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Banned
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Originally Posted by Xazy
Watch some pollywood videos http://www.seconddraft.org/movies.php and see how easy the media is manipulated. There are numerous allegations of deaths that later turn out to be fake. It is amazing how the media seems to dance there to one tune, and I will take my leave on this since to me it is hard to have a discussion and I can admit it. But it is very personal to me, and gets me upset the stuff that goes on there. |
Xazy, we've been there....done that....re: the pallywood videos' propaganda, right here in a thread on this forum:
Pallywood http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?p=2105204
.....and....how does a serious discussion with you, take place...considering that you posted (in post #3) unattributed content (no link was posted)....nearly the entire page, in fact....from this page on the Israeli foreign ministry website:
http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Terrorism-...5-Apr-2007.htm
Xazy, we cannot have a discussion because too many cannot "grok" that Israel is a separate sovereign nation from the US. for quite a while now; and the US and Israel have some common interests, but many more separate interests, policies, and priorities, too.
If you believed that Israel is separate and has sometimes advocated for the perceived interests of it's own "right wing militancy", at the direct expense to US "best interests", you wouldn't be posting "chunks" on this thread, from an Israeli foreign ministry site, but, if you did, in a manner that demonstrated that you were being "up front" about your agenda, you would have posted the link.
Eleven years ago, it was a myth that Israel was vulnerable....there was no way then, and no way now, in 2007, that Israel is in any realistic danger of being "driven into the sea", by any enemy, or group of allied "enemies", and it's proabably been impossible, since the late 1980's after the fall of the old Soviet Union:
So....in order to actually have a "discussion", we must agree that:
<a href="http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/06/10/lieberman/index.html">[Israel] is a different nation than the U.S. </a>
...that Israel is the sole superpower in it's region...at least according to Jane's info from eleven years ago....before the US and Israel spent an additional amount, in excess of $70 billion, to further equip, train, and operate Israeli forces.
<b>We must also agree that the "Israel lobby" is able to evoke a bipartisan influence so strong, and often, so counter to US "best interests", that all of us should be gravely concerned</b>, but as we observe right here on this thread....curiously are not alarmed at all. Some us even enthusiastically approve of a country considered a poor "victim" of "Arab aggression"....but isn't.....at all.....a country that has been the largest recipient of US military aid for more than 20 years....that is wealthy enough to pay for it's own "aid", but doesn't, using it's lobby to interfere with our legislators' efforts to prevent the US president from unilaterally starting another preemptive war!
Quote:
http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/...007-05-15.html
....But with Iran measures possibly headed to the House floor as early as today, it is unclear if Democrats have the votes to pass legislation calling for the president to seek authorization from Congress for a preemptive strike on Iran.
House Democratic leaders initially attempted to insert Iran language in their now-vetoed Iraq supplemental bill, but abandoned the plan after some New York Democrats, including Reps. Eliot Engel and Gary Ackerman, balked at the language.
<b>The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), an influential group that advocates strong U.S. ties with Israel, lobbied heavily to remove the Iran provision in the supplemental</b>, arguing that the measure would weaken President Bush’s attempts to dissuade Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
Needing every vote they could get, House leaders dropped the provisions before narrowly passing the Iraq measure......
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.....and, we need to agree that this where we were, that it was far from perfect:
Quote:
http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0204-01.htm
Published on Sunday, February 4, 2001 in the Baltimore Sun
How Honest the American Broker?
by Jim Anderson
WASHINGTON -- Almost unnoticed in the commotion about the change in administrations in Washington is a quiet revolution in U.S. foreign policy. It is not a success story.
Consider: For the past quarter-century, beginning with Henry Kissinger's bravura performance shuttles, the Middle East conflict has been the center-piece of every president's foreign policy agenda. Whether Democrat or Republican, every secretary of state personally struggled to push the Arab-Israeli peace process forward.
That was true for the flashy secretaries like Mr. Kissinger or Madeleine Albright, as well as more workmanlike officials like Warren Christopher (28 trips to Damascus in four years).
But in the aftermath of the fiasco of July's Camp David II summit and the second intifada, which began Sept. 29, both Palestinians and the likely next government of Israel have denounced American mediation attempts as well-meaning, but dangerous or meretricious, or both.
The harshest words came from the Palestinians. In a statement Jan. 22, the Palestinian Authority suggested that the U.S.-led peace process was a sham, a "mirage designed to trick" the Arab governments and to give "a false sense of normalcy" behind which Israel could keep building more settlements in occupied territory and take permanent possession of more of the West Bank and Gaza.
In apparent reference to the U.S. negotiating team, with its key members such as Dennis Ross and Martin Indyk coming from organizations associated with the Israel lobby in Washington, the Palestinian statement said, "Unfortunately over the last seven years in particular, the U.S. has become increasingly identified with Israeli ideological assumptions."
The trigger for the Palestinian anger appears to have been an unusual statement by then-President Bill Clinton after the Camp David summit crashed. He elaborately praised the flexibility and courage of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak but pointedly omitted any mention of Palestinian Chairman Yasser Arafat and his travails.
For the Israelis, the concessions put on the table by Mr. Barak under relentless pressure from Mr. Clinton, led to the collapse of his uneasy coalition government and the calling of new elections. Polls project him to be defeated soundly by the more hawkish leader of the Likud coalition, Ariel Sharon.
The man who is expected to be one of the inner circle of Mr. Sharon's advisers, former U.N. Ambassador Dore Gold, made it clear that Mr. Sharon will not be calling on the United States for more mediation help. He spoke last week at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a pro-Israel public policy think tank (where Mr. Ross was and will become a senior fellow and where Mr. Indyk was executive director).
Mr. Gold, as is his style, was blunt and to the point. "We maximized the U.S. role, yet we didn't get results. We have way over-used [the American] presidential impact. There may be value in letting the parties engage by themselves" -- that is, without any American presence.
In a biting farewell to Mr. Clinton, Mr. Gold said, "The lesson is that you don't call a Camp David [summit] unless you've done your homework."
So why did such an heroic American effort end in failure and rejection, particularly after it was marked with a triumphant beginning for Mr. Clinton in 1993 on the White House lawn after a joint signing by Mr. Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin?
Simply put, there was always a lack of honesty in the U.S. effort. The "honest broker" had a cultural and political bias toward one party, Israel, and a vast lack of knowledge and sympathy for the other side, the Palestinians.
There was always an internal contradiction in U.S. foreign policy which was overlooked by the Arabs, as long as they could see an advantage for themselves or, more importantly, no alternative.
As the first President George Bush said honestly when he was in office, "We are not even-handed" in the Middle East.
Successive U.S. administrations have made a continuing priority commitment to Israel's security and well-being. That endures, despite inconvenient Israeli governments such as Yitzhak Shamir's or Benjamin Netanyahu's. The reason: Because of the overwhelming sentiments expressed by the American electorate as represented by the Congress, voter turnouts in key states like California and New York and campaign contributions.
The Arab governments do not claim that U.S. sympathy toward Israel resulted in stacking the deck against the Palestinians. What they do suggest is that the background of the American negotiators simply made them insensitive to deeply held Arab views about such issues as recognizing the rights, in some way, of more than 4 million Palestinian refugees.
Second, the world has changed.
Ten years ago, at the end of the Persian Gulf war and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States was the only global power that mattered. Now things are more complex. The European Union (EU), by far the largest contributor to the strangling Palestinian economy, is edging closer to the Middle East negotiations and the United Nations is becoming more assertive.
As a symbol of the upheaval in U.S. Middle East policy, the only outsider at the recent Israeli-Palestinian talks in Taba, Egypt, was the representative of the EU, Miguel Moratinos. No American representatives were present or invited by either the Israelis or the Palestinians.
Jim Anderson is a Washington-based correspondent who has covered U.S. foreign policy, including the Kissinger shuttles, for more than 30 years.
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So, the US role as "honest broker" was not "honest", but it was not hopelessly broken, as it has intentionally been made to be, over the last six years.....
....and this is where we are, now, and the change has gone a long way towards making things much worse for Palestinians, and much better for Israel's Likud party extremists:
Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp...45652-2003Feb8
Bush and Sharon Nearly Identical On Mideast Policy
By Robert G. Kaiser
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 9, 2003; Page A01
Running for reelection last month, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel repeatedly boasted of the "deep friendship" he has built with the Bush administration -- "a special closeness,"....
Sharon was describing what his American supporters call the closest relationship in decades, perhaps ever, between a U.S. president and an Israeli government. "This is the best administration for Israel since Harry Truman [who first recognized an independent Israel]," <b>said Thomas Neumann, executive director of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs,</b> a think tank that promotes strategic cooperation with Israel as vital to U.S. security interests.
<h3>host inserts: Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs= JINSA</h3>
For the first time, a U.S. administration and a Likud government in Israel are pursuing nearly identical policies. Earlier U.S. administrations, from Jimmy Carter's through Bill Clinton's, held Likud and Sharon at arm's length, distancing the United States from Likud's traditionally tough approach to the Palestinians. But today, as Neumann noted, Israel and the United States share a common view on terrorism, peace with the Palestinians, war with Iraq and more. Neumann and others said this change was made possible by the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and their aftermath.
The Bush administration's alignment with Sharon delights many of its strongest supporters, especially evangelical Christians, and a large part of organized American Jewry, according to leaders in both groups, who argue that Palestinian terrorism pushed Bush to his new stance. <b>But it has led to a freeze on diplomacy in the region that is criticized by Arab countries and their allies, and by many past and current officials who have participated in the long-running, never-conclusive Middle East "peace process."</b>
"Every president since at least Nixon has seen the Arab-Israeli conflict as the central strategic issue in the Middle East," said Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger, President Bill Clinton's national security adviser. "But this administration sees Iraq as the central challenge, and . . . has disengaged from any serious effort to confront the Arab-Israeli problem."
The turning point came last June, when Bush embraced Sharon's view of the Palestinians and made Yasser Arafat's removal as leader of the Palestinian Authority a condition of future diplomacy. That was "a clear shift in policy," Kenneth R. Weinstein, director of the Washington office of the Hudson Institute, a conservative supporter of Israel and Likud. The June speech was "a departure point," agreed Ralph Reed, chairman of the Georgia Republican Party and former director of the Christian Coalition.
Since then, U.S. policy has been in step with Sharon's. The peace process is "quiescent," said retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, Bush's special envoy to the region. "I've kind of gone dormant," he added. In December Bush appointed an articulate, hard-line critic of the traditional peace process, Elliott Abrams, director of Mideast affairs for the National Security Council.
"The Likudniks are really in charge now," said a senior government official, using a Yiddish term for supporters of Sharon's political party. Neumann agreed that Abrams's appointment was symbolically important, not least because Abrams's views were shared by his boss, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, by Vice President Cheney and by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. "It's a strong lineup," he said.
Abrams is a former assistant secretary of state in the Reagan administration who was convicted on two counts of lying to Congress in the Iran-contra scandal, then pardoned by President George H.W. Bush. In October 2000, Abrams wrote: "The Palestinian leadership does not want peace with Israel, and there will be no peace."
Said Meyrav Wurmser of the Hudson Institute, who shares his outlook: "Elliott's appointment is a signal that the hard-liners in the administration are playing a more central role in shaping policy." She added that "the hard-liners are a very unique group. The hawks in the administration are in fact people who are the biggest advocates of democracy and freedom in the Middle East." She was referring to the idea that promoting democracy is the best way to assure Israel's security, because democratic countries are less likely to attack a neighbor than dictatorships. Adherents of this view have argued that creating a democratic Palestine and a democratic Iraq could have a positive impact on the entire region.
Some Middle East hands who disagree with these supporters of Israel refer to them as "a cabal," in the words of one former official. Members of the group do not hide their friendships and connections, or their loyalty to strong positions in support of Israel and Likud.
One of Abrams's mentors, Richard Perle, chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, led a study group that proposed to Binyamin Netanyahu, a Likud prime minister of Israel from 1996 to 1999, that he abandon the Oslo peace accords negotiated in 1993 and reject the basis for them -- the idea of trading "land for peace.<h3>" Israel should insist on Arab recognition of its claim to the biblical land of Israel, the 1996 report suggested, and should "focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq."</h3>
<b>Besides Perle, the study group included David Wurmser, now a special assistant to Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton, and Douglas J. Feith,</b> now undersecretary of defense for policy. Feith has written prolifically on Israeli-Arab issues for years, arguing that Israel has as legitimate a claim to the West Bank territories seized after the Six Day War as it has to the land that was part of the U.N.-mandated Israel created in 1948. Perle, Feith and Abrams all declined to be interviewed for this article.
Rumsfeld echoed the Perle group's analysis in a little-noted comment to Pentagon employees last August about "the so-called occupied territories." <b>Rumsfeld said: "There was a war [in 1967], Israel urged neighboring countries not to get involved . . . they all jumped in, and they lost a lot of real estate to Israel because Israel prevailed in that conflict. In the intervening period, they've made some settlements in some parts of the so-called occupied area, which was the result of a war, which they won."............</b>
......The State Department pressed for continued negotiations and pressure on Sharon to limit the scope of his military response to Palestinian suicide bombers, while the Pentagon and <b>the vice president's office favored more encouragement for the Israelis, and less concern for a peace process</b> which, they said, was going nowhere anyhow........
But the administration did make a series of statements and gestures intended to restrain Sharon's response to suicide bombings, and to reassert the traditional U.S. policy that Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank had to cease. At the urging of Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, Bush publicly embraced the idea of a Palestinian state.
An internal debate split the administration and invited the lobbying of think tanks, Jewish organizations, evangelical Christians and others who take a fierce interest in the Middle East. While some groups including Americans for Peace Now lined up against Sharon's tough policies and in favor of negotiations, most of the organizations and individuals who lobbied on these issues embraced a harder line, and supported Sharon. Over the past dozen years or more, supporters of Sharon's Likud Party have moved into leadership roles in most of the American Jewish organizations that provide financial and political support for Israel.
Friends of Israel in Congress also lined up with Sharon. <h3>In November 2001, 89 of 100 senators signed a letter to Bush asking the administration not to try to restrain Israel</h3> from using "all [its] strength and might" in response to Palestinian suicide bombings. Signers said they wanted to persuade Bush to prevent Secretary of State Colin L. Powell from pressuring Sharon......
....A series of episodes in which Bush felt Arafat behaved inappropriately further soured the relationship. Bush repeatedly refused to meet with Arafat, who had met with Clinton 21 times. And month after month, U.S. officials blamed Arafat for failing to prevent the suicide bombings in Israel.
After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Sharon began immediately to argue that Israel and the United States were fighting the same enemy, international terrorism. Over the months that followed -- months marked by escalating violence in Israel and the West Bank -- Bush and Sharon grew closer, personally and politically. By the end of last year the two had met seven times and talked on many more occasions by telephone (with Sharon doing nearly all the talking, Israeli officials said). Said a senior official of the first Bush administration who is critical of this one: "Sharon played the president like a violin: 'I'm fighting your war, terrorism is terrorism,' and so on. Sharon did a masterful job."
Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, a leading figure in Jewish-Evangelical Christian relations for two decades, offered a more sympathetic description of Bush's alignment with Israel and Sharon. "President Bush's policy stems from his core as a Christian, his perceptions of right and wrong, good and evil, and of the need to stand up and fight against evil," Eckstein said. "I personally believe it is very personal, not a political maneuver on his part."
Politics have played a role, several sources said. Gary Bauer, an evangelical Christian activist and Republican presidential candidate in 2000, said that he and like-minded evangelicals have campaigned vigorously in support of Israel and Sharon's tough policies. "I think we've had some impact," Bauer said.
Another conservative Republican with Christian ties who has made Israel a cause is House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.). Last April, speaking to a Jewish group in Washington, DeLay called Israel "the lone fountain of liberty" in the Middle East, and endorsed Israeli retention of the occupied territories. He referred to West Bank by the biblical names, Judea and Samaria, which are often used by Israelis who consider them part of Israel.
The Rev. Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention said the White House and its political director, Karl Rove, know "how critical [evangelical] support is to them and their party," and know how strongly evangelicals support Israel. "We need to bless Israel more than America needs Israel's blessing," Land said, "because Israel has a far greater ally than the United States of America, God Almighty."
"This is not your daddy's Republican Party," said James Zogby, president of the Arab-American Institute in Washington, who argues the administration is losing its ability to act as an honest broker in the Middle East by lining up with Israel. "There's a marriage here between the religious right and the neoconservatives," he said, referring to intellectual hard-liners such as Abrams and Perle, both of whom worked for Democrats before joining the Reagan administration.
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IMO, we can have no discussion of "what's wrong with the Palestinians", unless we are able to move beyond subtle insertions of Israeli Foreign Ministry web pages. in our posts here, and work on examining what is "wrong" with the
Israelis and the Americans, and what their culpability is in "squeezing" the Palestinians. What options are Palestinians, arguably believing that the "secular choice" of "leadership" that Israel and the US campaigns for them to choose, is actually an Israeli sponsored "puppet" government, supposed to embrace, when they experience "things" like this:
Quote:
Six Day War: Legality of Settlements Debated
Listen to this story... by Eric Westervelt
West Bank settlement outpost of Migron.
David Silverman
<img src="http://media.npr.org/news/images/2007/jun/07/sixday2002.jpg">
<i>An armed Jewish settler walks past mobile homes in the West Bank settlement outpost of Migron. Getty Images</i>
Morning Edition, June 8, 2007 · In the Six Day War of June 1967, Israel defeated the combined armies of Egypt, Syria and Jordan, capturing the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights and the Sinai Peninsula. For Israel, it was a stunning triumph; for Arabs, a humiliating defeat.
Israel no longer occupies the Sinai or Gaza, but its continued hold over the other territories has stymied efforts to bring comprehensive peace to the Middle East.
The fifth part of a five-part series follows. .....
.....The problem with Migron, according to court papers, is that the outpost was illegally built on land owned by Palestinians in the adjacent villages of Deir Didwan and Burqa.
"Israel claims it respects ownership rights in the West Bank," says Dror Etkes, the Settlement Watch Coordinator for Israel Peace Now, "but Migron was constructed … fully on registered private Palestinian land."
In February, responding to a lawsuit by Peace Now, the Israeli government conceded that the outpost was unauthorized, that it was built on private land and, the state said, that it should be dismantled.
In 2005, the Israeli-government-created Sahsohn Commission concluded that the state illegally spent more than 4 million Shekels, or about $1 million, of public funds building Migron.
The state has successfully petitioned the court for more time to create an outpost evacuation plan before dismantling the outpost. Etkes called that just another stalling tactic. He said Migron is a prime example of how settlers continue to establish facts on the ground in the West Bank — backed by the government – that, over time, often become larger settlements.
"And what we see here, is, not only has the state not enforced law on Israelis in West Bank, but the state is supporting and subsidizing law violation on a massive scale," Etkes says.
The ongoing legal fight over Migron is likely to become a key test-case for other outposts. Settlers are fighting back hard in the courts because a loss at Migron could make other, more vast Israeli-built areas in the West Bank legally vulnerable, Etkes says.
"They're extremely afraid of Migron," he says. "They understand very well that once a precedent will be done in Migron, there will be dozens and hundreds of sites in the West Bank. And it's not only outposts, but official settlements, which are fully or partially built on private Palestinian land."
According to the government's own Sahsohn report, more than 100 new unauthorized outposts have been built in the West Bank since 1996. The report says most have basic infrastructure provided with direct help from the state.
The first Israeli settlements in the West Bank began cropping up in the fall of 1967 — just a few months after the Six Day war.
Israeli historian Gershom Gorenberg said that back then, there were warnings at the highest levels within the government that settlements would be viewed by some as neo-Colonial occupation and could backfire. But parliamentary proponents of settlement consistently won out. The romanticized allure of settlement, Gorenberg says, was hard to stop. It was the way Jews in the late 19th century returned to their homeland before independence.
"It had this log cabin, frontier mystique — or the equivalent on Israeli terms — and people who settled the land were heroes," Gorenberg says. "But it was anachronistic. It was this out of date ideal that, when applied to the post-'67 reality, led Israel into a quagmire."
Today the Israeli government, on the one hand, concedes that Migron and the other outposts like it are illegal and contrary to established government policy. Yet, at the same time, the government has actively supported their development and, so far, has done little to remove them.
"That's a pattern that began in the summer of 1967. It reflects that the conflict between the rational understanding that settlement is destructive for Israel and the emotional, almost mythical romance with settlement has not been resolved," Gorenberg says.
Polls show that a majority of Israelis have increasingly soured on the mystique of settlement, and no longer believe they'll be able to hold on to the majority of West Bank land captured 40 years ago.
Yet, near daily rocket fire from Gaza Strip — from which Israel unilaterally withdrew two summers ago — has made Israelis more fearful than ever of implementing a West Bank pullout. As one analyst here put it, "The incredible irony is that at a time when the majority of Israelis have finally reached a conclusion it's impossible to stay in the West Bank, they're terrified of what the divorce will bring."
(Because of intense interest in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, NPR makes available free transcripts of its coverage. View the free transcript of this story.)
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...oryId=10816818
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I'm "bothering" because I admire roachboy's effort and his patience. So many responses to his OP that come from folks who seem to me, anyway....to have malformed opinions of what Israel is, and has done. Israel has one priority....influencing the US legislature and executive to do it's bidding, and influencing a majority in the US to push the executive and the legislature, because so many swallow the "Israel will be driven into the sea", bullshit.
That was a circumstance in another era. Can you even consider...even as a remote possibility.....that what is perceived as good for Likud dominated Israel, is not necessarily good for the US? Can you consider that the US cannot be both the closest friend to a belligerent, Likud dominated Israel, and
an importer dependent on 14 million bbls per day of petroleum, without the risk of provoking otherwise avoidable wars with Israel's petroleum rich adversaries?
Can you, at least consider, that the US is in need of a policy makeover that includes fair treatment of Palestinians and other middle easterners, at the expense of Israeli influence on US political decision making, because Israel is a wealthy country fully capable of taking care of itself....even to the point of asserting US best foreign policy interests, over those of Israel?
Can you consider, that I, and others who post here, are presenting a fact supported, reasoned argument that addresses the present and recent state of affairs in the area where Israel and Palestinians live?
If you disagree with the accuracy of what I, or roachboy, or willravel have posted, wouldn't it be advantageous to point out the flaw that you perceive, and discuss it with us? Isn't it best to be leary or skeptical of a foreign lobby with the bipartisan influence that AIPAC obviously enjoys? Doesn't it seem safer to elect a US presidential candidate in 2008 that will challenge Likud leadership, more than Hillary or any of the republican candidates will be apt to do? Shouldn't it be a priority to listen to Dartmouth educated King Abdullah of Jordan, at least on a level equal to what Israeli leaders enjoy?
Isn't it extreme to be an American Zionist when simply supporting Israel's right to exist. would be adequate and much more in keeping with US "best interests?
Last edited by host; 06-13-2007 at 10:55 PM..
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