Burning Question for Indybay re. Censorship and Israel/Palestine

It would be great if one issue thats not even local didnt take over all discussion on the site. Palestine is an important issue but there are other issues and I think the constant debate where some antiZionists bordered on antiSemitism (and much of the proIsrael stuff was from rightwingers who probably are antiSemitic too) didnt really lead anywhere.

The original "article" above is nothing more than zionazi troll bait that has been posted to manipulate IMC into accepting the existence of "Israel" by posing as a moderate voice of peace. The same strategy has been deployed by zionists wherever they hope to gain a foothold. There is no such thing as a "peace" supporter who tolerates zionism, any more than there is such thing as a "peace" supporter who tolerates nazis or the klan. There is NO place for zionism, nazism or the klan in ANY movement for social progress.

You guys' ignorance and ugliness is an embarrassment to the rest of us. Cuz you are guys, aren't you? Any jews in your ranks either?

The question stands: Will Indybay tolerate this kind of thuggish suppression of a whole point of view in what is a real debate among people of conscience the world over? Or will automatic dogmatic logic win?

Insh'Allah, we will have a constructive answer from y'all.

Maa' salaam and shalom to the lot of ya.

A few people in the indybay group are Jewish (some practicing, some not). Its a pretty diverse group.

That's a rather bizarre understanding of AMERICAN internal politics, Nessie. US policy has been pro Israel for the last 55 years for one reason and one reason only.

Because the US is not a parliamentary democracy with strong party discipline, interest groups concentrated around some one or two things that they want very badly to the exclusion of caring very much about anything else get a "say" all out of proportion to their numbers -- unless directly opposed by some other interest group equally willing to "give way" on side issues. This is not necessarily a BAD feature. It depends upon fundamental assumptions about what is a good democracy.

We often over simplify to "majority rules" and THAT is more or less how a parliamentary system works. Some majority coalition gets to make ALL of the decisions and the minority interests just get to bitch about it. There is another vision which influenced how our system was designed which asks rather how minority interests can "negotiate" SOME of what they want. The bigger your group, the MORE things you can get, the smaller, the LESS things, but even a fairly small group maybe able to get the one thing it really wants if it is willing in exchange, to "cooperate" with almost anybody else's wants and desires.

If compact around an issue, if not DIRECTLY opposed, in US politics a 2-3% size interest group "owns" that issue. Any attempot to change US policy toward Israel HAS to consider the American Jews "stakeholders". Has to consider the impact on a political package (a candidate, a party, etc.) which does not contain support for the continued existence of Israel.

Don't misread what I just said. CAN be critical of particular policies. Just cannot contain "solutions" to the problem so polarized as not to consider Israeli interests at all. Any such "packages" would find 90+% of the American Jews opposed REGARDLESS of whatever "good things" (things they otherwise would favor) are contained in that package.

Nessie -- you have to understand that my concern is NOT about your position on Israel-Palestine but how it might get linked to "other matters" which would then be asked to pay the price. I'm not even TELLING you not to do that (not to "link"). I'm simply asking that you do not pretend to yourself that consequences do not exist.
What I'm telling you is that the American Jews ARE "stakeholders" whether you think they should be or not. I'm telling you that any issue X which is linked to "Israel must be eliminated so that the Palestinians can have opeace" is going to find the opponents of X approaching the Jews and saying "you help us against X and we'll support a pro-Israel position" and that the American Jews will go along -- even if they would otherwise be neutral or even in favor of X.

You've seen this in action, Nessie. Have you forgotten "Rainbow" already? How can you keep pretending to yourself that it's not the political reality under which you must operate. Pretending that the American Jews aren't "stakeholders" because you don't think that they SHOULD be or because you WISH they weren't doesn't change reality. If you want to keep them neutral (or in support) of your other issues then you need to come up with "solutions" they will find acceptable.

I think the original article asked a fair question, and is far from troll bait. I've been a member of Indymedia (but on the other side of the country) since april of 2000, and I've become pretty dismayed at how the Israel-Palestine conflict has been handled by many imc sites.

This sentiment that "if you aren't for the complete dismantling of Israel, you aren't leftist and have no business being involved in Indymedia" is getting depressingly common. It's really antithetical to the IMC principles of unity, but yet it is the de facto reality that has started to creep in.

As for our sites, if I saw an even marginally porportionate badgering of all other nation-states with a history of colonialism and present practice of problematic militarism and social policy, I'd be far less disturbed. But a read through many IMC's feature and newswire columns shows something quite different.

I'm glad to hear that there are jews included in the diversity of those invoved in indbay. I hope they'll feel safe speaking up if/when it appears that critique of Israel and blanket statements about zionoism begin to cross the line into antisemitism.

"There should only be one article on this issue (every couple of months)."
-MH

-

"This issue" = the zionazi apartheid wall of hate, which MH actually dares to refer to as a "security fence".

MH is another zionist robot incapable of rational independent thought and who wants to suppress criticism of his beloved "Israel".

1
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/040113/481/jrl10201131140

2
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/040113/481/jrl10101131140

Nessie -- YOU are the one interpreting speaking of Jews collectively as meaning race. The Jews are essentially a "tribal" people and race has nothing to do with it (except in the minds of 19th century Eurpopeans -- and weird considering that almost all scholars of this period had taken Latin but apparently didn't understand the word "gens").

And it's a tribe with a high degree of "tribal solidarity". Don't bother telling me that you can find some Jews who don't care about the welfare of the tribe -- I know you can. But that isn't statisticly relevant. And don't bother telling me that they shouldn't feel the way they do, that they should care about all of humanity equally because your "should" is irrelevant to the "is" --- and I would trust your moral expression a great deal more if I heard you giving equal time to opposing the tribality of our native tribal peoples.

I'm not telling you to like it, just to recognize how this reality affects your political agendas. If for you the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is IMPORTANT, more important than all the other things in your agenda list, by all means, proceed as you are . I'm simply saying that you have no cause to bitch and moan when your attempts to link this matter with other things on your agenda results in finding this tribe becomes in effect "enemy" on those other things.

LOOK --- This is one of the reasons why "the left" has a problem with the Jews. They stubbornly insist on maintaining their tribal identity as more important to them than class idenitfication. You should note that the return (and it IS a return) to stronger identification tribally wasn't THEIR decision but that of people external to them, the 20th century Europeans who chose to treat Jews alike whether or not they identified with their tribe or political causes.

I want you take a serious look at why you think of this as "race", where you get this from, why you think a strongly tribal Jew sees the difference between "us" and "other" as "race". Do you imagine that Hopi or Dene see the differences between each other in terms of RACE????

MH, you pointed to one of the posts hidden on sf.indymedia and cite the reason editors hid it as
"This was hidden because it compromises the interests of the Palestinians and the anti-Zionist side."

I agree, that would be a *very* troubling reason to hide a post, and certainly well outside the IMC's principles of unity and spirit of open publishing.

But, what makes you say this is the reason it was hidden? One of the things I prefer about Dada (another popular IMC script) is that it includes the *reason* why an article was hidden, to create some accountability and transparancy with editing decisions. The SF Active script used here, which has other advantages over Dada (not taking overall tech preferences here) sadly doesn't seem to record and make available such information.

Thanks for speaking up about this issue. It's rather disheartening to see how quickly (and often wrongly) someone raising concerns over this are branded as "zionazi provacateurs", when they actually have long standing personal ties with indymedia and leftist or radical activism in general.

Both sf.indymedia and indybay hide clearly rightwing posts. Comments are hidden if they are hateful or are rightwing reposts but not always hidden if they are real right of center arguments that can be responded to.

The problem with the antiZionist debates is that both sides cross the line in terms of basic leftwing values all the time. Posts about the USS Liberty try to drum up hatred of Israel based off a response to the US being attacked (and a lot of the articles on the USS Liberty were written by neonazis). Posts where Zionist and Jew could be interchanged and the post would sound like an old fashioned antiSemetic diatribe (control of the media, control of the government in the US etc..) are allowed since Zionist is interpreted to mean evil and thus the other meanings of the word dont apply. At the same time those defending Israel, but who see themselves as leftwing, often talk about the right for a Jewish state which comes across as a demand for an ethnically (in a lose sense of the word) cleansed country, or at least like Buchanan's calls to keep the US Christian. Questions about why the focus is on Israel can also seem like a call to ignore whats happening rather than a legitimate question that may have some easy answers (level of US funding and support) but also raises a lot of new questions (why do people in France focus so much on Israel when France's refusal to recognize an election in Algeria resulted in many more deaths there than in the entire Palestinian conflict).

Opposition to the wall being bult through Palestinian villages in the west bank has little to do with one's views on Zionism. Many Israelis who support a two state solution oppose the wall since it is seen as making that goal impossible (since the walls are inside what would be a Palestinian state). As for "fence" vs "wall", it is a wall in places so does it matter what its called overall? Most of the wold (including newspapers that tend to be proIsrael) are calling it a wall:
see http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&edition=us&q=Israel+wall
vs
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&edition=us&q=Israel+fence

As the original poster on this, I don't have a problem with volume/spam control, or even theoretical qualms with censorship of patently rightwing views-- they have their own media, &c &c. But even all that is a slippery slope, and if you dont watch out, one day you wake up and can't oppose the official policy on question x, y or z, or it's off to the gulag. I think MH is exactly right about the social and spiritual effects of that in the long run. Meanwhile, some folks seem to think there's no Palestinian right wing, and no Israeli left... Us good, Them bad. Ugh, havent we had enough of logic like that?

Mostly, I'm specifically interested here in a recalibration of the acceptable parameters of debate on the Israel-Palestine thing. I want to see more room for those who are not anti-Israel-as-such, and I want to see less acceptance of vitriol from those on the Arab side. I'd like to think that somewhere, maybe even at Indybay, people of good conscience on all sides can find a place to come together against common oppressions like war and militarism-- and blind defense of same, from any side. Without being bullied into silence by bigots and thugs on any side, while the community watches on in silence.

You may say I'm a dreamer, and all that. Maa' salaam and shalom on the lot of ya.

There were left wing Nazis, too. So what's your point, that one kind of racist is better than the next? Wise up. They're all scum. Which race they happen to be, is irrelevant.

local loser, exposing his real agenda says: "I want to see more room for those who are not anti-Israel-as-such".

-

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good people do nothing. And acceptance and tolerance of zionism and its monster "Israel" is doing nothing.

I DON'T want to see more room for those who are not anti-National-Alliance-as-such.

I DON'T want to see more room for those who not anti-KKK-as-such.

I DON'T want to see more room for those who are not anti-zionist-as-such.

As previously mentioned, "There is no such thing as a "peace" supporter who tolerates zionism, any more than there is such thing as a "peace" supporter who tolerates nazis or the klan. There is NO place for zionism, nazism or the klan in ANY movement for social progress."

Period.

Zionists like "local loser" and MH have no place in IMC. If MH has (as one commentator suggested) helped IMC, that reflects poorly on anti-zionist security. Will IMC welcome the National Alliance and the klan if THEY provide labor and/or money to IMC? I think not.

Well, "Zero Tolerance," who seems to be named after a far-right reactionary campaign in the culture war (which gave us the "drug war" and put millions of people in prison, primarily young Black men), wants us to equate the Jewish experience in the 20th century, which led among other things to the foundation of Israel-as-such, with the Klan and the NF. Anything less is an ideological impurity to be shouted down and cleansed from the collective discourse.

I can't thank Zero enough for the living illustration of what I object to. I for one will remember the camps, and I won't have the road to them repaved for anyone, Palestinian or Jew, me or you.

Maa'salaam and shalom to the lot of ya.

Those asserting the meaninglessness of race, tend to come from the dominant one. Taking account of the role of race in people's experience is not inherently racist. aying someone is better or worse because of it is.

And the Jews and the Palestinians are all Semitic, and so the whole race construct in this question is a myth-- one perpetuated by propaganda from both sides, usually aimed at polemicizing European whites.

Yes Virginia, there is only one human race. So why does everyone keep talking shit otherwise?

Yeah, the liberty postings have been on a new rampage lately, spamming all over the imc network, and very often going hand in hand with antisemitic remarks, essentially going on about zionist controlled media and world system, rehashing the Elders of Zion and acting as if cleverly replacing "jew" with "zionist" as a codeword.

(this of course is doubly bad... it's anti-semetic and it makes folks understandably hesitant of other legitimate critiques of zionism because right wing, neo-nazis are using it as their new code word for jew hating)

The illiterate remark about zionists is, by the way, pretty despicable. Think zionists are just militants who support the illeagal settlements? Actually, a zionist peace group is the best known monitoring group of illeagal jewish settlements and actively campaigns the US congress to cut aid to Israel that gets used to support these illeagal settlements (over half the aid to Israel).

If you actually thing zionists are inherently militant and support the persecution of palestinians, visit http://www.peacenow.org Like much that relates to Judaism, what zionism means to dfiferent people varies and has changed, for many, is very different from the association it often has hertzl and the like.

I usually post as hmm and tend to be pretty proPalestinian but agree on the strangeness of the focus on leftwing websites on the USS Liberty. An NSA ship may have been intentionally or unintentionally attacked by Israel. Rallying around such an event is kinda like rallying around the Maine or Gulf Of Tonkin incident. Jingoistic nationalism should never be used to promote one's cause.

Do Palestinians have the right to rule themsleves or should they be kept in a stituation where they have no say in the government that rules over them? Whether one is appalled by the actions of Palestinian nationalists or see it is a legitimate struggle for self determination, none of these actions can justify the situation in which the Palestinian people have been placed. This should be the issue. When people who support the Palestinian cause stay on issue and stop being misled by right wingers who try to coopt the cause, real progress may be made. Both Palestinians and Jews are victims of antiJewish conspiracy theories.

Sorry, didn't mean to nab a common nickname :-)

A good article on the need for legitimate supporters of palestinian social justice and autonomy to be vigilant against making misguided affiliations with anti-semitic groups and rhetoric: http://www.ramallahonline.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1696

"Or will it be a forum in which those interested in peace, from all sides, can conduct civilized discussions? "

What is meant by peace?

1. A status quo with a Palestinian population living under foreign rule with no vote in the government that rules over them.

2. A two state solution with many Palestinians left in refugee camps (since their homes were in Israel proper), forced relocations of Jewish settlers, growing conflict between Israel and its arab citizens, and a nongeographically connected Palestinian state.

3. A single secular state with a constitution guaranteeing both populations equal rights (but continuing conflicts between the citizens of this new state over land ownership by settlements etc..)

Most Palestinians hope for 3, most Israelis hope for 2 and Sharon is holding out for 1 (but is making 3 look more viable than 2 due to the increase in settlements).

Congrats to you for such a well-thought out comment. I completely agree. I also agree with the sentiment of the original post.

And to the other posters, don't bother discussing anything with Nessie. He goes through life with a most rigid ideological perspective while fronting as an "anti-authoritarian" of one sort or another (anarchist?).

To "." who wrote:

"Thanks for speaking up about this issue. It's rather disheartening to see how quickly (and often wrongly) someone raising concerns over this are branded as "zionazi provacateurs", when they actually have long standing personal ties with indymedia and leftist or radical activism in general."

No doubt. I have been active in numerous left endeavors in the past decade but if I so much as suggest that Israeli citizens should be able to exist in peace I am deemed a racist "Zionazi".

"Zero tolerance" sums up this perspective when he equates the neo-Nazi National Alliance with the state of Israel. What lunacy! This needs to stop if the left hopes to have any influence on this issue.

Thank goodness "Hmmm" provided a taste of reality in mentioning Americans for Peace Now (APN). APN is a Zionist organization whose members have risked being shot at to document the spread of illegal settlements. They are a fantastic organization.

Hey Mike and others:

Note that nessie isn't even capable of having a real conversation. He uses rhetoric, slogans and catch-phrases like a cruth.

Nessie is too far gone. His brain is gone. He's off the deep end. He's like a robot now, and a badly-programmed one at that.

The complaints here are legit. Lots of indymedia sites and some members of the peace movements are so rabidly "israel must be dismantled and if you don't agree 100% and hate anyone who doesn't agree than you are a racist and evil."

Notice that MIKE is speaking like a normal, rational, intelligent person, and the only people who disagree with him are the ones who rant like loons about "zionazis" or just pick apart structural errors in your sentences while totally ignoring the obvious correct main points you're trying to make.

I note that a variety of opinions have developed in this thread, without explicit agreement and offering insight from a variety of viewpoints. I also notice the emergence of a previously-suppressed but widespread view within the IMC community, at least as measured by posts here.

I also notice that this thread hasn't gotten the swiss cheese treatment by some tinpot tyrant trying to impose orthodoxy on everyone.

Maybe the step forward has already been taken. I remain impressed with the difference in the new Indybay collective. I never believed much in splits, but I think my mind might be starting to change on that.

See:

http://sfbay.indymedia.org/news/2003/08/1638426_comment.php#1642334

" I have been active in numerous left endeavors in the past decade but if I so much as suggest that Israeli citizens should be able to exist in peace I am deemed a racist "Zionazi". "Zero tolerance" sums up this perspective when he equates the neo-Nazi National Alliance with the state of Israel. What lunacy! This needs to stop if the left hopes to have any influence on this issue."

- "long time imc'er"

-

There are three lunacies in the above comment:

1. That there is such a thing as "Israeli" citizens.

There is no such thing as an "Israel" and no such thing as an "Israeli" citizen. There is only an occupying army and its camp followers whose citizenships are from a variety of host countries.

2. That these so-called "Israeli" citizens should be allowed to "live in peace".

If they wanted "peace", they should never have invaded Palestine! They should return to their homelands if that's what they want. As long as they continue to occupy the land of others, they have no expectation of peace.

3. That comparisons between zionists and the National Alliance are "lunacy".

Both zionists and the National Alliance are master race theorists who target for ethnic cleansing so-called "inferior" groups. Both are militant fascists. If there is any difference, it is only that the National Alliance is primarily still in its "wannabe" stage while zionists have already massacred untold thousands, already ethnically cleansed millions and already persecuted millions more with further occupation, assassinations, home demolitions, the apartheid wall and more. The zionazis even issued a decree in August prohibiting intermarriages between Jews and Palestinians.

To say that such scum should be left in peace is the sheerest lunacy and the notion that zionists have any rights at all in Palestine defies every principle of social justice.

Again, and if it is really true that there are zionist sleeper cells that have been around long enough to become "IMC long timers", then IMC has failed in its obligation to prevent its penetration by fascist elements of the zionist stripe.

Ah yes, the history. Thanks for mentioning that, MH. One continuous conquest all the way back to Jericho. All over the Mediterranean, too. History is where everyone's claims to "rightfully" own the place fall to pieces. The only solution is to live together. There is no road to peace, peace is the road. yadda yadda...

Notice that no one here has defended Ariel Sharon, the IDC or any current Israeli governmental policy, semantics aside. People who put the sins of government on all the people it ostensibly represents are a kind of fundamentalist. It's not an attitude any reasonable American can sustain, let alone a "radical" one. In my experiences in the region, it is never necessary to explain to ordinary people the difference between the people and the government. This myopic confusion of the two seems to be a unique product of so-called "liberal" democracy. I am very suspicious of people who try to impose it on other peoples' contexts, because of modern european-colonial history.

Also notice, that the Palestinians have never tried nonviolence as an official policy. That does not mean Palestinians are all violent, it does however make their leadership dubious at best. Where oh where are the Palestinian sit-ins, the Palestinian Ghandi, the Palestinian March on Washington er Jerusalem? The Palestinian Tienamen Square?

I have a lot of ideas on each side of these questions. The relevant one here is, why aren't all these so-called radical liberationists asking tough questions of their friends the Palestinians, but instead mindlessly waving their flag? Friends tell friends difficult truths, not jingoist shit. Likewise, why turn a blind eye to such a horrific history of genocidal oppression as that of the Jews in Europe? who meanwhile decided "no more mister nice guy" after ww2. can anyone reasonably blame the sentiment? If jews generally felt secure, they wouldnt have to do the hardass thing.

i'm not talking moral ideals here, but realpolitic, for both sides-- one that assumes peace to be an imperative.

Why does it matter? Well, for example, who's the biggest ethnic minority in several countries in Europe right now? Muslims, many if not most of them Arab-- that's right Virginia, Semites. Think the history of European antisemitism might bite them in the ass, or worse? Maybe it's already started, but they're too busy *blaming the Jews again* to deal with the situation until it's too late-- with the help of their "leftist" friends.

That's why these questions matter, and why they matter to the left, and especially the white/euro left. Ranters on either side are worse than mere wankers, they are endangering the people they ostensibly are advocates for.

Maa' salaam and shalom on the lot of ya.

Anti-Semitism, as practiced in Europe today, is not directed towards Semites...only to Jews.

I propose we call it like it is..."Jew-hatred". And it's getting worse.

OST> One continuous conquest all the way back to Jericho

You are mistaken. See:
http://www.indybay.org/news/2004/01/1667964.php


OST> Muslims, many if not most of them Arab-- that's right Virginia, Semites. Think the history of European antisemitism might bite them in the ass?

Currently much of the Jew-hatred in Europe is being instigated by these Muslim Arabs (who have a rich history of anti-semitism in their own lands).

non-Anarchist> Anti-Semitism, as practiced in Europe today, is not directed towards Semites...only to Jews. I propose we call it like it is..."Jew-hatred".

The word "Semitic" (unless you believe that various people are descendents of Noah's son Shem) refers to a LANGUAGE group and is not related to the word "anti-semitic", which was coined as a scientific-sounding euphemism by Jew-haters some 125 years ago.

Words do not mean the sum of their parts. We drive on park-ways and park on drive-ways, and something inflammable burns very well.

For more on this, see:
http://www.indybay.org/news/2004/01/1667981.php

about what Jews in Israel (not the government, but the people surveyed) think about Arabs

and, its not very flattering, tending to contradict what quite a number of people here have said about disconnecting Zionism from racism

turns out that a lot of Israelis have perspectives about Arabs that would, in any other context, be considered racist

finally, a couple of points: (1) funny that there is such an emphasis upon the need for the Palestinians to practice non-violence, when quite a number of Zionists, both in the US and in Israel, expressly advocate violence as a basis for creating and maintaining a Jewish state, as opposed to a secular state, based upon equal rights for all; and (2) isn't it curious that Sharon was acknowledged as an explicitly colonialist candidate, supporting the settlements in the occupied territories, yet the Isreali public voted for him, anyway, which is a perfect transition to the article (see the 8th and 9th paragraphs for the survey of the Israeli public's attitudes towards Arabs:


[Most Israelis Don't Believe It (or Support It)
The Only Democracy in the Middle East?
By NEVE GORDON

JERUSALEM.

Anyone who follows the news has no doubt come across the claim that "Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East." Usually, this claim is followed by its logical inference: "As an island of freedom located in a region controlled by military dictators, feudal kings and religious leaders, Israel should receive unreserved support from western liberal states interested in strengthening democratic values around the globe."

Over the years, some of the fallacies informing this line of argument have been exposed. Whereas many commentators have emphasized that foreign policy is determined by selfish interests rather than by moral dictates, few analysts have challenged the prevailing view that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East.

In order to examine this issue, one must first determine Israel's international borders. Insofar as Israel's borders extend from the Jordan Valley to the Mediterranean Sea -- the de-facto situation for over 36 years -- then the state of Israel currently consists of a population of over 9 million people, 3.5 million of whom cannot vote.

De-facto, then, Israel is not a democracy. One-third of the demos does not enjoy a series of basic rights which make up the pillars of liberal democracies. The state of Israel has existed for 55 years and has controlled the Palestinian population in the occupied territories without giving them political rights for two-thirds of this period. Accordingly, the notion that the occupation is provisional or temporary should, by now, be considered an illusion concealing the reality on the ground.

If, however, one chooses to explore the issue exclusively from a de-jure perspective, that is, from inside the internationally recognized pre-1967 territories, it is still unclear to what extent Israel is a democracy.

There is the question of 400,000 Jewish Settlers -- seven percent of the citizenry -- all of whom enjoy full citizenship rights but do not live in Israel proper. This leads to a series of contradictions, not least the fact that Israel is the only country in the world where government ministers and parliament members live permanently outside its borders.

Even if one were to disregard this reality as well and were only to take into account the six million people living inside Israel proper, one would find an extremely tenuous democracy. The contradictions that have characterized Israel's policies in the occupied territories are now catching up to the state, and their detrimental effects have become apparent for all to see.

Consider a report just published by the Israeli Democracy Institute (IDI), which like most other think tanks (in Israel and abroad), conceives of Israel in the de-jure sense, ignoring the de-facto situation. IDI examined several aspects of Israel's democracy, and its findings suggest that "over the last few years there has been a significant decline in the Jewish population's support of democratic norms on all levels: general support of the democratic system, support of specific democratic values, and support for equal rights for the Arab minority."

IDI found that only 77 percent of the Jewish population supports the statement that "democracy is the best form of government," the lowest percentage (alongside Poland) among the 32 countries for which there is available data. Over half the population (56%) is of the opinion that "strong leaders can be more useful to the state than all the deliberations and laws." Fifty percent concur that if there is a conflict between security interests and the preservation of the rule of law, the former should take precedence. And only 57 percent agree with the statement that violence should never be used to attain political objectives.

More than half of the Jews in Israel (53%) state that they are against full equality for the Arabs; 77 percent say there should be a Jewish majority on crucial political decisions; less than a third (31%) support having Arab political parties in the government; and the majority (57%) think that the Arabs should be encouraged to emigrate. Not only is the majority of the Jewish population against the provision of equal rights for Arab citizens, half of the Jews are even unwilling to face up to the fact that Palestinian citizens of Israel are discriminated against.

Public trust in institutions has also declined in recent years due to widespread corruption and a lack of social cohesion. Yet, tellingly, the Israeli military -- and not the legislature, courts or government ministries -- is the most trusted institution.

Even if one were to stubbornly hold on to the illusion that Israel exists only within the pre-1967 borders, one would still have to acquiesce that while democracy may exist, it now stands on very shaky grounds. The great political theorist Montesquieu taught us as much. In addition to his well known claim that freedom can be secured only through the separation of the legislative, judicial, and executive powers, he asserted that if a regime is to maintain its form, the norms and values held by a people must correspond with the regime's basic principles.

The IDI report clearly reveals that even within Israel proper the majority of the population no longer believes in the basic principles of democracy -- equality and freedom -- thus suggesting that democracy is in demise. If, however, one faces up to the fact that Israel's borders reach the Jordan Valley, then democracy simply does not exist.

Neve Gordon teaches politics at Ben-Gurion University Israel, and can be reached at neve_gordon [at] yahoo.com.]

When I was just checking back to see if Critical Thinkifier -- a.k.a. anti-angie, etc -- was sending me anymore of his (her!!!?) love..., I noticed...

Oh, my goodness! Don't tell me that MH -- Morley Harper(!), the SCOURGE of Vancouver indymedia -- has discovered the Bay Area and indybay! Get ready for some *LONG*-WINDED, *CONVOLUTED* epistles here now! Gehrig and Critical Thinkifier -- just mental tots compared to MH -- has got *NOTHING* on Morley!

What happened Morley? Did people finally get too bored to pay you any mind up there in Vancouver? -- where you were posting from Israeli "Stratcom" (oh I *love* that military talk -- Strategic Communications), otherwise known as THE ISRAELI PROPAGANDA OFFICE -- or did you just run out of arguments that fooled anyone but other arch-Zionists?

By the way, on your:

"2. Only a small number of Zionists are racists."

Zionism is by definition racism:

Political Zionism, as a European-created nationalist Jewish ideology (never accepted by all Jews), is the belief that Jews, wherever they are born, eternally have a natural, automatic, ***superior***, nationalist, ethnic, religious, and God-given right to most/all of Palestine -- this so, entirely over the indigenous rights of the Palestinian people, who were turned into much worse than even 2nd class inhabitants in their own home.

Only Zionists don't believe that it is (racism), once the above stipulations are revealed.

In fact, I have noticed that *no* one who is *NOT* already *both* a Zionist and under 10, ever buys that Zionist ideology, once it's revealed for what it is. American Zionist Jews can only coerce their ideology through censorship, smear campaings, intimidation and threats: domestic political terrorism, the only common terrorism in the U.S..

Hey Morley, Gehrig, CT, I just took a class, on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, last semester with an older anti-Zionist Jew named Larry Harris (reasonably well-known in such progressive circles in the Bay Area). I told Larry about you arch-Zionist guys on indymedia and Larry says that you guys are so *stupid* that he wouldn't even bother to debate you on indymedia.

So lets make it simple and easy, with a little bit of common sense and reasoning…
ISRAEL…Border on the pre 1967 line (Green Line)
PALESTINE…On the Whole of the West Bank and Gaza…
REFUGEES… Can only return to the New State of Palestine…
The 1,200,000 or so Arabs living inside Israel Proper can stay if they choose. They are or they become citizens of Israel.
The 300,000 or so Jews living in the West Bank and Gaza can choose to stay in Palestine, and if they do not like living in Palestine they can move to Israel.
What Better Way to solve this Settlement Problem???
Almost Every Nation on Earth has more then one Religious Group or Ethnic Group.
Why not the Same for Israel and Palestine…
The Superior Israeli Army can then spend their time Guarding and Controlling the Borders of Israeli instead of committing atrocities in the West Bank and Gaza…

The only way to end conflict is to compromise.
To end the Resistance to the Occupation you have to end the Occupation that allows for the Resistance.

While I'm checkin' back...

(Gee, now that I'm back Non-Critical Thinkifier is nowhere to be found! While I was gone he couldn't help but talk about me.)

Anyway...

Angel: "Almost Every Nation on Earth has more then one Religious Group or Ethnic Group."

Response: And Every other so-called advanced Nation on Earth *officially* has civil, national, legal/constitutional equality for all citizens regardless of ethnicity or religion -- except for Israel.

As they say, in every nation on earth Jews demand equality; in Israel Jews demand *apartheid* or "Jim Crow".

I'm so glad that I was banned from SF-IMC! It's irritating dealing with these lilliputian Zionist 'intellects'. I certainly saved lots of time and got to bed earlier and woke up easier in the morning (good thing I'm on flex time!).

(I was up listening to Tavis Smiley on PBS-TV. Harry Bellafonte was on. Interested progressives should go to the Tavis Smiley Show and check out the transcript on what Bellafonte had to say about the political state of affairs in the world today vis-a-vis the U.S.)

Hey, *I* know! Let's make the West *officially* Christian-supremacist nations -- legally semi-theocratic, "non-Jewish Christian states", where, effectively, no Jew can own any land or participate in running the executive government. It will be expressly illegal for any officials, politicians or political parties to advocate full equality for all people in those nations, regardless of ethnicity or religion. All the Jews that don't like it can get the hell out and move to Israel!

[I trust that at indybay, there won't be some *ASSHOLE* editor like the one at SF-IMC that deletes my compositional sarcasm/satire -- without formally requested explanation -- because he doesn't get it!]

CLARIFICATION:

In my post above, Wednesday, Feb. 04, 2004 at 2:05 AM (hey, it was really *late* at night!)...

I *meant* to say...

In fact, I have noticed that *no* one who is *NOT* already *EITHER* a Zionist *OR* under 10, ever buys that Zionist ideology, once it's revealed for what it is [racist]. American Zionist Jews can only coerce their ideology through censorship, smear campaigns, intimidation and threats: domestic political *terrorism*, the only common terrorism in the U.S..

I hope that clarification is helpful.

REF:
"About Nessie's impudence
by Critical Thinker Sunday, Jan. 18, 2004 at 3:21 AM."

Hey, Non-Critical Thinkifier! You're so full of sh*t!

NO ONE ON *ALL* OF INDYMEDIA HAS POSTED UNDER SO MANY ALIASES/A.K.A.'S AFTER BEING BANNED FROM SF-IMC!

NO ONE ON *ALL* OF INDYMEDIA HAS MADE AS MANY OBSCENE PERSONAL ATTACKS -- POSING SO OFTEN UNDER ALIASES -- ON OTHER PEOPLE (OR EVEN THEIR DECEASED MOTHER) -- ESPECIALLY AGAINST ANGIE, ONE OF THE MOST THOUGHTFUL, NICEST POSTERS (ESPECIALLY CONSIDERING ALL THE SH*T SHE TOOK FROM YOU ARCH-ZIONIST RACISTS) ON SF.INDYMEDIA.

YOU'RE AS FULL OF SH*T -- AND HYPOCRITICAL -- AS DANIEL PIPES, CHARLE KRAUTHAMER, ABE FOXMAN, THE ADL, THE JCRC, RABBI SCHNEIER, THOMAS FRIEDMAN, AND ALL YOUR OTHER RACIST ARCH-ZIONIST FRIENDS!

AND, UNLIKE ANGIE OR MYSELF, YOU WON'T EVEN COME OUT FROM UNDER THE SLIMEY ROCK THAT YOU SLITHER FROM AND USE YOUR REAL NAME/INITIALS.

YOU AIN'T NOTHIN' BUT A BIG ZIONIST COWARDLY HYPOCRITICAL ***CRYBABY***!!!

ANY NOBODY REALLY CARES *WHAT* YOU HAVE TO SAY! -- EXCEPT YOUR L'IL ZIONIST BUDDIES.

(Maybe I should get banned from indybay too! [Just kidding, editors.] I gotta get up at 4:30am for a flight and I'm still up talking to this non-CT fool! But it's always fun to make fun of you crybaby Zionists!)

By the way, I posted at sf.indymedia earlier this evening -- using "JA -- BANNED AT SF-IMC" -- about Daniel Pipes -- and my post is *STILL* there! SO THERE!!.

From: "Joseph Anderson"
To: nessie [at] sfbg.com
Subject: Inquiry about being banned from SF-IMC
Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 19:57:33 -0800

BCC's enclosed

CC: Jeff Perlstein,
Executive Director
Media Alliance
San Francisco


Hi nessie,

One of my friends [a grassroots political activist and regular SF-IMC poster], who you know, wants me to email you and to find out why I am banned from sf.indymedia. She said that you would respond. [She's very surprised and disappointed in you that you didn't.] I've been enjoying the break from SF-IMC, but she and several other people have been asking me to look into this, as they would like to see me posting comments, announcements, and articles again. One of the SF-IMC editors was being an ***ASSHOLE*** one night and arbitrarily deleting me; I repeatedly emailed and *called* SF-IMC to inquire why my posts were being deleted.

SF-IMC is not my only outlet for public political expression, so I hadn't been in any hurry, and if some editor was going to act *that* summarily and arbitrary, then SF-IMC is not a reliable venue for public free speech anyway (short of defamitory, racist, sexist, homophobic, etc, remarks [which *should* be deleted]). But, I thought that it was sad that, while I was being banned, my good friend Angie, from Canada, had to put up with undeleted posts by disgusting arch-Zionists joking about her dead mother and the like.

(Now, I'm normally not that abrupt or explicit [ re the "ASSHOLE" remark], but extra mean treatment sometimes calls for an extra mean response.)

I believe it was some know-nothing (Zionist?) editor with an uninformed hair-trigger about anti-Semitism, as the first post deleted (back a while) was a satirical one where I was making fun of the crazy, idiot arch-Zionists who think that the only reason that some of us are anti-Zionists and support Palestinian human rights and self-determination is "because [we] just don't like Jews"!

There was never any response by SF-IMC to any of my email and telephone inquiries.

So, now my friend (whose entire excellent article, "The Registrars Are the Enemy", by Green Party Activist, has been deleted) insists that I email you. [She seems to have some faith in some minimal integrity from you.]

(Jeff Perlstein asked me to call him a while back about this, so that he could look into this, but I what with the holidays, my schedule, the nice break, and all, I hadn't gotten around to it.)

By the way, I was also the person who used to make fun of all those crazy people who spammed SF-IMC about *you*, although I disagreed with you over animal testing. I used to defend the editors in general too, until some ***ASSHOLE*** editor (I didn't know you had any) got so rude and arrogant with me. But now, since I am sometimes interviewed on KPFA, and go to plenty of political events, I am bidding my good time for an appropriate moment to mention this on the air there.

Speaking of spamming, in repsonse to one of the editors being such an ***ASSHOLE***, I did resort to spamming SF-IMC (but it was really late at night, caused minimal disruption, and I apologized to all the other posters whom I may have inconvenienced) . But he *deserved* it for being rudely arbitrary, absolutely arrogant and completely unresponsive to my inquiries. [In other words, an *ASSHOLE*!] There are other people (not the Zionist or animal rights crazies) who've said that sometimes an editor can be an inflexible asshole.

Other than that, I am moderately well-known -- especially by many of the people that count in the Bay Area -- in East Bay progressive activist circles, by organization directors (including people like Barbara Lubin, or Medea Benjamin in S.F.), radio journalists (including people like Dennis Bernstein and Davey D), and other grassroots activists like myself (including people like my Green Party activist friend), so my reputation is sound here. I wonder how sound is the reputation of the SF-IMC editor(s) that arbitrarily and summarily banned me -- without explanation. One day, in some public setting, we might find out.

Awaiting your response...


Sincerely,

JA


P.S. As you can see, I wear my being banned from SF-IMC as a badge of honor, given its circumstances, and will use this as a new moniker at *ALL* IMC's -- especially at Indybay -- for as long as the ban is in effect. It will be my new claim to 'fame'. My new political activist credentials.

no- unless multiple people are posting as JA, it is known who he is. I've talked to him at the Long Haul and Int'l House in Berkeley, and I've heard him on the Ray Taliafaro show, and he was once caller of the month at KPFA - that was interesting.

Could it be that "JA" is really one of SFBay's members?

Because he's not spamming here and because this is a relevant thread for such a discussion. In case you didn't notice.

Why are you here?

you people are apparently so selfish and self centered that you are willing to pursue policies that disrespect every single member of the Indymedia network, as long as the don’t hurt you personally, and especially if you think they are helping you. You not only harbor this notorious spammer, but you yourselves have spammed the the Indymedia network repeatedly. Worse, by your own admission, you either have hacked a number of Indymedia sites, or approved in public of whoever did.

See:

http://sfbay.indymedia.org/news/2004/01/1667723.php

But hey, that appears to be the kind of people you are, and as long as you continue to harbor this spammer, the whole world knows it.

Go back to your Van Sertima blog...

RE: by nigga pleeez [a.k.a. Gehrig]... Monday, Feb. 09, 2004 at 8:29 AM

Also ref.: "WHY I DID IT ! -- BY JOSEPH ANDERSON -- BANNED AT SF-IMC!"
http://www.indybay.org/news/2004/02/1669658.php

GEHRIG: "...your sorry black ass JA"

JA: Speaks for itself.

Now, go back to the pigs 'n cornland hinterland!

[The university even has pig farms!]

Why did you spend so much time out here anyway, passing yourself off as a local? There's obviously an IMC *there* (or even in Chicago)! What, they *CAN'T STAND* (!) you around Urbana-Champaign either!? I know academics and advanced-study students at the U/I, and others in its intellectual, progressive community. I bet that you're the *JOKE* of the town there too!

I always wondered what that *stench* was around the U/I campus -- maybe it wasn't the pigs at all -- huh, *GEHRIG*?

(Oh, 'dem CRAZY Zionists jes' crack me up!! HA-HA-HA...!!)

JA's allegations are a giant crock of excrement. This coming from the same person who once made an unfounded claim - at the time he was still merrily dropping his feces on SF-IMC in earnest - that I had been banned "from at least several IMCs". The only IMC I was ever banned from is SF-IMC. I haven't seen any of my comments here either. Apparently Indybay hasn't re-instated them, but I'm not fussing about this.

I have never made obscene remarks about anyone's parents, nor about his Canadian cyber girlfriend Angie's mother in particular.
As for that Angie being so thoughtful and nice toward people she disagrees with, the reality is much more complex than that. She has personal problems with *every* poster she has ever disagreed with and has insulted them all one way or another. Btw, it doesn't appear that she has been suffering from his departure from SF-IMC.

I don't give a damn about JA's opinion about the consistency of my views, and do not stack up to his capabilities of mendacity, hypocracy, dishonesty and uncivil discourse manner.
It's astoundingly funny that a reckless idiot who had refused to furnish real evidence for his allegation that Ariel Sharon wanted Israel to become a "Reich to last a thousand years" on a par with Hitler's accuses me of cowardice.

As to what I have said on SF-IMC and this board, I couldn't care less about JA's unsupported argument that nobody cares what I had to say. Facts mean little to that fool anyway.

I don't want to post under my real name and owe Jack Ass no explanations why.

Of most importance, though, is the fact JA's comments about me are irrelevant to this thread's topic. He apparently doesn't want to take his meds for his Tourette Syndrome and his apparent reluctance manifests itself virtually everywhere he posts on Indymedia in his writing style.

Whoever has been unfamiliar with JA's posts on SF-IMC should by now realize that his credibility registers very little above zero. Accordingly, I'm not about to go back to his screed and start refuting his foolish nonsense line by line.

Let me just say that the most racist thing I've leveled at JA was asking him if he's a Malcolm X wannable. I also told him, several weeks later, that he should go look in the mirror and he'd see either a Malcolm X wannable or another character (probably a buffoon, though I don't recall now exactly). These are the only two instances where I hurled at JA anything even remotely smacking of racist abuse.
But contrast what I told JA several months ago with the above quoted Jack Ass gem he lobbed at me now. (It would be an interesting mental experiment to try imagine JA making a similar remark to an Arab Muslim.) I think it tells you all one needs to know about JA's anti-racist pretenses. JA is an anti-Semite, a RACIST, not merely a rabid anti-Zionist. It's not a huge surprise that he repeated the Khazar canard a few times on SF-IMC. He also issued various anti-Semitic remarks and slanders under some of his nyms there.


To paraphrase what one contributor on UC-IMC said about the trash being spewed by the likes of JA: JA's crap deserves little attention from civilized people. http://www.ucimc.org/newswire/display_any/15535

YOU KNOW WHAT?: *YOU'RE* PROBABLY THE ***ONLY*** ONE (WELL, BESIDES GERHIG) HERE THAT GIVES A FAT RAT'S ASS ABOUT WHAT YOUR BABBLING ABOUT, BECAUSE NOT EVEN *I* DO!

NOBODY KNOWS *WHO* THE HELL YOU ARE (OR FOR THAT MATTER EVEN *WHERE* THE HELL YOU ARE: URBANA-CHAMPAIGN, *ISRAHELL*? --WHAT COUNTRY YOU'RE IN OR WHAT CONTINENT YOU'RE EVEN ON, PHSYICALLY OR MENTALLY. BUT WE ALL KNOW *'WHAT'* YOU ARE! HA-HA!!

*LOTS* OF PEOPLE KNOW WHO I AM -- AND I DON'T EVEN *NEED* TO DEFEND MYSELF AGAINST, LEAST OF ALL, YOUR *LILLIPUTIAN* ATTEMPTS AT EITHER PHONY ACCUSATIONS OR, CONVERSELY, *TRYING* TO DEFEND YOUR IMMORAL BEHAVIOR.

*MY* PERSONAL REPUTATION (POLITICALLY AND INTELLECTUALLY) IS SOCIALLY KNOWN AND PUBLICLY ESTABLISHED. AND -- 'IN A DIFFERENT WAY' (GET IT?) -- SO IS YOURS!

NOW, **SCRAM** ZIONOID!!!

GO BACK TO THE *SMALL* POND! *YOU'VE* GOT AN IMC THERE! THIS POND -- THIS SOPHISTICATED BAY AREA METROPOLITAN AREA -- IS TOO *BIG* FOR YOU (OR YOUR ZIONOID CHUM GERHIG, AND YOU'RE LESS QUALIFIED THAN *HE* IS)!!

AND YOU'RE JUST AN INTELLECTUAL GUPPIE THAT I *OBVIOUSLY* HAVE NEVER TAKEN SERIOUSLY.

NOW, AS WE SAY IN 'THE RAP COMMUNITY', GET OFF MY JOCK!!

How did the Palestinians reach their current tragic state? Are the Israelis responsible? What about the other Arab states and the Palestinians’ own leaders? What part of the blame falls on them?

These are important questions. The answers are complex, requiring a historical literacy and a willingness to go beyond the simplistic notion of the international media that the Mid-east conflict is a matter of conflicting rights and Israeli “occupation” of Palestinian lands.

Early Oppression of Palestinian Arabs by the Ottoman Turks



The exploitation of Palestinian Arabs began more than 170 years ago, when Israel was still an impossible dream, and intifadas and suicide bombers were unimaginable. At the height of its rule in the early 19th century, the Ottoman Empire instituted “Tanzimat,” a series of laws promulgated over several decades which radically changed the nature of land ownership. As a result of the new laws, wealthy land owners, bankers, business owners, and money lenders anywhere in the Empire could now buy land formerly owned communally by the Arab peasants (fellahin) in the towns and villages of the region that would later become known as Israel.



From the mid-1830s to the late 1850s, wealthy Arabs (effendi) from Cairo to Beirut, Jaffa to Damascus, purchased land previously owned by hundreds of thousands of fellahin, who suddenly found themselves landless serfs instead of successful small farmers, now working what had once been their own land as tenants of the effendi.



In years of inadequate harvest, Arab money lenders granted usurious loans and took as collateral both future harvests and whatever land remained under communal ownership. When future harvests were insufficient to pay off the debt, with its astronomic interest rate, the money lenders confiscated more land and pushed the fellahin deeper into a modern-day version of feudal serfdom. In other words, the Palestinian Arab peasantry watched helplessly as their land was bought out from under them, by their own people, 50 years before Zionism.



From the 1830s onward, travelers such as Karl Marx and Mark Twain commented on the desolation and emptiness of the area. The Sultan could not collect taxes from unoccupied land. So the Turkish authorities forcibly relocated Bulgarians, Circassians, and Arabs from surrounding regions. Some stayed, worked the land, and assimilated into the local population. Others found a way to escape back to their homelands. The crown’s policy of forced resettlement impacted negatively on the indigenous Arab fellahin. The newcomers created competition for resources (especially water) and offered new sources of supply for agrarian markets. The Arab peasants, already reduced to subsistence agriculture, had to work harder simply to survive. (1).



The Benefits of Zionism to the Arab Peasantry



From the 1880s onward, Zionists bought land in ever-increasing amounts all over what would later be called Israel, and in trans-Jordan. They purchased land from two main sources: The crown and the wealthy Arab land-owners (Effendi), both local and absentee. The fellahin or peasants were already dispossessed.



Owned by the Sultan, crown land was largely unoccupied and un-worked. The Sultan was delighted to have someone purchase, develop, and pay taxes on it. The purchase of crown land rendered no one landless. In fact, it had a positive influence on the neighboring fellahin. The technologically advanced Zionist agrarian endeavors resulted in the reclamation of arid areas with modern irrigation. In addition to learning new agricultural techniques, the Arab peasants could graze flocks on the newly created grassland surrounding the Zionists’ fields. In the swampy areas of the Jezreel and upper Hula valleys, newly drained swampland created arable tracts beyond the holdings of the Zionists, and local Arabs worked those lands, albeit illegally as squatters as far as the crown and wealthy Arab landowners were concerned.



Unlike the wealthy Arabs who purchased land under the Tanzimat and kept the fellahin on the land as serf-like peasants, the Zionists worked the land they purchased themselves, as farmers, and thus had no use for peasant labor. Re-location of the Arab peasants was accomplished in several different ways. Zionist purchasers sometimes paid an additional fee to the wealthy Arab land owner, for instance, to help subsidize the peasants’ move. There was much un-worked land both in the land west of the Jordan River and in Trans-Jordan (the land to the east) that could be bought with these funds. The former Arab serfs could now once again become land-owners, thanks to the surcharge paid by the Zionist purchasers.



Sometimes, the wealthy Arab land-owner illegally kept the surcharge. When Arab peasants did not receive their payment, they complained and sometimes sued the Zionists in the Muslim courts of the Turkish administration. In many cases, the Zionists paid the surcharge again to the peasants rather than incur the expenses and risks of a court case, especially as Jewish plaintiffs in a Muslim court.



Sometimes, the Arab peasants demanded that other land be bought for them so they would not have to search for uninhabited farmland. The Zionists often did this to avoid confrontation. But after fulfilling their part of the deal, they often found their land suddenly covered with Bedouin tents or the shanties of squatters. Having no police or other armed force of their own, they turned to the Ottoman rulers of the region for justice. Sometimes honest neighbors would attest that the new occupants were indeed interlopers trying to extort money from the Zionists. At other times, in the absence of such witnesses, the Zionists had to pay off these squatters or buy land for them elsewhere. (2)



The Hope-Simpson report in 1930, addressing the question of uprooted Arab peasants under the British Mandate (imposed after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I), concluded that only a bit more than 800 families were actually rendered landless by Zionist land purchases over the decades from 1880 onward. While initially more than 3,000 Arab heads of households claimed such status in the hope of gaining land or money at the expense of the Zionists or the British, the Hope-Simpson staff found that only a fraction of that number were legitimate (3).



Over all, the Zionist endeavor in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was highly beneficial to the indigenous Arab population ruled by the Turks. Among the benefits were the agricultural advances the Zionists brought to Arab peasants and Bedouins who migrated in from surrounding areas in considerable numbers from the 1880s onward. Wealthy Arab land-owners enriched themselves at the expense of the Zionists who were willing to pay inflated prices with double and triple surcharges in order to procure land for the creation of a Jewish homeland. And some Arab peasants were able to reverse the tragic consequences of the Tanzimat land-grab and regain their status as land-owning farmers thanks to the Zionists’ willingness to pay them or buy land for them, often in trans-Jordan (4).



Arab Jew-hatred Under the British Mandate



British involvement in the Holy Land began in the early decades of the 19th century. When the French assisted Mehmet Ali and Ibrahim Pasha in Egypt during their revolts against the Turks, England worked with the Sultan to counter the Egyptian rebellion and thus limit the extent of French influence in the Middle East.



English political and cultural representatives now filtered into the Holy Land to build schools, hospitals and other cultural centers. British exploration of Christian holy sites began at this time. The result was a rapidly growing sphere of British influence on the Eastern Mediterranean litoral from Beirut to Gaza by the late 19th century. With the opening of the Suez Canal and discovery of petroleum in “Mesopotamia” (later Iraq), British interest in the region skyrocketed. Eventually Britain would build oil refineries in Haifa and a railway connecting the Eastern Mediterranean port with Iraq.



This British activity translated into massive economic growth. Thousands of Arab peasants were given an education and exposed to modern medicine. Between the Zionist development in agriculture and medicine and British industrial and cultural advances, the economy of the region grew rapidly. Infant mortality plummeted, life expectancy increased, migration to the region continued unabated, and the Arab peasant could find employment that paid him in a month what his peasant father earned in a year. Arab agricultural techniques improved as well, and for the first times, farming in the region changed from subsistence to commercial, with the Arab tenant farmers producing enough to meet their own needs and have excess for marketing (5).



After the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I, the League of Nations’ created “British Mandatory Palestine,” which encompassed all of the Holy Land west of the Jordan River and what would later become the Hashemite Emirate of Jordan to the East of the Jordan River (Trans-Jordan, now known as the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan). The goal of this arrangement was for Britain to assist the Arabs and the Jews who lived there to become able to govern themselves autonomously, at which point Britain’s mandate would end.



In 1922, Britain established Trans-Jordan in the area east of the Jordan River (which constituted 74% of the entire Palestine Mandate) and declared it the Hashemite emirate. The majority of the population were Arabs from the Palestine region, but the rulers were Hashemite Arabs originally from Arabia. Jews were forbidden by law to enter this new emirate, and the existing Jewish farming settlements east of the Jordan River were dismantled and relocated in areas to the west. In other words three quarters of the Palestine Mandate were declared Judenrein (ethnically cleansed of Jews) by the British in order to appease the Arabs.



Under the Palestine Mandate, the economy of the remaining area continued to prosper. Rather than using the draconian methods of the Ottoman army to keep order, British officers encouraged the growth of a local indigenous leadership. Thus, the infamous and pro-Nazi, Hajj Amin el-Husseini, although indicted by the British for his role in the anti-Jewish riots of the early 1920’s, was appointed the “Grand Mufti of Jerusalem” by the British High Commissioner. Even the lethal anti-Jewish riots of 1929 and 1936, sparked in large part by the Hajj’s incendiary anti-Jewish preaching and behind-the-scenes machinations, did not undermine the British determination to assist the Arabs of Mandatory Palestine to develop institutions of leadership in preparation for self-rule at some point in the future (6).



The Arab War Against the Jews and their State: 1936 to 1947



Although the Zionist endeavor, along with the British contributions to the region’s economy, brought unprecedented prosperity to the region, and created the environment in which the Arab population could more than triple between 1855 and 1947, Arab leadership resented Jewish progress and feared the growth of the Jewish population. Despite efforts by leading Zionists to develop modes of cooperation and joint programs with industrial and agrarian leaders, the Hajj and other Effendi provoked anti-Jewish sentiment and pressured the British to put a complete stop to Jewish immigration. The British agreed to reverse their stand on the concept of Palestine as a homeland for the Jews, and a series of “white papers” limited the number of Jews that could enter the country. But rather than appeasing Arab leadership, these attempts at mollification emboldened the Hajj to preach a full-scale revolt. In 1936 Arab riots took the lives of dozens of British and hundreds of Jews. With World War II looming, the British moved swiftly to quell the revolt (7).



At Parliament’s behest, Lord Earl Peel visited the region in 1937 to find a way to satisfy Arab demands. His conclusion was that the Arabs and the Jews could not live together, and the only option was partition. Thus was created the “Peel partition plan” in which the Arabs in the area west of the Jordan River would receive about 85% of the land, and the Jews 15%. The division was based on the areas in which each group had the most population. In other words the Jews were being offered 15% of the remaining 26% of the original Palestine Mandate, the other 74% to the east of the Jordan River having already been given to the Hashemites. The Jews accepted this arrangement. The Arabs rejected it –the 92% of the original Palestine Mandate they would now have was considered inqdequate -- and they went to war.



The leaders of the 1937 revolt imagined that the British would buckle under sustained attacks, and that Jews would stop immigrating. But their terrorism, hit-and-run tactics, and relentless attacks on Jewish civilian populations created a situation that the British could not allow to continue. By 1937, as war clouds gathered in Europe, they quickly augmented their military strength and over the next year killed somewhere between 3,000 and 10,000 Arabs, ending the revolt in 1939 (8).



While Arab historians decry Britain’s use of overwhelming force to end the revolt, it is important to remember that before they resorted to force the British attempted to find a solution via a negotiated compromise. Had Arab leadership accepted this compromise, and created Palestine alongside of Israel as the Peel Commission recommended, the Palestinian people would have had their own state in 1937 on about 85% of what is today Israel and Palestinian Arabs would be living on 92% of the original Palestine Mandate (in a new Palestinian state west of the Jordan River and in the Hashemite kingdom of Jordan east of the river).



By preaching Jew-hatred and provoking the revolt against the British, the Hajj and his cohorts betrayed the interests of their own people and condemned them to a war they could not win and to the loss of a Palestinian state. After their defeat, the Arab leaders of the revolt who escaped the British dragnet initiated their own “night of the long knives,” executing as many as 3,000 of their own people whom they accused of collaboration.



In the post-war era, the British, fed up with the costs of empire, handed the “Palestine question” over to the newly formed United Nations. The UN undertook a thorough and in-depth evaluation of the partition proposal. Several fact finding missions went to Palestine and found in the Zionists a willing and cooperative group. Lengthy and uninhibited interviews with leaders, rank-and-file, rich, poor, new-comers, and even refugees on board the immigrant ships that had been held up by the British all resulted in the impression that the Jews, especially after the Holocaust, needed a state. It was clear as well that there was enough land legally owned by Jews and the Jewish Agency for a state to be cobbled together. In order to avoid infringement upon land owned by Arabs, this Jewish state would be rather odd looking and problematic. It had a segment in the south connected to a sausage-like segment in the middle and a third piece that was just barely contiguous to the other two in the north. It was an administrative, managerial, and security nightmare. Nonetheless it was a state, and the Jews accepted it.



But the Arabs remained adamantly opposed to any solution that included Jewish self-determination. The Arabs avoided the UN representatives, insisted that the UN had no jurisdiction over the Palestine Mandate, refused to meet with fact-finding committees, or sometimes agreed to meet with them and then did not show up. With the British gone, the Arabs were confident that they could ethnically cleans the Jews from the Palestine Mandate, and the Palestinian state to emerge would be an Arab country.



By a tiny margin, the UN partition plan (Resolution 181) was passed on November 29, 1947, creating a state for the Jews, on the three slivers of land (the Negev, the northern part of the coastal plain, and the eastern Galilee), representing about 55% of what is today Israel (or about 1/8th of the original British Mandate on both sides of the Jordan). The territory which the UN apportioned to Israel was primarily land that Jews had purchased and developed over the past 100 years, plus the desolate Negev south of Beer Sheba, almost completely uninhabited and deemed uninhabitable. The Arab state on the remaining 45% plus the Hashemite emirate in Trans-Jordan gave the Arabs a total of 7/8th of the land that the Balfour Declaration had originally committed as a homeland for the Jews. The Arab state was to include much of the southern coastal plain from the Sinai border up to Jaffa, all of the West Bank’s central hill country, and the western Galilee. Jerusalem was to be an international city shared by both groups and administered by a UN commission (9).



Zionists and Jews everywhere rejoiced. Had the Arab world accepted the partition, there would have been a Palestinian state in 1947, and peace for the next fifty plus years. But the Arab leaders had no interest in such a state and launched a war to destroy the new mini-state of Israel instead.



The Arab Responsibility for “an-Nakba” – the “Catastrophe” for Palestinians



The creation of Israel is referred to as “an-Nakba” (the catastrophe) in Arab historiography and the political pronouncements of Arab leaders and their supporters. But the catastrophe experienced by the Arabs of Palestine was the result of Arab policies, and the Arab rejection of any solution that would include a Jewish presence in the Middle East. Five Arab armies invaded the three slivers that were Israel in an attempt to destroy the new state. Under threat of annihilation, Israeli forces defended the slivers that had been assigned to them by the United Nations. Part of that defensive action included driving Arab civilians from their homes in a few Arab villages located at strategically important sites or which sat upon major arteries, especially the road to Jerusalem. These actions, both legal and commonplace in wartime (Mohammed is praised for doing the same thing to Jewish villages near Mecca), have been reframed by Arab propaganda into the fictional history of Israel’s “aggression” against the Palestinians (10).



In fact, the flight of Palestinian Arabs began months before the shooting started. Tens of thousands left the Galilee and areas from Jaffa south and fled to Lebanon and Egypt. Tens of thousands more fled after the shooting started, and long before the Jewish army had taken any measures against strategic villages. It is well documented that Arab leaders, military, political and religious, urged the peasantry to flee so that the Arab armies could enter unencumbered and quickly do away with the Jews (cf. Meir-Levi, “Big Lies” for documentation). By the spring of 1948 almost 350,000 Arabs had left their homes.



The Israeli attack on Deir Yassin has been singled out and falsely presented by Arab historians as the quintessential example of Jewish barbarism in which “Zionist thugs” brutally massacred hundreds of innocent civilians. In fact, Iraqi soldiers had occupied the village, dressed as women, and hid in the villagers’ houses. Survivors of the attack admit openly that none of the atrocities ascribed to the Jews ever actually occurred. These atrocities were the invention of Dr. Khalid Husseini, director-general of the Arab radio station “voice of Palestine.” As he explained, he broadcast his own fictionalized account of the battle in order to shame the Arab states into sending more troops to wipe out the Jews.



To the degree that the battle at Deir Yassin sowed panic among the Arabs throughout the rest of Palestine, that panic was the result of Dr. Husseini’s lies, not the Israeli actions. But most important, the battle occurred on April 9, 1948, almost 6 months after the Arab flight had begun by which time more than 300,000 Arabs had already left Israel (11).



In the south, close to 300,000 more Palestinian peasants were forced to flee at gunpoint by the Egyptians, according to Yasir Arafat himself. The Egyptian army forced the Arabs of southern Palestine into what Arafat called “concentration camps” in the Gaza Strip. Today we know these as the refugee camps into which nearly 1,000,000 hapless, homeless, helpless, hopeless Arabs are crowded together under abominable conditions, thanks to the Egyptians (12).



But Arab responsibility for “an-Nakba” goes even further. The Arab forces of Jordan occupied the West Bank, and King Abdullah unilaterally and illegally annexed it to his Hashemite kingdom. King Farouq of Egypt declared Egyptian sovereignty over the Gaza Strip. Both actions were illegal in terms of international law, and in high-handed defiance of UN resolutions 181 and 194. When the war was over, and armistice lines drawn, the land which the UN had apportioned to the Arabs of Palestine had been seized by the Arab states that had invaded, supposedly to help the Palestinians. When Israel offered to return land taken in its defensive actions and to negotiate fair settlement of the refugee issue, but only in exchange for peace, the Arab states refused. Better the Palestinians remain refugees than the existence of Israel be ratified (13).



Jordan and Egypt not only illegally occupied the land that was supposed to be the Palestinian state; they and other Arab States forcibly maintained the helpless Palestinian refugees in concentration camps as a living grievance against Israel and the West.



The Arabs who stayed and became citizens of Israel (about 170,000 in 1949, today in excess of 1,400,000) prospered. Today Arab Israelis serve as members of Parliament (Knesset), as faculty in universities, as highly educated professionals in just about every field of endeavor, and enjoy a standard of living, political and personal freedom, and economic opportunity unparalleled anywhere in the Arab world.



Israeli Generosity to the Arabs Who Attacked Them



In his very detailed and comprehensive “Records of Dispossession,” Michael Fischbach documents Israel’s desire to offer reparations as part of the resolution of the refugee problem (14). Israel was unwilling, in the absence of a state of peace, to permit hundreds of thousands of members of a potentially hostile population to re-enter the country during wartime. So repatriation was possible only after peace; but reparation offers could be made.



At the Rhodes conference (1949) individual refugees and whole groups tried to discuss reparations with Israeli representatives. But Arab leaders prevented their own refugees from meeting with the Israeli delegation. The USA and the UN insisted that restitution and resettlement elsewhere would be a fair and reasonable resolution. But the Arab states refused. Some Arab leaders expressed openly their lack of concern for the refugees, and many refugees were openly hostile to the Arab delegations (15)..


Later, Israel offered restitution and the return of frozen bank accounts and safe deposit box contents. But under pressure from Arab governments, refugees refused to fill out forms needed to verify ownership, because that might imply recognition of Israel. Israel rewrote the forms to placate the refugees; but only a tiny fraction submitted the requests (16)..

In 1960, Israel was still trying to find ways to pay reparations to refugees via secret contact through Cypriot authorities; but Arab states again intervened to prevent a settlement. As late as 1964 when the US Department of State developed a “technical program” based on reports estimating the value of refugee property, Israel agreed to use this program as basis for negotiations for just compensation. Again the Arab states refused to meet, refused to negotiate, rejected the report; and they kept the whole opportunity secret from the refugees (17)..



The 1967 Arab Aggression and the Immense Benefits of Israeli Occupation



Egypt and Syria started the Six Day war with the USSR’s help by massing troops on Israel’s borders, evicting the UN and USA peace-keeping forces from the Sinai, re-militarizing the Sinai with thousands of tanks and tens of thousands of soldiers, closing the Straits of Tiran, and doing illegal fly-over incursions into Israeli airspace. When they dragged Jordan into the campaign and prepared for a three-pronged simultaneous invasion, Israel struck. Israel’s lightning victory created a new wave of Arab refugees. Some estimates assert that as many as 200,000 Arabs fled the West Bank as Israeli forces entered, seeking refuge in Jordan (18).



Within a few days of the June 10 cease-fire, Abba Eban, Israel’s Ambassador to the UN, made his famous speech offering to negotiate the return of captured territories in exchange for three Arab concessions: diplomatic recognition of Israel; negotiations to decide on universally recognized borders and other issues; and peace as a final outcome. Western countries expressed amazement that the victor was offering to negotiate with the vanquished and was willing to make concrete concessions (return of territories) in exchange for symbolic and diplomatic ones. To formulate a response to this unexpected new reality, the Arab states called a summit meeting in Khartoum (capitol of Sudan). The result was the now infamous three Khartoum NOs: no recognition, no negotiations, no peace. Thus Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza was caused first by Arab aggression and then by Arab refusal to negotiate a peace after the Arab armies had been vanquished (19).



After the war, Israel began what is sometimes called its “mini-Marshall plan” for the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, investing hundreds of millions of dollars to bring them both into the 20th century with regard to infrastructure, roads, sewerage, electricity, phones, radio and TV broadcasting, water purification and water supply. World Bank records indicate that the GDP of the West Bank grew at the average rate of 13% per year between 1967 and 1994. Tourism skyrocketed, unemployment almost disappeared as hundreds of thousands of Arabs worked in Israel’s economy earning far more than their counterparts in other Arab countries. Seven universities grew up on the West Bank in place of the three teachers training schools that existed before 1967.



And, perhaps most telling of all, free and unencumbered access to Israel’s medical infrastructure resulted in a declining infant mortality and a rise in longevity. The infant mortality rate was reduced from 60 per 1,000 live births in 1968 to 15 per 1,000 in 2000. Under a systematic program of inoculation, childhood diseases such as polio, whooping cough, tetanus, and measles were eradicated. During the two decades preceding the First Intifada, the number of schoolchildren in the territories grew by 102%, and the number of classes by 99%, though the population itself had grown by 28%. Illiteracy rates dropped to 14% of adults over age 15 (compared with 61% in Egypt, 45% in Tunisia, and 44% in Syria). The rapid growth in population as a result of access to Israeli medicine, in addition to Arab immigration into the territories from “Diaspora Palestinians” all over the Arab world, resulted in a tripling of the Arab population from around 950,000 in 1967 to more than 3,000,000 in 1994 (20).



All this time the Arab nations remained formally at war with Israel. In 1979, Egypt alone among the Arab states agreed to sign a peace treaty with Israel. In response to Egypt’s willingness to sign the peace, Israel withdrew its forces and settlements in the Sinai.



The peace signed with Egypt also offered a new opportunity for Palestinians. Prime Minister Menahem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar es-Sadat invited Arafat to their peace table. Arafat refused, and in doing so, squandered what could have been yet another opportunity for Palestinian statehood. Sadat was then assassinated by Muslim radicals for making peace with the Jews.



Arafat Takes Over and Destroys Palestinian Prosperity and Peace



When the 1993 Oslo Accords allowed Yasir Arafat to set up shop in the West Bank as the head of the newly created Palestinian Authority, the robust economy created in partnership between Israel and the Arabs ground to a halt and then went into a steep decline. By 2002, the West Bank’s GDP was one-tenth of what it was in 1993. Israel has been blamed worldwide for the economic plight of the Palestinians when it is entirely the responsibility of Yasir Arafat and the Palestinian Authority. Yet, the record as registered in annual UN Human Development Reports, clearly shows that the Palestinian people were much better off under Israeli occupation than under the Palestine Authority’s control.



Data provided by the UN Human Development program of 2005 (21) indicate that the economic difficulties experienced by the Palestinian Arabs were largely the result of policies of the Arafat regime and not from any oppression by the State of Israel. Looking at what it calls “The Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT),” the UN report cites many examples of how positive trends in human development have been reversed. For instance, the second Intifada beginning in Sept. 2000 resulted “…in a sharp deterioration in living standards and life chances.”. The poverty rate nearly tripled from 20% in 1999 to 55% in 2003. The report notes that because of the Intifada, the town of Nablus a prosperous commercial hub prior to September 2000, became an economic basket case. Shops were closed; to survive, workers had to sell their tools, and farmers were forced to sell their land. It was Arafat’s war, not Israeli rule, that destroyed Palestinian prosperity and bled its people (22).



Even with the disruption of their economy that the Palestinians suffered as a result of the Intifada, the Palestinians are still listed as seventh in a list of 103 developing countries, on a par with Cuba, Singapore and Columbia. A number of other Arab countries rank far below the Palestinian territories. Even more ironic is the fact that while the Palestinians receive more aid per capita than any nation in the world except one--Cape Verde--because of Arafat’s terror war and his embezzlement of huge amounts of this money for himself and his terror armies, the Palestinian people have experienced a severe decline in economic well-being. The UN report suggests that Arafat diverted almost all of the aid money to his various militias. So the aid money, rather than helping the economy and thus creating conditions that would end violence, actually promoted violence (23). The picture that arises from the UN 2005 report is a clear continuation of trends documented in the 2004 report (24).



The Post-Oslo Terrorist War against Israel



The Oslo Accords of 1993 created what would turn out to be the last best offer of statehood and peaceful co-existence alongside of Israel. As with every other opportunity since 1937, Israel accepted the agreements, recognized and supported the concept of Palestinian statehood, and fulfilled its obligation under the Oslo Accords to create and arm a Palestinian Authority. But before the ink was dry, Arafat was betraying the agreement he had just signed to renounce violence. To be sure, he spoke words of peace in English to the West. But in Arabic he began preaching Jihad and rejecting every one of his Oslo commitments. By early 1994 he had joined with the Islamic terrorist group Hamas in beginning a “low intensity” terror war operating in Israel and in Lebanon.



When in June of 2000 at Camp David Arafat rejected what Saudi prince Bandar bin-Sultan described as the best offer the Palestinian people could possibly hope for, he threw away what proved to be his people’s last chance at a negotiated settlement that would have led to statehood and to peace. His reply to Barak’s offer of a Palestinian state on 97% of the land they had demanded, was to launch a Second Intifada. This terrorist war driven by suicide bomb attacks against Israeli civilians began in September 2000, and has led to the empowerment of Hamas and other terrorist organizations.



Arafat created a massive thugocracy to oppress and terrify his people and to maintain his own power. He embezzled billions of dollars from the aid money pouring in from Arab states, the EU, the UN, the UK and the USA, to line his own pockets and fund his terror war. He exploited the maneuverability and the base of operations that the Oslo Accords gave him, to create massive graft and corruption in his crony-government, and to attack, intimidate, arrest torture and kill anyone of his own who objected (25).



By the end of Arafat’s life, Israel and America had concluded that there could be no peace with him at the helm. Realizing finally that they had no negotiating partner for a peace, Israelis has begun drawing their own boundaries with a fence to keep terrorists out. Arafat’s legacy is clear: the current Palestinian government has no leadership capable of putting an end to the terrorism, to the descent into chaos and lawlessness, and to the ascent of the terror gangs in both the Gaza and the West Bank.



CONCLUSION



So what are the answers to the questions with which we opened this essay?



Who is responsible for the plight of the Palestinians? From the data presented above, the answer is obvious. From the 19th century onward, Arab leaders, both local and external, have betrayed the Palestinian Arabs, forced them into poverty, cheated, intimidated, and oppressed them, condemned them to serfdom and stolen the land out from under them. Every opportunity for statehood was squandered by leaders who chose war and terrorism over peace and cooperation (see Addendum). Arafat’s totalitarian kleptocracy, his “democracy of the gun”, was most assuredly the very worst, most heinous, of all betrayals.



How did Palestinian leaders let their people fall into such a tragic state? They didn’t “let them,” they did it to them. A heartless, Machiavellian Arab leadership bent on violence, war, terrorism, destruction and genocide subordinated Palestinian hopes and aspirations to their own dark plans; even while Zionists in the pre-State period and the Israeli government thereafter accepted, supported, and attempted to assist the Palestinian people.



Why did the Palestinian people allow themselves to be reduced to this tragic state? It is true that Palestinian leaders ruled as tyrants, by terror, intimidation, and totalitarian repression. But even under a totalitarian tyranny, people have broken free. Today we are witness to the Ukrainian revolution, the Cedar revolution in Lebanon, and the rise of a courageous defiant democratic process in Afghanistan and Iraq (thanks to the USA coalition forces). So why have the hopeless, hapless, homeless, helpless Palestinians done nothing to take their fate into their own hands?



It would require psychiatrists or cultural anthropologists to venture an answer to this question. But one thing is certain: there are no leaders without followers.



APPENDIX: A Survey of the opportunities for creating a Palestinian state



Since the Peel Commission in 1936, there have been a total of FIFTEEN (15) attempts to create a state for Palestinian Arabs alongside of Israel. The British, the UN, the Israelis, Arab leaders, and the USA have all put forward plans for peace between Israel and the Arab world that included a state for the Palestinian Arabs. Each time, these offers have met with Israeli approval and Arab rejection. The Arab rejection has been expressed in unequivocal terms of war, terrorism, violence, and murder. Arab and Palestinian leadership have adumbrated most clearly their intent to create a Palestinian state instead of Israel, not alongside of it.



1.) The Peel Commission, set up in 1936 during the British Mandate. In 1937, Lord Earl Peel recommended that Her Majesty’s government partition Palestine and give c. 85% of Mandatory Palestine to the Arabs, and c. 15% to the Jews. The Jewish response was positive. The Arab Response was a 2.5-year war against the Jews and the British, with hundreds of Jews and British killed, and c. 10,000 Arab casualties at the hands of British troops (Israel then had no organized armed forces).



2.) The UN Partition Plan gave the Palestinian Arabs and the Jews their separate states on 11/29/47. The Palestinian Jews were ecstatic. The Arab response was a 15-month war of annihilation against Israel. Against all odds, Israel won.



3.) The Rhodes Armistice Talks, 1949: The Israeli negotiators indicated that “everything was negotiable” in exchange for political recognition, negotiations, and peace. The Arab representatives refused.



4.) The Israel Peace Initiative after the “Six Day War”: 6/5-10/1967 brought the remaining Palestinian land under Israeli control in the 3rd defensive war against the Arabs. Immediately after the war, Abba Eban made his “Israel Peace Initiative” speech at the UN. “Everything but Jerusalem is negotiable”.The Arab response was the Khartoum conference in August, 1967: “no recognition, no negotiation, no peace with Israel



5.) Aziz Shihadeh, 1967: Mr. Shihadeh was a Palestinian Arab from Jaffa, residing in Ramallah after the 1948 war, working as a human rights attorney. Following the 6-day war, and in response to Abba Eban’s speech, he wrote an article urging Palestinian leadership to engage Israel in negotiations for a “two state solution”. Mr. Shihadeh was murdered by the PLO.



6.) Camp David Accords, 1979: In the context of the peace agreement with Egypt, the Camp David Accords, Menahem Begin and Anwar es-Sadat urged Arafat, and related factions to renounce the three Khartoum “no’s” and the Palestinian Covenant’s declaration for commitment to the total dismantling of the State of Israel and the creation of a Palestinian State in its place. The PLO and various terrorist factions escalated terrorist activities against the civilian population of Israel from inside of Lebanon.



7.) The Fahd Plan, 1981: At the Arab Summit in Fez, then Crown Prince Fahd of Saudi Arabia put forward the plan that the Arab states should call for a unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state. The plan was rejected by every other Fez summit participant, including the PLO representative, because it would have been a de facto recognition of the State of Israel.



8.) The Oslo Accords – 1993: Under President Clinton’s guidance, Israel agreed to the creation of an autonomous Palestinian entity. The PLO became the Palestinian Authority (PA), and Arafat was brought out of his Tunisian exile to head the PA, with its capitol in Ramallah. In exchange for agreeing to eschew terror, end incitement, disarm and dismantle the terrorist groups under his control, and settle all differences by negotiation (per his personal letter to Rabin on 9/8/93), Arafat was given independent and autonomous control over 96% of all Palestinians living in Israel, time during which to build the infra-structure of a functioning state, and the opportunity to negotiate with Israel for resolution of questions relating to the creation of an independent Palestinian entity. At that time, the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the West Bank and Gaza began. The last Israeli tank left Ramallah on 9/28/1995. Arafat immediately violated every one of the Oslo Accords and bean his terror war culminating in the 2nd Intifada.



9.) Ehud Baraq at Camp David II, July, 2000: The single most generous offer by Israel to the Palestinian leadership since Rabin’s promise in l967 was the “second Camp David” meeting in July, 2000, where Ehud Baraq made his historic offer of 97% of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and a PA capitol in East Jerusalem, in return for an end to the conflict. To quote Tom Friedman, Israel extended the olive branch and Arafat torched it. Arafat’s response was to escalate his terrorist war on Israel by starting the 2nd Intifada



10.) Clinton’s “Bridge Plan”, December 2000: In an attempt to quell the 2nd Intifada, Clinton suggested a “bridge plan” to pave the way to a return to the negotiating table. This plan was similar to Baraq’s , but more generous. Arafat rejected it, and then had his spin-masters tell the world that actually the plan was not a good one, and besides, nothing was put in writing. So the Intifada continued



11.) The Taba Talks, 1-2/2001: Israeli and PA representatives were, by anecdotal ex-post-facto accounts, on the verge of agreement about many issues. Baraq was trying to negotiate in good faith, even though the Intifada was raging, and there were an average of 10-20 terrorist attacks per day.



12.) The Mitchell Plan: Israel would stop building settlements and return to the negotiating table if Arafat would put an end to terror and return to the negotiating table. Since an on-going PA complaint was the continued expansion of the Israeli settlement population in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, this was an ideal time for Arafat to leverage the opportunity created by Mitchell’s visit to get Israel to back down from settlement expansion. But it required him to restrain his terrorists and return to negotiations. There were three terrorist explosions in Jerusalem and six other attacks around Israel after the Mitchell plan was announced. Arafat had again chosen terrorism and warfare over negotiations.



13.) President Bush’s offer: 6/24/02. Stop the terrorism and elect untainted officials and the single most powerful person in the entire world will support the creation of your state. Sharon agrees. The Palestinian leadership and spokespersons say: “don’t tell us whom to elect”, and Palestinian terrorists start a new wave of terror attacks.



14.) The Road Map: 4/03: the first line of the first sentence of the first paragraph of the first section of the Road Map says that the Palestinian Authority must unconditionally and immediately stop the terrorism and incitement. Palestinian leadership gave verbal acceptance of the Road map, but continued terrorism and invited Hamas to join the PA government.



15.) Sharon’s Unilateral Withdrawal: 4.14.04: “you get your state either way!”. If they stop the terror Israel negotiates a state with them. If they don’t stop the terror, they STILL get their state, but Israel will draw the borders unilaterally. Ahmed Qurei’a responded with : Unacceptable ! (26).

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