Arab MK: Israel ‘robbery of century’

[Violet_Crumble]

Israel is the 20th century's greatest robbery, carried out in broad daylight, Arab Knesset member Azmi Bishara (National Democratic Assembly) told a Lebanese audience last week during a speech at an Arab book fair in Beirut.


"I will never recognize Zionism even if all Arabs do," he said. "I will never concede Palestine. The battle is still long."


Bishara, who recently launched his campaign for an additional term in the Knesset, left for Lebanon five days ago without consent from the Interior Ministry, Israel's leading newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth reported Sunday.


His harsh anti-Israel message at the fair was quoted by Lebanese newspaper As -Safir.


"The conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is not a demographic dispute, but a national one," he said. "It's not the problem of 1.2 million Palestinians living in Israel. They are like all Arabs, only with Israeli citizenship forced upon them."


"We are the original residents of Palestine, not those who came from Poland and Russia," the MK added.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3186040,00.html

[bemildred]

1. I guess being militant looks like good politics these days. nt

[eyl]

2. Of course

next time someone suggests the Arab MKs' loyalty to Israel is less then complete, he'll be the first to cry "racism"

[barb162]

3. He doesn't seem very bright n/t

[Violet_Crumble]

4. I think he's pretty bright...

I think it's important to note that just because someone advocates Greater Israel or Greater Palestine, it doesn't mean that they're not very bright....

Violet...

[barb162]

7. And it's important to note that because someone advocates

something such as this, it's probably an extremely good indicator he's not bright at all

:hi:

[Violet_Crumble]

9. 'Something such as this'?

Does this opinion of yrs on the lack of brightness also apply to those who believe that the Palestinians aren't morally entitled to their own state consisting of the West Bank and Gaza, or does it only apply to the mirror opposite view?

Violet....

[Violet_Crumble]

5. And he'd be right...

Anyone who suggests Arab MK's aren't loyal to their own country based on these comments from one MK is being racist, imo, because they're judging an entire group based on the words of a few..

Violet...

[eyl]

6. A small group

and these kinds of comments are typical of more than one of them. But you're right - I'll rephrase that into "next time someoe accuses him of not being loyal to Israel".

Now, I'm not saying that all of them should be judged by the words of one. My comment was a somewhat sarcastic commentary on many of the Arab MKs' tendency to make inflammatory comments and then assume an air of injured innocence when someone calls them on it, or worse, when violence erupts.

[barb162]

8. As in: Did I do that?

Little ol' me?

[Violet_Crumble]

10. Making inflammatory comments and feigning innocence in Israeli politics...

...isn't confined solely to Arab MK's...

Violet...

[eyl]

11. True

but they're especially blatant at it.

[Violet_Crumble]

24. I don't see they're any more blatant than any other MK...

n/t

[GatoLover]

12. In other words, all of Israel is occupied territory

Tel Aviv no less than Hevron. That is the meaning of Bishara's speech.

[Violet_Crumble]

13. And yr problem with it is what exactly?

Isn't it the mirror opposite of what you believe?

Violet...

[Name removed]

14. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Jim Sagle]

15. Hate speech from a jagoff.

[IndianaGreen]

16. There has always been a Jewish presence in Palestine

a presence that has been uninterrupted since the time of the Mosaic migration.

It was the much-maligned United Nations that voted in 1947 to create two states out of the British colony in Palestine, one Jewish and one Arab. There were people that were hell-bent in making sure that the Jewish part of the equation did not survive. Here we are almost 60 years later and little has changed, as MK Bishara has been so kind to remind us.

[julianer]

26. Except that Israel now

occupies land much greater than the original UN partition area. Israel gained this land by ethnically cleansing Palestinians off their land by force.

The people 'hell bent' on making sure the Jewish part didn't survive were the ones whose land was being taken. How unreasonable.

[IndianaGreen]

28. There are some major gaps in your version of history, julianer

Before there were even anything called Palestinians, the Egyptians, the Jordanians, and the Syrians embarked on an effort to abort the Jewish state before she took her first breadth of air. As luck would have it, the Jews were determined not to be exterminated again. It was the Arabs that gambled that they could take the whole of the UN partition area, and they lost!

It should have ended in 1948, but it didn't. Israel was not the one that planned war against her Arab neighbors to take Arab Jerusalem, and gobble up the West Bank and Gaza. The same cast of characters promised to "push Israel into the sea." I remember that! I also remember when King Hussein put his troops under joint Arab command, I suppose they even agreed among themselves how they were going to divide the spoils.

Israel struck first! The 1967 war ended almost as soon as it began. It should have ended there, but it didn't. Israel's mistake is that she decided to build settlements on land she knew she would have to return. Israel did return land and removed settlements when she signed peace with Egypt. There was no one keeping the Palestinians off the negotiating table, except their corrupt leadership, still hopeful of total victory.

So here we are! There are people on both sides of this conflict that want peace, and that are willing to settle for a little less of what they wanted. These are the people we should be supporting, instead of continuing to demonize one side while glorifying the other. There are no saints and no demons in here!

As to the role of the international community, it has been lacking in leadership. The United States in particular, because it is our country, has been sitting on the sidelines since President Clinton left office. The current occupant of the White House is too busy listening to the instructions that his god leaves inside his head to bother with such menial task like peacemaking. Those that hope to replace the current White House occupant in 2008, are more interested in pandering to the side that fills their campaign coffers than they are in offering a realistic vision of where they want to lead the country in settling this sad conflict.

[Violet_Crumble]

31. And there are some major errors in yr version, Indy...

Before there were even anything called Palestinians, the Egyptians, the Jordanians, and the Syrians embarked on an effort to abort the Jewish state before she took her first breadth of air.

Thanks for the attempt to pass mainstream Zionist mythmaking off as fact. What is fact is that Jordan and the Zionist leadership successfully embarked on an effort to abort the Arab state before she took her first breath of air...

There are people on both sides of this conflict that want peace, and that are willing to settle for a little less of what they wanted. These are the people we should be supporting, instead of continuing to demonize one side while glorifying the other.

Okay, who in yr opinion are some of the people on both sides who want peace? Would Sharon be one of them? Because if he is, then that vision of peace is one that doesn't involve any sort of peaceful or secure for the Palestinians, as he's someone who's looked up to by folk who like to demonise one side while glorifying the other...

Violet...

[Dutch]

43. So you DON'T think it's unreasonable to be "'hell bent' on making sure

the Jewish part didn't survive"?

Until victory, until Jerusalem...

[julianer]

45. I believe the original partition idea

involved the creation of a Palestinian state which was never born because Jordan conspired with (the new) Israel to carve it up between them.

Are you saying that the Palestinian people shouldn't have been alarmed at the threat to their homes and land? How would you feel about being cleared away from your home into some refugee camp?

[Tom Joad]

17. His message is not so much "anti-Israel" as this article

puts it. It is anti-zionist. It is pro-democracy. Zionism is an ideology that forced out over 700,000 Palestinians in 1948, completey ethnically-cleansed over 500 villages, and continues with that job of making Israel a "Jewish State". This ethnic cleansing continues today in many forms. It is also expressed in making the Palestinians marginal, without human or national rights.

There must come a time when Israel chooses to be a democratic state rather than a state for Jewish people. A democracy must be a place for all its inhabitants.

Yes, i know some Arabs can vote in Israel (not all, including those on the west bank but on the Israeli side of the Wall, and those in Jerusalem). Democracy is more than voting, however. It includes equal rights to the land, and other resources. On this the Jewish state fails misarably.

Bishara is no more "extremist" than Nelson Mandela.
Mandela could have been released decades earlier if he accepted Bantustans in South Africa. This is what Israel is offering Palestians, on their own homeland.

We must accept nothing less than a democracy for all. We must also demand that all who have rightful claim to the land, including those forced out in 1948, are allowed to exercise their right to return to their homeland.

Americans must demand their government cease supporting this unjust system. Only then can we expect peace.

[IndianaGreen]

18. Nelson Mandela never called for the extermination of the Afrikaners

You also have the wrong idea about democracy. When someone like me, a Marxist-Leninist, speaks of democracy, we are speaking of the proletariat making decisions collectively. None of those decisions can go against the interests of the working class, therefore, any decision that maintains a system of exploitation will never be proper no matter how many people vote for it.

Democracy, as bourgeois Americans interpret it, means majority rules. This is why the Framers of our Constitution did not create a bourgeois democracy, but a republic. They knew, better than most of us, the dangers of mob rule. A majority will impose its will on a minority by tyrannical means. This is why limits were place on the popular will, e.g., a majority could not impose their religion on the minority.

A one-state solution for I/P will result in a democratic tyranny, a theocracy to be exact. Women will be forced to veil themselves, LGBTs will live precarious lives, minority religions will be persecuted. This is not Zionist propaganda, but a fact. Bahais have been persecuted by the Shia majority in Iran. Christians are now being persecuted by the Shias in Iraq. Women are being forced under Sharia law in Iraq. I could go on, and on, but you get my drift.

[Tom Joad]

19. Azmi Bishara has never called for the extermination of anyone.

[IndianaGreen]

20. He did call for the ethnic cleansing of all Jews!

I don't know how else to interpret this:

"We are the original residents of Palestine, not those who came from Poland and Russia," the MK added.

‘Leave and take your democracy with you’

Directing his speech at Israelis, Bishara said, "Return Palestine to us and take your democracy with you. We Arabs are not interested in it."

[Tom Joad]

21. First, I do not trust this translation of Bishara's speech. Second,

it is in the context of continual ethnic cleansing of Palestinian people from their land,being pushed out by the immigration of Europeans.

The fact is, that it is now Israel that has all the power now. It is Israel that is practicing the ethnic cleansing with US support. That cannot be justified that Palestinians may act unjustly toward the Jewish inhabitants in the future.

[Violet_Crumble]

22. And where did he call for extermination?

He didn't, yet you claimed he did.

Since I was recently informed by someone that saying they'd gladly pay more for petrol in order to resettle the Palestinians in the Saudi Peninsula wasn't a call for ethnic cleansing, I'm thinking that statement is a much clearer call for ethnic cleansing than what Bishara said...

Bottom line is his comments were every bit as absolutist as those of some Jewish-Israeli MKs who have openly advocated the 'transfer' of Palestinians from Israel and the Occupied Territories. Sad thing is that some folk can't bring themselves to see how absolutist and wrong anyone who spout crap that denies the existence of either Jews or Arabs, and will speak out against it only when it's their 'group' that's on the receiving end....

Violet...

[IndianaGreen]

30. Ethnic cleansing does not necessarily mean extermination

but it does mean removing a population.

[Violet_Crumble]

32. Exactly...

n/t

[IndianaGreen]

34. but when you tell the Jews to leave...

what if the Jews won't leave? Will anyone care if harm comes to them?

[Violet_Crumble]

35. And this same thinking doesn't apply to anyone else?

For example, Palestinians?

Violet....

[IndianaGreen]

36. Yes, but many of those Palestinians are the flip side of the Likud radical

and what one has to realize is that the only way to settle the I/P conflict is by having both sides lose by giving up on the Greater Israel and the Jewless Palestine. In practical terms it means that Palestinians will have to accept a deal that will fall short of their expectations, while the Israelis will have to give up the idea that Judea and Samaria are theirs by Divine edict.

[Violet_Crumble]

38. I don't understand what yr saying...

Many Palestinians are extremists? Israelis think that the West Bank belongs to them? Uh, apart from being sweeping and incorrect statements about both people, what's that got to do with the post you replied to where we were discussing yr claim that telling Israelis to go back to Europe actually reads as wanting to exterminate those Israelis?

Violet..

[Violet_Crumble]

23. Are you talking about a bi-national state?

A one-state solution for I/P will result in a democratic tyranny, a theocracy to be exact.

Are you referring to a solution that would bring about a bi-national state with equal rights any protection for all? Or is that yr vision of what Palestinian refugees would want? Whatever it is, claiming yr vision is a fact is in fact more ridiculous than any Zionist propaganda. No-one has a crystal ball into the future...

Violet...

[IndianaGreen]

25. Women and gays are doing so well in Arabs countries, aren't they?

The secular Palestinians are not the ones that are going to be in power. They are already under pressure by the Islamic radicals. Palestinian women are being forced back into the Dark Ages.

[julianer]

27. Western notions of cultural

injustices are now being used as justification for 'humanitarian interventions' - part of the Iraq justification is the supposed benefits accruing to women via bombing and invasion. We can see how well that has gone.

Your comments about Palestinian women being forced back into the dark ages could do with some justification, IMO. Got any links to academic research on this?

[IndianaGreen]

29. Palestinian women: their future legal rights

There is such a thing as Google, which should be followed by careful analysis of the sources being quoted. There is this 1994 article that predates the rise to power of Hamas:

Palestinian women: their future legal rights

Arab Studies Quarterly (ASQ), Wntr, 1994 by Adrien Katherine Wing

PART I. INTRODUCTION

PALESTINIANS ARE CURRENTLY ENGAGED IN DISCUSSING issues with the Israeli government related to their control of a future Palestinian entity. Additionally, President Arafat has recently appointed a high legal commission, whose task it is to draft a Basic Law which will serve as an interim constitution. One area for future consideration will be a re-examination of the customary and religious traditions which play a large social and legal role in their culture.(1) Both traditions sanction differential treatment on the basis of gender. This article confronts the question of how current and future Palestinian political and community leaders can begin to think about modifying customary and Islamic norms to meet a declared national goal in the 1988 PNC Declaration of Independence of improving the legal status of women. Since Palestinians do not currently control the various legal regimes applicable to them, it is probable that most of the suggestions proposed in this article will not be able to be fully considered until the autonomy period.

The issue of improving women's legal status is profound because deeply rooted customary and religious attitudes are difficult to eradicate through the passage of new laws, even if imposed by newly elected popular regimes. Efforts to grant women a legal status not on a par with their social and cultural status often fail due to lack of legitimacy in the community. Often women's actual social status under custom is better than their status under religious law, but is worse than their position under secular law.(2) While some sectors of the society will favor equalizing women's status, others may vehemently oppose such reformation. In the Occupied Territories, sizable communities of Islamic fundamentalists and other traditionalists fall into this latter category.

<snip>

The most ancient legal tradition in the Occupied Territories today is the customary law known as urf (that which is known). Urf handles disputes outside the official civil or religious courts on the basis of traditional oral customs and norms that stress conciliation, mediation, and family and group honor.(7) There are a whole range of offenses concerning the status of women, who are considered repositories of family and clan honor. A case of honor (qadiyat arad) is synonymous with sexual assault against women.(8) The judgments can run into the thousands of Jordanian dinars. The amount depends upon such factors as whether the violation was physical or verbal, whether she was fondled through her clothing, or whether her dress was actually lifted, and the distance the violation occurred from her home. If the violation is felt to be the woman's fault, the men in her "dishonored" family would feel customarily justified in severely punishing her or even killing her.(9) While the jurisprudence is urf, it is represented as being consistent if not identical to Islamic law,(10) an example of the intertwined nature of the two traditions. Actually, none of these arad determinations are covered by Islamic law.(11)

In the view of feminist scholars, the differential treatment of women under custom is due to the ongoing existence of patriarchy.(12) This stems from historical realities where the physically strongest were responsible for the protection of the family. Thus, gender roles were consigned in such a way so that men were the protectors and providers and women were the child rearers and nurturers.

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2501/is_n1_v16/ai_16082331

[Dutch]

42. Wow...the oppression of women is a "western notion of cultural injustice"

Welcome to the Respectnik view of what constitutes "equality".

[julianer]

44. That is not what I said

The point is that acts of aggression are justified by bogus concerns for the rights of others.

The rights of women in whichever country are the responsibility to the people of the country. If they have repressive rulers who discriminate and repress it is the people's sole responsibility to make changes.

[julianer]

46. And further it is a western idea

that the defence of equality 'rights' (ones that we still don't enjoy in our own countries) is ground for invasion. How are the women of Afghanistan faring now they have been 'liberated'? Does anyone care?

Of course the invaders, like the occupiers in Palestine, don't give a toss about anyone's human rights but their own. But they know that we do, so they trot it out as a lie to cover their crimes.

If you are concerned about women's rights in Arab countries, perhaps I could ask what you do for women's rights in your own country?

[Violet_Crumble]

33. You didn't answer my question...

Were you talking about a bi-national state?

[IndianaGreen]

37. A bi-national state is impractical and psychotic in nature

How can you have a state that on one hand grants women equality and gives LGBTs the chance to live in peace while another part of the state is run by religious laws that puts women in servitude and sanctions the execution of LGBTs.

[Violet_Crumble]

39. What you just described sure doesn't sound like a binational state....

Every time I've seen talk of a binational state, it's stressed that it'd be a secular one where every citizen has the same level of protection and equal rights. I've never seen this bizarre thing that you claim to be what a binational state would end up like, and find it totally nonsensical...

Violet...

[Tom Joad]

40. Where are all these people who are so very concerned about

"Arab Women rights" when a pregnant woman is held by the occupation army at a checkpoint, and forced to give birth there? Where are they when Arab women are being held without charges in an Israeli prison? When their homes are being crushed by a Caterpillar bulldozer?

Those Israeli Jews who do have real concern with human rights are joining Palestinian women and men in protests at the Wall, and helping rebuild their homes, replant destroyed crops. They stand at checkpoints with cameras and notepads to document human rights violations. They are standing bravely in a square in Jerusalem and holding signs for peace and justice, surrounded by racist extremists calling for expulsion of the Arabs. They offer real solidarity.

And isn't it interesting that while now the US vilifies muslims, it used Muslim fundamentalism to destroy a more secular version of Arab nationalism that existed prior to the 80's? The same ploy has been used by Israel, to weaken the PLO.

Why is it when i see posts like this that i think the real concern is keeping the status quo of the occupation?

[julianer]

41. Quite

However I expect they are all busy fighting the cause of women's rights in their own countries. Motes and beams, etc.

[Scurrilous]

47. Arab MK: Syria will hasten Palestinian J'lem

Mohammad Barakeh (Hadash-Ta'al) expresses his support of Syria, says ‘strong and resistant Syria will bring closer the day in which Jerusalem will become Palestine's capital’

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3192263,00.html

<snip>

"Arab Knesset Member Mohammad Barakeh (Hadash-Ta'al) expressed his support of Syria on Thursday, claiming that "a strong and resistant Syria will bring closer the day in which Jerusalem will become Palestine's capital."

Barakeh, who spoke during a rally of solidarity with Syria in Nazareth, added that "we can clearly see the cobwebs of the big spider, the United States, as well as the cobwebs of the small spider, Israel, who are trying to drive a wedge between Syria and Lebanon in order to devour Syria after what happened in Iraq."

Avi Peled, spokesperson for the right-wing party Israel Our Home, said in response that "the statements made once and again by Arab MKs, in which they express their support of Syria, Lebanon, the Palestinian Authority and turning Jerusalem into the capital of a Palestinian state, prove how necessary and essential it is to reach an agreement of land exchange between Israel and the PA."

"As a gesture, it is advisable to transfer these Arab MKs, even as a gift, to the PA and to deprive them of their Israeli citizenship," he suggested.

"Israel is our home, Palestine is theirs," Peled added."