'Jews Against The Occupation' Speak Out

Equality , justice , dignity

The World Conference against racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance



During the last fifty years since the adoption in 1948 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the international community has made some important advances in the fight against racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance. National and international laws have been enacted and numerous international human rights instruments, particularly a treaty to ban racial discrimination, have been adopted. Progress has been made -witness the defeat of apartheid in South Africa. Yet, the dream of a world free of racial hatred and bias remains only half fulfilled.
As technology brings the peoples of the world closer together and political barriers tumble, racial discrimination, xenophobia and other forms of intolerance continue to ravage our societies. Horrors such as "ethnic cleansing" have emerged in recent years, while ideas of racial superiority have spread to new media like the Internet. Even globalization carries risks that can lead to exclusion and increased inequality, very often along racial and ethnic lines.

As racial discrimination and ethnic violence grow in complexity, they become more of a challenge for the international community. As a result, new tools to deal with racism are called for. "This World Conference has the potential to be among the most significant gatherings at the start of this century," the Secretary-General of the Conference and High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, stated. "It can be more: it can shape and embody the spirit of the new century, based on the shared conviction that we are all members of one human family."

Meeting the challenge at the millennium

In 1997, the General Assembly decided, in resolution 52/111, to hold the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance. The World Conference which will be held in Durban, South Africa from 31 August to 7 September 2001, will be a landmark in the struggle to eradicate all forms of racism "requiring a strong follow-up mechanism to examine whether Governments have delivered on their promises made," according to the High Commissioner. She promised "to make it a conference of actions not just words." The World Conference is a unique opportunity to create a new world vision for the fight against racism in the twenty-first century.

The Preparatory process

The United Nations Commission on Human Rights is acting as the preparatory committee for the World Conference. Prior to the Conference, two preparatory intergovernmental meetings are planned. The first was held in Geneva from 1 to 5 May 2000, and the second will be held from 21 May to 1 June 2001, also in Geneva. At the first meeting, governments took a number of organizational decisions, including the adoption of the provisional agenda for the Conference and its draft rules of procedure. Member States also held informal consultations in January where they took stock of the recommendations of six experts seminars that took place in the last two years. They also discussed the draft declaration and programme of action, to be adopted by the Conference.

During 1999 and 2000 six regional experts seminars were held in: Geneva, Warsaw, Bangkok, Addis Ababa and Santiago de Chile. The objectives of each seminar was to discuss the issues of priority concern for that region, to advance the regional dialogue on racism, raise awareness, share information on the issues of racism and intolerance and to share "best practices".

The experts seminars focused on issues such as refugees and multi-ethnic states, remedies available to victims, protection of minorities, migrants and trafficking of persons, ethnic conflicts and economic and social measures for vulnerable groups.

Regional intergovernmental meetings are also being held. During the year 2000, European countries met in Strasbourg in October; the meeting for the Americas was held in Santiago de Chile in December; the African regional preparatory meeting took place in Dakar in January 2001; and the meeting of the Asian group was held in Tehran in February 2001.

Non-governmental organizations have adopted a similar preparatory process worldwide.

The Provisional Agenda

The elements of the provisional agenda are to be grouped under the following themes:

Theme 1: Sources, cause, forms and contemporary manifestations of racism, racial discrimination and related intolerance;

Theme 2: Victims of racism, racial discrimination and related intolerance;

Theme 3: Measures of prevention, education and protection aimed at the eradication of racism, racial discrimination and related intolerance at the national, regional and international levels;

Theme 4: Provision for effective remedies, recourses, redress, [compensatory] and other measures at the national, regional and international levels;

Theme 5: Strategies to achieve full and effective equality, including international cooperation and enhancement of the United Nations and other international mechanisms in combating racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia.

The bracket in theme 4 indicates that a consensus could not be reached on the word "compensatory".

Global Action against Racism

Since its creation, the United Nations has struggled to find measures to combat racial discrimination and ethnic violence. This commitment to human dignity and equality is reflected in its adoption of a number of resolutions, conventions and declarations, including:

Convention of the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide - 1948 Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide
Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination - 1963
International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination - 1965
21 March designated International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination - 1966
International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid - 1973 Apartheid.
First Decade to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination 1973-1982
First World Conference to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination, Geneva 1978
Second World Conference to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination, also in Geneva 1983
Second Decade for Action to Combat Racial Discrimination l983-l992
Third Decade to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination 1994-2003
World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance 2001
The International Year

In 1998, the General Assembly decided to proclaim 2001 as the International Year of Mobilization against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance. This observance will help to draw world attention to the objectives of the Conference and to provide a momentum for further political commitment to the elimination of racism and racial discrimination.

You do not have to be anti Semitic to be against something that is wrong.
There are many good moral Jewish people who are against what Israel is doing; some of these Jews are in Israel.
The Question is what is the cause of the huge problem known as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? And what is the possible solution?
The era of colonization is dead!!! End the occupation and brutality occurring in the West Bank and Gaza.
For a soluion where both sides win:
CLICK HERE > http://nyc.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=56156&group=webcast
Give a comment on the downfalls of the proposed solution....

$Zionist == "knucklehead"

if {$X protect($Zionist)} {
    $X = knucklehead;
    puts "$Zionist and $X are the same"
    -command { destroy $Zionist; destroy $X}
    exit();
   }

"It is absurd that people are dying over such a miserable piece of real estate.Isreal has a right to exist AND the Palestinians are entitled to their own state.
The land issue would have been settled long ago if it weren't for the religious fanatics on both sides, the misguided efforts of the U.S. Isreal lobby....and our old friends in the weapons business.
Guys who live on yachts tend to feel awkward and out-of-place on the unemployment line.This often leads them to ingeneous forms of 'product promotion'.Is it not a slight embarrassment that many of these gentlemen are of the american persuasion?"

-Frank Zappa 1988, "The Real Frank Zappa Book" page 322.

.....and it's not just Muslims and Jews that qualify as "religious fanatics"...

"Puritan readings of the Bible found Jewish resettlement of the Holy Land to be the Will of God as early as the 17th century.The idea picked up support as the millennium neared and the mass persecution of Jews in Europe sharpened.Worse, Christian fanatics even today praise the Lord over the violence in Palestine as a sign of the Second Coming, which they believe will give them eternal life in this body.Purportedly numbering 70 million, fundamentalist Christian Zionists outnumber Jews in the U.S. by about 10 to 1.
A strange alliance: divide-and-conquer cynicism met with irrational religion and ordinary racism-the idea of Negros back to Africa, Jews back to Judea-in a broad Christian Zionist constituency, whose structure continues little changed today.....
The dirty little secret of tens of millions of American Christian Zionists, dispensationalists, millenialists, or what have you: in a nutshell, stranger than fiction, they believe that if the Jews regain 'The Promised Land', and are subsequently wiped out in 'Armageddon', Jesus will raise the believing Christians bodily to Heavan; so what's a few trillion in military aid to nudge prophecy along?....
Protestant Evangelicalism would appear to be in the last stages of decay into shamanism, making the United States the scariest example on earth of a foreign policy dictated by crazy cultists"

-quotes from John Leonard taken from the "Backward" to "The War On Freedom" by Nafeez Mossadeq Ahmed

http://www.thewaronfreedom.com
http://www.treeoflifebooks.com
http://www.mediamonitors.net
http://www.globalresearch.org

"As you grow older in your observations of the peoples of this Earth, it becomes more noticable that stupidity is the reigning virtue.The masses are always willing that somebody take the resposibility of caring for them."
-Paul Twitchell, "The Far Country"

US should NOT Veto a UN resolutions that would place human rights observers in the West Bank and Gaza, and on ISRAELI BUSSES (oh wait, that clause is missing from the UN resolutions)

Who is this guy who is deliberately bumping only threads that have nothing to do with the Israel-Palestine issue? He is obviously trying to suppress discussion of this most important problem. Typical.

How do you deal with these people? I feel for the poor Paslestinians who have to put up with this kind of crap, and much worse, on a day-to-day basis.

Have a Palestinian State with the borders set at 1967 line.
The People who now live in the Settlement in Gaza and West Bank now live in Palestine.
If they do not like living in Palestine they can move to Israel.
There are many Palestinians living in Israel, if they do not like living in Israel they can move to Palestine.
This means natural end to occupation instead of forced ending.
Otherwise you have:
Israel: We have to confiscate Palestinian land and demolish Palestinian homes because there are suicide bombers???
Palestine: We have to defend ourselves because Israel is slowly confiscating all our land and demolishing our homes, We have no military to defend ourselves and our land. If we do nothing, we will soon have nothing at all???
Some of the People now living in West Bank and Gaza are refugees who used to have land and homes in what is now Israel. In return for the Palestinian State they will not have right of return but can be helped to settle into the new Palestinian State.
For details on this Possible Solution:
CLICK HERE > http://nyc.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=56156&group=webcast

Chris' scenario of making Jordan the Palestinian state won't work.

It is true that the whole area was administered as an entity called Palestinian. But there was a reality that there were large areas in what is now called the West Bank whose inhabitants for more than ten centuries have been non-Jews. It was their land. Although it was often ruled by some outside power, the local inhabitant controlled the use of the land and its resources, including water.

What is now Jordan, is and was largely empty desert. The arable regions, with sources of water, were already settled. It is true today that the majority of its population are Palestinians. That means that they are descendants of people who fled or were force off land west of the Jordan.

The West Bank and Gaza, as well as some regions inside pre-1967 Israel still have majority populations which are Arabic speaking and non-Jewish.

"So here is my solution. Instead of creating a second palestinian state for the Arabs currently living in the West Bank and Gaza, the Jordanian government should extend the citizenship to them. That way, they can continue living in West Bank and Gaza, as Jordanian Citizens, and if they feel that it is better for them economically, they can move to Jordan."

That is the Molodet solution. It denies the validity of any claim by the inhabitants of the West Bank, to land where their ancestors have lived for centuries. It also denies the validity of any claim by refugees from land in pre-1967 Israel for losses. Its asking the refugees to accept their losses and consider the debt cancelled. Its asking the people who were originally inhabitants of the West Bank and Gaza to accept new losses and to not make a fuss about it. What do the non-Jewish inhabitants of Palestinine get in return? A guarantee that the Israeli army won't beat them up?


" If they live peacefully in the West Bank and Gaza, they would be allowed to freely travel anywhere in Israel, as long as there is no violence."

Okay, the onus is on them to live peacefully. But would they have equal rights and equal protection under the law to Jews who move there? Not likely. Not if the last 35 years are a precedent.

"The government of Israel will annex the West Bank and Gaza and the Arabs with the Jordanian citizenship who live there will be residents of the State of ISrael."

This is ludicrous. In the past few centuries, when countries have annexed territories, as the US did when it annexed Texas and California, it accepted the inhabitants as citizens (with the exception of the native Americans - a bit of lingering racism). The cases where countries have annexed territories and not given full citizenship rights to the natives have been considered examples of colonial conguest.

Chris, you are asking the native inhabitants of the West Bank to accept the sovereignty of another country over the land in which they and their ancestors live and to accept citizenship in another country where they have never been.

"No political rights but all the civil rights that are entitle to anyone else who comes to Israel to visits, just like visitors in the US have all the civil rights accorded to them."

You are asking them to accept no political rights but all civil rights (whatever that means) in the country in which they were born and their ancestors lived for centuries. This is the bargain that the US gave to native Americans before 1925.

"I personally think that this is a very implementable solution, that does not involve "ethnic cleansing" or transfer or any forced exchange of population. Tell me what you think."

The result will be that Israel will have sovereignty over a large area of land in which Jews are the minority. If the last 35 years are a precedent, Jews will get preferential treatment in use of resources (Settlers use nine times the water per capita that the Palestinians do), in use of land (i.e. If Israel wants to confiscate land to build a settlement, it will do it.) and under the law (Israeli courts have consistently ruled in favor of Jews in issues with non-Jews, including violent assaults by settlers against their neighbors.).

Despite all this, you are asking the majority of people in this region to humbly accept their state and inferior status and not make any fuss.

Get real.

That's me. When I hide Zionist spam, which often takes an hour or two out of my day, a quirk in the software causes the author’s name to remain on the comments page. These guys are clever. They figured it out. Sometimes they'll spam a spew, knowing I'm online and will hide it immediately, but use names that spell out a Zionist propaganda message in the author's name column of the comments page. To deal with it, I have to open each thread, post a message with the word "bump" for a name, and then go back and hide the "bump" message. This is even more time consuming, but I do it anyway, because It gives me great pleasure to outwit these SOBs.

Tech support has promised that an automated version of my process is under development and will be online RSN. I have mixed feelings about this. It will add free time to my day, but deny me the immense pleasure of outwitting evil men. The outwitting of evil men is one of the seven or ten greatest pleasures in life. I must confess that at least part of me shall miss it dearly. Whatever shall I do with the free time it will give me?

Oh, wait. I know. I’ll outwit other evil men. It’s not like there is any shortage of evil men who need outwitting.



>He is obviously trying to suppress discussion of this most important problem. Typical.

And now I have a word of advice for you personally. There is a deep flaw in your reasoning process. Unless you learn to overcome it, for the rest of your life, evil men will be able to outwit you at their whim.

Here’s how to overcome it:

You must learn to realize that in politics, almost nothing is what it appears to be on the surface, something about which one can safely jump to conclusions, or “obvious”. This is especially true when one is dealing with men whose stated motto is, “"By way of deception, thou shalt do war" .

“Deception,” as Sun Tzu taught us two and a half millennia ago, “is the essence of warfare.”

The Zionists use many clever, subtle tricks to spread their propaganda here. Flooding the “author’s name” column of the comments page, while clever, is not very subtle. The subtle stuff includes, for example, the posting of a great deal of what, on the surface, appears to be anti-Semitic propaganda. They then immediately turn around, often in the very next post, sometimes two seconds later, and accuse SF-IMC of being anti-Semitic. Now that’s subtle and clever. However, we are just as clever, if not more so. We caught on. Whenever this happens, we hide it immediately. Then, once the realize that their ploy has filed, they resort to brute force, bulk spam, which we also remove immediately. Occasionally this produces a non sequitur in a thread. We apologize for this. Think of it as collateral damage in a war against evil doers.

And speaking of evil doers, I want to make it perfectly clear that I do not consider all Israelis to be evil. Israelis should no more be judged by the evil doers among them than should Americans, or for that matter, anyone else. That is the logic of the Sharons and bin Ladins of this world. It is the rational for group punishment, and the direct cause of the deaths of innocents crushed under the collapse of the WTC and the bulldozers in Jenin.

There can be no such thing as progressive Zionism for the same reason there can be no such thing a progressive Nazism. Any ideology that has, as its raison d’etre, the wellbeing of only one ethnic group, is reactionary, not progressive. There are, however, progressive Zionists. There are a great many people, millions in fact, who call themselves Zionists, but despise the Sharonists and sincerely wish, and work, for a peaceful solution. I believe that it is a serious mistake to refuse to dialog with them. Their potential leverage within Israeli society, in fact, the key to curing the long festering wound in humanity’s body politic.

So progressive Zionists are permitted to dialog with people here. This has lead to a number of distortions of the discourse. Typically, as soon as we let a progressive, peace loving Zionist speak, certain things predictable happen immediately. Often we discover that he is not progressive at all, but merely mouthing the words in order to get his foot in the door. In that case we 86 him pronto. If it turns out he really is progressive, and is sincerely attempting to to promote a discourse that will lead to a just and equitable peace, the reactionary Zionists immediately attempt to discredit him, or, more often, simply try to drown him out with brute force, bulk spam.

The other thing that happens is that the dimmer witted anti-Zionists, and the true anti-Semites, accuse SF-IMC, and me in particular, of being “Zionist sympathizers” or “soft on Zionism.”

This is an exact parralel to the other all too common phenomenon that takes place here. We permit, in fact encourage, anti-Zionism. With dreary predictability, we are accused for doing this of being “anti-Semites.”

Are we a “Zionist front” or a “cesspool of anti-Semites”? There is an ongoing and vociferous debate about this taking place, even now, on BBSs all across the internet. One side accuses us of being secretly funded by PLO, or by some wealthy Saudis. The other side accuses us of being secretly financed by the Mossad. Neither side has the faintest clue what really goes on behind the scenes at SF-IMC, and neither do you. When you make unwarranted assumptions about what you think is “obvious,” you merely make a fool of yourself. As the old adage goes, when you assume, you make an “ass” of “u” and “me.”

Get over it.

As I mentioned here before, your rational intelligent commentary are impressive, and the one above is equally so.

After reading Chris' views I thought, maybe, it might be another possibility; however, your views only confirm my fears..

The Palestinian peoples have had more than enough misery. To expect them to continue in like fashion is not acceptable .

I suggest Israel take its settlements and return to its 1967 borders. After that starting point, maybe some reasonable dialogue can commence. Otherwise, the horrors will continue.

check this out:

http://www.tau.ac.il/~reinhart/political/30_06_02_Penal_Colonies.html

(snip)

Surrounded with electric fences and army posts, completely sealed off the outside world, Gaza has become a huge prison. About onethird of its land was confiscated for the 7,000 Israeli settlers living there (and their defense array), while over a million Palestinians are crowded in the remaining areas of the prison. With no work or sources of income, about 80% of its residents depend, for their living, on UNRWA, or contributions from Arab states and charity organizations. Now Israel is considering the imprisonment there of families of suicide bombers from the West Bank (1). As a senior Israeli analyst stated, Gaza can now serve as "the penal colony" of Israel its "devils island, Alcatraz". (Nahum Barnea, Yediot Aharonot June 21, 2002).

(snip)

and your point is..............

The Point is that what pointer said is correct. The kinds of atrocities that Israel is committing in the West Bank and Gaza should not be tolerated by the U.N. and the U.S.
The Palestinian should be given their freedom, the days of colonization is over. The Palestinian need a reason to stop their freedom fight.
We need a Palestinian State with reasonable borders today.
For a Possible Solution:
CLICK HERE > http://dc.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=64554&group=webcast

The Palestinian need a reason to stop their (freedom?) fight.

THEY WILL NOT STOP FIGHTING, IF THEY WANTED TO THEY HAVE HAD MANY CHANCES TO "WAGE PEACE" BUT THEY DO NOT WANT THAT. THEY WANT TO FIGHT WITH ISRAEL, AND IF NOT ISRAEL
THEN IT WOULD BE SOMEONE ELSE.

as in Bosnia this group will need to be governed by some country that can teach Palestinians "civilized behavior" toward its own citizens and those of other countries. thousands of Arabs, from Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia flooded into Palestine to work on the new factories and cooperative farms that the Jewsish settlers had created. Those new Arab immigrants are the "Palestinians," the grandchildren of farm laborers who came from Egypt, Jordan and Syria, where they were not wanted...

"as in Bosnia this group will need to be governed by some country that can teach Palestinians "civilized behavior toward its own citizens and those of other countries."

Bosnia seems to be doing fine after some outside help to prevent Croatia and Serbia from dismembering it. Ziggy seems to have some notion that, although they experienced ruthless slaughter by Serbs and Croats (240,000 Bosnians killed in first year of the war) and were ethnically cleansed from much of their land, Bosnians were at fault for what happened to them.

"thousands of Arabs, from Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia flooded into Palestine to work on the new factories and cooperative farms that the Jewsish settlers had created."

This is a myth that has been soundly debunked, even by Israeli historians. Immigration into Palestine in the 1920's and 30's was very minor, not more than 8000 a year at the most. Most of these "immigrants" were returnees who left during the fighting in WWI. Most Arabs either worked their own land or worked for Arabs. In 1947, Jews owned only 5% of the land in Palestine, hardly enough to employ vast numbers of Arabs.

Moreover, the Jewish labor Union, Histadrut, ran a successful campaign in the 1920's and 30's to get Jewish owned companies to hire only Jews and for Jews to buy Jewish farm produce as much as possible.

The latter was not easy. Most Jewish immigration up to the 1940's was into urban areas. Although their were Jewish co-ops and other farming ventures, these played only a mnor role. In 1946, the agricultural produce from Jewish farms was less than 10% of the overall Palestinian production. Arabs still dominated in the Agricultural sector.

And when Jewish immigrants came to Palestine from Central Europe they had to learn agricultural techniques which were appropriate to the region, how to grow olives etc. Much of their farming experience from Europe was useless. They had to learn them from the Arabs. The primary "improvements" by Jews were large-scale land reclamation projects which required capital spending that locals would not have access to.

"Those new Arab immigrants are the "Palestinians," the grandchildren of farm laborers who came from Egypt, Jordan and Syria, where they were not wanted..."

The persistance of this myth in the face of overwhelming recorded history and documentation is one of the tragedies of this conflict. The Christian and Muslim Palestinians are native to Palestine with roots that are centuries old.

AS THEY SAY IF YOU DON'T LIKE THE HISTORY YOU HAVE ....JUST MAKE IT UP! RIGHT???

Riobard is absolutly correcet:
In the mid 1800s there were fewer then 6000 Jewish people in the Area now known as Israel, West Bank and Gaza. This was not an empty land, but a land with hundreds of Thousands Palestinian, both Christian and Muslim.
But we can not change what has occurred, since, So now there are some 5,000,000 Israelis and Millions of Palestinians.
Israel has to be recognized and allowed to have their state of Israel.
But if we want Peace the Palestinian People must be allowed to have their State.
The road map will not work because it does not start with reasonable Borders:
Set the Borders back to 1967…
The Settlements are now part of Palestine…
The Settlers who do not want to live in Palestine can move to Israel…
The many Palestinian who live in Israel and do not want to live in Israel can move to Palestine…
What will definitely not work is:
Israel: We have to confiscate Palestinian land and demolish Palestinian homes because there are suicide bombers???
Palestine: We have to defend ourselves because Israel is slowly confiscating all our land and demolishing our homes. We have no military to defend ourselves and our land. If we do nothing, we will soon have nothing at all???
For details on a possible solution:
CLICK HERE > http://dc.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=64554&group=webcast