Worse Than Apartheid

Discussion in 'Politics' started by Genji, Apr 10, 2007.

  1. Genji Registered Senior Member

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    US Conservative Speaks Out about Israel.


    Worse than Apartheid?
    By Robert D. Novak
    Monday, April 9, 2007

    Send an email to Robert D. Novak
    BETHLEHEM, West Bank -- Hani Hayek, an accountant who is the Christian mayor of the tiny Christian-majority Palestinian village of Beit Sahour, was angry last week driving me along the Israeli security wall. "They are taking our communal lands," he said, pointing to the massive Israeli settlement of Har Homa. "They don't want us to live here. They want us to leave."
    Har Homa, dwarfing nearby dwellings of Beit Sahour, seemed larger than when I saw it at Holy Week a year ago. It is. The Israeli government has steadily enlarged settlements on the occupied West Bank, and I could see both the construction at Har Homa and road building for a dual transportation system for Israelis and Palestinians.
    Jimmy Carter raised hackles by titling his book about the Palestinian question "Peace Not Apartheid." But Palestinians allege this is worse than the former South African racial separation. Nearing the 40th anniversary of the Israeli military
    . occupation of the West Bank, the territory has been so fragmented that a genuine Palestinian state and a "two-state solution" seem increasingly difficult.
    The security wall has led to virtual elimination of suicide bombings and short-term peace. But life is hard for Palestinians, whose deaths due to conflict increased 272 percent in 2006 while Israeli casualties declined. In a minor incident of type that goes unnoticed internationally, Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) troopers last week killed a Palestinian man accused of illegally entering a firing zone while collecting metal scraps to sell. The Britain-based Save the Children organization estimates half the children in the occupied territories are psychologically traumatized.
    Palestinians argue things have gotten worse because of pervasive feelings of hopelessness. Students at Bethlehem University (run by the Catholic Brothers of De La Salle with an enrollment 70 percent Muslim) sounded more pessimistic and radicalized than a year ago. Ahmad Al Issa, a fourth-year journalism student, was imprisoned for a year in an Israeli prison on charges of throwing stones at Israeli troops. Now he has bought into the libel that Jewish employees at the World Trade Center were warned in advance of the 9/11 attacks.
    The U.S.-backed boycott following the election victory of the extremist Hamas in early 2006 has made the Palestinian Authority (PA) destitute, crippling government services. Deprived of help from the PA with the economy in a shambles, city governments are bankrupt. Bethlehem's Mayor Victor Batarseh has a special problem because tourists and pilgrims no longer stay overnight in the city of Christ's birth. Out of money and credit, he is ready to lay off the city's 165 staffers.
    Batarseh, a U.S. citizen who practiced thoracic surgery in Sacramento, Calif., is pinned down in Bethlehem. A Christian and political independent who calls himself a private enterprise democrat, Batarseh is on the Israeli blacklist because he contributed to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) (a State Department-designated terrorist organization). Denied permits for Jerusalem, the mayor must drive to Amman, Jordan, to get to meetings in Europe.
    Contact with the PFLP is not a requirement for being holed up by the IDF. Bethlehem University students cannot get to Jerusalem, a few minutes' drive away, unless they sneak in illegally. The university's students from the separated Gaza enclave have to take classes from Bethlehem via the Internet.
    Republican Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey was at the university the same day I was, and Bethlehem faculty members could hardly believe a real live member of the U.S. Congress was there. Smith later was given a tour of Jerusalem to see with his own eyes that the separation barrier in most places is a big, ugly and intimidating wall and not merely a fence.
    Smith, an active Catholic layman, was drawn here because of the rapid emigration of the Holy Land's Christian minority. They leave more quickly than Muslims because contacts on the outside make them more mobile. Catholic Brother Peter Corlano of the Bethlehem University faculty told Smith and me: "We live the same life [as Muslims]. We are Palestinians." Concerned by the disappearance of Christians in the land of Christianity's birthplace, Smith could also become (as I did) concerned by the plight of all Palestinians. If so, he will find precious little company in Congress.

    Robert Novak is a syndicated columnist and editor of the Evans/Novack Report
     
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  3. S.A.M. uniquely dreadful Valued Senior Member

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    More in the same vein:

    http://www.canada.com/topics/news/world/story.html?id=27a8d58f-ad18-4484-8b32-0a8182d5a02b&k=53202
    Sad.

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  5. Baron Max Registered Senior Member

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    Well, but Hamas and Hezbollah, as well as other such groups, want to kill Israelis and/or drive them into the sea. So ....what's the difference??

    Baron Max
     
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  7. swivel Sci-Fi Author Valued Senior Member

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    There is no difference, both are wrong.

    The funny thing about the Israel/Palestinian debate is that both sides never even try to defend themselves. They are both guilty of such horrific acts that they are reduced to cataloging each other's transgressions. It is as if the winner will bury the other under a mountain of accusations.

    As long as there is religion in that region, we will never see an end to this. It is ingrouping/outgrouping that is to blame here, and both sides are guilty. I fear that the only resolution would be for the rest of the world to cordon the area off, refuse trade, ANY TRADE, and let the region descend into a primitive, anarchic state. 50 years later we could come in and sift through the rubble and offer help to any survivors we find.

    Civil wars are never resolved when there is outside interference, or no closure. We are trying to avoid an amputation and we are going to lose the whole body to gangrene.
     
  8. Mr.Spock Back from the dead Valued Senior Member

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    such a horrible state. wait, why are there arabs immigrating to israel? masochists?
     
  9. Mr.Spock Back from the dead Valued Senior Member

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    only this isnt a civil war. its a war of one sides that openly says, like genji. jews out. they think, like genji, theyre gonna win with the help of the UN and the arab world.

    they are wrong

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  10. Mr.Spock Back from the dead Valued Senior Member

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  11. swivel Sci-Fi Author Valued Senior Member

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    Haha. Because there are jobs there? Good point.
     
  12. Genji Registered Senior Member

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    Those that are accepted are fleeing devastated cities teeming with refugees, no access to education, health care or even to fields to tend. Israel has created a captive population that is shattered and hopeless. Lots of things are borne out of such conditions.
     
  13. S.A.M. uniquely dreadful Valued Senior Member

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    You mean as compared to living in a place with starvation, bombing, nightly sonic booms, snipers shooting children, lack of water and electricity? Gee, I don't know.

    Btw, is it immigration if they still consider it their land?

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  14. Genji Registered Senior Member

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    Even conservatives are critical of Israeli apartheid. It's the neocomen and their marriage to Christian fundamentalists that have been the cheerleaders of Judeofascism.
     
  15. Baron Max Registered Senior Member

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    If the fuckin' Arabs would spend as much time working and making things better in their homes, instead of planning and carrying out terrorist attacks, perhaps the fuckin' Arabs could have things better for themselves.

    Calling it their land, and it being their land is two entirely different things! There has never, ever been a country called "Patestine" ...never, ever, in all of history.

    Baron Max
     
  16. S.A.M. uniquely dreadful Valued Senior Member

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    :yawn:

    http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/Palestine_stamp.jpg

    http://www.eufunding.org/Textbooks/Page_Images/B04_Stamp.jpg
     
  17. Baron Max Registered Senior Member

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    Sorry, Sam, I never click on your dumbass links! If you have something to say, say it .......but quit letting others speak for you. If you have no opinion on the matter, then keep your fuckin' mouth shut!

    Just like lots/most Muslims, huh, .....letting others do you speaking for you? Like that asshole Sadr in Iraq? ...he speaks and all the Muslims go running to blow things up ..mostly without thinking about it at all. Is that they way you are, Sam???

    Baron Max
     
  18. S.A.M. uniquely dreadful Valued Senior Member

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    Liar.

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  19. Genji Registered Senior Member

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    The zionists caught being the monsters they really are.

    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18058725/

    I'm sure he looks as expendable as all other non Jews to SF's zionist cheerleader brigade but these tactics aren't working for the Judeofascists. I'm surprised the IDF terrorists didn't murder the photographers.
     
  20. Genji Registered Senior Member

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    Apartheid Israel. Gleaming Bastion of Democracy.

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    Just like Botha's South Africa.
     
  21. S.A.M. uniquely dreadful Valued Senior Member

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    Don't be silly Genji. Look at the big picture. The Palestinians are backward, unproductive and Muslims. They don't win Nobel prizes. A few million more or less hardly makes a difference.
     
  22. Baron Max Registered Senior Member

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    Maybe they should try to become forward-thinking and productive. Instead of learning how to shoot rockets and make sucide bombs and spending their time protesting, maybe they should work a little bit.

    "Revenge is mine, sayeth the Muslims of the world."

    Muslims think only of the past ....and how to avenge some ancient wrong!

    Baron Max
     
  23. S.A.M. uniquely dreadful Valued Senior Member

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    Exactly, silly to fight about losing your home and country. If the Mexicans were to over run the US, Americans would just move to a better place, not stay and fight! Silly buggers.
     

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