Do you seriously suggest it is a privilege to be on a site like yours. More a penalty

So that would make you a serious masochist.

I’ll send your regards to Len & Libby. I can’t imagine why they’d have anything to do with you.

I note in yr reply that you didn’t actually name anything you’d done on behalf on any of the peace organizations you listed as ones you respect. Which would make you a big talker.

One Voice is at the forefront of bringing Israelis and Palestinians together, but of course that organisation would not commend itself to you as it is even handed and anything that has a good word to say about Israel must be an anathema to you

What was it you just said about not presuming to know what you believe? Yet you stupidly presume I don’t support One Voice (which I do). As for saying a good word about Israel–I say good words when they’re warranted. Besides, you haven’t read enough of my posts to know whether I do say a good word or not (I do).

BTW, Jeremiah, Isaiah & Amos were castigated by their brethren for the same reason: they weren’t sufficiently pro-Israel; too much criticism. Their peers wanted to hear good news fr. them & all they heard instead was carping. Spinoza too said things his fellow Jews didn’t want to hear. So they flayed him in the same way you try to flay me. But I’d rather be on their side than yours any day. I know which side history will vindicate & it won’t be yours.

And listen my friend, you’ve caught yrself out in commending the Traubmans to our attention. They are friends of mine. Their views of the conflict are, if anything, more strenuous than mine. You can’t possibly have anything in common with any initiative of theirs. And if you do then you don’t know anything about their politics & they don’t anything about yours. I’ll be talking to them about you to find out if you’re all mouth or whether you’ve ever actually DONE anything to help them.

And finally why not walk into any Israeli hospital and see the Jewish and Palestinian doctors working side by side to save lives

Well, not precisely. Palestinian doctors can’t work in Israel. But you may mean Israeli Arab doctors. If so, I would concede there may be handful in Israel. But given that 20%+ of Israelis are Arab would you care to hazard a guess as to what percentage of Israeli doctors are Arab? How much lower than 20% would it be?? Would it even be 1%? And if so, why would that be? Don’t paint a pretty picture of Israeli society that isn’t justified by facts. I don’t mind someone praising Israel, but do it w. facts on yr side.

You may also like to visit Neve Shalom

Don’t talk to me about Israeli peace organizations. Believe me, I’ve been supporting them since the late 1960s. I’ve supported Neve Shalom since it was founded. Your views have nothing to do with what Neve Shalom stands for. If you forwarded yr comments in this thread to any member of Neve Shalom they’d blanche at reading yr views.

Basically, you’ve just listed a catalogue of the few peace groups you know. You haven’t proven that you’ve actually done a thing to support them. But I’d really like to know what specifically you have done to support a single one of these groups. If you have, more power to you. If you haven’t, shame on you for pretending that you have.

We’re talking about Gaza, remember? Hamas runs Gaza, not Fatah. I’m not going to defend Fatah as I think they’re, with a few exceptions, a bunch of corrupt thugs. You specifically claimed that HAMAS had misappropriated aid funds. Not that Arafat had. I asked you to prove that HAMAS had committed these acts. Not to prove that Arafat had. You are trying to smear Hamas, remember? So let’s stick to Hamas for the sake of argument.

There is plenty of photographic evidence of arms smuggling through the tunnels but not one thing showing food etc goes through it as you claim

Sloppy, Joy–very sloppy. This from the pro-Bush neocon Washington Times:

An elaborate network of tunnels from Egypt has become the primary transport route for commercial goods entering the Gaza Strip, enabling the area’s Hamas rulers to maintain a rudimentary economy in the face of an Israeli embargo.

Food products, machinery parts, raw materials and even antibiotics are delivered to Gaza through the tunnels…

Care to retract that statement??

As you seem to have a major case of logorhea, I’m going to impose a limit on you. You can write one more comment in this thread & then you are done in this thread. If you do not honor this request your privilege to continue commenting in this thread will be revoked. You’ve enjoyed the privilege of publishing several thousand words in this comment thread. Move on to another thread or risk the revocation of yr privileges. Oh & by the way, do feel free to complain about censorship. But before you do, note that I specifically mention this provision meant for the few obsessive compulsives like you who seek to regurgitate endlessly here.

If you use an IP address never registered by my spam filter it moderates yr comment. So stop getting melodramatic & imagining yrself the victim of a conspiracy.

Israel has done its best to move Palestinians out of the camps and into new homes.

This is rich. You’re actually claiming Israel offered to build new homes for Gazans??? Surely, you must be joking. Palestinians & even Israeli Arabs literally can’t build any new construction in Israel or the Territories because Israel refuses to issue licenses. And you have the chutzpah to claim that Israel actually did, or wanted to build new homes for Gazans in Gaza??? Do pls. provide me a single shred of evidence of this.

Nine new residential schemes have been built so far, housing some ten thousand families that have chosen to vacate the camps. Each family was given a plot of land with full infrastructure

Joy, Joy, Joy…what do you take us for? Fools. Why didn’t you tell us you were using CAMERA as yr source? You expect anyone here to believe a single word from that sack of Israel-First ideology? Really, Joy. I can see why you refused to provide a link to them because you’d prob. read my comment rules which specifically note which partisan groups can’t be quoted here as credible sources. Guess who’s among them? CAMERA. What a surprise. And you feel they’re convincing evidence to buttress yr argument.

A word of advice: don’t quote from CAMERA here again. There are actual credible resources even right wingers like yrself can use to provide evidence for yr perspective. If you’ve got to resort to CAMERA then you’re a) really desperate & b) don’t care about truth or accuracy.

So Russia knew to a large extent what type of kidnapping situation they’d be dealing w. since they’ve experienced a number of high profile kidnapping situations involving Chechen militants. The fact that the former dealt with all of them in the same brutal fashion only indicates how obtuse they are & how little they learn from their experiences.

UN resolution
A/RES/31/15(A-E)
23 November 1976

. Calls once more upon Israel:

(a) To take effective steps immediately for the return of the refugees concerned to the camps from which they were removed in the Gaza Strip and to provide adequate shelters for their accommodation;

(b) To desist from further removal of refugees and destruction of their shelters;

While the PLO has done its best to keep Palestinians in refugee camps, Israel has done its best to move Palestinians out of the camps and into new homes. Israel even started a heavily subsidized “build-your-own-home” program for Palestinian refugees. According to an early description of the program:

Nine new residential schemes have been built so far, housing some ten thousand families that have chosen to vacate the camps. Each family was given a plot of land with full infrastructure…

The new neighborhoods were built on state land within municipal areas near the camps, and each had an electricity network, water and a sanitation system … a road system, paved sidewalks and developed surroundings. Public buildings were constructed in each neighborhood such as modern schools, health clinics and shopping centers, and land was allocated for mosques.

… As soon as his house is built, the refugee becomes the full property owner, and in due course his property is registered in the Land Register. (Judea, Samaria and the Gaza District, 1967 – 1987; Israel, Ministry of Defense, 1987)

Sheik Radwan, Gaza: New houses for Palestinian refugees built by Israel. (1977, Moshe Milner) Sheik Radwan, Gaza: Road construction in neighborhood built for Palestinian refugees by Israel (1977, Moshe Milner)

The vacated homes in the refugee camps were taken down with the goal of eventually creating enough open space so that the camps themselves could be rebuilt as further new neighborhoods for the refugees.

It’s not surprising that the PLO vehemently opposed this program – after all, former residents of a refugee camp, now living in a nice home in a new neighborhood, would have a stake in supporting peace and opposing violence, exactly the opposite of the PLO’s strategy.

What is perhaps surprising is that the United Nations also opposed the program, and passed harsh resolutions demanding that Israel remove the Palestinians from their new homes and return them to the squalid camps. For example, UN General Assembly Resolution 31/15 of Nov. 23, 1976:

Calls once more upon Israel:

(a) To take effective steps immediately for the return of the refugees concerned to the camps from which they were removed in the Gaza Strip and to provide adequate shelters for their accommodation;

(b) To desist from further removal of refuges and destruction of their shelters.

Similarly, UNGA Resolution 34/52 of November 23, 1979 declared that:

measures to resettle Palestinian refugees in the Gaza Strip away from their homes and property from which they were displaced constitute a violation of their inalienable right to return;

1. Calls once more upon Israel to desist from removal and resettlement of Palestinian refugees in the Gaza Strip and from destruction of their shelters;

Perhaps thanks to this support from the UN, the PLO began threatening to kill any refugee who would move out of the camps.