The reality of occupation of Palestine
If a martian observer looks objectively to the question of Palestine he would be paying special attention to the facts.
The first principle is that we should pay heed to historical documented facts if we are to discern the truth.
The reality of occupation of Palestine is described eloquently by the Jewish-Israeli Historian Benny Morris:
"Israelis like to believe, and tell the world, that they were running an "enlightened" or "bening" occupation,qualitatively different from other military occupations the world had seen. The truth was radically different. Like all occupations, Israel's was founded on brute force, repression and fear, collaboration and treachery, beatings and torture chambers, and daily intimidation, humiliatin, and manipulation. True, the relative lack of resistance and civil disobedience over the years enabled Israelis to maintain a facade of normalcy and implement their rule with a relatively small force, consisting of a handful of IDF battalions, a few dozen police officers (rank-and-file policemen were recruited from among the palestinians), and a hundred or so general security service (GSS) case officers and investigators."(Benny Morris , Righteous victims (vintage, 2001), p. 341
Since its creation and in particular since 1967 Israel has preferred expansion over security and has continously blocked peace initiatives thanks to the support of the super power.
There is considerable evidence to believe that prior to 1973 Israel could have successfully negotiated a peaceful settlement and possibly entering into a federal arrangement in mandatory Palestine.
Israel not only opted out of any negotiations but has effectively made them an impossibility by ruling out any hope of any rights for the palestinian people.
Saying the fate of territories will be settled " in accordance with the basic guidelines of the [Israeli] governement.... there will be no addtitional Palestinian state....Jordan being already a Palestinian state"
Israel with the help of US refuses to accept the international consensus on two state solution with Israel withdrawing to pre -1967 borders, dismantling the illegal settlements in the west bank and complying with the UN resolution 242 which calls "the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war and the need to work for a just and lasting peace in which every State in the area can live in security" the resolution specifically calls for "withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict" the resolution also reminds Israel that "all claims or states of belligerency and respect for... the sovereignty... of every state in the area and their right to live in peace... free from threats or acts of force".
Israel is portrayed, by its friends, to be a weak, peace loving country surrounded by hostile arab and muslim states and is threatened to be "wiped off the map" the fact that Israel is the fourth biggest military power (biggest outside Nato) armed with the most sophisticated and dangerous weapons of mass destruction including nuclear and biological weapons are irrelevant.
It is also irrelevant that Israel has attacked all its neighbours and occupied land by naked aggression including the Golan heights and Sheba Farms from Syria and Lebanon respectively.
Facts have no meaning when it comes to Israel's crimes against humanity condemned by virtually all international human rights organistions. The genocide of Sabra and Shatella is out of history, the systemic land expropriation and settlement expansion in the west bank (inspite of international consensus on their illegality) , bull-dozing of Palestinian homes, the killing of children and elderly including the assisination of a quadraplegic man in his wheel chair are mere nonsense.
Another incident rarely mentioned in the media and scholarship is the massacre of Deir Yassin where 250 men,women, and children were ruthlessly murdered in cold blood,planned and executed by Menachem Begin's Irgun.
Contempt for reality such as those mentioned above, from a catalogue of crimes, is not uncommon when they are against you, dismissed as anti-semitic diatribe.
Its interesting that the race card is played so gratuitously when it comes to dismissing the critical voices but is not pertinent to inherent racism in the ideology of zionism and its supporters.
When Churchill was reminded that Jews cannot go to Palestine because there are already people living in Palestine called the Palestinians he declared that "I do not accept that the dog in the manger has the final right to that manger”
Racism is acceptable depending who is the victime ,sometimes pronouced with amusing candidness as Moshe Dayan put the matter to the labour cabinet in the 1970s, we must say to Palestinians that " we have no solution, you shall continue to live like dogs, and whoever wishes may leave, and we will see where this process leads".
More than 4 million Palestinian refugees live in miserable conditions in nieghbouring countries and yet they are the fortunate ones.
More than 3 million Gazans live in the biggest prison in the world, cut off from the rest of world with scant water supplies, squalid living conditions with more than 80% of the population unemployed and dependent on food rations.
Israeli journalist Amira Hass writes in Ha'aretz ( the Israeli newspaper):
" A thousand words and a thousand images cannot describe it. That's not because of the weakness of words and photos, but because of the ability of most Israelis not to see and not to grasp the extent of the vineyards and groves and orchards and fields that the people's army of Israel turned into desert, the green that it painted yellow and gray, the sand turned over and the exposed land, the thorns, the weeds.
To ensure the safety of settlers.... the IDF [Israeli defense forces] spent five years uprooting the green lungs of Gaza, mutilating its most beautiful areas and cutting off the livelihood of tens of thousands of families. The Israeli talent for ignoring the enormous destruction that we caused leads to the wrong political assessments. Ignoring it enables the IDF to continue destroying Palestinian territory in the West Bank. Along the [separation] fence, around the settlements, in the Jordan Valley, the destruction goes on as a means to continue creating facts on the ground and to guarantee that the future Palestinian entity remains as divided and split and territory-less as possible." Ha'aretz Semptember 2005
The first principle is that we should pay heed to historical documented facts if we are to discern the truth.
The reality of occupation of Palestine is described eloquently by the Jewish-Israeli Historian Benny Morris:
"Israelis like to believe, and tell the world, that they were running an "enlightened" or "bening" occupation,qualitatively different from other military occupations the world had seen. The truth was radically different. Like all occupations, Israel's was founded on brute force, repression and fear, collaboration and treachery, beatings and torture chambers, and daily intimidation, humiliatin, and manipulation. True, the relative lack of resistance and civil disobedience over the years enabled Israelis to maintain a facade of normalcy and implement their rule with a relatively small force, consisting of a handful of IDF battalions, a few dozen police officers (rank-and-file policemen were recruited from among the palestinians), and a hundred or so general security service (GSS) case officers and investigators."(Benny Morris , Righteous victims (vintage, 2001), p. 341
Since its creation and in particular since 1967 Israel has preferred expansion over security and has continously blocked peace initiatives thanks to the support of the super power.
There is considerable evidence to believe that prior to 1973 Israel could have successfully negotiated a peaceful settlement and possibly entering into a federal arrangement in mandatory Palestine.
Israel not only opted out of any negotiations but has effectively made them an impossibility by ruling out any hope of any rights for the palestinian people.
Saying the fate of territories will be settled " in accordance with the basic guidelines of the [Israeli] governement.... there will be no addtitional Palestinian state....Jordan being already a Palestinian state"
Israel with the help of US refuses to accept the international consensus on two state solution with Israel withdrawing to pre -1967 borders, dismantling the illegal settlements in the west bank and complying with the UN resolution 242 which calls "the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war and the need to work for a just and lasting peace in which every State in the area can live in security" the resolution specifically calls for "withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict" the resolution also reminds Israel that "all claims or states of belligerency and respect for... the sovereignty... of every state in the area and their right to live in peace... free from threats or acts of force".
Israel is portrayed, by its friends, to be a weak, peace loving country surrounded by hostile arab and muslim states and is threatened to be "wiped off the map" the fact that Israel is the fourth biggest military power (biggest outside Nato) armed with the most sophisticated and dangerous weapons of mass destruction including nuclear and biological weapons are irrelevant.
It is also irrelevant that Israel has attacked all its neighbours and occupied land by naked aggression including the Golan heights and Sheba Farms from Syria and Lebanon respectively.
Facts have no meaning when it comes to Israel's crimes against humanity condemned by virtually all international human rights organistions. The genocide of Sabra and Shatella is out of history, the systemic land expropriation and settlement expansion in the west bank (inspite of international consensus on their illegality) , bull-dozing of Palestinian homes, the killing of children and elderly including the assisination of a quadraplegic man in his wheel chair are mere nonsense.
Another incident rarely mentioned in the media and scholarship is the massacre of Deir Yassin where 250 men,women, and children were ruthlessly murdered in cold blood,planned and executed by Menachem Begin's Irgun.
Contempt for reality such as those mentioned above, from a catalogue of crimes, is not uncommon when they are against you, dismissed as anti-semitic diatribe.
Its interesting that the race card is played so gratuitously when it comes to dismissing the critical voices but is not pertinent to inherent racism in the ideology of zionism and its supporters.
When Churchill was reminded that Jews cannot go to Palestine because there are already people living in Palestine called the Palestinians he declared that "I do not accept that the dog in the manger has the final right to that manger”
Racism is acceptable depending who is the victime ,sometimes pronouced with amusing candidness as Moshe Dayan put the matter to the labour cabinet in the 1970s, we must say to Palestinians that " we have no solution, you shall continue to live like dogs, and whoever wishes may leave, and we will see where this process leads".
More than 4 million Palestinian refugees live in miserable conditions in nieghbouring countries and yet they are the fortunate ones.
More than 3 million Gazans live in the biggest prison in the world, cut off from the rest of world with scant water supplies, squalid living conditions with more than 80% of the population unemployed and dependent on food rations.
Israeli journalist Amira Hass writes in Ha'aretz ( the Israeli newspaper):
" A thousand words and a thousand images cannot describe it. That's not because of the weakness of words and photos, but because of the ability of most Israelis not to see and not to grasp the extent of the vineyards and groves and orchards and fields that the people's army of Israel turned into desert, the green that it painted yellow and gray, the sand turned over and the exposed land, the thorns, the weeds.
To ensure the safety of settlers.... the IDF [Israeli defense forces] spent five years uprooting the green lungs of Gaza, mutilating its most beautiful areas and cutting off the livelihood of tens of thousands of families. The Israeli talent for ignoring the enormous destruction that we caused leads to the wrong political assessments. Ignoring it enables the IDF to continue destroying Palestinian territory in the West Bank. Along the [separation] fence, around the settlements, in the Jordan Valley, the destruction goes on as a means to continue creating facts on the ground and to guarantee that the future Palestinian entity remains as divided and split and territory-less as possible." Ha'aretz Semptember 2005
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