TRANSCRIPT Hardball with Chris Matthews (9:00 PM ET) - CNBC May 1, 2002 Wednesday CHRIS MATTHEWS, host: Congressman Dick Armey of Texas leads the Republicans in the US House of Representatives. Congressman Armey, Mr. Majority Leader, why is the Congress about to pass a resolution supporting Israel at a time that the president is trying to walk a line between Israel and its Arab neighbors? Representative RICHARD ARMEY (Republican, Majority Leader): Well, we've had--we feel very strongly in the House of Representatives that we have a moral obligation to protect the safety, security and freedom of Israel. And the Congress wants to speak on that, both bodies want to do so. We've discussed it with the White House, and everybody is comfortable. We will go--go ahead with that tomorrow. It is very important to the world that Israel be--the freedom of Israel be protected and honored. MATTHEWS: What good is this going to do anybody? Rep. ARMEY: Well, I think, again, we--we want to make the point... MATTHEWS: To whom? Rep. ARMEY: The president of the United States is trying to make a transition in foreign policy from what it has been to what it must be in the future. We can no longer appease aggressors in the Middle East. There obviously will never be a peace. The goal is no Jews between them and the sea, and we must make it very clear that if you want to talk about peace and talk the talk, you must walk the walk, and that must be respect for Israel's right to live freely, safely and securely. MATTHEWS: OK. Let's talk about the realities over there. There's a fight between the Arabs and the--and the Israelis over who owns the Pal--all of Palestine. Do you support the idea that there be a Palestine state alongside Israel? Rep. ARMEY: I am perfectly content to have a Palestinian state alongside Israel if it is a state that honors others borders. MATTHEWS: You are in total, 180 disagreement with Tom Delay who said this week that the entire West Bank belongs to Israel and it belongs to that country that's not an Arab country. Rep. ARMEY: I... MATTHEWS: It should not have a statehood. Rep. ARMEY: No, I'm perfectly content to have a Palestinian state. I am not content to give up any part of Israel for that purpose of that Palestinian state. MATTHEWS: Wait a minute. Tom Delay's, whose resolution you're going to put on the floor tomorrow and schedule, has said that the entire West Bank, he calls it Judean Samaria, belongs to Israel. How can you say that this resolution doesn't support the Delay position which is Israel has a right to grab the entire West Bank? Rep. ARMEY: No, I--I'm content to have Israel grab the entire West Bank. I'm also content to have the Palestinians have a homeland and even for that to be somewhere near Israel, but I'm not content to see Israel give up land for the purpose of peace to the Palestinians who will not accept it and would not honor it. It is time to... MATTHEWS: Well, where do you put the Palestinian state, in Norway? Once the Israelis take back the West Bank permanently and annex it, there's no place else for the Palestinians to have a state. Rep. ARMEY: No, no, that's not--that's not at all true. There are many Arab nations that have many hundreds of thousands of acres of land and--and soil and property and opportunity to create a Palestinian state. MATTHEWS: So you would transport--you would transport the Palestinians from Palestine to somewhere else and call it their state? Rep. ARMEY: I would be perfectly content to have a homeland, just as--most of... MATTHEWS: But not in Palestine? Rep. ARMEY: Most of the people who now populate Israel were transported from all over the world to that land and they made it their home. The Palestinians can do the same, and we're per--perfectly content to work with the Palestinians in doing that. We are not willing to sacrifice Israel for the notion of a Palestinian homeland. MATTHEWS: Right, no. No, that's not the question and that's not your answer. The question here is: What is the future of the Palestinians who are fighting Israel right now? You say there future is somewhere besides Palestine. That runs in the way of US policy going back to 1948. It runs--it runs completely against the president's policy and every policy I've heard a president take, which is that Israel has to give up its settlements on the West Bank and give it back to the Arabs in exchange for peace. You say the deal should be the Palestinians leave? Rep. ARMEY: That's right. Palestinians say the deal should be the Israel--that--that the Israelis leave. MATTHEWS: Have you talked about this with the president? Rep. ARMEY: I happened to believe that the Palestinians should leave. MATTHEWS: Have you ever told George Bush, the president from your home state of Texas, that you think the Palestinians should get up and go and leave Palestine and that's the solution? Rep. ARMEY: I'm probably telling him that right now. This is... MATTHEWS: Have you thought this through? Rep. ARMEY: I have thought this through. I've thought it through for a lot of years. I believe that Israel is the state for the Jewish people. It needs to be honored. It needs to be protected. MATTHEWS: Yeah. That's not what you're saying. You're saying Israel should expand its borders to the Jordan River... Rep. ARMEY: No. MATTHEWS: ...and kick out all the Palestinians? That's what you just said. Rep. ARMEY: I am--I am content to have Israel occupy that land that it now occupies and to have those people who have been aggressors against Israel retired to some other arena, and I would be happy to have them make a home. I would be happy to have all of these Arab nations that have been so hell bent to drive Israel out of the Middle East to get together, find some land and make a home for the Palestinians. I think it can be done. MATTHEWS: So the president, who has been dutifully, for the last couple of weeks, trying to get the Israeli army to withdraw from the West Bank, should stop that, let the Israeli defense force take over the West Bank and hold it and make it part of Israel? You completely disagree with the president's policy then? Rep. ARMEY: I am--I am perfectly content to have Israel hold and occupy the land that it has at this moment. MATTHEWS: Well, how about though-how about the Jenin in Samaria? Tom Delay, whose measure you're putting on the floor tomorrow, says that all the West Bank, Jenin, Judea, Masada, everything belongs to Israel. It's not occupied territory. It's Israeli. Is that your position? Rep. ARMEY: Well, first of all, Chris, I think we have to be real careful on how you are interpreting jo--Tom's provision. I think Tom's provision is principally and primarily that the Jewish people have a right to defend themselves. MATTHEWS: Well, just to repeat, you believe that the Palestinians who are now living on the West Bank should get out of there? Rep. ARMEY: Yes.
Rs7, Please correct me if I am wrong. Several times you implied that it was the palestinian that quit their land because of the arabs and that basically the israelis just defended themselves. The past is the past and I am really sure that peace is possible and is achievable but understand me saying that the palestinian quit their country is just wrong it's an insult to their memory and to history. Like no one can say there was no holocaust no one can say that about palestinian. I read many books and seen many documentaries where it was clear that palestinian unfortunately were chased and it was not done with flowers. The text I posted showed how brutal it was... Now, the best solution for everybody is to turn the page and build something new. Saying that it's the other's fault is not that constructive. If not this will continue forever. This is certainly not what we want for our children and children children. Personaly, I think that if the labour candidate is elected there will be peace. Arafat is certainly more than ready to do it. This guy cannot even speak properly he is ill, I think his last hope is to achieve peace with the Israelis and enter history... Last but not least Rs7, it is important to check before saying something. As I told you before you can go in any arab country and I am more than sure you will never be arrested even with an Israeli visa. I think it's just like the cliche for Turkey with the movie Midnight express. May be it happened but I have been several times to Istamboul and it was a wonderful trip and certainly a very safe city if not one of the safest I have ever visited. Peace and Shalom my friend TF
Forums âºâº Community Lounge âºâº Chit Chat âºâº Jokes OPTIONAL777 (ID=2302) (Dec 13, 2002 10:57:07 AM) Q: What is the difference between the Dresden bombing and Germany's best comedian? A: Only the first one can make you smile. wild (ID=2284) (Dec 13, 2002 11:03:48 AM) "Churchill said: 'The destruction of Dresden remains a serious query against the conduct of Allied bombing. I am of the opinion that military objectives must henceforward be more strictly studied....I feel the need for more precise concentration upon military objectives such as oil and communications behind the immediate battle-zone, rather than on mere acts of terror and wanton destruction however impressive.' OPTIONAL777 (ID=2302) (Dec 13, 2002 11:08:46 AM) Q: How many people from Dresden can you fit in a mini van? A: About 25000 if you've got a shovel wild (ID=2284) (Dec 13, 2002 11:10:02 AM) ''In Slaughterhouse Five, -- Or the Children's Crusade, Vonnegut finally delivers a complete treatise on the World War II bombing of Dresden. The main character, Billy Pilgrim, is a very young infantry scout* who is captured in the Battle of the Bulge and quartered in a Dresden slaughterhouse where he and other prisoners are employed in the production of a vitamin supplement for pregnant women. During the February 13, 1945, firebombing by Allied aircraft, the prisoners take shelter in an underground meat locker. When they emerge, the city has been levelled and they are forced to dig corpses out of the rubble. The story of Billy Pilgrim is the story of Kurt Vonnegut who was captured and survived the firestorm in which 135,000 German civilians perished, more than the number of deaths in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. Robert Scholes sums up the theme of Slaughterhouse Five in the New York Times Book Review, writing: 'Be kind. Don't hurt. Death is coming for all of us anyway, and it is better to
Only once will I reply to WIld (ebeest). Never liked Dick Armey, never will, but he is entitled to his opnion. Now Wild, please remind me which SS division your father was attached to.
What I just read about Israel makes me real sad. More than that what you said makes me ill. A man like Wild was certainly in the camp of the resistants that helped the jews and not in the SS camp ... today the palestinian are the victims not the jews. If what Dick Armey happens to be true I think there will be a resistance all over the world to help the palestinian people. Peace anyway
http://www.nimn.org/ Rs7, please read that and be objective at least once. This is not a website written by an activist of hamas but by Jewish people like you. U.S. Aid to Israel United States taxpayers send approximately $3 billion to Israel, the bulk of it military aid, each year. Without this aid, the Israeli government would be forced to deal rationally with a different reality: one in which circumstances would force them to make peace, not war. Since the eruption of the Palestinian Intifada Israeli forces have shelled many civilian Palestinian areas on a nightly basis killing and injuring numerous Palestinians and destroying their property. Indiscriminately fired Israeli shells make no distinction between civilian homes and facilities and legitimate military targets. Over the last five months al-Haq has been carefully following and documenting these developments. After intensive bombing campaigns during the first few months of the Intifada, Israeli forces, under intense international pressure, began to limit their use of tanks and helicopters in strikes against Palestinian targets during January. Unfortunately this reprieve proved to be only temporary. During the last several weeks, Israeli missiles have once again begun to rain down on Palestinian civilian areas. What follows is a case study of one of these attacks based on information gathered by al-Haq's fieldworkers. The National School for Blind Girls in al-Bireh came under fire from Israeli tanks and heavy weaponry on 20 February 2001. The school was shelled for more than three hours causing extensive damage to the building. However, of greater significance is the psychological impact that the shelling had on the disabled children in the school. "The crime is doubled when it is committed against disabled children who can hear the sound of the explosions, but can not see what is happening around them. We do not know what to do now in order to protect the children " said the school's headmaster Mr. Hayyan al-Idrisi. The National School for Blind Girls was established in 1978 under the initiative of the Friends of the Blind Association in Palestine with the objective of providing an education for children whose parents cannot afford the expense of educating their disabled child. The school works hard to integrate the students into the wider Palestinian society in an attempt to provide them with every opportunity given to student without disabilities. It currently serves 75 blind female students ages 4-18 and is primarily dependent upon charitable donations given by local community members. The school provides educational, artistic, and counseling services for its students. It doubles as a home for many of the students who board there. Teachers treat students with motherly affection and the students feel safe while they are at the school. Both students and their teachers believed that the school was a safe location in which the students could receive a good education. Unfortunately, the Israeli shelling changed this belief causing many students and staff to feel worried and on edge. Ten-year-old Isra' Ziedan told of the shelling as follows, "I was awakened by the sounds of shelling. I began crying and woke up the rest of the children to escape. None of the children could move out of fear. Our teacher came and asked us to move to the staircase, as it is the safest place in the building. All of the students rushed to the staircase and, as they cannot see, many fell down out of panic and fear. After I left my room I started looking for my brother who attends the school with me, but I could not find him. Our teacher then asked us to pray for the shelling to stop and to ask God to protect us. Ulfat, who is only 4, would not stop crying until our teacher Suhier came and hugged her." Ulfat said that at first she tried to calm down other children, but being only a child herself she was also scared of the shelling and needed someone to comfort her. After a short time she said that she could not contain her fear and began to cry. Her teacher said that she cried throughout the rest of the Shelling, which lasted for three hours. The Israeli authorities often talk about "purity of arms", but then defile this "purity" when they use force indiscriminately against civilian targets, including innocent disabled children. In so doing the Israeli forces have violated international treaties and norms related to the rights of children, and all commonly held ethical standards. For years al-Haq has repeatedly warned the international community about the consequences of Israel's continuous violations of International Humanitarian Law and Palestinian civilians' human rights. We would now like to express deep concern regarding these most recent developments and Israel's continued grave violations in the Occupied Territories. Local and international human rights organizations have repeatedly called upon the United Nations Security Council to provide a protection force for the Palestinian people. Unfortunately their requests have fallen upon deaf ears and no action has been taken. In order to stop the Israeli authorities from continuing their illegal campaign, which has instilled terror in the local Palestinian population, al-Haq now calls upon the international community to place pressure upon the members of the Security Council to take immediate action. To wait can only serve to further Israel's goal of terrorizing the Palestinian people and will lead to an increased number of human rights violations. The Palestinian people both deserve and require the assistance and protection of the international community.
One might object to any group in the category "Ethnic group X against Y", but "Jews Against Zionism" isn't at all exclusive. "Jews Against Zionism" is a positive development, and this is a timely and powerful intervention. Jews Against Zionism Zionism claims to speak for all Jews, because it wishes to silence us. Zionism claims Palestine as the homeland, because it wants to uproot us. Zionism claims to be the only possible defence against a new holocaust, because it wishes to dominate us. The actions of the Israeli state have actually made us more vulnerable as Jews, as shown by the rise of anti-Jewish attacks. And in a telling twist, congregation members of a strongly anti-Zionist Stoke Newington synagogue have stated that Zionist militants are likely to be responsible for a spate of threats and attacks against them. As Jews we are supposedly obliged to support a permanent state of war and hold a laughable 'right' to 'return' to a land many of us have never seen. But as people descended from the murdered of the Nazi genocide and countless pogroms - and who but for a few decades whould have been murdered for being Jewish and for other 'crimes' too - we reject Zionism and all it entails. Zionism is the predicatable outcome of worldwide nationalism, colonialism and statism. Born at a time when the world was being carved up and the European nation-state system consolidated, Zionism is the accomplice of Western power and a scourge of the Palestinians. The Zionist alliance with power and tyranny does not make it the guardian of the Jews. It has always collaborated with racists and murderers to further its colonisation of Palestine. On the contrary, we support those who seek to overthrow 'their own' governments and leaders. We support struggles witht the potential to undermine the state and capitalism. The 300-plus Israeli soldiers who have refused to fight, Palestinians resisting in the grassroots spirit of the first Intifada, the international activists who are spreading both their own and Palestinian struggles are positive developments. While beyond the Middle East, from Argentina to Genova, from Woomera to Campsfield, a new world is trying to express itself. Zionism Against Jews Zionism did not 'save' Jews from the Holocaust. That was never its concern. "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 Israel, then I opt for the second alternative" , Ben Gurion - who became the first Israeli Prime Minister - said in 1938. He acknowledged that rescue would have been the end of Zionism. "If our brothers in America have to choose between the physical rescuing of the Jews of Europe and Zionism, they will choose the former and that will be the end of our movement". The colonisation of Palestine was the be-all and end-all, even at the cost of Jewish lives. This did not change when the Jews were being exterminated. The Stern Gang sought an "anti-imperialist" alliance with the Nazis, stating "Common interests could exist between the establishment of a New Order in Europe in conformity with the German concept, and the true [read: Zionist] national aspirations of the Jewish people". A foul pact was made to save 600 select Budapest Jews at the expense of 800,000 others; members of Zionist youth organisations, the "best biological material" as the Nazi Eichmann put it, were saved in exchange for "quiet and order" in the camps. Zionism has always been concerned not with opposing anti-Semitism, but with coming to an arrangement with it. Even amidst the genocide of the Jews, it placed the colonial project before the masses of Jewish people. The founders of Zionism rejected the possibility of overcoming anti-Semitism through popular struggle and social revolution. Moses Hess, Theodor Herzl and Chaim Weizmann chose the side of state power, class domination and exploitative rule. They fully understood that the cultivation of anti-Semitism and the persecution of the Jews were the work of the very ruling class from whom they sought favour. In seeking the sponsorship of the anti-Semites themselves, they revealed several motives: the worship of power with which they associated strength; an illusion of ending Jewish 'weakness' and vulnerability and the state of being perpetual outsiders. This sensiblity was a short step to assimilating the values and ideas of the Jew-haters themselves. The Jews, the Zionists wrote, were indeed an undisciplined, subversive, dissident people, worthy of the scorn they had earned. The Zionists catered shamelessly to racist Jew-hatred; their literature is full of the most poisonous stereotypes. This worked in tandem with the anti-Semitic desire to be rid of a group of people long radicalised by persecution who swelled the ranks of many revolutionary movements. The racism and oppression shown by the Israeli state is not unusual. The historical betrayals of Zionism are not unique: they are common to all forms of nationalism. Our anti-Zionism is based on opposition to all states, all borders and nations; to all the rulers and exploiters of the world. For a global Intifada and an end to all borders! Email: JewsAgainstZionism@hotmail.com
by Nur Masalha St. Mary's College, University of Surrey The Palestinian refugee problem has been at the centre of the Arab-Israeli conflict since 1948. After 1948 the Palestinians and the Arab states refused to discuss a general settlement of the Palestine conflict until Israel declared that it accepted UN General Assembly Resolution 194 (III) of December 1948, which stated that 'the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date'. The Israeli position, on the other hand, has always been that there can be no returning of the refugees to their homes and properties in Israel, and that the only solution to the problem was their resettlement in the Arab states or elsewhere. The Zionist-Israelis did not want the refugees back under any condition. They did not want them to return because they needed their lands and their villages for Jewish immigrants. Nor did they want the repatriation of an Arab population that would question the Zionist-Jewish, ethnically exclusive character of the state of Israel. Since 1948 Israel has continued to propagate the myth that the Palestinian refugee exodus was a tactic of war on the part of the Arabs who initiated the war against the Jewish Yishuv (settlement) in Palestine. In recent years the 'new historiography' of Israel/Palestine has revealed that this official myth was in fact cooked up by the Israeli government's 'Transfer Committee' in its report of October 1948, which formulated the main lines of Israeli propaganda in the following decades: it denied any Israeli culpability or responsibility for the Palestinian exodus - denied, in fact, its own members' roles in various areas and contexts. Since then Israel has also argued that the Palestinian refugees constituted a 'population exchange' with those Jews who left the Arab world in the 1950s. Although Israel's case was as mendacious as it was misleading, Israeli spokesmen continued to propagate it at home and abroad. In his book, The New Middle East (1993), Shimon Peres rehashes many of the founding myths of Israel and repeats basic points of the Israeli propaganda for rejecting refugee return. The mountains of available evidence show that the Palestinian refugee exodus of 1948 was the culmination of over half a century of efforts, secret (Zionist) plans and, in the end brute force; that the primary responsibility for the displacement and dispossession of three-quarters of a million Palestinian refugees in 1948 lay with the Zionist leadership. Israel was primarily responsible for the 1948 Palestinian catastrophe.
In my work on the subject, which is largely based on Hebrew and Israeli archival sources, I have dealt with the evolution of the Zionist concept of 'population transfer'- a euphemism denoting the organised removal of the Arab population of Palestine to neighbouring or distant countries. I have shown that 'ethnic cleansing' (in current terminology) was deeply rooted in Zionism. It was embedded in the Zionist perception that the 'Land of Israel is a Jewish birthright' and belongs exclusively to the Jewish people as a whole, and, consequently, that Palestinians are 'strangers' who either should accept Jewish sovereignty over the land or depart. Nearly all the founding fathers of Israel advocated transfer in one form or another, including Theodor Herzl, Leon Motzkin, Nahman Syrkin, Menahem Ussishkin, Chaim Weizmann, David Ben-Gurion, Yitzhak Tabenkin, Avraham Granovsky, Israel Zangwill, Yitzhak Ben-Tzvi, Pinhas Rutenberg, Aaron Aaronson, Zeev Jabotinsky, and Berl Katznelson. However, the 'transfer' solution became central to Zionist strategy in the period between 1936 and 1948. During this period the Zionist leadership pursued 'transfer' schemes almost obsessively. 'Transfer Committees' were set up by the Jewish Agency and a number of transfer schemes were formulated in secret. Many leading figures justified Arab removal politically, morally, and ethically as the natural and logical continuation of Zionist colonisation in Palestine. Demography and the land issue were at the heart of the Zionist transfer mind-set and of the secret transfer plans of the 1930s and 1940s. In 1947 the Palestinians were the overwhelming majority in the country and owned much of the land, and the Jewish community, mainly based on European migrants and settlers, was about a third of the total population and owned about 6 percent of the land. The general endorsement of 'transfer' during this period was designed to achieve two crucial objectives: * to clear the land for Jewish settlers and would-be immigrants; * to establish a fairly homogenous Jewish state. Basically Ben-Gurion and other leaders of the Jewish Agency strongly believed that Zionism would not succeed in setting up a Jewish state and fulfilling its imperative of absorbing the expected influx of Jewish immigrants if it allowed the indigenous Palestinians to remain. With the 1948 war, the Zionists succeeded in many of their objectives; above all they created a vastly enlarged Jewish state on 77 percent of historic Palestine. From the territory occupied by the Israelis in 1948 about 90 percent of the Palestinians were driven out - many by psychological warfare and/or military pressure, and a very large number at gun-point. The 1948 war simply provided an opportunity and the necessary background for the creation of a Jewish state largely free of Arabs; it concentrated the Zionist-Jewish mind, and provided the security, military and strategic explanations and justifications for purging the Jewish state and dispossessing the Palestinians. The Israeli State Archives and the Zionist Central Archives in Jerusalem contain tens of official files with extensive information pertaining to Israel's policies toward the Arab minority, including what usually is described in Israel as 'population transfers'. By the end of the 1948 war, hundreds of Palestinians villages had been completely depopulated, and their houses blown up or bulldozed - with the main objective of preventing the return of refugees to their homes and villages. The overwhelming evidence shows that the refugee exodus was largely the deliberate creation of Jewish leaders, especially David Ben-Gurion, and military commanders. Once Palestinians had been driven out of their homes, villages and towns, Israel took steps to prevent their return. Palestinian farms and villages were razed and refugee property seized. Jews, many of them new immigrants, were settled in homes and neighbourhoods belonging to Palestinian refugees. Subsequent policies adopted by the Israeli state were aimed at consolidating the power and domination of the newly created Jewish majority. A key element in this effort was the prevention of the return of Palestinian refugees. This objective has served until today as a guiding premise underlying t Israeli policy concerning refugees. The outcome of the 1948 war left Israel in control of over five million acres of Palestinian land. After war, the Israeli state took over the land of the 750,000 refugees, who were barred from returning, while the remaining Palestinian minority was subjected to laws and regulations that effectively deprived it of most of its land. These actions were legalised through the enactment of a range of laws reflecting the prevailing Zionist view that Palestinian refugees were not welcome and enshrining their prejudiced position as a matter of state policy. The entire massive drive to take over Palestinian refugee land has been conducted according to strict legality. Between 1948 and the early 1990s Israel enacted some 30 statutes that transferred land from private Arab to state (and thereby Jewish) ownership. In theory the decade between 1991 and 2001, from the Madrid peace conference to the Israeli-Palestinian permanent status talks at Taba in Egypt, offered an opportunity to negotiate the Palestinian refugee issue with an intensity not witnessed for four decades. In reality, however, the Israeli refugee policy throughout this decade remained strictly tied to its established position vis-Ã -vis the repatriation of the refugees. The classical Israeli refugee policies have remained unchanged throughout the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, including the refusal to entertain any recognition of culpability for the Palestinian refugee problem or of moral and legal responsibility for the refugees. Israel also, in effect, refused to admit any responsibility for monetary compensation to the refugees. A comprehensive, just and durable settlement will depend on addressing the refugee problem seriously. For decades the Palestinian 'right of return' (haq al-awda) has been central to the Palestinians' struggle against dispossession and expulsion from their ancestral homeland and for national reconstitution. Only by understanding the centrality of the nakba and expulsion that befell the Palestinian people in 1948 is it possible to understand the Palestinians' sense of the right of return. The Palestinians are currently demanding that the refugees be given a free choice between repatriation and/or compensation, in line with the international consensus enshrined in UN Resolution 194. The trauma of the 1948 catastrophe has remained central to Palestinian society today (in the same way that the Holocaust has been central to Israeli and Jewish society). Today, the aspirations and hopes of millions of Palestinian refugees are linked to the 1948 nakba. Any genuine reconciliation between the two peoples - peace between peoples as opposed to a political settlement achieved by leaders - could only begin by Israel and most Israelis taking responsibility for the creation of the Palestinian refugee problem, the displacement and dispossession of the refugees. Holocaust denial is abhorrent; in some European countries it is a crime. In the same way, acknowledging the Palestinian nakba and an official apology for it by Israel would be very helpful. But the wrong done to the Palestinians can only be righted, and the disasters ended, through a return to their homeland and a restitution of their property. Taking responsibility also means admitting responsibility for monetary compensation, including the restitution of property and a start in making reparations.
dgabriel, for your files: my father served as a Leutnant (Lieutenant) & Hauptmann (Captain) in the Infanterie-Regiment 7, later 252. Infanteriedivision of the Wehrmacht (formerly "Hirschberger Jäger") until he was seriously wounded (blind) in Russia in 1942 and quit active Wehrmacht service ... no connection to the SS or Waffen-SS whatsoever. hope this helps wild http://www.lexikon-der-wehrmacht.de/Gliederungen/Infanteriedivisionen/28ID.htm