Right. The negotiations have been such a smashing success that now everybody wants to bask in their glory. Actually it's not about being sidelined, Bush was so terrified by the show of Iranian force a week ago (three scuds and one Photoshop) that he is sending a representative to declare complete and unconditional surrender and announce that he'll be converting the country to Islam. Seriously though, I think it's the last-ditch effort to make Iranians understand that we (or more likely Israelis) are not kidding anymore and simultaneously show to the world that we've done our due diligence and talked to them face to face. After that we'll just wash our hands and watch the Israelis do what they do best... But that's just my opinion which is as good as yours about the fear of being sidelined.
That doesn't mean everything is nice, it simply means people likes their land. As far as Jimmy Carter is concerned, the quote is about the laws of Israel; I'm talking about the practice. 77% of Israeli arabs would rather live in Israel than anywhere else and Carter says that Israel is a "wonderful democracy with equal rights for jews and arabs" but you disagree, you know better than all of them combined. BTW you can find cases of discrimination everywhere - France, the UK, the US, South America, anywhere else, Israel is certainly not an exception but the arab minority is by far better off in Israel politically and financially than it is in Europe. Most of this discrimination is done by having Israeli citizenship benefits tied up with the military service which Arabs obviously cannot do Bullshit. They can volunteer and defend their country like the rest of their countrymen (including women) do. Unlike the jews they actually have a choice to serve or not to serve, they have more rights than the jews in this respect. And certainly they are not entitled to benefits available to veterans only unless they serve and defend their country against the Arab and Persian aggressor. I'd rather be an Arab than have my head as far up my ass as you. Your head is already up there and it's still quite possible that you are an Arab. The initial area of the Palestinian state would comprise about 73% See, how very dishonest of you. That was the initial offer, it was reviewed and changed multiple times, the final Clinton's proposal in December 2000 was 95% of West Bank, all of Gaza, East Jerusalem, muslim holy sites etc. Even Jacques Chirac's France (no friend of Israel by any stretch of imagination) acknowledged that it was an incredibly generous proposal and got behind it. But hey, destructive here knows better than Clinton, Chirac, 77% of Israeli Arabs and Jimmy "Self-righteous" Carter.
No I did not. I will grant you that as soon as most Muslim countries cease calling for Israel to be destroyed, it will improve things immensely and perhaps lead to reconciliation. That's incredibly naive, IMO. Although you are correct to say there is a class of the oblivious, to say that one is either a war-maker or a peace-maker is absurd. Sometimes peaceful people have to go to war in order to survive. If not, they would be slaughtered.
If the US would not have joined in talks with the Iranians now that Syria is helping in and the EU shows openness, the US would have been sidelined in the process - with little to say in vetoing or determining the outcome. Imagine what would happen if the EU started talks and made a deal with Iran, and the US was never in on the talks. The US would have had egg all over their face ... Frankly, the US had no choice but to join in ...
anyone else find it interesting that the US sent "an envoy" to IRAN? We have not spoken to Iran in 25 years. (besides 1 sit down between Iran and Iraq and the USA a few months ago) Bush pointed out that "we will not negoatite until they stop enriching uranium. But isnt this a siginifiact step? or did i miss something?
Well, it might well be just another sit down and nothing more than that, at least this is the official spin. Perino said...that the meeting was a "one-time U.S. participation." Who knows, griningho thinks Iran is ready to play ball and the US does not want to be left out. I am not sure why he is so excited as he actually wants Iran to go nuclear believing that it will make the world a better place. Anyway, I hope he's right that Iran is ready to deal but I don't hold my breath, I doubt Iran under any circumstances will be willing to voluntarily give up their nuclear ambitions. We'll see, It may be significant, then again it may indeed be a "one-time participation".
Neither will last 5 minutes under a stealth fighter and a couple of laser guided missiles. Do you know how well an Iranian F-15 will do against a stealth fighter, it cannot even detect? Or against the vastly superior systems on a US or Israeli craft? If there is a war, it will be from the air. The Iranian air force and navy will be in flames. So will every conservative cleric building, military buildings. The power will be out.
Not as systematic and heavily documented as in Israel. Spend some time on BTselem.org It's not as much their country as it is a foreign nation that spawn around them. Most of them have family on the West Bank or Gaza-strip where they might be sent to kill, so for most of them military service is out of the question. It appears like you would be ready to kill Americans for social benefits. If my country was occupied I sure as hell wouldn't fight with the occupiers to kill my own people, thats for sure. This policy provides an effective way of filtering out Palestinians from Jews; the government can discriminate as they feel like by linking whatever they want to the military service which in effect means excluding Palestinians. Luckily, in later years members of Knesset has recognized this and some good individuals are fighting it - with fierce opposition from the racist right I might add. There's still a long way to go, as B'Tselem will show you if you just take some time and study the situation, but maybe things will be better in 10 years. Not half as possible as you being Jewish. You've got it all wrong. By initial, they don't mean it was the first proposal, their talking about how the creation would start. Meaning that if they did come to an agreement, 73% of the West Bank would be part of the Palestinian state. That was the final offer. In addition, they would be promised that with time, in about 10-25 years, they would be given up to slightly under 90% of the West Bank. That is only if everything went well, something that you and I both know it wouldn't. In return for these 73% (possibly 90% with time), the Palestinians would have to give up 10% for good, they would have to accept all the roads splitting up the area in smaller segments, they would have to forget about the right to return and they would have to forget about Jerusalem. In effect, it would never be an independent state, they would never stand on their own feet, they would have to live at the mercy of the Zionist masters. It doesn't matter what Clinton said, what Chirac said or even what Carter says when we can look up the facts and judge by ourself. Norman G. Finkelstein, Jewish professor and son of Holocaust survivors wrote a good article about this issue: http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=11&ar=989 I know you feel compelled to condemn him for being a self-hating Jew, but I assure you he's not; people like him are the number one obstacle in the way of the so called new antisemittism; the fact that people like him are taking up the fight for truth and justice shows beyond any doubt that the evils of Zionism are in no way related to Judaism or the Jewish people in general. I'æm sorry, but I don't believe in adopting other peoples opinions. I take their positions into consideration, I judge the information they provide and I try to understand them, but I choose to make up my own mind. You should try it sometime.
I'm glad you brought this up. It has never been about having an ethnically clean national state for the Palestinians, it's all about the people who where living there. The families, the individuals, the farmers had been living in the land for as far back as they can tell (since the dawn of civilization science will tell you), and they were suddenly removed. Nobody is claiming the restoration of an ancient Palestinian state, thats just a myth. Some Palestinian intellectuals are calling for the restoration of the Canaanite city states (*) which were even there before the Jews arrived (read your bible) because evidence shows these are the Palestinians earliest descendants. That's kind of ironic, history tells us the same people (the Jews) did the very same thing to the same people (Canaanites/Palestinians) twice by stealing their land, with a period of 3000 years between the two times. * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canaanites_(movement) In my opinion though ALL ancient history is 100% irrelevant; what matters is the current situation and everything that lead up to it fom the creation of Zionism. Actually, this is wrong. That is, this distinctive culture and language has not always been called Palestinian and it is not limited to the people we call Palestinians; it's to a large extent shared with the rest of the Southern Levant (Lebanon, Jordan and parts of Syria). These people, the people of the Southern Levant speaks a different kind of Arabic (1) than the Arabic spoken in other countries; It is a form that is descended from the Canaanite or Arameic and far closer related to Hebrew (which also is a Canaanite language) than say Iraqi Arabic. The culture (2) of Palestinian fellahin is also distinct; they have their own folklore, their own style of clothing, their own music, poetry. Even a distinctive ancient calender (3) is being used only by some. (1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_Arabic (2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_culture (3) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentecontad_calendar Who cares, my King is part British. I don't care about his blood, I care about his loyalty - about his actions. It is actually the other way around, the stuff you're preaching is manufactured in order to make the Zionists look better. There's no denial to it, even David Ben Gurion and Yitzhak Ben Zvi, argued that the distinctive culture of the Palestinians was a historical testimony to Israeli practices in ancient times (*). Why do you think there's a falafel-stand on every corner in Israel? You'd be surprised how much Palestinian culture Israelis have adopted because they believe it stems from the ancient Israelites. * http://www.palestine-studies.org/final/en/journals/content.php?aid=6109&jid=4&iid=20&vid=7&vol=192 To try and delete a peoples heritage for the sake of looking better is quite despicable. It's almost as bad as neonazis denying the Holocaust because it makes their Hitler look bad. You should be better than that. This is all wrong. First of all, the Arabs didn't throw out any more Jews, in fact they turned it around and allowed more freedoms for Jews (in spite of the dhimmi-status). Second, the Arabs did not expel nor exterminate the indigenous inhabitants which by the way mostly where Christians descendants of whoever else had been in the land before them, including the Canaanites. The Arabs mainly took control over the land and it took more than a hundred years for half the population to convert to Islam. This is what Arabs did all over the Islamic world; they didn't replace the indigenous populations, they merely, for lack of a better term, "arabized" them. This is confirmed beyond any doubt by the cultural and linguistic diversity within the Arab world, as well as genetic studies: http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/citation/2000/1030/1 In short, the genetic makeup as well as the culture of the Palestinian people is heavily influenced by all the people who have dominated the land throughout the ages. But the people has remained: "Throughout history a great diversity of peoples has moved into the region and made Palestine their homeland: Jebusites, Canaanites, Philistines from Crete, Anatolian and Lydian Greeks, Hebrews, Amorites, Edomites, Nabateans, Arameans, Romans, Arabs, and European crusaders, to name a few. Each of them appropriated different regions that overlapped in time and competed for sovereignty and land. Others, such as Ancient Egyptians, Hittites, Persians, Babylonians, and Mongols, were historical 'events' whose successive occupations were as ravaging as the effects of major earthquakes ... Like shooting stars, the various cultures shine for a brief moment before they fade out of official historical and cultural records of Palestine. The people, however, survive. In their customs and manners, fossils of these ancient civilizations survived until modernityâalbeit modernity camouflaged under the veneer of Islam and Arabic culture." http://www.thisweekinpalestine.com/details.php?id=2208&ed=144&edid=144These I do not agree with this, no more than I agree with Palestinians who try to claim the land because of Canaanite heritage. Ancient history is ancient history; the only thing that matters is the people who are alive today. Actually these archaeological digs are revealing more about the Palestinians since there's a 2000 year period with only a small group of Jews continually living there side by side with Christians and Muslims. And further, these digs are revealing that Israelites might well be Canaanites who emerged in the area amongst the people living in the Highlands around 700 B.C. rather than invaders who came from Egypt in 1000 B.C. Israel Finkelstein, an Israeli archaeologist and academic currently the Jacob M. Alkow Professor of the Archaeology of Israel in the Bronze Age and Iron Ages at Tel Aviv University, have written a book about this called The Bible Unearthed. You should read it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_Finkelstein Nobody is denying that; every single field of science confirms this as much as it confirms the Palestinian presence. However, this does not change the fact that Modern Israel was built by European immigrants who had no ties to the land other than some holy scriptures. This does not qualify to throw the indigenous people out.
This claim goes against science, history, archeology, anthropology, linguistics and reason. Do you have any evidence? Revelation 21:8 (King James Version) King James Version (KJV) 8 But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death. Lies in order to make yourself look better, no less. At least now you can't say you were not warned. How could this be? Arabic existed before the Koran was written. The words simply didn't mean anything before Muhammed came along? The name stems from Phillistine (Ph as in F) and the Arabs call the land Filistine (which is basically Phillistine). "Palestine" with the P is simply a western derogation that has nothing to do with the historical etymology of the word. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philistia Though your right about the historic philistines probably not playing a large part in forming the Palestinian identity. It's the long history starting with the Canaanites that makes up the Palestinian heritage. Wrong. The Palestine Brigade was made up of three Palestinian Jewish regiments and one Palestinian Arab regiment, and they fought and died side by side: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Brigade#Palestine_Regiment You're wrong about the Palestinians never being referred to as Palestinians, but you're right about indigenous Jews being referred to as Palestinians. Simply put, all the people whether they where Muslims, Jews or Christians, if they lived in the Palestine area (western side of Palestine-Transjordan Mandate), they where called Palestinians. This is well documented in the footnotes of this wiki-article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian