Reply With Quotethis isn't a really good idea methinks.....
friday night funny rant, open letter to the Palestinians
The Palestinians' time is running outBy Bradley Burston
For my Palestinian friends, with sadness:
I understand why you long ago came to believe that time was on your side. I understand the many factors, demographic, cultural, historic, geo-political, which have served to reinforce that belief, the strong conviction that Palestinian statehood was inevitable, inalienable - in every sense, a matter of time.
I understand why you have come to believe that the state of Israel is merely the latest in a long series of fleeting colonial episodes, that its roots are elsewhere, its strength is illusory, its endurance eroded, its spirit broken, its future dim. I understand that you believe you can wait these people out, wear them down, outfight them and out-believe them and out-populate them and, in the end, take them over.
I understand that you believe that rockets and mortars from the north, south, east, and, eventually, west, can depopulate and peel back and obliterate the borders of pre-1967 Israel until there will be no need to agree to a Jewish state on those borders, no need to compromise on refugees, Jerusalem, settlements, no need to talk, no need for self-scrutiny and reconsideration, no need to bend.
I understand that you believe that this is your right, religiously, morally, politically. I understand why you believe that you can wait.
But this month, three generations since 1948, since your Nakba, this is what I ask you to consider:
Your time is running out.
If you do not begin to act with all of your wisdom in moving toward statehood, you run the risk of becoming the Kurds of the Mediterranean basin, the Native Americans of the Middle East, permanently stateless, eternally denied.
If you do not begin to rethink the course which the Palestinian national movement has taken, you must begin to consider the idea of a world without a Palestine. The world is beginning to feel more and more comfortable with that possibility, and it is time for you to think hard about the reasons why.
We in the post-modern West have spent years educating ourselves to believe that all cultures are equally valid - with the possible exception, of course, of our own. We have taken it on faith that to criticize the culture of an indigenous people is obscenely imperialist, paternalist.
In short, we gave you a pass. And we encouraged you to give yourselves one. In respecting you for your steadfastness, we refrained from calling you on your passivity. In accepting and amplifying your contentions as to Israel's acts of wrongdoing, we chose not to hold you accountable for your own, or to explain them away as a function of occupation.
You learned, over time, to hold Israel responsible for the whole of your plight. You learned, over time, to ignore, explain away, blame entirely on Israel, or otherwise deny the ways in which your actions and, in particular, your passivity, have deepened and fostered your misery. You learned to excuse your leaders their corruption, and their policy of foiling Israeli and foreign attempts to improve your conditions. You learned to excuse your Arab brothers their duplicity and their lip service and their exploitation and their cold shoulder and their contempt and their consummate failure to come to your aid.
In the process, you may have grown accustomed to a definition of time, and of indigenous peoples, that bears re-examination. There is, first of all, this:
The Jews are an indigenous people here, no less than you.
The Jews have every right to have a nation here, no less than you.
The Jews are stubborn and proud and fundamentally fierce as hell, no less than you.
You have dismissed the Jews as a foreign influence. You have dismissed their history, waved away their blood and sinew tie to Jerusalem, acted as though they have no business here but evil.
But in the decades you have spent misleading yourself about the true nature of the culture and the origins of the Jews, generation upon generation of Jews has been born here. They are natives. They are not going anywhere. And even the leftists among them are willing to die in defense of staying on this soil.
Worse, perhaps, is the way in which you took deadly aim at the concept of land for peace, and destroyed it, perhaps for all time. Your artful justifications of using Gaza settlement ruins for Qassam launchers wash with no one. You have justified every last claim and prediction of the Israeli right. You have lost immeasurable international support. You are looked upon abroad as polarized to the heart, paralyzed by internal strife, and unable to arrive at, abide by, or implement decisions.
Your unfortunate ally Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, rising to your defense, marked the anniversary by telling you that Israel "has reached the end like a dead rat after being slapped by the Lebanese" and tha "Those who think they can revive the stinking corpse of the usurping and fake Israeli regime by throwing a birthday party are seriously mistaken."
Your unfortunate ally Osama Bin Laden told you last week that Israel's 60th anniversary was "evidence that Palestine is our land, and the Israelis are invaders and occupiers who should be fought."
"We will continue, God permitting, the fight against the Israelis and their allies ... and will not give up a single inch of Palestine as long as there is one true Muslim on earth."
What your unfortunate allies are saying is that it is more important to eliminate the Jewish state than it is to create a Palestinian one.
For this entire decade, the Palestinian national movement has acted accordingly. At the same time, it has effectively done the bidding of the Israeli right, doing everything in its power to raise the status of the settlers from an unruly, unfocused, marginalized, declining entity to that of a prophetic force.
Thanks in no small part to you, the settlement movement is flourishing as never before, confident that your rockets and your rhetoric will see to it that, as the years and generations pass, the settlers will come to be seen as, yes, indigenous.
The settlers will never be able to repay their debt to you.
You may have noted that in the wake of the second intifada, hundreds of suicide bombings in Israel's main cities, and thousands of Qassams, mortar shells and Katyushas, the Israeli left is furious with you, the Israeli center wants never to hear from you again, and only the Israeli right is delighted with the decisions you have made and the actions you have undertaken.
You may conclude from this that the left were untrustworthy to begin with, and all Israelis are the same.
Or you might think twice.
True, Israel was once isolated, stigmatized, universally condemned, boycotted. But your actions, and those of Bin Laden and Iran, have effectively welcomed Israel into the good graces of a range of countries which have begun to think twice about you. And have ceased to care about you. No country in the world - Israel included - has cried wolf more often in the past than you have. Now, when your distress is truly worse than ever, the cry has fallen on deaf - or hostile - ears.
We in the media coddled you, supported you, cast you as the noble underdog. In response, you decided that the Jews control the media, take Israel's side, slander the cause of Palestine.
Look again.
Your celebration of terror has alienated many of your closest friends.
You did this. You. No one else. You have convinced exactly those Israelis who were willing to trade the West Bank for peace, that this would be a literally fatal error.
Last month, as if to remove the remainder of doubt, the veteran Palestinian Authority Representative in Lebanon, Fatah Central Committee member Abbas Zaki, told a Lebanese television station, "Let me tell you, when the ideology of Israel collapses, and we take, at least, Jerusalem, the Israeli ideology will collapse in its entirety, and we will begin to progress with our own ideology, Allah willing, and drive them out of all of Palestine."
You owe your children more than this. You owe your children more than pipedreams, nightmares, threats and delusions. You owe them more than victim status. You owe your children, and theirs, more than a culture of failure and passivity and graft and violence and loss. You owe your children and theirs - and ours - an honest search for peace.
Or would you rather that I simply shut up? Just the rantings of
another untrustworthy Jew? Still want to believe you did everything
right? Still want to believe that your few friends remaining in the
Western left are more than just powerless cranks? Still want to
believe that if you hold out long enough, everything will come your
way?
As you wish.
Perhaps regrettably for both sides, we can wait.
Seen in Haaretz
this isn't a really good idea methinks.....
The Native Americans have casinos. They are taking their revenge by draining our savings account.Originally Posted by gilgoul
Given the Rabbinical views on casinos in Israel, the west bank might have a start-up enterprise
In mid 90s Palestinians actually opened a casino in Jericho which was very popular with Israelis who had their savings accounts drained.
on a serious note
It's, however, a waste of time and waste of lives. What's necessary here is a rational discussion by both parties how to share the cake. Since the rights assumed by both parties are contradictory, both have to leave them aside and engage in honest, rational discussion on practical solutions which will allow both parties to live in peace, security and dignity (and hopefully prosperity, which can follow). That's unfortunately a theory detached from reality on the ground...Perhaps regrettably for both sides, we can wait.
Wrong. It would be a waste of lives to yield to the Arab 'Palestinian' demands. They walked away from Statehood in 1948. They have no right to demand more than they are offered in 2008.
You statement concerning both parties moving away from their positions presupposes moral and legal equivelence.
In november 1947, I would have said the same, wait, the zionist executive movement said just that, even more, Ben Gurion said just that the day of the declaration of Independence.
The same day, 7 arab armies and militias (Lebanon, Irak, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Kaujki forces, and the forces gathered around Hajd Amin Al Husseini, the great mufti of Jerusalem) launched an all out assault on the just born state.
And since, despite everything, our successive governments have been doing just that, everytime the shadow of an opportunity would present itself, sometimes even blinding themselves and us for the pipe dream of a true peace in the Middle East.
The ball isn't on our side of the field, and if it means that we are going for a major conflagration before we can do that, just like Europe needed two world wars to solve it's internal problems, so be it.
But we are here to stay.
Hamas seem reasonable enough to me. Perhaps meet at Starbucks to discuss these problems for a coffee and some cake. Make sure to bring the kids....Since the rights assumed by both parties are contradictory, both have to leave them aside and engage in honest, rational discussion on practical solutions which will allow both parties to live in peace, security and dignity (and hopefully prosperity, which can follow).
I'll take a liberty of quoting myself because I have a feeling that you (Calanen, Gilgoul and LRPV) missed the last sentence. What I wrote expressed the ideal approach to solving the conflict. Unfortunately the conditions are not ideal (to say at least). We can list a few, the list is not exclusive: lack of leadership (anywhere you look), strong and strengthening extremists, complete, mutual lack of trust due to past experience and propaganda, external interference (e.g., Iran), lack of impartial intermediaries and guarantors, etc., etc. In short, the parties themselves (we cannot be even sure who they are right now) are not able to breach the gaps and implement agreements, even if reached, and no external party can enforce any honest deal. Therefore we have the reality of more of the same with occasional upsurges of violence. As one of Israeli (I think) commentators wrote a few years ago - it doesn't hurt enough to make people come to their senses. The status quo situation has to become unbearable for all involved or a strong, international quake is necessary (like the Fist Gulf War leading to Madrid Conference and resulting in Israel-Jordan peace treaty as an undisputed achievement, Israeli - Syrian talks which ended in stalemate and Israel - PLO agreements which ended in failure).
Spot the differenceHamas seem reasonable enough to me. Perhaps meet at Starbucks to discuss these problems for a coffee and some cake. Make sure to bring the kids....
Kid in the quote is taught to hate and kill innocents like his "terrorist" parents.
Kids below learn to admire the soldiers fighting the forces of "evil"
Hypocrisy. Keep children away from war.
Well,as a matter of fact,Palestinians had a casino built in Jericho,which had pretty positive economic effect on the city of Jericho as you can imagine.All that until one lovely day nice fella with a gun (or fellas with guns) decided to shoot some from inside the casino,and making one Israeli tank angry...
I think the article did spoke about the opportunities given to Palestinians and how they blow them.
I find it hard to respond to your naive BS, People like you embolden the terrorists and go about mitigating the terrorist's action by promoting the some perverted concept that how they fight conflict is equal.
In the US, dependents of US service personal are often invited for demonstration to help them understand what the family member who is in the military does. That is much different than dressing kids up as suicide bombers, sending them to terrorist training camps etc.
Recently A Ft Bragg, there was a Special Force memorial for Fallen SF Soldiers, it was done for their dependents. Demonstrations, rides, etc was set up so the dependents would have a better understanding of teh work of their fallen loved one.
Maybe keep you Hamas supporting BS to yourself.
Try reading this forum's rules/policies again:
"3. Don't confuse fact for your opinion. Qualify your opinion. If it's personal experience say so. If it's from a book say so. If you heard it from your great aunt's sister's best mate's ex 21SAS boyfriend best if you don't post at all.
4. Remember this is a pro US, pro GWOT board by it's nature and thus some opinions may not be too welcome particularly if the dissenter is hyperbolic or baiting about their beliefs."
" There will be peace with the Palestinians, when they learn to love their children more than they hate ours"
Golda Meir
Personally, I dont think they deserve a state of their own, seeing as though there never was a Palestinian race. But in the effort for peace, if they just dropped their weapons and started focusing towards building their society, wouldnt you think they would have greater chances at obtaining statehood?
I mean look at the billions upon billions over the years donated to the Palestinians (over $7 billion for 2007 alone) and what have they done with it? Nothing. The difference with giving land to the Palestinians, is that once its theirs and like with the financial aid, they do nothing productive with it, they still hold it forever. Wasting land given to you, especially when Israel is so miniscule (and 50% desert) and unmeasurably savoured by the Israeli people, is something that is regretted more then anything else, even the loss of life.
Personally those who take the opportunity (having land given in exchange for peace) to target civilians, doesnt deserve to keep it. Gaza should have been uprooted long ago. I can only hope the pressure from the international community upon Israel dissolves for the purpose of justice. Let the suffering of the Palestinians be treated by non political organisations
So why is it, that in the IDF they are trained to avoid civilian casualties to their fullest abilities?
As an IDF soldier, you kill an innocent civilian in Gaza, where forensic investigation proves that there was no threat whatsoever (i.e in a crossfire situation). Result? you go to JAIL
As a Palestinian "militant" or i think more accurately described, TERRORIST, you kill an Israeli civilian, no matter man, woman or child, you are praised as a hero?
Explain the hipocrisy of both sides in that one for me please?
Children are taught at a young age in Israel how the army succeeded in protecting them when their country was attacked. They later learn how for centuries they have been slaughtered. Prior to starting the army, students in high school visit Poland's Auschwitz extermination camp to learn about how their people were slaughtered for nothing more then their faith. It then sets a basis for them to have sensitivity to those who were helpless,which cements a moral and ethical standard of duty for when they start the army. It also builds the foundation for the reason why they are to defend the only Jewish homeland there is, to preserve their heritage and offer sanctuary to those who have experienced oppression as well as those who glorify their faiths.
Tell me what the Palestinians are taught? At a young age that the Jews are to blame for their worries? Lies that the Jews slaughter them mercilessly and desire to kill children like themselves? How they should sacrifice themselves by killing any Israeli regardless of who they are and their motives through any means necessary including suicide bombing? Then adding the reward of being gloryfied as heroes and celebrities? All whilst pushing the blame and purposely manipulating the media to try convince the world of their cause?
Still trying to distinguish the hipocrisy. By taking pictures like those above and explaining them in the way you have, follows the same line as what the Palestinians use to manipulate and brainwash, just like the case with France 2 and the man 'clutching' his child in his arms prior to being killed which investigation later proved was of his own people not the IDF
.
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