Aardvark

Rosie, Enemies did fire guns and missiles into the UK from Ireland. Over 3000 people died in the 'troubles'. We knew that the IRA/Sinn Fein was not the Irish Government. We also knew that in some areas they operated with the tacit, and illegal, consent of sympathetic Gardai and local politicians. At all times they received funding from the USA and their leaders met with American Presidents and other politicians.

We did not bomb IRA safe houses in Ireland, we did not threaten their allies in the USA, we did not kill women and children other than by the very rare mistake (the IRA killed women and children on a regular basis with their random bombings). We realised early on that internment without trial (as practised daily by Israel on neighbouring Arab populations) was a recruiting segeant for the IRA.

How would the USA have reacted if we had tried to create a buffer zone in the Irish Republic? What would have been said if we'd bombed republican areas of Dublin? Would the USA have accepted the specious argument that we'd told the Irish to leave their homes and if they chose to stay where their families had lived for a thousand years it was their fault if they got killed or injued? Would the USA have noted that they couldn't afford to move, the roads had been destroyed, the bridges were down and all vehicles were being attacked and that therefore moving across open ground whilst shells and bombs were falling was always going to be a non-starter?

Hizbollah kidnapped the 2 soldiers not to start a war, but to obtain the release of the hundreds of Lebanese Shi'ite men, women and children held arbitrarily without trial in Israeli prisons.

Israel is being incredibly disingenuous when they play the wounded party. There are Arabs in Israeli prisons who have been held for several years longer than the Guantanamo Bay internees. 10 years without trial is not unheard of in Israel.

Hamas has one Israeli, Hizbollah has 2 Israelis, Israel has over 9000 non-Israeli Arabs in prison. The best part of a thousand have not been tried and the rest have been tried by Israeli courts, which are not known for their sympathies to Arabs. Israel illegally occupies or controls Arab territories contrary to many UN resolutions and applies laws contrary to the Geneva Convention.

I'm sorry, but this mess is entirely of Israel's making. If Israel genuinely wanted peace they would negotiate with Hizbollah and Hamas in the same way that our government negotiated with the UVF and the IRA. Although I don't like the thought of murderers and torturers going free, as has happened in NI, the final settlement got a foreign power to change its constitution so that it no longer claimed 6 counties of sovereign UK territory.

Israel is a pariah state that does not want peace. Until Israel is prepared to accept the 1967 boundaries then they cannot expect peace with the Arabs. Once the 1967 boundaries with a 2 state solution are accepted then moderate Arabs can rein in the extremists and sort out the refugee camps once and for all. There will always be Arabs who want the destruction of Israel, but there will be a lot less if Israel clears its illegal settlements and accepts international law.

prober

With a use less foreign secretary, a prime minister out on the job finding circuit and lap dogs in the cabinet , British politics cries out for disenting voices .... er from UKIP

a) Which UKIP MEP is the UKIP shadow for foreign secretary matters ?

b) ditto for defense matters ?

c) What have they said ?

Another point, Israel with its big guns and high tech guided bombs from USA has totally failed to impact on rocket firing by a clever guerilla army which has no inhibitions about operating from within civilian enclaves and welcomes high Israeli caused civilian casualties to generate more support for itself. The lesson is that rithless terrorism works & state power can actually be impotence...

eg 1 rocket fired by by pro democracy protesters into the EU HQ in Brussels will cause more effect than years of UKIP & all the rest , & the EU would go into spasms & shock waves .

Mikeuk

Great post by Aardvark. What can one add?

Sounds like a job for assassination aficionado Greg Lance-Watkins.

Tony Bennett

One wonders why there is not similar outrage to that being expressed against Israel on the BBC, in the Guardian, the Independent and other media about:

* the appalling Arabic Islamic massacres of Africans in Darfur,

* current Muslim atrocities in Thailand and Malaysia,

* the visceral anti-Semitic racism which rages in the Islamic countries, and

* the massive disruption to a large part of Israel with, up to half a million now displaced after thousands of Hezbollah bombs, _all targeted at civilians_, have rained down on northern Israeli towns in the last three weeks.

Well, here's a contributory reason: journalists who report the truth might get killed!

Here's some estracts from a report in a recent newsletter by Mr Simon McIlwaine at Anglicans for Israel:

------------------------

QUOTE

"LETTING THE CAT OUT OF THE BAG"

Extracts from the article below:

The BBC's coverage of the present war has been so extraordinary that even staunch BBC supporters in London seem rather embarrassed - in conversation, not on the air, unfortunately.

If the BBC were just a British problem that would be one thing, but it is not. No other station broadcasts so extensively in dozens of languages, on TV, radio and online.

From the distorted imagery, selective witness accounts, and almost round-the-clock emphasis on casualties by the media, you would be forgiven for thinking that the level of death and destruction in Lebanon is on a par with that in Darfur, where Arab militias are slaughtering hundreds of
thousands of non-Arabs.

Another journalist let the cat out of the bag last week.

Writing on his blog while reporting from southern Lebanon, Time magazine contributor Christopher Allbritton, casually mentioned in the middle of a posting: "To the south, along the curve of the coast, Hezbollah is launching Katyushas, but I'm loathe to say too much about them. The Party of God has a copy of every journalist's passport, and they've
already hassled a number of us and threatened one."

END QUOTE

================================================== ===================

You can complain to the BBC

Please use as much as possible whether you have seen their news in this country or abroad and forward to as many people as possible.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/make...nt_step1.shtml

ukpatriot

Well there's nothing to stop you writing about it is there?

Don't forget too that these Israelis you mention are settlers, ie colonists, and some might argue that those whose land was forcibly removed from them to make way for these settlers might object to the plight of the Palestinians at the hands of Israelis or at the massacre of hundreds of children by Israeli forces in Lebanon.

Not quite the BBC is it, and not exactly unbiased either. Is he a mate of yours?

[/quote]

You ought to read Aardvark's excellent post above.

Mikeuk

Strangely enough, Simon is a longstanding friend of mine. I don't agree with him on this though.

He is a former Tory parliamentary candidate and an Ulsterman.

Sadly many otherwise commendable Ulster Unionists have a bit of a fetish about Israel.

Tony Bennett

With all due respect, 'ukpatriot', I suggest you should study a bit more Palestine history before posting again on the subject. You wrote:

"Don't forget too that these Israelis you mention are settlers, i.e. colonists, and some might argue that those whose land was forcibly removed from them to make way for these settlers..."

NOW FOR A REALITY AND HISTORY CHECK:

1. It may have escaped your notice, but the Jews occupied that land from the time of Abraham (around 1900 BC) until today. Admittedly for 70 years most of them were carted off to Babylon ("By the rivers of Babylon...). True also that many dispersed in the first century A.D., but a remant always remained and I believe I am right in saying that there were some 25,000 settled there in 1917, when General Allenby recaptured Jerusalem from the German-supporting Ottoman Empire

2. During the Palestine mandate, 1917 to 1948, Jews moved to the area in increasing numbers, most of them from Soviet Russia and Eastern Europe due to persecution and pogroms. They bought or obtained land there legally. I think you woud have to agree that they were therefore _not_ 'colonisers', nor was land 'forcibly removed' from existing occupiers, no more anyway than land has been 'removed' here by some 3 million immigrants in the last 10 years

3. In 1947, the U.N. awarded a relatively small area of land to Israel, in which some Arabs lived, most some of whom were perfectly happy to remain there when the Jewish state was set up. Those that did remain have had the privilege of living in a democratic, prosperous state under the rule of law and which is tolerant of all faiths - witness the number of mosques in Israel (now compare all that with the Arab countries around it) - the Arabs having equal rights to Jews, with good Arab-Jew relations and of course a number of Arab MPs in the Knesset (Israeli Parliament)

4. Palestine pre-1948 was full of organisations with Palestine in the title but which were mainly or exclusively Jewish, not Arab e.g. the Palestine National Orchestra, an excellent orchestra which was entirely Jewish

5. Arabs who would not accept the U.N. resolution setting up in Israel 1948, including some from Palestine together with some of the surrounding Arab states, picked a fight with Israel to try to eliminate it at birth. They got a bloody nose, despite overwhelmingly superior numbers (they were out-thought), and this has been the pattern ever since; Arabs not being able to bear the presence of Israel, especially with it being so successful, and constantly picking fights in which they come off worse. Right now we are seeing yet another action replay.

Oh, and by the way, just as the English have a home-land - England, and the Welsh - Wales, and the Scots - Scotland, and the Germans - Germany, is it not right that the Jews too should also have their homeland? Particularly after the shameful events of the Holocaust? I hope we're all not forgetting that?

Finally, with great respect, aardvark's post was not brilliant at all. He set up an entirley false analogy with Northern Ireland which, when you really think about it, breaks down in several ways.

----------

P.S. QUIZ QUESTION:

How many Palestinian refugees have been given refugee status in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iraq or any other Arab country?

Answer: 0 (none, nought, nil)

----------

P.P.S. No, I don't know the gentleman whose newsletter I cited. But I do search the Internet for a balanced view on the Hezbollah attack and 'declaration of war' (their words) on Israel - and the Israeli response to that attack, and on the U.N.'s total and abject failure to implement U.N. Resolution 1559 [disarming Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon]; I certainly don't rely for my information just on the BBC

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P.P.P.S. I'm not sure I would welcome it if 'aardvark' ever had a hand in running the U.K. He (or maybe she) wrote: "Sometimes one hankers for the days of the Ottoman Empire..."

COMMENT: Er, one of the most brutal and repressive regimes in world history. Read Balkan history

ukpatriot

Israel,'s treatment of the Palestinians, from before the foundation of israel until now, has been very poor. Its actions in Lebanon over the last few weeks have, as others have stated, been totally out of all proportion to the kidnapping by Hezbollah of a couple of IDF men who were apparently on Lebanese soil at the time they were kidnapped. They were kidnapped apparently in order to use as bargaining counters to secure the release of Arabs who have been held without trial for years in some cases by israel.

As others have said, we in Britain did not invade Ireland and bomb Dublin when the IRA killed British servicemen; if we had, you can guarantee that the USA would have come down entirely on the side of the Irish. Strange they do not condemn Israel for its activities in the same way...

Back to Israel, the vast majority of Israelis are emigrants from the Soviet Union, Europe and the USA and have no blood ties with the Middle East; they are settlers. The Arabs there have more rights to be in Palestine than these settlers, their families have been there for centuries, and no document whose contents were passed down verbally through the generations can credibly claim otherwise.

Mikeuk

Exactly. Trust these peopke to dredge up totally irrelevant ancient history. Maybe, as Anglo-Saxons, we should be demanding our own homeland somewhere in the middle of Germany.

In recent, ie relevant, history, Palestine was inhabited by some Jews, some Christians, but mostly Muslims. Therein lies the problem. Muslim lands (formerly governed by the Muslim Sublime Porte) were arbitrarily reserved for settlement by Europeans and Americans.

It was a crass error. Now Israel is a fait accompli and of course it has a right to exist, but having regard to its problematical status it must exist on terms determined by the responsible international community.

'Responsible' does not encompass that moronic cretin Bush and his hapless gofer Rice, a woman who is unfit to punch train tickets, let alone occupy the senior position allocated to her by her semi-literate puppetmaster.

Aardvark

Keith Hand, I drew the analogy with Ireland since Rosie talked as if nobody had ever attacked over our borders (they frequently used to take pot shots across the border from Belleek when I was in NI). Although the IRA had a limited objective - annexation of 6 counties from the UK, it is still part of the break up of the union.

I was being ironic about the Ottoman Empire! I have read widely on the subject of their rule and have been to Turkey, Israel/Palestine, Jordan, Egypt, Kosovo, Bosnia and Macedonia in the last few years and have taken the trouble to acquaint myself with a lot of the history. I was told of the Turkish destruction of Heraklea (now modern Bitola) whilst monitoring the Macedonian elections earlier this month.

It is ridiculous to talk about the continuous Jewish presence as the basis for Israel. The majority of Jews converted to Christianity in the first couple of centuries AD and to Islam at a later date. The Arabs are the Jews who converted in the same way that the Bosniacs are Muslim Serbs in reality.

The reason for all of this is that most people when offered the choice of conversion or oppression will go with conversion. The Ottoman Empire gave tax and trading breaks for Muslims. Muslim boys were exempt from conscription at the age of 7 into the Janissary armies. Christian boys were rounded up and forcibly converted to Islam before being trained to be the most fanatical of soldiers. Those who survived a lifetime of war were allowed to marry Muslim women and bring up their children as Muslims.

The Arabs have every right to be in Palestine since they are descended from ethnic Jewish Muslims! Ever wondered why Sephardim and Arabs look alike?

As for buying land - this is a non starter when we talk about sovereignty. Because a Jew buys land it doesn't become Israel. If I buy a villa in Marbella it doesn't give HMTQ sovereignty. It is still Spain! Only in Israel - I emphasise, only in Israel - of all of the world's nations does the belief exist that if an individual buys a piece of land sovereignty changes.

The English do indeed have a homeland - on the basis of who was where 1900 years ago it is northern Germany and Denmark! The modern Jews can't have a homeland since they are no longer really a race, but an amalgam of people of different races who practice versions of the same religion. Mel Gibson has apparently just converted to Judaism. Under Israeli law he now has a right to 'return' to a country from which none of his ancestors came! Having the end of your willy cut off does not change your DNA. Mel Gibson is of British origin, Australian birth and Jewish religion. How does he now have a greater right to live in Ashkelon, say, than the Arabs of Gaza who were born there and had family homes there for hundreds of years?

I recall flying to Tel Aviv and sitting next to a red haired, blue eyed Orthodox man. How can he possibly be a close blood relation of the dark haired, dusky hued Tunisian Jew who sold me some jewellery at Caesarea? It's silly.

There were synagogues all over the Middle East until 1948. The circumstances were not ideal for Jews in most cities in the Muslim world, but often they were no worse off than Berbers, Copts, poor people, women and all the other people who were not part of the establishment. With the establishment of Israel without consultation with any Arabs nations - because of course the white colonialists knew best - the Jewish communities in Arab nations became the unwitting victims of Muslim Arab rage. This was a tragedy for all concerned since the Jews were often craftsmen and businessmen who added a lot of value to the societies in which they lived. Baghdad had 60,000 Jews in 1948 - Saddam Hussein famously invited their return and restoration of their property if only Israel would fade away.

The Holocaust is not a justification for the establishment of Israel. The Nazis persecuted and slaughtered the Jewish populace of the countries they occupied. That is not a reason to place Arab lands under Israeli sovereignty. Some Arabs supported the Nazis (most notoriously the Mufti of Jerusalem), but they didn't run concentration camps and didn't pillage Jewish property in the way that Europeans did. The Arabs should not have become the victims.