olga says:

Accusing Israel of war crimes is unjust!!!!
What was Israel supposed to do when Hamas fired rockets on Israeli cities on daily basis.
This terror organization, which rules Gaza Strip is openly calling for Israel’s destruction and firing thousands of missiles purposely targeting Israeli civilians and Israel supposed to take it quietly?

David R. Evans says:

Reality check: Israel is and has since 1948 when it massacred and forced 750.000 Palestinians from their homes and lands, been the aggressor. Hamas kept the ceasefire until Israeli troops violated it on Nov 4 2008. Palestinians use homemade and smuggled rockets because they have no F16, tanks and artillery with which to throw off the illegal occupation of their lands by the 4th most powerful military machine on the planet, Israel. It’s long past time that some of the myths of the violent Israeli regime. Lets start with the false claim that Cast Lead was begun because of “hundreds of rockets fired from Gaza”. It’s a lie!

http://www.spinwatch.org/-articles-by-category-mainmenu-8/73-middle-east/5317-how-israel-torpedoed-its-ceasefire-with-hamas-to-produce-a-casus-belli

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10123.shtml

David R. Evans says:

For the reason few of us know the truth about Israel, I suggest that you check out these videos:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6604775898578139565#

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SbjAanvUqs

…and for more facts: http://www.ifamericansknew.org/

David R. Evans says:

Awamori, diversion is an old trick. Of course there are many brutal regimes in the world, some of them imposed and supported by US and other powerful states. Let’s stay focused on the issue at hand in this thread. None of the states that you or the article you link to cite are practicing ethnic cleansing of the original inhabitants of the land. Nor are these states expanding their borders. Israel is, in fact Israel has no defined borders as it is intent on expanding and colonizing other’s lands: Zionist ambitions would carry “Israel” beyond the territories it had conquered in 1948. “Zionist mainstream thought,” writes Benny Morris “had always regarded a ‘Jewish’ (Zionist) state from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River as its ultimate goal.”
* * *

At various times, Zionists had made more expansive territorial claims that included – besides Palestine – Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and the Sinai.

In October 1936, even while accepting the recommendations of the Peel Commission to partition Palestine, Ben-Gurion had explained, “We do not suggest that we announce now our final aim which is far reaching – even more so than the Revisionists who oppose Partition.”

In another speech in 1938, Ben-Gurion revealed that his vision of a Jewish state included Cis-Jordan [the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean], southern Lebanon, southern Syria, today’s Jordan, and the Sinai. Ten years later, he spoke, grandiosely, of settling “the account with Egypt, Assyria and Chaldea on behalf of our ancestors.”

http://www.abna.ir/data.asp?lang=3&p=4&id=154934

Israel was born on the blood and the land stolen from hundreds of thousands of other people. ALL violence between Israelis and Palestinians is subsequent to that fact. Israel is in violation of more than 100 UN Resolutions and international court decisions, and the leaders in Jerusalem continue to steal evermore land (settlement building all over the West Bank, building The Wall, etc.) from the land’s rightful owners and moving them out of the way.

Israel is not a democracy. It is an ethnocracy, as it has more than 20 laws regarding different treatment of it’s Arab citizens (those few who still live in Israel Proper – those excluding Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, who are under brutal military domination) Housing laws, marriage and co-habiting laws, subsidies and benefits laws that are discriminatory, etc. In other words, democracies treat all citizens equal. Israel doesn’t. The US gives Israel more money than any other nation on the planet (3 billion per year), despite Israel’s wealth. We also give weapons and military tech secrets, some of which they sell to China. Israel, despite what our media parrots continue to tell us, is not a friend of the US. It’s abuses and belligerance are the primary reason that there is so much animosity towards the US expressed by Middle East and Asian nations.

Awamori says:

David, so many lies…I even don’t want to respond to every single one of them.

You are certainly living in some alternative reality, where Israel is expanding, Israeli arabs (1.5 million) are few, US gives Israel more money than any other nation on the planet, Israel cells to China US secrets, etc. But you will be always wellcomed to come back to a real world.

BTW all the antisemits like to claim, that they have some Jewish friends.
It’s a known trick. Try something else.

Awamori says:

David, incomplete truth and lies are pretty the same thing.

1)Regarding Israel’s expanding you don’t want to notice, that the recent building is inside the existing settlements, not outside. That is not expanding.

Besides, after 1967 Israel keeps withdrawing – Sinai in 1979, South Lebanon in 2000, Gaza and additional settlements on West Bank in 2005.
All this unilaterally, w/o any conditions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel%27s_unilateral_disengagement_plan_of_2004

In general, all the “extra” territory was gained by Israel during defensive wars.

2) You have claimed: “The US gives Israel more money than any other nation on the planet (3 billion per year)”. So this is I call lies. You can read in your own link, that there is economical aid and the military aid. In 2006, for example the numbers were 240 and 2,260 respectively. So the point is, that military aid is not a “money”. It is American armament and investment in common military research projects (like “Arrow” missile), which are to the common interest.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow_(missile)

3)1.5 million Arabs INSIDE the 1948 borders it is not a few at all. There are only 300,000 Jewish settlers OUTSIDE those borders. Ratio of 5:1.

Summary:

Look, in the real world in any conflict it simply can’t happen, that first side is always right, and second is always wrong. One is an innocent victim, and second is pure evil.
But in your reality it is like this.

Awamori says:

David, the wall’s purpose is not to steal the land, but protect Israeli citizens (both Jews and Arabs) from terrorist attacks.
I know, it doesn’t look very nice, but Israel simply has no choice. In contrary, Palestinians always had a choice -they could accept Israel back in 1948, they also can accept it right now. If they don’t want peace, they get a wall – simple and clear.

“Israeli officers (including the head of the Shin Bet) quoted in the newspaper Maariv have claimed that in the areas where the barrier was complete, the number of hostile infiltrations has decreased to almost zero. Maariv also stated that Palestinian militants, including a senior member of Islamic Jihad, had confirmed that the barrier made it much harder to conduct attacks inside Israel. Since the completion of the fence in the area of Tulkarem and Qalqilyah in June 2003, there have been no successful attacks from those areas. All attacks were intercepted or the suicide bombers detonated prematurely.[17] In a March 23, 2008 interview, Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader Ramadan Abdallah Shalah complained to the Qatari newspaper Al-Sharq that the separation barrier “limits the ability of the resistance to arrive deep within [Israeli territory] to carry out suicide bombing attacks , but the resistance has not surrendered or become helpless, and is looking for other ways to cope with the requirements of every stage” of the intifada.”

This website, you are referring to is pathetic. For example it compares number of Palestinians dead from the beginning of conflict with number of Israelis. Which conclusions is one supposed to make from this numbers?
Let’s compare, for example, the number of Americans dead in Iraq and the number of Iraqis ? Or American casualties during WW2 with the Japanese ones. I guess, the ratio will be more o less same if not higher. Conclusions?

David R. Evans says:

Awamori, The Wall is an illegal tool which is used to encroach into and acquire Palestinian land. You continue to deny truths I present with distracting argument and non-factual BS.

“Since December 2000, according to the Israeli human rights organization B’tselem, the settler population of the West Bank has grown by 86,000 and that of East Jerusalem by 50,000. Gaza was evacuated of settlers and soldiers in 2005, but Israel retains near complete control over egress and exit of people and goods to and from the coastal strip, regularly cuts supplies of fuel and other necessities to punish the residents and mounts military incursions at will. All the Palestinian territories are subject, to one degree or another, to the measures of house demolitions, “closures” that halt economic activity, administrative restrictions on movement, deportation, induced out-migration and much more.

Indeed, the matrix has reconfigured the country to such an extent that today it seems impossible to detach a truly sovereign and viable Palestinian state from an Israel that has expanded all the way to the Jordan River. Anyone familiar with Israel’s “facts on the ground,” perhaps first and foremost the settlers, would reach the conclusion that, in fact, the matrix cannot be taken apart in a piecemeal fashion, leaving a few settlements here, a road there and an Israel “greater” Jerusalem in the middle. The matrix has become far too intricate. Dismantling it piece by piece, with Israel stalling by arguing for the security function of each “fact on the ground,” would be a frustrating series of confrontations that would eventually exhaust itself. The only way to a genuine two-state solution and not a cosmetic form of apartheid is to cut the Gordian knot. The international community, led by the United States, must tell Israel that the occupation must be ended entirely. Israel must leave every inch of the Occupied Territories. Period.”

http://www.merip.org/mero/mero091109.html

What I present here is links to data and truth. All you present is opinions and lies.

Fact: Israeli terrorists moved several hundred thousand people out of their way to build their state. Israel now illegally militarily occupies lands and neighborhoods of people who want them to leave. Israel is the aggressor state. Palestinians are the victims of the aggression. All violence towards Israel is the result of these facts. If you would actually read and view some of the links that I have provided here, you would know that.

David R. Evans says:

Is this story staged?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nDUFiuZLhc

David R. Evans says:

also, Awamori, while I’m on the subject of lies of Israel, I’d like to address this recent lie: ‘Israel launched operation Cast Lead in response to the hundreds of rockets being fired fro Gaza by Hamas. Israel has a right to protect itself.”
How many times was that lie repeated by our media talking puppets on the nightly news during the 22 day murderous rampage on innocent people by the Israeli war machine?

Here is the truth:

http://www.themediaoasis.com/Hamasrockets.htm

Check out the links to the stories, particularly the story that shows that Hamas arrested Palestinians caught firing rockets into Israel. Hamas kept their end of the brokered ceasefire despite Israeli home invasions, shootings of farmers and fishermen, continued choking of the Gaza borders and arrests and capture of Palestinian citizens, all violations of the ceasefire. It was only after Israeli troops invaded Gaza on Nov 4 and killed hamas leaders that Hamas RETALIATED with rocket fire.

For one of the reasons that Israel launched it’s attack (which was 2 years in the planning):

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=11680

Awamori says:

Conflict escalates
On November 4, 2008, Israeli forces raided a Hamas-dug tunnel near the Israel-Gaza border. The IDF claimed the tunnel was intended for the capture of Israeli soldiers while Hamas asserted that the tunnel served defensive purposes.[59] The raid and the associated air strike killed six Hamas fighters. Hamas launched 35 rockets into southern Israel in what was described by a Hamas spokesman as a “response to Israel’s massive breach of the truce”.[60][61] According to a November 17 article in The Daily Telegraph, “since violence flared on November 5, Israeli forces and militants, some of them from Hamas, have engaged in almost daily tit-for-tat exchanges.”[62] Rocket attacks targeted at Israeli cities near Gaza sharply increased during November 2008, approaching pre-truce levels.[63]

On December 13, Israel announced that it was in favor of extending the cease-fire, provided Hamas adhered to the conditions.[64] On December 14, a Hamas delegation in Cairo proposed that the parties return to the original ceasefire arrangement: Hamas would undertake to stop all rocket attacks against Israel if Israel would agree to open up the border crossings, not to reduce commercial traffic, and not to launch attacks into Gaza. At an Israeli cabinet meeting on December 21, Yuval Diskin, head of Israel’s internal security agency, said he thought Hamas was “interested in continuing the truce, but wants to improve its terms…it wants us to lift the siege of Gaza, stop attacks, and extend the truce to include the West Bank.”[65]

On December 20, Hamas officially announced that it would not extend the cease-fire which had expired on December 19. It cited the Israeli border blockade as the primary reason and resumed shelling of the western Negev.[66] Israel said that it had begun to ease the blockade, but reimposed it when Hamas failed to end all rocket fire and weapons smuggling.[67]

On December 23, senior Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar reiterated that Hamas was willing to renew the cease-fire under the original terms.[68] That same day the IDF killed three Palestinian militants, claiming that they had been planting explosives on the Israel-Gaza border.[69] On December 24, more than 60 Palestinian mortar shells and Katyusha and Qassam rockets hit the Negev.[70] Hamas code-named the attacks “Operation Oil Stain” and claims it fired 87 rockets and mortar rounds at Israel that day.[71]

On December 25, after Israel had “wrapped up preparations for a broad offensive,” Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert delivered a final warning in an interview with the Arabic language satellite channel al-Arabiya. He said “I am telling them now, it may be the last minute, I’m telling them stop it. We are stronger.”[72]

On Friday, December 26, Israel reopened five border crossings between Israel and Gaza to supply fuel for Gaza’s main power plant and to provide about 100 truck loads of humanitarian aid, including grain and other goods.[73] That same day, militants fired approximately a dozen rockets and mortar shells from Gaza at Israel; one accidentally struck a northern Gaza house, killing two Palestinian sisters and wounding a third.[74][75] According to Israeli officials, its subsequent December 27 offensive took Hamas by surprise, thereby increasing militant casualties.[76]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_War#Conflict_escalates

David R. Evans says:

The graph shows that Hamas abided by the cease-fire until the incursion into Gaza and the killing of Palestinians by Israeli soldiers on Nov 4, 2008. Only then were rockets again launched in large numbers from Gaza (Hamas actually arrested those militants who were caught launching rockets during the cease-fire, despite Israel’s continuing choking of supplies at the Gaza border crossings – a clear violation of the ceasefire. Israel never did allow enough food medicine fuel and other supplies in to relieve the shortages suffered by Gazan citizens. Israel never did honor their bargain, their part of the cease-fire agreement:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jOFXL62zw0

Awamori says:

To #23

November 4th:

“Israeli troops crossed into the Gaza Strip late last night near the town of Deir al-Balah. The Israeli military said the target of the raid was a tunnel that they said Hamas was planning to use to capture Israeli soldiers positioned on the border fence 250m away. Four Israeli soldiers were injured in the operation, two moderately and two lightly, the military said.

One Hamas gunman was killed and Palestinians launched a volley of mortars at the Israeli military. An Israeli air strike then killed five more Hamas fighters. In response, Hamas launched 35 rockets into southern Israel, one reaching the city of Ashkelon.

“This was a pinpoint operation intended to prevent an immediate threat,” the Israeli military said in a statement. “There is no intention to disrupt the ceasefire, rather the purpose of the operation was to remove an immediate and dangerous threat posted by the Hamas terror organisation.”

Awamori says:

Sorry David, but would the “capturing another Shalit” be a break of cease fire? That’s exactly what was prevented.

“Israel good, Palestinian Arabs bad.” – Never said that.
But your are always saying “Israel is bad, Palestinians are good”.
Balance, David, balance.

BTW, I don’t think, that the average Palestinian hates Israel and justifies Hamas as much, as you do.

Awamori says:

David, I see the conflict in different perspective. Not “Israel vs. Palestinians” but “Israel vs. Arab World” or even “Israel vs. Muslim world.”

After all, before 1967, when those territories where under Arab control, no one has reminded the “Palestinian nation” or “Palestinian State.”

I don’t think that Arabs themselves consider a Palestinians as a independent nation who deserves its own state. Nobody worried about a Palestinian state, when Gaza and WB were under Arab control untill 1967. After all, this territory used to be Arab colony, like Southern Spain or Northern Africa. So now they want it back, using “Palestinian rights” as a PR move.

Some good and balanced article regarding Arab and Jewish population of Ottoman and Mandate Palestine:

]http://www.mideastweb.org/palpop.htm

“…Therefore we cannot conclude that Jewish settlement displaced Arabs. On the contrary, Jewish settlement may have attracted Arabs, so that in the areas that that eventually became Israel in all probability there were more Arabs than there would have been without Jewish settlement. Another explanation is that the urban areas attracted Jewish settlers and Arabs because of better standard of living and employment opportunity. Health conditions were probably somewhat better in these areas as well. Note that Table 8 is not divided according to areas that did or did not become part of Israel. Therefore the data should not be misused to claim that a large number of Arabs present in Israel in 1948 had migrated from the non-Jewish areas of the West Bank and Gaza. Beersheba district, which became part of Israel, lost about 45,000 Arabs between 1931 and 1945, if we believe the survey.

The importance of the above is that it shows that rather than “dispossessing” or displacing the Arabs of Palestine, Zionist settlement apparently attracted them…”

David R. Evans says:

Also, Awamori, consider some of the works of Jewish historian, Illan Pappe, particularly his book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine

“Pappe’s argument, or as he gladly admits, his “j’accuse” rests on first demonstrating that Zionists from the very first days of Herzl in the 1890s recognized the demographic problem they faced if they were to realize a purely Jewish state in a land overwhelmingly non-Jewish. Using various source materials he shows how the idea of forced expulsion had always been there but emerged openly in the 1930s. Two particulary stark quotes from David Ben Gurion stand out.

“I am for compulsory transfer; I do not see anything immoral in it” Ben Gurion in 1938 pg. xi

And here on the eve of achieving statehood:

“There are 40% non-Jews in the area allocated to the Jewish state. This composition is not a solid basis for a Jewish state. And we have to face this new reality with all its severity and distinctness. Such a demographic balance questions our ability to maintain Jewish sovereignty… only a state with at least 80% Jews is a viable and stable state” Ben Gurion on December 3, 1947 pg. 48

In the next part of the book Pappe uses Israeli archives from the military, the IDF, minutes of political meetings, public statements, and also diaries of David Ben Gurion and other memoirs from the period. What these documents show is that while the political leadership didn’t have to articulate a master plan of ethnic cleansing in its instructions, the overall objective was understood.

“…most of the troops engaged in ethnic cleansing do not need direct orders; they know what is expected of them. Pg. 3

What follows is a most powerful, and riveting narrative. It is the detailed account, almost day by day of the events from December 1947 through 1948, the period when the ethnic cleansing began. Pappe does not hold back in graphically recounting the systematic, brutally cruel expulsion of the Palestinians from over 500 tiny villages that dotted the landscape of old Palestine. Nothing less than acts of pure terrorism were employed, mostly by the Irgun and the Stern gang operating under the auspices of the Hagana which earlier was the militant Zionist underground dating back to the 1920s and officially designated a terrorist organization by the British. The campaign to “cleanse” Palestine of its indigenous population included bombings, assassinations, demolitions, arson, pillage, rape, and two cases of poisoning the water supply with typhoid; one succeeded the other failed. The most famous case is the massacre at Deir Yassin in which up to 100 men, women, and children were murdered in cold blood. Because international reporters happened to be on the scene it aroused a round of international outrage at the time. But spreading fear in the Palestinians so that they would flee in terror was also part of the strategy of the Hagana.

It should be noted that Pappe has been accused of fabricating massacres. He deals with this charge in the book in reference to a particular case of a libel suit in Israel against a University student. Most of the scholarship on this period has relied on Israeli sources and either ignores or gives little credence to oral histories by Palestinians or other Arab sources. Pappe insists that a complete picture of what happened is not possible unless all testimonies are included for scholarly consideration.

The last part of the book deals with the “memoricide of the Nakba” and “Nakba Denial”. The expulsion and dispossession of the Palestinians in 1948 constituted a gross physical abuse. What followed has been a profound psychological abuse far deeper and no less painful. This has been the systematic bulldozing and destruction of almost all of the small Palestinian villages so that there remains no trace that they ever existed. Over these ruins are built Jewish homes, roads, recreation parks, Kibbutzim and even historic sites all renamed with Hebrew names, modern or ancient to reflect the resurrection of ancient Israel, destroy the memory of a Palestinian culture and community, and support the myth of a “land without a people, for a people without a land”.

Ilan Pappe has argued that the time for a two state solution has passed and that the only just solution to this conflict, and the only way that both Jews and Arabs can find the peace and security they yearn for, is in a one state democracy in which all Palestinian refugees are finally granted their right of return as expressed in UN Resolution 194. Of course, the demographics of such a solution would make Jews a minority and thus the exclusively Jewish character of the state, which has been the Zionist dream, would disappear”

http://www.aria-aperta.org/AriaAperta/BookReviews/ApartheidEthnicdoublereview.html