8 Children Killed in Israeli Attack

[S. Kroeze]

Originally posted by Al'Kimiya
Except that most of the land was uninhabited and didn't belong to anyone. This is like claiming land on the moon.

Perhaps you should read some historical study before making such ludicrous statements....
Could you please recommend me one -just one- recent historical study that endorses this incongruous viewpoint?

Yes, I know that some Zionists claim that Arabs are no human beings, but 'ape-men savages'. Fortunately, so far this view has been shared only by a minority among them.

[Shiber]

Originally posted by CyberGnu
With 'you', do you mean the palestinians? I'm a blond, blue-eyed atheist swede...

Sorry, I'm too used to speaking to Pals about this issue.

Originally posted by CyberGnu
Perhaps, but that doesn't mean it is right. It would just mean I'd put my own interest over right and wrong.

What diplomatic techniques were they using that you'd consider wrong?

Originally posted by CyberGnu
...an offer that gave 25% of the population only 50% of the land'?

Had the conditions in Israel were better and more Jews were inclined to migrate to Israel and 75% of the pop. would have been Jewish, what would you say? That we deserved 75% of the land?
The Zionists wanted a national home for generations to come, not a state for that 25% of the population.

[Shiber]

Originally posted by CyberGnu
I'm sorry, but that doesn't matter. Hitler used the same justification to annex sudeten etc. And to use a less inflammatory example, it doesn't give the US right to attack Europe, even though much of their culture comes from the 'old country'.

Perhaps, but the Germans have a national home. The Americans have a national home. The Jews don't.
Every nation strives to gain an independent state in a region which that nation relates to historically, religiously or culturally, it being Israel for the Jewish nationl.

Originally posted by CyberGnu
The palestinians have lived there for hundreds of years.

We could have shared. There was plenty of room (if over than 6 Mil. people can live in Israel today (this including Israeli arabs) then couldn't the Jews and the Palestinians have lived together then?

Originally posted by CyberGnu
It is not their fault that jewish culture didn't let go of an area they left 2000 years ago.

Left?
Driven out of by force would have been more appropriate here.

Originally posted by CyberGnu
I'm sorry, but this is just not the case. Take a look at the british white papers. One of them states quite bkuntly that 'there is no more room for jewish settlers without signifcantly lowering the quality of life of the current population. Immigration to palestine should thus be curtailed'.

I happen to know which paper you're talking about and it was referring to jobs. The Brits worried that if more Jews migrated to Israel there wouldn't be enough jobs for everyone and people would resort to violent protest.
I'm simply not buying these claims of "lack of room". Millions lived in New York at that time and I don't hear the New York authorities complaining about lack of room (though they may be complaining about it today).
Besides, at that time there were areas of Israel who haven't been settled by humans for hundreds of years. There was certainly "room".

[Al'Kimiya]

Originally posted by S. Kroeze


Perhaps you should read some historical study before making such ludicrous statements....
Could you please recommend me one -just one- recent historical study that endorses this incongruous viewpoint?

Well.. most of the land is desert. I've seen it (well it was about ten years ago). Some areas are densely populated, mostly in the north. In the early 1900s, there were mostly tiny villages here and there and LOTS of space inbetween. Zionists made the land more hospitable, its not propaganda.

And.. off course there are GOOD arabs too, they are just not allowed to prove it.

[Shiber]

Originally posted by CyberGnu


Have you seen pictures from the area? Walls of neighbouring houses are caved in, there is debris everywhere. Over 140 wounded.

Quite frankly, there is no such thing as a 'surgical strike'.




actually, I was wrong. The house wasn't two stories, it was three. That means at least two more famillies lived there. These are also the civilians that were killed...

From

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/23/international/middleeast/23GAZA.html

His [the sheiks] wife and three of his daughters were initially reported killed this morning, but hospital officials later said they had survived.

from LAtimes:

Most of the dead were Shehada's neighbors, whose apartments were leveled or badly damaged when a missile from a U.S.-made F-16 hit the building where Shehada was visiting his wife and 14-year-old daughter.

The force of the blast sent shrapnel and broken concrete flying a block or more. Five apartment buildings of two to four stories sustained heavy damage.

Yes I have seen pictures from that area. How do you know the caved-in walls were of other houses? According to what I saw these could have been the remains of the apt. building where the terrorist leader lived.
As for what pictures a day after are worth, I wouldn't give them too much credit as Palestinians often use dirty tricks such as smuggling arms and suicide bombers in ambulances, adding the names of people who died in car accidents or in crime-related incidents to the list of those killed by Israeli troops and yes, 'altering' the scene.
I saw a PA bulldozer tearing down a wall, possibly to aid recovery efforts, possibly to make the damage look greater.

I don't know what became of the people who were living in the other two stories (I really had no idea there were two other stories). I'll comment on this when I see more information, but right now it's 2:30AM and I feel like going to bed.

[Dr Strangelove]

It's basically the fault of the Europeans. No one acted to countermand the rising wave of anti-semitism that swept Europe after 1880. Following WW2 the Jews of Europe had the choice between returning to homelands where the hatred fanned by the Nazis still lingered or emigrating to Israel. Many where simply not allowed to return home. Europe has a responsibility to these people which it is not discharging.

[Shiber]

Originally posted by CyberGnu


Umm, you do know that the bomb weighed 1000kg, right?

The problem here is that it is not a defense. Yes, a 1000kg bomb might have been needed to kill him, but
A) these assassinations are acts of barbary
B) the army knew very well that civilians would die in the attack but carried on anyway.

Of course, I meant to write 1ton.
A 1kg bomb would kill a man. In an open field, but not inside a building, of course.

RE: A. Is killing an enemy officer during war an act of barbary? If America killed Bin-Laden, would that be an act of barbary?
There is a war between Israel and the Hamas. This man is responsible to attacks that took the lives of over a hundred Israeli civilians, therefore making him a _legitimate target_.

RE: B. I'm telling you they didn't, but you'll never believe me anyway so there's no point going on.
I'll wait for the army to publish its official report, which always include interviews with people in charge, photos, airshots etc' and then see if I can get a hold of it or parts of it that are not classified and get them over to you.
I truly believed that the army didn't know that this would be the outcome of this attack, and if they did then the people who hid that fact from the political rank and told them this would be a clean operation deserve the same fate as those innocents killed in the attack.
These are my honest thoughts, I'm not trying to cover up for anything. If you think I'm lying then we really should stop this discussion, because if we don't believe each other then what point is there in going on?

[Shiber]

Originally posted by CyberGnu
Or let me put it this way: Even bush condemned the attack. If there were even the slightest chnace of dending an Israeli atrocity, Bush would take it. But even his administration couldn't find one this time.

Bush HAD to condemn this attack, because public opinion was against it and that's what US presidents always do: say what the public wants to hear.
Do you think Bush said Arafat is irrelevant to negotiations because he thought so, or because the pollmakers determined that this is what the American public would want to hear? IMHO both, but he wouldn't have said so if the average American said otherwise.

[Shiber]

Originally posted by Al'Kimiya
And.. off course there are GOOD arabs too

I happen to have arab friends, and they're not ape-like life forms nor do I see them as such (this referring to CyberGnu's remarks).
Mind you, but most Israelis are not what you would have called racists. Compared to the Palestinians, we are Mother Theresas. Seriously now, have you ever opened a Palestinian school book? They actually teach which race is superior. Mein Kampf is a best seller in Gaza and Ramallah, btw.

Edit: fixed a typo.

[S. Kroeze]

Here is just one example of how the Zionist leadership made a conscious decision to oppose the rescue of Jews because in their view the conquest of Palestine was the only truly important issue:

"With the abandonment of the Peel proposals, Zionism ceased to have any real relevance for the Jews of Europe. The British had cut immigration in an effort to placate the Arabs, and only 61,302 Jews were allowed entry to Palestine from 1936 to 1939; the WZO allowed entry to only 17,421 from Germany. However, not even the terrible danger to the Jews of Central Europe, nor their own abandonment by their imperial patron could shake the determination of the leaders of the WZO: under no circumstances was Zionism to be shunted aside in the now frantic scramble to find havens for the desperate Jews. When, after Kristallnacht, the British, in the hope of easing the pressure for increased immigration into Palestine, proposed that thousands of children be admitted directly into Britain, Ben-Gurion was absolutely against the plan, telling a meeting of Labour Zionist leaders on 7 December 1938:

[*]If I knew that it would be possible to save all the children in Germany by bringing them over to England, and only half of them by transporting them to Eretz Yisrael, then I would opt for the second alternative. For we must weigh not only the life of these children, but also the history of the People of Israel.[23]

Britain's policy was firmly fixed; there was not the slightest chance of London suddenly allowing any mass immigration into Palestine, yet Ben-Gurion persisted, refusing to contemplate other sanctuaries. On 17 December 1938 he warned the Zionist Executive:
[*]If Jews will have to choose between the refugees, saving Jews from concentration camps, and assisting a national museum in Palestine, mercy will have the upper hand and the whole energy of the people will be channelled into saving Jews from various countries. Zionism will be struck off the agenda not only in world public opinion, in Britain and the United States, but elsewhere in Jewish public opinion. If we allow a separation between the refugee problem and the Palestinian problem, we are risking the existence of Zionism.[23]"

(source: L.Brenner: 'Zionism in the Age of the Dictators',1983)

[23] Yoav Gelber, 'Zionist Policy and the Fate of European Jewry (1939-42)', Yad Vashem Studies, vol. XII, p. 199.
[24] Ari Bobber (ed.), The Other Israel, p. 171.[*] like the author I use another type to indicate that those were Ben-Gurion's own words

note for Sirotnikov: "Zionism in the Age of the Dictators' is not identical to 'How Israel Was Won' by B.Thomas; it was written by another author and has a different title; nor was it published by Neturei Karta

Why do you consider the opinion of Jews actually living in Palestine irrelevant?
Do you still think that Jews in the Diaspora should elect the Knesset and not the inhabitants of Palestine/Israel?
There are many Irish/Italians who migrated to the USA, becoming American citizens. Yet they do not qualify to vote in their native country, Ireland/Italy.

The Zionists decided to disregard the wishes of Jews living in Palestine, who would have preferred to live in peace. But of course only Europeans can make intelligent decisions, not those obscure Arab Jews living in Palestine!

[Al'Kimiya]

Originally posted by Shiber
I happen to have arab friends, and they're not ape-like life forms nor do I see them as such (this referring to CyberGnu's remarks).

These arab friends, I bet are citizens of Israel, not from the territories. Because if arabs in west bank/gaza have israeli friends they get massacred and hanged for all too see. Unless they manage to keep it a well-kept secret, that is.

[S. Kroeze]

Originally posted by Dr Strangelove
It's basically the fault of the Europeans. No one acted to countermand the rising wave of anti-semitism that swept Europe after 1880. Following WW2 the Jews of Europe had the choice between returning to homelands where the hatred fanned by the Nazis still lingered or emigrating to Israel. Many where simply not allowed to return home. Europe has a responsibility to these people which it is not discharging.

What about Dreyfuss?

Here is proof of the 'boundless love' of Americans and Zionists for Jewish refugees; even the survivors of Auschwitz were not allowed to live in a peaceful environment:

"The Anglo-American Committee issued its report on 1 May 1946. With regard to the future government of Palestine, the report was vague, but it urged that 100,000 Jewish immigrants be immediately allowed into the country. It is ironic that the United States government strongly urged the British to allow large-scale immigration into Palestine, but only 4,767 Jewish refugees were permitted to enter the United States in the first eight months of 1946. There were many reasons why the United States permitted so few DPs into the country, not least of which was the apathetic attitue of the American Jewish community leadership to a liberalization of US immigration law.

By 1946 most American Jewish organizations had been converted to Zionism. As such they viewed the immigration of the Jewish DPs to the United States or anywhere else besides Palestine as a diversion from their goal to establish a Jewish state in the Holy Land. The Jewish DPs in their detention camps in Europe were subjected to intense propoganda by Zionist agents. But according to General Frederick Morgan who ran the camps for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency (UNRRA), if the Jewish displaced persons had been allowed to make their own decision, few 'would have gone elsewhere that to the USA.'(51) But the Zionists used the Jewish refugees as propaganda for their cause and as cannonfodder in the struggle to create a Zionist state in Palestine. After the horrors of the Holocaust, these unfortunate survivors deserved a better fate.

During this period, Palestine was suffering as a result of Jewish terrorism perpetrated by the Irgun and Stern Gang, which directed their attacks against British installations. The terrorists hoped to persuade the British, who had 100,000 troops in Palestine, that continued occupation would be too costly. Both the Irgun and the Stern Gang came out of the right wing of the Zionist movement.
(source: M.Palumbo, 'The Palestinian Catastrophe',1987)

note for Sirotnikov: 'The Palestinian Catastrophe' is not identical to 'How Israel Was Won' by B.Thomas; it was written by another author and has a different title; nor was it published by Neturei Karta

A Question:
Did Zionists ever try to combat anti-Semitism, Fascism, Nazism?

Just one quote:
"The Jew is a caricature of a normal, natural human being, both physically and spiritually. As an individual in society he revolts and throws off the harness of social obligations, knows no order nor discipline."
('Our Shomer "Weltanschauung",' Hashomer Hatzair (December 1936), p. 26; originally composed in 1917, republished)

Hashomer Hatzair (Young Watchmen) was a left(!) Zionist youth movement

[Shiber]

Wow S. Kroeze, I have to admit that I'm way out of your league. I don't know enough of history to even understand most of your arguments or how they relate to the current topic. I am merely a 17 yr. old who likes to hang around in forums (), while you seem to be more learned as well as older than me. When it comes to debating, you are obviously more than just my match.
All I can do is group any of the arguments I could think of to answer back to your arguments in this message. Perhaps the bigger fish, e.g. Siro and others can answer you better.

* Zionists have always believed that founding a Jewish state should be the highest of all goals because ultimately it would save many more lives than it would cost. I'd rather not lay down their arguments to this as I am not learned enough of the Zionist doctrine, so I'll leave that to others to do.
IMHO they shouldn't have used holocaust victims as pawns though. This is wrong.

* If they realized that Ben-Gurion wasn't going to change his mind, why didn't the Brits save those children anyway? Or have they?

* Does it come as a surprise to you that the Americans were more eager to transfer supporting populations to Palestine rather than transfer DPs to America, where most of them would probably join the unemployed?
America's foreign policy has always preferred taking care of its national interests over conducting humanitarian efforts.

* IMHO it's not the fault of the WZO that terrorist groups stepped out of their ranks. Is it World Socialist Movement to blame for creating Fascism just because Musolini stepped out of their ranks?
As long as Zionism wasn't preaching terrorism, the WZO are not responsible for whatever terrorist groups who used the Zionist ideology to justify their actions, unless they were supporting the actions of those groups, which you have to prove.
Anyway, those Jewish terrorists may have believed in Zionism, but they also believed in terrorism which is why I condemn their actions.

* In your opinion, why did the Zionist movement want to create a national home for the Jewish nation in Israel? Surely they weren't doing this for religious reasons. Do you know why then?
According to the Zionist doctrine the main reason for Anti-Semitism is that Jews are an abnormal nation, which is because they don't have a national home. I've read a lot about this argument and the whole issue and I'm sure that so have you, so let's skip over the 'why'.
Anyway, according to this, by working to create a national home for the Jewish nation, the Zionists were in fact combating Anti-Semitism.
If you disagree with that then please judge the ideology, not the people.

* AFAIK, the WZO does combat modern Anti-Semitism today by answering back to public figures that make Anti-Semite remarks and holding cons as well as other activities.
This year's convention of the WZO in Israel carried the slogan 'Zionism is fighting Anti-Semitism' (I don't remember the exact words but it was either that or something very similar to this and in the same spirit).

Edit: fixed a typo.

[Dr Strangelove]

Originally posted by S. Kroeze


What about Dreyfuss?

Here is proof of the 'boundless love' of Americans and Zionists for Jewish refugees; even the survivors of Auschwitz were not allowed to live in a peaceful environment:

"The Anglo-American Committee issued its report on 1 May 1946. With regard to the future government of Palestine, the report was vague, but it urged that 100,000 Jewish immigrants be immediately allowed into the country. It is ironic that the United States government strongly urged the British to allow large-scale immigration into Palestine, but only 4,767 Jewish refugees were permitted to enter the United States in the first eight months of 1946. There were many reasons why the United States permitted so few DPs into the country, not least of which was the apathetic attitue of the American Jewish community leadership to a liberalization of US immigration law.

The "Displaced Persons Act" of 1948 opened up immigration to the US for about 400,000 Jews.

From 1900 to 1930 the US received 19 million immigrants, 2 million of whom were Jewish. After this humongious bolus of immigrants the US sharply curtailed immigration. Only 500,000 immigrants were permitted to enter the US between 1930 and 1940. One million were allowed to enter between 1940 and 1950. Please note that Jews were given about 40% of this allotment.

How about the Netherlands?

[Dinner]

I see the same old anti-jewish, anti-Israeli people are crawling out of the wood work. Why is it every time Israel targets muslim terrorists an anti-Israeli thead gets posted in minutes however Arabs blow up bus load after bus load of kids and folks have a hard time uttering a peep?

The Israeli's are not going to leave their country get over it all ready. Also I can't help but laugh at the suggestions "why doesn't the US just give the Jews New Mexico?"; did you ever stop to consider that maybe they don't want New Mexico? Maybe they want what is historically & religiously (if one believes the old testimont) theirs to begin with. Maybe they want to keep that which was stolen from them now that they finally got it back.

That's my $0.02 as well as my first and last post on this proticular thread. Please continue your propaganda.