Higgly

A security threat. Jeez. How many acts of violence have been committed in Britain by moslem women wearing veils? Say compared to British louts wearing football club jerseys?

I sure agree with you there. I think though that the arbitration has to start with each as equals. There is nowhere close to that situation now. I was hopeful there might be progress when the prison agreement came out between the jailed leaders of Fatah and Hamas. Unfortunately, that has fallen apart. Palestinian society is under such enormous stress that infighting is inevitable, which only delays things further.

I imagine you are referring to my use of the word Israelite. I use to denote people who are pro-Israel. It has nothing to do with religion or citizenship. I would call George Bush an Israelite. You are the one who equates discussions of Israel with attacks on Jews and you use it as an attack mechanism. Rue you are welcome to cite whatever sources you wish and if others wish to read them, that is up to them. However the purpose of boards like this is to discuss issues. The idea is for you to digest your sources and represent them in the debate. This is fine Rue, but where does it say that all of Palestine will be converted to a Jewish state? Mote also article 6 with reference to the rights and position of others. Yes there were Zionists who wanted a shared state with the Arabs. They lost to the hard liners. This comes through again and again in Israel's history - the hardliners (such as Ben Gurion) winning out over moderates (like Sharett) No Rue, my post addressed specific items of mythinformation spread by Israel about the 1948 war. And your point is? Which line was this? I think I used the word Jews in a couple of places. Are you saying this is a derogatory term? Why is it OK to use the words Arab and Moslem and not use the word Jew? No Rue. This is exactly what Weitzmann did. After the 1937 breakout of violence Ben Gurion himself said he didn't blame the Arabs for revolting and that were he in their shoes, he would probably do the same thing. Just call me David. Yes. What they weren't open about was their desire to forvce the Arabs out.

This is a response to Rue's post of Oct 4 2006, 01:30 PM number 139857. For some reason, the wuote feature is not working properly so I have put Rue's comments in italics and my responses in bold "Historical records show that the majority of Palestinian Arabs were deliberately expelled by Jewish fighters. " Of course the above is incorrect. In fact 300,000 Palestinian Arabs left without ever seeing any Israeli soldiers for the simple reason that a lovely gentleman by the name of Dr. Hussein planted a rumour that Jews (Zionists) had massacered Palestinians causing a mass exodus long before 1948 and he did so delibereately on behalf of the Arab League. What is also a fact is the Arab League on loud-speakers, in speeches, in newspapers, and on its radio, told Arabs to leave stating the war would be quick and they could return once the Jews were removed. So to try revise what happened and make it sound like Jews stood there and said leave is absolute b.s. The massacre of Palestinian Arabs by Jewish forces in places like Balad al-Shaykh, Deir Yassin, Abu Shusha, Saliha, and Ein al Zeitun are fact. If someone was spreading stories about that, I would say they were performing a public service. As for the radio broadcasts you mention, historians have come to agree that they never occurred. More to the point according to the UN, yes 711,000 Palestinian Arabs were displaced. How about the 900,000 Jews that after 1948 were thrown out of all the Muslim countries of the Middle East and had their property seized not to mention the countless of other Jews not counted in this 900,000 because they had already been killed? An important question about those Jewish refugees: who is keeping the tally? Have those numbers been audited in any way? These are numbers maintained by Israel to counterbalance any claim for compensation that might be put on it for the Palestinian refugee problem. Calls into question issues related to conflict of interest. Not to forget as well Rue, that whatever harrassment these people suffered came after the 1948 war during which the Arab world saw Arabs being expelled by Israel. I think it is also important to note Rue that a number of Jews living in Middle Eastern countries voluntarily migrated to Israel once the state of Israel was declared. Palestine never existed as a nation. Anyone who knows anything about Middle East Hisory knows that. The name Palestine is a geographic term. So what. This is sophistry. The notion of Arabs wanting a seperate Palestinian nation is for Western consumption. That is what they tell the West because that is of course what people like Higgly want to here. But if you live in the Middle East, if you read Arab newspapers, listen to their t.v. and radio, read their literature and speeches you would know when Muslims talk to each other about Palestine it has a different context. Nonsense. UN resolution 242 after the 1967 war called for Israel to evacuate the West Bank. Jordan and Israel discussed the possibility of Jordan retaking possession of the West Bank or Israel administering it as an administrative area. The Arabs of the West Bank (where they were by far the majority) wanted to have their own autonomous nation. Here is what Adbdul-Hadi, a local Arab leader said about Palestine when speeking to the Peel Commission in 1937; " There is no such country [as Palestine]! 'Palestine' is a term the Zionists invented! There is no Palestine in the Bible. Our country was for centuries part of Syria." Or here is what the representative of the Arab League said to the United Nations in his statement in May 1947; "Palestine was part of the Province of Syria... ...politically, the Arabs of Palestine were not independent in the sense of forming a separate political entity." Or here is what Ahmed Shuqeiri, the Chairman of the PLO to the UN Security Council said; "It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but southern Syria." So what. They were coming up with arguments against the entire region being turned into a Jewish State and trying to bring Syria in on their side. Modern Syria itself didn't really exists until the French set it up. I can cite you Israeli cabinet discussions where it was proposed that the West Bank be turned over to a Palestinian Arab autonomous area. So what. In the real Muslim world, borders are an absurdity. Muslims do not seperate state from religion. Really? How about Pakistan? Indonesia? Iraq under Saddam? Egypt? Tunisia? Morocco? The idea of borders was imposed after World War One by the British and French carving the Middle East into little colonies they could control. Yes. See my point above countering your point about Syria. Before then Palestine was an empty set of swamps and bogs, and desolate and simply the route between Cairo and Damascus. O I know. There wasn't even a place called Israel. I am going to skip over your dissertation on history under the Turks.... If the Arab League was as benevolent as it is portrayed ask yourself, why did they never resettle Palestinians in other countries? Why was Arafat expelled from Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt and Tunisia? You are asking the Arab countries to take responsibility for a problem that Israel created. Wouldn't that be convenient. In any case I have already given you arguments that show you are wrong on this. Well let us go back to what Palestinians think of Palestine; the former military commander of the PLO as well as member of the PLO Executive Council, Zuhair Muhsin made this statement in the early 1970's: "There are no differences between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. We are all part of one nation. It is only for political reasons that we carefully underline our Palestinian identity....yes, the existence of a separate Palestinian identity serves only tactical purposes. The founding of a Palestinian state is a new tool in the continuing battle against Israel." He was referring to the pan-Arab nation. This is why for example the former Syrian President, Hafez Assad said; "Palestine is an integral part of Syria. Therefore it is we, the Syrian authorities, who are the true representatives of the Palestinian people." and he also stated; "Palestine is a principal part of Southern Syria, and we consider that it is our right and duty to insist that it be a liberated partner of our Arab homeland and of Syria." Why are you holding the Palestinians responsible for something Assad said? Why is it that you keep harping on this theme that the Palestinians should be subject to the opinions, whims, and political ambitions of the Arab countries in the region? This is something straight out of the Likud playbook. This why there was a major civil war in Jordan in 1967 called the Black Sabbath uprising in which Palestinians the majority of the population in Jordan were prevented from taking control and deposing King Hussein. Jordan did not want Palestinians in its country and it expelled them. No Rue, this civil war was fought because Jordan wanted to re-take possession of the West Bank and the PLO wanted it to be an autonomous Palestinian State. Syria? Syria expelled Arafat and the PLO and Assad and Arafat openly feuded precisely because Syria felt Israel should be part of its country along with Lebanon and to this day feels that way. You've got this backwards. Syria attacked Jordan in an effort to help the PLO overthrow Hussein. Syria was repelled by an attack from the Israeli Air Force which was requested of Golda Meir by the Nixon Whitehouse, specifically Henry Kissinger. Lebanon? Lebanon expelled Arafat as well because the civil war between shiite and sunni Muslims and between those two and Christians and Druze became bloody and the PLO tried to seize control of the country. Lebanon was in no shape to expel anyone. It had gone through a civil war followed by an Iraeli invasion and aerial bombardment that killed some 15,000 Lebanese civilians and reduced the entire country to rubble. It was the Americans who finally brokered a peace deal which would see the PLO leave Lebanon under US escort in exchange for security assurances that the remaining Palestinian refugees would be protected. Israel, most particularly the psychopath Ariel Sharon, broke that deal by slaughtering over 2,500 Palestinian women, children and old men in the Sbra and Chatila refugee camps. Tunisia? Same thing. The Arab world is not opening its arms welcoming Palestinians as brothers? Palestinian leaders and Palestinians are considered second class citizens in the Arab world and are seen as Israel's problem. Oh but Rue. They are Israel's problem. Israel is a convenient scapegoat because the Arab League then does not have to examine its legal role in encouraging Palestinians to leave and telling them they could return soon Well Rue, as I say, that is the mythinformation that Israel would have us all believe. It was the mass expulsion of Palestinian Arabs by Jewish fighters, the closing of the borders refusing to allow them to return to their homes, along with the passing of the Abandonnment laws in 1950 that robbed the Palestinian of their land. And that indeed is Israel's problem. What Higgly would also have you ignore is the fact that after World War Two the Grand Mufti of Jerusalemwho had been a frequent guest of Hitler, as was the tradition since the 1930's, called on all MUslims to embrace Nazi anti-semitism, and see the waqr against Israel as not just a war against ISrael but of all Jews everywhere. Well Rue, you are not going to like to hear this, but prior to the war, there were people in the Palestinian Zionist community who were consdering asking the Nazis for help in expelling the British from Palestine. Mohamed Abbas the supposed moderate leader of the PLO wrote his thesis on why the holocaust never happened. Iran just ran a symposium inviting scholars from all over the world to visit and present essays on why the holocaust didn't happen and ran a cartoon contest seeing who could depict the most insulting charactiture of a Jew. Well Rue, you are going to find this hard to accept but our scared cows are not necessarily everybody else's. In fact that was the point of the cartoon contest which Iran put together after cartoons of Mohammed were published all over the western world, including in this country by the "Western Report." On Jordanian t.v. in a supposedly moderate Muslim nation, are open discussions by Muslim clerics as to why Jews are infidel You can see the same thing in CNN most nights of the week except it is the Moslems who portrayed like that. Watch the Glenn Beck show. What does this have to do with the original post? Egyptian t.v. is full of movies and debates depicting Jews as vermin. On and on it goes. And you can still see movies on western TV portraying Arabs as slimey murdering thieves. What does this have to do with the original post? Hamas is not talking about a secular state. Its charter like Hezbollah's calls on a holy war against Jews world-wide. I don't agree with Hamas, but are there not political parties in Israel that are controlled by the religious right, Rue? In any case, what does this have to do with the original post? Yah for people like Higgly who have a preconceived notion that Jews are bad, he will cut and paste and find essays to suit his preconceived notion that Jews are not special and are unreasonable, etc. No Rue, I didn't say Jews were bad. This is entirely your own hate-mongering at work. You use it as a form of attack and in fact it is done a lot by people such as yourself who want to silence people you disagree with or whom you want to silence. Anybody who questions anything about Israel or its policies is immediately labelled as a Jew hater by zealots like yourself. The fact is however quite simple. Right or wrong 3,500 years of persecution and slaughter of Jews leading to the holocaust created a fait accompli as to the fate of Jews. Terrible truths Rue, but it was not the Palestinians who did it. What does this have to do with the original post? This talk of a secular state in an area of the world where Muslims kill each other daily is a laugh. Morrocco and Tunisia don't seem to be having too much trouble doing it. When Iran's economy collapses, of course its leader will make all kinds of anti-Zionist statements. First thing you do when your country is corupt and totalitarian and its economhy collapses is to pull the Jewish scapegoating out of the hat to distract. The Iranian economy is doing not too badly actually. If it does collapse it will probably be because of sanctions put on it by the US. The Muslim world has embraced Nazism. It was not an accident that so many Nazis settled in Damascus post World War Two and created many of the splinter groups that today call for the destruction of Israel. Well a lot of them went to Argentina and Brazil too. In fact a lot more than Damascus. Some of them even came to Canada. And what does that have to do with the original post? So when Higgly tries to paint the Arab world as a bunch of heroes helping a victimized people Rue perhaps you can point me to the place in my original post where I said this. Again, this is you jumping to conclusions based on your own paranoia. The subject of my post was related to specific items of Israeli mythinformation about the 1948 war and I think I have established a pretty good case for it. All of the other miscellaneous red herrings that have come into the thread have come pretty much from you. Iraq is condemned to being split in 3 abd becoming a series of fragmented mini states. Well gee Rue. I wonder why that might be? Afghanistan is all about getting back to Sharia law despite our naive efforts to turn it into a democracy. Oh now we're into Afghanistan are we? Iran? Iran is typical of what Hezbollah and Hamas want, theocratic states that do not allow freedom of speech. And Iran too. My my how far we've travelled. So let us stop pretending this is good v.s. bad. Good idea Rue. When did you plan to start? Rue you have turned a focussed post into a shotgun rant of your own pet peeves. In short, what you have tried to do is highjack my thread to make it all about your own anti-Arab ravings. If you want to start threads that say these things, then by all means go ahead. But, if you want to be taken seriously in my threads, stick to the subject at hand. And this has nothing to do with the size of your pee-pee.

So look for another cab. Why is this a big deal?

Abba Eben, in describing the various Israeli proposals, said "The Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity." The Israelis have never proposed a viable Palestinian state: they have consistently proposed a failed state. Abba Eben be damned.

Personally I think it is all in the words. Especially if they are written down and signed by both parties. Everything else is negotiation.

Well it might depend on her perkiness. If the tits are perky and her nipples are engorged, then Jack might interpret this to be a good thing, but his wife might not. On the other hand, if the tits were not perky, Jack might ask whether the chief has more mojo than the chief across the way whose wife has perky tits. And then we have the case of saggy tits with perky nipples where Jack's wife has a headache...

How did this get turned into a religious issue? This is a gun issue. Anyone who says that the death of these children is a religious issue is an idiot. I cannot believe that there are people who are trying to co-opt this tragedy to their pet peeve. My God. What is wrong with you? Have you never been touched by a child? Do we not have anything that is sacred?

OK. Let's say that Jack and his wife go down to sub-saharan Africa and meet with a tribal chief. We have gotten past the tea and company stage and we are getting down to matters of state. The chief asks Jack's wife to take off her top and show her tits....

Thank you Rue. Can we consider this ground zero?

I have watched this thread develop over a number of days with growing discomfort. These people are the most peaceful of any we can find anywhere in North America, and the victims are without doubt the most innocent among them. I have watched even CNN present them as loving people who see every stranger as someone who brings peace. And I have yet to see anyone who asks why it is that every American has the right to bear arms.

Wise thoughts, Jerry. I think it is our responsibility to at least get history right, because we have to make decisions based on facts on the ground. Here is a case in point.... A Palestinian terrorist and suicide bomber killed a number of innocent people, among them a Canadian citizen who had gone to live in Israel. There was heavy pressure put on Canadian government representatives to visit the family who lived in a West Bank Settlement. West Bank settlements contravene article 49 of the 4th Geneva Convention, which Israel refuses to recognize, and which Canada has agreed to. The question is... should we have sent a consular official to visit the family of this innocent victim of terrorism? I believe that our government needs to hear from us before it makes these decisions and that we need to tell it how we feel. If you can't understand the context, you would be hard pressed to interpret this tipping point for Canadian foreign policy. Those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it.

"Stop brother. what's that sound. Everybody look what's goin' round." I'd suggest you look into this a little deeper.

The guy who kills the most bandits gets Jessica Simpson's phone number.

I will get to all of these posts, one at a time, in a first come, first served manner.

Well that's my point. As for who would pay for it, well, that's my question too.

Aloysius B Practicum would have you know: O if only you could spend more time with your girl!

Isn't the Citizen a Can-West paper? What we really need is a polling process untarnished by advocacy. Seems every one of our pollsters is associated with either a newspaper or a political party. And no, we do not have a neutral press. Press neutrality has become a thing of the past in our country; quite honestly, I question whether it has ever existed. We need something completely agnostic. Until we have it, polls are only marketing as far as I'm concerned.

OK. I think we've established that Dancer is a guy with some influence in the corporate world and needs to be convinced about all of our crazy enthusiasms. Or he is a fan of being shown favourably on TV in the biggest market he has yet to penetrate. Which would help explain the make-up. So in addition to knowing who supplied the seats, I'd like to know who does his make-up, heh heh. Was it your opinion that he looked a little, well, gay? Damn Rue. Maybe I have misjudged you. Family doesn't count Dancer. You have been postal coded. Look for spam. Have I told you about my viagra site?

Seems to me we'de be giving up a lot. What would we be getting back in return?

Good story. You're right about the corporate seats. Who cares if they win as long as you have a treat to offer that big, important customer. I see Harper was at the season opener. Would be interesting to know whose seat that was.

Yes it was remarkable to see members of the Sharon government routinely showing up on CNN demanding that the Palestinians take responsibility for Israeli security while the IDF was attacking Palestinian police posts and repeatedly violating cease fires.

You are justifying Pinochet with the Soviet invasion of Hungary and Czechoslovakia? If I recall at the time, there was horror and abomination from the US for this. Allende was a democratically elected leader. Either you stand for democracy and accept it, or you prove your real colours by financing coups. If Allende's term had come to an end and he had refused to call an election or abide by an unfavourable result, then fine. But these things did not hapen. He was running a government that had actually increased its popular support in senatorial elections just prior to his coup and murder by Pinochet. Allende may have been a bad manager (which he was) and a rabid socialist (which he also was) but most importantly he was a democratically elected leader, and as far as I am concerned, that is written in stone, Soviet proxy be damned. No the US didn't create all the right wing dictators of the world, just a few of them. And it sided with many others when they suited its purposes. There was a famous quote from Johnson: "He may be a sunofabitch, but he's our sunofabitch." America is indeed a democracy. So was Chile under Allende. And Iran under Mossadegh.... And as far as problems with indigenous peoples go, I would hardly call the US a model the rest of the world should follow. Personally I have no argument about the validity of Afghanistan. The US had every right to go in there and clean house. They were fighting a war of self-defense and the Taliban were given the opportunity to turn over Osama. They should have taken it. We'd all be much better off. My argument about Afghanistan is that 5 years later the same battle is still being fought because somebody took their eye off the ball. If Bush had stuck to his knitting they'd probably have clean water, electricity and shopping malls with food courts by now. But they didn't, and the reason for that is Kissinger-like thinking. The whole idea of using war as a strategic tool like a gardener uses a hoe. Vietnam was a waste of human capital, and so is Iraq.

Nobody invited you here Argus. You are here entirely under your own power. You don't like it, then piss off.