69 thoughts on “Land Day Picture Worth a Thousand Words – Tikun Olam תיקון עולם إصلاح العالم
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  1. I will add some words, though. Too often, we read about terrible things being done, and the immensity become overpowering.As Denise Levertov put it, the disasters numb us, feeling like lumps of raw dough.

    In spite of it all, we can do something. One is to read the Palestinian Kairos document, and assist brave people like those in Jewish Voice for Peace.

    Another is to aid those in American churches who want to the settlements and corporations that benefit from the settlement movement.

    For example, see the United Methodist Kairos Response, at https://www.kairosresponse.org/. Methodists will have their every-four-year general conference soon; divestment will be discussed. At least two of the Methodist “annual conferences” have voted to divest from settlement companies. American Presbyterians have led the way.

    Would it matter? Yes, everything matters. Perhaps it would shock the Israeli public into thinking some about “Land Day”. I find that many Israelis simply don’t think about Arabs, or “the people who lived here before we displaced them”. It reminds me of the US at the beginning of the civil rights movement. People are happy to be oblivious to an injustice done for them.

  2. Goons. When met with an unarmed US marine and fellow activists (I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to break from civiliZION there… I meant terrorists) on the Mavi Marmara, they turn into this: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_xFykR7V7QdU/TCFkGGQVn3I/AAAAAAAAAAM/4rnCR-yYN6g/s1600/Captured_IDF_boy_on_MVMM,_crying.jpg

    He must have been thinking: “They’re going to execute me…what about my sister, my father.. my mother?” and lived to see another day.

    What was 19-year old activist Furkan Dogan, American Turk, thinking when he five bullets riddled his soft flesh and tore his bone asunder lodging into him like a heavy molten slug of lead?

    What was Rachel Corrie, American, 23, thinking when the Israeli in the bulldozer mercilessly ran the bulldozer over her fragile young body and snuffed her soul like a meaningless and un-noteworthy annoyance for daring to protest Palestinians losing their homes to unjust demolition?

    What do you think Netanyahu was thinking when Gilad Shalit’s dad approached him for the 5th time?

    How many reading this are so sure that Tolouse wasn’t an “inside” job?

    Do you trust these criminals? I don’t. I wish there was a hero to snuff them instead. RIP the innocent of the world who just want to live.

    1. You wrote:

      “How many reading this are so sure that Tolouse wasn’t an “inside” job?”

      Can you possibly mean that question seriously?

      1. I meant it quite seriously. It’s a shame you are blind, in denial, or cannot fathom that a completely sordid and criminal regime might endeavor to commit more crimes than you are told about directly to defend.

        1. It feeds into the Orientalist trope that crimes are only driven by hegemonic power, or colonial authority. It is real to believe that certain Muslims, in violation of the values of Islam, can commit atrocities just like certain Jews can in violation of the values of Judaism. While states and authorities engineer crimes every so often, I think all evidence currently points to the fact that this particular case was not an “inside job”. The wording of an “inside job” is also problematic since it implicitly bonds French Jews with Israel, which also happens to be the view of the state of Israel: that only Israel is a haven for Jews and that every misfortune or evil to befall Jews outside owes to their refusal to migrate. I think the focus should be on the innocent people who were murdered.

          1. No, I think we have turned a blind eye to facts and investigation long enough to “respect the victims”.

          2. Here, Aiman, see what Gilad Atzmon says about Tolouse:

            http://www.gilad.co.uk/writings/is-it-an-israeli-false-flag-again.html

            I think it was a “false flag” as he calls it as well. Perhaps “inside job” was too controversial a term. My insistence is that no Palestinian would ever do something like murder civilians to drive home their righteous and ethically superior argument against apartheid.

            RFK advocated against Israel’s nuclear program and sought to investigate his brother’s murder and Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian, kills him. Makes sense also…if you aren’t BLIND

          3. Re Atzmon: “I find his views objectionable.” Well, yes, Richard, we now have to censor whom we quote. If more people would read his book and understand what he says, maybe we wouldn’t be having all these arguments. But since you arbitrarily censor my comments too, I think it is time I left this blog for good. It’s too bad. Once in a while you write a good article and I pass it on. No more.

          4. “I think all evidence currently points to the fact that this particular case was not an “inside job””

            SUCH AS?

            “solid reality” my tukhus. Richard would sooner shoot the messenger than accept that his “country – good or bad” is not even a country but has always been a forced colony using Jews as political pawns. How else to project empire into the energy supplying (most important) region of the Earth?

            Right, the English empire suddenly decided – let’s be charitable!

          5. Israel is not “my” country & I resent the implication of this statement. The U.S. is my country. Israel is a country inhabited by Jews of whom I am one. But it isn’t “my” country. You are on very thin ice.

          6. @ Persian Advocate
            Leading Palestinian activists have called for a disavowal of Atzmon, and they’re right: he’s not having a positive effect on the Palestinian struggle. The guy clearly has things to sort out with Israel, Judaism and his own Jewishness, that’s okay, but it has nothing to do with the Palestinian struggle for justice but belongs to the domain of psychology !
            http://www.uspcn.org/2012/03/13/granting-no-quarter-a-call-for-the-disavowal-of-the-racism-and-antisemitism-of-gilad-atzmon/
            I’ve read the article that you linked. Aztmon doesn’t know what he’s talking about. I live in France, have followed this case constantly, and your ‘false flag operation’-theory is just ridiculous.
            That French intelligence screwed up seriously in this case, no doubt. That Israel and it’s French mouth-piece, CRIF, have tried to take advantage of the killings, once it had happened and will do in years to come, no doubt. In fact, I can easily imagine a remake of Bibi’s post 9/11 “That’s good for Israel”. It has in fact already started here. Prominent Muslim scholars such as al-Qaradawi and the former Mufti of al-Quds, ‘Ikrima Sa’id Sabri, have been denied entry to France this week, Sarko & Juppé want to deny Tariq Ramadan entrance too. Charles Enderlin, the French-Israeli journalist whose team shot the pictures of Muhammadad al-Durrah’s death have been accused of being responsible for the Toulouse killings and so on, but Mohamed Merah was NOT working for the Mossad. Far too unprofessional, by the way.

            Oliver Roy, French academic, specialist on radical Islam, had a great article on Mohamed Merah in the NYT a couple of days ago. He’s describing him as a ‘loser’ and also asks: “why didn’t we hear about Anders Behring Breivik’s religion when he gunned down nearly 80 youngsters in Oslo”.

          7. @RS

            “…I find him [Atzmon] and his views objectionable.”

            And one day the evolving circumstances will prove you wrong, and it won’t be the first time.

        2. Thanks for the thoughtful reply, Aiman. I would like to agree. However, the visible hand played by the Israeli government was one of waving Israeli flags for the pictures all over France and to definitively step in, as a foreign country, in the affairs of France. Did Israel do the same for Lieby Aaron, age 9, when he was cut up by someone in his Hasidic community in Brooklyn?

          Of note, the French victims’ were whisked away and buried in Israel. Why did the perp “jump” out of a window after making sure everyone and their mother knew of his then absurd desire to “want to live”? Oddities abound, if it walks like a duck… quacks like a duck, it’s probably the theater of the absurd featuring Bibi Nutt and Yahoo and his cast of Sacha Baron Cohen characters, I mean, AIPAC and the GOP.

          1. The “visible hand” is not visible. The second part of my previous response already addressed why the government of Israel would be interested in commemorating this. The person who committed the murders was named Mohamed Merah.

            I mostly wanted to respond to your earlier comment in which you said: ‘No, I think we have turned a blind eye to facts and investigation long enough to “respect the victims”.’

            I’m guessing you are also a Muslim and I can share a narrative with you:

            Once Muhammad was seated at some place in Madinah, along with his Companions. During this time a funeral procession passed by. On seeing this, Muhammad stood up. One of his companions remarked that the funeral was that of a Jew. Muhammad replied, “Was he not a human being?”

            It’s time to rise and pay respect to those deceased Jewish men, women and children and cure our disfigured humanity.

          2. The ugliness of repression and occupation, the war against Palestinians, is so deep that it necessarily inspires “conspiracy” theories at every juncture. Virtually every trick, and every horror, has been visited upon Palestinians by Israel and it is not unthinkable that Toulouse also was a false flag, though I don’t believe it. But, I do sympathize with those driven to such speculation, that is, I understand the exasperation.

          3. How do I have an odd conspiracy theory? It’s plain as obvious – and Richard, you would believe Netanyahu to not be beyond a PR stunt like this when he’s desperate?

            Fancy how people can blame Iran for everything under the sun, but Israel remains your holy lamb.

          4. I believe Netanyahu to be beyond such a heinous act. Yes. I’m not beyond believing that you’d believe that, though.

            Israel remains your holy lamb.

            I think you need a break. This sort of snark is unpardonable. You’re banned. If you feel you can return and follow the rules as I lay them out, then you can communicate this to me and I will reinstate you. If not, take it somewhere else.

          5. I’m not Muslim nor do I care for religious division or stories.

            I find it hilarious that your conjecture is grounded in fact, while my due speculation is an odd conspiracy theory.

            Shows the bias here.

          6. Thanks, David. I never make up things or work on speculation, regardless of what Richard claims.

          7. Here are the obvious reasons why this is a false flag:

            First the shooting suspect was supposed to be an ex-military with “neo-Nazi” conections then all of the sudden the media started calling him a Muslim with links to Al Qaeda. Why then did he have a stamp in his passport for ISRAEL?!

            Mohammed Merah, the suspect in the killing of seven people outside a Jewish school in Toulouse, France, fits the pattern of an al-Qaeda intelligence asset. According to the BBC, he was on the radar of French authorities because of visits he made to Afghanistan and the “militant stronghold” of Waziristan in Pakistan (edit and Jordan, India and Israel).

            More specifically, Merah was handled by France’s DCRI intelligence service “for years,” according to Claude Gueant, the interior minister.

            Merah, a French citizen of Algerian origin, was arrested on December 19, 2007, and was sentenced to three years in jail for planting bombs in the southern province of Kandahar in Afghanistan.
            In April of 2011, the United States admitted it has operated secret military prisons in Afghanistan where suspected terrorists are held and interrogated without charges.

            The notorious Bagram airbase detention center is operated by the Joint Special Operations Command and the DIA’s Defense Counterintelligence and Human Intelligence Center (DCHC).

            The DCHC “will be responsible for developing an ‘offensive counterintelligence operations’… capability for the Department of Defense, which may entail efforts to penetrate, deceive and disable foreign intelligence activities directed against U.S. forces,” Secrecy News reported in 2008 after the government announced the creation of DCHC.

            The Pentagon and the CIA specialize in creating terrorists as part of a so-called covert and unconventional war doctrine dating back to the end of the Second World War (see Michael McClintock’s Instruments of Statecraft: U.S. Guerilla Warfare, Counterinsurgency, and Counterterrorism, 1940-1990 for an in-depth examination).

            Although virtually ignored by the corporate media, it is an established fact that the CIA and Pakistani intelligence created what is now known as al-Qaeda out of the remnants of the Afghan mujahideen following the CIA’s covert three billion dollar war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.

            It was the so-called Safari Club – organized under the CIA and with the participation of intelligence agencies in France, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco and (under the Shah) Iran – that ramped up the largely contrived threat of international terrorism prior to and during the CIA’s manufactured war in Afghanistan (see Peter Dale Scott, Launching the U.S. Terror War: the CIA, 9/11, Afghanistan, and Central Asia).

            Intelligence agencies have specialized in the covert – and not so covert – creation of terrorists which are then used to provide a cynical raison d’être for launching military intervention around the world and also providing a pretext to build and expand a domestic surveillance police state.

            A textbook example of this process is the Christmas Day, 2009, underwear bomber fiasco – subsequently exposed as a false flag event – that was exploited to push for installing dangerous radiation-emitting naked body porno scanners at U.S. airports. “

          8. I asked you yesterday to lay off the wild conspiracy theories. Since you’ve decided to ignore my request, I’m moderating your future comments until I’m certain you understand and follow the rules.

            I’d also like to ask you to try not to publish more than three comments in a single day. I don’t want individual commenters to dominate the threads.

  3. RE: “I see Israeli border police mauling unarmed Palestinian demonstrators. I see them pepper-spraying one at point-blank range.” ~ R.S.

    MY COMMENT: It could have been much worse!

    SEE: The Dogs of War: The Next Intifada, By Uri Avnery, Counterpunch, 9/03/11

    (excerpt)…The second (“al-Aqsa”) intifada started after the breakdown of the 2000 Camp David conference and Ariel Sharon’s deliberately provocative “visit” to the Temple Mount. The Palestinians held non-violent mass demonstrations. The army responded with selective killings. A sharpshooter accompanied by an officer would take position in the path of the protest, and the officer would point out selected targets – protesters who looked like “ringleaders”. They were killed.
    This was highly effective. Soon the non-violent demonstrations ceased and were replaced by very violent (“terrorist”) actions.

    With those the army was back on familiar ground.

    All in all, during the second intifada 4546 Palestinians were killed, of whom 882 were children, as against 1044 Israelis, 716 of them civilians, including 124 children…

    ENTIRE COMMENTARY – http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/09/02/the-next-intifada/

  4. RE: “It goes without saying that this image portrays the monstrous thuggery of the border police, known for their savagery against generally defenseless Palestinians.” ~ R.S.

    MY COMMENT: You ain’t jus’ whistlin’ Dixie! *

    FROM WIKIPEDIA [Betar]:

    (excerpt) The Betar Movement (בית”ר, also spelled Beitar) is a Revisionist Zionist youth movement founded in 1923 in Riga, Latvia, by Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky. Betar has been traditionally linked to the original Herut and then Likud political parties of Israel, and was closely affiliated with the pre-Israel Revisionist Zionist splinter group Irgun Zevai Leumi. It was one of many movements and youth groups arising at that time out of a worldwide emergence of fascism.[1] Some of the most prominent politicians of Israel were Betarim in their youth, most notably Prime Ministers Yitzhak Shamir and Menachem Begin, the latter of whom idolized Jabotinsky.[2]…
    . . . The group initially praised Mussolini for his anti-communism and fascist principles, leading it to adopt the black uniform shirt of Italian fascism for a short period. Mussolini’s invasion of Abyssinia, however, was seen as “cowardly” by Betar and led them to break with him shortly after.[8]…

    SOURCE – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betar

    P.S. ALSO SEE The Hidden History of Zionism, Chapter 6, by Ralph Schoenman

    (excerpt)…Mussolini set up squadrons of the Revisionist Zionist youth movement, Betar, in black shirts in emulation of his own Fascist bands.
    When Menachem Begin became chief of Betar, he preferred the brown shirts of the Hitler gangs, a uniform Begin and Betar members wore to all meetings and rallies – at which they greeted each other and opened and closed meetings with the fascist salute. . .

    SOURCE – http://www.marxists.de/middleast/schoenman/ch06.htm

    * IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER FOR THE RENOWNED PHONOLOGIST ADAM HOLLAND: The dropping of the ‘t’ at the end of the word ‘just’, and the dropping of the ‘g’ at the end of the word ‘whistling’ is not meant to allude to, denigrate, or offend, any racial, ethnic or socioeconomic group. Cross my heart and hope to die!
    SEE “ADAM HOLLAND: NEGRO’S GREATEST FRIEND”https://www.richardsilverstein.com/2011/08/20/adam-holland-negros-greatest-friend/
    ALSO SEE: Phonological history of English consonantshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonological_history_of_English_consonants
    Also, no animals were harmed in the making of this comment.
    Furthermore, any similarity of this comment to actual persons or actual events is purely coincidental. I swear on my grandmother’s grave. And I’m referring to the grandmother who suffered (as did we) from early-onset Alzheimer’s back before there even was such a thing.

    1. P.S. SOME “BE(I)TARIM” IN ACTION: Hundreds of soccer fans crowd Jerusalem mall: ‘Death to Arabs!’, by Annie Robbins, Mondoweiss, 3/24/12

      (excerpt)…Chanting “Death to Arabs,” hundreds of Beitar soccer fans crowded into a mall in Jerusalem after their team won a match and what spilled out …words escape me:

      The Independent: Hundreds of fans, mostly teenagers, descended on busy Malha Mall, jumping on tables, waving scarves, and chanting “Death to Arabs”.
      When a group of fans started to heckle and spit on Palestinian women dining with their children in the food hall, the centre’s Arab cleaning staff rushed to their defence and chased the fans off. But moments later, the fans returned, and started to attack the Arab staff.
      “They [the fans] caught some of them and beat the hell out of them,” Yair, the Jewish owner of a bakery in the shopping centre, told Israel’s Haaretz newspaper. “They hurled people into shops, and smashed them against shop windows. … One cleaner was attacked by some 20 people, poor guy.” The brawl might have turned deadly, but food hall staff refused to respond to fans’ demands for knives and sticks…

      SOURCE – http://mondoweiss.net/2012/03/hundreds-of-soccer-fans-crowd-jerusalem-mall-death-to-arabs.html

      P.P.S. MORE “BE(I)TARIM” IN ACTION: Jerusalem Day celebrations PART1 : Provocations. (VIDEO, 03:49) – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NorLZCkCcuY

      1. P.P.P.S. Discussing a 2010 survey of 536 Jewish and Arab respondents between the ages of 15-18, Ha’aretz reported that “Nearly half [49.5%] of Israel’s Jewish high school students do not believe that Israeli-Arabs are entitled to the same rights as Jews in Israel. . . The same poll revealed that more than half [56%] of the students would deny Arabs the right to be elected to the Knesset.”
        While the ADL and other Jewish organizations consider graffiti such as “Death to the Jews” to be serious manifestations of anti-Semitism, the Jerusalem Post reported on the same poll and noted that “50% of the Jewish youngsters who defined themselves as religious [in the poll] said they believe the ‘Death to Arabs’ slogan was legitimate.”

      2. P.P.P.P.S. ALSO – WATCH: Israeli teens brandish racism after Palestinian children die, by Ami Kaufman, +972 Magazine, 4/02/12
        Israeli youth today has no fear of saying what it really thinks about Arabs. The youth featured in the video below are not only are they happy when children die, but one girl said she has no problem with taking a weapon and killing innocent Arabs

        February 16, 2012. A bus full of kids north of Jerusalem hits a truck and turns over. Kids are burned to death in the fiery crash.
        As the reports start to surface, so does the ugly Israeli. On Facebook, on the news sites. In the street. You can’t miss it. First it starts with an exhale of relief that they aren’t Jewish. Next comes the sorrow that more of them weren’t killed.
        “Sure,” you say, “but these don’t represent Israeli society.”
        Well, I beg to differ. I think the teenagers shown in the Channel 10 magazine item below (my translation) are actually quite representative of your average Israeli teenager. Nothing scientific on my part. Not backing it up with data, so you can go ahead and take a jab at me for that. Just backing it up with the daily doses of racism I see every day when I enter my social media, my news sites, my streets, my supermarkets, my clinics, my kids’ ballet classes, my work place. So many places. Those are my sources.
        Sources of disgust.

        VIDEO (14:49) – http://972mag.com/watch-israeli-teens-brandish-racism-after-palestinian-children-killed/40004/

    1. It’s interesting that the NYT story (Bronner) about Land Day, picked up in my local paper, was headed something about Palestinians protesting on Land Day. The text failed to report the international participation in the marches entirely. To the casual reader, it was just another Palestinian protest and little else. The editorial policy at work is just so obvious.

        1. Much as I despise the Israeli far right, calling them Goebbels is another comment rule violation. If your goal or need is to call Israelis Nazis you’re going to have to do it elsewhere. Do you understand?

      1. As was the case all over the US, David. And of course, there were people killed and injured in “clashes,” even though the term implies that there was some kind of equal footing when in fact, the demonstrators were unarmed, and the IOF were equipped not only with pepper spray etc., but were shooting live rounds in Gaza. The fatality that day was a 20 year old Gazan man.

        The first Land Day was in 1976 in response to Israeli theft of lands in the northern West Bank: http://www.palestinefacts.org/pf_1967to1991_land_day_1976.php

        1. “Palestine Facts”, as provided by Mary, cleared up everything for me. Apparently, some Marxist-Leninists alleged “discrimination” in Israel and the confiscation of Arab land. The confiscation of this land was no different from the use of eminent domain in the US. No different. Rowdy commies then protested the confiscation of private Arab land and the Israelis had no choice but to kill six of them dead in self-defense, no doubt.

          “Palestine Facts” will only allow comments which “add value” to the “discussion” which is right: One doesn’t want spurious facts to contradict a full blown fantasy. As you might anticipate, there is then no discussion.

          Thanks Mary, I’ll be turning to this site frequently to get the true story every time.

          1. @ David
            If Mary is the Mary I’m thinking of, I think she chose this site by a mistake, she probably didn’t know it and only read the first line or two.
            “Palestine Facts” is in fact a Hasbara site. It’s just like Committee on Accuracy In Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), a Likudnik organization.
            Or pen-names like “objective”, “neutral observer” etc. You just know right from the start that they are Zionist propagandists.

            By the way there was a article on Ynetnews yesterday concerning the Saturday After-Land Day march in Jaffa, ans it quoted Dannay Ayalon to whom Land Day demonstrations are “political terrorism” and a continuation of Abu Mazens’ “diplomatic terrorism” in international forums. I guess he’s talkig about Un in September. So in the picture firther up, we know thanks to Ayalon, who’s the terrorist.

          2. I thought Mary provided the site in fit of irony, which I then indulged in my response. There’s not a lot of “discussion” on this site at all, which tells you something.

          3. LOL David, I’m amused that you didn’t see the sarcasm behind my post. Maybe it was a tad too subtle for you, or perhaps you simply wanted a pat on the head for promoting the zionist agenda.

            Deir Yassin, I put the site up on purpose. Sometimes I’m inclined to mischief these days because I’ve found myself in one too many so-called “coexistence” groups on Facebook. I sometimes like to out-hasbara the hasbarists.

            I should have been more in-your-face and posted something from StandWithUs, I guess.

          4. Mary — this is out of hand. I did see the “sarcasm” and answer in the same language, or so I thought. Then Deir Yassin provided his own explanation for everything. I do deserve a pat on the head anyway; it has not been easy breaking with a lifetime of particular (and wrong) beliefs!

          5. Mea culpa
            I was the one who didn’t see the sarcasm, neither Mary’s nor David’s. By the way I still don’t see Mary’s sarcasm in her introduction to the Hasbara-link 😀

        2. Mary i read your description of Land Day and do not know if i should laugh or cry.

          Let’s begin with the obvious, Land Day had nothing to do with northern west bank, Land Day was about Israel’s deceleration of imminent domain over a land located in the lower Galilee.
          The place has nothing to do with Palestinians, it has a lot do with Israeli Arabs. While Palestinians are not citizens of the state of Israel, Israeli Arabs are, which make Land Day an Internal Israeli issue. If you would like to discuss the justification of the act, no problem but please start with opening a map and getting your self familiar with the facts, and please stop spreading nonsense.

          1. You’re right.
            Land Day is commemorating the death of six Israeli-Palestinians killed 30.03.1976 during a demonstration against confiscation of their land in the Galilee.
            For the rest you’re wrong !
            You’re clearly NOT Palestinian, and NO non-Palestinian is going to decide whether Palestinians living within the State of Israel are Palestinians or not ! Zionism expelled 80% of the Palestinans, invented a concept: ‘Israeli Arabs’ in order to deny the link between the Palestinians who managed to remain on their land and those who were exiled, but you’re not deciding anything about Palestinian national feelings !
            As Emile Habibi, Christian Palestinian with Israeli citizenship, and longtime member of the Knesset for Hadash, once said: “I didn’t ask Israel to come, Israel came to me !”
            A large majority of Arabs living in Israel consider themselves Palestinians, and NO Hasbara can change that !

          2. Deïr Yassin The situation in Israel is complicated enough without adding an unnecessary layer of complexity.
            Israeli Arabs are Arab citizens of the state of Israel.
            Palestinians are not citizens of the state of Israel.
            Just like there are Syrian / Egyptians / Jordanians Arabs / Muslims and Christians.
            The Palestinians and Israeli Arabs can refer to themselves any way they wish, when i would like to explain something that has to do with the state of Israel, i would refer to the two groups any way i want, As long as it is done in a respectful way i do not see any problem with it. if you have any problems with the way i define things…no one is forcing you to read my comments.

          3. And so I can refer to Arican Americans as Negroes, Coloreds or drakes as long as I do it “respectfully.”. But I don’t because that’s not how Israeli Palestinians refer to themselves. The ultimate respect is to call an ethnic group by the name it calls itself & not the name that is most comfortable to you given yr Israeli nationalist perspective on the matter.

          4. @ The Owl….
            “The situation in Israel is complicated enough without adding an unnecessary layer of complexity”
            That’s plain Hasbara-spin ! People around here are not idiots, and there’s nothing “complex” by calling Palestinians living in Israel for Palestinians. You have a whole variety of choices: ’48 Palestinians, Israeli-Palestinians, Palestinian citizens of Israel etc.
            We all know that “Israeli Arabs” is an Israeli concept.

            “Palestinians are not citizens of the State of Israel”
            Well, the members of my family who live in the state of Israel – and who are Palestinians – actually often feel that way ! Thanks for confirming….

            “As long as it’s done in a respectful way”
            Well, yours wasn’t a respectful way ! You answered Mary concerning Land Day (whether it’s in the West Bank or the Galilee isn’t important) that “this place has nothing to do with Palestinians” and you thus deny Mary the right to respect the way Palestinian citizens of Israel in their large majority identify themselves. Talking about respect…Yeah, sure !
            The Palestinian people is ONE, in ’48 Palestine/State of Israel, in the West Bank, in Gaza and the diaspora. You better start to accept that. ONE.

  5. “If Israel or other nations wish to encourage such refugees not to settle in Israel proper they might offer more compensation to those who do not return to Israel. But returning or not should be a decision of the refugee” (Richard S.)

    Proposing to throw more money at the Palestinians, which is a totally failed Arab policy is oversimplifying the needed solution. Current host countries have to first accept to naturalize the refugees and to spend billions on building the required infrastructures to make the permanent residency of refugees feasible; the “extra cash” given to refugees would be useless if they couldn’t buy a home or start a business with it or move out of their current slums in the host countries. The first decision is therefore with host countries. To that end, the US with Saudi participation has tabled offers of assistance to host countries but zero compensation to the refugees as these would have solved Israel’s problems more than those of the Palestinians and the host countries.

    Demographic hurdles are preventing full absorption of refugees in host countries as much as in Israel but the rightful place for the Palestinians is in their own country and they are not at all interested in remaining in the current host countries.

  6. Great post, Richard. It is interesting that you mentioned the Border Police brutality. I wrote in my latest blog post about Rachel Corrie (click on my name to read) how Israel uses its lowest classes of society to “deal with the Palestinians”. These are usually Druze, lower class Mizrahim and Ethiopians and new immigrants. The lower echelons are always eager to assert their superiority over the untermensch (some things never change) and to prove their loyalty to their benefactors and importers, perhaps hoping to gain access to higher spheres in the Israeli caste system, which they rarely do.

  7. What is EVIL? I think we need to look to Israel as a prime example of evil unfolding and gaining strength with the help of the network that Zionism has created in many Western countries to protect it, shield it from criticism and empower it; IT being pure EVIL.

  8. If this Land Day has taught us anything, it’s that the Palestinian people are more disunited and clannish than previously thought.

    1. If your comments have taught us anything it’s that you’re a racist thug. If a non- Jew called Jews “clannish I’d ban his ass. So welcome to it buddy. Banned & richly deserved too.

        1. You wrote “clannish,” not “clan” and there’s a huge difference & you know it. If you don’t, then you either don’t understand English or you’re being too cute by half. You are right on the edge.

  9. I wonder if Israel goes out of its way to recruit thugs into the Border Police? Or do they have to be trained to be so thuggish?

    Either way you get the same end-result in all its gory display, but it is still an interesting chicken-and-egg question.

    1. The border police are particularly thuggish & I’ve written a great deal here about their predilection for brutality, mayhem, & murder. They are rewarded for this behavior & promoted accordingly.

      1. Well, yeah, I’m not disputing that their behaviour is thuggish. What I’m asking is how that comes about i.e. is Israeli society repleat with thugs, or is the IDF particularly good at brutalizing and dehumanizing its recruits.

        After all, you can train a poodle to attack, but you really have to brutalize the poor thing. But a rottweiler requires very little encouragement to Chump Down.

        Israel’s public should ask themselves a simple question: is *that* photo really how they want the forces of Law and Order to behave?

        And if the answer is “Hell, yes!” then they really do need to have a good hard look at themselves in the mirror, because *that* photo will be a reflection of *their* values.

        1. The Border Police aren’t the IDF. The Border Police are the equivalent of internal security police whose purpose is to terrorize Palestinians. They also capture illegal immigrants or workers. They are a cross between police & army, with less of the professionalism that one expects from the military.

          I’m sorry to say that the answer to your question is that the Israeli Jewish public (with few exceptions) is more than content with its police treating Palestinians this way.

          1. “The Border Police aren’t the IDF.”

            Hmmmm, you might want to reconsider that point.

            The Border Police is a gendarmie i.e. they are soldiers who play at being policemen, they are not policeman who happen to be heavily-armed.

            After all, during wartime the Border Police units fight alongside the “regular” IDF units, which means that
            (a) they receive IDF combat training and
            (b) they operate under an IDF chain-of-command.

            And if they operate within the IDF chain-of-command then as far as I’m concerned they are IDF soldiers.

          2. Dear Richard,
            The Israeli Border Police is a branch of the Israel National Police, and not a part of the Israel internal police.
            Its main task is securing Israel’s borders, it has also been deployed in assisting the Israel Defense Forces, and for counter-terrorism and law enforcement operations in the West Bank, as well as in Jerusalem.
            Their training has very little to do with the Training of an Army soldier, and so are their roles.

            As for “capturing” illigal immigrants or workers” – that is a different unit of the Israeli police, but I can uderstand how someone can confuse between the two due to the fact that in many cases, the Border police capture Palestinian who infiltrate Israel, mostly for work.

            re,
            Nimrod

  10. Richard, I know you won’t publish this, but I want you to read it anyway. Above, you say Israel is not your country. But you do claim to be a Zionist. Zionist ideology asserts that Israel is the homeland (country) of ALL JEWS. Thus, logically, Israel is your country.

    You criticize Persian Advocat for hogging the space, yet you let others, such as Dickerson fill (dominate) the space with nothing more than links to other sources, with absolutely no ideas of his own.

    There are many contentious comments made on your blog that are much more offensive than those made by Persian Avocat or myself. Why do you not block them? Kalea, for example, obviously detests everything you, and Zionism, stand for.

    Sorry it has to end this way. You’ve written some good things that I have been happy to share with others, such as your piece I sent to NYTX. But your priggish remarks in your reply to comments are a waste. Why do you bother?

    1. Wrong Gene. Zionism isn’t one thing any more than France or America is. Zionism, as I practice it, declares that Israel is a homeland for Jews. Not THE homeland for all Jews, but only for those who choose to live there. I also believe it is fully consonant with Zionism that Palestinians have their homeland in Israel as well. So for me, Zionism doesn’t meant that I have to make Aliyah or all Jews do. Zionism is based on choices, not obligations or commands.

      Kalea is moderated & only comments I don’t find offensive are published. Like with him, I gave PA every opportunity to adhere to the rules and warned him numerous times over many months’ time.

      I’ll turn your question around & ask why you bother? No one’s begging you to return every time you take your marbles and in a huff go home. It’s OK with me if you’re here or not here. Just don’t try to turn it into drama. It’s not.

  11. Drama, it’s not.

    I have never taken my marbles and gone home in a huff. It is usually only when you moderate or block my comments. Glad to see you are so much more open now, and have printed the above. But it will be a long time before we will agree on a definition of Zionism. History shows its true colors as a racist, exclusivist enterprise. It will be the downfall of Israel.

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