It is basic human nature to demonise groups which are foreign/alien to you, and underplay the flaws in the groups you are most friendly and familiar with, regardless of the facts. See below for one take on this, which includes discussion of the culture of violence in the Middle East: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/t...103-5272407-8703840?v=glance&s=books&n=507846 The Middle East and Israel/Palestine will only see peace once the majority of people believe the idea that peaceful negotiation is a superior way to solve problems, rather than violence. Given the current state of most Middle East societies, that will take a long time. However, Europe moved from a culture of violence to a culture of peaceful negotiation over the last 50-100 years, and Latin America has done that more recently, so the Middle East may eventually move down that path. The role of the West should be to promote civilised values out there, and punish barbaric values - that is the best way to hasten the process. In the meantime, everything else is just applying short-term band aids to the problem.
Israel isn't violating any laws, unless you're referring to UN resolutions. And nothing you've said has addressed my point that the UN resolutions, especially as they concern Israel, are absurdly politicized and biased. Israel is worried about its survival, and is playing to a double standard, while other countries are simply committing terrible, terrible acts that have nothing to do with their survival, and the UN says nothing. So what is it you are looking for? Israel wants to survive, and the UN doesn't. Nuff said! The road map called for both sides to take good faith steps. Why should Israel make a move that they've already made in the past when the PA has never shown a whiff of willingness to stop supporting terrorism (let alone to actually try to curb it). And yes, by the way, Israel did stop the expansion. That is why they shut down some settlements and are going to maintain only 6 of them, until and unless the "Palestinians" actually decide they want to become an honest peace partner. Ditto! Good luck to you too.
the last cease fire ended by Israel shooting some people - followed by a suicide bombing from the Pals. israel policy is to instigate terror attacks and then blame the pals for attacking. in fact they have publized this as a tactic - move troops into areas they are not welcomed to instigate a violent response from the pals.
COMPLETELY, ABSOLUTELY the opposite. This is the ultimate twisting. If you're referring to the assassination of terrorists, you are twisting so much its absolutely pathetic. Hamas called a UNILATERAL cease fire, yet terrorist bombings were still going on. They only called a cease fire to try to rebuild arms, and yet Israel backed off some, despite the fact that some terrorism was still going on, but when they got wind of more terrorist plans and saw the ring leaders, they killed them. If this is your idea of "provoking," you have a very backwards or biased philosophy.
i was talking about the cease fire instigated for the road map awhile ago twisting - so in a cease fire Israel can assassinate people and i cant find it now but the Haaretz had an article saying that one of the methods to find 'terrorists' was to push troops/tanks into areas for no reason other than to provoke a response another article off haaretz - since this current thread was about pal refugees http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/...2&subContrassID=1&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y Rape, massacre, transfer Benny Morris, in the month ahead the new version of your book on the birth of the Palestinian refugee problem is due to be published. Who will be less pleased with the book - the Israelis or the Palestinians? "The revised book is a double-edged sword. It is based on many documents that were not available to me when I wrote the original book, most of them from the Israel Defense Forces Archives. What the new material shows is that there were far more Israeli acts of massacre than I had previously thought. To my surprise, there were also many cases of rape. In the months of April-May 1948, units of the Haganah [the pre-state defense force that was the precursor of the IDF] were given operational orders that stated explicitly that they were to uproot the villagers, expel them and destroy the villages themselves. "At the same time, it turns out that there was a series of orders issued by the Arab Higher Committee and by the Palestinian intermediate levels to remove children, women and the elderly from the villages. So that on the one hand, the book reinforces the accusation against the Zionist side, but on the other hand it also proves that many of those who left the villages did so with the encouragement of the Palestinian leadership itself." According to your new findings, how many cases of Israeli rape were there in 1948? "About a dozen. In Acre four soldiers raped a girl and murdered her and her father. In Jaffa, soldiers of the Kiryati Brigade raped one girl and tried to rape several more. At Hunin, which is in the Galilee, two girls were raped and then murdered. There were one or two cases of rape at Tantura, south of Haifa. There was one case of rape at Qula, in the center of the country. At the village of Abu Shusha, near Kibbutz Gezer [in the Ramle area] there were four female prisoners, one of whom was raped a number of times. And there were other cases. Usually more than one soldier was involved. Usually there were one or two Palestinian girls. In a large proportion of the cases the event ended with murder. Because neither the victims nor the rapists liked to report these events, we have to assume that the dozen cases of rape that were reported, which I found, are not the whole story. They are just the tip of the iceberg." According to your findings, how many acts of Israeli massacre were perpetrated in 1948? "Twenty-four. In some cases four or five people were executed, in others the numbers were 70, 80, 100. There was also a great deal of arbitrary killing. Two old men are spotted walking in a field - they are shot. A woman is found in an abandoned village - she is shot. There are cases such as the village of Dawayima [in the Hebron region], in which a column entered the village with all guns blazing and killed anything that moved. "The worst cases were Saliha (70-80 killed), Deir Yassin (100-110), Lod (250), Dawayima (hundreds) and perhaps Abu Shusha (70). There is no unequivocal proof of a large-scale massacre at Tantura, but war crimes were perpetrated there. At Jaffa there was a massacre about which nothing had been known until now. The same at Arab al Muwassi, in the north. About half of the acts of massacre were part of Operation Hiram [in the north, in October 1948]: at Safsaf, Saliha, Jish, Eilaboun, Arab al Muwasi, Deir al Asad, Majdal Krum, Sasa. In Operation Hiram there was a unusually high concentration of executions of people against a wall or next to a well in an orderly fashion. "That can't be chance. It's a pattern. Apparently, various officers who took part in the operation understood that the expulsion order they received permitted them to do these deeds in order to encourage the population to take to the roads. The fact is that no one was punished for these acts of murder. Ben-Gurion silenced the matter. He covered up for the officers who did the massacres." What you are telling me here, as though by the way, is that in Operation Hiram there was a comprehensive and explicit expulsion order. Is that right? "Yes. One of the revelations in the book is that on October 31, 1948, the commander of the Northern Front, Moshe Carmel, issued an order in writing to his units to expedite the removal of the Arab population. Carmel took this action immediately after a visit by Ben-Gurion to the Northern Command in Nazareth. There is no doubt in my mind that this order originated with Ben-Gurion. Just as the expulsion order for the city of Lod, which was signed by Yitzhak Rabin, was issued immediately after Ben-Gurion visited the headquarters of Operation Dani [July 1948]." Are you saying that Ben-Gurion was personally responsible for a deliberate and systematic policy of mass expulsion? "From April 1948, Ben-Gurion is projecting a message of transfer. There is no explicit order of his in writing, there is no orderly comprehensive policy, but there is an atmosphere of [population] transfer. The transfer idea is in the air. The entire leadership understands that this is the idea. The officer corps understands what is required of them. Under Ben-Gurion, a consensus of transfer is created." Ben-Gurion was a "transferist"? "Of course. Ben-Gurion was a transferist. He understood that there could be no Jewish state with a large and hostile Arab minority in its midst. There would be no such state. It would not be able to exist." I don't hear you condemning him. "Ben-Gurion was right. If he had not done what he did, a state would not have come into being. That has to be clear. It is impossible to evade it. Without the uprooting of the Palestinians, a Jewish state would not have arisen here."
Israel did not agree to a cease fire, Hamas was not abiding by their unilateral cease fire, and the only reason it offered one was to buy time to rebuild its stocks of weapons and make new terror plans. As far as the article, I can hardly address the accusations of an author that are supposed to offer new information. What are his sources? In Jenin the people accused Israel of massacres, and animals were brought in to make the area smell like death. This was despite the fact that Israel risked and lost the lives of many soldiers by sending them in for very, very close quarters combat rather than risk large scale civilian lives by leveling the place (as any other state would have done). After a long and tough UN investigation, no evidence of any abuses were found. My point is that, as far as I know here, the author is simply repeating propagandist allegations, which have been so common. If there is any truth that abuses were committed during wartime 60 years ago, it is sad. Although war frenzy invites terrible things, the intentional killing of innocent people is always terrible and unacceptable, regardless of where, when, and to or from whom it occurs!
The Palestinians can go live in the Gaza strip, in Jordan and in Iraq... the Arabs lost the war, and Israel defended itself by taking the land... end of story... God Bless Israel in her continued battle against Evil... But Bush is still a mad dog...
the author is a jewish historian, self proclaimed zionist, who claims the evidence is "It is based on many documents that were not available to me when I wrote the original book, most of them from the Israel Defense Forces Archives" - article is in a Israeli jewish newspaper, the author of the article is jewish.
Maybe it is accurate (and maybe not), its not like I have time to buy and read and then research this book this afternoon. But the fact that the guy is Jewish in itself proves little to nothing (usually nothing). If its accurate, and again I say IF, then as I said before it is sad. No group of people is incapable of doing bad things. Indeed, no large group of people in the world has a history without any blemishes (or worse) whatsover. This, IF true, would certainly be a sad one.
"After a long and tough UN investigation, no evidence of any abuses were found. " I thought you did not give a damn about what UN says.