The 'terrorists' can't move away from their families and they don't 'surround' themselves with them - they have nowhere else to go. Gaza is a tiny sliver of land surrounded by enemy forces - Israel even keeps an eye on the Egyptian border. Nobody can 'move'. There are 1.5 million Palestinians trapped in Gaza; before the 'Jewish' settlers moved 5000 of them occupied one fifth of the land - every square inch was stolen at gun point. The Palestinians, without a state, have no right to passports. They have great difficulty moving safely between villages in the West Bank. The idea that you can just get up and move house in Gaza assumes certain things - that there is a housing market, that people have money (unlikely as all the industry has been destroyed by the Israelis and unemployment in some families is 100%), that there is anywhere to move to where people opposed to Israel don't live, that you have notice that your home is going to be destroyed (15 minutes is the usual warning given, although when bombs are dropped on homes there is no warning). People who have not been to the region do not understand that simple solutions do not exist.
One solution to the Palestinian problem is for the settlers to stop stealing land at gun point.
Bear, do you really think there was a good reason for the Israeli soldiers to smash up schools and hospitals (funded with EU cash)? What reason is there for defecating on teenagers homework?
The Palestinians used to have a very large Christian community, which is now in decline, and the West Bank was home to a substantial Armenian community, there are Bedouin and Druze and even a few Samaritans left in the Holy Land. The Israelis, if you'll pardon the expression, see them as wo\gs.
I lived on the Green Line in Jerusalem and saw a lot. I read the viciously racist Jerusalem Post - a week reading that and you begin to think long and hard about Jews and Zionism. It is a vile newspaper from the same stable as the Daily Telegraph. The letters page would shame the BNP. I have never, in any country, read such vile filth. People write from Manhattan about how if they visit their relatives in the settlements they will spit on Palestinian border guards rather than show their passes (Topol was going to do that). The hatred is beyond my comprehension.
The Balfour Declaration, which I have read several times, is ambiguous. Balfour was sympathetic to the Zionist cause and suggested a homeland in Palestine, without detriment to the Palestinians. People keep falling back on the declaration to say it presaged the state of Israel, but that wasn't what was expected.
In my view perhaps the only solution is the destruction of the illegitimate state of Israel. It is not a 'Jewish' state any more. There are more new Russian Orthodox churches being built than synagogues in some regions. There are 1 million Russian speakers (of 'Jewish' origin). The kibbutz system, that at least had some morality, has collapsed. Apartheid exists across the country and the million or so Arab citizens of Israel do not have the same rights as the 'Jewish' citizens. A Jew can marry an American gentile and he/she might move to Israel to live, an Israeli Arab cannot marry within his own clan, if the family was split in 1948, and bring his/her partner to Israel, even though the partner's parents or grandparents came from his/her village.
Israel is an apartheid state ran by religious nutters and racists. Israel expects to be treated as an equal, but ignores the UN declaration of Human Rights. Israel ignores the Geneva Convention and illegally occupies and steals land. Israel routinely tortures Arab prisoners and holds 9000 without charge or trial, many for years on end. Israeli settlers routinely snipe at Arabs going about their business and have killed a number of people for the crime of farming their own fields. Israeli border guards f@ck arabs around for no good reason - I waited for an hour for an American Arab in front of me to be processed at the Allenby crossing, no reason was given and the thick Polish Jewish tart actually took a 30 minute lunch break whilst processing one person. The thick Polish Jewish tart, despite my partience and good humour, then looked at my passport and said she'd never heard of the UK and asked where it was (this must have been malicious spite as we were at the Allenby Bridge and perhaps somebody had told her about the Balfour Declaration).
Push the b@st@rds into the sea is what I thought at that stage. I have seen too much petty bullying to ever think nice things about Israel and the Israelis ever again. I've met a few 'left wing' Israelis since and they're not too bad, but the religious and political bigots deserve to be treated as the international pariahs they surely are.
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When in Woking do as the Wokes do.
"I do not wish to form my opinions by thoughtlessly quoting others; I wish others to support their opinions by sensibly quoting me." Paul Wesson (Aardvark) 13th April 2008
Last edited by Aardvark; 19-05-2008 at 04:12 PM.
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