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POPSPalestine: The State History Forgot Is it a joke of history that before there was the states of Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, Syria, etc there was Palestine? Now they all exist and Palestine doesn't yet. You will read that there never was a Palestine from a certain quarter and how can you miss what you never had. How you know they are lying! They'll say that as they are all Arabs that there's enough room for them all. It's like saying that the Scots Welsh and Irish are all Celts and one state would do them all! Yes, there was a time when such thinking was regarded as valid. If we had the Age of Imperialism back then the Brits might validly have a claim on the USA and most of the rest of the world. In the present imperialism, if the existent holder of the gunboat diplomacy role, the USA, decided to sort out Palestine's present difficulties it could in a breath. Hopefully in a more honourable fashion that the last gunboat holder did.
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POPSObama's missteps Obama's unnecessary promise deviates from nearly six decades of U.S. foreign policy that held Jerusalem to be occupied territory under international law. This long tradition was first broken in 2004 when President Bush acknowledged Israel's demands to keep its illegal West Bank settlements in a final peace agreement, including those around Jerusalem. Thus Obama, a Harvard-trained lawyer, would both scorn the international legal system's foundational principle -- the inadmissibility of territorial acquisition by war -- and echo President Bush, whose failed Middle East policies he has rightly deplored. If Sen. Obama's Philadelphia speech on race was a model of courage and nuance, his AIPAC talk was brimming with the pro-Israel orthodoxy that typifies this year's presidential campaign. Like presumptive Republican nominee Sen. John McCain, Obama also backed Israel's so-called right to exist as a Jewish state.
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POPSPaul Craig Roberts: Obama and the fall into tyranny Obama is too smart not to know that US foreign policy has been shanghaied by the Lobby, not in order to protect innocent Israel but to enable Israel’s territorial expansion. Obama has dispelled hope on the economic front as well. Obama has appointed two leading apologists for jobs offshoring as his economic advisors -- Bill Clinton’s Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and Rubin associate Jason Furman. These two are notorious for their justifications of policies that benefit Wall Street, CEOs, and large retailers at the expense of the economic well-being and careers of millions of Americans. As a result of offshoring, good jobs in America are disappearing. The Bureau of Labor Statistics job figures make it totally clear that the US economy has ceased creating net new middle class jobs in the private economy in the 21st century.
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POPSUri Avnery: Apologizing for past wrongs as a part of modern political culture I BELIEVE that peace between us and the Palestinian people - a real peace, based on real conciliation - starts with an apology. In my mind's eye I see the President of the State or the Prime Minister addressing a special extraordinary session of the Knesset and making a historic speech on the following lines: MADAM SPEAKER, Honorable Knesset, On behalf of the State of Israel and all its citizens, I address today the sons and daughters of the Palestinian people, wherever they are. We recognize the fact that we have committed against you a historic injustice, and we humbly ask your forgiveness. Uri Avnery Deutsch: Frieden in Israel und Palestina - Texte von Uri Avnery
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POPSMazel Tov, Israel! Das selten gelobte Land „Wissen Sie, wir wollen einfach nicht, dass Auschwitz irgendeine Rolle im aktuellen Diskurs spielt“, schreibt die israelische Historikerin Fania Oz-Salzberger . „Wir brauchen demokratische Verbündete, nicht Mitleid und Erbarmen. Wir müssen uns alleine durchschlagen, unsere Rechnungen bezahlen, uns mit unseren Fehlern auseinandersetzen und ehrlich gemeinte Kritik akzeptieren.“ Und mit seinen „gewaltigen Fehlern“ setze sich das „Israel der Mitte“ sehr intensiv auseinander. Wir müssen nur genauer hinschauen; dann ändert sich unser von Schuldgefühlen überlagertes, negatives Israel-Bild vielleicht ganz von selbst.
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POPSUri Avnery: 1948 At the time, the Jews constituted only a third of the population. The hundreds of Arab villages throughout the country dominated the main arteries that were crucial to our survival. We suffered heavy casualties in our efforts to open them, especially the road to Jerusalem. We honestly felt that we were "the few against the many". Our side was preparing for the massive attack of the Arab armies and we could not possibly leave a large hostile population at our rear. This military necessity was, of course, intertwined with the more or less conscious desire to create a homogeneous Jewish territory. ccording to the UN resolution, the "Jewish state" was to include more than half of Palestine (as it existed in 1947 under the British Mandate). In this territory, more than 40% of the population was Arab. In the second half of the war, after the advance of the Arab armies was halted, a deliberate policy of expelling the Arabs became a war aim on its own.
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POPSBreaking The Silence. The Moral Price Paid. How does a dead 13 year old girl fit with an acquitted Captain and a moral army? How does it happen that time and time again the IDF emerges out of the fogginess of its "military operations" and explains to us all what morality is? What goes through the Mind of a Soldier When He Takes the Chopped-Off Head of a Terrorist and Sticks It on a Stake and Pushes a Cigarette into his Mouth? – Answers for Shocked Parents, Concerned Citizens and One IDF Spokesman.
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POPSIsrael and the Nakba - Coming to Terms with the Past or Simply Easing Consciences? Israel will celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of its foundation this May. The celebration coincides with another sixtieth anniversary, namely that of the dispossession of Palestinians (al-Nakba) in 1948. Nevertheless, it would seem as if interest in al-Nakba is growing among young Jewish Israelis. Joseph Croitoru investigated the depth of this interest. ↗ 60 Jahre Israel und die palästinensische "Nakba" - Vergangenheitsbewältigung oder intellektuelle Mode?
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POPSPalestine/Israel: Water and international law - Things could get worse The United Nations' General Assembly reaffirmed in several resolutions that the Geneva Convention (IV) relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War (1949) is applicable to the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied by Israel since 1967, including Jerusalem, and again and again condemned Israel's policies and practices against the population in the occupied territories. Very startling, the chutzpah with which Israel withstands the imminence of being classified as a rogue state.
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POPSClemens Messerschmid (2003): Palästinas Wasserressourcen und Israels Trennmauer Much to my regret, I did not find an English translation of the hydrogeologist Clemens Messerschmid's essay on the disastrous impacts the Israeli "security fence" makes on the Palestinian infrastructure, especially the water supply. It might be that Messerschmid's paper "TILL THE LAST DROP - The Palestinian Water Crisis in the West Bank, Hydrogeology and Hydropolitics of a Regional Conflict" is of correlative content. It is available at http://www.palestineacademy.org/wconf/ (see the abstracts on http://www.palestineacademy.org/wconf/Abstracts.pdf). Messerschmid is working in several international water projects in the West Bank, currently in the position of Research & Coordination Advisor to the Palestinian Water Authority (PWA) for the Project "The Sustainable Management of the West Bank and Gaza Aquifers" (SUSMAQ) of University of Newcastle and PWA. See also this clip .
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POPSWater Policy in Israel and Palestine - There's Enough Water for Both The increasing difficulties with water availability, concludes the hydrogeologist, result from Israel using the majority of water resources for agricultural purposes, although this sector today represents a very small portion of the Israeli economy. Despite this, the Israeli state remains unswervingly committed to the Zionist foundation myth, which regards the promotion of agriculture as a central tenet in the Jewish settlement of Palestine. Messerschmid, in turn, sees the priorities of Israeli water policies as fundamentally flawed, leading to a wasteful use of the precious resource. Large areas of land, for instance, are still intensively watered even during conditions of very high temperatures, although most of the water immediately evaporates. The Palestinians, by contrast, do not even have the amount of water at their disposal that was promised in the Israeli-Palestinian peace treaty. Deutsche Fassung
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POPSBradley Burston, Haaretz.com: I want the Palestinians to win "I and the majority of the Palestinian people are ready for a historic agreement based on international decisions that will allow a Palestinian and Israeli state to coexist, side by side, in peace and stability." Jailed Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti Source: Ha'aretz, 08 April 2008 Bradley Burston is Senior Editor of Haaretz.com, the Israeli newspaper's online English language edition. __________________________________ See also Kore7 's clip Bradley Burston: Ten Ways to Make Sure That Peace Stays Dead .
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POPSUri Avnery: Manifest Destiny? Note: Manifest Destiny was the belief that the United States was destined to expand from the Atlantic seaboard to the Pacific Ocean; it has also been used to advocate for or justify other territorial acquisitions. Advocates of Manifest Destiny believed that expansion was not only good, but that it was obvious ("manifest") and certain ("destiny"). Manifest Destiny Deutsche Übersetzung See also: The legal status of Israeli settlements under International Humanitarian Law (Harvard Program on Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research, PDF file)
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POPSBundeskanzlerin Angela Merkels Rede vor der Knesset (im Wortlaut) Merkel stressed that the German government supports the Annapolis peace process . "Germany stands firmly behind the vision of two states within secure borders and living in peace, for both the Jewish people in Israel and the Palestinian people in Palestine." Germany, Merkel said, would "never abandon Israel, but instead will remain a loyal partner and friend." As in the past, Merkel's speech contained only homeopathic doses of criticism of Israel's occupation policy and its hesitation to commit itself to the peace process. "One must also have the strength to make painful concessions," the chancellor hinted, only to quickly dilute what had sounded like the beginnings of a rebuke. "In order to be a realist you must believe in miracles," she said, quoting David Ben Gurion, the founder and first prime minister of the State of Israel. spiegel.de
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POPSRasmus issues threats! He needs to appolgize! Rasmus has threatened me, called me names and has said things amounting to the legal definition of slander. I believe he in Germany but that does not stop from from thinking he has a right to impose Germany's wrong laws an US citizens. I have saved the entire clip off my computer in a safe place if I need it since he makes threat of unknown meaning!
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POPSUri Avnery: Targeted killing hazarding cease-fire It was obvious to all that the killing of Islamic Jihad militants in Bethlehem would cause the renewal of the Qassam launchings on Sderot. And so it happened. According to Barak himself, he was ready to risk Jewish lives today in order to take revenge on persons who may perhaps have shed blood years ago and have since given up their armed activity. ↗Deutsche Fassung
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POPSFive Years of Suicide Bombings in Iraq Never before has the Arab world witnessed a phenomenon of suicide-death on this scale. During Israel's occupation of Lebanon after 1982, one Hizbollah suicide-bombing a month was considered remarkable. During the Palestinian intifadas of the 1980s and 1990s, four per month was regarded as unprecedented. But suicide bombers in Iraq have been attacking at the average rate of two every three days since the 2003 Anglo-American invasion.
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POPSQuo vadis, Israel? (Zu Igal Avidans Buch "Israel - Ein Staat sucht sich selbst")
Igal Avidan, geboren 1962 in Tel Aviv, studierte Englische Literatur und Informatik in Ramat Gan sowie Politikwissenschaft in Berlin. Igal Avidan lebt in Berlin und arbeitet seit vielen Jahren als freier Journalist und Deutschland-Korrespondent für verschiedene israelische Zeitungen (wie z.B. der Tageszeitung Maariv, Tel Aviv), Hörfunksender und Nachrichtenagenturen sowie als freier Autor und Kolumnist zum Thema Nahost u.a. für die Süddeutsche Zeitung, die NZZ, Cicero, Frankfurter Rundschau, Berliner Zeitung, Der Tagesspiegel, Die Welt, Handelsblatt. Für verschiedene deutsche Organisationen wie die Bundeszentrale für Politische Bildung, die Deutsch-Israelische und Christlich-Jüdische Gesellschaft sowie für mehrere Stiftungen hält er Vorträge über Israel und den Friedensprozess im Nahen Osten. "Israel - Ein Staat sucht sich selbst" ist seine erste Buchveröffentlichung. Igal Avidan Israel Ein Staat sucht sich selbst ISBN 987-3-7205-3046-0
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POPS"Shahida – Brides of Allah". An Israeli View of Female Palestinian Terrorists Die israelische Regisseurin Natalie Assouline hat über zwei Jahre Palästinenserinnen begleitet, die nach gescheiterten Selbstmordanschlägen in Israel inhaftiert wurden. Entstanden ist ein aufwühlender Film voller Widersprüche. Als sie mit Sehnsucht über ihre Kinder sprechen, die sie nur durch die Gitter sehen können, empfindet man Mitleid mit ihnen. Als in einer Szene die 30-jährige Kahira endlich ihre vier Kinder umarmen darf, kommen dem Zuschauer Tränen in die Augen. Und das, obwohl er weiß, dass diese Mutter eine Mörderin ist. Die israelische Regisseurin Natalie Assouline porträtiert in ihrem Debütfilm palästinensische Terroristinnen. Dabei lässt sie die Zuschauer immer wieder in der Spannung zwischen Mitgefühl und Verurteilung. Der bedrückende Dokumentarfilm heißt "Shahida", auf Arabisch "die Heilige", und als Heilige sehen sich diese Gefangenen. Das ist Teil ihrer Selbsttäuschung. ( Deutscher Originalartikel )
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