LOL LOL LOL !!!! I was kind of thinking the same thing about the color of jews but i figured that could be another thread
True. And I said so in an earlier post (about the Indian Wars....I had neglected to speak about the Mexican "border disputes". So I admit to a degree of inaccuracy. However, the shameful Indian Wars were fought within our own borders (whether they were morally right or wrong is another matter). The Mexican conflicts were over disputed borders. Which is not to make an excuse for them. I am not knowledgeable enough to either condemn or condone what occurred in these matters. But as far as I know, there were not incursions into Mexico beyond the borders we did recognize at the time. Am I wrong? (I may be. I did not pay that much attention in history class. This amazing girl sat right in front of me). But my point really was in "modern day" American foreign policy, we have not taken "spoils of war". And it is in this era that we find ourselves now. What happened in the 1880's is hardly a basis for believing we will now exploit any "victorious" conclusions in any impending conflicts in "oil nations". Iraq, or elsewhere. This is one of my concerns. If it seems too easy, maybe our military will try to convince our leaders to just roll on. But I have faith in the American people to stop any such over-zealous intentions, if they should become an issue. Certainly there is a dark and shameful past we must live down. As Traderfut and others have so often reminded us. But we have evolved. And by the time the 20th century rolled around, we had become a nation that did not keep land, or natural resources of the nations we conquered. Nor did we take their valuables, as did the Germans.....works of art, precious stones, metals, cash, etc....no personal properties whatsoever (unless you want to count souvenir Luger pistols, German war medals, and other battlefield "memorabilia". And none of that was condoned by the military or the government. Hope I have cleared this up and expressed my meaning in a more accurate manner. Peace, rs7
Depends on who's interpretation of the "borders" you believed. There were always borders. They just were not agreed on. Why quote the whole post? Once isn't enough Peace, O777, rs7
I think it is just a the very simple fact that Israel is the only democracy in that part of the world. Pure and simple. The race issue is certainly a non-factor. We fought wars with nations that were "caucasian". The "Jews in the financial" industries is a myth. Real estate? Maybe a disproportionate number of wealthy Jews in real estate, but certainly no more disproportionate than in any other lucrative endeavors. Doctors, Lawyers, entertainment, whatever. Where there is money to be made, you will find Jews. Why? Because like everyone, they like to be successful. But culturally, education is generally more highly stressed in the Jewish world. Always has been. Part of the teachings of Judaism is about the importance to pursue an education. The religious Jews find these teachings in the Talmud. The secular Jews find it in their every day culture and family values. As for influential Jews from the 1940's to the 1980's....gotta start with the Marx Brothers, and the Three Stooges And work your way up through the entertainment industry to Speilberg and Seinfeld and such today. Other than entertainers, why would any of us be aware of the religion of people in less high profile professions or industries. Certainly, as a minority, there have not been many Jewish politicians. Too much bigotry still. But Leiberman is now a national figure. Ed Koch...well NY is NY. (Bloomberg now). More Jews in NY than in Israel I believe. That is why the lox and bagels, the pastrami sandwiches and the chinese food are the best in NY. Try getting any of this in Kansas. Peace, Rs7
As for influential Jews from the 1940's to the 1980's....gotta start with the Marx Brothers, and the Three Stooges And work your way up through the entertainment industry to Spielberg and Seinfeld and such today. Other than entertainers, why would any of us be aware of the religion of people in less high profile professions or industries. Certainly, as a minority, there have not been many Jewish politicians. Too much bigotry still. But Leiberman is now a national figure. Ed Koch...well NY is NY. (Bloomberg now). More Jews in NY than in Israel I believe. That is why the lox and bagels, the pastrami sandwiches and the chinese food are the best in NY. Try getting any of this in Kansas. My point was that out of the ten jews named, most of them were not on the national scene of importance until after the 1980's..and in some cases the 1990's so it's pretty ludicrous to assume that those were the reasons we supported israel since 1947 or so......but MAYBE just MAYBE we have the real issue about the whole middle east problem and the whole european problem....Maybe you still have a Germany and France with deep rooted hatred of the Jewish people they drove out or Europe and maybe it's not about oil but about Jews/Americans vs Middleast/Europeans based on ethnic backround and race....afterall, ask some of the people who are posting here if they are for or against Israel and it's right to a state and Im sure you 'd have mixed answers....Ask most middleastern men if they are for ANY israeli state in the middleast and for the most part the answer is NO.....so maybe it's really not about OIL but about the existence and the right to exist for Israel. Saddam, Osama, Taliban, they all calle dofr the complete destruction of Israel..not for them to create a pailistinian state...how much differnet do you beleive the leaders of Germany, France and Pakistan are?
This part of your statement seems to be absolutely true. At least the calls for the destruction of Israel in the Arab world. But then again, what if Israel really did cease to exist? Who would the scapegoat be then? How would these "leaders" of the Arab world retain their power? Who would be to blame for all the the incredibly unbalanced distribution of wealth and power? Israel seems to serve a great function for the Royal families and the dictators. The universal enemy. If they disappear, what will be the rallying cry of the Arab leaders then? Germany, France and Pakistan? If any of us could understand what makes these countries tick, we should be writing books, and teaching political science at Princeton, not posting to ET. Peace, rs7
Edward S Herman http://www.krysstal.com/democracy_whyusa03.html "Thus, instead of having to leave the occupied territories Israel continues to push out the locals by force, uproot their trees, steal their water, beggar them by 'closures' and endless restrictions, and it suffers no penalties because it has USA approval, protection, and active assistance. The partners also deny Palestinians any right to return to land from which they were expelled, so 140+ contrary United Nations votes, and two Security Council Resolutions (both vetoed by the United States) have no effect; and in a remarkable Orwellian process of doublethink - and double morality - Israel is free to expel more Palestinians in the same time frame in which their protector spent billions and great moral energy in a campaign to return worthy victims in Kosovo." "Another remarkable Orwellian process is this: the abused and beggared Palestinian people periodically rebel as their conditions deteriorate and more land is taken, homes are demolished, and they are treated with great ruthlessness and discrimination. Many are among the hundreds of thousands expelled earlier, or who have still not forgotten their relatives killed and injured by Israeli violence over many years - and Palestinian deaths by Israeli arms almost surely exceed Israeli deaths from 'terrorism' by better than 15 to 1. And after this long history of expulsion and murder they are still under assault. In this context, if they rise up in revolt at their oppressors this is not 'freedom fighters' or a 'national liberation movement' in action, it is 'irrational violence' and a return to 'terrorism,' and both Israeli and USA officials (and therefore the mainstream USA media) agree that the first order of business is to stop this terrorism." "But in the definitional system of oppressor and patron this is TERRORISM, horrifying and intolerable. What Israel has done making this people desperate is not terror. As [USA] State Department PR man James Rubin explained after another spate of Israeli demolitions of Palestinian houses, this was 'a wrong signal' for a delicate stage in peace talks. Not bad in themselves and a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, just a wrong signal. Madeleine Albright called on the Israelis to refrain from 'what Palestinians see as the provocative expansion of settlements, land confiscation, house demolitions and confiscation of IDs'. Only 'the Palestinians' see these actions as 'provocative;' Albright does not find them objectionable in themselves or illegal. In fact, under Clinton the United States finally rejected the international law and almost universal consensus on the occupation, declaring the territories not 'occupied Palestinian lands' but 'disputed territories' (Albright). By USA fiat Palestinian lands became open to settlement by force by the ethnic cleanser who the United States has armed to the teeth, and who has aggressively brutalized while creating 'facts on the ground' during the 'dispute,' which will not be settled until the victims end their terrorism." "And Albright has stressed that there is 'No moral equivalency between suicide bombers and bulldozers' (Newsweek, Aug. 18, 1997). Clinton, standing next to Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres as the latter defended a blockade of the Palestinians that was adding to their misery, put the blame on Hamas who were allegedly 'trying to make the Palestinians as miserable as possible' (Phila. Inquirer, March 15, 1996). There was not the slightest hint that Israel was contributing to Palestinian misery despite massive expropriations and 300 devastating "closures" after 1993." "So it is not Israeli policy, which amounts to a continuous and illegal assault on and displacement of the Palestinians, that is ultimately at fault and that must be changed to resolve this conflict. Albright can't recognize that decades of 'bulldozers' necessarily produce suicide bombers, although she was quick to find that much less repression in Kosovo produced 'freedom fighters;' nor can she distinguish between systematic policy (i.e., bulldozers) and uncontrollable outbursts from victims that do NOT constitute policy. The inability of these USA officials to see Israel's hugely discriminatory and brutal expulsions, demolitions, mistreatment and plain exploitation as seriously wrong in themselves, illegal, or causal manifests a complete identification with and apologetic for the ethnic cleansers. Five years ago a senior Clinton White House official declared that 'We are not going to second-guess Israel'. [Later] Colin Powell assured the Jewish lobbying group AIPAC that 'We are dedicated to preserving this special relationship with Israel and the Israeli people...[and] a secure Israel with internationally-recognized borders remains a cornerstone of the United States foreign policy.' In short, now as in the past, and with only rare exceptions, as in the case of the unauthorized Israeli attack on Egypt in 1956, Israel will get strong USA support for whatever it does, and the ethnic cleansing of its unworthy victims can proceed as required." "One of the triumphs of [the] Oslo [Agreement] was its buying off of Arafat, making him into a second class client and an enforcer of the pathetic 'settlement,' with USA and Israeli funds and training exchanged for his commitment to keep his people in line and control 'terrorism.' The formula for the wholesale terrorists (Israel) has always been: whatever violence we perpetrate is 'retaliation' and it is up to the retail terrorists (Palestinians) to stop terrorizing and then we might 'negotiate' with them in a 'peace process.' Israeli leaders say 'You can't ask us to stop expanding existing settlements, which are living organisms' (Netanyahu), as if this were not in violation of UN resolutions, the Fourth Geneva Convention, and even the 1993 Oslo agreement itself." "USA officials can never bring themselves to say that what Israel is doing is wrong - at worst it may send 'a wrong signal,' etc. And they follow closely the Israeli party line that 'terrorism' (Palestinian, not Israeli) must be stopped first, so that the 'peace process' can be put back on track. For Albright, 'security' is primary, and she told Arafat that 'she needed a commitment and action on the subject of security' before she could make a credible approach to Israel on other issues. 'Security' always means Israeli security, not Palestinian, for Albright - or for Colin Powell - just as for Israeli officials. Here as elsewhere these high USA officials internalize the Israeli perspective and the idea of 'security' for the unworthy victims doesn't arise, any more than the notion that Israeli insecurity arises from the much greater Palestinian insecurity that inevitably results from Israeli policies. In his visit to Jerusalem in March 1996, Clinton spoke of 'the awful persistence of fear' - but only in reference to Israelis, not to Palestinians. This is an internalized racist bias that has characterized USA official statements and media and expert opinion here for decades." "Why does the United States support Israel's ethnic cleansing? Broadly speaking, the reasons boil down to two factors. One is Israel's role as a USA proxy in the Middle East and its integration into the USA security system, which encompasses not only keeping the Arab world in line, but also providing services like supplying arms to the Somoza regime in Nicaragua, the Pinochet government of Chile, Mobutu, Idi Amin, apartheid South Africa, and the Guatemalan and Argentinian terror states. Because of these services, Israel's victims are not merely unworthy, they also become 'terrorists' and part of the 'Islamic threat' for the USA political elite and mainstream media." "The second factor is the exceptional power of the pro-Israel lobby, which for many years has bought and bullied politicians and the media, so that they all vie with one another in genuflections to the holy state. This bullying is especially strong and effective in Canada and the United States, but it applies widely, and the distinguished British reporter Robert Fisk, describing the abuse he has suffered in reporting on the Middle East, says that 'the attempt to force the media to obey Israel's rules is now international'." "These factors feed into the intellectual and media culture in complex ways that institutionalize the huge bias, with pro-Israeli and anti-Palestinian perspectives internalized and / or made obligatory by potential flak and pressure from above and without. This is extremely important, as there is no reason to believe that the USA public would support a massive and brutal ethnic cleansing program if they were given even a modest quantum of the ugly facts, if the main victims rather than the ethnic cleansers were humanized, and if the media's frames of reference were not designed to apologize for Israeli expropriation and violence. However, the ongoing media and intellectual biases do very effectively complement the national policy of support for the ethnic cleansing state, just as they helped cover up national policy supporting Indonesia's murderous occupation of East Timor, and just as they roused the public to a pitch of frenzy over the unapproved Yugoslav violence in Kosovo." Der Spiegal, news magazine from Germany (1 September 1997): "Never before in modern history has a country dominated the earth so totally as the United States does today... America is now the Schwarzenegger of international politics: showing off muscles, obtrusive, intimidating... The Americans, in the absence of limits put to them by anybody or anything, act as if they own a kind of blank cheque in their 'McWorld'".
The Jewish Agency (run by future Prime Minister of Israel, David Ben Gurion) uses a Jewish terrorist group, Irgun (run by Monachem Begin, a future Prime Minister of Israel and future recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize) to organise and carry out The King David Hotel Massacre in UK controlled Palestine. The King David Hotel in Jerusalem is blown up killing 92 Britons, Arabs and Jews. The Jewish Agency and Irgun want to set up a Jewish state in Palestine. Numerous acts of terrorism are planned to force the UK out of the region and to terrify the indigenous Arab Palestinians into leaving. Irgun had been attacking Palestinians since the late 1930s. Israel Zangwill (a Jewish UK journalist) had declared as early as 1905: "[We] must be prepared either to DRIVE OUT BY THE SWORD the tribes in possession [of our land] as our forefathers did or to grabble with the problem of a large ALIEN population. Many are semi-nomad, they have given nothing to Palestine and are not entitled to the rules of democracy." In 1939, Vladimir Jabotinsky (founder of the Israeli Likud Party) had admitted: "Zionist colonization must either be terminated or carried out against the wishes of the native population.. It is important to speak Hebrew, but it is even more important to be able to shoot - or else I am through at playing with colonizing" Moshe Sharett (soon to be Israel's first Foreign Minister) had recently written: "[W]hen the Jewish state is established--it is very possible that the result will be [population] transfer of [the Palestinian] Arabs."
The UK announces it will leave Palestine in 1948 and hands over resolution of the problems in the region to the United Nations. The United Nations proposes that Palestine be partitioned into two states: Israel (which is allocated 56.5% of the territory) and Palestine (43%). The city of Jerusalem (0.5% of the territory) is to remain under international control. The USA threatens countries with reduction of aid or other sanctions if they vote against the partition plan. The Jewish population in Palestine had increased during the previous 70 years after migrations from Europe. Year Jewish Population Percentage (%) 1880 24,000 6 1917 (Balfour Declaration) 56,000 10 1922 84,000 11 1931 174,000 17 1936 384,000 28 1945 608,000 31 1947 (UN Partition Plan) 640,000 33 Thus, at the time of United Nations partition plan, 33% of the inhabitants of Palestine are Jewish. The population percentage ratio in the section alloted to Palestine is 10% Jewish to 90% Arab. In the section alloted to Israel the population percentage ratio is 55% Jewish to 45% Arab. The Jewish Agency accepts the proposals while the Arabs reject them. Talking about Israel and the Palestinians, David Ben Gurion (the first prime Minister of Israel) states: "[I am] satisfied with part of the country, but on the basis of the assumption that after we build up a strong force following the establishment of the state--we will abolish the partition of the country and we will expand to the whole Land of Israel." "No Zionist can forgo the smallest portion of the Land Of Israel. [A] Jewish state in part [of Palestine] is not an end, but a beginning ..... Our possession is important not only for itself ... through this we increase our power, and every increase in power facilitates getting hold of the country in its entirety. Establishing a [small] state .... will serve as a very potent lever in our historical effort to redeem the whole country." "We must do everything to insure they never return. The old will die and the young will forget. We shall reduce the Arab population to a community of woodcutters and waiters." "We must expel Arabs and take their places .... and, if we have to use force-not to disposes the Arabs of the Negev and Transjordan, but to guarantee our own right to settle in those places-then we have force at our disposal." "In the area allocated to the Jewish State there are not more than 520,000 Jews and about 350,000 non-Jews, mostly Arabs. Together with the Jews of Jerusalem, the total population of the Jewish State at the time of its establishment, will be about one million, including almost 40% non-Jews. such a [population] composition does not provide a stable basis for a Jewish State. This [demographic] fact must be viewed in all its clarity and acuteness. With such a [population] composition, there cannot even be absolute certainty that control will remain in the hands of the Jewish majority .... There can be no stable and strong Jewish state so long as it has a Jewish majority of only 60%." "With compulsory transfer we [would] have a vast area [for settlement] .... I support compulsory transfer. I don't see anything immoral in it." "we adopt the system of aggressive defense ; with every Arab attack we must respond with a decisive blow: the destruction of the place or the expulsion of the residents along with the seizure of the place." "The transfer of Arabs is easier than the transfer of any other [people]. There are Arabs states around . . . And it is clear that if the [Palestinian] Arabs are transferred this would improve their situation and not the opposite." Other quotes showing what was being planned for the Arab population of Palestine: "There is no other way than to transfer the Arabs from here to neighbouring countries; not one village, not one tribe should be left" (Joseph Weitz, 1940). "There is no choice: the Arabs must make room for the Jews in Eretz Yisrael. If it was possible to transfer the Baltic peoples, it is also possible to move the Palestinian Arabs" (Vladimir Jabotinsky, 1939 - Eretz Yisrael means Greater Israel). "We Shall spread in the whole country in the course of time ..... this is only an arrangement for the next 25 to 30 years." (Chaim Weizmann writing about the partition of Palestine in 1937). "The Partition of Palestine is illegal. It will never be recognized .... Jerusalem was and will for ever be our capital. Eretz Israel will be restored to the people of Israel. All of it. And for Ever." (Menachem Begin, 1948). "Transfer could be the crowning achievements, the final stage in the development of [our] policy, but certainly not the point of departure. By [speaking publicly and prematurely] we could mobilizing vast forces against the matter and cause it to fail, in advance." (Moshe Sharett, 1947). "We must continually raise the demand that our land be returned to our possession .... If there are other inhabitants there, they must be transferred to some other place. We must take over the land. We have a great and NOBLER ideal than preserving several hundred thousands of [Palestinian] Arabs fellahin [peasants]." (Menachem Ussishkin in a 1930 speech in Jerusalem). "Isn't now the time to be rid of them? Why continue to keep in our midst these thorn at a time when they pose a danger to us? Our people are weighing up a solution." (Yosef Weitz on the inhabitants of Daliyat al-Rawha', south of Haifa). Haganah and Irgun (Jewish paramilitaries) kill 60 civilians in Balad al-Shaykh, 7 in Yehida, 10 in Khisas, 5 children in Qazaza. Beduin settlements near Tel Aviv are attacked.