"If the Israelis have ever managed to convince American administrations about anything, it is that anyone connected with the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) is certainly not human, is almost certainly a total psychopath and is also very likely to be so contaminated with communicable diseases that standing downwind from one of these monsters when he exhales is certain to lead to the clap, palsy and yaws. Begin was able to draw out his extermination campaign in west Beirut by insisting that Philip Habib [Reagan's special Middle East envoy] should not be allowed to talk to the Palestinians; Phil talked to Saeb Salam, the grand old man of orthodox Lebanese Muslim politics...and Saeb, immunized by years of mixing with the terrorists, passed on Phil's thoughts to one of Arafat's men...who asked Arafat what he thought; then Arafat passed on the message to Saeb who - presumably after having his hands washed by a security man and a careful gargle to remove the contamination - talked to Phil, who passed on the thought to Begin's men. This system won whole days for the Israelis to knock off hundreds more civilians - far more than they could have blown away if Phil had simply called up Arafat and said, 'Yasser, this is what we've got for you today'. " (God Cried, Tony Clifton, 1983, p 132)
Free at last from the constraints of toeing the party line (increasingly dictated so far as the Middle East conflict is concerned by the Israel lobby), former Labor foreign minister Gareth Evans, now president of the International Crisis Group, has argued sensibly in The Christian Science Monitor (27/3/08) that "The policy of isolating Hamas and applying sanctions to Gaza has been a predictable failure. Violence to both Gazans and Israelis is rising. Economic conditions are ruinous...The credibility of PA President Mahmoud Abbas...has been grievously damaged. The peace process is in tatters. It's time to stop digging this hole. Maintaining extreme pressure on Hamas in the hope of undermining its rule or stopping the rockets has gone nowhere. A new direction is needed, one that attempts to stabilise the situation by engaging the movement with the immediate goal of reaching a mutual ceasefire and the opening of Gaza's border crossings...the ceasefire should entail reciprocal commitments to stop all attacks, an opening of the crossings that recognises Hamas' role while restoring a PA presence in Gaza...The status quo is untenable. Israel cannot be expected to accept rockets targeting its civilians. Hamas will not sit idly by as Gaza is choked." You can read it all at http://www.crisisgroup.org/
Help! Ceasefire! The Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) executive director, Dr Colin Rubenstein, predictably followed Israel's grand tradition of saying Lo! (Hebrew 'no') to Palestinians, even those as supine and collaborative as PA President Abbas (Israeli Infrastructure Minister Ben-Eliezer has described current negotiations between Israel and the PA as "only virtual negotiations." Haaretz, 5/4/08). Col, in his alarm, reeled off the familiar talking points: Hamas is "firmly committed to Israel's destruction" [While Israel is actually engaged in throttling Gaza and colonizing the West Bank]; "negotiating with Hamas 'rewards violence' " [Where are the pacifist PA's rewards?]; a ceasefire "will allow [Hamas] to rearm" [While the latest American weaponry continues to flood into Israel]. (AIJAC denounces call to re-engage Hamas, AJN, 4/4/08). What's more, Col, always more Zionist than the Zionists, maintained his knee-jerk rejectionism despite a recent Haaretz poll "showing that 64% of Israelis want their government to negotiate with Hamas to broker a ceasefire" (Talk to Hamas, Israelis tell government as attacks continue, Toni O'Loughlin, The Guardian, 28/2/08).
Equally predictably, the Rudd government took a head-in-the-sand approach at Evans' outrageous suggestion. Foreign Minister Stephen Smith "would not comment...saying he had not seen the article" (Labor snubs call to engage Hamas, The Australian, 1/4/08). The Australian's report went on to remind us that "Hamas' military wing has been designated as a terrorist organisation since 2003 under Australia's Criminal Code Act" and that "guidelines on official contact with Palestinian representatives advise that contact with Hamas or affiliated people should be avoided."
On the eve of last year's federal election, the then opposition leader Kevin Rudd said: "Tomorrow Australians face a stark choice - a choice between the future and the past. Between a Government that has sat on its hands for 11 years and doesn't understand the new challenges we face - or a new leader with fresh ideas...Australia needs a newleadership with fresh ideas. That is what Labor government will be all about." And what happens post-election? Not only does Foreign Minister Smith not come up with a fresh idea about Middle East peace, but, when a former Labor foreign minister does, he doesn't want to know about it lest Col get cross with him. As far as Middle East policy is concerned, it looks like the Rudd government will hypocritically continue the Howard government's practice of "sitting on its hands."
In the unlikely event that Rudd or Smith ever do get off their hands on this one, they will of course need to acknowledge the real reasons why the Israeli government doesn't want a ceasefire with Hamas: not only because the pressure would then be on for Israel to curtail its settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank and even, God forbid! end its 40 year long occupation, but also because there's gold (& even more valuable PR) in them thar rockets: "Like the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, Sderot is now a must-see stop for those who support Israel or are being urged to do so [my italics]. Several groups have set up offices to arrange visits to a damaged home or a trauma center. Foreign diplomats have been bused here by the government; a UN officer says he has brought top officials here 5 times; Senator John McCain came last month; Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, residents say, cannot be far behind. Israelis and their supporters are lining up to volunteer. Money is pouring in for bomb shelters, social services and an Orthodox religious seminary" (A town under fire becomes a symbol for Israel, Ethan Bronner, NYT, 5/4/08).
So it's 'Talk to the hand, 'cause the face ain't listening', Gareth!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
SOME QUESTIONS FOR OUR HOST LETS SEE IF HE DARES TO POST THEM ON HIS WEBSITE LET ALONE DARES TO ANSWER THE QUESTIONS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
http://www.ortzion.org/news46_end.html
A Japanese View of the Palestinians
by Yashiko Sagamori
If you are so sure that "Palestine, the country, goes back through most of recorded history", I expect you to be able to answer a few basic questions about that country of Palestine:
When was it founded and by whom?
What were its borders?
What was its capital?
What were its major cities?
What constituted the basis of its economy?
What was its form of government?
Can you name at least one Palestinian leader before Arafat?
Was Palestine ever recognized by a country whose existence, at that time or now, leaves no room for interpretation?
What was the language of the country of Palestine?
What was the prevalent religion of the country of Palestine?
What was the name of its currency? Choose any date in history and tell what was the approximate exchange rate of the Palestinian monetary unit against the US dollar, German mark, GB pound, Japanese yen, or Chinese yuan on that date.
And, finally, since there is no such country today, what caused its demise and when did it occur?
You are lamenting the "low sinking" of a "once proud" nation. Please tell me, when exactly was that "nation" proud and what was it so proud of?
And here is the least sarcastic question of all: If the people you mistakenly call "Palestinians" are anything but generic Arabs collected from all over -- or thrown out of -- the Arab world, if they really have a genuine ethnic identity that gives them right for self-determination, why did they never try to become independent until Arabs suffered their devastating defeat in the Six Day War?
I hope you avoid the temptation to trace the modern day "Palestinians" to the Biblical Philistines: substituting etymology for history won't work here.
The truth should be obvious to everyone who wants to know it. Arab countries have never abandoned the dream of destroying Israel; they still cherish it today. Having time and again failed to achieve their evil goal with military means, they decided to fight Israel by proxy. For that purpose, they created a terrorist organization, cynically called it "the Palestinian people" and installed it in Gaza, Judea, and Samaria. How else can you explain the refusal by Jordan and Egypt to unconditionally accept back the "West Bank" and Gaza, respectively?
The fact is, Arabs populating Gaza, Judea, and Samaria have much less claim to nationhood than that Indian tribe that successfully emerged in Connecticut with the purpose of starting a tax-exempt casino: at least that tribe had a constructive goal that motivated them. The so called "Palestinians" have only one motivation: the destruction of Israel, and in my book that is not sufficient to consider them a nation" -- or anything else except what they really are: a terrorist organization that will one day be dismantled.
In fact, there is only one way to achieve peace in the Middle East. Arab countries must acknowledge and accept their defeat in their war against Israel and, as the losing side should, pay Israel reparations for the more than 50 years of devastation they have visited on it. The most appropriate form of such reparations would be the removal of their terrorist organization from the land of Israel and accepting Israel's ancient sovereignty over Gaza, Judea, and Samaria.
That will mark the end of the Palestinian people. What are you saying again was its beginning?
So Where are the answers to each Question? All of a sudden their is silence from our learned Middle East Scholar. Can got your tongue?
That is by far one outrageous comment, left of course by an anonymous poster. The article cited is flawed and quite misrepresented and repeats the propaganda of a false "Palestinian" entity that we have become so accustomed to. What is even more silly is that there are many academic books that attest to a Palestinian affirmation for self-determination separate from a Greater Syria or the Arab Nation: see Tom Segev's One Palestine, Complete and Baruch Kimmerling's Palestinians: The Making of a People, as well as Rashid Khalidi's The Palestinian Identity, Mohammed Muslih's The Origins of Palestinian Nationalism and books by Yehoshua Porath.
What is pathetic is that the continued ignorance of a Palestinian identity is far less pragmatic than the stance of the Arab nations. If it is true that they desire the destruction of Israel and have never abandoned that dream, then why is it that every neighbouring state has either signed a peace treaty with Israel or strives for one with Syria? Is it all subterfuge or do Egyptians really persecute Gazans because they want Israelis dead? As a matter of fact Hamas continues to offer a ceasefire and lately has supported the two-state borders and this is currently rebuffed by Israel. What is also dismissed from this so-called Japanese perspective (and how scholarly it really is) is the fact that the Israelis had their own armed wing in order to eventually expel the "Palestinians" from their homeland, one that even David Ben-Gurion has been quoted as an entity that had legitimate nationalist cause equal to the Jewish one. Yes, the Haganah, the Irgun and the Stern Gang contributed greatly to the birth of Israel with actions that border on the definition of terrorism that this Japanese expert solely afflicts on the Palestinians and yet he did not question the merit of a Jewish nationalism coupled with a paramilitary that was responsible for such massacres as Deir Yassin.
Of course there is also the omission of an occupation but that is because this analyst believes that it is not an occupation at all and that Palestinians have no right to inhabit the land that they have dwelled and cultivated for over a century. You can even sense of colonialism littered all over this comment. It just aims to be the superior lord over the inferior, ie the cultured elite of the West versus the Orient. How spectacular that this is coming from a person from the Orient. Shameful.
It also failed to mention that many Jews who were in Palestine resisted the ideology of Zionism and felt that it was a folly that would spark violence with no end. In fact, they confessed that the Arabs did have an affinity for the land and that they could not be bribed to leave their homes and that they shared a sense of nationalism and self-determination. Maybe this person should do some more adepth reading instead of flicking through the pages of From Time Immemorial.
What is also stupid is that the "rhetorical" questions is easily answered by anyone who has studied the conflict with any real scrutiny. Clearly this Japanese reporter just dismissed any meticulous study of it and read the Israeli textbooks that do not show any Arab villages that were destroyed. Agriculture mean anything to you? How about major cities such as Hebron, Nablus, Ramleh, Jaffa and Haifa as well as Jerusalem and Nazareth? Its borders? It was under the rubric of the Ottoman Empire and was only split after WWI into smaller states to reward Arab kings for their support against the Turks. What were Israel's borders? Oh right, they do not have any. What is Israel's capital? Tel Aviv or Jerusalem? Which is recognised by international law?
I do believe the neighbouring Arab states have accepted defeat and have shown plenty of moderation towards the state of Israel. They have acknowledged many times that they want normal relations with the Jewish state and have even abandoned the Palestinian cause in all but rhetoric to save face from their populous. Invertly, it is not only the Palestinian people in danger but the Israelis too. However you want to paint it their fate is intertwined. If the Palestinians are threatened, then the Israelis have cause for concern.
Make no mistake about it: Israel is on course for a collision. It cannot continue to exist as it is. Something will give and in the end Zionism may be truly be just a part of history.
So you are unable to answer the simple questions and instead you come up with the usual Palestinian propaganda.
what is required is simple answers to the very simple questions and not more rhetoric?
The fact that these very pertinent questions comes form some one in the orient is quite interesting this person is unlikely to be bias to either the Jews or the Arabs,
personally, I wouldn't have bothered answering those questions... Just reading the way he rhetorically asked (and answered BTW) shows how much racist vile he is subjecting this blog to (e.g. "...If the people you mistakenly call "Palestinians" are anything but generic Arabs collected from all over -- or thrown out of -- the Arab world...").
Let the world read and be a judge on his racist vitriol.
Rgrds,
Phonetics.
Post a Comment