Subject: Israeli kids send gifts to Lebanese kids,Lebanese kids receivethem!!!!!!!!!

Sorry you won’t see the picture showing Israeli kids signing the heads of bombs to be fired at Lebanese.

Shame on them!!

(PS. Sunny, I tried to do a “trackback” link, but it didn’t work, similar to how you linked to my Dubai blog.)

“Desi Italiana – I’ve read all your quotes and don’t find any of them against the right of return per se, they give reasons, however, why others should be against it.”

Sorry, I was in a bit of a rush, and I thought the quotes were self explanatory. My point was counteract your claim that only the ultra orthodox who wear warm clothing in the summer think this way. I wanted to illustrate that instead, this is mainstream opinion. These quotes are implicitly against the right of return, given the various desires that I’ve alluded to on the other thread “Israel Wants War’.

As far as I know, no Israeli politician has ever proposed the right of return. One Israeli, who is a professor, Ilan Pappe, is one of the VERY, VERY few who actually states that the right of return must be given to Palestinian refugees.

“Thank you for the amount of research you have done in preparing your reply to me, kudos to you.”

No problem– getting the quotes was actually not that time consuming. I have been studying this for years, although you wouldn’t be able to tell because I know I often just post assertions here on PP.

A question, not only to you, but to others as well. And I am not being snarky or condescending at all, I just sincerely want to know: have people actually read the history of Israel, the documents written by Zionist leaders, thinkers, and politicians and complemented it with historians of Palestine? Because the things we generally hear are in stark contrast to the facts on ground.

Will try to dig up things about current leaders like Olmert.

Worth reading some of the comments too.

“The west must recognise that Israel’s agenda is in conflict with its own

The Olmert government, Hizbullah and Hamas are tacitly united in rejection of any moves towards a compromise peace”

David Clark on CiF

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1822145,00.html

Thank you for the amount of research you have done in preparing your reply to me, kudos to you.

I will give this more thought, and be back to you, probably tomorrow, as I have a hospital appointment today, and goodness knows how long that will take.

The IDF is Hungry for War – What Are They Fighting For?

Whatever may be the fate of the captive soldier Gilad Shalit, the Israeli army’s war in Gaza is not about him. As senior security analyst Alex Fishman widely reported, the army was preparing for an attack months earlier and was constantly pushing for it, with the goal of destroying the Hamas infrastructure and its government. The army initiated an escalation on 8 June when it assassinated Abu Samhadana, a senior appointee of the Hamas government, and intensified its shelling of civilians in the Gaza Strip. Governmental authorization for action on a larger scale was already given by 12 June, but it was postponed in the wake of the global reverberation caused by the killing of civilians in the air force bombing the next day. The abduction of the soldier released the safety-catch, and the operation began on 28 June with the destruction of infrastructure in Gaza and the mass detention of the Hamas leadership in the West Bank, which was also planned weeks in advance.

(1) In Israeli discourse, Israel ended the occupation in Gaza when it evacuated its settlers from the Strip, and the Palestiniansí behavior therefore constitutes ingratitude. But there is nothing further from reality than this description. In fact, as was already stipulated in the Disengagement Plan, Gaza remained under complete Israeli military control, operating from outside. Israel prevented any possibility of economic independence for the Strip and from the very beginning, Israel did not implement a single one of the clauses of the agreement on border-crossings of November 2005.

Israel simply substituted the expensive occupation of Gaza with a cheap occupation, one which in Israel’s view exempts it from the occupier’s responsibility to maintain the Strip, and from concern for the welfare and the lives of its million and a half residents, as determined in the fourth Geneva convention. Israel does not need this piece of land, one of the most densely populated in the world, and lacking any natural resources. The problem is that one cannot let Gaza free, if one wants to keep the West Bank. A third of the occupied Palestinians live in the Gaza strip. If they are given freedom, they would become the center of Palestinian struggle for liberation, with free access to the Western and Arab world.

To control the West Bank, Israel needs full control of Gaza. The new form of control Israel has developed is turning the whole of the Strip into a prison camp completely sealed from the world. Besieged occupied people with nothing to hope for, and no alternative means of political struggle, will always seek ways to fight their oppressor.

“Refresh the right of return is only not accepted by a small group of ultra orthodox fanatics who feel the biblical prophecy of the coming of the Messiah has to come to pass before the formation of the State of Israel. They also like to wear extremely warm clothing all the year round, so for me their judgement is impaired.”

–” If I were an Arab leader, I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country. Sure, God promised it to us. But what does that matter to them?…there has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only know one thing: we have stolen their country. Why should they accept that?
–Ben Gurion

–Ehud Barak stated, “had he born Palestinian, he ‘would have joined a terrorist organization’” .

–Yitzhak Rabin: “The red line for Arabs is 20% of the population, that must not be gone over…” and if there were to be a binational state, he replied, “I want to preserve the Jewish character of the state of Isreal not by name only, but also in action, values, language, and culture. This does not mean that one one lives in it except the Jews. But today there are 4.4 million Jews vs. 2.8 or 3 million Arabs and this cannot continue”
–Rabin

” It was not as though there were a Palestinian people and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them. They did not exist”

–Golda Meir

– We have to use the pretext of security needs and the authority of the military governor as there is no way of driving out the Arabs [note the designation of "Arab" rather than "Palestinian", erasing the linkage of Palestinians to Palestine] from their land as long as they refuse to go and accept our compensation”
–Dayan

Are any of above “ultra orthodox fanatics”? And given the opinions and policies quoted above, does it logically follow that they would accept the “right of return”?

As a sidenote, another quote regarding the Holocaust and Israel:

–”If I knew that it was possible to save all the children of Germany by transporting them to England, but only half of them by transporting them to Palestine, I would choose the second–because we face not only the reckoning of these children, but the historical reckoning of the Jewish people”
–Ben Gurion

I am sure there are similar quotes from contemporary leaders…but do not have time right now to dig up.

BTW, there is a “Pro Israel Demonstration” in downtown Chicago today, which is being widely publicized on the radio all this morning.

Given even Iran had offered to settle all outstanding issues inc. Palestine (2003); and Arab league offer of recognition and rapid move to normalisation (2002) you not only want to beleive there is something at the end of that rainbow – but want nuclear weapons trained on those that make these offers. Because THEY can’t be trusted.

No, something else is going on.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_nuclear_weapons

1. No hostage taking (including “administrative detention”)
2. No bombing in civilian areas
3. No extra-judicial killing
4. Willingness to talk about peaceful solutions with elected representatives, without preconditions, regardless of how much you condemn their policies.

Any further principles people want to suggest that would be binding on both sides and acceptable to both sides of the debate here on PP?

Has the Lebanon activity changed the acceptability of the four principles so far for any of you?

But the chances are slim. Fat chance that the US will get rid of its nukes.

I said this, but you know, deterrance works. Look at North Korea– no way in hell that the US would actually invade and attack N.Korea the way they did to Iraq.

Lesson #1 in International Relations: if you don’t want the US messing with your country and don’t want to end up like Iraq, arm yourself with nukes!!