Sunny, only temporarily clouded - Tel-Aviv's weather at the year's start is also typical of the people's mood. The economy is healthy, booming - even the cautious guild of state and private finance experts smiles. The entourage of the by now forty-man deep Government exudes discreet optimism on the question of recharging the batteries of serious peace negotiations. Prime Minister Netanyahu met with Egypt's President Mubarak, who in the latest phase of Israeli thinking plays a leading part. There is hope that Mahmoud Abbas, with his Fatah faithful, will this time come to the conference table. Thanks to the special pressure from President Obama this time all thorny issues will be thoroughly discussed: frontiers, settlements, Jerusalem, Holy Places and Palestinian right of return.
Europe should also play a more important role. In my private talks with Netanyahu, Defence Minister Barak and especially President Shimon Peres there was the definite feeling that even if Europe still does not speak with one voice it does contain willing and reasonable interlocutors. An Israeli Government delegation due to meet soon with Angela Merkel's ministerial team is expected to lead to truly constructive and thorough discussions.
Therefore all the more so has the escalating anti-Semitism and anti-Israel feeling in European media in connection with Gaza caused Israeli bitterness and pain.
There is much talk about a news story claiming that Israeli soldiers harvest inner organs and blood of Palestinians for commercial purposes. In the Persian language programme of the BBC World Service these stories were prominently reported. An open letter to the Director General of the BBC Mark Thompson came from an unexpected source: world-famous 38 year old piano virtuoso Evgeny Kissin, who spent his youth under the yoke of Soviet dictatorship, some of whose friends and relations lived, suffered and died in the Gulag and who is proud of living as a British citizen in the homeland of freedom, wrote a fiery letter of protest which is causing a sensation. By last night he had not received an answer.
Here one tends to think about the efforts of another great personality, Maestro Daniel Barenboim, to demonstrate to the world that 'enemies' (Israelis and Arabs) can gather under the banner of music, work and live in an orchestra peacefully and, in the truest sense of the word, harmoniously. Barenboim's intentions are crystal clear: he works for peace. Yet there is a danger of one side exploiting a noble initiative from the other side. Thus the Israelis fear that the plight of the Palestinians tends to be more dramatised in the accounts of the orchestra's activities than the legitimate fear that Israel will never be recognised as a free people and State. In spite of all that the concept of the West-Eastern Divan orchestra must deeply impress all those in quest for peace. It leaves open for both sides to rethink their views on right and wrong.
For me at any rate there is no better judgment on this complex issue than a quote from a speech of Israel's first President, Chaim Weizmann: "The Jewish-Palestinian problem is not a conflict of right and wrong but one of two rights and two wrongs." And he concluded "Our wrong is the smaller one."
no peace for sixty plus years.
Specifically, it's true that organs have been harvested illegally from cadavers to be sold for profit in at least one Israeli hospital, and that some of these came from dead Palestinians and arab Israelis.
It's also true that arab Israelis are treated under Israeli law as second class citizens, with lesser rights and privileges in their own land.
It's also either true or very plausibly alleged that in last year's attack on Gaza, Palestinian civilians were shot and killed in cold blood by Israeli soldiers, and that Israeli denials of this accusation have relied in large measure upon heat rather than light.
These three facts suffice to take us most (but not all) of the way to the swedish paper's blood libel. If the accusation is that close to the truth, it cannot be said that the story is preposterous and should not have been reported by any paper.
Here's what you wrote below on this post:
"Israel's 'facts on the ground' strategy uses civilians to further the military goal of cementing permanent Israeli control of much of the occupied territory. They are, in other words, being used as a weapon in Israel's war against the Palestinians, and that means that they're not civilians at all."
So, are there any other reasons you think its OK to go out and kill some civilians on purpose?
The only countries that have designated Hamas as a terrorist organization are:
Canada, USA, Japan, Australia, Israel and 27 EU countries.
So, only 32 out of 200 countries of the world agree.
I don't know why that is, but it probably explains why we hear boths sides of the issue...from just the side of 32 countries....all but Japan, being white.
Go ahead and jump on me...I like it....but stating inconvenient facts....isn't necessarily a defence....except for those who think reacting...is the same as thinking.
On top of this the IDF have had a policy of targeted assassinations against Palestinian leaders for decades now along with imprisoning others.
The Israeli state has deliberately encouraged the radicalization of the Palestinians and isolated effective leadership. If you had watched over the years you would have seen them calling for the Palestinians to control their own forces while simultaneously destroying the forces they had to effect any control and calling for a moderate leadership to talk to as they imprisoned those who could perform that function thus allowing them to continue to attest they have nobody to negotiate with and continue to appropriate Palestinian land.
Of course none of this as with your answer has anything to do with my post.
You say that they problem is extending freedom to Palestinians. But that has never been the problem. That has been available for decades. The problem is how to extend freedom to Palestinians such they they will not, *as they promise they will*, use that freedom to further their campaign of denying the very freedom to Israelis.
Google, for example "PLO Phased Plan" and "Hamas Charter".
These people (as opposed to the general Palestinian populations, which would prefer to get on with a peaceful existence in their own state next to Israel) make it quite plain what their intentions are vis-a-vis any freedom they are accorded, and *that* not anything else, not even settlements, is the sticky wicket.
They only people who don't know about that are people who don't care to listen to what the Palestinian armed factions have been explaining for years. Such *facts*, after all, get in the way of *the narrative*.
Emanuel met with Jacob Dayan, consul general of Israel in Los Angeles, about two weeks ago, after which Dayan briefed the Foreign Ministry.
Emanuel told Dayan the U.S. is sick of the Israelis, who adopt suitable ideas months too late, when they are no longer effective, according to Army Radio.
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The U.S. is also sick of the Palestinians who never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity, Emanuel reportedly said.
Emanuel added that if there is no progress in the peace process, the Obama administration will reduce its involvement in the conflict, because, as he reportedly said, the U.S. has other matters to deal with.
Emanuel reportedly said that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly acknowledged the two-state solution too late, and that the freeze on settlement construction in the West Bank came only after months of U.S. pressure.
The report added that both sides reportedly rejected the peace plan proposed by former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, but that if there is progress in peace talks, Obama might visit Israel and the region"
J
Your objection is a richocet.
1. frontiers: 1967 border.
2. settlements: All illegal. They must be dismanteled.
3. Jerusalem: Divided by the 1967 border.
4. Holy Places. Each country manages all sites that fall in its territory.
5. Palestinian right of return: All Palestinains have the right to return to their homes and lands.
Plain and simple. The are no rights to surrender. No compromise that implies surrendering Palestinian rights are acceptable. And by the way, the Balfour declaration is illegal. The mandate of Palestine was in fact a mandate to return the land to the Palestinians, not to give it to other people.
J
It is so easy to label all Jews as zionists, this is just not true and I am quite sure there are many jews in Israel who are equally unhappy. Unfortunately the Governments they get seem unable or unwilling to relinquish the land belonging to the Palestinians (and Syria come to that) or to break the impasse. In fact the current Government is so right wing that there is no hope of a change in that situation.
The hostility towards the Israeli Government is of their own making. Noone can doubt that the war on Gaza and previously in Lebannon refugee camps were as Goldstone said crimes against humanity. To state this is not anti-semetism simply the facts.
I am told all the time that I'm a Jew hater, simply because I find the behavior of right wing Israelis and their operatives within the IDF to be opposite to all standards of humanity.
It goes both ways - and from the debate I've seen, the antisemitism is rather a small percentage - people genuinely feel that Israeli has taken a fatalsitic turn - and that they themselves are working against their own interests by showing how little respect they have for anyone not Israeli - chilkdren included.
Do you ruminate about right wings and militaries of other peoples of the world? I am 99% sure no.
Guess what that means about you.
Either majority rule will allow the democratic process to move forward on paleistinian issues or
a jewish minority will impose an authoritairian system in the name of jewish security.
Placing the return of East Jerusalem on the negotiating table is the key to a peaceful resolution. It would signal the start of good faith negotiations and an end to the tight-fisted attempt to annex it.
Put East Jerusalem on the middle of the table and the moderate Palestinians will be strenghtened and the radicals will lose support. But if the goal is to hang on to it (which it has been to date), then no accord can be reached.
Also, when one side has an overwhelming preponderance of military strength and refuses to bargain in good faith, terrorism is pretty much all that is left to the weaker side. They can't contest in set-piece battle.
Israel has developed a military industrial complex that sees a secure peace as a threat to its defense dole from the U.S.