The Holocaust can never be forgotten. An estimated 6 million Jews were killed by Nazi Germany.
After World War II, the Allied victors felt compelled by guilt to grant the Zionist/Jewish wish for a national Jewish state. Because Britain then controlled Palestine, which is where the Zionists felt their state should be, Britain, along with the UN came up with a partition plan to give the Jews a portion of Palestine for their homeland.
Since that time, Britain, Germany and the UN — meaning all developed nations — bear equal responsibility for Palestinian suffering. Israel has had nearly 60 years to do the right thing. It is time for the world to step in and right the wrong it played a big part in creating.
Most Palestinians live with unemployment, depression, poverty and hunger; it has become so bad that child beggars are entering Israel from the supposedly better off West Bank. Children sent by parents who can't afford to feed them, to face the danger of knife point robbery and sexual abuse for a few dollars, tells us just how desperate the situation is in the West Bank — and it's even worse in Gaza.
Here's why: Israel is the occupying nation. With their checkpoints and border restrictions they keep Palestinians from visiting family and friends, which is likely to cause loneliness, hopelessness and depression, from getting to jobs and making exports difficult causing unemployment and poverty. Fear comes from air strikes and arrest operations. And all the above causes and exemplifies Palestinian anger.
The more Israel gets away with, the worse it gets, and the less likely a Palestinian state becomes. Like Israel failing to abide by the 4th Geneva Convention regarding the treatment of civilians by an occupying force. Israel does not regard the Geneva Convention as applying de jure to the West Bank and Gaza strip — yet says that the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment does not apply to the occupied territories because they are covered by the Geneva Convention. That is a clear example of Israel saying we are above international law — and getting away with it.
In the summer war with Lebanon last year Israel used depleted uranium bombs and cluster bombs in civilian areas. Lebanese civilians are still paying for the latter with their lives, and the damage the uranium may have done to the soil, crops and female fertility remains to be seen.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Franco
And the moon is made of green cheese.
Still pumping out fallacy-ridden propaganda. One could think that you are just obtuse, but I do not believe you are, and I know you don't either.
Mr. Bailey, it's no different then lying.
2 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
Franco,
Could you put some mustard, humus and tomato on that green cheese sandwich? And please make sure it has multigrain bread.
TIA,
Reuven
3 - Dave Nalle
This relentless harping on the same story over and over again actually raises my curiosity. Does he just like hitting his head against the same stone wall over and over again, or is he secretly driven by a racist, anti-zionist agenda which I sometime sse peeping through in his terminology and phrasing. Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between the soft anti-zionism of international socialists and the harder form driven by racism, and these articles always seem to tread the fine line between the two.
Dave
4 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
Psst! Dave! There's a time-sensitive article in "pending" for you to publish...
5 - Liam Bailey
Dave,
I think you are the one who has hit your head off a wall...
Perhaps you can tell me what terminology you are reffering to, probably the 4th geneva convention that did it. Bereft of argument for my point you've pulled out the anti-semitism card.
It is regular tactic by those Jews who want to maintain the status quo and druel at the thought of a greater Israel, those like Ruvy, to call anyone or anything that criticizes the behaviour and policies of the Israeli government, with respect to Palestinian and peace, racism or anti-semitism. To be honest with you, I know the truth, if Israel stopped all the policies I have a problem with today and returned the land taken in 1967 or its equivalent, adequately compensating all refugees, I would write a massive article bigging them up. Until then I will continue to tell the truth about what Israel is doing.
It is always when -- the truth -- Israeli violations of international law are brought to light, facts that no one can argue with that brings out the anti-semitism card. Get some new material I mean really, it's getting tired.
6 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
Hey Liam!
Can't I get a fuckin' blue cheese sandwich around here without you whining away like a pricked haggis? I just want some editor to publish my pending article! It makes your screed look and smell like the trash it is.
Read my article - then bitch.
7 - Liam Bailey
Ruvy,
Its all about personality and psycological profile.
We all hear the same news, see the same pictures, read the same articles and know the same facts. It is how our brain interprets them that defines us, that is why i can't change your opinion on world politics and you can't change mine.
I believe and desire world peace. I believe and desire a just world where everyone has all they need to live a happy and fulfilling life. I think that all big corporations and rich people should be forced to give all their wealth bar one million to the needy and starving children in the world, and that from that point on should only be able to make a few million each year and the rest goes to feed the starving. So, unless you've had a labotamy I won't be reading your article. As I have never read any of your articles -- I just don't see the point. Feel free to stop reading mine.
8 - Christopher Rose
I fail to understand what Franco, Ruvy and Dave are objecting to. Respectively, you make accusations without supplying an alternative argument, seek to negate the point of view in the article by mockery and make a pointless and specious argument which the author of is also open to.
This isn't a political discussion by any stretch of the imagination and if I wasn't in such a good mood this lovely sunny morning in Granada (you know, Dave, the place with the Rock and the monkeys, lol), I'd have deleted all the above comments.
C'mon guys, I know you're all prejudiced, but you can do better than this...
9 - Christopher Rose
Hmm, Liam goes for reasonable discussion, Ruvy goes for tantrums. Who to believe? Who to believe?
Seriously, Ruvy, why don't you either take Liam's suggestion and not read his stuff or otherwise take mine and try and come up with some counter arguments that deal with the contemporary political situation?
10 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
It's L-O-B-O-T-O-M-Y, Liam. Even in the Queen's English. If you're going to brag about being a writer, at least spell correctly.
"...unless you've had a labotamy I won't be reading your article. As I have never read any of your articles -- I just don't see the point. Feel free to stop reading mine."
I think there is a line in the Christian book about 'he who will not open his eyes will not see', somethin' like that. You probably know the line better'n I. Since you refuse to open your eyes - even to read an adversarial opinion - you'll continue to butt you head on the same wall of Arab lies that you repeat article after article.
In case you do not know, Dave Nalle grew up in Lebanon, Jordan and Syria. HE SYMPATHIZES WITH THE ARABS FAR MORE THAN I DO. According to what he has written in the past, he once felt that Israel should be nuked - on principle. He's moved away from that view, but his sympathies are definitely with the South Syrian Arabs, the "Palestinian" people living here who are exploited so brutally by their fellow Arabs, and who have had to fight against them for their survival. If he writes "This relentless harping on the same story over and over again..." about your articles, you really ought to re-examine what you write and think. He is on your side more than your realize.
11 - Christopher Rose
Chill out, Ruvy. You also make spelling mistakes from time to time, including missing the "r" off "your" in the above comment. C'mon mate, enage with the issues or stop whining...
12 - Dr Dreadful
Chris, don't we Brits have an apt phrase that describes this Ruvy-Liam feud?
"Handbags at dawn".
13 - Clavos
You know a discussion is going nowhere (perhaps because it wasn't worth discussing in the first place?) when the best either side can do is resort to spell checks of each other's posts.
14 - Christopher Rose
I'm not on either side, Clavos, I just think Ruvy is capable of a better response than he's managed so far, not that he's alone in that by any means.
15 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
Chris,
Everything I needed to say, I said in comment #10. I the fool refuses to even read the work of an adversary, much less recognize that someone that should be on his side isn't, and ask why, there is nothing more to be said.
16 - Christopher Rose
Ruvy, all you said in #10 was unresponsive to Liam's points, right or wrong as they may be. You sure use a lot of words for someone who thinks that "there is nothing more to be said".
It is irrelevant that you think someone else ought to be on his side and isn't, either debate with the man or stop reading his stuff and being rude...
17 - senad
none of this people who posted comments show any care for conditions of life in palestine
anyone who show any thoughts about is accused being antisemitic . semitic people are all arabs people and jews and everybody on the penincula so how come jews are only semitic?
18 - moonraven
Although I am not partial to the way Liam presents his case, I do agree with him.
I think the Israelis have milked enough guilt money out of the US and Europe and should simply be booted out on their butts if they even open their mouths one more time about the Palestinians.
AND Olmert should be tried for crimes against humanity, en passant.
It´s high time that those whining snivelers stopped committing genocide against others just because it was committed against them.
The eye for an eye shit just does not cut it anymore.
19 - Liam Bailey
FYI Ruvy,
I have read plenty of articles in Haaretz and the Jerusalem Post wiht views the total opposite of mine, but guess what, as I sai to you, their articles didn't change my view one iota, just as your view hasn't been changed by reading all of my articles. Because, as I said, we are all working with the same facts, the difference is in our interpretation of them.
The reason I avoid your articles is because I feel you are biggoted in your opinions, and have read enough of your arguments in comments on my articles to know that you won't change my views, to read your article would be nothing more than a waste of my time, which I have precious little of as it is.
BTW, thanks for pulling me up on my spelling of lobotomy, I typed it three times before leaving it with what I had, I just wasn't sure how it was spelt and as it was only a comment, not an article I didn't check the dictionary, that old precious time again. FYI, I really don't spend too much time proofreading comments, so feel free to waste yours doing it for me, if that's how you get your kicks...
And another FYI, if Dave Nalle sympathisez with Arabs I'm a dutchman, he's a rightie through and through.
Until you come up with a counter-argument, as Chris says, it's goodbye from me.
20 - Al Barger
This is really pretty:
I believe and desire world peace. I believe and desire a just world where everyone has all they need to live a happy and fulfilling life. I think that all big corporations and rich people should be forced to give all their wealth bar one million to the needy and starving children in the world, and that from that point on should only be able to make a few million each year and the rest goes to feed the starving.
Here's a classic on the same theme:
One evening as the sun went down and the jungle fire was burning
Down the track came a hobo hiking and he said boys I'm not turning
I'm headin for a land that's far away beside the crystal fountains
So come with me we'll go and see the Big Rock Candy Mountains
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains there's a land that's fair and bright
Where the handouts grow on bushes and you sleep out every night
Where the boxcars are all empty and the sun shines every day
On the birds and the bees and the cigarette trees
Where the lemonade springs where the bluebird sings
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains all the cops have wooden legs
And the bulldogs all have rubber teeth and the hens lay soft boiled eggs
The farmer's trees are full of fruit and the barns are full of hay
Oh, I'm bound to go where there ain't no snow
Where the rain don't fall and the wind don't blow
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains you never change your socks
And the little streams of alcohol come a-trickling down the rocks
The brakemen have to tip their hats and the railroad bulls are blind
There's a lake of stew and of whiskey too
You can paddle all around 'em in a big canoe
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains the jails are made of tin
And you can walk right out again as soon as you are in
There ain't no short handled shovels, no axes saws or picks
I'm a goin to stay where you sleep all day
Where they hung the jerk that invented work
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains
I'll see you all this coming fall in the Big Rock Candy Mountains
Now, if you could just add a verse about there being no Jews on the BRCM, it'd be perfect, wouldn't it?
21 - moonraven
Liam,
Folks are picking at nits in your article because their brains are full of them--and they have no counter-arguments.
The right wing prejudices on this site are legion: women, Native Americans, anyone of brown skin, intellectuals, etc etc etc.
You can see the red on their necks from the stratosphere.
22 - Al Barger
"And the long hair can't cover up my red neck"
23 - Alec
RE: This should mean the world makes sure the Palestinians get their own state, just as Britain and the U.N. decided Jews were entitled to their own state because of their suffering in the holocaust.
The 1947 United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine or United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181 specified a Jewish state, a Palestinian state and an internationally administered area, although the areas designated for each group were so absurdly demarcated that dissatisfaction was inevitable.
However, since that time, absolutely nothing has prohibited Palestinians from laying out a map of where they think their state should be, which would set the table for compromise. Except for the fact that practically every proposal from the Palestinians that I have ever seen, including the writings of a supposed moderate such as the late Edward Said, has always included the right of every Palestinian and their descendants to return to the homes that they abandoned when the other Arab nations promised that they would toss the Jews into the sea. The right of return, of course, would always require that Israel cease to exist.
Arab nations have kept Palestinians in camps, kept them poor, and have exploited and oppressed them often for their own ends, as in Lebanon and other areas. Palestinians have also been an indirect victim of British national and economic interests, since Jordan (formerly Transjordan) came into existence as a separate mandate in order to accommodate British oil interests in the early 20th century. Oddly, nobody much complains now that the legitimacy of Jordan is questionable and might more reasonably have been part of a Palestinian homeland.
I don’t have any easy answers for this long standing dilemma. But I do know that to blame Israel and the West as the source of all obstacles to a mutually agreeable solution is just flat out wrong.
24 - Liam Bailey
Alec,
It's not about blame, it's about power.
Israel is far more powerful than the Palestinians, so if Israel wanted to end the conflict the Palestinians couldn't stop them but the opposite isn't true. And as I said in my article the Palestinains have been and continue to be the biggest losers out of the conflict. All the while Israel is taking more land with the wall, land which should be part of a future Palestinian state, demolishing homes, Judaizing Jerusalem of which the eastern part should become the Palestinian capital, withholding millions of dollars in Palestinian tax revenue, and generally riding rough-shot over Palestinian life while the UN and the world watches, oh and gives Israel money. Israel is getting millions in U.S. military aid because it is in a constant state of war and existential fear, another reason not to seek peace with the Palesitinians.
As for my Geneva Convention reference, I was speaking of the 4th Geneva Convention which relates to the treatment of civilians in a time of war, I read it in full and Israel is outright breaking it. Israel says that the fourth Geneva Convention doesn't apply de jure to the West Bank and Gaza, but they say the aren't following the UN treaty for the treatment of civilians and prisoners in the West Bank and Gaza because the areas are covered by the Geneva Convention, so all the while there is no law covering Israel's treatment of the Palestinians - and Israel makes the most of it.
If Israel wanted peace they should offer a million dollars to each refugees family and pull back to the pre-1967 borders, offering land-swaps where necessary, that would really start the ball rolling.
I just think that Israel is taking advantage of the world being on their side, and the Palestinians are just getting trampled all over. I know I could live happily as an Israeli, but I know how miserable I would be as a Palestinian.
I wrote my article because everyone is looking to Israel and the Palestinians to find peace, but most of the Palestinian leadership are martyrs who hold onto right of return like their life depends on it, yes I admit right of return is another obstacle to peace. But I also believe that Israeli leadership, Zionists really don't want peace either, Israel has never defined borders because they want to keep taking land for as long as they are allowed, so they are ragging it out as much as they can, and the Palestinian leadership is letting them drag it out, well making it easier for them.
That is why i think the powers in the world should step in, like an adult in the school yard or a parent and say:
Right, you pull back to the 67 lines and compensate the refugees, this senseless conflict has gone on long enough and you stop all forms of terrorism and be happy enough with your new states to live side by side in peace, OR ELSE!! A threat that really only the U.S. can make in this world.
Basically I feel so sorry for the Palestinians and I just want it to end.
25 - Al Barger
Yeah Liam, this right here is absolutely factually untrue: Israel is far more powerful than the Palestinians, so if Israel wanted to end the conflict the Palestinians couldn't stop them but the opposite isn't true. I find it difficult to accept that you actually believe something so clearly untrue.
The Palestinians could easily end the conflict and get much more for themselves. The Israelis would LOVE to give them a goddam state. They keep trying to do so, and GWB has certainly encouraged it. All the Palestinians would have to do would be to quit massacring Jews at every opportunity. Is that too much to ask?
Every bit of evidence is that Palestinians by and large are much more interested in hurting Jews than they are in doing anything for themselves, so their current misery is what they more than deserve. If you wish to whine about how this is unfair to The Children, then blame their parents and leaders for putting them in harms way - and for recruiting them as suicide bombers and such.
I'll grant, though, that the first part of the statement is true: Israel is more powerful, and they COULD stop the conflict with a quickness - but I doubt you'd like how that went.