If Americans knew

[Omni_Skittles]

How are Israelis undermining our power?

[Omni_Skittles]

Themis;1101619 wrote: Why ask me?

Go find out why.. inform yourself, watch the video with the sound up or go to the website, use your feet or twiddle your toes..the video just points out stuff... unless i tuned a lot of information out... that's what i got from it.

[Galbally]

I think what the video demonstrates is collectively we need finally to find the will somehow to stop what is happening in the middle east, a terrible price is being stored up for all of what is happening between Jew and Arab, Christian and Muslim, West and East.

What happened in World War II in Europe to the Jews, and in 1948 onwards to the palestinians cannot be undone. All sides have to confront this reality. Hamas cannot rocket the jews into the sea, and the Israelis cannot beat and shoot the Palestinians into staying quiet forever.

But even at this bleak moment, there is still a possibility that the march toward a Middle Eastern war can be averted if everyone involved recognizes that no one can have everything they want. Israel exists, and its going to continue to exist, they need to be able to live in their land unafraid of being destroyed by their enemies.

The Palestinian people simply have to be given justice, they simply have to be given the right to be a people with their own state, to exist without that existence being proscribed by what Israel deems acceptable for them to have.

All parties in the middle east including Hamas, Hezbollah, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria, Fatah, Jordan, Israel, the EU, and of course the US, have to talk about how the region can save itself from this eternal hatred and bloodshed.

It has to be comprehensive, it has to include everything, not just Palestine, but also whats happened in Iraq, in Afganistan, the emergence of Al Queda, muslim hatred of the west, Western fear of Islamicism, the looming threat of a Nuclear powered Iran and Israel squaring up to each other. The fact that the bomb is sitting there, patiently even now, just waiting for the right circumstance for someone to allow it to do its work.

Whether thats possible in the near future I do not know, but I do know that ultimately, most of the problems we face in this clash of civilizations are ones of hatred and injustice, of power and money, terrorism and counter-terrorism, and land and water, and oil. Of incompatible world views trying to vie with one another for as much as they can get.

This planet is small, and technology is making it smaller every day, we can no longer ignore the reality that we have to accept that for us all to survive we need to agree to share it somehow, often with people who are not like us, and don't agree with how we think. Otherwise, there won't be much of a planet left for any of us to share.

[Omni_Skittles]

Galbally;1101764 wrote: I think what the video demonstrates is collectively we need finally to find the will somehow to stop what is happening in the middle east, a terrible price is being stored up for all of what is happening between Jew and Arab, Christian and Muslim, West and East.

What happened in World War II in Europe to the Jews, and in 1948 onwards to the palestinians cannot be undone. All sides have to confront this reality. Hamas cannot rocket the jews into the sea, and the Israelis cannot beat and shoot the Palestinians into staying quiet forever.

But even at this bleak moment, there is still a possibility that the march toward a Middle Eastern war can be averted if everyone involved recognizes that no one can have everything they want. Israel exists, and its going to continue to exist, they need to be able to live in their land unafraid of being destroyed by their enemies.

The Palestinian people simply have to be given justice, they simply have to be given the right to be a people with their own state, to exist without that existence being proscribed by what Israel deems acceptable for them to have.

All parties in the middle east including Hamas, Hezbollah, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria, Fatah, Jordan, Israel, the EU, and of course the US, have to talk about how the region can save itself from this eternal hatred and bloodshed.

It has to be comprehensive, it has to include everything, not just Palestine, but also whats happened in Iraq, in Afganistan, the emergence of Al Queda, muslim hatred of the west, Western fear of Islamicism, the looming threat of a Nuclear powered Iran and Israel squaring up to each other. The fact that the bomb is sitting there, patiently even now, just waiting for the right circumstance for someone to allow it to do its work.

Whether thats possible in the near future I do not know, but I do know that ultimately, most of the problems we face in this clash of civilizations are ones of hatred and injustice, of power and money, terrorism and counter-terrorism, and land and water, and oil. Of incompatible world views trying to vie with one another for as much as they can get.

This planet is small, and technology is making it smaller every day, we can no longer ignore the reality that we have to accept that for us all to survive we need to agree to share it somehow, often with people who are not like us, and don't agree with how we think. Otherwise, there won't be much of a planet left for any of us to share.Very good point. But reality is... umm this world is also full of people with agendas... so i guess we won't have much of a planet...

[Galbally]

Omni_Skittles;1101785 wrote: Very good point. But reality is... umm this world is also full of people with agendas... so i guess we won't have much of a planet...


Yes I know I know, but of all the graces, by far the greatest one we have is

hope

:-6

[Omni_Skittles]

Galbally;1101816 wrote: Yes I know I know, but of all the graces, by far the greatest one we have is

hope

:-6hmm hope... what is that? Does anyone know the meaning of it anymore? Seriously i watch the news at night and i feel more and more hopeless...

[Lon]

Jester;1101878 wrote: I know all about what Israel is doing and I'm all for it!

GO ISRAEL!


Jester my friend, do you subscribe to the old saying "My country right or wrong"?

'

[Lon]

Jester;1101884 wrote: Lon this video is sheer propaganda, the whole issue is infinatly more complicated than just whats presented, theres lots of right and wrong on all sides, but in the final analysis, Israel gets my support, Im just not gonna fall into a bogus crap video and then suddenly support Hamas.


My question to you really has nothing to do with the video re: Israel. I just get the feeling from some of your prior posts that you may subscribe to the "My Country Right Or Wrong" philosophy. Your patriotism, dedication, loyalty and willingness to serve your country is without question, but I think that it could leave a few blind spots when it comes to some of the U.S. Foreign Policy and it's inconsistencies in pursuit of it's own self interest. I have served my country in a just cause and would if age were not a factor, serve in what many might call an unjust cause. That does not mean however that I would not critique or try to in some small way change the system. Removing your self from society and the tax rolls as you are doing is certainly your right, but I really am dismayed to see someone with the hutzpah and spiritual beliefs that you seem to have throw in the towel simply because you don't like the new CIC and think the U.S. is headed towards a Socialist Government. That's not logic, just hard headiness and being stubborn.

[Oscar Namechange]

Omni_Skittles;1101623 wrote: the video just points out stuff... unless i tuned a lot of information out... that's what i got from it.


Reading from your posts. i take it you are very young and also un-educated in foriegn policy of America for Israel.

Your comment 'the video just points out stuff' is childish and you should take the advice of the poster who posted the thread, when he/she said 'go educate yourself' in these matters.

I could sit here typing away explaining to you exactly what the video is telling you but i think you don't have the intelligence to understand it.

It is not just a video that 'points out stuff' as you so elequently put it. It is American people talking about the iminent danger to America from the rest of the world should it continue to back Israel with military aid.

What part of that do you have trouble in understanding?

[mikeinie]

This whole thing is basically evil vs evil.

There are no good guys here, only bad guys on both sides. There is no point arguing for or against either side, as hatred breeds hatred and they are all full of hatred.

I am neither for or against either side of this situation, all I ask is just don’t drag us into it.

[Oscar Namechange]

Themis;1102184 wrote: Look at what you wrote.


Very good imformation you have posted. The facts can not be dismissed as propoganda.

Jester

What ever race or religion Themis is, he/she has as much right to air their opinions as we do.

He/she is trying to highlight the plight of the Palistians in a non Jewish propoganda format, that's all.

[Omni_Skittles]

oscar;1101927 wrote: Reading from your posts. i take it you are very young and also un-educated in foriegn policy of America for Israel.

Your comment 'the video just points out stuff' is childish and you should take the advice of the poster who posted the thread, when he/she said 'go educate yourself' in these matters.

I could sit here typing away explaining to you exactly what the video is telling you but i think you don't have the intelligence to understand it.

It is not just a video that 'points out stuff' as you so elequently put it. It is American people talking about the iminent danger to America from the rest of the world should it continue to back Israel with military aid.

What part of that do you have trouble in understanding?Oh fine... I'll go educate myself before i come back here lol

[mikeinie]

Themis;1102182 wrote: How Palestine Became Israel


In the late 1800s a small, fanatic movement called “political Zionism” began in Europe. Its goal was to create a Jewish state somewhere in the world. Its leaders settled on the ancient and long-inhabited land of Palestine for the location of this state.

Palestine's population at this time was approximately ninety-six percent non-Jewish (primarily Muslim and Christian).

Over the coming decades Zionist leaders used various strategies to accomplish their goal of taking over Palestine:

1. Encouraging Jewish immigration to Palestine, partly through the invention of such deceptive slogans as "a land without a people for a people without a land," when, in fact, the land was already inhabited. Since the majority of Jews were not Zionists until after WWII, Zionists used an array of misleading strategies, including secret collaboration with the Nazis, to push immigration.

2. Convincing a “Great Power” to back this process. By turn, Zionists approached the Ottomans, the British, and the U.S. to further their cause. While the Ottomans turned them down, the British (being promised that American Zionists would push the U.S. to enter World War I on the side of England) eventually acceded, as did the U.S. (due to concerns of politicians like Harry Truman that they would lose elections otherwise).

3. Buying up the land (sometimes through subterfuges), proclaiming it Jewish for all eternity, and refusing to allow non-Jews to live or work on the purchased land. This was called "redeeming" the land and was financed by a variety of means, including by such wealthy banking families as the Rothschilds.

4. Violence, if such financial dispossession should fail or prove too slow – as it did.

In the 1930s, Jewish land ownership had increased from approximately 1% to just over 6% of the land, and violence had increased as well. With the emergence of several Zionist terrorist gangs (whose ranks included a number of future Prime Ministers of Israel), there was violent conflict. Numerous people of all ethnicities were killed – then, as now, the large majority of them Christian and Muslim Palestinians.



The Catastrophe

This growing violence culminated in Israel's ruthless 1947-49 "War of Independence," in which at least 750,000 Palestinian men, women, and children were expelled from their homes – half of them even before any Arab armies joined the war. At every point in this war, Zionist forces outnumbered Arab forces. This massive humanitarian disaster is known among Palestinians and others as ‘The Catastrophe,’ al Nakba in Arabic.

Zionist forces committed at least 33 massacres and destroyed 531 Palestinian villages and towns. Author Norman Finkelstein states: “According to the former director of the Israeli army archives, ‘in almost every village occupied by us during the War of Independence, acts were committed which are defined as war crimes, such as murders, massacres, and rapes’...Uri Milstein, the authoritative Israeli military historian of the 1948 war, goes one step further, maintaining that ‘every skirmish ended in a massacre of Arabs.’

Count Folke Bernadotte, a former vice chairman of the Swedish Red Cross who saved thousands of Jews during World War II and was appointed U.N. mediator in Palestine, said of the refugees: "It would be an offence against the principles of elemental justice if these innocent victims of the conflict were denied the right to return to their homes.”

Injustice Continues

Over the 60 years since Israel’s founding on May 14, 1948, this profound injustice has continued. Palestinian refugees are the largest remaining refugee population in the world.

1.3 million Palestinians live in Israel as “Israeli citizens,” but despite their status as citizens, they are subject to systematic discrimination. Many are prohibited from living in the villages and homes from which they were violently expelled, and their property has been confiscated for Jewish-only uses. In Orwellian terminology, Israeli law designates these internal refugees as “present absentees.”

In 1967 Israel launched its third war and seized still more Palestinian (and other Arab) land. Israel also attacked a U.S. Navy ship, the USS Liberty, killing and injuring over 200 Americans, an event that remains largely covered-up today, despite efforts by an extraordinary array of high-level military officers and civilian officials to expose it.

Israel militarily occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip – the final 22% of mandatory Palestine – and began building settlements for Jewish Israelis on land confiscated from Palestinian Muslims and Christians. It has demolished more than 18,000 Palestinian homes since 1967. In 2005 Israel returned Gazan land to its owners, but continues to control its borders, ports, and air space, turning Gaza into a large concentration camp, where 1.5 million people are held under what a UN Human Rights Commissioner described as “catastrophic” conditions. Approximately 11,000 Palestinian men, women, and children are imprisoned in Israeli jails under physically abusive conditions (many have not even been charged with a crime) and the basic human rights of all Palestinians under Israeli rule are routinely violated. A number of prisoners tortured by Israel have been American citizens.

American Involvement

American taxpayers give Israel approximately $7 million per day – far more than we give to all of sub-Saharan Africa put together. In its 60 years of existence, Israel, the size of New Jersey, has received more of our tax money than any other nation on earth. While most Americans are unaware of these facts (studies have shown that media report on Israeli deaths at rates up to 13 times greater than they report on Palestinian deaths) our governmental actions are making us responsible for a continuing catastrophe of historic proportions – and which is, in addition, creating extremely damaging enmity to the US itself. Israel partisans have played a significant role in promoting U.S. attacks on Iraq and Iran.14

As more and more U.S. citizens across the political spectrum and of all ethnicities become informed on this issue, they are demanding that their elected representatives change current policies. In recent history, the Berlin Wall has fallen, Northern Ireland has achieved peace, and South African apartheid ha
s ended. Change is possible and justice attainable – when people become informed.

Palestinian Loss of Land 1946-2005



“Confusion about the origins of the conflict all too often has obscured Americans’ understanding of its true dimension. It began as a conflict resulting from immigrants struggling to displace the local majority population. All else is derivative from this basic reality.”

– Donald Neff, former Senior Editor, Time Magazine, Fallen Pillars: U.S. Policy towards Palestine and Israel since 1945

“[T]he story of 1948... is the simple but horrific story of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine... Retrieving it from oblivion is incumbent upon us, not just as a greatly overdue act of historiographical reconstruction or professional duty; it is... the very first step we must take if we ever want reconciliation to have a chance, and peace to take root, in the torn lands of Palestine and Israel.”

– Ilan Pappe, Israeli Historian, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine

“The Palestinian Holocaust is unsurpassed in history. For a country to be occupied, emptied of its people, its physical and cultural landmarks obliterated, its destruction hailed as a miraculous act of God, all done according to a premeditated plan, meticulously executed, internationally supported, and still maintained today...”

– Dr. Salman Abu-Sitta, Palestine Right Of Return, Sacred, Legal, and Possible

Recommended Books:

* George W, Ball & Douglas B. Ball, The Passionate Attachment
* Mazin Qumsiyeh, Sharing the Land of Canaan
* Greg Philo and Mike Berry, Israel and Palestine: Competing Histories
* Paul Findley, They Dare to Speak Out
* Ali Abunimah, One Country
* Jonathon Cook, Blood and Religion
* Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
* Israel Shahak, Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel
* Donald Neff, Fallen Pillars
* Salman Abu-Sitta, Palestine Right of Return, Sacred, Legal, and Possible
* Robert John & Sami Hadawi, Palestine Diary 1914-1945
* Kathleen Christison, Perceptions of Palestine
* John W. Mulhall, CSP, America and the founding of Israel
* Charles D. Smith, Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict
* Nur Masalha, Expulsion of the Palestinians
* Stephen Green, Taking Sides
* Noam Chomsky, Fateful Triangle
* Sami Hadawi, Bitter Harvest
* Virginia Tilley, The One State Solution
* Norman Finkelstein, Beyond Chutzpah
* John Mearsheimer & Stephen Walt, The Israel Lobby

Selected Websites

ifamericansknew. org

palestineremembered. com

End the Siege on Gaza

Please sign petition and send a letter to your Senators,Representative and Secretary of State.

Join the National March!




Who cares? Gaza is where they train suicide bombers and other assorted terrorists. They danced in the streets when the twin towers came crashing down.

Israel actually believes that God gave them that land and that ‘they are God’s chosen people’.

They are both completely f*cked up.

I am not signing anything

[Oscar Namechange]

Themis;1102779 wrote: Now I'm a nutjob a Rat and a Hamas insurgent,



I'm insulted lol.... maybe now you will stay away


You make sure you stick around Themis but update your profile so we can see where your posting from eh?

[abbey]

oscar;1101927 wrote: Reading from your posts. i take it you are very young and also un-educated in foriegn policy of America for Israel.



Your comment 'the video just points out stuff' is childish and you should take the advice of the poster who posted the thread, when he/she said 'go educate yourself' in these matters.



I could sit here typing away explaining to you exactly what the video is telling you but i think you don't have the intelligence to understand it.



It is not just a video that 'points out stuff' as you so elequently put it. It is American people talking about the iminent danger to America from the rest of the world should it continue to back Israel with military aid.



What part of that do you have trouble in understanding?


oscar;1102189 wrote: Very good imformation you have posted. The facts can not be dismissed as propoganda.



Jester



What ever race or religion Themis is, he/she has as much right to air their opinions as we do.

He/she is trying to highlight the plight of the Palistians in a non Jewish propoganda format, that's all.That was good advice you gave Jester, maybe you should take your own advice!

Skittles is a longtanding, valid member of this community and has every right to post her opinions without fear of being insulted.

[Oscar Namechange]

Themis;1103004 wrote: I have no idea why you cant see my profile or posts.


I just checked your profile :):):)

[Kathy Ellen]

Jester;1106124 wrote: No.



For being here so many times before under multiple ideinties you dont remember very well do ya? I dont play dirty, Im above board all the time. If I'm gonna accuse you of something it will be to you first. I left this thread when I found out who ya were, theres just no sense arguing with a fool.




You're a good man Far and always honest....that's for sure;)

[Kathy Ellen]

Themis;1106237 wrote: This is a teeny weeny bit off subject? I am more interested in the plight on innocent people being murdered in their beds not how great Jester is..



can you take your love parade elsewhere and have a little bit of respect about the topic at hand and it's serious nature..




You don't have to be nasty to me Ian. I'll post what I want and where I want. You have the same option.



And, now I'll take my little "love parade" elsewhere:-6

[Bruv]

Can I ask why all the links in Themis's explanation of the Palestinians plight have been re-directed to a MySpace anti-phising page ?

[Bruv]

Don't know if most of that post is meant for me or not Mr Jester.

I am never rude to anybody especially a lady.....unless they really wind me up....but she hasn't.

All I am asking is why I cannot follow the links.....I am too naive to suspect anybody might have tampered with any evidence they may or may not hold.

But if they have been tampered with, don't bode well for the freedom etc.you guys hold so dear.

[Chezzie]

Bruv;1106322 wrote: Can I ask why all the links in Themis's explanation of the Palestinians plight have been re-directed to a MySpace anti-phising page ?


We will have to wait and see if Themis has done this himself Bruv.

Also Jesters reply was to Themis and not you matey:-6