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ForeignPolicy

US Academic Deported and Banned for Criticizing Israel

By Toni O'Loughlin, The Guardian. Posted May 27, 2008.


Norman Finkelstein, the controversial Jewish American academic and Israel critic, has been deported from the country and banned for 10 years.

Norman Finkelstein, the controversial Jewish American academic and fierce critic of Israel, has been deported from the country and banned from the Jewish state for 10 years, it emerged yesterday. Finkelstein, the son of a Holocaust survivor who has accused Israel of using the genocidal Nazi campaign against Jews to justify its actions against the Palestinians, was detained by the Israeli security service, Shin Bet, when he landed at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion airport on Friday.

Shin Bet interrogated him for around 24 hours about his contact with the Lebanese Islamic militia, Hizbullah, when he travelled to Lebanon earlier this year and expressed solidarity with the group which waged war against Israel in 2006. He was also accused of having contact with al-Qaida. But Finkelstein rejected the accusations, saying he had travelled to Israel to visit an old friend.

"I did my best to provide absolutely candid and comprehensive answers to all the questions put to me," he told an Israeli newspaper in an email exchange.

"I am confident that I have nothing to hide. Apart from my political views, and the supporting scholarship, there isn't much more to say for myself: alas, no suicide missions or secret rendezvous with terrorist organisations. I've always supported a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders. I'm not an enemy of Israel."

Finkelstein is one of several scholars rejected by Israel in the increasingly bitter divide in academic circles, between those who support and those who criticise its treatment of Palestinians.

Last year, Israel's most contentious "new historian", Ilan Pappe, left his job as senior lecturer in political science at the University of Haifa after he endorsed the international academic boycott of Israeli institutions, provoking the university president to call for his resignation.

Finkelstein was also refused tenure last year at Chicago's DePaul University for attacking several staunch Israel supporters and academics such as Harvard law professor, Alan Dershowitz.

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel said the deportation of Finkelstein was an assault on free speech.

"The decision to prevent someone from voicing their opinions by arresting and deporting them is typical of a totalitarian regime," said the association's lawyer, Oded Peler.

"A democratic state, where freedom of expression is the highest principle, does not shut out criticism or ideas just because they are uncomfortable for its authorities to hear. It confronts those ideas in public debate."

Finkelstein said he was held in a cell and encountered "several unpleasant moments with the guards" and that eventually he borrowed the mobile phone of another detainee and called a friend who in turn called a lawyer.

Although entitled to appeal against the entry ban, Finkelstein said he would not contest it.

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So Much For Western Democracy
Posted by: NoPCZone on May 27, 2008 1:16 AM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Apartheid meets Jim Crow meets the Gag Order. When are the nations of the west stop pretending that Israel is an open and just society?

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» RE: So Much For Western Democracy Posted by: helenwheels
What's new about this?
Posted by: blogbooks on May 27, 2008 1:23 AM   
Current rating: 2    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
David Irving (widely known holocaust denier) has been banned from the following countries: New Zealand, Italy, France, South Africa, Austria.

Freedom of speech doesn't exist outside of the U.S. If you say the wrong thing, and anger the wrong group, you get taken down a peg.

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» There's a difference . . . Posted by: Scientz
» Uh huh . . . Posted by: Scientz
» Except . . . Posted by: Scientz
» You fancy yourself a scholar? Posted by: blogbooks
» No . . . Posted by: Scientz
» RE: What's new about this? Posted by: chaoslegs
» RE: What's new about this? Posted by: yellow
The problem is the same everywhere
Posted by: saltoafronteira on May 27, 2008 3:42 AM   
Current rating: 3    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Israelis, just like all other peoples in the so called "western world" have a problem: the ruler classes and financial elites. Those who insist that there is a jewish conspiracy to rule the world must set eyes on this example.
For the rulers of this world, we the people, jewish or non jewish, black or white, red or yellow, are nothing but cattle, and this hate mongering between races is nothing else but another way to manipulate, and so keep on ruling, us.
The fact that many of these rulers are of jewish religion doesnt change a thing about what I've said.
Zionism, capitalism, militarism, industrial globalization, and so on, are nothing but tools for power-keeping. The real issue is keeping the resources control and, therefore, power and wealth.
The real fight in Israel is the same as in the other western countries: dismantling those tools in order to impose a fairer wealth distribution for all and, consequently, the birth, or rebirth, of citizenship and the death of religious and ethnic hate.
by the way, that will be the only serious path for Israel's survival in the long term, as many on Israel itself so well know.

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» RE: The problem is the same everywhere Posted by: saltoafronteira
» Insightful Comment Posted by: Gravitas
Oppression through subjugation
Posted by: Abushite on May 27, 2008 4:31 AM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Israel's oppression of the Palestinian peoples,
is evil. they are no better than the Germans, maybe worse as they had an experience to learn from. They will be remembered as a cruel and merciless people.

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» RE: Oppression through subjugation Posted by: saltoafronteira
» RE: Oppression through subjugation Posted by: helenwheels
» he's right Posted by: meetmeineleusis
American for liberty, truth, and justice
Posted by: Michael_D on May 27, 2008 5:40 AM   
Current rating: 3    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Israel: 60 Years of Denial
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9005
by Ramzy Baroud


Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. Ephesians 5:11

google video:
clinton chronicles
coke bush
iraq for sale
no end in sight
911 Mysteries Part 1 - Demolitions
911 revisited

IfAmericansKnew.org

patriotsquestion911.com

pilotsfor911truth.org

911pressfortruth.com

bodyofwar.com

IVAW.org

A general strike is called for September 11, 2008, the anniversary of the 9/11/2001 attacks on New York City and Arlington, Virginia.

General strikes shut down the normal operations of a city, state, or nation for a period of time. These strikes aim to force action on a single issue or broader set of concerns. The 9/11/08 General Strike has a central location - http://www.votestrike.org - on the Internet, which is linked to and reproduced on a variety of other internet sites. The site states the rationale for the effort:

The General Strike is a national call to action, from citizens to other citizens. It is not about a single issue. It is not an anti-war protest, a civil rights protest, an election fraud protest. It is not about torture, surveillance, corporate media, or the environment. This strike is about all these issues and more.

We all have different concerns, but we all have the same concern: we are being lied to and this government does not represent us. Join other Americans in demanding truth, justice, and accountability.

This is our country.

And our world.



A National Call to Action: Thursday, September 11th, 2008

No school. No work. Buy nothing. Hit the streets!


LOCK DOWN USA

The strike targets key issues facing the American public, issues that have not been addressed in any meaningful way by any branch of government. Unions, corporations, & the major parties have failed to deal with pressing matters of war & peace, income inequality, crime & punishment & the meaning of citizenship itself, it has fallen to the American people to set things right! Public protest is an important part of democracy, just like a free press, a judiciary, and congress. Our causes are many but it's time to make our voices as one.

Citizen discontent & other concerns of the strike include massive violations of civil rights. The strike campaign argues that under our system of checks & balances when the judiciary & Congress fail in their duty it is then up to the American people to defend the Constitution, Bill of Rights & our way of life.

Call to action: No work, No school on September 11, 2008. It also includes “no shopping;” a suspension of all purchasing during the strike. 75% of our economy is consumer spending, when Bush says to shop, we must STOP!

The general strike calls for participants to “Hit the Streets.” But why spend our time protesting in DC to be ignored? Unless we get in the streets outside our rep.s personal residences- who is going to care?

We need to mobilize locally- & demand national action. Few of us could go to Washington- but many of us- can go to our city halls or state legislatures- or local Congressional offices.

Tell the government that we're fed up with war, torture, corruption, & special interest funding our elections & our media.

Strikes have brought civil rights in the U.S. & around the world. Help make our voices louder than the mainstream media & corporate dollars.

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As a Holocaust scholar . . .
Posted by: Scientz on May 27, 2008 5:51 AM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
. . . (yes, those of you familiar with my comments who wondered what my actual area of expertise was--or if I had one . . . it is the Third Reich, World War Two, and the Holocaust).

Anyhow, as a Holocaust scholar, I can say that Finkelstein's "The Holocaust Industry" was a very interesting read.

Essentially, the book says that Israel's position as America's best friend was not a foregone conclusion out of the gate. Finkelstein shows that from 1948-1967, relations between Israel and the US were very cold, and that few American Jews even spoke about Israel on positive terms. After 1967 (and especially 1973) today's relationship between the US and Israel began to emerge. Finkelstein's thesis can be basically summed up by "America likes a winner." The US wasn't sure how it felt about a tiny nation of emaciated Holocaust survivors, precariously placed among people who professed its immediate destruction. However, after the 1967 war between Israel and (pretty much) all of the Arab states in the region, America knew it could back a mighty little winner.

Finkelstein's chief problem--in addition to the way the Holocaust is "sold" to justify Israel's existence--is with American Jews who neither survived the Holocaust nor decided to emigrate to Israel.

His question, which I believe to be totally valid, is "if you didn't survive the genocide, and didn't answer the call of Aliyah (to return to the 'homeland') then what right do have to speak on the issues of Israel?"

Finkelstein is essentially accusing American Jews of appropriating another people's history for their own geopolitical purposes.

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» America Likes a Winner? Posted by: dustdevil
» Again . . . Posted by: Scientz
» please pay attention . . . Posted by: dustdevil
» Interesting theory . . . Posted by: Scientz
» RE: Interesting theory . . . Posted by: Prairie Waif
» Liberty Posted by: nap
» RE: America Likes a Winner? Posted by: Lauren
» You could be right . . . Posted by: dustdevil
» It says . . . Posted by: Scientz
» RE: It says . . . Posted by: dustdevil
» I've never . . . Posted by: Scientz
» Because Hitler wasn't . . . Posted by: Scientz
» Machiavelli and Hobbes. Posted by: Scientz
Norman Finklestein is one of my heroes.
Posted by: carl baydala on May 27, 2008 6:50 AM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I suppose if you are a Jew or a Zionist you tend to react to these kinds of things a little differently than the rest of us.

Speaking for myself, I see Professor Finklestein as a kind of martyr. Most likely, many martyrs are being produced in these times of war and of the decline in free speech in America and in places like Israel.

I tend to side with victims and those who the state decides is his enemy, for whatever reason. As is clearly evident in the article Norman Finklestein is not a terrorist or even a supporter of the enemies of Israel nor the United States. He is a bona fide critic of what he sees as an abuse of power and illegitimate use of an event in history to promote an agenda: the misuse of the Holocaust to achieve political ends.

A democracy and a free state does not produce martyrs simply because it disagrees with them, but welcomes criticism so as to improve its character and standing in the
world.

The U.S. and Israel have failed in these noble endeavors and all would do well to cheer on leaders and men of character and purpose such as the like of Dr. Norman Finklestein. He is one of my heroes.

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» Paddy Buc-Buc Posted by: pfeifer999
» I love your posts theallegro Posted by: meetmeineleusis
» Maybe because in 1948 . . . Posted by: dustdevil
nuclear bomb
Posted by: uncleeddie on May 27, 2008 7:41 AM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
What do you expect from a country who throws a guy in jail for 10 years because he tells the world Israel was now a nuclear power. Sad to think that Jewish people got to call this country home as a reward for all their suffering.

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» Hamas Condemns The Holocaust Posted by: fanny666
They deny entry to foreigners because...
Posted by: David/Daoud on May 27, 2008 8:02 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
they want the world to be ignorant of the situation in the occupied territories. Israeli authorities would have us all believe that each and every Palestinian is a "terrorist", in exactly the same way that the U.S. views Usama Bin Laden et al as "terrorists". Israel has successfully conflated the two very different situations.

Nonetheless, many people from all over the world have indeed visited the West Bank and Gaza and have returned to their respective countries and have told their stories. Nowadays, Israeli authorities are preventing many people from entering in the first place, anyone they suspect of being human-rights or peace activists, even Jews.

Norman Finkelstein, wow, might have stayed in the same cell at the airport that I occupied in 2003. I feel privileged!

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It is astonishing how
Posted by: steven w on May 27, 2008 8:30 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
freedom of speech is being attacked in various democracies all over the world!

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» That's the real story here Posted by: blogbooks
» RE: That's the real story here Posted by: theallegro
» Canadian Conservatives . . . Posted by: Scientz
» RE: Canadian Conservatives . . . Posted by: Prairie Waif
» :S Posted by: Scientz
Israel: the 51st Amerikan state
Posted by: HughScott on May 27, 2008 9:22 AM   
Current rating: 3    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
In 1968, after visiting the Ann Frank house in Amsterdam and Dachau concentration camp near Munich, I became an ardent supporter of Israel.

My feelings changed in the summer of 2006 when the Israeli "Defense" Force (IDF) dropped U.S.-supplied cluster bombs and 2,000-pound bunker busters containing depleted uranium on Lebanon, killing and maiming hundreds of innocent civilians -- all because Hezbollah allegedly kidnapped two IDF soldiers.

I realized then that Israel's ruling Likud Party was a clone of Bush 43's rightwing GOP -- a gang of bloodthirsty thugs.

Because of my new enlightenment, which came from studying the Republican neoconservative extremist organization, Project for a New American Century (PNAC), I began researching the history of Israel.

Once more I was dismayed by the neocon-controlled Jewish state.

To my disgust, I learned that on July 22, 1946, so-called Jewish "freedom" fighters committed the first act of organized Middle East terrorism when they blew up the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, headquarters of British rule, killing 92 people, including many Arabs. The Jewish terrorists also detonated suitcase bombs in Arab railroad passenger stations.

As it turned out, the acts of Jewish cowardice triggered an unending, tit-for-tat Middle East conflict dominated by Israel, which now has an insane number of nuclear warheads in its far superior arsenal.

Two years ago, Likud Party officials erected a plaque outside the restored King David hotel and held a lengthy seminar with speeches and a tour of the building by one of the Jewish "resistance fighters" involved in the attack.

Complained Simon McDonald, the British Ambassador in Tel Aviv, and John Jenkins, the Consul-General in Jerusalem, in writing to Israeli diplomats, “We do not think that it is right for an act of terrorism, which led to the loss of many lives, to be commemorated.”

In particular McDonald and Jenkins demanded the removal of the plaque that paid tribute to Irgun, the Jewish resistance group headed by Menachem Begin, which carried out the deadly bombing.

The maltreatment of Arabs in Palestine continues, with Israel holding thousands of innocent Muslim men, women and children in squalid detention camps. That tells me Likud Party members learned the wrong lessons from WWII's Holocaust.

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

Hugh E. Scott, Vietnam veteran, lifelong registered Republican, Obama supporter and the editor of www.FreedomCentralUSA.com -- a nonprofit investigative website that exposes Bill Kristol's rightwing extremist organization, Project for a New American Century (PNAC), as the primary and profit-motivated instigator of Gulf War 2.

For visitors who want to keep track of the treasonous weasels, FreedomCentralUSA presents a list of 225 PNAC members (called "signatories"), including John Insane McCain and his Vietnam War draft-dodging buddies, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz and Scooter Libby.

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» Again hugh, I see we are kindred spirits Posted by: meetmeineleusis
The Article Gives Proof to the Transparency and Freedom in Israel
Posted by: Len Miller on May 27, 2008 10:23 AM   
Current rating: 2    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
If one reads the article with some objectivity (some case with the crowd of commenters here), one notes the openness of Israeli society.

1. There is an Association for The Civil Rights in Israel. Dissent and protest is accepted in Israel.

2. Finkelstein was not incommunicado. He was allowed to call a lawyer.

3. There is a legal process in Israel..."Although entitled to appeal against the entry ban, Finkelstein said he would not contest it." Why, when he had the opportunity to appeal (ever hear of appeal in any of the Arab states?)did he not take advantage and go through the process? Since he did not-could he have something to hide? Perhaps (could it be?) that because "he travelled to Lebanon earlier this year and expressed solidarity with the group which waged war against Israel in 2006" , he may have had something to hide? Even if he did not, why should someone who supports a terrorist organizations -Hezbollah- be granted a visa to visit? Would you let an enemy that vowed to destroy you into your home? Let's get real people.

Finkelstein has only himself to blame. Take the appeal. Do not fail in the process and then blame the other guy. Take responsibility.

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» RE: Isn't every Jew on earth a citizen of Israel? Posted by: rfrancis@godisdead.com
» Golda Meir Posted by: pfeifer999
Finkelstein - Israel - Democracy ?
Posted by: RJMosk on May 27, 2008 11:02 AM   
Current rating: 1    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Is the Land of Israel a real democracy? Or has Israel become the 'GULAG' ?

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HEZBOLLAH AND THE ERADICATION OF JEWS
Posted by: Len Miller on May 27, 2008 11:25 AM   
Current rating: 2    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
For anyone who would like a thorough review of the history of the attempt to eradicate the Jews of the World, I give you but a brief overview of an excellent article -Let's see if you will read it:

Hezbollah's Final Solution
by Alan M. Dershowitz
.....
"The uniqueness of the Holocaust was not the Nazi's determination to kill the Jews of Germany and even of neighboring Poland.... (It) was the Nazi plan to "ingather" all the Jews of the world to the death camp and end the Jewish "race" forever....

The official leader of the Palestinian Muslims, Haj Amin al-Husseini, the grand mufti of Jerusalem, collaborated in the Nazi genocide, declaring that he sought to "solve the problems of the Jewish element in Palestine and other Arab countries" by employing "the same method" being used "in the Axis countries". Husseini, who spent the war years in Berlin and was later declared a Nazi war criminal at Nuremberg, wrote the following in his memoirs:

Our fundamental condition for cooperating with Germany was a free hand to eradicate every last Jew from Palestine and the Arab world....

Husseini planned a death camp for Jews modeled on Auschwitz, to be located in Nablus. He broadcast on Nazi Radio, calling for genocide against all the world's Jews: "kill the Jews wherever you find them--this pleases God, history, and religion." Professor Edward Said has acknowledged that this Nazi collaborator and genocidal anti-Semite "represented the Palestinian Arab consensus" and was "the voice of the Palestinian people."....

Never before or since in world history has a tyrannical regime sought to murder all of the members of a particular racial, religious, ethnic or cultural group, regardless of where they live--not until now. Hezbollah's aim is not to "end the occupation of Palestine," or even to "liberate all of Palestine." Its goal is to kill the world's Jews. Listen to the words of its leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah: "If Jews all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide." (NY Times, May 23, 2004, p. 15, section 2, column 1.) Nasrallah is one of the most admired men in the Muslim and Arab world today. Hitler made similar threats in Mein Kampf but they were largely ignored. Nasrallah has a reputation for keeping his promises.

His genocidal goals--to kill all Jews--were proven by two recent statements. He has warned the Arabs and Muslims to leave Haifa so that his rockets can kill only Jews. And he apologized for causing the deaths of three Israeli-Arabs in Nazareth, when a Katuysha struck that religiously mixed Israeli city. Hezbollah also worked hand-in-hand with Argentine neo-Nazis to blow up a Jewish community center, murdering dozens of Jews.

Nasrallah is a modern day Hitler, who currently lacks the capacity to carry out his genocide....

Despite these anti-Semitic and genocidal threats, some of the hard left admire Nasrallah and his bigoted organization, as well as Iran and its anti-Semitic president. Others do not seem to take his threats seriously.

For example, the notorious Jewish anti-Semite Norman Finkelstein has said, "looking back my chief regret is that I wasn't even more forceful in publicly defending Hezbollah against terrorist intimidation and attack."

Finkelstein's hatred of Jews runs so deep that he has actually implied that his own mother, who survived the Nazi Holocaust, may have collaborated with the Nazis. If so collaboration with evil seems to run in the family, because Finkelstein has clearly become a collaborator with Hezbollah anti-Semitism and Nazism. Finkelstein's website is filled with Hezbollah promotion, including breathless reprints of Nasrallah speeches....

Those like Finkelstein, who support Hezbollah, and even those who refuse to fight against this evil, are on the wrong side of history...."

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» Dershowitz . . . Posted by: Scientz
» RE: Dershowitz . . . Posted by: theallegro
» Furthermore . . . Posted by: Scientz
» RE: Furthermore . . . Posted by: Len Miller
» RE: Furthermore . . . Posted by: Scientz
» RE: Dershowitz . . . Posted by: Len Miller
» RE: Dershowitz . . . Posted by: Len Miller
» RE: Dershowitz . . . Posted by: Scientz
» Potato Launchers Posted by: Prairie Waif
» Nice find . . . Posted by: Scientz
» RE: You didn't look hard enough Posted by: Ydotheyhateus
To all those 'self-loving' Jews
Posted by: Ydotheyhateus on May 27, 2008 1:09 PM   
Current rating: 3    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
You morons are our worst enemy right now.

Do you realize that Iraq war is causing such huge problems in US economy.

Do you know what will happen when we are facing the new Depression era? Americans will look for a scapegoat to place the blame.

And they will rightly blame the 'Neocons', which has become synonymous with Jew. How effing crazy is that!

The traditional conservative block as represented by Pat Buchanan have already established the ground work of blaming us for the Iraq fiasco.

These antisemites have created the myth that neocons are Israeli agents and that the war was started at Israel's behest.

Do you think the avg. Joe who hates muslims today, would do 'nuance' tomorrow, and distinguish between Neocon and Zionists, and between Zionists and Jews?

Idiots!

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» Damn son, you nailed it Posted by: meetmeineleusis
» Jews For Justice Posted by: fanny666
HARVARD
Posted by: fg on May 27, 2008 1:14 PM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
should banish Dersh.

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» No they shouldn't Posted by: meetmeineleusis
» RE: No they shouldn't Posted by: fanny666
» RE: No they shouldn't Posted by: Graeme
» YES...HE CAN HANG WITH.... Posted by: pfeifer999
wasabimon
Posted by: RODNOX on May 27, 2008 4:06 PM   
Current rating: 3    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
IF ONLY MORE PEOPLE REALZED WHAT A MONSTER ISRAEL IS.....THANK YOU NORM FOR POINTING IT OUT----WHEN THE AVERAGE PERSON LEARNS WHAT ISRAEL REALLY IS AND WHAT THEIR PURPOSE IS IT MAY OPEN THE EYES OF MILLIONS WHO HAVE MISTAKENLY SUPPORTED THESE GREEDY--WAR-MONGERING--ARROGANT---GENOCIDAL LUNATICS..........TO HELL WITH THE ZIONIST PIGS

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» RE: wasabimon Posted by: koolwoman
» RE: wasabimon Posted by: Turiye
» RE Posted by: DesertStone
WHERE DO YOU START
Posted by: Len Miller on May 27, 2008 4:12 PM   
Current rating: 2    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I wrote this as a reply to a post However, I think it deserves it's own space-- so I repeat it here-- maybe some of the vitriol will be understood:

The article you linked me to and which I read is quite clear in its view. The introduction says it all for me: "As the Palestinian people prepare to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Nakba ("catastrophe") - the dispossession and expulsion of most of our people from our land -"

I believe that statement sums up the starting point for most of you who seem obsessed by the fact that Israel exists and that Jews have a homeland. If one starts with the premise that there should be no Jewish homeland and that the partition of "Palestine" by the UN and by the British was a "Nabka"-- then logically what most of you ar saying follows---

a. Jews (or politely "Zionists") are occupiers of someone else's land;

b. As occupiers they oppress the people who should really be there;

c. An occupier has no right to occupy, is not sovereign and has no right of defense to the "rightful owners" of the land, etc., etc.

Respectfully, I do not view the creation of the State of Israel that way. In my view, the State was created out of a British protectorate. If anyone has the most recent claim to the land, it is the British. Of course the Ottoman Empire may have a claim and those Israelites that were the first to own the land, before being taken over by the Roman Empire-- why even they may have a claim.

With most of history, there is a great deal of complexity. However, if you accept the fact that Israel was created as a sovereign Nation State -- A Jewish State--- just as there are Islamic States, then all that you say is illogical.

Once you accept the fact that Israel is a sovereign State, it has all right,as any other, to defend itself and its population from attack. It had every right in 1948 to protect itself from the attack of its Arab neighbors. It had very right to protect itself from Arab attack thereafter.

So, the argument starts with the premise-- Do you beleive that Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish State? If you do not, then, of course, your logic is that it is the evil empire. I think when you look at the history of most of the nations that exist in the World, you are wrong in your view of Israel.

One must accept the imperfect World we live in. OLf course, strive for better, but do not judge Israel as though it exists in a vacuum.

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