Why is Israel the good guys????

Seriously, though, Dan, AIPAC is the largest foreign affairs lobby in the US. It has 65,000 members - a staggering number by any count. Most of the US congress has taken quite sizable AIPAC contributions during their election. AIPAC doesn't just work on politicians, either - they have groups which deal entirely with the media as well. Check out their site: Just a moment...------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

I'd like to mention that he left out the things from Israel's early history that don't put it in such a good light, such as the Lavon affair (where the Israeli government was staged terrorist attacks against US interests in Egypt to frame the Egyptians) and the bombing of the King David Hotel.The intent of Zionism wasn't bad. It's practice was. The initial idea, which had limited success, was to buy off what land they could, and to try to arrange for employment for the residents outside of the country. Naturally, this only went so far - most people just didn't want to leave. The inevitable result of attempting to take the rest of the land is violence. If your ideology states that you need to have all of a particular country, and the people there don't want you to take it... well, the results are going to be obvious.It's kind of funny.... the idea behind Zionism is that Jews were a minority wherever they lived, and this minority status led to racism and distrust among the majority populations. By creating an Israeli state, they would be the majority there, and reduce the minority populations elsewhere, thus reducing worldwide anti-Jewish sentiment, and giving Jews a safe place that they can live.By all accounts, it was an utter failure on these fronts.------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

Percy, do you realize that you're using as a reference an Israeli lobbying group's website (us-israel.org)? The very first line of their About page:The AMERICAN-ISRAELI COOPERATIVE ENTERPRISE (AICE) was established in 1993 as a nonprofit 501(c)(3), nonpartisan organization to strengthen the U.S.-Israel relationship by emphasizing the fundamentals of the alliance - the values our nations share.Since you've apparently been getting your information from Israeli lobbies, would you in the interests of being fair-minded take some time to listen to the opposing side? Subscribe to the International Solidarity Movement's mailing list for a few weeks; by having both perspectives, you'll have a more balanced look at the present, and through the lens of the present, you'll have a more balanced look at the past.------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

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and no, I certainly don't have fucking horns. (Honestly... had to explain that last one to an especially thick girl once who was meeting her first Jew.)

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I bet she was disappointed. It reduces the options...Now if you'll excuse me, as a generic white American, I need to get down to my SUV in time to drop the kids off at day-care and go league bowling this evening with the local chapter of the NRA.(BTW, I hate that stereotype about Jewish = Pro-Israel, too It's really hurt the people who don't like what Israel has done, because every time we comment on it, we're accused of anti-semitism. My bridesmaid is half Jewish, and hates how militarily overaggressive Israel has been.)------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."[This message has been edited by Rei, 10-24-2003]

1. You did not just reference a map of the initial partition plan. You referenced a pro-Israel commentary on the partition plan, from an Israeli lobbying group.2. Seing as you're referencing such things, it makes one question where you get your information from. If one is reading information from Israeli lobby websites, it would only be fair to read live descriptions of what is going on in the territories, from international observers.3. If you're not getting your information from lobbying sites, it's recommendable that you don't use them as references. If I made a reference to electronicintifada.org, would you think that was balanced?By the way, how familiar are you with the (rejected by the zionists) Peel Commission Plan, the 1947 partition resolution, and the later brutal ethnic cleansing of over 800,000 from their homes on Ben Gurion's orders (including Yitzak Rabin's own memoirs about his involvement in 50,000 of them (the towns of Lydda and Ramle))?Also, I should add, I don't recall whether it was you or someone else who claimed that there were more Jews in Palestine than Arabs. There were more Jews in the *Jewish partition* than Arabs, and not by a huge number; according to Ben Gurion, about 60% of Israel would have been Jewish (pre-expulsion).------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."[This message has been edited by Rei, 10-24-2003]

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The biases in both your position and the rabid pro-Israel position are equally abhorent to me. I think you really need someone as rabidly pro-Israel as you are pro-Arab to do this up right.

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Care to qualify what these are, or are you just going to assert that they're there?------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

Concerning google:
http://images.google.com/images...
{Shortened display form or URL, to restore page width to normal - Adminnemooseus}Concerning the lack of anchors:
http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/images/maps/02MAP_pg55.gifI would like to apologize if you really did not realize that you were linking to a web page (not a map, but a web page that just happened to contain a map halfway down) from an Israeli lobbying group. I would just ask that you be more careful next time, when you're accusing people of pro-arab bias and portraying yourself as a moderate.

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But quit this silly "you're getting your information from biased sites" garbage. I haven't gotten information about Arab/Israel affairs from anywhere other than the daily news for over a decade. (If your answer is, "Aren't you aware that all the major news outlets are controlled by the Jews?" then all I can do is roll my eyes.

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Percy, you of all people should know what a straw man is - I never once claimed that "the major news outlets are controlled by the Jews." The pro-Israel faction has *far* stronger of a lobby than the pro-Arab side, but they don't "control" the news. Of course, if you think lobbying by a 65,000 strong group from one lobby alone is irrelevant, well, you're free to have that viewpoint. If you want to talk about US media (versus foreign media) coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, that in itself could use its own thread. My favorite commonly occuring line in articles is the "relative calm" line - for example of this type, NPR's Linda Gradstein's "You know, there's been actually three weeks of relative quiet. Only one Israeli has been killed in those three weeks, as opposed to 44 Israelis who were killed when Zinni was here last time in November and early December.". It's apparently only "relative quiet" when Israelis aren't dying; 26 Palestinians were killed during this "quiet", of which most were unarmed, 6 of whom were minors), starting with the shooting of 13-year-old Rami Khamis Al-Zorob (shot in the head while playing near his home). Unfortunately, there's not much of an organized effort to hold the media accountable for things like this, and so they keep happening. We can go into the coverage of numbers of killings on both sides, number of minors on both sides, the ratio of reporting on civilian versus military deaths on both sides, etc - take your pick, there've been plenty of counts done.I would ask what your opinion would be as to why there is such a difference between US coverage of Israel/Palestine, and most of the rest of the world's (such as even Israel itself. Do you ever read Haaretz Daily, the Jerusalem Post, or any of those papers?).

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I thought finding the map was important because it shows how small a part of the originally planned Arab state Israel took in the 1948-1949 Arab/Israeli war.

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They expelled a massive number of people from the territories, Percy - the region has, and had, a very uneven population density. Rabin himself admits to being involved in the expulsion of 50,000 from just two cities. There were over a hundred cities in which the Israelis rolled up and drove the residents out of their homes in mass, killing any who resisted. They siezed the very richest farmland in Palestine - about 80% of cultivatable land, 50% of the citrus production, 90% of the olive groves, etc. This is just 1948. In the current situation, they even monopilize the supposedly Palestinian territories - for example, in the West Bank, Israeli settlers use 80% of the water supply, mostly for their agricultural exports. I'm extremely thankful to the ISM members for chaining themselves to the wells after the Israeli army began shelling them, destroying abut 50% of the city's water supply before they got there (I bet you'll see this as meaning I'm rabidly pro-Arab - wanting the people of Rafah to be able to have drinking water).Unfortunately, so many people that are pro-Israel see themselves as moderates. My only response, really, is to summarize: Read what the rest of the world thinks about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - read their newspapers, they're mostly online just like ours - and then see how toward the "middle" of world public opinion you are.(edit: After reading over this again, I would like to stress again that I apologize if a inadvertently pigeonholed you into a role that you don't want to be in, in this debate. I know you want to be evenhanded, and I assume that your posting of propaganda was just inadvertent in looking for a map.)------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."[This message has been edited by Rei, 10-25-2003][This message has been edited by Adminnemooseus, 10-27-2003]

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1. Which side purposely targets innocent civilians and uses women and children as shields to protect the guys with the guns?

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Israel: Sharon Investigation Urged (Sabra and Shatila Massacre)Amnesty Report: Israeli Military Committed War Crimes (use of human shields, a sample case)Challenge: For every one case of Palestinians using human shields, I'll give you 10 the other way around.Which side has the vast majority of Planet Earth apart from America and Israel itself supported?

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3. Which side made the land productive and built it up? Which side did little in this respect?

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Do you have any clue how many dunams of Palestinian farmland (olive groves, greenhouses... not much citrus, because Israel already stole most of the citrus-growing region) have been destroyed in this conflict alone? Or how many are being siezed by the "Separation Fence"/"Apartheid Wall"? Or how much Palestinian water Israel diverts for their farming? I find your notion that the Palestinians didn't farm before Israel got there patently amusing. Why don't you just go and claim that their century-old olive groves were used for sacrificing babies?

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4. Which side kept the land from being one more fundamentalistic Islamic dictatorship to solidify the entire Middle East to freedomless tyranny with oil for leverage for world conquest?

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1) Which side committed ethnic cleansing on their siezed land so that they could establish a religious state?2) (different answer): Who overthrew the only major Arab democracy in history?

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4. Which side names streets after suicide bombers and teaches their children that doing so is noble?

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1) Who had tens of thousands of pilgrims who visited the grave of a mass murderer every year?2) Whose children have trouble being taught anything because entirer cities are often kept in long-term lockdown, and tear-gasses schools during it? (Nablus was kept in lockdown for over 100 contiguous days at one point; Bethlehem was in lockdown last Christmas - you should have seen the Palestinian Christians protesting, I should try and track down some of the pictures).

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5. Which side has consistently declared that Israel has no right to exist and has consistently taught this in their schools to the children?

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Which side's dominant party has sought the ethnic cleansing of the entire territories, and actually has a chance to accomplish it?

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6. Which side refused to sign a treaty when offered all the specific demands they had called for?

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LAF, "Barak's Generous Offer" rears its ugly head again. The West Bank and the Gaza Strip compose 22% of historic Palestine. In Oslo, they conceded that other 78% (which includes most of the good land in the territory). Barak further demanded an additional 10% of the 22% as "permanent settler blocks". Not only is this losing another 10% of the land, but it slices the country into pieces, making travel from one part to another a long arduous process. Then there's another 10% "temporary Israeli Control" regions, which have no time limit on the "temporary" part, making them effectively permanent - and these further slice up the nation. To compensate for the land losses, as almost a mockery of good faith, Barak offered some land that Israel had used as a nuclear waste dump. Israel was to retain complete control over Palestine's borders on all sides, the right of return had to be given up.Buz, give up the Israeli propaganda.------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

Hmm, lets see what's been going on in Israel today - from live reports. Israel supporters, please feel free to post your own reports of what has gone on in Israel today. Perhaps this should be a regular thing - reports, just to make the current status clear. Things like this (or worse) happen every day in Palestine, so if the two nations' plights are on par, we should expect daily things like this to Israelis as well, shouldn't we?INTERNATIONAL VOLUNTEERS BEATEN BY SETTLERS[Einabus, Awarta, West Bank]International and Israeli volunteers were beaten by a group of young
Israeli settlers while they were accompanying Palestinian farmers
picking olives at midday today. As a result of the destruction of
approximately 250 trees by settlers, farmers from the Einabus area
were afraid to harvest their olives without the presence of
observers from Rabbis for Human Rights (RHR) and the International
Solidarity Movement (ISM). Palestinian farmers are frequently
attacked on their land by settlers who are not held to account for
their actions.Sixty-six year old John (ISM) from San Francisco and Rabbis
Ascherman and Nir (RHR) were beaten with stones and clubs by young
men (some with masked faces) from Izhar settlement. John has a
badly injured leg and is currently being treated in Rabin Medical
Centre (Beilinson Hospital) for a suspected fracture. The Rabbis
have suffered bruising but have not required hospital treatment.For further information please call:ISM Media Office +972-2277 4602------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

Today's Israel/Palestine news:Permits ordered for Palestinians | Palestinian territories | The GuardianThe Israeli military is ordering 12,000 Palestinians to get permits to live in their own homes, whose homes are near the "security fence". The number is expected to rise to near 40,000 within months. This is the fence that is confiscating a huge amount of Palestinian farm land, as it's not being built on the green line, and is maneuvering around towns and villages so as to cut them off from their fields.Only Israelis and Jews can enter the area without such a pass.Also, from Sunday:Page Not Found | Reuters.comIsrael demolishes, in one swipe, the homes of 156 families in retaliation for an attack against one of Israel's illegal settlements. Need I remind people that collective punishments are illegal under international law...[This message has been edited by Rei, 10-28-2003]

Probably a good point. I think the main reason that this happens is that there typically isn't anything that goes on in Israel that isn't widespread knowlege. When there's a suicide bombing that kills a half dozen people, it's front-page news. When 40,000 people are required to get permits just to live in their own homes (while their land is cut off from them), hundreds of families have their homes taken away from them, children are shot-up by the IDF, etc, it's just another day.Any person who leans toward the Palestinian side of the conflict is going to horribly outpace Israeli supporters.------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."