The Big Picture on Why the Palestinians Always Say ‘No’

By Jack Schwartzwald, The American Thinker

Addressing the Brookings Institution on December 2, 2011, U. S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta rebuked Israel for not doing enough to promote peace with the Palestinians, demanding that Israel’s leaders “just get to the damned [peace] table.”  But the notion that Israel bearsany (much less primary) responsibility for the absence of peace or Palestinian statehood is a difficult case to make.

During the British Mandate, the Jews of Palestine twice agreed to peace based on the country’s partition into Arab and Jewish states — first at the time of the 1937 Peel Commission Report and second with the U.N.’s historic 1947 partition vote.  Both times the Palestinian leadership bluntly declined the offer.  The same answer was given when Levi Eshkol discussed Palestinian autonomy with West Bank Arab “notables” (1968), when Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat signed the Camp David Framework for the West Bank and Gaza (1979), and when Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert made their respective statehood offers to Yasir Arafat (2000-01) and Mahmoud Abbas (2008).

The most obvious reason for all this Palestinian naysaying is that national expression for Palestinians has never been the goal of the “Palestinian” movement.  The true goal (pursued in concert with the Arab world at large), is, and always has been, the eradication of Jewish national expression in Judaism’s ancestral homeland.  No one, perhaps, has expressed this fact more succinctly than PLO executive committee member Zahir Muhsein, who told the Dutch Newspaper Trouw in 1977, “The Palestinian people does not exist. … Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct ‘Palestinian people’ to oppose Zionism.”

The assault on Jewish national identity, however, is actually part of a more pervasive strategy pursued by Islamists throughout the Middle East.  “Since the fall of the Ottoman Empire and Western decolonization,” writes Professor Walid Phares, “dominant ethnicities in the Greater Middle East [i.e., Arab, Persian and Turkish] have subjected regional minorities to territorial and political repression on the one hand, and cultural and linguistic suppression on the other.”  Well-known examples of this assault on ethno-religious identities include Turkey’s Armenian genocide (1915-23) and Saddam Hussein’s use of poison gas against Iraqi Kurds.

It was hoped that 2011’s “Arab Spring” might lead the region toward greater democratic freedoms, but as the dictators fell, a less agreeable picture emerged.  Libya and Egypt have moved inexorably toward sharia law (which traditionally treats non-Muslims as subjugated second-class citizens).  The peril has already been felt by Egypt’s Coptic Christians — 100,000 of whom have fled the country since the fall of Hosni Mubarak.

Many Westerners assume that Muslims are the indigenous people in Arab lands.  In fact, there are a multitude of ethnic Christian minorities throughout the region whose heritage antedates the Muslim conquest.  The Copts are such a people.  Christianized in the 1st Century AD by Saint Matthew, the Copts date their ethnicity to the days of the Pharaohs.  Since the Muslim Conquest in the 7th Century AD, they have endured unceasing second-class citizenship in their own homeland.  Having no territorial ambitions, the Copts, who constitute at least 10% of the Egyptian population, have long striven for basic civil rights — including the right to speak the Coptic language, which is presently outlawed and kept alive only in Church prayers.  Far from bringing relief to Christians, Egypt’s “Arab Spring” has magnified their torment.  According to a May 2011 French news report, “an explosion of violence against the Coptic Christian community” has been in train since Mubarak’s fall.  On September 30, 2011, for example, Muslim vandals in the town of El-Marinab set fire to St. George’s Church.  When members of the Coptic community attempted a peaceful march to the Maspero state TV building in protest, Egyptian soldiers drove armored personnel carriers into the crowd, crushing a number of protesters to death.

The TV station, meanwhile, falsely proclaimed a threat to the regime, thereby inciting anti-Christian riots in Cairo.

Iraqi Christians are another case in point.  Iraq’s Assyrian (Orthodox) and Chaldean (Catholic) communities were Christianized in the 1st Century AD, but their ethnicity dates to the Ancient Assyrian Empire.  Since Saddam Hussein’s fall in 2003, Assyrian Christians have come under increasing attack by the Muslim majority.  Predictably, the U.S. withdrawal in 2010-11 sparked even more anti-Christian violence.  The worst instance occurred in October 2010, when al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorists burst into the Our Lady of Salvation Church in Baghdad and opened fire on the congregation, killing priests and parishioners alike.  When Iraqi security forces attempted to intervene, two of the attackers detonated suicide vests.  In all, 58 worshipers were killed and many more wounded.

Since 2003, an estimated 800,000 of Iraq’s 1.4 million Christians have fled.  The unprecedented exodus has prompted Iraqi Christian leaders to demand an autonomous province guarded by Christian security forces in Iraq’s Nineveh Plains region.  Meanwhile, many Assyrian émigrés have settled in neighboring Syria, only to face fears that they will be sent fleeing again should Bashar Assad’s regime fall.  Lebanon’s Maronite Church patriarch has spoken publicly on the topic, saying, “We are with … reforms and human rights [in Syria,] but we hope the price will not be the same as what happened in Iraq.”

Other examples are legion.  Lebanon’s Maronites (and other Christian sects) accounted for 54% of Lebanon’s population in 1932.  The PLO ravages of the 1970s-80s, the 1975-76 Civil War, and, more recently, maltreatment at the hands of Hezb’allah have lowered this figure to an estimated 30%-40%.  (During the 2006 Lebanon War, Hezb’allah terrorists fired rockets and mortars from Christian neighborhoods hoping that Israeli return fire would strike innocent Christians.)  In southern Sudan, 2 million African Christians and animists have been killed in a decades-long struggle for autonomy from the domineering Arab north.  Even the “long-suffering” Palestinians have found opportunity to persecute Christians.  When the Palestinian Authority obtained control over Bethlehem in 1994, the city had a 60% Christian majority.  Anti-Christian violence and intimidation since that time have caused a general flight.

By 2001 Christians accounted for just 20% of the population, and they continue to leave.

The list goes on — and it constitutes something more than simple persecution of Christians.  Walid Phares has termed it “the negation of cultural identity” of targeted minorities living in the “circle of Arab states.”  Arab and Palestinian attitudes towards Israel are simply further examples of the ongoing process.  For what is the Palestinian refusal to allow Jews to pray on the Temple Mount (Judaism’s holiest site) or their denial of the existence of a Jewish Temple there (even as they labor to destroy priceless Temple artifacts from beneath the Mount’s surface) or their official Palestinian Authority maps (showing Israel wholly replaced by a Palestinian state) if not an attempt to negate Jewish cultural identity in Judaism’s birthplace?

In viewing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Leon Panetta has demonstrated an inability to perceive which side is obstructing peace.  Perhaps if he takes a step back and looks at the big picture, he will see things in sharper focus; for it is the regional Islamist aspiration to suppress non-Muslim ethno-religious identities — and not a lack of Israeli pacifism — that explains why the Palestinians always say “no.”

Jack Schwartzwald is a clinical assistant professor of medicine at Brown University and the author of Nine Lives of Israel (McFarland Publishing, Spring 2012).

 

 

April 24, 2012 | 43 Comments »

Leave a Reply

43 Comments / 43 Comments

  1. @ CuriousAmerican:

    “I have seen, by percentages, much more JEWISH criticism of Israel than comes from real Evangelical Christians.”

    Me too.

    “Uri Avery, Noam Chomsky come to mind as former avid Zionists.”

    These are poor examples, however.

    Don’t know when Chomsky was EVER a Zionist (avid or otherwise).

    Avnery is a special case.

    “Tony Campolo was never in the Evangelical supporters of Israel rank.”

    Precisely my point in challenging the above gambit [‘I was once a Zionist, but now Ive seen the light… etc…’], as posited by Arison.

  2. @ dweller:

    First of all, it’s a very common gambit to claim, “I was once a [fill in the blank: Zionist, Republican, pro-gunner, pro-lifer, pro-capitalist; or the reverse of any of the foregoing, etc] — but now I’ve seen the light, blah, blah, blah… ad naus.”

    I have seen, by percentages, much more JEWISH criticism of Israel than comes from real Evangelical Christians.

    Uri Avery, Noam Chomsky come to mind as former avid Zionists.

    Tony Campolo was never in the Evangelical supporters of Israel rank.

  3. @ Arison:

    “[T]hey are former Christian Zionists… They are mostly former pro Israel. I had a heated debate online with one such who claimed he saw the light.”

    First of all, it’s a very common gambit to claim, “I was once a [fill in the blank: Zionist, Republican, pro-gunner, pro-lifer, pro-capitalist; or the reverse of any of the foregoing, etc] — but now I’ve seen the light, blah, blah, blah… ad naus.”

    You hear that lead-in all the time on talk-show call-ins. They use this to give themselves a special standing — to establish some kind of ersatz, on-air credibility — in arguing the opposing position. But the truth is that far more often than not, they have always had their present stance, but they’re hoping to turn the listener around with this bullshit-bona-fides ploy.

    Secondly, in some cases, they may well have been formerly ‘pro-Israel’ in a perfunctory way.

    But if they can be so easily swayed by the paper-thin & misleading claims of these filmmakers, then their ‘Zionism’ was never in fact ‘Christian’ in any substantive way.

    As I noted above, Tony Campolo & friends have been suckers for much of the liberal agenda for a long time. I find little to be shocked about in their susceptibility to this part of it. All this really means is that those who can see their way thru its bogus appeal are going to have to dig deeper in themselves for the resources to fight it within the Evangelical community.

    And we should stand ready to help them do that, if we can.

    Remember, in Israel for a couple decades the “post-Zionist” school of thought went out of its way — bent over backwards — to debunk as much as it could of the Zionist narrative.

    More recently, however, there’s been a “modification of the modification,” as it were, under way (e.g., Benny Morris, et al). In a real sense, the result has been the growth of a more solid Zionism than before, because now it’s better thought thru, instead of being just accepted in a surface way.

    In may be that Gentile Zionism may have to undergo a comparable recrudescence based its own deeper understanding of what’s at stake.

  4. yamit82 Said:

    Yes they are opposed to what your call Christian Zionism but they do exist and their numbers are growing quite rapidly.

    They are mostly former pro Israel. I had a heated debate online with one such who claimed he saw the light. My response was that it is never something we relied on.

    This movement is shifting towards the pallie side.

    Christians for Palestine – Tablet Magazine April 18, 2012
    http://www.hudson.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=publication_details&id=8876

    Christ at the Checkpoint, is indicative of the different direction this segment of the evangelical movement is heading toward. The idea is that evangelicals should rethink their support for a state that occupies another people and oppresses them.

    there is an increasingly heated debate in the evangelical community that may augur a shift in the political winds. And if the Christ at the Checkpoint camp wins out, the pro-Israel Jewish community that once looked warily upon evangelical support may come to regard that movement with nostalgia.

  5. @ CuriousAmerican:

    “Thanks for the post above dweller.”

    Thanks not required. It was very much in order.

    All-the-same though, you’re quite welcome.

    “Yamit speaks without thinking.”

    He’s easily set off, I’m afraid.

    I confess that I love his spunk.

    Though I do wish we could get him to switch to decaf

    — gradually, of course. Caffeine withdrawal is a bear.

  6. @ yamit82:

    “Syrian-Lebanese it’s all the same people.”

    Maybe so, but IF so, they were a people sharply riven by irreconcilable cultural & religious differences — and in desperate need of separation. Otherwise, why would else France have been so adamant about setting Lebanon apart from Syria? — it had no special natural resources or geographic features the French desired. They simply wanted to provide a safe haven for Christians, and Lebanon was already dominated by Maronites.

    After San Remo, with all of southern Syria — i.e., Palestine east & west of the River — now designated a separate, British, Mandate, the French were all the more insistent on maintaining direct control over the remainder of Greater Syria, the Mandate for which included the then-overwhelmingly Maronite Catholic, western littoral: viewed by France as vulnerable to the radical Islamists concentrated in Damascus. The city, with its environs, was identified by the Quay d’Orsay as

    “a Muslim center which is very hostile to France; to tell the truth, the most hostile in all Islam. It is there that the fanatical Arabs of North Africa go who want to elude our control. It is there where all the plots against our authority in the Muslim countries are hatched, and it is there where the agitators come and preach rebellion… Damascus [must therefore] be placed under our control.” [Jan-Karl Tanenbaum, “France and the Arab Middle East, 1914-1920,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 68, pt. 7 (1978), pp. 21, 34, 35. Quai d’Orsay memo, “Note sur la Syrie,” 14 Feb 1919; Archives du Ministere des Affaires Etrangeres (AAE), serie: Levant S-L-C, Vol. 10, fol. 46, as quoted by Tanenbaum, p. 27]

    It’s indisputable that the Christian (mostly Syrian Orthodox or Maronite) population of Damascus and the Lebanon had suffered long & dreadfully at Muslim hands (or those of their sometime Druze proxies). Writing half-a-century earlier, in 1867, within the context of that decade’s religious wars — and just a few years after “five thousand Christians were massacred in Damascus…” by Syrian Muslims bitterly opposed to the 1856 Ottoman reforms granting Christians equality before the law with Muslims, a young, not-yet-celebrated, midwestern American journalist named Clemens had noted reports relating that

    “those narrow streets ran blood for several days, and that men, women and children were butchered indiscriminately and left to rot by hundreds all through the Christian Quarter [of Damascus]; they say, further, that the stench was dreadful. All the Christians who could get away fled from the city, and the Mohammedans would not defile their hands by burying the ‘infidel dogs.’ The thirst for blood extended to the highlands of Hermon and Anti-Lebanon, and in a short time twenty-five thousand more Christians were massacred and their possessions laid waste [by Mountain Druze, threatened by unrest among the rival, Maronite, minority]. How they hate a Christian in Damascus!” [Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad; or, the New Pilgrims’ Progress (American Publishing Co., Hartford, CT, 1869; New American Library—Penguin, NY, 1966), p. 332]

    Moreover, the much more recent memory of the (largely artificially induced) famine: contrived through the Turkish blockade of the eastern Mediterranean coast in the early war years of 1915-1916, and which had killed over 100,000 Maronites in Syria, and particularly in the Lebanon region, was then only too fresh in mind. Furthermore, the [Muslim] Turkish genocide of the [Christian] Armenians, although BEGUN by the Ottoman government of the quickly decayed and no longer young, Young Turks (CUP) regime, was now effectively CONTINUING under the auspices of the Turkish Republic. These protracted outrages were being carried out by Mustafa Kemal Pasha — Ataturk [“Father of the Turks — the very man who had abolished the Caliphate & set Mosque apart from State.

    “So imminent and ever-present was the peril, and so fresh the memory of these events in the minds of the non-Muslims, that illiterate Christian mothers dated events as so many years before or after ‘such and such a massacre’.” [cited by Serge Trifkovic from George Horton {U.S. Consul in Smyrna}, The Blight of Asia (Bobbs-Merrill, Indianapolis, 1926)

    “Across the Middle East, the bloodshed of 1915-1922 finally destroyed Christian communities and cultures that had survived since Roman times — groups like the Jacobites, Nestorians & Chaldeans. The carnage peaked after World War One ended.” [Serge Trifkovic, Sword of the Prophet: Islam, History, Theology, Impact on the World (Regina Orthodox Press, Boston, 2002), p. 123]

    The Turkish burning of Smyrna [“Izmir,” in Turkish], in western Anatolia, the wealthiest, most sophisticated & cosmopolitan city of the former Ottoman Empire, and home of the last of the Seven Churches of Revelation — together with the extermination or dispersal of the city’s Greek Christian population (twice that of Athens) — was still to come: in two catastrophic weeks of September 1922. In the end, Greek civilization in Asia Minor would be fundamentally destroyed in the most shocking humanitarian tragedy of its day; but even now, the pattern was already all-too-well established.

    The Quay d’Orsay was, thus, understandably unyielding: If Mandate Syria was ultimately to become sovereign & independent, as ordained by the Mandate which the Principal Allied Powers had indeed awarded to France, it would happen on France’s time and by way of France’s judgment — and nobody else’s. The Lebanon region would become a haven — and if necessary, a redoubt — for Christians, protected by their own state sovereignty.

  7. @ yamit82:

    “You know as well as I do Lebanon is part of historical Syria.”

    “Historical,” from what perspective?

    From the Ottoman perspective?

    From that perspective, Eretz Yisrael — including Transjordanian Palestine — is also “part of historical Syria.”

    “Lebanon is an artificial state carved out of the Ottoman Empire by Britain and France.”

    Arguably, this is the case with ALL the states that emerged from the former possessions of the Ottoman Empire; you can’t single out Lebanon in that respect.

  8. @ yamit82:

    “Who put good loyal American citizens in concentration camps Me? the Jews? No, it was racist Christian Americans.”

    Actually it was liberal Americans who did that, like FDR & Earl Warren.

    J. Edgar Hoo-hah, OTOTH, opposed it, I think.

    Go figure.

  9. @ CuriousAmerican:

    “Rabbi Kahane, with his ugly racist comments…”

    Ugly? — maybe, sometimes

    — he could get pretty exasperated with the infirm, vacillating attitude of the Israeli establishment in its relation toward a consistently demonstrated enemy of the People of Israel.

    But ‘racist’? — no way; he couldn’t have cared less about anybody’s DNA — or, strictly speaking, even their ethnicity, as such.

    — Arab culture, OTOH (and particularly in its intersection with the Religion of Peace), THAT was a matter of major significance with him — because of the viciousness it generated & nurtured in the Arabs.

    Racist, however, he was not.

  10. @ CuriousAmerican:

    “The sole purpose of non-Jews is to serve Jews, according to Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the head of Shas’s Council of Torah Sages and a senior Sephardi adjudicator.

    ‘Goyim were born only to serve us. Without that, they have no place in the world – only to serve the People of Israel,’ he said in his weekly Saturday night sermon on the laws regarding the actions non-Jews are permitted to perform on Shabbat.”

    Rebbe Ovadia’s take on the Doctrines of Unconditional Election and Predestination?

  11. @ yamit82:

    by CuriousAmerican:

    You are a REAL sweetheart of a guy!

    I know.

    And modest too!

    And you have the gall to talk of moral relativism?!

    Sorry I see no connection or relevance of what I said to moral relativism. Since you do, show me where?

    You condemn Muslim supremacism, but do not see the same vice in yourself.

    The very Zionist Joseph Farah is of Lebanese and Syrian extraction.

    Syrian-Lebanese it’s all the same people.

    Tell that to a Maronite Christian. They claim, with good reason, they are Phoenicians, NOT Arabs. And indeed they are. The Arabs did not arrive in their area until the 7th century. The Maronites did not speak Arabic until the 19th. They spoke Aramaic.

    You know as well as I do Lebanon is part of historical Syria. Lebanon is an artificial state carved out of the Ottoman Empire by Britain and France.

    Truly idiotic. TRULY!

    Mt Lebanon was an autonomous province for Christians.

    Lebanon is mentioned in the Bible, and not as part of Syria.

    Funny thing though, the Syrians and Arabs think Israel is an artificial state carved out by the British and French.

    Truly, you are heliocentric. The universe revolves around you.

    Sununu is part-Palestinian in extraction; and not really a good example.

    An Arab is an Arab and there is no such animal as a Palestinian People.

    The Arabs say a Jew is a Jew, and really are Khazars.

    I suspect you share Rabbi Yosef’s view on Gentiles.

    Some of my best friends are Gentiles. A Gentile once saved my life and I am forever grateful. I was once even engaged to a beautiful, smart,talented Presbyterian girl with a great sense of humor.

    That said Judaism is Judaism and Yosef is considered by some as a “Gadol” of his generation, not mine necessarily I have my own “Gadol” but I can’t say he is wrong. I could quote original Church fathers and those who came after on the vile things they said about Jews. I could quote your NT for all the anti Jew verses and writings of Christian theologians so If you want to have a pissing contest, you will lose.

    I suspect I would lose. You seem to be more full of bodily waste than I am.

    But your comment, “total losers” shows that you base you morality only on strength.

    I am not an advocate of the Christian concept of love thy neighbor which they never practiced.

    So what will you do if your strength fails?

    YAMIT, your worldview is ugly.

  12. @ Arison:

    “He argued that Jews were ‘Christ-killers’ because ‘the New Testament says they are’.”

    Except that it doesn’t say that at all.

  13. @ Arison:

    “[T]hese are Xtian Zionists who are now showing their true colours, http://www.withgodonourside.com

    Who said they were “Xtian Zionists”?

    I can’t watch the trailer with sound, but based on what I saw of it, these people don’t even claim to be ‘Zionists’ (Xtn or otherwise).

    Tony Campolo, whose name seems to be all over the film, is a product of the Evangelical movement, it’s true — and most Evangelicals are indeed Xtn Zionists.

    But there is a certain element among the Evangelicals that isn’t Zionist (Campolo is an exemplar; so’s Jimmy Carter), because it still clings to Replacement Theology — Supersessionism — the notion that ‘Christians’ have ‘superseded’ the Jews as God’s Chosen People; that the promises to the Jews are cancelled — viz., God as “Indian-Giver” (just an expression; no offense to our Native American friends) — and that the promises are “transferred” to the Xtns (“the New Jews”), etc.

    Campolo & cohort are also squishy on homosexuality, environmentalism, etc, as well.

  14. @ CuriousAmerican:

    You are a REAL sweetheart of a guy!

    I know.

    And you have the gall to talk of moral relativism?!

    Sorry I see no connection or relevance of what I said to moral relativism. Since you do, show me where?

    The very Zionist Joseph Farah is of Lebanese and Syrian extraction.

    Syrian-Lebanese it’s all the same people. You know as well as I do Lebanon is part of historical Syria. Lebanon is an artificial state carved out of the Ottoman Empire by Britain and France.


    Sununu is part-Palestinian in extraction; and not really a good example.

    An Arab is an Arab and there is no such animal as a Palestinian People.

    I suspect you share Rabbi Yosef’s view on Gentiles.

    Some of my best friends are Gentiles. A Gentile once saved my life and I am forever grateful. I was once even engaged to a beautiful, smart,talented Presbyterian girl with a great sense of humor.

    That said Judaism is Judaism and Yosef is considered by some as a “Gadol” of his generation, not mine necessarily I have my own “Gadol” but I can’t say he is wrong. I could quote original Church fathers and those who came after on the vile things they said about Jews. I could quote your NT for all the anti Jew verses and writings of Christian theologians so If you want to have a pissing contest, you will lose.

    But your comment, “total losers” shows that you base you morality only on strength.

    I am not an advocate of the Christian concept of love thy neighbor which they never practiced.

  15. @ CuriousAmerican:
    All of my answers were vile or just some of them? Which?

    They blamed the Muslims for the destruction of Lebanon.

    Probably true so why should we credit them with any positive attributes relating to Israel/Jews because they stated the truth?

    Your comparison of Arabs to cockroaches is vile.

    Anybody trying to kill me is vile, Anybody who supports those who would kill me by word thought or deed is vile. The American characterizations of the “Krauts” and “Japs” and even worse were not vile? Who put good loyal American citizens in concentration camps Me? the Jews? No, it was racist Christian Americans.

    Your contempt for Christian Lebanese is truly racist.

    I didn’t know that the Lebanese are a race?

  16. @ CuriousAmerican:

    The sole purpose of non-Jews is to serve Jews, according to Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the head of Shas’s Council of Torah Sages and a senior Sephardi adjudicator.

    “Goyim were born only to serve us. Without that, they have no place in the world – only to serve the People of Israel,” he said in his weekly Saturday night sermon on the laws regarding the actions non-Jews are permitted to perform on Shabbat.

    This guy was a major player in Shas? Why wasn’t he fired? Why only Octavia Nasr whose explanation made more sense than Rabbi Yosef?

    Octavia Nasr made an innocent, though misspoken, tweet, TAKEN OUT OF CONTEXT. She explained it and apologized for any misunderstanding.

    Rabbi Yosef seems to be serious however.

    I read the article re: Ovadia Yosef. 🙂

    Three reasons why Judaism and Christianity are light years away from each other:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPJeLIFukVk&feature=related

  17. @ CuriousAmerican:

    http://www.jpost.com/JewishWorld/JewishNews/Article.aspx?id=191782

    The sole purpose of non-Jews is to serve Jews, according to Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the head of Shas’s Council of Torah Sages and a senior Sephardi adjudicator.

    “Goyim were born only to serve us. Without that, they have no place in the world – only to serve the People of Israel,” he said in his weekly Saturday night sermon on the laws regarding the actions non-Jews are permitted to perform on Shabbat.

    This guy was a major player in Shas? Why wasn’t he fired? Why only Octavia Nasr whose explanation made more sense than Rabbi Yosef?

    Octavia Nasr made an innocent, though misspoken, tweet, TAKEN OUT OF CONTEXT. She explained it and apologized for any misunderstanding.

    Rabbi Yosef seems to be serious however.

    I read the article re: Ovadia Yosef. 🙂

    Three reasons why Judaism and Christianity are light years away from each other:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPJeLIFukVk&feature=related

  18. @ CuriousAmerican:

    http://www.jpost.com/JewishWorld/JewishNews/Article.aspx?id=191782

    The sole purpose of non-Jews is to serve Jews, according to Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the head of Shas’s Council of Torah Sages and a senior Sephardi adjudicator.

    “Goyim were born only to serve us. Without that, they have no place in the world – only to serve the People of Israel,” he said in his weekly Saturday night sermon on the laws regarding the actions non-Jews are permitted to perform on Shabbat.

    This guy was a major player in Shas? Why wasn’t he fired? Why only Octavia Nasr whose explanation made more sense than Rabbi Yosef?

    Octavia Nasr made an innocent, though misspoken, tweet, TAKEN OUT OF CONTEXT. She explained it and apologized for any misunderstanding.

    Rabbi Yosef seems to be serious however.

    I read the article re: Ovadia Yosef. 🙂

    Three reasons why Judaism and Christianity are light years away from each other:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPJeLIFukVk&feature=related

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPJeLIFukVk&feature=related

  19. By Curious American

    They are mad that their Christian areas of Lebanon were bombed by Israel in 2006 when Israel knew that Hezbollah was acting independent of the Lebanese gov’t; and everyone knew that the Christians were actually, initially rooting for Israel until Israel bombed bridges in the Christian cities.

    By Yamit

    Tough…!

    You are a REAL sweetheart of a guy!

    And you have the gall to talk of moral relativism?!

    Even in 1948, the Christians in Lebanon did NOT want war, but could not stop the Muslim street from volunteering.

    I mean who cares. Even if they wanted war they couldn’t fight their way out of a paper bag. Total losers.

    Seems to me our friends Helen Thomas and Family of John Sanunu are of LEBANESE EXTRACTION.

    The very Zionist Joseph Farah is of Lebanese and Syrian extraction.

    Sununu is part-Palestinian in extraction; and not really a good example.

    But your comment, “total losers” shows that you base you morality only on strength.

    I suspect you share Rabbi Yosef’s view on Gentiles.

  20. Your answer above, Yamit, is vile.

    My former pharmacist, and a some friends of mine were Lebanese-Christians.

    They blamed the Muslims for the destruction of Lebanon.

    All grew up in Lebanon before moving to America.

    Your comparison of Arabs to cockroaches is vile.

    Your contempt for Christian Lebanese is truly racist.

  21. @ CuriousAmerican:

    Lebanese Maronite Catholics(the largest Christian denomination in Lebanon) are affliated with Rome, and would hew to the Vatican’s Western View.

    And what view is that?

    The only major difference today with the historic Churches position on Jews and Israel is that for the time being, is that they are not actively engaged in proselytizing Jews. Guess they figure our Christian Zionist (friends) are doing a good enough job. On the other hand they want us dead and out of Jerusalem and to that end they support all of our mortal enemies. I concede that the American Catholic Church seems to have a more ecumenical approach to Jews and Israel but not so everywhere else.

    It was the Maronites who tried to disarm the PLO in 1975, because they did NOT want the PLO attacking Israel from their country. The Lebanese Civil War started and the Christians LOST. The Christians in Lebanon were destroyed by PLO refugees.

    I would say that the PLO was a danger to them more than any concern for Israel. Since the Christians made up most of the commercial and financial strata of Lebanon they also had a vested interest in seeing Israel not disrupting their commercial activity.

    Do not confuse the reasons I mentioned with any concern or like for Jews or Israel. Their motivations were basically self interest as they saw it. “CAUSE AND EFFECT”…See Toynbee

    I find your statement out of touch with reality, and exhibiting a prejudice against Mideast Christians bordering on anti-Christian paranoia. The Maronites were slaughtered by Muslims in the 19th century and the 20th, and they have had NO illusions about Islam. I know Lebanese-Americans personally, and they are NOT intrinsically anti-Semitic.

    Your evidence is serendipitous, not scientific and coming from you non objective.

    They are mad that their Christian areas of Lebanon were bombed by Israel in 2006 when Israel knew that Hezbollah was acting independent of the Lebanese gov’t; and everyone knew that the Christians were actually, initially rooting for Israel until Israel bombed bridges in the Christian cities.

    Tough…!

    Even in 1948, the Christians in Lebanon did NOT want war, but could not stop the Muslim street from volunteering.

    I mean who cares. Even if they wanted war they couldn’t fight their way out of a paper bag. Total losers.

    Seems to me our friends Helen Thomas and Family of John Sanunu are of LEBANESE EXTRACTION.

  22. @ CuriousAmerican:

    Octavia Nasr explained her comments. She noted that her praise of Fadlallah concerned his stance AGAINST honor killings, and in favor of women’s rights; which FOR A MUSLIM CLERIC WAS DOWNRIGHT PROGRESSIVE.

    BullSh-T

    She was NOT referring to NOR approving of his terrorism.

    BullSh-T

    And, given her explanation, she should NOT have been fired.

    Her explanation:? 🙂 She should have been fired along with anybody else connected to the the media channel who is only 2nd to BBC in their Jew hatred. You can’t work for CNN if you are objective about Israel or Jews not to mention being even slightly pro Israel. After many years of complaining our cable provider dropped CNN in January. Nobody here is complaining or missing them either. Kind of Masochistic to have to pay to get bashed every day.

    She is Maronite Catholic (who historically were pro-Israel).

    Shirley YOU JEST?

    I doubt she is anti-semitic. I do not know her views on Palestine, though.

    First you credit her with not being a Jew Hater then you admit you don’t know her views. There are terms for people like that.

    As for bigotry, what do you do with some of the comments coming out of Hasid Rabbis?

    Ah, I was waiting for the moral relativism…!

    Some of you Christians and not a few Jewish useful idiots compare us with the Nazis for what they call our treatment of the poor Cockroaches.

    What quotes from the rabbis might you be referring?

    Famous Lebanese-Americans

    Find me 5 who don’t hate Jews

  23. @ CuriousAmerican:

    The site you gave are those OPPOSED to Christian Zionism, and they are NOT representative any more than Rabbi Kahane, with his ugly racist comments (He walked up to Arabs and called them dogs), was representative of all Jewry.

    BTW: Even if you agree with his political observations, his violent abusive manner was not appropriate.

    To just walk up to Arabs and call them dogs is not nice; even if his viewpoints about Arabs were or were not accurate.

    Yes they are opposed to what your call Christian Zionism but they do exist and their numbers are growing quite rapidly.

    CUFI’s Robert Stearns warns of Evangelical shift to the Left

    And then he dropped the bomb…

    “He cautioned that at this point in time “the evangelical movement is in a place of shifting”. He spoke about “the emergence of a new evangelical left”, “the new progressive evangelicals”, and that they have “a very different view of Israel. He said it was vital to be aware of these forces which are ostensibly operating under “an evangelical umbrella””.

    Re: Your opinion of R Kahane H”YD. If he were polite to the Arabs he called dogs would you or anyone else remember the confrontation?
    I don’t think of the Arabs as dogs I consider them vermin or cockroaches. Israel is blessed with many varieties of roaches and while easy to kill tough to eliminate. In the beginning was not the word but the Cockroaches. They will probably survive the Armageddon.

    Unlike you I may despise my enemies but I also respect them and understand them. There are in the final analysis, only two options. Drive them out or kill them. I prefer to drive them out it’s more humanitarian but I am perfectly willing to kill them all just like the Cocroaches.

  24. @ Arison:
    Not so, Lebanese Xtians in the USA are Jew hating anti semites. Octavia Nasr??

    Octavia Nasr explained her comments. She noted that her praise of Fadlallah concerned his stance AGAINST honor killings, and in favor of women’s rights; which FOR A MUSLIM CLERIC WAS DOWNRIGHT PROGRESSIVE.

    She was NOT referring to NOR approving of his terrorism. And, given her explanation, she should NOT have been fired.

    She is Maronite Catholic (who historically were pro-Israel). I doubt she is anti-semitic. I do not know her views on Palestine, though.

    As for bigotry, what do you do with some of the comments coming out of Hasid Rabbis?

    http://www.jpost.com/JewishWorld/JewishNews/Article.aspx?id=191782

    The sole purpose of non-Jews is to serve Jews, according to Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the head of Shas’s Council of Torah Sages and a senior Sephardi adjudicator.

    “Goyim were born only to serve us. Without that, they have no place in the world – only to serve the People of Israel,” he said in his weekly Saturday night sermon on the laws regarding the actions non-Jews are permitted to perform on Shabbat.

    This guy was a major player in Shas? Why wasn’t he fired? Why only Octavia Nasr whose explanation made more sense than Rabbi Yosef?

    Octavia Nasr made an innocent, though misspoken, tweet, TAKEN OUT OF CONTEXT. She explained it and apologized for any misunderstanding.

    Rabbi Yosef seems to be serious however.

  25. @ Arison:

    to: @ CuriousAmerican:

    Yamit82 is right, and even US Christian support is conditional, as you can see here, these are Xtian Zionists who are now showing their true colours,
    http://www.withgodonourside.com

    The site you gave are those OPPOSED to Christian Zionism, and they are NOT representative any more than Rabbi Kahane, with his ugly racist comments (He walked up to Arabs and called them dogs), was representative of all Jewry.

    BTW: Even if you agree with his political observations, his violent abusive manner was not appropriate.

    To just walk up to Arabs and call them dogs is not nice; even if his viewpoints about Arabs were or were not accurate.

  26. @ Arison:

    Not so, Lebanese Xtians in the USA are Jew hating anti semites. Octavia Nasr??

    You take one example out of context. I could quote some gems from Rabbi Kahane and, using your methods, run them up to make a case for anti-Christianism among the Rabbinate. Of course, it would not be accurate; but then again neither is the case of Octavia Nasr. And in Nasr’s case, she was quick to point out her error. She claims that she was only saying that FOR A MUSLIM, FADLALLAH WAS PROGRESSIVE.

    And she may have been right. FOR A MUSLIM, HE MIGHT HAVE BEEN PROGRESSIVE. It would not take much.

    What about this Lebanese American: Brigette Gabriel.
    http://www.actforamerica.org/welcome/
    Lebanese Christian.
    BTW: and to the side, just for curiousity, despite her dark complexion, she has gorgeous blue eyes. She must have been drop dead gorgeous as a teen-ager.

    Lebanon is a very tricky case.

    In the war between Jews and Muslims, it was Christian Lebanon which got destroyed.

  27. It is clear that in general, the Eastern churches have yet to move beyond the noxious anti-Semitic motifs repudiated by the Vatican in its Nostra Aetate declaration issued in 1965, after the Second Vatican Council.

    Lebanese Maronite Catholics(the largest Christian denomination in Lebanon) are affliated with Rome, and would hew to the Vatican’s Western View.

    It was the Maronites who tried to disarm the PLO in 1975, because they did NOT want the PLO attacking Israel from their country. The Lebanese Civil War started and the Christians LOST. The Christians in Lebanon were destroyed by PLO refugees.

    What do you do with this video?
    Israel and Lebanon – Allies – Part 1
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mo5TNVNB_Dc

    Bashir Gemayel in 1982
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h92yK54jp0Q

    Lebanon’s Bashir Gemayel was killed for making an alliance with Israel.

    If you want to see prejudice (in this case from a Jewish group):

    Written by Rabbi Saadya Grama — an alumnus of Beth Medrash Govoha, the renowned yeshiva in Lakewood, N.J. — the self-published book attempts to employ classical Jewish sources in defense of a race-based theory of Jewish supremacy. Grama’s book, published in Hebrew under the title “Romemut Yisrael Ufarashat Hagalut,” includes flowery endorsements from the most revered religious scholars at the renowned Lakewood yeshiva, including the institution’s foremost religious leader, or rosh yeshiva, Rabbi Aryeh Malkiel Kotler.
    Source: THE JEWISH FORWARD http://www.forward.com/articles/7311/charedi-rabbis-rush-to-disavow-anti-gentile-book/#ixzz1t3b4o4NN

    I find your statement out of touch with reality, and exhibiting a prejudice against Mideast Christians bordering on anti-Christian paranoia. The Maronites were slaughtered by Muslims in the 19th century and the 20th, and they have had NO illusions about Islam. I know Lebanese-Americans personally, and they are NOT intrinsically anti-Semitic.

    They are mad that their Christian areas of Lebanon were bombed by Israel in 2006 when Israel knew that Hezbollah was acting independent of the Lebanese gov’t; and everyone knew that the Christians were actually, initially rooting for Israel until Israel bombed bridges in the Christian cities.

    Even in 1948, the Christians in Lebanon did NOT want war, but could not stop the Muslim street from volunteering.

  28. Middle Eastern Christians and anti-Semitism
    http://www.meforum.org/2997/middle-eastern-christians-anti-semitism
    Similarly, in an interview with NBN TV on November 9, 2010, Iraqi priest Father Suheil Qasha claimed that the Jews consider all gentiles to be beasts, and asserted that the “real danger” to Middle Eastern Christians came from Zionism. He went on to state that those who perpetrated the attack on the church in Baghdad were certainly not Muslims, but probably those trained and supervised “by global Zionism.”

    Anti-Semitism extends to the Coptic Orthodox Church, which, serving around 10 percent of Egypt’s population, is the largest single church in the Middle East and North Africa. As liberal Egyptian blogger Samuel Tadros points out, a certain Father Marcos Aziz Khalil wrote in the newspaper Nahdet Masr: “The Jews saw that the Church is their No. 1 enemy, and that without [the] priesthood the Church loses its most important component . Thus the Masonic movement was the secret Zionist hand to create revolution against the clergy.”

    AT THIS point, many would no doubt be inclined to explain away this anti-Semitism by pointing to the anti-Jewish sentiments that are mainstream among the Muslim populations of the region. Living in such an environment – the reasoning goes – Christians would naturally be careful not to denounce deeply held convictions among their Muslim neighbors for fear of provoking persecution.

    However, the cancer of hostility toward Jews among Middle Eastern Christians goes much deeper than that.

    Indeed, it is telling that other non-Muslim minorities that have suffered discrimination and violence at the hands of Islamists – including the Yezidis, Mandeans and Bahá’ís – have never blamed Jews or Zionism for their persecution; their religions have not featured anti-Semitic doctrines.

    The case of the Bahá’í community is especially important because, with the religion’s global center located in Haifa, charges of collaboration with Israel can easily be leveled against Bahá’ís. Yet the Universal House of Justice has never complained of a Jewish/Zionist conspiracy against the Bahá’í communities in Iran and the wider region. Rather, it has always rightly identified the problem as enforcement of traditional Islamic law on the treatment of non-Muslims and apostasy, along with the supremacist attitudes fostered by the promotion of Shari’a.

    Ultimately the malaise of anti-Semitism among Middle Eastern Christians is entrenched in charges of deicide (i.e., of killing Jesus) against the Jewish people as a whole. As Saliba put it, Jewish conspiracies are “only natural” because the Jews repaid Christ for his miracles by crucifying him. In particular, Pope Shenouda III of the Coptic Orthodox Church lambasted the Western churches for exonerating Jews for Christ’s death, in a televised interview on April 8, 2007. He argued that Jews were “Christ-killers” because “the New Testament says they are.”

    It is clear that in general, the Eastern churches have yet to move beyond the noxious anti-Semitic motifs repudiated by the Vatican in its Nostra Aetate declaration issued in 1965, after the Second Vatican Council. If anti-Semitism in the Middle East and North Africa is to be eradicated, the burden of theological reform will evidently not be a task for Muslims alone.

  29. CuriousAmerican Said:

    My experience with Lebanese Christians is that they do NOT hate Israel; but they have to be politic with the Muslims around them.

    Not so, Lebanese Xtians in the USA are Jew hating anti semites. Octavia Nasr??

  30. @ yamit82:

    Christian Arabs hate the Jews from their religious teaching and beliefs, they hate the Jews as Arabs and finally as a minority, they want to be seen more anti Israel than their Muslim brothers, (it’s a cultural thing).

    In 1946, the Maronite Patriarch of Lebanon welcomed the Jews to the Mideast.

    This created an uproar in the Muslim street of Lebanon.

    My experience with Lebanese Christians is that they do NOT hate Israel; but they have to be politic with the Muslims around them.

    My experience with you, on this board, seems to be that you hate Goyim in general.

  31. Based on my personal observations and experiences I say let them fight it out. My experience with Christian Arabs is that they hate the Jews more than the Arab Muslims do. For us whether Lebanon is more or less Christian is Mute, totally irrelevant.

    Christian Arabs hate the Jews from their religious teaching and beliefs, they hate the Jews as Arabs and finally as a minority, they want to be seen more anti Israel than their Muslim brothers, (it’s a cultural thing).

    Israel does not have a horse in that internal conflict. Zu nevela v’zu treifa (meaning between two irremediably kinds of non-kosher )

  32. The demise of the Middle East’s minorities means Arab anti-Semitism will get uglier. With no one to blame at home, Arab leaders will blame Israel for all their troubles. This will make peace impossible. I don’t see why the growth of intolerance and hatred for the Jews in the Arab World is Israel’s obligation to solve. Let them rot.

  33. @ CuriousAmerican:

    “Neither side accepted the 1937 Peel Commission recommendations.”

    Among the Jews, opinion was deeply divided.

    Jabotinsky & the Revisionists — i.e., those who favored a revision of Britain’s unilateral (and arguably illegal) contravention of the Mandate’s intent [when HMG had amputated transJordanian Palestine from the Jewish National Home] — were outraged by the proposition that Britain aggravate & augment yet further the dismembering of the already truncated Mandatory award.

    They rejected Lord Peel’s proposal outright, and, though they had withdrawn from formal membership in the Zionist Organization [having formed their own, alternative body — the Union of Zionist Revisionists — two years earlier], their disdain for the Plan was shared by most of the Twentieth Zionist Congress, including the influential U.S. delegation. Hence the vote to oppose.

    Moreover, Field Marshal Smuts, who had been an original architect of the 1917 Balfour Declaration [during his tenure as a member of the War Cabinet of PM David Lloyd George, twenty years earlier], wrote a letter — that was read aloud to the assembled delegates — opposing the Royal Commission’s concept as a betrayal of the Declaration.

    Nor would Ben-Gurion, as Chairman of the Jewish Agency, concede justice or legality to the notion of the Jewish People surrendering part of its patrimony. Scarcely a week after issuance of the Commission’s Report, he had written significantly, “The Jewish people have always regarded, and will continue to regard, the whole of Eretz Israel as a single country which is theirs in a national sense, and will become theirs once again. No Jew will accept partition as a just and rightful solution.” [cited in Sarah Honig, “Another Tack: Saving Labor from Itself,” Jerusalem Post, 2 Apr 09].

    Moreover, at Zurich the following month, the Chairman would thunder to the delegates that the right of the Jewish People to the Land of Israel — in its entirety — “is preserved… throughout the generations and cannot be forfeited, or, under any circumstance or condition, cancelled.”

    Nevertheless, and notwithstanding these admonitions, Ben-Gurion himself ultimately DID accept the Peel proposals, in view of the deadly specter now looming large overseas and his recognition that even this miniature state would provide vital sanctuary for the gravely endangered European Jews: who had found the capitals of the world increasingly closed to them — after the 30 January 1933 accession to power of the Nazis.

    The Peel Commission was, however, in the event, unable to proceed with considerations of implementation anyway: and not only because the Mufti & his associates flatly rejected partition & demanded instead an end to the Mandate and its replacement by a single, independent Arab state — to be headed by [who else?] Husseini personally — but ALSO because, far from abating, and as if to punctuate the Mufti’s words, the Arab rioting (which had prompted the commissioning of Peel’s investigation in the first place) thereupon increased — markedly — in both intensity & scope.

    Like the General Assembly’s partition proposal [Resolution 181] of ten years later, Lord Peel’s plan was promptly rendered a dead letter by Arab violence.

    In the end even the Report’s stingy & grudging provision for the Jews: allowing them scarcely 20 percent of Western Palestine and amounting to a Lilliputian four percent of the Palestine Mandate originally promised the Jews in its entirety was unacceptable to the Palestine Arabs — because it had not ruled out Jewish statehood altogether.

    By any disinterested assessment, however, it was more than apparent that the violence had clearly been intended, from its inception, to discourage Jews frantically seeking to escape Europe from coming to Palestine, and thereby, to prevent the country from ever becoming (even in the tiny parcel proposed for the Jews in the Commission Report) the Mandate Charter-promised, Jewish National Home — sovereign or otherwise.

    Finally, though, and perhaps most significant among the reasons for the augmentation of the violence was the dynamic of Arab culture, which is to be excited — not mollified — by apparent concessions.

    The operative paradigm so familiar to the West: “Half-a-loaf for you &n half-a-loaf for me” — is thoroughly alien to Arab culture. In its place is the notion of concession as weakness: “Give me an inch, and I’ll demand a foot. Offer me a foot, and I’ll be stimulated by the very act of your offering, to take a mile.”

    Wherefore, to yield in any degree, or to propose compromise of any sort, is to signal an opportune occasion for one’s adversary to attack — and the greater the concession, the more certain & the more prompt & the more confident (indeed the more shameless) the assault — and, invariably, the more ferocious the violence of the assault.

    The bloodletting presently broke out, that summer, into open Arab rebellion throughout the land.

    “From April 1936,” observes Joan Peters in From Time Immemorial (Harper & Row, NY, 1984), p. 314], “the Mufti’s ‘systematic assassinations’ caused the murder or flight from the country of any Arab suspected of less than total loyalty to the rebels: mayor, affiliated official, [tribal] sheikh, village mukhtar [headman], rival Arab notable — and even prominent Muslim religious figures — all were victims.”

    If Hajj Amin Husseini couldn’t destroy the Jewish presence in Palestine all at one time, he would liquidate his Arab opposition: in preparation for a future assault on the Jews, when his control over the Arab populace — his weapon against the despised yahudi — would be thus consolidated and all the more reliable, all the more deadly.

    Many prominent members of the Husseinis’ chief rival clan, the (typically more conciliatory) Nashashibis, were, in these events, murdered or forced to flee for their lives.

    Persistently tolerated by Commissioner Wauchope’s Mandate administration, and financed entirely by funding from the Third Reich [confirmed subsequently by compelling & conclusive evidence found in the files of the German High Command in Flensburg, Germany], Hajj Amin’s “blood carnival” lasted another 18 months, claiming 3000 lives (far more Arab, in the end, than Jewish), as well as another 4000 casualties, and driving some 18,000 Arab fugitives into a crowded exile in Egypt & Lebanon by August of 1939 — just before the opening of WWII.

    “However, it was based on ethnic cleansing.”

    It certainly wasn’t based on mutual integration, if that’s what you mean. What was contemplated was a dual ‘cleansing’ — on the order of the prievious separation of the Turks & Greeks. Ben-Gurion wasn’t keen on ethnic cleansing; thought it unnecessary, as seen in this letter to his son a decade later:

    “We do not wish and do not need to expel Arabs and take their place. All our aspiration is built on the assumption — proven throughout all our activity in the Land [of Israel] —that there is enough room in the country for ourselves and the Arabs. But if we have to use force — not to dispossess the Arabs…but to guarantee our own right to settle — then we have force at our disposal.” [David Ben-Gurion to Amos Ben-Gurion, Ben-Gurion Archives, Correspondence Section, Doc. 19-22]

  34. I just want to add something more about Lebanon.

    There are roughly 15 million Lebanese outside of Lebanon.

    Almost 4x as many as live in Lebanon.

    ALMOST ALL ARE CHRISTIAN.

    Consider that. Run it backwards and it tells you that without Muslim persecution Lebanon would be vastly, majority Christian today.

    It is the Christians in Lebanon which pressured for expatriate voting.

    I suspect they know the majority of expatriates are Christian.

    In 2013, they will be allowed to vote. I do not know how far back it goes. 1 generation, 2 generations, 3 or whatever; and whether dual nationals will be allowed to vote without paying taxes.

    But they will return Christian majorities to the Lebanese gov’t; and do not kid yourself – the Muslims will riot. This palliative will not long last. If the Christians want to rule in Lebanon, they have to be on the ground in Lebanon – and well armed.

    No prosperous Lebanese in France, New York, or Chile, or Brazil is going to leave their prosperity to return to Lebanon.

    http://www.khazen.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=473&Itemid=201

    In fact, those millions of Lebanese living outside of Lebanon have been chased out of the country by the very Syrian occupation and its lackeys in the Lebanese regime that are now denying them the right to vote. And for good reason: If people like me were allowed to vote in New York, Los Angeles, Detroit or Houston, the puppet dictators in Beirut would have been booted out of power by the peaceful means of elections decades ago.

    He makes a mistake of assuming Muslims will respect peaceable elections which go against them.

    With 90% of expatriate Lebanese being Christian; and with the vast majority of recent refugees being Christian, the Muslims in Lebanon really oppose this new law.

    It will not last long.

    Israel blames Lebanon for doing nothing to stop Hezbollah. But in 2008, the Lebanese gov’t tried to take back control of the airport from Hezbollah.

    Within a few hours, Hezbollah had troops on the streets of Beirut.

    Lebanon has no control over its own government.

  35. Other examples are legion. Lebanon’s Maronites (and other Christian sects) accounted for 54% of Lebanon’s population in 1932. The PLO ravages of the 1970s-80s, the 1975-76 Civil War, and, more recently, maltreatment at the hands of Hezb’allah have lowered this figure to an estimated 30%-40%. (During the 2006 Lebanon War, Hezb’allah terrorists fired rockets and mortars from Christian neighborhoods hoping that Israeli return fire would strike innocent Christians.)

    If you really want to see a disaster, then read about the massacres of the Lebanese Christians in the 19th century. It was massives, tens of thousands or more were killed. The Christians started fleeing to the West at that time. The French had to land to save the Christians from extinction.

    But the rush to escape was on. By the 1890s, Christians were fleeing to Chile, Argentina, Brazil, and New York.

    If you think the British were duplicitous to the Jews, in the 19th century, the British armed the Druze who were massacring the Christians, just to stymie the French.

    One can only imagine what would have happened apart from those 19th century massacres – maybe a million more Christians in Lebanon today. Maybe Lebanon would have stablized into a very clear Christian majority. But even in 1932, under French rule, the Christians were getting out, because their majority was slipping fast.

    Some of the Maronites – the wiser ones – were NOT so eager for the French to leave in 1943.

    Lebanon is considering awarding expatriate Lebanese dual citizenship. If so, the millions of Lebanese outside Lebanon would shift the vote.

  36. During the British Mandate, the Jews of Palestine twice agreed to peace based on the country’s partition into Arab and Jewish states — first at the time of the 1937 Peel Commission Report and second with the U.N.’s historic 1947 partition vote.

    Neither side accepted the 1937 Peel Commission recommendations.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peel_Commission

    The Twentieth Zionist Congress in Zurich (3-16 August 1937) announced “that the partition plan proposed by the Peel Commission is not to be accepted … ”

    The Zionist Congress did NOT accept it. They were stalling to get a better deal from the British.

    However, it was based on ethnic cleansing.

    Ben-Gurion wrote: “The compulsory transfer of the Arabs from the valleys of the proposed Jewish state could give us something which we have never had, even when we stood on our own during the days of the First and Second Temples: [a Galilee almost free of non-Jews]. … We are being given an opportunity which we never dared to dream of in our wildest imagination. This is more than a state, government and sovereignty—this is a national consolidation in a free homeland. … if because of our weakness, neglect or negligence, the thing is not done, then we will have lost a chance which we never had before, and may never have again.”

    Ben Gurion was willing to consider it, but only as a first step.

    He regretted, after the Holocaust, that it had not been accepted.

    Since it was based on COMPULSORY TRANSFER, it was not as “nice” an offer as would be accepted today; but it was considered moral in the 1930s.

    Ben Gurion felt that more land could have been acquired later.

    Both sides, let’s face it, want(ed) the whole territory, abd both sides were not open about it, feigning a compromise neither entertained.

    So it basically boils down not to International Law, but historical claims to the land. Here the Jews are on better ground.