thank you.

Rudeboy Rupert - NO evidence of racism. Exact lines you lazy cunt.

Ive held back my tongue - but Ive had enough. You think the Israeli's are victims??

Fuck off you class A cunt!!!! See you've brought me down to your level of cuntingness...

This is the first time ive used such language - but it seems you want a slagging match.

GIVE ME THE EXACT LINE OF RACISM.

thanks man

I know you weren't denying the holocaust but I guess it is such a delicate matter, one needs to choose ones words carefully. Remember it is not "Jews" persecuting the people of Palestine it is the Israeli government - this is political not religious and should be expressed in such terms.

I Hope you see what I mean.

Thanks

V

I'm aware of this. But still not sure how I was refered to as a racist. The holocaust is a delicate matter - but it seems we are not learning from man's history.

RudeboyRupert claimed i was a racist on several posts. I have asked for the EXACT line where it shows I'm a racist. So far silence.

It seems those that 'support' the occupation needed a change of subject when so many on here condemned Israel's action over the Palestinians. So have tried to tar me with false labels of being a racist and Nazi sympathiser once the holocaust was mentioned. In order to steer the subject away from the occupation.

okay shogun my final reply, I think you are perhaps tarnishing Rudeboyrupert with the same brush by calling him "pro-occupation" surely you would need a quote to back this up.

This is a heated debate, things get said, but we are adults, lets just be amicable.

Nice try valeha to bring some peace to this thread +1 for the peacekeeper, and I'm not talking the "new" Micallef at the Ghetto.

Can I suggest to shogun & rudeboyrupert that you carry on your argument via PM's instead of this thread.

Can we have a bit of reality here.

#1 The Arabs, who already had 22 States were OFFERED a State of their own in 1948 but opted along with the entire Arab world to try and kill the Jews instead.
Unfortunately for them it didn't work out that way and most of the Jews only three years out of concentration camps beat them. There was NO American support, no American weapons and only 5 million bullets.
The odds were heavily stacked against them.
Britain had even armed and trained one of the attacking armies - the Jordanian Army.

Please remember that Palestine was not nor had it EVER BEEN a state or a country. It was a territory first controlled in modern times by the Ottoman Turks and then by the Brits. Many Jews lived there along with Arabs. Many cities were majority Jewish and not Arab. Many Jews bought land from Arab landowners. Many Arabs only came to Palestine to work on Jewish farms. And despite the claims being made here, Jews did NOT live peacefully with the Arabs. There were Jewish massacres all the time, some pretty infamous like Hebron for example.

Have any of you ever read the travel diaries of Samuel Clemons a/k/a Mark Twain he did for a NYC Travel Magazine which included a trip to the "Holy Land" in the late 1800's ? Had you, you might find it interesting to discover this territory was virtually abandoned. Few lived here unlike the claims of today that would have people believe here we had cities full of "Palestinians" that the Jews with their guilty European backers evicted ... but none of that is true at all.

Twain's writings are available for all to read and here's some of what you'd learn

"Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes. Over it broods the spell of a curse that has withered its fields and fettered its energies. Where Sodom and Gomorrah reared their domes and towers, that solemn sea now floods the plain, in whose bitter waters no living thing exists--over whose waveless surface the blistering air hangs motionless and dead-- about whose borders nothing grows but weeds, and scattering tufts of cane, and that treacherous fruit that promises refreshment to parching lips, but turns to ashes at the touch. Nazareth is forlorn; about that ford of Jordan where the hosts of Israel entered the Promised Land with songs of rejoicing, one finds only a squalid camp of fantastic Bedouins of the desert; Jericho the accursed, lies a moldering ruin, to-day, even as Joshua's miracle left it more than three thousand years ago; Bethlehem and Bethany, in their poverty and their humiliation, have nothing about them now to remind one that they once knew the high honor of the Saviour's presence; the hallowed spot where the shepherds watched their flocks by night, and where the angels sang Peace on earth, good will to men, is untenanted by any living creature, and unblessed by any feature that is pleasant to the eye"


Its patently unfair to remove the historical context from this issue as is being done here. The Israelis didn't just become what they are now - they were forced to. they didn't one day decide to build walls and checkpoints. They were forced to.

I suppose they could have dealt with the situation the same way most would deal with and perhaps the mistake is that its gone on as long as it had. Perhaps if the Israelis would have obliterated the Arabs which they could have easily done in later years, many wouldn't have had the time to revise history and mythologize peoples and places.
Does anyone think for a minute that had the Arabs had the Jews on the ropes in 1948 or in 1957 or in 1967 or in 1973 that they wouldn't have killed every last one of them ?

A few years ago I became interested in reading graphic novels about war and genocide. I was feeling really confused about how human behavior could lead to such atrocities. I found this amazing author Joe Sacco. He writes and illustrates his journeys to Palestine and Bosnia. It was really his graphic novel Palestine that I think is a true masterpiece. It shows a perspective of Palestine through an outsider living amongst the Palestinian population. I just wanted to recommend it, as I see in the postings that many people want to learn more about the situation in these parts. I think it will especially appeal to those of artistic interest cause the whole thing is one big comic book. I got mine on Amazon but I'm sure you could find it lots of places. Hope you enjoy.

Flights are about £250 that includes airport tax.

Then its an hours drive from tel aviv to Bethlehem, which I am told you go by taxi.

Anyone fancy going Tuesday?

Greenery -

What people seem to forget at times when this is discussed as it is a war, Palestine is being forcibly occupied by Israel and they are fighting back against them. Why are they firing rockets into Israel? Because they're defending themselves, they're trying to fight back against their occupation and oppression in the best way they know how to.

I'm making an assumption here but I see you are from New York, can I ask, are you Jewish? I think that if you are that your view on this may be more than a little one sided. The views of people in the Western World in general on this subject are very one sided as they have only been fed one side of the information (the Israeli side of it) through their news bulletins and newspapers. Search on the internet and you hear a very one sided story... You hear about the Palestinian attacks, you hear about the suicide bombers in Israel, but you don't hear the other side to the story... the daily oppression, the shootings, the people going missing, the threat of waking up one morning to find the IDF are going to demolish your home... all part of life living in a forcibly occupied territory.

The Israeli argument is if they do give the land back the attacks won't stop... this is from an article I read "Imagine a farmer going to the judge and saying: "My neighbour is beating me every day. Oh, and by the way, I have been occupying his field since 1967." Now I hope the judge would say: "Give him back his own field, then he should stop hitting you. And if he doesn’t, apply self-defence, or come back to me; but don’t take his field ever again!" However, Israel’s favourite judge is expected to say: "Fine, keep his field and hit him back, because he might hit you even if you return it!"..."

The main reason Israel are still doing what they're doing is fear, they are scared if they pull out they'll leave themselves vulnerable, they will have a very thin border (9 or 10 miles) near one of their most densely populated areas... what? Does this mean the Palestinians should give up the West Bank to Israel just so they're secure? Not at all...

It doesn't matter how this started and what view you take on the history, I know what mine is and I'm sure I know what yours is too, there is no justification for what is happening now, for the Israeli government to be denying millions of people their basic human rights... There is only one solution to the conflict and that is for the aggressive occupation by Israel to stop...

One thing is 100% certain... If the situation was the other way round you can't for one second think that the US wouldn't storm in to rescue the oppressed and right the wrongs...