News

Segment of Article

Actually, AF here is a segment of the article I mentioned below.  I posted this several months ago in another thread but since it came up here, I thought it might be appropriate to repost it.

While the two party state seems at first blush to be a solution to the crisis in Israel, it really exacerbates the problem.  To begin with it is a form of segregation based on religion and ethnicity.  Oslo was an attempt to create a two nation solution but in reality it was a disaster doomed to failure from the outset.  While most writers have focused upon the discriminatory and illegal effect of Oslo upon Jews, few writers have examined the discriminatory and illegal effect upon Palestinians. But that discrimination needs to be recognized and addressed. 

Oslo forces the Palestinians onto reservations in the same way that the American Indian was forced unto reservations in America. Through Oslo, Gaza and the West Bank will become Palestinian reservations in the Middle East. While the PA leadership claims to have an interest in a separate Palestinian state, the reality is that the Palestinians seek a return to the land of Medinat Yisrael where they resided before the relocation to modern Palestine.  Disengagement has thrown an already devestated territory into further financial devestation.  The situation will only become worse and it will not give the Palestinians what they truly desire.  The Palestinians seek to become part of Eretz Yisrael and they should be permitted to do so under a fair and equitable government that secures the rights of all people, not just the Jews.  The current so called democracy in Israel does not do this.  

The reason Israelis sought an independent state was to avoid the antisemitism experienced in Europe.  However, by allowing Arabs to remain in Israel, Israelis run the risk of becoming out numbered by Arabs, and in a democracy they then run the risk being outvoted and ultimately losing control of their own government.  This could result in the destruction of the Israeli government and eventually another holocaust. 

Yet, a two nation state is a not a cure for the problem in Israel. It only treats the symptoms.  The problem is religious and ethnic  discrimination that is caused by Israel's attempt to create a democratic system of government. The following examples describe what is really occurring in Israel.

Blacks to the left, whites to the right (Remember the segregated drinking fountains and restrooms in America?)
Indians to the left (onto the reservations), whites to the right                                                                       

Palestinians to the left (onto the reservations of Gaza), Jews to the right

Oslo is a makeshift remedy consisting of discrimination and segregation. Segregation is Oslo’s nearsighted and ineffective solution that will only exacerbate the problem leading to decades of hatred, warfare and blood shed if not the complete annihilation of Israel/Palestine. The alternative to Oslo, which is integration, is the solution to overcoming prejudice and hatred in the Middle East.  Perhaps we can learn from experimentation in the United States on this issue.

In the 1950's, in the United States, discrimination between black people and white people was intense. In many parts of the nation, blacks were not permitted to use the same water fountain as whites. They were not allowed to use the same restrooms or even eat at the same restaurants. At that time, future president John F. Kennedy saw the evil in this system of segregation. He recognized that all men are created equal. In an effort to eliminate racial segregation in the United States, and with the help of Lyndon Johnson, he set out to draft the Civil Rights Act of 1957. He became the first president since Harry S. Truman to call for equal rights for blacks and whites. Indeed, it became a primary platform of his election campaign. The assassination of President Kennedy in 1963 left the equal rights activists feeling defeated and hopeless. Would Lyndon Johnson carry on the fight for equality? To the relief of equal rights supporters throughout the states, President Johnson did carry on the fight against discrimination and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 became the standard for racial equality in America.

After the death of President Johnson, others picked up the scepter to carry forward the fight for racial equality. They recognized that Kennedy was correct in his belief that racial discrimination was evil. They began to develop plans for integrating people of different races with one another. They recognized that only by living side by side, and learning to respect and to care for one another, could racial discrimination be eliminated. Some very wise advocates of equal rights recognized that it was necessary to begin education and cultural integration at a young age. To achieve that objective they developed a program called "bussing." Under this program school children were to be transported by busses to other schools in order to achieve a balanced racial mix in American schools. Similar programs were implemented in other areas of culture with the same objective. These programs were vigorously opposed by the mainstream population in America but they were implemented nonetheless. The result is that today, in America, racial discrimination as it once existed, has been essentially eradicated. Indeed, we just elected a black man as president of the United States.  Clearly there will always be fringe elements that engage in the practice of discrimination in various forms. But for the most part, among Americans, racial discrimination is unacceptable and intolerable.

What is occurring in Israel is the precise opposite of the brain child of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In part it stems from the notion among some early Zionists that it was necessary to expel Arabs from Palestine and among some Arabs that Jews should not live in their land.  Oslo is a perpetuation of the belief that Jews and Arabs must live separately. 

The following are some of the violations of the United Declaration of Human Rights that would occur if Oslo is reinstated:

Now, Therefore THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY proclaims THIS UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction.

Article 1.

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Article 2.

Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.

Article 3.

Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.

Text omitted

Article 7.

All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.

Article 8.

Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law.

Article 9.

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.

Article 10.

Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.

          Text omitted

Article 12.

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

Article 13.

(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.

(2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.

         Text Omitted

Article 17.

(1) Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.

(2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.

Article 18.

Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

Article 19.

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

         Text omitted

Article 30.

Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.

The solution in Israel is not further segregation and discrimination, it is assimilation and accomodation.  The biggest impediment to this is the misinterpretion of the Torah which precludes non-jews from living in Israel.  That issue will be addressed separately.

you are obviously too idealistic as well...:-)

i was told that on another thread.  so what!  i will remain so as long as i possibly can.  what a wonderful world it would be if... IF... we could all have that attitude!  israels reputation has suffered greatly, and by default, so has ours.  it's getting harder and harder to plead victimization.  not for one second am i denying their justification but at some point, someone is going to have to say "ok... time to sit down and talk this thing through".  enough is enough.  i agree with both your analysis'.  fight the good fight.. eh?

It is interesting because

I argued something very similar onsite to the Zionists or at least I tried to. i tried to tell them that if they would adopt a completely pacifist approach and not retaliate miliatrily to those rockets no matter what but respond by giving aid to the people (even if it were hard to get it into Gaza, there would always be a way..food, medicine, whatever they need) and make sure the people would know it was from them, end the wall-building and all the other crap, that they would be amazed how soon opinion of Israel would shift both world opinon and opinion within Gaza and Palestine in general.

Of course the initial response was cynical, oh we already did that whenever and it failed..

and of course I never could get further along in the discussion because of all the other shouting that was always going on.

There are people on a feed now on sudan as we speak who are defending IRI on ,Bashir...so Oxfam is a neo-Colonialist hegemonic conspiracy You go feed those people, I said. One person signed themselves AMUSED. Amused at the Western response to Darfur. It is indeed very hard on a forum like this one with so much ideologiccal polarization (and sometimes just plain meanness) to get reasonable ideas, which always involve compromises on both sides, off the rgound.

Major First Step

Except for the torture, this is a major step in the right direction. 

//www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5itboNyakbUQdWE9h_UrcHcjMglsg

Palestine needs a leader like Ghandi who would fight the battle on the floor of the UN General Assembly and in the media rather than in the streets of Palestine and Israel.  I know of such a man but of course he sits in a prison in Iran. 

If Palestine took a passive approach to this conflict, opposing violence, and presented their case to the media, those who oppose their position would be powerless.  It was not until Nelson Mandela reaffirmed his original opposition to violence (which he had retracted after a massacre in 1962) that the world became sympathetic to the black people in South Africa.  The greatest weapon the Palestinians could launch would be a major campaign against violence but to do that they need a leader of courage.  I have been watching for him but I do not yet see him. 

Actually it's a funny thing because when I wrote that post D/F

I suddenly realized I don't actually KNOW what your views are on Israel in terms of one-state or two-state solution David, and that is why I did not USE the word Zioniist. However I guess it was implicit when I said I'm a non-Zionist and..What I actually said was you "argued the case for Israel" . You and I never really got to tak about it because I was too busy getting mud slung in my face for trying to hear that case..

It is a very complex issue. There is an underlying root cause, I think which is that the world knows we are all collectively resposible for this because the situation in Israel was a direct result of the attrocities of the 20th centruy and I DON'T mean just the Holocaust. To fully explore the question of ultimate responsibility and arrive at truth and reconciliation would require a FAR wider-reaching and far deeper scrutiny of Imperialsim than the facile one, which just fosters polarized ideologies..those kinds of ideologies are smoke screens and rationalizations and it is very easy to espouse them and at the same time sip your latte and stream in your netflix without taking a hard look at yourself and your role in it all. In other words it's easy to be what we used to ca ll at Columbia in the 70's a "coffee table Marxist" (today it's not Marxist but the principle still holds..)

I am not saying I don't enjoy my latte but I enjoy it living in a realm of ambiguity where there where the borders between who's right and who's wrong are much fuzzier than for most--especially for most here--and where most of us are both innocent and guilty of the same things. It is always the victims of white phosphorus you have to support whatever shape that phosphorus takes but...every day I read Haaretz and aljazeera together because they balance each other out and what is interesting is that their views are not that far apart...a lot of people supposedly on my "side" here don't want to admit that because many people who write for Haaretz ARE Zionists so what does that say about their view of iZionists. I don't think they liked this either...no it wasn't featured but...not one single comment..except for one you really can't call a comment at all.

//iranian.com/main/blog/rosie-roxy-roshan/what-hamas

the other day someone said something on a feed about CEO's with ties to the AIPAC lobby and I said what about once in a blue moon saying APAIC's ties to these CEO's? The real concentration of wealth in the US is in the hands of WASPS, why is AIPAC the Borg that devoured everybody? Maybe the angle Establishment is the Borg that devoured the Jews for their own imperialistic agenda? Actually the relationship is reciprocal. But when you're always using a certain kind of language it DOES wind up imbing the Jews with this Protocol of the Elders of Zion-like power...and that gets...very messy...

Going further. In reality the term Holocaust denier is propagandistic itself, as I'm sure you know. There are very few deniers, what there are are people who question the extent and their discussions are as nuanced as any other discussions, there are hardliners as well as much milder revisionists and everything in between. But the fact is that wherever they may lie on the spectrum, if you go back to who first came up with the numbers of the deaths in general and specific to the gas chambers, it appears to have been the Allied forces. Whether the figures and tactics reported were correct or not is not my concern, my concern is that if they are exaggerated it would appear that the original exaggeration was not by "the Zionists."  These ALMIGHTY Zionists...

And on and on and on.  When you start blaming Israel for everything (and they have a LOT to answer for..) without putting it into the context of a larger blame (what Jaspers called "moral" and "metaphysical" responsibility as opposed to just "criminal" in "On the Question of German Guilt"), it becomes same ol' same ol'. flip side of the ideologies you're supposedly combatting. No human evolution has taken place...

and some of the treatment I got from my own "side" for questionig some of Hamas' tactics for even asking Israelis to tell me their own narrative of their history...finally one of them told me I did not speak "passionately enough" about the Palestinians and therefore was a Zionist and god knows what, and I just said you know what you are you're a Fascist in petticoats.

I know I have already mentioned some of this privately to both of you, DW and Fish.

Among many blogs I have wanted to write has been one called "Fascists in Petticoats" but as you and Fish both knowI have reasons why I am reluctant to spend a lot of time writing blogs., foremost among them the non-featuring..

but I had the link and everything all ready...

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMPNoD52bsg&feature=related

LOL

Actually during the Gaza conflict there was a lways a small group of people who would just say "but what about Darfur?" No one answered them. I thought about it a lot I knew it was a complicated response and would require more than just a simple "racism" reply which they knew anyway, it was rhetorical. I had planned to write a series at the end of the Gaza conflict on my observationsa and the last one would've centered on the what about darfur issue. I only got to write one of those blog  it wasn't featured so i gave u on the proect. Too painful, too draining too much time and effort to be hidden...should've been an article anyway...

//iranian.com/main/blog/rosie-roxy-roshan/nazi-state-israel-state-mind-part-i-hiroshima-1

well if EVER there was a time to ask what about darfur it would be now wouldn't it? with the stink about al-Bashir and IRI and the war crimes indictment...

anyhow Fish without tooting my own horn thank you but I do know I am good for the site. The question for me right now is is the site good for me? No it is not I need a break.

well said DW... well said

and i look forward to your article.  i'm trying to stay neutral on the subject of two-state or one-state because i don't feel i have enough information to form an opinion, much less discuss it in public!!!  i am lucky to have a friend in rosie who understands that a difference in opinion does not negate any respect two people might have for one another.  unlike some who have tried to speak FOR me, rosie has never twisted my words to suit her agenda.  my agenda remains the same as hers... a desire for peace.  i hope you'll join me in assuring her that iranian.com is a better place because of.. and with... her presence. 

peace out.

Reply to Rosie

Actually, I am not a Zionist either Rosie but I recognize that the issue is far more complex than is usually presented with the black and white polarization as it exists in this forum.  I support a single unified government in Israel/Palestine consisting of the Gaza Region, Israel, and the West Bank under a single unified government.  Anything else is based upon discrimination and segregation.  We tried that in the US after the Civil War and it led to a disaster until the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 when the picture began to change.  Now we have a black president.  So eliminating discrimination as impediments to government and opportunities does work.  The proof is in the pudding. I will be publishing an article on this issue shortly.   

I oppose the intentional targeting of innocent civilians under any circumstance.  This includes firing Kassam rockets into civilian populations and suicide bombers just as it includes unreasonable collateral damage in response to assaults.  It gets more complicated when issues like the use of humans as shields and firing weapons from populated areas come into play but there are answers. 

There is a root cause to the problem in Israel which is the dispossession and occupation.  That is an issue that must be addressed but it cannot be addressed by winding the clock backward 100 years. Whatever is done has to go forward not backward and it has to be a resolution that is fair to everyone not just the Jews and not just the Palestinians.    

but i want to make a point about david and anonfish..

these two people are friends of mine and they both have argued the case for israel i am jewish and i am not a zionist and neither of them have any problem with that and they never questioned my beliefs or my right to have them, we respect and try to understand each other's beliefs...and i have come to the opinion that what we share is a desire for world peace, and that as long as that is the fundamental desire, if we have faith, i mean as a people on the planet...that the political differences will be resolved...

and david posted this...and as you can see these two people are as disturbed as i am by this disgusting congressman...and care about the palestinians just as much as i do.

most people on this planet desire PEACE. most people on this forum desire PEACE.

trust must be built. it's like a marriage..we're all married..because we're all human...and you have to work every day to make a marriage work.

rosie

yes, this was withdrawn

kyle admitted the amendment was based on incomplete evidence given to him regarding obamas intentions.  it IS disgusting that something like this could get that far without more information.  at least you can be satisfied to know that his reputation is probably shot to hell after this...lol.

elsa.  thanks for speaking out.  this isn't the first time gol-dust has used such offensive language. 

No,

thank YOU.

Kyl Withdraws

Thanks to everyone who promptly jumped on this.  :)

//blog.amnestyusa.org/us/palestinian-refugees-kyl-retreats/

Reply to Knee Jerk

By your logic political asylum should not ever be a basis for allowing people to immigrate. By your logic, no assistance should have been offered to the Jews in Germany because, after all the people of Germany elected Adolph Hitler into office.  Do you believe that every single person in Gaza voted for Hamas? 

Please explain how this amendment is implied in "refugee law." To what "refugee law" are you referring?

Kyl was the co-author with Lieberman ...

to the Kyl-Lieberman Amendment to the Defence Authorisation Bill which worked systematically towards preparing the grounds for a US attack on Iran. Its designation of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist organisation opened the door to the possibility of a devastating war. So his politics are very consistent! His co-author though was a Democrat! So we better not get tied down by labels ...

This amendment is implied in US refugee law.

The protection that is extended to refugees should not be offered to Gaza people? Because they are persecuted by the Hamas government they voted in office. Now they want to run away from it as refugees. How does that make sense to anybody? Now I know why this redundant amendment is needed; to explain the US refugee law to the clueless.

Reply to gold-dust

You have a tendancy to make broad sweeping generalizations about people, organizations and nations which makes you look naive and foolish. It diminishes your credibility. There are good Republicans and bad Republicans just as their are good Democrats and bad Democrats. Abraham Lincoln, the man who abolished slavery in America was a Republican. Did he destroy America?

Rosie, he is Republican! The ones who hate Arabs & destroyed US

Besides, I bet AIPAC was behind his big mouth!

Reply to Rosie

Here is his profile:

//kyl.senate.gov/

Sick

That's so sick I guess I'm naive but I can't believe there are people like that in cCongress . Aren't they supposed to have some kind of education?