Zionism and History

by **sockmonkey** » Wed Sep 13, 2006 9:21 pm

Here's one to chew on: The Controversy of Zion by Douglas Reed. <a href="http://knud.eriksen.adr.dk/Controversybook/index.htm">knud.eriksen.adr.dk/Contr.../index.htm</a>

by **Dreams End** » Wed Sep 13, 2006 9:31 pm

Sockmonkey I think demonstrates the difficulties of this. I am going to hold off on getting to his link as the first page has: <blockquote>Quote:<hr>For 1956 was the year of another American presidential election in which, once again, the Zionists demonstrated their decisive power to influence Western politics; it was the year in which the nations of the West stood by as helpless spectators as Soviet forces were used to crush a spontaneous revolt and re-install a Jewish-Communist regime in Hungary; and it was the year in which Britain and France, under Zionist pressure, were drawn into the disastrous fiasco of an attempt to capture the Suez Canal, an adventure from which, once again, Israel alone gained any advantage.<hr></blockquote> But I do reprint it to show How Jews were "blamed" for communism. How the idea that Jews were somehow managing to get powerful nations to do things "against" their best interests (rational people understand that control of Suez was one of two primary British goals in the Middle East..the other to keep an eye on that black gold.) Hell, this could come right out of today's dialogue about the gulf war. Except for the embarrassing problem that there were no "neocons" back then. Perhaps, Alice, as a leftist, you'd like to have the honor of addressing this last link? Meanwhile, I am going back to reading.

by **rain** » Wed Sep 13, 2006 9:41 pm

The Sunday Times Magazine, 2 October 2005 After watching the England v India one day cricket match at Lords last summer, I had a drink with Peter O’Toole and then walked with him to his car. Outside Lords Tavern we passed a large group of young Indians having a few beers to celebrate their team’s victory. The moment they spotted O’Toole they broke into a chant of "Lawrence. . . Lawrence . . Lawrence." Thinking about it later I realised how extraordinary this was. It was not O’Toole’s presence as an actor that excited them but the image of Lawrence of Arabia, a man who had lived and died before they were even born. ...... his goes some of the way to enlighten us but it fails to tell us how it is that the British, supposedly an unromantic race, have developed so big a passion for this diminutive man. I believe that the answer is obvious, but apart from a few perceptive authors, most have missed it. Lawrence of Arabia was the first modern celebrity, a creation of one of the smartest public relations promoters and propagandists of the 20th century, Lowell Thomas, an American whose skills, if he were still around today, would make Max Clifford look like a beginner ..... For while Lawrence had been fighting a tenacious rearguard action to implement his plan for the Middle East, the American journalist Lowell Thomas was turning Lieutenant-Colonel T. E. Lawrence, a soldier most people had never heard of, into the Prince of Mecca, the Deliverer of Damascus. Almost overnight the newly-elected Fellow of All Souls, Oxford University, a saddened recluse at work on his manuscript, "Seven Pillars of Wisdom", became as Lawrence of Arabia, the centre of a great fashion, the first modern celebrity. ...... When the United States had entered the First World War in April 1917, it was not with the whole-hearted approval of he American people. Historically reluctant to be drawn into Europe’s troubles, most Americans wanted to remain neutral. Even after the United States had declared war, enlistments were so poor that the government had to raise a conscript army. To inspire the nation to fight, a propaganda campaign was needed to inspire what President Wilson’s private secretary called "the people’s righteous wrath". ..... So in the summer of 1917 the Administration approached Lowell Thomas, a Chicago reporter, and asked him to go to Europe, find material there that would that would encourage the American people to support the war, and hurry back with it. Thomas was well-known for his talent for writing simple but exciting stories and Washington thought stories of war heroes would change the national mood ..... Thomas liked the idea but had bigger plans. He was intrigued by the possibilities provided by the rapidly-developing art of documentary film and dreamed of not only writing about the glamour of war but filming it as well. An indication of his ambition is that he budgeted his expedition at $75,000, nearly a million dollars in today’s money ..... This was too much even for the American government, so Thomas turned to a group of eighteen wealthy Chicago meat-packers. It seems that these businessmen owed him a favour because he had exposed in his newspaper a confidence trickster who had been trying to blackmail them--without publishing the damaging blackmail material. Grateful for Thomas’s discretion, they readily agreed to finance him and he rewarded them with his enigmatic dedication in his book With Lawrence in Arabia: "To eighteen gentlemen of Chicago this narrative of a modern Arabian knight is gratefully dedicated". ...... With the war drawing to a close, Thomas decided not to rush back to America with his Lawrence story but carefully kept it to himself. He had big plans for it. Early in 1919 he began to work on an illustrated lecture about the war. The idea was that he would tell "dramatic stories" while Chase’s film was shown to the accompaniment of "appropriate music synchronised into the background." The lecture opened at the Century Theatre in Central Park West in March 1919. It included accounts of the American Expeditionary Force in France, the Italian front, and Allenby and Lawrence in the Middle East. ..... But there was more to the whole business than was realised at the time. The impresario Burton was encouraged to produce the Lawrence of Arabia show by the English-Speaking Union, of which Thomas was a member and whose committee included Winston Churchill and the newspaper proprietor Lord Northcliffe. The union’s aim was to emphasize the common heritage of Britain and the USA, to draw the two countries closer together and to forge a common sense of future destiny. If Lawrence could be portrayed as an old-style British hero and, more importantly, a representative of the new benevolent British imperialism, then the American liberal misgivings, now ironic, about Britain as an oil-hungry , greedy, oppressive power in the Middle East might be dispelled ...... <a href="http://www.phillipknightley.com/articles/propaganda/sunday-times-021005.html">www.phillipknightley.com/...21005.html</a>

by **dranek7** » Wed Sep 13, 2006 11:20 pm

Dreams End, I can honestly say that I'm surprised that you've never heard of the word, hasbara. The following three paragraphs from Moment Magazine provide a nice introduction to what it is: <blockquote>Quote:<hr>The Jewish Word Dancing the Hasbara It might just be one of the most popular euphemisms in today’s Jewish-American English. Hasbara (haz-ba-rah), Hebrew for “to explain,” has become the Jewish-English term of choice to describe any good that a Jewish-American does for Israel in the public arena—from penning a letter in defense of Israel to hosting a synagogue event with an Israeli speaker. It is all hasbara—helping people understand Israel better. In other words, it’s pro-Israeli propaganda. “It is like a South-American dance-craze—everyone is doing the hasbara,” says David Marks, a British-born Israeli who founded the Israel Hasbara Committee. The group provides information about Israel and explains Israel’s actions and motives—“to fight gross falsehoods and distortions of truth, which are the greatest threat to Israel’s existence.” Marks believes that he may have been the first to use the word as an English term. In 2001, after he established his website, he says, “the word hasbara took off as a rocket ship.” Though it’s not clear who the real father of the term in English is, its ascendancy is undeniable. A quick search reveals tens of websites that “do hasbara” (even Natan Sharansky has one) plus the existence of hasbara specialists, hasbara schools and even hasbara summer camps... --by Nathan Guttman read the rest at the <a href="http://www.momentmag.com/5766/aug06/MOM-2006-08_jewishword.html">link</a> <hr></blockquote> Hasbara has been in existence for a long time, but until recently, much of the public had no knowledge of its existence. The most widely publicised "e-hasbara" site, <a href="http://giyus.org/">GIYUS</a> (give Israel your united support) was started during the recent conflict. Here's a <a href="http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1154525982026&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull">link</a> to a JPost story about the organisation. I was just responding to the Osculum Infame's Camera link, trying to give it more context. Eventually, people will catch on to the possibility that a pro-Israeli government viewpoint has been carefully screened and researched with minimal input from the author. This thread and the related one are only effective in exposing people to the presence of strategic influence. I also noted how it was ironic that these groups also hold court with the Christian fundamentalists, whose ultimate goal is to vaporise the Middle East with man-made rapture in the name of God. A handy list of such Christian groups can be found <a href="http://www.hasbara.co.il/christian_support_israel.html">here.</a>

by **Dreams End** » Thu Sep 14, 2006 12:22 am

Not really sure how a pro-Israeli letter writing campaign led to the Lebanese invasion.... It's a pretty common tactic. I get letters all the time from groups asking me to write letters on behalf of causes. So I guess I'm still not getting your point.

by **dranek7** » Thu Sep 14, 2006 1:14 am

My point was to illustrate the purpose of the "CAMERA" link. Where did I say that the GIYUS program led to the Lebanese invasion? I said that the Lebanese invasion precipitated the launch of GIYUS. There were stories published at the time in mainstream western media which illustrated the existence and operations of hasbara. The point is that the once secret pro-Israeli government perception management program is not such a secret any more. When one posts certain things, a reader may have the assumption that the words and research were crafted by the busy bees at Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

by **Dreams End** » Thu Sep 14, 2006 1:27 am

Well, the Brenner book is long. I started out looking for a more concise history of Zionism. I found one that is obviously pro-Zionist but certainly not uncritical. The first thing that stands out is something I really should have voiced more strongly...criticizing "Zionism" is rather meaningless without at least some acknowledgment of the various factions and ideologies within that. "Zionists" did not agree on everything..and in fact there was never consensus from what I can see on much of anything. So the charge that Brenner's book is tackling is that "Zionists" "collaborated" with the Nazis. I'm going to print this brief excerpt from the history of Zionism site I found. This is quite obviously a pro-Zionist site...not trying to sneak anything past anyone. Finally, I simply wonder if people could step back....that is, people who still believe the Holocaust happened and who still believe that waves of pogroms in Europe were the norm....and see that Zionism, at its heart was about people wanting a home. In every European country in which Jews found themselves, they were met with pogroms, expulsions, and worse. EVERY country. The Church killed them on Crusade and kings expelled them when running short of cash. This is reality. I could back it up with references, but am I safe in assuming I don't need to? To suggest that the waves of refugees coming to Israel and the people who dreamed of making a safe place for them there was some sort of cynical plot to..whatever the hell it was supposed to be a plot for, does such a grave injustice to the memories of those people. Zionism is about ALL of those people...leaders as well as plain old settlers. There were, as I said, factions within Zionism. Some were egalitarian, and some, as I'm learning, were frankly separatist. Some underestimated the true extent of Hitler's plan and played a game of "told you you couldn't assimilate" while others, as you see, worked desperately to rescue Jews against rather incredible odds and with, frankly, little support from the supposed enemies of Hitler. Some were socialists. Alice posted a link that suggests they were not very good socialists, favoring ethnic solidarity over class solidarity. I read that article...I think it contains some truth. I think it may also leave out aspects of the story. I won't get us sidetracked on this rather small side issue, even though I posted the flyer from the Haifa committee (mainly to show goodwill on the ground from Jewish settlers to Arabs) but I certainly found labor Zionists CONDEMNING this practice and even a quote from Ben-Gurion that says: <blockquote>Quote:<hr> “We do not want to create a situation like that which exists in South Africa, where the whites are the owners and rulers, and the blacks are the workers. If we do not do all kinds of work, easy and hard, skilled and unskilled, if we become merely landlords, then this will not be our homeland” (David Ben-Gurion to Palestinian nationalist Musa Alami 1934), quoted in Shabtai Teveth, Ben-Gurion and the Palestinian Arabs: From Peace to War, London: Oxford University Press, 1985, p. 140).<hr></blockquote> Did they fail? I'm still looking at that question. But that is a different question from whether a South Africa is what Zionists, as some monolithic entity, had in mind all along. Some Zionists believed that assimilation, mixing in with a majority population of nonJews, was simply not possible. History suggests they were right up until that point. I hope that history will ultimately prove them wrong. <blockquote>Quote:<hr>Zionism during the Holocaust The murder of six million Jews by the Nazi regime in the Holocaust has become inevitably and inextricably bound up to the history of Zionism. The relation of the Holocaust to Zionism has provoked controversy and resentment, particularly among anti-Zionists. Zionists have been accused of indifference to the plight of European Jews. To an an extent it was true at first. Initially, the reports of Nazi persecution did not seem to be any worse than persecution of Jews that had occurred in Europe for hundreds of years - confiscation of businesses, discriminatory legislation and expulsion. The Yishuv was struggling with an Arab revolt and trying to build a Jewish society. The tiny, more or less powerless and poor Israeli Yishuv and the Zionist movement that supported it, could do very little to aid the Jews of Europe in any case. Nonetheless, the Zionist organization and the Yishuv ransomed Jews from Nazi Germany in return for economic concessions. The Zionists managed to save over 200,000 European Jews before World War II. When the British responded to Arab pressure and ended Jewish immigration to Palestine, the Zionists, attempting to rescue Jews from the Nazis, organized illegal immigration through the "Institution for Illegal Immigration" (Hamossad L'aliya Beth). Illegal immigration (Aliya Bet) was organized by the Jewish Agency between 1939 and 1942, when a tightened British blockade and stricter controls in occupied Europe made it impractical, and again between 1945 and 1948. Rickety boats full of refugees tried to reach Palestine. Additionally, there were private initiatives, an initiative by the Nazis to deport Jews and an initiative by the US to save European Jews. Many of the ships sank or were caught by the British or the Nazis and turned back, or shipped to Mauritius or other destinations for internment. The Patria (also called "Patra"<img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/wink.gif ALT=";)"> contained immigrants offloaded from three other ships, for transshipment to the island of Mauritius. To prevent transshipment, the Haganah placed a small explosive charge on the ship on November 25, 1940. They thought the charge would damage the engines. Instead, the ship sank, and over 250 lives were lost. A few weeks later, the SS Bulgaria docked in Haifa with 350 Jewish refugees and was ordered to return to Bulgaria. The Bulgaria capsized in the Turkish straits, killing 280. The Struma, a vessel that had left Constanta in Rumania with about 769 refugees, got to Istanbul on December 16, 1941. There, it was forced to undergo repairs of its engine and leaking hull. The Turks would not grant the refugees sanctuary. The British would not approve transshipment to Mauritius or entry to Palestine. On February 24, 1942, the Turks ordered the Struma out of the harbor. It sank with the loss of 428 men, 269 women and 70 children. It had been torpedoed by a Soviet submarine, either because it was mistaken for a Nazi ship, or more likely, because the Soviets had agreed to collaborate with the British in barring Jewish immigration. Illegal immigration continued until late in the war, apparently without the participation of the Mossad 'aliya Bet. Despite the many setbacks, tens of thousands of Jews were saved by the illegal immigration. To circumvent British regulations against creating new settlements, the Zionists initiated the "stockade and tower" ("homa umigdal"<img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/wink.gif ALT=";)"> program, that allowed overnight creation of a new "settlement," consisting of a wall and watch tower. Under the law, the British could not destroy such an 'established' settlement. The Zionists wanted to fight Fascism and rescue European Jews, but they could not do so except as permitted by the British government. The British recruited soldiers in Palestine. About 26,000 Jews out of a population of perhaps 500,000 and 6,000 Arabs out of a population of over a million, volunteered to fight in the British army. The Zionists pleaded for combat duty in Europe in a special Jewish Brigade. For the most part, however, they were employed in the Middle East. Eventually a Jewish Brigade was formed. The Jewish Agency proposed a scheme to send hundreds of Jewish commandos into occupied Europe to liaison with partisan groups and rescue Jews. Over a year passed before the British finally approved of a limited version of this plan. About 110 Zionist Parachutists were trained of the 250 who volunteered, but less than 40 reached Europe. Reports of Nazi atrocities became increasingly frequent and vivid. Despite the desperate need to find a haven for refugees, the doors of Palestine remained shut to Jewish immigration. The Zionist leadership met in the Biltmore Hotel in New York City in 1942 and declared that it supported the establishment of Palestine as a "Jewish Commonwealth." This was not simply a return to the Balfour declaration repudiated by the British White Paper, but rather a restatement of Zionist aims that went beyond the Balfour declaration, and a determination that the British were in principle, an enemy to be fought, rather than an ally. This was a defeat for the left-wing party of the Labor Zionists, Mapam, who wanted a bi-national Zionist state, and for Chaim Weizmann, who opposed confrontation with the British and favored partition. The Revisionists rejoined the Zionist movement, but were still called "dissidents" and did not merge their underground armies, the Irgun and the Lehi (also called the "Stern Gang"<img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/wink.gif ALT=";)"> into the Hagannah defense organization of the mainstream Zionists. (bolded, because I think this conflict is important to understand). On November 6, 1944, members of the Lehi underground Eliyahu Hakim and Eliyahu Bet Zuri assassinated Lord Moyne in Cairo. Moyne, a known anti-Zionist, was in charge of carrying out the terms of the 1939 White Paper. The assassination turned Winston Churchill against the Zionists. The Jewish Agency and Zionist Executive believed that British and world reaction to the assassination of Lord Moyne could jeopardize cooperation after the war, that had been hinted at by the British, and might endanger the Jewish Yishuv if they came to be perceived as enemies of Britain and the allies. Therefore they embarked on a campaign against the Lehi and Irgun, known in Hebrew as the "Sezon" ("Season"<img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/wink.gif ALT=";)"> . Members of the underground were to be ostracized. Leaders were caught by the Hagannah, interrogated and sometimes tortured, and about a thousand persons were turned over to the British. Following World War II, Britain continued to limit Jewish immigration to Palestine. (note, this limitation on immigration, both before and after the war, really should be solid evidence that, institutionally speaking, Britain was not pushing the Zionist enterprise.) The Zionist factions united and conducted an underground war against the British, as well as applying pressure on the British government through the United States. In June of 1947, the British rammed the Jewish illegal immigrant ship Exodus (formerly "President Warfield"<img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/wink.gif ALT=";)"> on the high seas. They towed it to Haifa where it was the subject of extensive publicity, generating public sympathy for the Zionist cause. The passengers were eventually disembarked in Hamburg. The incident set world opinion, and particularly US opinion against the British, and caused the British to intern illegal immigrants thereafter in Cyprus, rather than attempting to return them to Europe. To read the rest of the article and to follow all the linkes that are provided go to this........... <a href="http://www.zionism-israel.com/zionism_history.htm">link</a><hr></blockquote> Feel free to respond. But let's try to keep this a platitude free zone. Back up your assertions with good evidence or at least sound logic. and, if possible, if you link to an entire book, say, it would be helpful to pull out relevant quotes or summarize the points. Because I can get a little OCD about pursuing a topic, I am reading an awful lot. Not sure others will have the patience.

by **Trifecta** » Thu Sep 14, 2006 4:51 am

<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Hasbara">www.sourcewatch.org/index...le=Hasbara</a> snip: Hasbara refers to the propaganda efforts to sell Israel, justify its actions, and defend it in world opinion. Using contemporary euphemisms, it is Public diplomacy for Israel, or using a pejorative interpretation, then it is apologia. Israel portrays itself as fighting on two fronts: the Palestinians and world opinion. The latter is dealt with hasbara. The premise of hasbara is that Israel's problems are a matter of better propaganda, and not one of an underlying unjust situation. oh and the handbook is riveting reading <a href="http://www.middle-east-info.org/take/wujshasbara.pdf">www.middle-east-info.org/...asbara.pdf</a> Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=osculuminfame@rigorousintuition>Osculum Infame</A> at: 9/14/06 3:00 am

by **erosoplier** » Thu Sep 14, 2006 5:27 am

"GAZA is dying. The Israeli siege of the Palestinian enclave is so tight that its people are on the edge of starvation. Here on the shores of the Mediterranean a great tragedy is taking place that is being ignored because the world’s attention has been diverted by wars in Lebanon and Iraq. "A whole society is being destroyed. There are 1.5 million Palestinians imprisoned in the most heavily populated area in the world. Israel has stopped all trade. It has even forbidden fishermen to go far from the shore so they wade into the surf to try vainly to catch fish with hand-thrown nets. <a href="http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/opinion/2006/September/opinion_September34.xml§ion=opinion&col=">www.khaleejtimes.com/Disp...inion&col=</a>

by **Trifecta** » Thu Sep 14, 2006 6:49 am

erosplier, hasbara deals with it this way, its all propaganda you know <img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/wink.gif ALT=";)"> <a href="http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=7&x_issue=52&x_article=1193">www.camera.org/index.asp?...ticle=1193</a> Hey I am not making light of your post, just demonstrating the examples they use from the heand book to counter your concerns.

by **AlicetheCurious** » Thu Sep 14, 2006 9:39 am

Anti-Zionism = Antisemitism is a big fat lie, only made possible by suppressing and ignoring the many courageous, progressive anti-Zionists, people of conscience, who know justice when they see it, and are not afraid to speak out: As a person who was born Jewish, I am morally obliged to speak out against what is being done by the Zionist State of Israel to the Palestinian people since Israel claims to act on behalf of Jews everywhere. I must cry out, as I do with other like-minded South Africans of Jewish descent: “Not in my name!”. I am certain that the attempt to destroy the Palestinian people will fail, just as oppression failed in South Africa. The courage of the Palestinian people coupled with the courage of the Israeli war resisters and progressive Israelis, will be victorious. <blockquote>Quote:<hr><blockquote>Quote:<hr>ADDRESS BY Ronnie Kasrils MP, Minister of Water Affairs and Forestry, South Africa TO PALESTINE SOLIDARITY CONFERENCE LONDON 30 NOVEMBER 2002 It is an honour to be invited to speak at such an important conference. Our world is a dangerous place with the threat of war over Iraq and unresolved conflicts in several hot-spots. Yet no conflict is more acute than the suffering of our Palestinian Brothers & Sisters where the longest running military occupation continues with seemingly no end in sight. I speak as a former military commander in the struggle against apartheid. Now, in our free non-racial South Africa, I am in the Cabinet as Minister of Water Affairs and Forestry. I speak here in my personal capacity and I am proud of the role my government is playing to help find a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Water and forestry are important to understanding the Israeli oppression of Palestinians. I shall return to this in due course. We in SA know about racial oppression. We fought it and defeated it because it was unjust. We fought it to be free to rebuild our country. Yet let me declare without hyperbole that the violence of the apartheid regime, as inhuman as it was, “was a picnic” (in the words of Archbishop Desmond Tutu) in comparison with the utter brutality of Israel’s occupation of Palestine. I refer to the whole of Biblical Palestine from which Palestinian Arabs have been driven or are struggling to survive from the 1948 ethnic cleansing to the violence in the occupied West Bank and Gaza today. We did not see tanks with guns blazing protecting armoured bulldozers reducing homes and bones to dust. We did not see helicopter gunships “taking out” militants with their families, children and their homes with calculated precision! In South Africa we did not see the destruction by bombing of apartment blocks such as Rafah in the Gaza Strip where children were sleeping. We did not see town centres such as Jenin and Ramallah razed to the ground reminiscent of the bloody suppression of the Jewish uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto during the Second World War. We experienced the brutality of repression and the suffering it caused. We also saw the brutalisation of young white soldiers who, with white South Africans generally, were brutalised. We saw in apartheid South Africa the traumatisation of our whole society. Britain’s Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sachs sees the same thing in Israel. He comments on the corroding of the society by the brutal occupation and how it is undermining the highest ideals of Judaism. We see the same suffering under apartheid paralleled in the lives of generations of Palestinians. We see the suffering of people prevented from going to a doctor; of ambulances being stopped and of pregnant women forced to give birth at checkpoints. We saw similar things in South Africa but not on such a scale for such long periods of time. Military checkpoints and curfews in South Africa were sporadic, 24 hours duration, not months on end, and nowhere near as infamous. We know about checkpoints and fences from the bantustanisation of our country with artificial boundaries, with migrant labour, with a Group Areas Act that determined where people could live and work. There are no prizes for guessing who had the best and who had the worst of land and property and jobs. Israeli state policy has always been to drive all Palestinian Arab people out of their land of birth, where their ancestors lived and tilled the soil for centuries. The boundaries of the state have steadily expanded until 22 percent of it is nominally left to the Palestinians. Under apartheid the indigenous black majority were left 13% of the land – the whites had seized the rest. There are about one million Palestinians who are citizens of a supposedly democratic Israel, but they are denied many rights of citizens. They may not acquire land or property. 92 % of the land falls under the administration of the Jewish National Fund, and cannot be sold to non-Jews. Result: the Israeli Arabs who make up 19% of the population own only 4% of the land.” (The Jewish Telegraphic Agency.) Where will their children live when they are adults and need a home in which to raise their own families? Apartheid operated something similar under the Group Areas Act and Land Act. Israel has been created by land theft on a grand scale. This theft has been accompanied by falsehoods: “Palestinians abandoned their land and effectively gave it to Israel,” in 1948. A monstrous lie that hides the massacres, deliberate destruction of villages and ethnic cleansing. They claim that invading Arab states broadcast instructions for the Palestinians to flee. The BBC monitoring archives records not a single such call. General Dayan admitted that there was not an Israeli village or settlement that had not been built on an Arab village. The Arab names of the villages have been obliterated from maps as they were physically obliterated and their people driven into exile. This theft of land continues to this day. Palestinians are remarkably generous, prepared to accept the 22 per cent of their own land in the West Bank and Gaza as the basis of their independent state, yet Israel continues to colonise more land. Zionist settlers, some who were Russian or American citizens yesterday, lord it from settlement hilltops in that emasculated 22 per cent area and then defend the newly stolen land with the backing of the Israel Defence Force’s enormous firepower. The theft of land has serious economic consequences. In an area as water-stressed as Palestine, land without water is useless. Israel has stolen over 80 percent of the Jordan waters and the West Bank aquifer system for their economy, destroying the Palestinian economy in the process. Israeli consumption of water per capita is six times that of Palestinians. The illegal Israeli settlers take twelve times more water than Palestinians for their swimming pools and garden sprinklers while Palestinians struggle to survive in the hot desert climate. For me this is one of the starkest, most iniquitous comparisons with apartheid. Over 700,000 olive and orange trees have been destroyed by the Israelis. This is an act of sheer vandalism from a state that claims to practise conservation of the environment. How appalling and shameful! The Israelis say they do this for security reasons: to build apartheid like razor wire fences and military roads. But the real reason is to destroy the Arab economy and make the Palestinians destitute. To ruin them. To drive them away through sheer destitution; a form of ethnic cleansing. Trees require water. Israel with the help of the Jewish National Fund, supported by Zionists all over the world, has created new plantations and forests, and new lakes, for leisure activities and water sports. These facilities have been created on stolen land. They have been created with stolen water. They have been created at the expense of the blood and tears of countless Palestinians. Israelis claim that they are the chosen people, the elect of God and find a biblical justification for their racism and Zionist exclusivity. This is just like the Afrikaners of apartheid South Africa, who also had the biblical notion that the land was their God-given right. Like the Zionists who claimed that Palestine in the 1940s was “a land without people” for “a people without land” so the Afrikaner settlers spread the myth that there were no black people in South Africa when they first settled in the 17th Century. They conquered by force of arms and terror and the provocation of a series of bloody colonial wars of conquest. The Zionists propoganda machine was more efficient in covering up such outrages, than their apartheid counterparts. There are other things we South Africans recognise in the Palestinian struggle for national self-determination and human rights. Human beings when oppressed tend, sooner or later, to struggle for freedom. Repression of that just struggle leads to resistance. Often the more brutal the repression the more intense the resistance. The repressed are demonised as terrorists to justify ever-greater violations of their rights. We have the absurdity that the victims are blamed for the violence meted out against them. Both Apartheid and Israel are prime examples of terrorist states blaming the victims! Every successive Israeli Government has practised forms of repression and use of military power to impose their will. The depths of violence and systematic brutality have been reached during Sharon’s bloody rein. We saw the same crude attempt to find a military solution in apartheid South Africa. That attempt failed, just as it will fail in Palestine. But at what cost in human lives, in pain and suffering on all sides, Arabs and Jews alike? It is not the victims who are to be blamed but the perpetrators of colonial style conquest. The blood of Palestinian and Israeli victims are on Sharon’s hands, and the Zionist programme. I now speak with another hat. As a person who was born Jewish, I am morally obliged to speak out against what is being done by the Zionist State of Israel to the Palestinian people since Israel claims to act on behalf of Jews everywhere. I must cry out, as I do with other like-minded South Africans of Jewish descent: “Not in my name!”. I am certain that the attempt to destroy the Palestinian people will fail, just as oppression failed in South Africa. The courage of the Palestinian people coupled with the courage of the Israeli war resisters and progressive Israelis, will be victorious. Whites who opposed apartheid, including young soldiers who were war resisters refusing to make war on South Africa’s black people, were called traitors by the apartheid authorities and their supporters. I declare for Not in My Name in South Africa that criticism of Israel’s Zionist expansionism is not anti-Semitism. It is an affirmation of the humanity we share with all people. This conference will not be a talking shop and we South Africans are inspired by the dedicated work of the British Solidarity Campaign on Palestine. Together we must work for international action in solidarity with the Palestinian people, be they in the West Bank, Gaza, Israel or the Diaspora. The people of Britain and the world helped through anti-apartheid mobilisation to isolate apartheid South Africa. You were part of our struggle by isolating the apartheid regime politically, economically, diplomatically, socially, culturally and militarily. By isolating Israel we will bring about a solution to the conflict in the interest of Jews and Arabs alike, so that all can be spared the present agony and grief and together find peace, security, friendship and reconciliation. South Africa is an example of what is possible. We demand the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of Israel’s troops and settlers from the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza. We demand that Israel negotiate in good faith with the acknowledged leaders of the Palestinian people. We demand that they cease their claim to decide who those representatives should be! The revolutionary alliance of the African National Congress, the South African Communist Party and the Congress of South African Trade Unions has committed itself to solidarity with the Palestinian people in their struggle for self-determination, for freedom and dignity in their own independent state, and I bring greetings from that mighty alliance. Blacks and whites in South Africa, Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindi and indeed from all religious groups, and non-believers, are uniting behind the call of Palestinians and those Israelis who want a just solution in the Holy Land. We want to be part of a powerful international movement of solidarity with Palestine and with the peace movement in Israel. I am proud of my government’s stand on the rights of the Palestinians and in support of peace in the region. To quote our Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Aziz Pahad, ”The international community must step up assistance to both sides in building a common vision for a peaceful future in spite of the bleak reality on the ground.”. <a href="http://www.palestinecampaign.org/pdf/ronnie_kasrils">www.palestinecampaign.org...ie_kasrils</a><hr></blockquote><hr></blockquote> PS: I was going to write a little expose of how Israel intimidates and attacks journalists, foreigners, including foreign aid workers, and other independent witnesses from entering or reporting from the Occupied Territories, and then, through its Hasbara agents such as CAMERA, AIPAC, etc., floods the media with its own version of "the facts". But unfortunately, I have urgent places to go and things to do, so I have to briefly postpone that particular project.

by **Dreams End** » Thu Sep 14, 2006 11:29 am

Well, Alice, take this in whatever direction you want, but I'd love it if you'd respond...or anyone, really, to what I've actually posted. I admit, I have only made my way up to the foundation of the state of Israel. It's not that I don't want to deal with today, it's that I can only do what I can do. The original charges I was responding to is the idea that Zionism was a racist project with the express goal of removing all the Palestinians from Palestine. I suggested: 1. Using the term "Zionism" as a monolithic category makes no sense. I'm pretty sure that some of the most egregious actions and quotes, for example, come from the Revisionists, who were not even allowed back in government until after the 6-day war, if my cursory reading is correct. Even for the moves against Jewish worker solidarity with Arab workers has led me to statements by other Zionists who criticized this practice. 2. There is lots of evidence that, in fact, it was not the expressed intention of Zionists to remove Arabs, though there were some who favored "voluntary transfer", and I'm aware that this is euphemistic which is why I put it in quotes. 3. That there was a very active Zionist attempt to rescue Jews from Europe. This is in response to Alice and other suggesting that part of the Zionist agenda was to use the Holocaust (thankfully Alice does not suggest the CAUSED the Holocaust) to populate Palestine. I acknowledged that SOME Zionists, cut deals, especially before the full extent of Hitler's program was understood. This rescue attempt was done in opposition to British authorities in Palestine who, despite the growing terror against the Jews LIMITED immigration into Israel. 4. I did not mention, but will now, that there were several waves of immigration into Palestine of Jews from Europe. There were 2 or 3 such "aliyoth" before ww2, in reponse to other pogroms. In summary, I am challenging this idea that Zionism was, at heart, a program to run the Arabs out of Palestine. I would also suggest, whether via the source I provided or some other, that people who want to understand all this learn about the complexities of the situation. The plan to partition Palestine into a Jewish and Arab state came from the UN and much of the haggling was between British and the French haggling over the map to get things more advantageous for themselves. Zionism was pretty much opposed to partition. The majority in the Zionist camp (actually, I think the Jews may have been represented by the Jewish Agency here, which had Zionist and non-Zionist representatives) went along with it, though the borders in the plan were indefensible. Revisionist Zionism was against Partition from the beginning. In any event, within a very short time after the partition plan was announced, the Arabs League attacked. I've seen lots of evidence that their fears about Zionist plans were very much stoked by this same Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. And Alice, I'm aware that anti-Zionism does not equate with anti-Semitism. Anti-Americanism does not equal anti-Semitism either, but theories which suggest America is secretly run by Jews are both. And I'm not sure what to make of your post from a Jewish South African, suggesting Israel is much worse than South Africa was. And, naturally, no references to any of his claims. To be honest, I thought it was pretty distasteful. If I were going to argue your side (and maybe I have to as you aren't really arguing you are just sort of plopping in a reference and then not responding but I understand you are busy) I think I would have concentrated not on how apartheid South Africans was so much better than Israel (shockingly insenstive to South Africans, in my view) but the historic relations between Israel and South Africa, especially in terms of weapons transfer. Given Israel's relations with South Africa, I can understand why Kasrils would be anti-Israel. Looking him up, he served in the military wing of the ANC. I will make no attempt to justify Israel's relations with the apartheid regime because there is no justification for that. The world is a complicated place. I sure would be happier if I could come here and justify everything Israel has done or does now. I can't think of a country for whom I could do such a thing. Israel's relationship to the US alone has been enough to put them on the wrong side in a variety of ways. But as I said, I'm only up to 1948...so we can get to those things. I think that also there was a real shift in Israeli leadership and political direction in the sixties, and I am hoping to learn more about that. But my primary point is that, as the thread title suggests, Zionisms role in history has been exaggerated, distorted and in some cases outright fabricated to serve a variety of agendas. Meanwhile, the role of superpower politics, the Cold war, oil, historic anti-Semitic movements and various other factors in the Middle East get ignored completely.

by **AlicetheCurious** » Thu Sep 14, 2006 7:02 pm

You know, Dream's End, I respect your interest in learning about the history of Israel, and whether the founders of Zionism and the Zionist state were not merely racists, but specifically aimed to commit genocide against the Palestinian people. I'm not denying it's an interesting and worthwhile topic for research, only that I can do it for you. I will be happy to share any relevant information I come across in my own web-surfing, but it won't be possible for me to dedicate the time and the effort to answer each one of your questions, with summaries, footnotes and bibliography. For what it's worth, here are my own conclusions, based on quite a lot of reading over the years, including one Jewish Studies course back in university, when I did a paper on the most influential early Zionist thinkers (you don't have to believe me, but I got an A, I think it was the only A in the class, but I can't swear to that). Anyway, you can take the following as maybe a working hypothesis, that you're welcome to prove or disprove or ignore. My own reading on the subject over the years has convinced me that the original Zionist theoreticians and thinkers shared one thing with today's: the Palestinians, or any other Arabs, or arguably anyone else, were only considered to the extent that they presented any actual or potential obstacles to Zionist plans. Israel uber alles, as it were. As for the term Palestinian, it referred to the inhabitants of Palestine, regardless of religion. As was most of the Middle East, Palestine was populated mostly by Muslims, with smaller number of Christians and an even smaller native Jewish population. Later, as the number of foreign Jewish settlers grew, they began to refer to the non-Jewish Palestinians as Arabs, to distinguish them from the Jews. As Jewish Israelis do today, identifying themselves as either ethnic Jews or Israelis, Palestinians had no problem identifying themselves as Arabs or Palestinians. I do not believe that Zionists presented genocide as a desirable end in itself. If possible, the Palestinians were to be bought off, or frightened into leaving. I don't think most Zionists necessarily preferred one or the other. But when the Palestinians actually organized and resisted their dispossession, the founders and philosophers of Israel were able to produce a spectrum of justifications for everything from terrorism, to war crimes, to, yes, mass murder and genocide. If you like, you can chase down and try to discredit the following quotes, compiled by the Palestinian Right to Return Coalition, al-Awda: <blockquote>Quote:<hr>"Zionist colonization must either be terminated or carried out against the wishes of the native population. This colonization can, therefore, be continued and make progress only under the protection of a power independent of the native population - an iron wall, which will be in a position to resist the pressure to the native population. This is, in toto, our policy towards the Arabs..." Vladimir Jabotinsky, The Iron Wall, 1923. "If we are going to admit claims on conquest thousands of years ago, the whole world will have to be turned upside down." Lord Sydenham, Hansard, House of Lords, 21 June 1922. The Palestinians are "..beasts walking on two legs." Menahim Begin, speech to the Knesset, quoted in Amnon Kapeliouk, 'Begin and the "Beasts"', New Statesman, 25 June 1982. "When we have settled the land, all the Arabs will be able to do about it will be to scurry around like drugged cockroaches in a bottle." Raphael Eitan, Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defence Forces, New York Times, 14 April 1983. "How can we return the occupied territories? There is nobody to return them to."Golda Meir, March 8, 1969. "If it is proper to 'reconstitute' a Jewish state which has not existed for two thousand years, why not go back another thousand years and reconstitute the Canaanite state? The Canaanites, unlike the Jews, are still there." H.G. Wells, quoted in Palestine Dilemma: Arab Rights Versus Zionist Aspirations, by Frank C. Sakran, Public Affairs Press, 1948, p. 204. "We must expel Arabs and take their places." David Ben Gurion, future Prime Minister of Israel, 1937, Ben Gurion and the Palestine Arabs, Oxford University Press, 1985. "A voluntary reconciliation with the Arabs is out of the question either now or in the future. If you wish to colonize a land in which people are already living, you must provide a garrison for the land, or find some rich man or benefactor who will provide a garrison on your behalf. Or else-or else, give up your colonization, for without an armed force which will render physically impossible any attempt to destroy or prevent this colonization, colonization is impossible, not difficult, not dangerous, but IMPOSSIBLE!... Zionism is a colonization adventure and therefore it stands or falls by the question of armed force. It is important... to speak Hebrew, but, unfortunately, it is even more important to be able to shoot - or else I am through with playing at colonizing."Vladimir Jabotinsky, founder of Revisionist Zionism (precursor of Likud), The Iron Wall, 1923. "Between ourselves it must be clear that there is no room for both peoples together in this country. We shall not achieve our goal if the Arabs are in this small country. There is no other way than to transfer the Arabs from here to neighboring countries - all of them. Not one village, not one tribe should be left." Joseph Weitz, head of the Jewish Agency's Colonization Department in 1940. From "A Solution to the Refugee Problem" Joseph Weitz, Davar, September 29, 1967, cited in Uri Davis and Norton Mevinsky, eds., Documents from Israel, 1967-1973, p.21. "The thesis that the danger of genocide was hanging over us in June 1967 and that Israel was fighting for its physical existence is only bluff, which was born and developed after the war." Israeli General Matityahu Peled, Haaretz, 19 March 1972. "We shall reduce the Arab population to a community of woodcutters and waiters" Uri Lubrani, PM Ben-Gurion's special adviser on Arab Affairs, 1960. From "The Arabs in Israel" by Sabri Jiryas. "...if people become accustomed to the large figure and we are actually obliged to accept the return of the refugees, we may find it difficult, when faced with hordes of claimants, to convince the world that not all of these formerly lived in Israeli territory. It would, in any event, seem desirable to minimize the numbers...than otherwise." Israeli official Arthur Lourie in a letter to Walter Eytan, director general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry (ISA FM 2564/22). From Benny Morris, "The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem 1947-49", p. 297. "If we thought that instead of 200 Palestinian fatalities, 2,000 dead would put an end to the fighting at a stroke, we would use much more force...." Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, quoted in Associated Press, November 16, 2000. One of the most enduring and deceptive slogans of Zionism was coined by Israel Zangwill almost 100 years ago: Palestine was a "land without people for a people without land." After paying a visit to Palestine in 1891, the Hebrew essayist Achad Ha-Am commented: " Abroad we are accustomed to believe that Israel is almost empty; nothing is grown here and that whoever wishes to buy land could come here and buy what his heart desires. In reality, the situation is not like this. Throughout the country it is difficult to find cultivable land which is not already cultivated." The removal of Arabs bodily from Palestine is part of the Zionist plan to "spirit the penniless population across the frontier by denying it employment...Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried away discreetly and circumspectly." Theodore Herzl, founder of the World Zionist Organization Complete Diaries, June 12, 1895 entry. In 1899, Davis Triestsch wrote to Herzl: " I would suggest to you to come round in time to the "Greater Palestine" program before it is too late... the Basle program must contain the words "Great Palestine" or "Palestine and its neighbouring lands" otherwise it's nonsense. You do not get ten million Jews into a land of 25,000 Km2". Vladimir Jabotinsky (the founder and advocate of the Zionist terrorist organizations): "Has any People ever been seen to give up their territory of their own free will? In the same way, the Arabs of Palestine will not renounce their sovereignty without violence." Quoted by Maxime Rodinson in Peuple Juif ou Problem Juif. (Jewish People or Jewish Problem). David Ben Gurion (the first Israeli Prime Minister): " If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal; we have taken their country. It is true God promised it to us, but how could that interest them? Our God is not theirs. There has been Anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?" Quoted by Nahum Goldmann in Le Paraddoxe Juif (The Jewish Paradox), pp. 121-122. Ben Gurion also warned in 1948 "We must do everything to insure they (the Palestinians) never do return." Assuring his fellow Zionists that Palestinians will never come back to their homes, "The old will die and the young will forget." Also Ben Gurion stated " The present map of Palestine was drawn by the British mandate. The Jewish people have another map which our youth and adults should strive to fulfill -- From the Nile to the Euphrates." "Among the most disturbing political phenomena of our time is the emergence in the newly created State of Israel of the Freedom Party (Herut), a political party closely akin in its organization, method, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties." Albert Einstein, Hanna Arendt and other prominent Jewish Americans, writing in The New York Times, protest the visit to America of Menachem Begin, December 1948. Begin and Yitzhak Shamir who were members of the party became Prime Ministers. Martin Buber, Jewish Philosopher, addressed Prime Minister Ben Gurion on the moral character of the state of Israel with reference to the Arab refugees in March 1949: "We will have to face the reality that Israel is neither innocent, nor redemptive. And that in its creation, and expansion; we as Jews, have caused what we historically have suffered; a refugee population in Diaspora." "It lies upon the people's shoulders to prepare for the war, but it lies upon the Israeli army to carry out the fight with the ultimate object of erecting the Israeli Empire." Moshe Dayan (Israel Defense and Foreign Minister), on February 12 1952. Radio Israel. "When we (followers of the prophetic Judaism) returned to Palestine...the majority of Jewish people preferred to learn from Hitler rather than from us." Martin Buber, to a New York audience, Jewish Newsletter, June 2, 1958. Aba Eban (the Israeli Foreign Minister) stated arrogantly: " If the General Assembly were to vote by 121 votes to 1 in favor of "Israel" returning to the armistice lines-- (pre June 1967 borders) Israel would refuse to comply with the decision." New York Times June 19, 1967. "Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I don't blame you because geography books no longer exist, not only do the books not exist, .The Arab villages are not there either. Nahal arose in the place of Mahlul; Kibbutz Gvat in the place of Jibat; Kibbutz Sarid in the place of Huneifis; and Kfar Yehushu'a in the place of Tal al Shuman. There is not one single place that did not have a former Arab population." Moshe Dayan's address to the Technion, Haifa (as Quoted in Haaretz, April 4, 1969). "There was no such thing as Palestinians, they never existed." Golda Maier Israeli Prime Minister June 15, 1969. "The only solution is Eretz Israel, or at least Western Eretz Israel (=all the land west of Jordan River), without Arabs. There is no room compromise on this point ... We must not leave a single village, not a single tribe." Joseph Weitz, Director of the Jewish National Fund, the Zionist agency charged with acquiring Palestinian land, Circa 194. Machover Israca, January 5, 1973 p.2. "Hitler's legal power was based upon the 'Enabling Act', which was passed quite legally by the Reichstag and which allowed the Fuehrer and his representatives, in plain language, to be what they wanted, or in legal language, to issue regulations having the force of law. Exactly the same type of act was passed by the Knesset (Israeli Parliament) immediately after the 1967 conquest granting the Israeli governor and his representatives the power of Hitler, which they use in Hitlerian manner." Dr. Israel Shahak, Chairperson of the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights, and a survivor of the Bergen Belsen concentration camp, Commenting on the Israeli military's Emergency Regulations following the 1967 War. Palestine, vol. 12, December 1983. I see "many similarities in the oppression of Blacks in South Africa and of Palestinians." Dennis Goldberg, a Jewish South African sentenced to life imprisonment for "conspiring to overthrow the apartheid regime," is released through the intercession of Israeli officials, states on arrival in Israel, March 1985. He called for a total economic boycott of South Africa, singling out Israel as a major ally of the apartheid regime. Pledging never to stay in Israel, Goldberg moves to London. "It is forbidden to sell apartments in the Land of Israel to Gentiles." Mordecai Eliayaho, the Israeli Chief Rabbi commenting on an attempt by a Palestinian to buy an apartment owned by the Jewish National Fund in East Jerusalem. Ha'aretz January 17, 1986. The same situation was repeated many times, and that decision is legalized now by the Israeli Supreme Court. "Jewish blood and a goy's (gentile's) blood are not the same." Israeli Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburg, implying that killing isn't murder if the victim is Gentile. Jerusalem Post, June 19,1989. "I am a black South African, and if I were to change the names, a description of what is happening in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank could describe events in South Africa." Archbishop Desmond Tuto, observes during Christmas visit to Jerusalem, December 25, 1989. From Israeli daily Ha'aretz, cited in Palestine Perspectives, January/February 1990. "The past leaders of our movement left us a clear message to keep Eretz Israel from the Sea to the River Jordan for future generations, for the mass aliya (=Jewish immigration), and for the Jewish people, all of whom will be gathered into this country." Former Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir declares at a Tel Aviv memorial service for former Likud leaders, November 1990. Jerusalem Domestic Radio Service. The Balfour Declaration to Baron Rothchild, on the 2nd of November, 1917 "His Majesty's Government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country." "In Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country"Lord Balfour in private memorandum to Lord Curzon, 11 August 1919. "We walked outside, Ben-Gurion accompanying us. Allon repeated his question, 'What is to be done with the Palestinian population; Ben-Gurion waved his hand in a gesture which said 'Drive them out!'? Yitzhak Rabin, leaked censored version of Rabin memoirs, published in the New York Times, 23 October 1979; Rabin's description of the conquest of Lydda, after the completion of Plan Dalet. "We have to kill all the Palestinians unless they are resigned to live here as slaves." Chairman Heilbrun of the Committee for the Re-election of General Shlomo Lahat, the mayor of Tel Aviv, October 1983. "There is no other way than to transfer the Arabs from here (Palestine) to the neighboring countries, to transfer all of them; not one village, not one tribe should be left." Jospeh Weitz, Davar, 29 September 1947 from "My Diary and Letters to the Children", Massada, 1965, III, p. 293. "When we have settled the land, all the Arabs will be able to do about it will be to scurry around like drugged cockroaches in a bottle." Raphael Eitan, Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defence Forces, New York Times, 14 April 1983. "Israel should have exploited the repression of the demonstrations in China, when world attention focused on that country, to carry out mass expulsions among the Arabs of the territories." Benyamin Netanyahu, then Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister, former Prime Minister of Israel, tells students at Bar Ilan University, From the Israeli journal Hotam, November 24, 1989. <a href="http://www.al-awda.org/quotes.html">www.al-awda.org/quotes.html</a><hr></blockquote> Re: the "Spotlight" reference. I humbly apologize, I mistook the "Spotlight" section of the website of this Israeli organization for the "Spotlight" publication. I should not let myself become rushed -- if I can't be careful about my sources, it's better if I don't respond at all, even when I really want to. You may not be aware of it, but some of your questions require hours of research that I simply don't have, what with small children and my other responsibilities. If you are sincere in wanting to explore the historical roots of the current reality, I suggest you simply check out alternative sources of information, including those that are not pre-approved by AIPAC, the ADL and the other Israeli or Zionist gatekeepers. It won't hurt, and you might benefit from the experience. Although I am genuinely sorry for that "Spotlight" mistake, the Israeli website you did quote is a particularly egregious example of right-wing Zionist propaganda. Funny that you use the word 'distasteful' in connection with a brave man like South African government Minister Ronnie Karsils, who fought against apartheid and now demands justice for the Palestinians, but didn't mind quoting from a vicious web-site that contains gems like this: <blockquote>Quote:<hr>Over the years (and even before the withdrawal from Lebanon), the Hizbullah has succeeded in creating a situation in which it deters Israel more than Israel deters it. It is unprecedented for a terrorist organization to deter a state and not vice versa. This phenomenon was expressed on two levels simultaneously. First, Hizbullah used terror attacks to make it clear to Israel that any effective offensive move against it (for example, the 1992 assassination of the organization’s former leader, Abbas Moussawi or the 1993 Israeli Air Force (IAF) attack on the organization’s training camp in the Bekaa Valley, in which dozens of Hizbullah activists were killed) would be followed by an severe response from the organization against Israeli or Jewish targets abroad (such as the terror attacks in Buenos Aires in those same years). Israel learned the lesson quickly and has refrained over the years from taking actions that claimed more than a certain number of casualties [note how [<a href="http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/quana_01_19_03.htm" target="top"> the first massacre at Qana</a> has been deleted from history -- the dozens of women and children killed at a UN compound after being precisely targetted must have been 'below a certain number'] and refrained from killing the heads of the organization in order to prevent the Hizbullah from responding abroad. But that wasn’t enough. The Hizbullah also succeeded in deterring Israel from carrying out routine operations against it by creating a dangerous and unjust equivalency in which any Israeli action that harmed Lebanese civilians, even if it was by chance or to a minor extent, would be followed by a rain of Katyusha rockets on Israeli civilian sites. <a href="http://www.ict.org.il/default.htm">www.ict.org.il/default.htm</a><hr></blockquote>

by **Dreams End** » Fri Sep 15, 2006 12:53 am

That's a lot of quotes. One of them I am actually familiar with...and happen to know the words that were excised from it. I assume you were not asking me to "debunk" the quotes which were critical of Israel? I would very much like to look into some of these. Some of them are so stunted by ellipses that they are useless. For example: <blockquote>Quote:<hr> "Jewish blood and a goy's (gentile's) blood are not the same." Israeli Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburg, implying that killing isn't murder if the victim is Gentile. Jerusalem Post, June 19,1989.<hr></blockquote> Without context, I have no idea if that was, indeed, what he was implying. I also don't know if Yitzhak Ginsburg was a Zionist leader. It is beyond anything I care to claim that there are no racist Israelis. I've already acknowledged the South Africa connection. I don't excuse my country for its relations with S.A., so I can't excuse Israel's. So you'll do me the favor, if needed, of pointing out which, if any, quotes, are not from those in Israeli/Zionist leadership? That would help. Secondly, I've already posted a quote in direct contradiction to the Ben Gurion quote...so this is curious. Meanwhile, I'll reduce my questions to two: If Hizbollah is a legitimate liberation group and is sponsored by Iran, and shares ideology with Iran, do you hold Iran up as a model for the sort of state you'd like to see Hizbollah bring about in the ME? To me, when the left embraces (current) Iranian ideology, something is very, very wrong. Do you have no room in your analysis for the organic movement of the Jewish masses away from oppression and to a land that would hopefully be a homeland? Is that simply not relevant?

by **Dreams End** » Fri Sep 15, 2006 1:18 am

Oh...I guess to be fair... <blockquote>Quote:<hr> Speaking at a graduation ceremony in Haret Hreik, Nasrallah announced on October 22, 2002: "if they [Jews] all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide."[5][6] The New York Times qualifies this as "genocidal thinking"[7], whereas the New York Sun likens it to the 1992 Hezbollah statement, which vowed, "It is an open war until the elimination of Israel and until the death of the last Jew on earth."[8] Michael Rubin qualifies his goal as genocide too, quoting Nasrallah ruling out "co-existence with" the Jews or "peace", as "they are a cancer which is liable to spread again at any moment."[9] The Age quotes him like so: "There is no solution to the conflict in this region except with the disappearance of Israel."[1<img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/alien.gif ALT="0]"> Interviewed by CNN, Nasrallah expressed Hezbollah's reluctance to fight America, however, declaring readiness to respond if "someone launches an attack [...] We will not take rejection or humiliation."[11] Nassrallah has made several statements of anti-Semitic nature. On September 28, 2001, Nassrallah said on Al-Manar, “Throughout history the Jews have been Allah's most cowardly and greedy creatures. If you search the entire face of the earth you will not find anyone more miserly than the Jews or more greedy than they”. [12] "Jews invented the legend of the Holocaust," said Nasrallah on April 9, 2000. During another appearance on Al-Manar on February 23, Nasrallah praised a leading European Holocaust denier, David Irving, for having “denied the existence of gas chambers.” [13] The scholar Amal Saad-Ghorayeb quotes Nasrallah describing his view of Jews: "If we searched the entire world for a person more cowardly, despicable, weak and feeble in psyche, mind, ideology and religion, we would not find anyone like the Jew. Notice, I do not say the Israeli". [14] --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5^ Nasrallah alleges "Christian Zionist" plot by Badih Chayban, The Daily Star, October 23, 2002 6^ "Hezbollah leader targets Christians", WorldNetDaily, 2002-10-23. Retrieved on 2006-07-30. 7^ Lappin, Elena, "The Enemy Within", The New York Times, 2004-05-23. Retrieved on 2006-07-30. 8^ Staff Editorial. "Nasrallah's Nonsense", New York Sun, 2005-03-11. Retrieved on 2006-07-30. 9^ Eradication First - Before Diplomacy by Michael Rubin, American Enterprise Institute, July 17, 2006 10^ Markus, Andrew, "Little choice for a defiant Israel", The Age, July 15, 2006. Retrieved on 2006-07-30. 11^ Macvicar, Sheila, "Interview With Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah", CNN, March 16, 2003. Retrieved on 2006-08-01. 12^ Dr. Erlich, Reuven, "[<a href="http://www.intelligence.org.il/eng/sib/4_04/as_hp.htm">www.intelligence.org.il/e.../as_hp.htm</a> Anti-Semitism in the Contemporary Middle East]", Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, April, 2004. Retrieved on 2006-08-07. 13^ STALINSKY, STEVEN, "The MEMRI Report", The New York Sun, July 26, 2006. Retrieved on 2006-08-07. 14^ Saad-Ghorayeb, Amal (2001). Hizbullah: Politics and Religion. London: Pluto Press. IS<hr></blockquote> Article evidently taken from Wikipedia but there is plenty of info to track down the original sources...more than I'll have in many cases.

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