2 working for change pieces posted with only links (no comments, the second is at 169672) 169250 Monbiot at common dreams on us (indyans) --------- 169278 http://www.thenation.com/ doc.mhtml?i=special&s= breytenbach20020410An Open Letter To General Ariel Sharon (english) Breyten Breytenbach ---------- 169197 "Commanding Heights" on PBS is Privatization drivel ---------------------- 2 working for change pieces posted with only links (no comments, the second is at 169672) Geov Parrish Zionists for peace 375 Israeli COs demonstrate the greatest courage in the conflict While coverage in the United States focuses on Colin Powell's decision to meet with Yassar Arafat -- wonder if Sharon will let Powell leave the compound afterward? -- the Israeli offensive continues. Somehow, U.S. media treatment of the conflict only has time for a quick visual of a news anchor, flak jacket donned, in some picturesque setting, handing off the coverage to some correspondent reading Bush Administration tea leaves (or scat) as to what the U.S. will do next: Mild Rebuke? Expression of Concern? Stern Condemnation? Guarded Optimism? The West Bank burns, and George Bush is still learning how to use his thesaurus and yawn at the same time. Interestingly, the range of viewpoints regarding what Israel is doing, and how the aggrieved parties might proceed, is far wider in the Israeli press than it is stateside. It's also far less dependent on official pronouncements. Hence, yesterday's edition of the Israeli daily Ha'aretz had a long article -- notably absent of any "balancing" judgments of treasonousness from Likud spokespeople, a trope no U.S. report would be complete without -- on the remarkable, courageous refusal of Israeli Army reservists to report for duty on the West Bank or Gaza Strip. The reservist COs have gotten a bit of coverage in the United States, but it's generally come without at least two pieces of context essential for understanding how important -- and, for the Sharon government, alarming -- their movement is. When American readers think of conscientious objectors, we think generally of Vietnam. But while COs were unpopular in many parts of the United States in the '60s, the risks they took are nothing next to what Israeli reservists face. There, military service is woven into the very fabric of Israeli life. All men serve; therefore, most adult men not in the army are veterans, and many identify with the military fiercely. Secondly, the military itself is seen as a very immediate guarantor of Israel's survival, and so words like "traitor" are not mindless epithets; they're taken seriously, and to refuse a callup order is also, oftentimes, to defy your boss, your co-workers, your relatives -- it is not an easy thing. Nor, if you stick by your decision, is the resulting jail time -- sure, Israel tends only to torture Palestinians, but their "sympathizers" are only one rung above. Into that maelstrom, so far, have walked an unprecedented 375 IDF reserve officers and soldiers, all of whom, according to Ha'Aretz, have now signed a letter of refusal to serve in the occupied territories at a time when their ultimate commander, Ariel Sharon, has called the offensive being carried out there a war for the existence of Israel. Last Friday, a group of them, carrying Israeli flags to underscore their ties to Zionism, took their refusal directly to Sharon: choosing for their first public demonstration to gather outside the prime minister's residence in Jerusalem. The Israeli peace group Yesh Gvul ("There Is A Limit"), which has long counseled and organized Israeli COs, says that over the last weekend it received "dozens of calls" from more reservists seeking advice and help. And the sentiment may run much, much deeper. The Ha'Aretz article quotes a "refusenik" currently serving 28 days, Zlad Lahav: "I am a Zionist and a patriot and went to serve in an infantry unit out of free choice. When I informed [the army] of my refusal to do reserve duty in Hebron, around half of my friends in my platoon told me that they supported my actions. The others said they didn't agree with me, but understood me." These are not pacifists, and they are Zionists; they believe in Israel, and are willing to fight to defend it, but not to steal Palestinian land, massacre civilians, or endanger their comrades (and, ultimately, Israeli civilians) unnecessarily. The stand at least 375 Israelis have now taken on behalf of their beliefs is more courageous than most of us can know. If Israeli soldiers -- trained and encouraged to dehumanize all Palestinians, to consider even women and children as the enemy -- are in large numbers sympathetic to or even empathetic with the decisions of men like Lahav not to fight, then Ariel Sharon may also be facing a limit. And it is one that has nothing to do with international condemnation or the visit of Colin Powell. Reclaim History! Things that happened on Apr. 12 that you never had to memorize in school: 1861: Confederates attack Fort Sumter, in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina; beginning of Civil War. 1893: Ozette Indian reservation established on Olympic Peninsula coast. Later becomes the only reservation in the country inside a National Park (in this case, Olympic National Park). 1913: Several thousand homeless invade the town hall in Paris. 1935: Sixty thousand college students around the U.S. go on strike against war. 1957: Eighteen nuclear physicists warn of danger of nuclear weapons, Gottingen, West Germany. 1963: Martin Luther King, Jr. and a number of others arrested in Birmingham, Alabama, for violating an injunction against protests after the city attacked volunteers attempting a voter registration drive. 1967: Fifteen hundred march in Seattle's U-District in opposition to Vietnam War. 1968: Tigua Pueblo people of northwest Texas recognized by U.S. government. 1971: First European anti-nuclear power demonstration, Fessenheim, France. 1989: Abbie Hoffman dies, near Allentown, Pennsylvania. Officially, a suicide, though those close to him have maintained their doubts, then and since. Geov Parrish is a Seattle-based columnist and reporter for Seattle Weekly, In These Times and Eat the State! He writes the weekdaily Straight Shot for WorkingForChange. If you would like to be alerted as soon as his column is posted, please send a request to editor@newsforchange.com To see more of his work, click here. To respond to this article, report a problem or provide general feedback to the editors of this site, click here. ----------------- Laura Flanders 04.11.02 Printer-friendly version Email this item to a friend Most e-mailed stories New Yorkers say no A heart-to-heart talk about the Middle East in the heart of Manhattan The mood was somber in Public School 3 this Tuesday, when members of New Yorkers Say No To War gathered to talk about Israel, Palestine and Us. New Yorkers Say No has been meeting each week since September 18th. Each Tuesday the group gathers and not since that first week has the feeling in the room been so heavy, so tangible: Grief. Grief sank the shoulders of the progressive, activist Jews in the room. New Yorkers Say No is full of them. A public school teacher, a professor, a therapist, a civil rights attorney, a performer, a theater critic, a politician, a journalist. The Jews in the room are men and women who've dedicated their lives to fighting racism, segregation, the slighting of the poor, the eradication of culture. Their parents did likewise, in this country and elsewhere. "My father's dream of Israel is dead," said one who grew up in a Jewish family fighting apartheid in South Africa. "I believed there could be a democratic secular state," said another, who was born, as she put it "A Palestinian. In Palestine, before the founding of Israel." "We are losing what I thought it was to be a Jew," said one and then another. The Jewish tradition dying before us, explained the second, was the tradition of socialism, internationalism and standing up for justice for oppressed people everywhere. In face of Ariel Sharon's assault on the human rights of all West Bank Palestinians and in defiance of global opinion, she said, "I fear it's over. It's dead." There are reasons to fear as well as to grieve. The weekend saw two marches in this city. On Saturday, thousands, largely but not exclusively Palestinian and Arab, marched against Israel's re-occupation of Palestinian lands. There were a handful of signs on the march which read "Sharon=Hitler," that equated the Star of David with the Swastika, one that read "Palestine Yes/Israel No." "I've marched many times," said a NYSAYNO member who had talked about travelling from Oklahoma to Israel in her youth and finding -- to her horror and disappointment -- racism in the so-called "promised land." A civil rights activist, a feminist, a leftist, she said she'd participated in no end of marches alongside Palestinians. "This was the first time I felt bad, scared, so sad." Tears cut off her voice. Sunday brought thousands more, mostly Jewish New Yorkers into the streets in "solidarity with Israel." A couple of NYSAYNO members, like those who belong to the Israeli-based peace group, "Women in Black" had attended that march too. The Israeli Defense Force's assault on Palestinians puts Israel in more peril, not less, they say. To be "in solidarity" means to call for an end to occupation, they believe, but among the marchers for Israel they were a tiny few. "I felt entirely alone, and scared there, too." Said one. Grief brought tears to young eyes as well. Kate is quickly becoming a veteran activist through her work with the Direct Action Network of New York. She talked about a woman she knows: 21-year Palestinian American, Suraida Saleh, who was born in Washington DC at George Washington hospital. On April 5, undercover Israeli agents shot Saleh dead as her husband drove her to hospital in Ramallah, Kate explained, through sobs. She died protecting the 18-month-old baby she was cradling in her lap. Twenty-something year-old Trevor, a visitor from Seattle, was red-eyed when he talked about Hurriya. Hurriya is an eleven year-old Palestinian in whose family Trevor stayed this winter in Ramallah. A member of the ad-hoc International Solidarity Movement, Trevor is returning to Ramallah next week, he told NYSAYNO. Hurriya called him Easter morning to say that Israeli troops were on her doorstep. Her older brother Majid was taken away, she said. He has not returned. Hurriya is "a walking sun," said Trevor. When the young Israeli soldiers invaded her home, they told her they felt like monsters doing it, she told him. "One told her it made him feel sick," said Trevor. Ariel, was born in Israel and served his time in the army there. "I discovered my "enemy" was human too," he said on Tuesday. "I remember my surprise." Is it possible to have a heart-to-heart talk about the Middle East in the heart of Manhattan? It's by no means easy, but it's possible, yes. Is there a hunger for this kind of talk? Absolutely. I had the honor of facilitating the conversation I've described here. On Working Assets Radio we've aired similar conversations with listeners, too. It only takes two questions to start: What are we feeling? What can we do? As Americans we're involved, politically and economically. Jew and non-Jew, Arab, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, WASP, our tax-dollars and our failure to act make the Sharon/Bush alliance possible. And people who believe in peace and justice are particularly summoned right now. Like the Israelis, we live in a nation that is waging war in "self defense." We too, live in a nation in which the context for what violence has been committed against us is roundly ignored; even considering that context is criticized as "capitulating to violence." We too, live in a nation where the overwhelming majority of our peers support the use of violence to respond to violence and those who favor other responses have found no way yet to turn their neighbors around. You hear voices calling for Israelis to rise up against their government -- and many thousands have been doing just that this week, and been gassed and beaten by soldiers for their efforts. Do Americans think that Israelis can do in their democracy what we in the U.S. have so far not? Many peoples of many lands have had unspeakable wrongs committed against them. Those wrongs smolder and will get expressed. Three of the last to speak at this week's New Yorkers Say No meeting were an African American man, a Persian woman, and a Native American. "I'm going to the West Bank on Sunday," said the last. "As a Native American I recognize occupation. I feel it." A cycle of violence is taking us all down. Can we build a global movement that models a response to political violence that gets beyond talk of "capitulation to terrorism" and gets to the business of righting injustice? Can we begin to air our feelings about what we're seeing and on the basis of those feelings act? I believe we can. Journalist Laura Flanders is the host of Working Assets Radio and author of "Real Majority, Media Minority: The Cost of Sidelining Women in Reporting." Her Spin Doctor Laura columns appear daily on WorkingForChange. You can contact her at laura@lauraflanders.com To respond to this article, report a problem or provide general feedback to the editors of this site, click here. --------------------- 169339 Open question to any indepedent media user (english) - 9:20am Thu Apr 11 '02 (Modified on 12:05pm Thu Apr 11 '02) address: - phone: - - article#169339 A couple of questions I'd be curious to hear answers to. Hi, just a couple of thoughts I've been having in regards to the use of the web as a democratic aid. I was curious to hear what anybody had to say. I suppose I don't really have direct questions, but am more interested in hearing opinions on a couple of things. I guess what I'm most curious about in regards to the web (sites like Indymedia, www.dfn.org, and several others) is whether or not you believe it has any real effect? Or if on the web, by its very nature of being a media where the user has so much control over the content, are you effectively 'preaching to the choir'? As only those who agree with your views are likely to look at the site. Another angle on much the same point. There's a term I came accross recently called 'group polarisation' Which I've since seen being levelled at the web quite frequently. While I'd like to think otherwise, it does hold a good logical arguement that the web could well be a "breeding ground for extremism", as like minded people simply gather to compare like minded views. In what way do you feel that might effect this type of work (if any)? Do you think that the information being put 'out there' by independent media and legal groups has any actual effect? Or does it foster the kind of culture where people simply read what's on their screen and feel that they have accomplished something by simply being informed? That Huxley's idea of "democracy being the theme of every broadcast" but not of any real action is coming to pass? Or is the publication of information is, in and of itself, enough to be an aid to a functioning democracy? Any thoughts anyone may have on the matter would be appreciated. - ============ PDQ (english) Maxwell 9:52am Thu Apr 11 '02 comment#169357 Just as the convinence store/gas station PDQ only recieves support from the people who like it, indymedia.org is synonymous. Indymedia.org is a place where free thinkers can get free media and many perspectives versus NBC who only gives one, or two if you count Mr. Brokaw (who is really just a robot, but nobody has figured it out yet). Independent media was the first kind of media the USA was shown eons ago when the freedom of the press was allowed. I believe some content on Indymedia.org is bias, in fact alot of it is, but think about it 6 billion people on this earth are bias about at least one thing. Distiguishing for your self what you prefer to believe is the deciding factor with media, be it independent media or mainstream (watered down). Perfect case in point, my comment is bias toward conglomerates such as Clear Channel or Viacom. Everyone has a point of veiw, but not everyone is willing to take action on their point of veiw. Independent media is an act of those willing to seek out their point of veiw and see if it is true or false for themselves. It is up to the reader to make their own choice of weather they are willing to act or not. Maxwell ====== hmmmmmmm (english) rb 9:54am Thu Apr 11 '02 comment#169359 First I must note I find it interesting that no one else has responded, I guess most folks don't think the questions as interesting as you'd think. Anyway, from what I see yes most of what you note is probably true to a degree. But this follows the human routine that birds of a feather flock together, and since a good portion of those entering this site are radicals , radicalizatioin would be a an activety to be expected, No ? However, unlike other gathering places of media consumption, since there is interlay and a lot of differing viewpoints there is the occassional discussion, True most of the time there is only a rigid holding onto of one's own ideas and name calling for a response, but there are actually short term discussions that happen. Hell it has to start somewhere. there is also the advantage that I do hear some viewpoints I wouldn't without the site. I WOULD LIKE TO HEAR PEOPLE'S IDEAS ON THE EFFECTIVENESS OF THE VITRIOLIC HATE BEING SPEWED BACK ON FORTH ON IMC. OBVIUSLY THE ARABS THINK THIS WORKS AND FOR NOW AT LEAST IT IS GETTING A FULL SUPPORT. ANY COMMENTS ??? rb ======== as long as it is not censored or edited (english) proof 9:59am Thu Apr 11 '02 comment#169362 The question of "effect" is complicated. In my eyes this newswire has been quite effective at opening my own eyes to the myriad of situations that are happening in the world around me. It also has allowed, under my assumption and its own charter, as an unedited newswire to elevate my confidence of it value. Meaning that I can trust that I am not just getting one persons viewpoint through their decision of whether or not something is newsworthy (I know some editing goes on, but..). Because, there is always another side of the same story, it has effected me by changing the way I view news and facts in that I have learned that I have to take everything in and honestly weigh it on some mental scale and figure out what to believe. This is of course not a new concept, but one which is pretty watered down in our (US) media culture, where the "truth" is served up on silver platters for all to just slurp in. I also see that there are some very frustrated people on the left(these are people that probably have far better understanding of the current situations than myself) that want to censor the obviously biggoted and racist propaganda that is often posted on the newswire. But I think they don't realize what a powerful teaching tool has been in effect with the newswire being open and people are allowed to comment on the posts. It unfortuantely takes time to deal with it, and many would like to skip that stuff because they have already learned that it is crap. So, I guess my main point is that yes this newswire has a huge effect on people and the way they think and then live their lives. It is a huge resource from which many different viewpoints are expressed and commented on freely. The news is no longer above the viewer. However, the process(es) of learning a new way to look at information takes time and visible progress(you would have to define this term) often requires a large percentage of people having some similar knowledge base. We are far from this, much new learning needs to take place to help eleviate the injustices of the world and forums such as this are an extremely beneficial way of allowing people to find the truth. For some it is dangerous because the truth eliminated power structures and for others this truth embedded within what they think is crap just makes the process take to long. Give the people a voice and let everyone provide feedback. Long live uncensored, completely commentable IMC newswire. ====== Good points, certainly... (english) Robin Skyler 10:08am Thu Apr 11 '02 comment#169366 I do worry aboutthat, especially when I dial into a website spouting very different politics with equal fervor and confidence--one can guess in some cases that these authors, too, have reason to feel sure of a vast and sympathetic audience somewhere. I try to remind myself to do web searches on propositions I don't agree with, just to be clued in to what their proponents are saying. So yes, preaching to the choir is a natural consequence of preaching on a great searchable archive. But even the choir needs to be informed--I get more of an idea of what's going on in Palestine, for instance, from Indymedia than anywhere else. And the long, slightly older article on this newswire, about the imprisoned activist in Georgia--that's front-page stuff I'm not hearing anywhere else. (Of course I want to double-check the story, but if it weren't for this venue I'd have nothing to double-check.) I think your observations go to argue for more tactics to be adopted AS WELL AS these news repositories, rather than for changing or discontinuing these services. If somebody could establish some kind of web venue that would pull a large numbers of readers from wildly divergent political backgrounds, that might help in really spreading news--but even so it would probably only inform those who are already of an investigative bent to begin with. Everybody else will continue to read articles that back up their existing points of view, at least most of the time. As for your Brave New World comparison, and the implication that a bunch of progressives chattering at each other online about their politics, inaudible to most of the world and easily ignored, is a real danger of pacifying us--it's plausible, yes. But I'm going to be in DC on April 20 and I've never gone to any protest before. For me, reading the news has been galvanizing, not pacifying. If we fearthat we're talking ourselves to sleep without gettig anything done, we should get up and do something rather than stop talking. The talking is important. www.ambiguous.org/robin ======= Whatever Happened to News? (english) Murrow 10:19am Thu Apr 11 '02 comment#169373 I think that Indymedia already suffers from "group polarization" as you put it, but not because of any intent on the designers part. This website also suffers from a "clash of extremisms." The problem is that this is NOT what Indymedia is supposed to be doing. This website and the local IMC's exist to distribute ORIGINAL NEWS REPORTS. If something really happens, and it is relevant to the "anti-globalist movement" (or whatever it's called), then an eyewitness has a place to report it. This could turn into group polarization (or "preaching to the choir") if the reporters were only one segment of the movement. But they aren't. The movement covers many issues, and at many levels of radicalism, so you wouldn't hear only one perspective, if Indymedia worked the way it was supposed to. Also, I'm not too concerned about "preaching to the choir". Up until the creation of Indymedia, it was not easy to keep up with "the global justice movement" (or whatever it's called) in a steady way that connects its participants. That's the key. Before, we struggled in our own little corners of the world and maybe were mentioned in a magazine a month or two later. Now we can report on our actions and our friends around the world can see them. It creates momentum, and (uh-oh, ugly corporate word coming up) it builds "synergy." That's the effect of Indymedia that I have felt. I feel connected to all the other movements -- around the world -- because they are more visible to me. I think that even if people who aren't "on our side" never look at Indymedia, it is still worthwhile to keep the movements in touch with each other's actions. But that connection is been broken here at Indymedia, at least at the world-wide site. Some of the problem is from well-meaning people who have for too long been denied an opportunity to speak and go overboard without understanding the purpose if Indymedia. They turn into ax-grinders or compulsive article sharers. Other problems come from those who intentionally try to disrupt our communication because they oppose the goals of "the movement." This is where you get the "clash of extremisms." On one hand, you have people copying news stories from other websites. This directly contradicts the idea of "being the media." In fact, there is so much reposting going on that I have a very hard time finding any ORIGINAL reporting on the Global site. (Maybe that is also because people do not live in and cannot report from a "global beat.") These article copiers select from pre-existing news sources, keeping to their little ideological niche. I think this contributes to a kind of "group polarization," one that keeps readers enthralled to "professional" reporters (and bought-and-paid-for pundits). The sheer volume of ideological catfights from the corporate media weighs in here, so you end up with a replay of the same tired old arguments between wishy-washy "liberals" and loudmouthed "conservatives." And the rest of us play the role of audience. And most of it is about U.S. politics, drowning out real news from the rest of the planet. What's the point of that? More recently, things have degenerated further. You have extremists playing this same reposting game, but pushing the goalposts farther apart. They polarize things more, by copying (for example) neo-nazi articles blaming the Jews for everything bad, and apologists for the Israeli government blaming the Palestinians for their own suffering, and Islamicists who want to ethnically cleanse the Middle East. This clash of extremisms continues to crowd out any grassroots, DIY reporting that might provide real facts from the ground (instead of more self-important punditry), facts which might lead to normal people discussing solutions to the world's problems. Also the racist and xenophobic and outright bizarre garbage taints by association what little good reporting makes it onto the newswire. Whatever happened to the idea of original news reports about stories that no one else has covered? That would not be polarizing. That would be empowering. That would not be preaching to the choir. That would be building a democratic news source for everyone, one that might someday attract more readers and viewers than the corporate sources. And it would attract them not because they want to do their duty to "be informed" about what the "experts" have to say, but because readers and viewers can become experts themselves as they participate in news coverage. To paraphrase Gandhi, what do I think of a grassroots, decentralized, independent news network that reports on the work of the global justice movement? I think it would be a good idea. Thanks for reading these thoughts. ======== dear Mr. CIA agent (english) NObelly 10:25am Thu Apr 11 '02 phone: mobile icvnus@yahoo comment#169379 Dear Mr. CIA agent: While you try to compile more info. from us free folk and working to divert us from the real news, we do in fact think for ourselves. If you're looking for the NObell PIEce Prize nomination this year, no luck here. Good day! ===== Preaching to the Choir (english) ML 10:52am Thu Apr 11 '02 comment#169405 "Preaching to the choir" sounds far more like the actual range of content and ideas allowed in the dominant media. How you can even begin to assoicate that with the wide range of views on IMC is beyond my understanding. ======== NObelly & ML (english) author of above piece 11:13am Thu Apr 11 '02 comment#169421 Hi, I'm the one who posted the rambling thing up above. Sorry to have offended anybody there. That really wasn't my intention. To NObelly, I'm certainly not a CIA agent (I'd have noticed the salary increase). But if I can respond in kind, it's posts like yours that have driven me, and quite a few people I know, from having as much respect as I would like to have for a lot of independent media (not just Indymedia). And that's a real shame. These are points that -honestly- concern me. I worry that what is accomplished here may not be having a real effect, and that the web is a medium that promotes isolation from opposing ideals. Considering these things, in -my- opinion at least, is critical thought, which is essential in any endevour. I'm not stating that this is necessarily the case, but that the possibility is a concern. For me at least. Enough so that I was curious to hear what other people had to say about it. Most of the responses have been thought-provoking and encouraging, which is a good thing indeed. ======== Perspective from the Beginning of IMC (english) Citizen Able 11:56am Thu Apr 11 '02 comment#169461 The real value of the global and local IMC's lie in their reporting before, during, and after demonstrations such as those that occurred in DC, Quebec City, Gothenborg, and Milan. The value of these reports should be self-evident. The attempts at jamming of the newswire with misinformation and other junk attest to the effectiveness of first-hand reports from non-corporate sources. I was aware from online information that the Seattle action against the WTO was going to be big. I found Indymedia while looking for more coverage and information of this event. The significant protests that occurred at Bush's swearing-in were almost totally ignored by the corporate media. The coverage on Indymedia provided a counterbalance. Between demos, the Indymedia newswire has some items of interest (sharing info, viewpoints, etc.) with quite a few postings of dubious merit. I don't think it has much value as an agent to change others' life philosophies. Maybe the value lies in providing information that others can choose to pursue or not. ===== Re: Online Isolation (english) Murrow 12:01pm Thu Apr 11 '02 comment#169466 To the original questioner: I just read your new comment in which you expressed your concern that "the web is a medium that promotes isolation from opposing ideals." It CAN do that, of course. But it doesn't have to. Trouble is, when people try to use it as a forum for differing views, it is extremely difficult to make it work. I think this is mostly because of the lack of accountability. The history of Usenet has demonstrated just how easily "loudmouthed" people and "ax-grinders" can destroy a discussion. They hog the stage and start flamewars, and the reasonable people (people who didn't necessarily agree on an issue but were willing to discuss it in a civil manner) get fed up and leave. Trolls and flamers and other problematic Internet users can do this because they are unaccountable. No one knows who they are or who their grandmother is. If we were in a town meeting debating something, and Old Bill came in screaming at the top of his lungs about "THE ALIENS!", we'd kick him out. Or if Snake didn't like my view on school vouchers and threatened to kill me, the local constable would make a mental note of that. (In fact, Snake would probably just keep his mouth shut in such a public setting.) The Internet allows a kind of "public invisibility." It allows people to demonstrate their worst personal traits in full view of the other users, but without any real personal consequences. Anonymity is important, especially for those who are in marginalized groups in the real world. No one knows you're black or a woman online, unless you divulge that information somehow. This kind of anonymity is good, as far as it goes. But it still costs something to be online, and the most privileged folks have more free-time to spend there. They are used to monoplizing "the conversation" in real life, and this carries through online. I think that if you want real exchanges of ideas -- and, more importantly, THE BUILDING OF GRASSROOTS DEMOCRACY -- you could do better with public assemblies in real life. There, you know who your neighbors are and they're less likely to do anything that's going to make them look bad in the eyes of people they have to deal with every day. saddened (english) dukeII 12:05pm Thu Apr 11 '02 comment#169471 I find that using IMC helps take me to other websites where I can often find information that is not always availble in the mainstream media. It does sadden me however that it is so often used to hurl insults rather than constructive dialogue about world issues so delicate and crucial. It often appears to mirror exactly what is happening in the mideast, on a verbal level. (You trash one of mine, I'll trash one of yours) and no constructive ideas come from tunnel vision. I am under the assumption, perhaps delution, that people who are on a quest to stand back and see the larger picture are generally open-minded, otherwise why the search? We may as well just accept what we're fed on CNN, go about daily life with no questions, curiosity or intellegent exchange. If we cannot be civil to one another on a website, how we expect any better of governments. ----------------------------------- 169412 HATE SPEECH HAS CONSEQUENCES (english) Fawn Rainforest 11:01am Thu Apr 11 '02 (Modified on 12:56pm Thu Apr 11 '02) article#169412 Words have consequences. The ongoing spewing of one-sided hatred towards Israel has given a signal that it is open season on the Jews. Stop the hate speech now. An Open Letter to the Nations of Europe Fifty-seven years after the Holocaust, innocent Jews are being murdered in Israel, and Jews and Jewish institutions are being attacked in Europe. In the 1930s and 40s, the destruction of six million European Jews was perpetrated by an evil regime with the assistance or indifference of many others throughout Europe. Today, in a different world, the nations of Europe are once again playing a detrimental role in the face of the murder of Jews in Israel. Europe's refusal to take a principled and moral stand against Palestinian terrorism has abetted the continuing terrorist killings. Each time the American government pressures Arafat to curb terrorism, Europe gives him a way out not to act. That in turn gives license to act to the perpetrators of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic violence in Europe. There is hope that the killing can cease if Europe joins America in telling Mr. Arafat in the clearest terms that terrorism must stop. He must be put on notice that if it doesn't, Israel has the fundamental right, as do all nations, to protect itself and its citizens. The message must be clear and consistent: Stop the violence. Combat the terrorists. Stop the incitement against Israel. Negotiate in good faith a compromise agreement that will lead to peace with security and independence for Israelis and Palestinians. Nothing justifies terrorism. If one is to believe that Europe has learned anything from the destruction of European Jewry then now is the time to act. add your own comments ====== Right Sentiment, Wrong Forum (english) lev 11:25am Thu Apr 11 '02 comment#169432 Did you bother to read the invective on this site? There wouldn't be an indymedia if not for the jew-haters and the dedicated volunteers providing them a forum. ========== SS "how to" manual (english) bobby 11:26am Thu Apr 11 '02 bobbyrooney@hotmail.com comment#169434 The insane and horrible atrocities committed against the Jews in WWII are not a justification for Israel to do the same to another people in the name of "survival." Apparently, the lessons that Sharon took from the holocaust were not the ones he should have. Israel has rounded up over 4,000 Palestinians many who are being executed without trial, are the death camps next? ====== Aw, poor Fawn... (english) Xenu 11:34am Thu Apr 11 '02 comment#169440 You may want to pull that tree out of your eye, you seem to be blinded to the hate being directed at the Palistinians. ====== I Agree With Fawn (english) Kurt the Yank 11:36am Thu Apr 11 '02 address: Brooklyn, NY USA comment#169443 I agree with Fawn. There has been too much anti-semetic crap on the Indy. Apparently the far-leftoids don't know the difference between anti-zionism and anti-semitism. ======= an exam question for lev (english) db 11:42am Thu Apr 11 '02 comment#169446 Does disagreeing with you, that this forum is run by jew haters, make me a jew hater? Does opposing the US support of the current regime in Israel make me a nazi? If so, do I have conscious motivation, or am I simply a pawn? Why? ======= How About Hate Actions? (english) wondering 11:47am Thu Apr 11 '02 comment#169450 For a good example of hate speech, look at the old testament, the Koran and the new testament. A sad fact is that the jewish community ( a religion not a race ) hasn't learned any lessons from being oppressed, and has switched to becoming the oppressor.But then, their own " holy texts " clearly state that Israel was originally created through the slaughter of the original inhabitants of Canaan. Sharon is a terrorist, read a little history on his exploits in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. Only adversaries on equal footing can negotiate in good faith. When one is better armed than the other, it becomes coercion. The death of civilians on both sides is horrific, as well as the death of soldiers or anyone, but I would go to the same lengths to repel an occupying force. Are you expecting the Palestinians to go quietly to the ghettos and camps? Maybe if Israel and the jewish religion doesn't like what is being said about them, they need to take a hard look at their actions. It seems that any criticism leveled at their policies is hate speech or racism. Call yourselves what you are, a religion, a lifestyle choice, but you can't claim racial status. ========= Thoughts have consequences (english) Outlaw 11:50am Thu Apr 11 '02 comment#169453 You argue that because words result in actions, we should ban words. Well, guess what. Thoughts result in words. I guess by your logic we should try to ban unacceptable thoughts too. You Zionists can't stop whining that because Europe won't play the role of your bitch the way America does, that they are our enemies. The American ideals of liberty of thought and speech and action (which now sadly exist only in symbol and not in fact) was the result of the intellectual and philosophical values of Europe. Stop trying to play the nations of the world against one another. We are on to you and your bullshit. We don't care about the Zionazi National Socialist Israeli Workers Party (Likud), Adolf Sharon, the Waffen moSSad or the IDF Gestapo. Free Palestine! =========== Zionazi Israeli Hate Speech (english) Goy 12:23pm Thu Apr 11 '02 comment#169482 Oh yes the old Anti-Semitism trick, anyone who dares criticize Israel or its disgraceful behaviour towards the Palestinian people. Must be an Anti-Semite and must be in league with the devil. Of course how can I forget the Jewish/Israeli people are above criticism and international law. There are one rule for the GOYIM and one rule for the CHOOSEN people. Of course a Jew would never say the following things: 1. "There is a huge gap between us (Jews) and our enemies ­not just in ability but in morality, culture, sanctity of life, and conscience. They are our neighbors here, but it seems as if at a distance of a few hundred meters away, there are people who do not belong to our continent, to our world, but actually belong to a different galaxy." Israeli president Moshe Katsav. The Jerusalem Post, May 10, 2001 2. "The Palestinians are like crocodiles, the more you give them meat, they want more".... Ehud Barak, Prime Minister of Israel at the time - August 28, 2000. Reported in the Jerusalem Post August 30, 2000 3. " [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. 4. "The Palestinians" would be crushed like grasshoppers ... heads smashed against the boulders and walls." " Isreali Prime Minister (at the time) in a speech to Jewish settlers New York Times April 1, 1988 5. "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. 6. "How can we return the occupied territories? There is nobody to return them to." Golda Meir, March 8, 1969. 7. "There was no such thing as Palestinians, they never existed." Golda Maier Israeli Prime Minister June 15, 1969 8. "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, Ha'aretz, 19 March 1972. 9. 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), pp121. 9a. 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." 10. "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. 11. "Every time we do something you tell me America will do this and will do that . . . I want to tell you something very clear: Don't worry about American pressure on Israel. We, the Jewish people, control America, and the Americans know it." - Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, October 3, 2001, to Shimon Peres, as reported on Kol Yisrael radio. (Certainly the FBI's cover-up of the Israeli spy ring/phone tap scandal suggests that Mr. Sharon may not have been joking. 12. "We declare openly that the Arabs have no right to settle on even one centimeter of Eretz Israel... Force is all they do or ever will understand. We shall use the ultimate force until the Palestinians come crawling to us on all fours." Rafael Eitan, Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defense Forces - Gad Becker, Yediot Ahronot 13 April 1983, New York Times 14 April 1983. 13. "We must do everything to ensure they [the Palestinian refugees] never do return" David Ben-Gurion, in his diary, 18 July 1948, quoted in Michael Bar Zohar's Ben-Gurion: the Armed Prophet, Prentice-Hall, 1967, p. 157. 15. "We should prepare to go over to the offensive. Our aim is to smash Lebanon, Trans-Jordan, and Syria. The weak point is Lebanon, for the Moslem regime is artificial and easy for us to undermine. We shall establish a Christian state there, and then we will smash the Arab Legion, eliminate Trans-Jordan; Syria will fall to us. We then bomb and move on and take Port Said, Alexandria and Sinai." David Ben-Gurion, May 1948, to the General Staff. From Ben-Gurion, A Biography, by Michael Ben-Zohar, Delacorte, New York 1978. 16. "We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation, and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population." Israel Koenig, "The Koenig Memorandum" 17. "Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you because geography books no longer exist. Not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahlal arose in the place of Mahlul; Kibbutz Gvat in the place of Jibta; Kibbutz Sarid in the place of Huneifis; and Kefar Yehushua in the place of Tal al-Shuman. There is not a single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population." Moshe Dayan, address to the Technion, Haifa, reported in Haaretz, April 4, 1969. 18. "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. 19. Rabin's description of the conquest of Lydda, after the completion of Plan Dalet. "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. 20. "There are some who believe that the non-Jewish population, even in a high percentage, within our borders will be more effectively under our surveillance; and there are some who believe the contrary, i.e., that it is easier to carry out surveillance over the activities of a neighbor than over those of a tenant. [I] tend to support the latter view and have an additional argument:...the need to sustain the character of the state which will henceforth be Jewish...with a non-Jewish minority limited to 15 percent. I had already reached this fundamental position as early as 1940 [and] it is entered in my diary." Joseph Weitz, head of the Jewish Agency's Colonization Department. From Israel: an Apartheid State by Uri Davis, p.5. 21. "Everybody has to move, run and grab as many hilltops as they can to enlarge the settlements because everything we take now will stay ours... Everything we don't grab will go to them." Ariel Sharon, Israeli Foreign Minister, addressing a meeting of militants from the extreme right-wing Tsomet Party, Agence France Presse, November 15, 1998. 22. "It is the duty of Israeli leaders to explain to public opinion, clearly and courageously, a certain number of facts that are forgotten with time. The first of these is that there is no Zionism,colonialization or Jewish State without the eviction of the Arabs and the expropriation of their lands." Yoram Bar Porath, Yediot Aahronot, of 14 July 1972. 23. "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 out discreetly and circumspectly." Theodore Herzl, founder of the World Zionist Organization, speaking of the Arabs of Palestine,Complete Diaries, June 12, 1895 entry. In December 1918, Ze'ev Jabotinsky wrote justifying dispossession of the Palestinian people: "This matter is not an issue between the Jewish people and the Arab inhabitants of Palestine, but between the Jewish people and the Arab people. The latter, numbering 35 million, has [territory equal to] half of Europe, while the Jewish people, numbering ten million and wandering the earth, hasn't got a stone. . . Will the Arab people stand opposed? Will it resist? [Will it insist] that . . . they. . . shall have it [all] for ever and ever, while he who has nothing share forever have nothing." (Righteous Victims, p. 79) What is perplexing that this argument is much better suited to the United States than to Palestine. European Jews could have chosen New York City as well, where American Jews were influential in building the most important city on earth. Why should Jews be homeless while American Christians have vast unpopulated areas in the U.S.? It is also worth noting that Palestine in the early 20th century had twice the population density of the United States. It is not only that this argument is fundamentally fallacious, if applied around the world it will create chaos, especially when religion is used to curve up countries along religious lines, click here to read more about this argument. In 1923, Ze'ev Jabotinsky wrote of how Palestinians really felt of their attachment to Palestine: "They look upon Palestine with the same instinctive love and true favor that Aztec looked upon Mexico or any Sioux looked upon his prairie. Palestine will remain for the Palestinians not a borderland, but their birthplace, the center and basis of their own national existence." (Righteous Victims, p. 36) Similarly, Ze'ev Jabotinsky also wrote in 1923: "The Arabs loved their country as much as the Jews did. Instinctively, they understood Zionist aspirations very well, and their decision to resist them was only natural ..... There was not misunderstanding between Jew and Arab, but a natural conflict. .... No Agreement was possible with the Palestinian Arab; they would accept Zionism only when they found themselves up against an 'iron wall,' when they realize they had no alternative but to accept Jewish settlement." (America And The Founding Of Israel, p. 90) The road map for the Israeli leaders policies towards the Palestinian people has been clearly stated by Ze'ev Jabotinsky in an article published in Ha'aretz newspaper in 1923: ".... Settlement can thus develop under the protection of a force that is not dependent on the local population, behind an IRON WALL which they will be powerless to break down. ....a voluntary agreement is just not possible. As long as the Arabs preserve a gleam of hope that they will succeed in getting rid of us, nothing in the world can cause them to relinquish this hope, precisely because they are not a rubble but a living people. And a living people will be ready to yield on such fateful issues only when they give up all hope of getting rid of the Alien Settlers. Only then will extremist groups with their slogan No, never lose their influence, and only then their influence be transferred to more moderate groups. And only then will the moderates offer suggestions for compromise. Then only will they begin bargaining with us on practical matters, such as guarantees against push them out, and equality of civil, and national rights." (Iron Wall, p. 14) In 1925 Ze'ev Jabotinsky wrote of how Zionists Jews should colonies Palestine: "Zionist colonization, even the most restricted, must either be terminated or carried out in defiance of the will of the native [Palestinian] population. This colonization can, therefore, continue and develop under the protection of a force independent of the local population --an iron wall which the native [Palestinian] population cannot break through. This is, in to, our policy towards the Arabs. To formulate it any other way would be hypocrisy." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 28) And he pointed out that Zionists believed in an "Iron Wall": "In this sense, there is no meaningful difference between our militarists and our vegetarians. One prefers an Iron Wall of Jewish bayonets, the other proposes an Iron Wall of British bayonets, the third proposes an agreement with Baghdad, and appears to be satisfied with Baghdad's bayonets-a strange and somewhat risky taste--but we all applaud, day and night, the Iron Wall." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 28) In 1925 Ze'ev Jabotinsky wrote an essay entitled "The Iron Law" explaining how Jewish colonization in Palestine should be done: "If you wish to colonize a land in which people are already living, you must provide a garrison for the land, or find a benefactor who will maintain the garrison on your behalf. ... Zionism is a colonizing adventure and, therefore, it stands or falls on the question of armed forces." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 45) In 1926 Ze'ev Jabotinsky wrote of the national struggle between the two conflicting, but just, national Jewish and Palestinian movements: "The tragedy lies in the fact that there is a collision here between two truths ..... But our justice is greater. The Arabs is culturally backward , but his instinctive patriotism is just as pure and noble as our own; it can not be bought, it can only be curbed ... force majeure." (Righteous Victims, p. 108) Ze'ev Jabotinsky declared: "There is no justice, no law, and no God in heaven, only a single law which decides and supercedes all---- [Jewish] settlement [of the land]." (Righteous Victims, p. 108) According to Ze'ev Jabotinsky, European Jews have little in common with the "Orient": "We Jews have nothing in common with what is called the 'Orient,' thank God. To the extent that our uneducated masses have ancient spiritual traditions and laws that call the Orient, they must be weaned away from them, and this is in fact what we are doing in every decent school, what life itself is doing with great success. We are going in Palestine, first for our national convenience, [second] to sweep out thoroughly all traces of the 'Oriental soul.' As for the [Palestinians] Arabs in Palestine, what they do is their business; but if we can do them a favor, it is to help them liberate themselves from the Orient.'" (One Palestine Complete, p. 151) In 1934 Ze'ev Jabotinsky introduced for his youth movement followers the Betar Oath: "I devote my life to the rebirth of the Jewish State, with a Jewish majority, on both sides of the Jordan." (Israel: A History, p. 76) Ze'ev Jabotinsky stated in a letter to one of his Revisionist colleagues in the United States dated November 1939: "There is no choice: the Arabs must make room for the Jews of Eretz Israel. If it was possible to transfer the Baltic peoples, it is also possible to move the Palestinian Arabs." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 29) And he also stated: "We Jews, thank God, have nothing to do with the East. . . . The Islamic soul must be broomed out of Eretz-Yisrael. . . . [Muslims are] yelling rabble dressed up in gaudy, savage rags." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 29) Just before his death in 1940, Ze'ev Jabotinsky expressed a justification for implementing "population transfer" for the Palestinian Arabs to realize Zionism as the following: "The world has become accustomed to the idea of mass migrations and has become fond of them." He later added, "Hitler--- as odious as he is to us---has given this idea a good name in the world." (One Palestine Complete, p. 407) In the following encounter, Shabtai Teveth (one of Ben-Gurion's official biographers) briefly summarized Ben-Gurion's relations with the Palestinian Arabs, Teveth stated: "Four days after the constituent meeting, on October 8, 1906, the ten members of the platform committee met in an Arab hostel in Ramleh. For THREE DAYS they sat on stools debating, and at night they slept on mats. An Arab boy brought them coffee in small cups. They left the hostel only to grab an occasional bite in the marketplace. On the first evening, they stole three hours to tour the marketplace of Ramleh and the ruins of the nearby fortress. Ben-Gurion remarked only on the buildings, ruins, and scenery. He gave no thought to the [Palestinian] Arabs, their problems, their social conditions, or their cultural life. Nor had he yet acquainted himself with the Jewish community in Palestine [which was mostly non-Zionist Orthodox Jews prior to 1920]. In all of Palestine there were [in 1906] 700,000 inhabitants, only 55,000 of whom were Jews, and only 550 of these were [Zionists] pioneers." (Shabtai Teveth, p. 9-10) The attitude of ignoring and neglecting the Palestinian people was (and still is) the rule among most Zionist leaderships. It is not only that Palestinians were a majority in their homeland as early as 1906 (as it has been highlighted above by Ben-Gurion's biographer), it should also be noted that: Most of Palestine's Jews were not citizens of the Ottoman Empire (they were mostly Tsarist Russian citizens). Palestinian Jews were Orthodox Jews who made 7.8% of the total population. Most Orthodox Jews at the time were non-Zionist Jews, and many were actually anti-Zionist. Zionist Jewish pioneers were almost absent in Palestine, they only numbered 550. As early as 1914, Ben-Gurion admitted secretly that Palestinian nationalism existed, at least among the working mass. Palestinian hatred to Zionism was based of their fear of being dispossessed, Ben-Gurion analyzed this hatred and stated: "this hatred originated with the [Palestinian] Arab workers in Jewish settlements. Like any worker, the [Palestinian] Arab worker detests his taskmaster and exploiter. But because this class conflict overlaps a national difference between farmers and workers, this hatred takes a national form. Indeed, the national overwhelms the class aspect of the conflict in the minds of the [Palestinian] Arab working masses, and inflames an intense hatred toward the Jews." (Shabtai Teveth, p. 18-19) By the turn of the 20th century, Ben-Gurion advocated exclusive Jewish labor (Avodah Ivrit) in Jewish businesses. He justified why a Jewish laborer should earn a higher salary: "[he was] more intelligent and diligent" than the Arab. (Shabtai Teveth, p. 12-13) In 1918 Ben-Gurion described the future Jewish state frontiers as the following: "to the north, the Litani river [in southern Lebanon], to the northeast, the Wadi 'Owja, twenty miles south of Damascus; the southern border will be mobile and pushed into Sinai at least up to Wadi al-'Arish; and to the east, the Syrian Desert, including the furthest edge of Transjordan" (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 87) In an article published by Ben-Gurion in 1918, titled "The Rights of the Jews and others in Palestine," he conferred that the Palestinian Arabs have the same rights as Jews. The Palestinians had such rights as stemmed from history since they had inhabited the land "for hundreds of years", he stated in the article: "Palestine is not an empty country . . . on no account must we injure the rights of the inhabitants." Ben-Gurion often returned to this point, emphasizing that Palestinian Arabs had "the full right" to an independent economic, cultural, and communal life, but not political. (Shabtai Teveth, p. 37-38) But Ben-Gurion set limits. The Palestinian Arabs themselves incapable of developing the country, had no right to stand in the way of the Jews. In 1918, he determined that rights sprang not from the past but from the future, and in 1924 he declared: "We do not recognize the right of the [Palestinian] Arabs to rule the country, since Palestine is still undeveloped and awaits its builders." In 1928 he pronounced that "the [Palestinian] Arabs have no right to close the country to us [Jews]. What right do they have to the Negev desert, which is uninhabited?"; and in 1930, "The [Palestinian] Arabs have no right to the Jordan river, and no right to prevent the construction of a power plant [by Jewish concern]. They have a right only to that which they have created and to their homes." (Shabtai Teveth, p. 38) In other words, Palestinians have no political right, and if they have any, their rights are confined to their places of residence. It is worth noting that Palestinians constituted over 85% of the population in the late 1920s. As Ben-Gurion went to shape the future map of the "Jewish state" soon after WWI ended, he excluded Damascus from this map (although it was part of Biblical "Eretz Yisrael") and limited its northern borders to 20 km south of the Syrian Capital because: "It is unthinkable that the Jewish state, in our day and age, could include the city of Damascus. . . . This is a large Arab city, and one of the four centers of Islam. The Jewish community there is small. The Arabs will never allow Damascus their pride, to come under Jewish control, and there can be no doubt that the English, even were it in their power, would agree to such a thing." (Shabtai Teveth, p. 34) If these are all sound reasons for not bringing Damascus under Jewish control, then what makes Zionist Jews believe that the current situation in occupied East-Jerusalem is different? It should be noted that Damascus was never occupied by the Crusaders, but Muslims and Arabs depleted their resources to cleanse Jerusalem from the Crusades! Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims often wonder where were the Zionist Jews when "Eretz Yisrael" needed them the most during the Christian Crusade genocide! As WWI was winding down, Ben-Gurion clearly stated his objective to make Palestine (including Trans-Jordan) a Jewish majority. He said in November 1917: "Within then the next twenty years, we must have a Jewish majority in Palestine." (Shabtai Teveth, p. 43) From the start, Ben-Gurion wanted to create a segregated society in Palestine in economic, social, and political sections of the society. The segregation of Palestine's society was nurtured to facilitate the future partitioning of the country. In that respect, he stated (in the 1920s) his support for exclusive Hebrew labor: "The assets of the Jewish National Home must be created exclusively through our own work, for only the product of the Hebrew labor can serve as the national estate." (Shabtai Teveth, p. 66) Early on Ben-Gurion envisioned that Zionism would not be in conflict with Palestinian Arab rights, he stated in 1925: "I am unwilling to forego even one percent of Zionism for 'peace'---yet I do not want Zionism to infringe upon even one percent of legitimate Arab rights" (Shabtai Teveth, p. 70) However, as the Nazis rose to power in Europe and the need to save European Jewry become more acute, Ben-Gurion recognized that Zionism cannot be realized without infringing on Palestinian rights. It is worth noting the Palestinians were a 2/3 majority as of 1946, click here for a map illustration. In July 1922, after the Palestinian Arab commercial strike, Ben-Gurion acknowledged privately that a Palestinian nationalism is evolving, he wrote in his diary: "The success of the [Palestinian] Arabs in organizing the closure of shops shows that we are dealing here with a national movement. For the [Palestinian] Arabs, this is an important education step." (Shabtai Teveth, p. 80) and in 1929 he also wrote about the Palestinian political national movement: "It is true that the Arab national movement has no positive content. The leaders of the movement are unconcerned with betterment of the people and provision of their essential needs. They do not aid the fellah; to the contrary, the leaders suck his blood, and exploit the popular awakening for private gain. But we err if we measure the [Palestinian] Arabs and their movement by our standards. Every people is worth of its national movement. The obvious characteristic of a political movement is that it knows how to mobilize the masses. From this prospective there is no doubt that we are facing a political movement, and we should not underestimate it." "A national movement mobilizes masses, and that is the main thing. The [Palestinian] Arab is not one of revival, and its moral value is dubious. But in a political sense, this is a national movement." (Shabtai Teveth, p. 83) When it was proposed that Jews organize an army and seize power in November 1929, Ben-Gurion offered these objections, first, "The world will not permit the Jewish people to seize the state as a spoil, by force." Second the Jewish people did not have the means to do so. And third and most important, it would be immoral, and the Jews of the world would never by this immoral cause. "We would then be unable to awaken the necessary forces for building the country among thousands of young people. We would not be able to secure necessary means from the Jewish people, and the moral and the political sustenance of the enlightened world. . . . Our conscience must be clean . . . and so we must endorse the premise in relation to the [Palestinian] Arabs: The [Palestinian] Arabs have full rights as citizens of the country, but they do not have the right of ownership over it." (Shabtai Teveth, p. 97) Similarly in 1928, Ben-Gurion stated that there is no contradiction between Zionist and Arab aspiration, he stated that Zionism stands for absolute justice for both parties: "our sense of morality forbids us to deny the right of a single [Palestinian] Arab child, even though by such denial we might attain all that we seek." (Shabtai Teveth, p. 159) It is not only that Ben-Gurion was 100% wrong with his assessment in 1928-1929, also: The world permitted the "Jewish state" to occupy and seize by force spoils of war. After the Holocaust, most Jews (along with the whole Western World) supported the "Jewish state" regardless if it was moral or immoral. Such support was mostly successful because of an effective and controlled propaganda campaign at the grassroots level. As of 1929, Palestinians owned over 96% of Palestine, and as of 1946 they owned 97% of the country, click here for a map illustration. The mass majority of the Palestinian children (if not all) were denied their basic human rights, so Zionism could "attain all that it seeks." However, as the sword was to be hanging on top of German and Polish Jews, Ben-Gurion shelved the goal of achieving peace with Palestinians at the expense of increasing Jewish immigration, which provoked Palestinians to launch their first Intifada between 1936-1939, see the few quotes below for more details. No question of the fact that Ben-Gurion did not intend on dispossessing and ethnically cleansing the Palestinian people as of 1928-1929, but when the survival of the European Jewry was being questioned (especially after the rise of Nazi Germany in 1933), Ben-Gurion looked at the matter as life or death for Zionism (and maybe for the Jewish people too). For example, he stated in the early 1930's: "If Zionism returns to be what it was ten or fifteen years ago--with Jews entering the country one by one-- then the issue of Palestine is liable to be dropped from the Jewish people's agenda. The Jews of Germany must be gotten out of there, and if it's impossible to bring them to Palestine, then they will go somewhere less, and Palestine will become the hobby of enthusiasts." "If Zionism over the coming years does not provide an answer to the calamity which has befallen the Jewish people, then it will disappear from the Jewish stage." (Shabtai Teveth, p. 154) The concept of "Jewish Majority" in Palestine is central for the realization Zionism. This point was eloquently articulated by Ben-Gurion who stated in 1929: "A Jewish majority is not Zionism's last station, but it is a very important station on the route to Zionism's political triumph. It will give our security and presence a sound foundation, and allow us to concentrate masses of Jews in this country and the region." (Shabtai Teveth, p. 103) To have a sense of how Ben-Gurion transformed his views, look up Ben-Gurion's quotes that are dated 1936 and after. In 1933, after Hitler rose to power, Ben-Gurion predicted a world war. Such a war would threaten not only the Jews of Europe, but the Yishuv (Palestinian Jews) too. The sense of responsibility that he now felt loosened his tongue, and he began to say things in public that he had kept to himself in the past. He no longer offered convoluted explanations for the Palestinian Arab resistance against Jews and British occupation, he stated in 1938: "Almost every [Palestinian] Arab" opposed Zionism, "because he is an Arab, because he is a Muslim, because he dislikes foreigners, and because we are hateful to him in every way." The conflict had lasted thirty years, and was liable "to continue for perhaps hundreds more." This was a "real war, a war of life or death."( Shabtai Teveth, p. 184) As immigration of European Jewry to Palestine increased between 1931-1935 (which doubled Palestine's Jewish population), Chancellor Judah Leon Magnes (the president of the Hebrew University who favored a bi-national state where Palestinians and Jews live with equal rights) asked Ben-Gurion to make concessions to Palestinians over Jewish immigration by 1935, Ben-Gurion explicitly told Magnes this: "The difference between me and you is that you are ready to sacrifice immigration for peace, while I am not, though peace is dear to me. And even if I was prepared to make concession, the Jews of Poland and Germany would not be, because they have no other option. For them immigration comes before peace." Ben-Gurion left no doubt that he identified, heart and soul, with this ordering of priorities." (Shabtai Teveth, p. 159) And in 1937, Ben-Gurion emphasized that the quest for Zionism should seek peace with the Palestinians ONLY as means to realize Zionism, not an ultimate goal. He stated: "We do not seek an agreement with the [Palestinian] Arabs in order to secure the peace. Of course we regard peace as an essential thing. It is impossible to build up the country in a state of permanent warfare. But peace for us is a means, and not an end. The end is the fulfillment of Zionism in its maximum scope. Only for this reason do we need peace, and do we need an agreement." (Shabtai Teveth, p. 168) In the early 1930's, Ben-Gurion finally admitted the mistake of trying to bribe or buy the Palestinian national movement, rather than working with it, he stated in a Mapai forum: "We have erred for ten years now . . . the crux is not cooperation with the English, but with the [Palestinian] Arabs." By this he meant not merely a relationship of friendship and mutual aid, but political cooperation, which he called the "cornerstone" of the "Arab-Jewish-English rule in Palestine. Let's not deceive ourselves and think that when we approach the [Palestinian] Arabs and tell them 'We'll build schools and better your economic conditions,' that we have succeeded. Let's not think that the [Palestinian] Arabs by nature are different from us." In the heat of the argument, Ben-Gurion said to one of his critics and asked: "Do you think that, by extending economic favors to the [Palestinian] Arabs, you can make them forget their political rights in Palestine?" Did Mapai believe that by aiding the Palestinian Arabs to secure decent housing and grow bumper crops they could persuade the Palestinian Arabs to regard themselves "as complete strangers in the land which is theirs?" (Shabtai Teveth, p. 114) As the number of Palestinian Jews (Yishuv) was doubled between 1931-1935, Palestinians became threatened of being dispossessed and for Jews to become their masters. The Palestinian political movement was becoming more vocal and organized, which surprised Ben-Gurion. In his opinion, the demonstrations represented a "turning point" important enough to warrant Zionist concern. As he told Mapai comrades: ". . . they [referring to Palestinians] showed new power and remarkable discipline. Many of them were killed . . . this time not murderers and rioters, but political demonstrators. Despite the tremendous unrest, the order not to harm Jews was obeyed. This shows exceptional political discipline. There is no doubt that these events will leave a profound imprint on the [Palestinian] Arab movement. This time we have seen a political movement which must evoke respect of the world. (Shabtai Teveth, p. 126) When Ben-Gurion heard of the Passfield White Paper in 1931 (which proposed stopping the implementation of Balfour Declaration), he was furious with "these cowardly traitors" who were responsible for the new policy, he stated: "England is a great power, the greatest empire. But to shatter even the largest stones on earth, it takes only a small quantity of explosive powder. Such powder packs tremendous force. If the creative force within us is capable of stopping this EVIL EMPIRE, then the explosive force will ignite, and we will topple this blood-stained imperium. . . . We will be those who take this war upon ourselves and beware thee, British Empire!" (Shabtai Teveth, p. 111) Ben-Gurion called on his colleagues to "prepare for a long and difficult road, if we are left with no alternatives, a road of alliance with the Arabs against these despicable powers." (Shabtai Teveth, p. 112) Although the British Government nullified the Passfield White Paper, and the alliance between both parties continued until late 1945, Ben-Gurion (who commanded the Haganah), Shamir (who commanded the Stern Gang), and Menachem Begin (who commanded the Irgun gang) all joined forces to wage a war of terror against the British and the Palestinian people between 1945-1947. Similarly we predict, when Israel's alliance with the United States outlives its usefulness (especially after Americans recognize that the policy of supporting Israel right or wrong is not in their national or security interests), then and only then Americans will come face to face with a tyrant whom they have armed, harbored, trained for decades. Now Israel has the A-Bomb which is capable of landing one on America's shorelines! Time will tell if this "holy alliance" will last and won't collide with America's strategic national interests! On July 29, 1937, Ben-Gurion stated to the World Convention of Ihud Po'alei Tzion in Zurich that Maronite ruled Lebanon will server the Christian minority better if it allied itself with the future "Jewish state." He said: "Having Lebanon as a neighbor ensures the Jewish state faithful ally from the first day of its establishment. It is not, also, unavoidable that across the northern side of the Jewish state border in southern Lebanon the first possibility of our expansion will come up through agreement , in good will, with our neighbors who need us." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 88) A few months before the peace conference convened at Versailles in early 1919, Ben-Gurion expressed his opinion of the future Jewish and Arab relations: "Everybody sees the problem in the relations between the Jews and the [Palestinian] Arabs. But not everybody sees that there's no solution to it. There is no solution! . . . The conflict between the interests of the Jews and the interests of the [Palestinian] Arabs in Palestine cannot be resolved by sophisms. I don't know any Arabs who would agree to Palestine being ours---even if we learn Arabic . . .and I have no need to learn Arabic. On the other hand, I don't see why 'Mustafa' should learn Hebrew. . . . There's a national question here. We want the country to be ours. The Arabs want the country to be theirs." (One Palestine Complete, p. 116) Ben-Gurion advocated exclusive Hebrew labor from the start, he stated in the early 1920s: "Without Hebrew labor there is no way to absorb the Jewish masses. Without Hebrew labor, there will be no Jewish economy; without Hebrew labor, there will be no [Jewish] homeland. And anyone who does anything counter to the principle of Hebrew labor harms the most precious asset we have for fulfilling Zionism." (One Palestine Complete, p. 288) In the backdrop of the 1929 disturbance, Ben Gurion spoke of the emerging Palestinian nationalism and the main goal of Zionism (Palestine becoming a Jewish majority) to the secretariat of the major Zionist groupings. he said: "The debate as to whether or not an Arab national movement exists is pointless verbal exercise; the main thing for us is that the movement attracts the masses. We do not regard it as a resurgence movement and its moral worth is dubious. But politically speaking it is a national movement . . . . The Arab must not and cannot be a Zionist. He could never wish the Jews to become a majority. This is the true antagonism between us and the Arabs. We both want to be the majority." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 18) Since Palestinian Jews (Yishuv) could not become a majority in Palestine as of 1948 (click here for demographic map), the Zionist leaders resorted to compulsory population transfer to solve the demographic problem in the newly emerging Jewish state. To hide their basics goals and intentions, they have concocted a myth that Palestinians left their homes, plantations, and business based on the orders of their leaders, click here to read our response to this argument. Ben-Gurion had a strange way of justifying why Jews have the right to settle in Palestine. In his mind, the right of the Jews to the land rested on their capacity for developing it. In 1930, he declared: "We do not recognize any form of absolute ownership over any country. Any group of diligent persons, every industrious people, is entitled to enjoy the fruits of labor, and do with its talents as it pleases. it has no right to prevent others from doing the same, or to close the doors leading to nature's gifts in the faces of others. The five million inhabitants of Australia have no right to close the gates of their continent--which they alone cannot fully exploit-- and so exclude the masses of desperate people seeking a new place to work. This is the principle behind the right of free migration, championed by international socialism." (Shabtai Teveth, p. 37) If such an argument is sound for Jews to immigrate and settle in Palestine, against the wishes of the indigenous population, why isn't it a good reason for Germans, Italians, and Palestinian refugees to immigrate and settle in Israel? It is worth noting that over 85% of Israelis live in under 14% of the land where Israel has the highest ratio of urban dwellers in the world, click here to read how Israelis "made" the desert bloom! On May 27, 1931, Ben-Gurion recognized that the "Arab question" is a "tragic question of fate" that arose only as a consequence of Zionism, and so was a "question of Zionist fulfillment in the light of Arab reality." In other words, this was a Zionist rather than an Arab question, posed to Zionists who were perplexed about how they could fulfill their aspirations in a land already inhabited by a Palestinian Arab majority. (Shabtai Teveth, p. xii, Preface) As early as January 1930, Ben-Gurion had set down the principle that: "Zionism policy must be in agreement with the English and the [Palestinian] Arabs. . . [However,] without an agreement with the English, there is no point in talking about an agreement with the [Palestinian] Arabs, as long as we are not a majority." (Shabtai Teveth, p. 126) To bring maximum number of Jew to Palestine's shores, (as of 1931) Ben-Gurion was prepared to "sup with the devil," so he hardly would have shunned a tactic of dissimulation for moral reasons. (Shabtai Teveth, p. xiii, Preface) In a book Ben-Gurion published in 1931 (titled: We and Our Neighbors), he admitted that Palestinian Arabs has the same rights as Jews to exist in Palestine, he stated: "The Arab community in Palestine is an organic, inseparable part of the landscape. It is embedded in the country. The [Palestinian] Arabs work the land, and will remain." Ben-Gurion even held that the Palestinian Arabs had full rights in Palestine, "since the only right by which a people can claim to possess a land indefinitely is the right conferred by willingness to work." They had the same opportunity to establish that right as the Zionists did. (Shabtai Teveth, p. 5-6) In 1936 Ben Gurion advocated exclusive Jewish labour in Jewish run enterprises, he said: "If we want Hebrew redemption 100%, then we must have 100% Hebrew settlement, a 100% Hebrew farm, and 100% Hebrew port." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 24) Ben-Gurion was impressed with the heroism of Izz al-Din al-Kassam in the mid 1930s, and predicted this his example would have far-reaching effects on the Palestinian national movement. He stated two weeks after Kassam's fateful battle nearby Ya'bad-Jinin "This is the event's importance. We would have educated our youth without Tel-Hai [an encounter with Palestinians in the Galilee in the early 1920s], because we have other important values, but the [Palestinian] Arab organizers have had less to work with. The [Palestinian] Arabs have no respect for any leader. They know that every single one is prepared to sell out the Arab people for his personal gain, and so the Arabs have no self-esteem. Now, for the first time, the [Palestinian] Arabs have seen someone offer his life for the cause. This will give the [Palestinian] Arabs the moral strength which they lack." Ben-Gurion also stressed that "this is not Nashashibi and not the Mufti. This is not the motivation out of career or greed. In Shaykh Qassam, we have a fanatic figure prepared to sacrifice his life in martyrdom. Now there are not one but dozens, hundreds, if not thousands like him. And the Arab people stand behind them." (Shabtai Teveth, p. 126) During the early stages of the first Intifada, which started in 1936, Ben-Gurion paradoxically expressed his feelings toward Palestinian Arabs: "I never felt hatred of the Arabs and none of their actions ever awakened vengeful emotions in me." On the other hand, he felt that Jaffa should be defaced: "The destruction of Jaffa, the city and the port, will happen and it will be for the best. This city, which grew fat on Jewish immigration and settlement, is asking for destruction when it swings a hatchet over the heads of its builders and benefactors. When Jaffa falls into hell I will not be among the mourners." (One Palestine Complete, p. 383) On April 16, 1936, Ben-Gurion informed Mapai party that he had reached the following conclusion about the Jewish-Palestinian relations: ". . . . there is no chance for an understanding with the [Palestinian] Arabs unless we first reach an understanding with the British, by which we will come a preponderant force in Palestine. What can drive the [Palestinian] Arabs to a mutual understanding with us? . . . Facts [meaning achieving Jewish majority through immigration and increased military strength] Only after we manage to establish a great Jewish fact in this country . . . only then will the precondition for discussion with the [Palestinian] Arabs be met." (Shabtai Teveth, p. 155) As Ben-Gurion met George Antonius in the mid-1930s (one of the few Palestinians that Ben-Gurion had contacts with, who was an advisor to al-Mufti al-Hajj Amin al-Husseini), he suggested that Arabs should help the Zionist Jews to expand the borders of their future sovereign "Jewish state" to include areas (inclusive of the Western Jordan) under French Mandate, such as southern Lebanon and the Golan Heights. Sarcastically, Mr. Antonius answered: "So, you propose that what England did not give you [according to the Balfour Declaration), you will get from us." (Shabtai Teveth, p. 162) According to Ben-Gurion, Antonius had complained about Zionists who "want to bring to Palestine the largest number of Jews possible, without taking [Palestinian] Arabs into consideration at all. With this type," said Antonius, "it is impossible to come to an understanding. They want a 100% Jewish state, and the Arabs will remain in their shadow." By the end of their talk, Antonius could, with reason, conclude that Ben-Gurion belonged precisely to this category of Zionists. (Shabtai Teveth, p. 163) According to Ben-Gurion, Palestine was a "matter of life and death" for the Jews. "Even pogroms in Germany or Poland, and in Palestine, we prefer the pogroms here." (Shabtai Teveth, p. 163) After Ben-Gurion's talk with George Antonius in May 1936, he was willing to concede the existence of a conflict, between the Palestinian Arabs and Jewish nationalism, for the first time in public. He stated: "There is a conflict, a great conflict." not in the economic but the political realm. "There is fundamental conflict. We and they want the same thing: We both want Palestine. And that is the fundamental conflict." (Shabtai Teveth, p. 166) "I now say something which contradicts the theory which I once had on this question. At one time, I thought an agreement [with Palestinians] was possible." Ben-Gurion attached some reservation to this statement. A settlement might be possible between both peoples in the widest sense, between the entire "Jewish people" and the entire Arab people. But such an agreement could be achieved "once they despair of preventing a Jewish Palestine." (Shabtai Teveth, p. 171) It is worth noting that this statement signaled a shift in Ben-Gurion's mind set, which is in a complete agreement with Ze'ev Jabotinsky's IRON WALL theory. When Jabotinsky came out with his famous theory in the early 1920s, Ben-Gurion discounted it as being "immoral", if not out right racist. But in the early 1930s, Ben-Gurion recognized that for Zionism to be realized it has to rely on the IRON WALL theory, in his opinion that was a "life or death" matter. Over no issue was the conflict so severe as the question of immigration: "Arab leaders see no value in the economic dimension of the country's development, and while they will concede that our immigration has brought material blessing to Palestine [where exclusive Hebrew labor was always promoted], they nevertheless contend---and from the [Palestinian] Arab point of view, they are right-- that they want neither the honey nor the bee sting." (Shabtai Teveth, p. 166) As the first Intifada erupted in 1936, many Zionists complained that the British Mandate was not doing enough to stop Palestinian resistance (which often described as "terror"), in that regard Ben-Gurion argued that: "no government in the world can prevent individual terror. . . when a people is fighting for its land, it is not easy to prevent such acts." Nor did he criticize the British display of leniency: "I see why the government feels the need to show leniency towards the [Palestinian] Arabs . . . it is not easy to suppress a popular movement strictly by the use of force." (Shabtai Teveth, p. 166) Ben-Gurion also empathized with the Palestinian Arabs during the first Intifada, he stated in a letter to Moshe Sharett in 1937: "Were I an Arab, and Arab with nationalist political consciousness . . . I would rise up against an immigration liable in the future to hand the country and all of its [Palestinian] Arab inhabitants over to Jewish rule. What [Palestinian] Arab cannot do his math and understand what [Jewish] immigration at the rate of 60,000 a year means a Jewish state in all of Palestine." (Shabtai Teveth, p. 166-167) In February 1937, Ben-Gurion was on the BRINK of a far reaching conclusion, that the Arabs of Palestine were a separate people, distinct from other Arabs and deserving of self-determination. He stated: "The right which the Arabs in Palestine have is one due to the inhabitants of any country . . . because they live here, and not because they are Arabs . . . The Arab inhabitants of Palestine should enjoy all the rights of citizens and all political rights, not only as individuals, but as a national community, just like the Jews." (Shabtai Teveth, p. 170) Soon after the outbreak of the first Intifada in 1936, Ben-Gurion stated in a meeting with his Mapai party: " .... the [Palestinian Arabs] fear is not of losing land, but of losing the homeland of the Arab people, which others want to turn into the homeland of the Jewish people. The [Palestinian] Arab is fighting a war that cannot be ignored. He goes out on strike, he is killed, he makes great sacrifices." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 18) "There is no conflict between Jewish and Arab nationalism because the Jewish nation is not in Palestine and the Palestinians are not a nation." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 19) During the tour which the Peel Commission did in Palestine in 1937, Ben Gurion told the commission that the Bible was the Jewish people's "Mandate." (One Palestine Complete, p. 401) On July 12, 1937 David Ben-Gurion wrote in his diary commenting on the partition plan proposed by the British Peel Commission: "The compulsory transfer of the [Palestinian] Arabs from the valleys of the

proposed Jewish state could give us something which we never had, even when we stood on our own during the days of the first and second Temples. . . We are given an opportunity which we never dared to dream of in our wildest imaginings. This is MORE than a state, government and sovereignty----this is national consolidation in a free homeland." (Righteous Victims, p. 142) and in August 7, 1937 he also stated to the Zionist Assembly during their debate of the Peel Commission: ". . . In many parts of the country new settlement will not be possible without transferring the [Palestinian] Arab fellahin. . . it is important that this plan comes from the [British Peel] Commission and not from us. . . . Jewish power, which grows steadily, will also increase our possibilities to carry out the transfer on a large scale. You must remember, that this system embodies an important humane and Zionist idea, to transfer parts of a people to their country and to settle empty lands. We believe that this action will also bring us closer to an agreement with the Arabs." (Righteous Victims, p. 143) In 1937 David Ben-Gurion wrote about the compulsory population transfer, or ethnic cleansing, proposed by the Peel Commission: "With compulsory transfer we [would] have a vast area [for settlement] .... I support compulsory transfer. I don't see anything immoral in it." (Righteous Victims, p. 144) and on the same subject, he also stated in 1938: "With compulsory transfer we [would] have vast areas .... I support compulsory [population] transfer. I do not see anything immoral in it. But compulsory transfer could only be carried out by England .... Had its implementation been dependent merely on our proposal I would have proposed; but this would be dangerous to propose when the British government has disassociated itself from compulsory transfer. .... But this question should not be removed from the agenda because it is central question. There are two issues here : 1) sovereignty and 2) the removal of a certain number of Arabs, and we must insist on both of them." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, 117) In August 1937, the 20th Zionist Congress rejected the Peel Commission proposed partition plan, since the area allotted to the "Jewish state" was smaller than expected. However, the concept of partitioning Palestine into two states was accepted as a launching pad for future expansions and to have unfettered Jewish immigrations. In September 1938, Ben-Gurion explained why he advocated partitioning the country NOW: "The ONLY reason that we agreed to discuss the [Peel commission proposed] partition plan," Ben-Gurion wrote Moshe Sharett, "is mass immigration. Not in the future, and not according to abstract formula, but large immigration now." (Shabtai Teveth, p. 184) and in October 1938, he wrote to his children that : "I don't regard a state in part of Palestine as the final aim of Zionism, but as a mean toward that aim." (Shabtai Teveth, p. 188) and in September 1937, he stated to a group of American Jewish labour leaders in New York: "the borders [of the Jewish state] will not be fixed for eternity." (Shabtai Teveth, p. 188) similarly, he also stated to his son Amos in October 1937 that a "Jewish state" in part of Palestine was: "not the end, but only the beginning." Its establishment would give a "powerful boost to our historic efforts to redeem the country in its entirety." For the "Jewish state" would have "outstanding army-- I have no doubt that our army will be among the world's outstanding--and so I am certain that we won't be constrained from settling in the rest of the country, either by mutual agreement and understanding with our Arab neighbors, or by some other way. . . . . I still believe . . . . that after we become numerous and strong, the Arabs will understand that it is best for them to strike an alliance with us, and to benefit from our help, providing they allow us by their good will to settle in all parts of Palestine." (Shabtai Teveth, p. 188) regarding settling the Negev desert which was allotted to the Palestinian state according to the Peel Commission, Ben-Gurion stated: "It is very possible that in exchange for our financial, military, organizational and scientific assistance, the [Palestinian] Arabs will agree that we develop and build the Negev [which as of 2002, the Negev is still mostly populated by Palestinian-Israeli citizens]. It is also possible that they won't agree. No people always behaves according to logic, common sense, and best interests." If the Palestinian Arabs "act according to sterile nationalist emotion," and reject the idea of Jewish settlement, preferring that the Negev remain barren, then the Jewish army would act. "Because we cannot stand to see large areas of unsettled land capable of absorbing thousands of Jews remain empty, or to see Jews not return to their country because the [Palestinian] Arabs say that there is not enough room for them and us." (Shabtai Teveth, p. 188-189) It is worth noting that the Negev is still a barren desert, and under populated by Israeli Jews. During a lecture in Tel-Aviv in front of Mapai activists in 1938, Ben-Gurion divided the realization of the "historic aim of the Jewish state" into two stages. The first stage, which would last ten to fifteen years, he called "the period of building and laying foundations." This would prepare the state for the second stage, "the period of expansion." The goal of both stages was the "gathering of the exiles in all of Palestine." And so "from the moment the state is established, it must calculate its actions with an eye toward this distant goal." Despite of all the Zionist expansionist policies, the mass majority of Zionists and Jews (under the influence of effective propaganda campaigns) wonder why Palestinians rejected the UN proposed partition plan in 1947? Click here for a detailed response. Prior to the 1930s, Ben-Gurion had once viewed Zionism as absolutely just; now necessity (represented by the rise of Nazis in Germany) demanded that he lower his moral sights. In April 1936, Ben-Gurion concluded that no people on earth determined its relations with other peoples by abstract moral calculations of justice: "There is only one thing that everyone accepts, Arabs and non-Arabs alike: facts." The Arabs would not make peace with the Jews "out of sentiment for justice," but because such a peace at some point would become worthwhile and advantageous. A Jewish state would encourage peace, because with it the Jew would "become a force, and the Arabs respect force." Ben-Gurion explained to the Mapai party "these days it is not right but might which prevails. It is more important to have force than justice on one's side." In a period of "power politics , the powers that become hard of hearing, and respond only to the roar of cannons. And the Jews in the Diaspora have no cannons." In order to survive in this evil world, the Jewish people needed cannons more than justice. (Shabtai Teveth, p. 191) This racist and belligerent remark, about Arabs being respectful of force, became a cancer that infected all sectors of the Israeli society. Sadly, many Arabs respond to this form of racism with their version of racism that "Israelis respect the language of force too," especially after Israel's debacle in Lebanon, click here to read more on this subject. The tragedy of the European Jewry did eventually strengthen the Yishuv (Palestinian Jewish community prior to 1948), in an unexpected way. In August 1937, Ben-Gurion already noted that: "Jewish suffering is also a political factor, and whoever says that Hitler diminished our strength, is not telling the truth." In one of history's crueler ironies, those words proved prophetic. Millions of Jews did not storm the beaches of Palestine, for they could not rise from ashes of the death camps. But the Holocaust--they zenith of Jewish agony-- became the same "political force" of which Ben-Gurion spoke before he even imagined the systematic destruction of European Jewry. After the war, the Holocaust was a powerfully influential factor in turning world public in Zionism's favor, and was the decisive factor in defeating the policy of the British 1939 White Paper (which called for a united bi-national Palestinian state no later than 1949 and the cessation of Jewish immigration). Guilt, sorrow, and remorse---what might be called the collective conscience of humanity--led many nations (referring to 1947 UN proposed partition plan) finally to grant survivors, that which might have saved the many victims: a "Jewish state." (Shabtai Teveth, p. 196) These comments by Ben-Gurion and his biographer (Shabtai Teveth) are a powerful reminder to the Christian West that Palestinians have been crossed for their sins. As the Gestapo slaughtered European Jews, their fellow Christian European neighbors watched (if not pointed also their Jewish friends too) as their Jewish citizens were being burned and gassed to death. This collective sense of guilt has blinded the West from the collective dispossession and ethnic cleansing of what is now 8.5 million Palestinians. From Palestinians point of view, the West has created two problems if not more, one was the destruction of most of European Jewry, the other is the collective ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. They have pitted two people to a constant state of war for generations to come, which may result in bloodshed on a huge scale, God forbid! In December 1938 Ben-Gurion remarked (a month after the Nazis' pogrom against Germany's Jews, know as Kristallnacht, but two years before the start of the Holocaust): "If I knew it was possible to save all [Jewish] children of Germany by their transfer to England and only half of them by transferring them to Eretz-Yisrael, I would choose the latter----because we are faced not only with the accounting of these [Jewish] children but also with the historical accounting of the Jewish People." (Righteous Victims, p. 162) During the first Intifada, which started in 1936, Ben Gurion devised a scheme to increase Jewish immigration to Palestine. He proposed that the Jewish Agency would receive 1,000 additional immigration permits for every Jew killed by Palestinians. He calculated that such a scheme would be much more efficient than troops deployment and collective punishment, such as house demolition. He thought this was a "fantastic idea" and laid out its advantages as the following: "There is no more convenient and effective means of tying the terrorists hands. It is easier than maintaining ten battalions and demolishing houses and pursuing gangs in the mountains. This method will work automatically." Moshe Sharett passed the idea on to the Wauchope; the high British Commission in Palestine who said politely that he would think about it. (One Palestine Complete, p. 426) And in December 1942, he also commented on the Holocaust: "The catastrophe of European Jewry is not, in a direct manner, my businesses. . . . The destruction of the European Jewry is the death-knell of Zionism." (Righteous Victims, p. 162-163) In 1936, Ben Gurion declared in a meeting of the Mapai central Committee that the solution to the "Arab Problem" would be ultimately solved by military solution: ".... there is no chance of an understanding with the Arabs unless we first reach an understanding with the English, by which we will become a preponderant force in Palestine. What can drive the Arabs to mutual understanding with us? .... Facts.... only after we manage to establish a great Jewish fact in the country.... only then will the precondition for discussion with the Arabs be met." (XXXX) In 1937 Ben-Gurion predicted a decisive war in which the Palestinians would not be left to fight on their own: "It is very possible that the Arabs of the neighboring countries will come to their aid against us. But our strength will exceed theirs. Not only because we will be better organized and equipped , but because behind us there stands a still larger force, superior in quality and quantity .... the whole younger generation [ from Europe and America]". (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 66) In 1938, Ben Gurion made it clear of his support for establishment of the Jewish state in part of Palestine only as an intermediary stage, he wrote: "[I am] satisfied with part of the country, but on the basis of the assumption that after we build up a strong force following the establishment of the state--we will abolish the partition of the country and we will expand to the whole Land of Israel." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 107, One Palestine Complete, p. 403) He also stated that Arabs would come to terms with Zionism only when faced with a fait accompli: "This is only a stage in the realization of Zionism and it should prepare the ground for our expansion throughout the whole country through Jewish-Arab agreement .... the state, however, must enforce order and security and it will do this not by mobilizing and preaching 'sermons on the mount' but by the machine-guns, which we will need." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 108) On 30 July 1937 Yosef Bankover, a founding member and leader of Kibbutz Hameuhad movement and a member of the Haganah regional command of the coastal and central districts, said that : "Ben-Gurion said yesterday that he was prepared to accept the [Peel partition] proposal of the Royal commission but on two conditions: [Jewish] sovereignty and compulsory transfer ..... As for the compulsory transfer-- as a member of Kibbutz Ramat Hakovsh [founded in 1932 in central Palestine] I would be very pleased if it would be possible to be rid of the pleasant neighborliness of the people of Miski, Tirah, and Qalqilyah." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 70) Ben-Gurion eloquently articulated the fundamental goals of Zionism to Auni Abdul Hadi, a prominent Palestinian politician before 1948, as the following: "Our ultimate goal is the independence of the Jewish people in Palestine, on both sides of the Jordan, not as a minority but as a community of several million. In my opinion, it is possible to create over a period of forty years, if Transjordan was included, a community of four million Jews in addition to an Arab community of two million." (Israel: A History, p. 74) and he also added: "we did not wish the [Palestinian] Arabs to 'sacrifice' Palestine. The Palestinian Arabs would not be sacrificed so that Zionism be realized. According to our conception of Zionism, we were neither desirous nor capable of building our future in Palestine at the expense of the [Palestinian] Arab." (Israel: A History, p. 75) Soon after the outbreak of the first Intifada in 1936, Ben-Gurion articulated the Palestinians fears when he wrote: "The Arabs fear of our power is intensifying, [Palestinians] see exactly the opposite of what we see. It doesn't matter whether or not their view is correct.... They see [Jewish] immigration on a giant scale .... they see the Jews fortify themselves economically .. They see the best lands passing our hands. They see England identify with Zionism. ..... [Arabs are] fighting dispossession ... The fear is not of losing land, but of losing the homeland of the Arab people, which others want to turn it into the homeland of the Jewish people. There is a fundamental conflict. We and they want the same thing: We both want Palestine ..... By our very presence and progress here, [we] have matured the [Arab] movement." (Righteous Victims, p. 136) In a letter David Ben-Gurion sent to his son in 1937, he wrote of the partition proposed by the Peel Commission: "No Zionist can forgo the smallest portion of the Land Of Israel. [A] Jewish state in part [of Palestine] is not an end, but a beginning ..... Our possession is important not only for itself ... through this we increase our power, and every increase in power facilitates getting hold of the country in its entirety. Establishing a [small] state .... will serve as a very potent lever in our historical effort to redeem the whole country." (Righteous Victims, p. 138) And regarding the Peel Commission, on June 9, 1937 he also stated: "In my opinion we must insist on the Peel Commission proposal, which sees in the transfer the only solution to this problem. And I have now to say that it is worthwhile that the Jewish people should bear GREATEST material sacrifices in order to ensure the success of transfer." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 70) And regarding the Peel Commission, on July 12, 1937 he wrote in his diary: "the compulsory transfer of the [Palestinian] Arabs from the valleys of the projected Jewish state . . . . we have to stick to this conclusion the same way we grabbed at the Zionism itself." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 70) In 1937 David Ben-Gurion commented on the compulsory population transfer proposed by the British Peel Commission, he wrote: ".... because we will not be able to countenance large uninhabited areas absorb tens of thousands of Jews remaining empty .... And if we have to use force we shall use it without hesitation -- but only if we have no choice. We do not want and do not need to expel Arabs and take their places. Our whole desire is based on the assumption --- which has been collaborated in the course of all our activity in the country -- that there is enough room for us and the Arabs in the country and that if we have to use force - not in order to dispossess the Arabs from the Negev or Transjordan but in order to assure ourselves of the right, which is our due to settle there- then we have the force." (Righteous Victims, p. 142) Ben-Gurion explained how the Palestinian Arab citizens of the Jewish state might be treated: As Ben-Gurion explained, the advantage of the [Palestinian] Arabs having Arab citizenship was that in the event of hostilities, their legal status would be that of resident aliens, and they therefore "could be expelled" from the Jewish state for potential disloyalty. With Israeli citizenship, on the other hand, "it would only be possible to imprison them, and it would be better to expel them than to imprison them." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 176) Soon before the British announced the 1939 White Paper, Ben Gurion believed that the Zionist interests would be best served if the Palestinian Arabs were represented by al-Hajj Amin's men: "It will be much easier for us to counter their claim," he explained. "We can say that they stand for terrorism and represent only small part of the Arab population. A broad delegation [to London] including 'moderates' [such Nashashibi's Istiqlal party] will display the Arab public's general resistance to the Jews." (One Palestine Complete, p. 437) In May 1944 (during a closed deliberation) Ben-Gurion continued to express without restrain his conviction that Arab transfer was inherent in the very conception of Zionism, he said: "Zionism is a TRANSFER of the JEWS. Regarding the TRANSFER of the [Palestinian] Arabs this is much easier than any other TRANSFER. There are Arab states in the vicinity . . . . and it is clear that if the [Palestinian] Arabs are removed [to these states] this will improve their condition and not the contrary." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 159) Ben Gurion wrote twenty years after the 20th Zionists Congress rejected the Peel Commission partition plan: "Had partition been carried out, the history of our people would have been different and six million Jews in Europe would not have been killed---most of them would be in Israel" (One Palestine Complete, p. 414). In 1941 Ben-Gurion expressed his opinion on the "Arab Question" in Eretz Yisrael, he wrote: "We have to examine, first, if this transfer is practical, and secondly, if it is necessary. It is impossible to imagine general evacuation without compulsion, and brutal compulsion, There are of course sections of the non-Jewish population of the Land of Israel which will not resist transfer under adequate conditions to certain neighboring countries, such as the Druze, a number of Bedouin tribes in the Jordan Valley and the south, the Circassians and perhaps even the Metwalis [the Sh'ite of the Galilee]. But it would be very difficult to bring about resettlement of other sections of the [Palestinian] Arab populations such as the fellahin and the urban populations in neighboring Arab countries by transferring them voluntarily, whatever economic inducements are offered to them." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians. 129) And he also added "The possibility of large-scale transfer of a population by force was demonstrated, when the Greeks and the Turks were transferred [after WW I]. In the present war [referring to WW II] the idea of transferring a population is gaining more sympathy as a practical and the most secure means of solving the dangerous and painful problem of national minorities. The war has already brought the resettlement of many people eastern and southern Europe, and in the plans for the postwar settlements the idea of a large-scale population transfer in central, eastern, and southern Europe increasingly occupies a respectable place." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians. 129) On December 19, 1947, Ben Gurion advised the Haganah on rules of engagement with the Palestinian population: "we adopt the system of aggressive defense ; with every Arab attack we must respond with a decisive blow: the destruction of the place or the expulsion of the residents along with the seizure of the place." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 176-177 and Israel: A History, p. 156) Ben-Gurion wrote in his dairy on November 30, 1947 after the UN's vote to partition Palestine into two states: "In my heart, there was joy mixed with sadness: joy that the nations at last acknowledged that we are a nation with a state, and sadness that we lost half of the country, Judea and Samaria, and , in addition, that we [would] have [in our state] 400,000 [Palestinian] Arabs." (Righteous Victims, p. 190) According to Sefer Toldot Ha-Haganah, the official history of the Haganah: "[Palestinian Arab] villages inside the Jewish state that resist 'should be destroyed .... and their inhabitants expelled beyond the borders of the Jewish state.' Meanwhile, 'Palestinian residents of the urban quarters which dominate access to or egress from towns should be expelled beyond the borders of the Jewish state in the event of their resistance.' " (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 178) In 1938, Ben-Gurion stated against the backdrop of the first Intifada: "When we say that the Arabs are the aggressors and we defend ourselves ---- that is only half the truth. As regards our security and life we defend ourselves. . . . But the fighting is only one aspect of the conflict, which is in its essence a political one. And politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves." (Righteous Victims, p. 652) In 1936, Ben-Gurion stated against the backdrop of the first Intifada: "The first and principal lesson of these disturbances. . . is that we must free ourselves from all economic dependence on the Arabs. . . We must not find ourselves in situation where our enemies are in a position to starve us, to block our access to the sea, to deny us gravel and stones for construction." (Righteous Victims, p. 130) Speaking of the fate of European Jewry to the UN Special Committee On Palestine (UNSCO) in 1947, Ben-Gurion noted that in recent Gallup Poll taken in the American Zone of Germany, 14 percent of the Germans questioned had condemned Hitler's massacre of the Jews, 26 percent had been "neutral", and 60 percent had approved the killings. Ben-Gurion said: "The Jews do not want to stay where they are. They want to regain their human dignity, their homeland, they want reunion with their kin in Palestine after having lost their dearest relations. To them the countries of their birth are a graveyard of their people. They do not wish to return there and they cannot." (Israel: A History, p. 147). With slight modification, Ben-Gurion's description eloquently articulate the plight of 8.2 million Palestinians in refugee camps, under occupation, and around the world. Soon after the UN vote to partition Palestine in November 1947, American support to Partition was diminishing and on 19 March 1948 US's representative to the UN, Warren Austin, announced that partition was no longer possible. Ben-Gurion responded to the idea of UN trusteeship in a press conference in Tel-Aviv as the following: "It is we who will decide the fate of Palestine. We cannot agree to any sort of Trusteeship, permanent or temporary. The Jewish State exists because we defend it." (Israel: A History, p. 165) On April 8-9 1948 Ben Gurion told Mishmar Ha'emek representatives to burn and destroy the neighboring villages, he said: "[They] said it was imperative to expel the Arabs [in the area] and to burn the villages. For me, the matter was very difficult. [But] they said that they were not sure [the kibbutz could continue to exist] if the villages remained intact and [if] the Arab inhabitants were not expelled, for they [i.e. the Palestinian Arabs villagers] would [later] attack them [i.e. Mishmar Ha'emek]." (Benny Morris, p. 116) "They [Mishmar Ha'emek people] faced a cruel reality ... [and] saw that there was [only] one way and that was to expel the Arab villagers and burn the villages. And they did this. And they were the first to do this." (Benny Morris, p. 116) On February 7, 1948 Ben-Gurion while addressing the Mapai Council responded to remark that "Jews have no land in the Jerusalem corridor" as the following: "The war will GIVE us the land. The concept of 'ours' and 'not ours' are ONLY CONCEPT for peacetime, and during war they lose all their meaning." (Benny Morris, p. 170 & Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 180) In a similar vein, Ben-Gurion asked Yosef Weitz in early February 1948 whether the Jewish National Fund (JNF) was ready to buy "from him" land at 25 Palestinian Pounds per dunam. Weitz replied: "if the land is Arab [owned] and we will receive the deed of property and possession - then we will buy. Then he [ i.e., Ben-Gurion] laughed and said: DEED of property - no possession-yes." The next day, Weitz and Granovsky lunched with Ben-Gurion. who restated his: "plan . . . Our army will conquer the Negev, will take the land into its hands and will sell it to the JNF at 20-25 Palestinian pounds per dunam. And there is a source . . . of millions [of pounds]. Granovsky responded jokingly that we are NOT LIVING in the Middle Ages and the army does not steal land. After the war the bedouins [of the Negev] will return to their place---if they leave at all-- and will get [back] their land." A week later, Ben-Gurion suggested to Weitz that he divest himself of: "conventional notions . . . In the Negev we will not buy land. We will conquer it. You are forgetting that we are at war." (Benny Morris, p. 170) It is not only that Ben-Gurion envisioned war as an instrument to change the demographics in favor of the Jewish minority, he also CLEARLY envisioned war as a tool to dispossess Palestinians and raise "millions" of pounds of much needed capital. And on February 8, 1948 Ben-Gurion also stated to the Mapai Council: "From your entry into Jerusalem, through Lifta, Romema [East Jerusalem Palestinian neighborhood]. . . there are no [Palestinian] Arab. One hundred percent Jews. Since Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans, it has not been Jewish as it is now. In many [Palestinian] Arab neighborhoods in the west one sees not a single [Palestinian] Arab. I do not assume that this will change. . . . What had happened in Jerusalem. . . . is likely to happen in many parts of the country. . . in the six, eight, or ten months of the campaign there will certainly be great changes in the composition of the population in the country." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 180-181) In a speech addressing the Central Committee of the Histadrut on December 30, 1947, Ben-Gurion said: "In the area allocated to the Jewish State there are not more than 520,000 Jews and about 350,000 non-Jews, mostly Arabs. Together with the Jews of Jerusalem, the total population of the Jewish State at the time of its establishment, will be about one million, including almost 40% non-Jews. such a [population] composition does not provide a stable basis for a Jewish State. This [demographic] fact must be viewed in all its clarity and acuteness. With such a [population] composition, there cannot even be absolute certainty that control will remain in the hands of the Jewish majority .... There can be no stable and strong Jewish state so long as it has a Jewish majority of only 60%." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 176) In a speech addressing the Zionist Action Committee on April 6, 1948, 1947, Ben-Gurion said: "We will not be able to win the war if we do not, during the war, populate upper and lower, eastern and western Galilee, the Negev and Jerusalem area, even if only in an artificial way, in a military way. . . . I believe that war will also bring in its wake a great change in the distribution of [Palestinian] Arab population." (Benny Morris, p. 181 & Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 181) According to Ben-Gurion in the early May 1948, he approved establishing the "Transfer Committee" to oversee: "the cleaning up [nikui in Hebrew] of the [Palestinian] Arab settlements, cultivation of [Arab] fields and their settlement [by Jews], and the creation of labour battalion carry out this work." (Benny Morris, p. 137) Note that he, as often was his practice, did not clearly state his intention of destroying Palestinian villages. When Ben-Gurion visited Haifa on May 1st, 1948 he heard Abba Khoushi was trying to persuade the Palestinian Arabs in the city to stay, and Ben-Gurion reportedly said: "Doesn't he have anything more important to do?" (Benny Morris, p. 328) Yitzhak Rabin has written in his diary soon after Lydda's and Ramla's occupation on 10th-11th of July 1948: "After attacking Lydda [later called Lod] and then Ramla, .... What would they do with the 50,000 civilians living in the two cities ..... Not even Ben-Gurion could offer a solution .... and during the discussion at operation headquarters, he [Ben-Gurion] remained silent, as was his habit in such situations. Clearly, we could not leave [Lydda's] hostile and armed populace in our rear, where it could endanger the supply route [to the troops who were] advancing eastward. Ben-Gurion would repeat the question: What is to be done with the population?, waving his hand in a gesture which said: Drive them out! [garesh otem in Hebrew]. 'Driving out' is a term with a harsh ring, .... Psychologically, this was on of the most difficult actions we undertook". (Soldier Of Peace, p. 140-141 & Benny Morris, p. 207) . Just before the outbreak of the war in 1948, the residents of the two cities, Lydda and Ramla, constituted close to 20% of the total urban population in central Palestine, including Jewish Tel-Aviv. Currently, these people and their descendents number close to half a million, who mostly live in deplorable refugee camps around Amman (Jordan) and Ramallah (West Bank). Based on Rabin's personal account of events, the decision to ethnically cleanse the two cities was not an easy decision, however, that did not stop him from placing a similar order, 19 years later, to ethnically cleanse and destroy the villages of 'Imwas, Yalu, and Bayt Nuba. The exodus from these cities was portrayed firsthand by Ismail Shammout, the renowned Palestinians artist from Lydda itself , click here to view his exodus gallery. When Ezra Danin, a Cabinet member, proposed installing a puppet Palestinian Government in the Triangle area (northwest of the occupied West Bank, which was handed over to Israel by H.M. King Abdullah after the war, click here for details), Ben-Gurion had impatiently declared on October 21, 1948: "The Arabs of the land of Israel [ Palestinians] have only one function left to them -- to run away." Ten days later, on a tour of the Galilee, Ben-Gurion describes Palestinian exodus in his dairy: "and many more still will flee." (Benny Morris, p. 218) During the 1948 war, Ben-Gurion stated again his "DREAM" of annexing southern Lebanon to the "Jewish state," he wrote: "The weak link in the Arab coalition is Lebanon. The Muslim rule is artificial and easy to undermine. A Christian state must be established, whose southern border will be Litani [River]. We will sign a treaty with it." (Righteous Victims, p. 497) In April 1949, Ben-Gurion stated that peace is a secondary priority to the Jewish state: "The main thing is the absorption of the immigrants. . . for many years, until. . . . a regime takes hold in the [Arab] world that does not threaten our existence. . . . The state's fate is dependent upon 'Aliyah [Jewish Immigration to Palestine]. . . 'Aliyah must determine our policy in negoctiations." (Righteous Victims, p. 263) And also he state during a Cabinet meeting in May 1949: "Egypt is the only state among the Arab countries that constitutes a real state and is forging a people inside it. It is a big state. If we could arrive at the conclusion of peace with---it would be a tremendous conquest for us. . . . But in general we need not regret too much that the Arabs refuse to make peace with us." (Iron Wall, p. 52) On the same subject, Ben-Gurion told a visiting American Journalist in July 1949 again that the Jewish state is in no hurry for peace: "I am not in a hurry, I can wait ten years. We are under no pressure whatsoever." (Righteous Victims, p. 263) In a cable sent by Ben-Gurion to Moshe Sharett (Israel's first foreign minister) in the early fifties regarding the peace negotiations with Egypt's King Farouk: "Israel will not discuss a peace involving the concession of any piece of territory. The neighboring states do not deserve an inch of Israel's land. . . . We are ready for exchange for peace." (Righteous Victims, p. 265) When Pinhas Rozen, who became Israel's first Israeli Justice, demanded that Israel's Declaration of Independence should cite the COUNTRY'S BORDERS, Ben-Gurion objected, and both exchanged the following: ROZEN: "There's the question of the borders, and it cannot be ignored." BEN-GURION: "Anything is possible. If we decide here that there's to be no mention of borders, then we won't mention them. Nothing is a priori [imperative]." ROZEN: "It's not a priori, but it is a legal issue." BEN-GURION: "The law is whatever people determine it to be." (1949, The First Israelis, p. xviii) Ben-Gurion said during one of the discussions with his aides: "Before the founding of the state, on the eve of its creation, our main interests was self-defense. To a large extent, the creation of the state was an act of self-defense. . . . Many think that we're still at the same stage. But now the issue at hand is conquest, not self-defense. As for setting the borders--- it's an open-ended matter. In the Bible as well as in our history, there all kinds of definitions of the country's borders, so there's no real limit. Bo border is absolute. If it's a desert--- it could just as well be the other side. If it's sea, it could also be across the sea. The world has always been this way. Only the terms have changed. If they should find a way of reaching other stars, well then, perhaps the whole earth will no longer suffice." (1949, The First Israelis, p. 6) It has been customary among all Zionists leaders to use the Bible to justify for perpetrating WAR CRIMES. Regardless of the methods used to build the "Jewish state", this quote is a classic example of how the Bible is being used to achieve political objectives. Ben-Gurion "had a dream" of annexing southern Lebanon to the "Jewish state" and to establish a Christian state north of the Litani River. At the beginning of the 1948 war, he stated: 'The Muslims rule of Lebanon is artificial and easily undermined. A Christian state ought to be set up whose southern borders would be Litani River. Then we'll form an alliance with it." In the coming years he repeated this idea, and according to Moshe Sharett, Moshe Dayan (who was Israeli's chief of staff in the early 1950s) responded favorably to this idea and who according to Sharett said: "In his [Dayan] view, all we need to do is to find a Christian Lebanese officer, perhaps no higher than a captain, and win him over or buy him with money, so that he would declare himself the savior of Maronite population. Then the Israel army would enter Lebanon, occupy the territory in question and establish a Christian government which would form an alliance with Israel." Sharett himself considered this an "awful" idea. (1949, The First Israelis, p. 10) What is ironic is that this "awful" idea was precisely executed twenty years later by Manahem Bagin and Ariel Sharon during the invasion and occupation of Lebanon between 1982-2000. Although an important document dating July 16, 1948 is still classified by the Israeli censorship, however, there is enough information to indicate the link in Ben-Gurion's mind between the concept of "transfer" and war. It was at the time that Ben-Gurion stated that he: "was not surprised" at the Arab exodus and that "we should prevent Arab return at any cost." He also cited ones again the Turkish-Greek war crime as an "example" in which the Turks "expelled the Greeks from Anatolia." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 191-192) It is extremely ironic to point out that this is the SECOND time in history that the Turks to be cited as an "example" to justify perpetrating WAR CRIMES. The first was used by the earliest Zionist leaders (such as Chaim Weizmann, Ben-Gurion, and Moshe Sharett), and the second was Hitler when he cited the Turkish genocide of 1.5 million Armenians (during WW I) as a precedent for the Nazi holocaust. During a meeting for the Mapai party center on July 24, 1948, is Ben-Gurion clearly stated his thoughts and attitude towards Palestinian Arabs, especially in the light of their behavior and flight during the war, he said: "Meanwhile, [a return of Palestinian refugees] is out of the question until we sit together beside a [peace conference] table . . . and they will respect us to the degree that we respect them and I doubt whether they deserve respect as we do. Because, nevertheless, we did not flee en mass, [And] so far no Arab Einstein has risen and [they] have not created what we have built in this country and [they] have not fought as we are fighting . . . we are dealing here with a collective murderer." (Benny Morris, p. 331) So in Ben-Gurion's opinion, the absence of an Arab Einstein, the fleeing of Palestinian Arabs during war, and not fighting well are good reasons for not respecting Palestinians rights? It also could be argued that the Christen Crusaders, in comparison to Jewish Zionism in the 11th century, had said exactly the same things about Muslim Arabs too. However, after 200 years of Crusades occupation, ethnic cleansing, and genocide, Arabs produced their versions of Einstein (in Cordoba, Seville, Cairo, Toledo, Baghdad, ... etc.), and fought well under the command of Saladin. And along with the Mongol and Tatar invasion, the Crusade genocide became a sad historical event in the human history. If history shall be used as an example, then it is very early to ride off Arabs only after five decades of ethnic cleansing and dispossession. Late 1948, Ben-Gurion proposed that the "Jewish state" should occupy Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Hebron, which was populated with 100,000 Palestinians at the time, he stated to the Israeli Cabinet: "I presumed that most of the [Palestinian] Arabs of Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Hebron would flee . . . and then the entire country, as far as the Jordan, north or south of Jericho, as well as all of the western bank of the Dead Sea would be ours." Although the Cabinet at the time rejected Ben-Gurion's proposal, years later he repeatedly asserted that rejecting the occupation of the West Bank was a fatal error. (1949, The First Israelis, p. 14) William Riley, a UN official in 1949, pressed hard for the Israelis to react favorably to the Syrian proposal to absorb almost half of the Palestinian refugees in Syria, and Ben-Gurion wrote: "Riley [the UN official] spoke to Rozen [Israeli Foreign Ministry official]. [Husnei] Zaim [Syria's president] wants to develop Syria and accept 300,000 [Palestinian] refugees. Riley asks if we would agree to sign an armistice agreement now, on the basis of the existing situation. Rozen replied that our answer was negative." (1949, The First Israelis, p. 16) When Yosef Weitz (JNF high official) proposed solving the Palestinian "refugees problem" by compensating the refugees for their lost properties in the Jewish state, according to him Ben-Gurion said: "In his opinion, time will cure all, and all will be forgotten." (1949, The First Israelis, p. 31) Soon after negotiating the Armistice agreement between Israel and Egypt, Ben-Gurion noted in his diary: "Abba Eban [Israeli Foreign Ministry official] came. He sees no point in chasing after peace. The armistice agreement is sufficient for us. If we chase after peace the Arabs will demand a price: either territory, return of refugees, or both. It's best to wait a few years." The Prime Minister noted these words without making any comments of his own. (1949, The First Israelis, p. 34) When Truman, the American President between 1944-1952, demanded that Arabs be compensated for the loss of territories which had not been assigned to the "Jewish state" by the UN Partition Resolution, Ben-Gurion wrote: "The State of Israel was not established as a consequence of the UN Resolution. Neither America nor any other country saw the Resolution through, nor did they stop Arab countries (and the British mandatory government) from declaring total war on us in violation of UN Resolution [click here to read our response to this myth]. America did not raise a finger to save us, and moreover, imposed an arms embargo, and had we been destroyed they would not have resurrected us. Those boundaries determined in the UN Resolution were based on peace accords, the validity of international law, and the Arabs' acceptance of them. But the Arabs rejected it. There are no refugees---there are fighters who sought to destroy us, root and branch. The Arab states came at their request, and they still refuse to make peace or to recognize us, and are openly threatening revenge. Shall we bring back the [Palestinian] refugees so that they can exterminate us for the second time [click here to read our response to this myth], or should we ask America to take pity on us and send an army to protect us? America is immense. We are a tiny and helpless nation. We could not withstand American might, but our self-preservation is more important to us than obedience to America. The rebuke and the threatening style [of Truman's letter] are incomprehensible." (1949, The First Israelis, p. 35-36) Ben-Gurion was dismayed with the large "mass robbery" of Palestinian properties by the citizens of the "Jewish state", he said in a Cabinet meeting: "The only thing that surprise me, and surprised me bitterly, was the discovery of such moral failings among us [Jews], which I had never suspected. I mean the mass robbery in which all part of [the Jewish] population participated." (1949, The First Israelis, p. 69) During the 1948 war, the Military Governor of Jerusalem, Dov Yosef, wrote Ben-Gurion describing the "looting" of Palestinian properties: "The looting is spreading once again. ...I cannot verify all the reports which reach me, but I get the distinct impression that the commanders are not over-eager to catch and punish the thieves. ...I receive complaints every day. By way of example, I enclose a copy of a letter I received from the manager of the Notre Dame de France (a monastery). Behavior like this in a monastery can cause quite serious harm to us. I've done my best to put a stop to the thefts there, which are all done by soldiers, since civilians are not permitted to enter the place. But as you can see from this letter, these acts are continuing. I am powerless." Ben-Gurion promised he would discuss with Moshe Dayan the possible measures to be adopted in order to put an end to the robbery. The subject troubled him greatly. Prior to the occupation of Nazareth he ordered Yadin to "use submachine guns on the soldiers if he saw any attempt at robbery." (1949, The First Israelis, p. 70) On June 16, 1948, there were calls by members of the MAPAM party for the return of Jaffa's "peace minded" Palestinian refugees, and in response, Ben-Gurion stated during a Cabinet meeting: "I do not accept the version [i.e. policy] that [we] should encourage their return. . . I believe we should prevent their return . . . We must settle Jaffa, Jaffa will become a Jewish city. . . . The return of [Palestinian] Arabs to Jaffa [would be] not just foolish." If the [Palestinian] Arabs were allowed to return, to Jaffa and elsewhere, " and the war is renewed, our chances of ending the war as we wish to end it will be reduced. . . . Meanwhile, we must prevent at all costs their return," he said, and, leaving no doubt in the ministers' minds about his views on the ultimate fate of the [Palestinian] refugees, he added: "I will be for them not returning after the war." (Benny Morris, p. 141 & 1949, The First Israelis, p. 75) During the course of 1948 war, Ben-Gurion ordered an inspection of all the kibbutzim and moshavim (collaborative villages) of Lower and Upper Galilee for an inventory of: "flocks [cattle, abandoned sheep], and other property 'taken' from the Arab villages during the war and after; crops, furniture and all other objects, were to be presented to the Minister of Defense." (1949, The First Israelis, p. 74) Like most of the earliest Zionist leaders, Ben Gurion promoted Jewish immigration to Palestine and the new "Jewish state" primarily to achieve Israel's national security and military might. In 1949 he defined the interests of the "Jewish state" as the following: "The main thing is the absorption of immigrants. This embodies all historical needs of the state." He later explained why immigration could strengthen Israel's security better than anything else. "We might have captured the West Bank, the Golan [Heights], but those conquests would not have reinforced our security as much as immigration. Doubling and tripling the number of immigrants gives us more and more strength. . . . That is the most important thing above all else." (1949, The First Israelis, p. 96) Ben Gurion stated that Zionism was largely a movement of Western Jews, specifically from Europe and America. In his opinion, the Jews of Europe were: "the leading candidates for citizenship in the State of Israel. Hitler, more than he hurt the Jewish people, whom he knew and detested, hurt the Jewish State, whose coming he did not foresee. He destroyed the substance, the main and essential building force of the [Jewish] state. The state arose and did not find the nation which had waited for it." In the absence of the European Jews, the state of Israel had to bring in Jews from Arab countries. Ben Gurion compared them with the Africans who were brought in as slaves to America. (1949, The First Israelis, p. 157) In 1949, Ben Gurion stated that North African Jews might overcome their "savage" life and become intellects, he said: "Even the immigrant of North Africa, who looks like savage, who has never read a book in his life, not even a religious one, and doesn't even know how to say his prayers, either wittingly or unwittingly has behind him a spiritual heritage of thousands of years. . . ." (1949, The First Israelis, p. 157) And in one session of the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, Ben-Gurion referred to the Moroccan Jews as "savages," but hastily added that they were no different from other Jews as the Polish ones, he said: "They tell me that there are thieves among them. I am a Polish Jew, and I doubt if there is any Jewish community which has more thieves among them. I am doubt if there is any Jewish community which has more thieves in it than the Polish ones." A few years later Ben-Gurion wrote to Justice Moshe Estzioni: "An Ashkenazi gangster, thief, pimp, or murderer will not gain the sympathy of the Ashkenazi community (if there is such a thing), nor will he expect it. But in such a primitive community as the Moroccans'---such a thing is possible. . . . " (1949, The First Israelis, p. 157) In 1949, Ben Gurion was not free of ambivalence in his attitude towards the Yemenite Jewish immigrants. In a letter to Yigael Yadin, the first Israeli Chief of Staff, Ben Gurion wrote: "This tribe is in some ways more easily absorbed, both culturally and economically, than any other. It is hardworking, it is not attracted by city life, it has---or at least, the male part has-- a good grounding in Hebrew and the Jewish heritage. Yet in other ways it may be the most problematic of all. It is two thousands years behind us [European cultured Jews], perhaps even more. It lacks the most basic primary concepts of civilization (as distinct from culture). Its attitude toward women and children is primitive. Its physical condition poor. Its bodily strength is depleted and it does not have the minimal notions of hygiene. For thousands of years it lived in one of the most benighted and impoverished lands, under a rule even more backward than an ordinary feudal and theocratic regime. The passage from there to Israel has been profound human revolution, not a superficial, political one. All it human values need to changed from the ground." (1949, The First Israelis, p. 186-187) It is worth noting how Ben Gurion referred to the Yemenite Jews by "it". When Moshe Sharett objected to Ben-Gurion's belligerent attitude towards Egypt in 1954, he said to the Cabinet secretary Ze'ef Sharef: "He is raising a generation of cowards. I will not let him . . . . I will not let him. This will be a fighting generation" (Iron Wall, p. 124) Later the Israeli army (headed by Ariel Sharon) raided Gaza which resulted in the killing and injuring of 74 Egyptian soldiers. Along with Yitzhak Rabin, Moshe Dayan, and Ariel Sharon, Ben-Gurion was obsessed with toppling neighboring Arab regimes, in 1954 he said: "[Nasser must be taught a lesson, thundered, either] to carry out his duties or to be toppled. It is definitely possible to topple him, and it is even a mitzvah [a sacred obligation] to do so. Who is he anyway, this Nasser-Shmasser." (Iron Wall, p. 124) This belligerence toward Egypt led to the tri-assault (Israel, British, and French) on Egypt in 1956 after Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal. Ben-Gurion was very pleased to know that Britain and France were anxious to topple Nasser of Egypt too, in that regards he said in October 1955: "This is a unique opportunity that two not so small powers will try to topple Nasser, and we shall not stand alone against him while he becomes stronger and conquers all the Arab countries. . . . and maybe the whole situation in the Middle East will change according to my plan." (Iron Wall, p. 174) Read the next quote to get an idea of Ben-Gurion's grand plan which included occupying southern Lebanon and sharing Jordan with Iraq. It is not only that Ben-Gurion looked at the Bible (see below quote) to justify the usurpation and occupation of the Sinai peninsula, he also envisioned a great enterprise in exploiting Sinai natural resources, he also stated in October 1955: "I told him [French PM, Guy Mollet] about the discovery of oil in the southern and western Sinai, and that it would be good to TEAR this peninsula from Egypt because it did not belong to her; rather it was the English who stole it from the Turks when they believed that Egypt was in their pocket. I suggested laying down a pipeline from Sinai to Haifa to REFINE THE OIL, and Mollet [French PM] showed interest in the suggestion." (Iron Wall, p. 175) In a cable sent to the 7th brigade following the occupation of Sharm al-Sheikh in Sinai on October 29 1956, Ben-Gurion wrote: "Yotvata, or Tiran, which until fourteen hundred years ago was part of the third kingdom of Israel," and in his speech to the Israeli Knesset on November 7, 1956 he hinted that Israel planned to annex the entire Sinai peninsula as well as the Straits of Tiran (the southeastern tip of the Sinai peninsula on the Asian side) . It is not the first time, nor the last time, that an Israeli leader will use the Bible to justify war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and occupation. (Iron Wall, p. 179) When Chaim Laskov proposed the occupation of most of the West Bank in July 1958, Ben-Gurion wrote in his diary: "This time the [Palestinian] Arabs on the West Bank will not run away!," meaning if the Palestinians would flee as a result of war (as what already happened during the 1948 war), he would not mind the occupation and annexation of the West Bank. (Iron Wall, p. 200) ========== reply to wondering (english) a3m 12:46pm Thu Apr 11 '02 comment#169503 you wrote: "A sad fact is that the jewish community ( a religion not a race ) hasn't learned any lessons from being oppressed, and has switched to becoming the oppressor." I must ask which Jewish community? the Likud, the settlers with their eyes closed, the West L.A. Jewish community, the refusnicks, the Jews standing and cringing with the Palestinians.....? Do you see my point? there is no such unity as a Jewish Community. It is a fiction for mental shorthand. beware it does not become a crutch for lazy thought. The sentiments you express certainly are true of certain individual human beings(to stretch the term) who are in control of the state and military aparatus of Israel. Otherwise you and I are part of the "american community" that runs the School of the Americas. My catholic friends are members of the Catholic community composed of child molesting priests. Not to say all is well. But we will never take a community to trial. I hope we do get individuals to trials. But lets not loose of cold logical focus on these goals because ourheart are troubled. Emotion and logic both have a job to do. =========== Read the Post Carefully! (english) Ghostbuster 12:56pm Thu Apr 11 '02 comment#169513 before you go off, there is no Dawn Rainforest -Come On! This is a Sharon supporter pretending to be a hippie chick-you’re so cleaver creep you know that angry Palestinians-(understandably) and right-wing Jews-(that’s not understandable) are ruining the IMC - Try to think, hate speech does have consequences 169482 SEVEN ANTI ZIONIST ORTHODOX JEWS BEATEN AND IMPRISONED TODAY IN ISRAEL!!!! (english) __ 8:34am Thu Apr 11 '02 (Modified on 2:57pm Thu Apr 11 '02) article#169318 SEVEN ANTI ZIONIST ORTHODOX JEWS BEATEN AND IMPRISONED TODAY IN ISRAEL!!!! 10 April, 2002 SEVEN ANTI ZIONIST ORTHODOX JEWS BEATEN AND IMPRISONED TODAY IN ISRAEL!!!! In Beit Shemesh, Israel, a crowd of several dozen anti Zionist Orthodox Jews marched today to, in their words "condemn the rule of Zionism" and the "aggression against the Arab peoples." They handed out literature which quoted the Satmar Rav of blessed memory who attributed much of the world's suffering to Zionism. This thoroughly peaceful demonstration was attacked by the Israeli police. Seven individuals were arrested. Since their arrest they have been deprived of food and religious articles. Please spread this message around the internet and to as many media outlets as possible. Zionist terror is not limited to the West Bank or the Palestinians. Even Jews who dare criticize its brutality find themselves its victims. The names of those imprisoned are Nachman Mashiach, Don Kessler, Aharon Kessler, Avraham Ginzberg, Avraham Fisher and two minors whose names we do not yet have. Pray for them. Tell the world of their plight. Jews and Moslims stand together against the Zionist brutality. source : http://www.netureikarta.org and : http://www.jerusalem.indymedia.org  /news/2002/04/10134.php www.netureikarta.org ========= ============= Why Orthodox Jews are opposed to the Zionist (english) __z 8:55am Thu Apr 11 '02 comment#169326 First some introductions; 1) What is "The people of Israel" ? The people of Israel have existed for thousands of years. It has its own particular, essential, nature. The Torah is the source of its essential nature. Without Torah and faith there is no people of Israel. Whoever denies the Torah and the Faith is no longer part of the people of Israel. The purpose of the People of Israel in this world is Divine service. Their salvation is occupation in Divine Service. 2) What is Zionism? Zionism is a relatively new thing. It has only existed for a century. Zionism redefines the true essential nature of the people of Israel, and substitutes for it a completely contradictory and opposite character - a materialistic worldly nation. Their misfortune is lack of what other nations have. i.e. a state and army. Their salvation is possession of a state and army etc. This is clearly spelled out in the circles of Zionist though, and among the leaders of the Zionist state, that through changing the nature and character of the people of Israel and by changing their way of thinking they can set before the People of Israel "their salvation" -- a state and an army. The People of Israel oppose the so-called "State of Israel" for four reasons: FIRST -- Because this is diametrically opposed and completely contradictory to the true essence and foundation of the people of Israel, as is explained above. Because the only time that the people of Israel were permitted to have a state was two thousand years ago when the glory of the creator was upon us. And likewise in the future when the glory of the creator will once more be revealed, and the whole world will serve Him. Then He Himself (without any human effort or force of arms) will grant us a kingdom founded on divine Service. However, a worldly state, like those possessed by other peoples, is contradictory to the true essence of the People of Israel. Whoever calls this the salvation of Israel shows that he denies the essence of the People of Israel, and substitutes another nature, a worldly materialistic nature, and therefore sets before them, a worldly materialistic "salvation." And the means of achieving this "salvation" is also worldly and materialistic i.e. to organize a land and army. However, the true salvation of the People of Israel is to draw close to the Creator And this is not done by organization and force of arms. Rather it is done by occupation to Torah and good deeds. SECOND -- Because of all of this and other reason's the Torah forbids us to end the exile and establish a state and army until the Holy One, blessed He, in His Glory and Essence redeem us. This is forbidden even if the state is conducted according to the law of the Torah. Because arising from the exile itself is forbidden, and we are required to remain under the rule of the nations of the world, as is explained in the book VAYOEL MOSHE. And transgress this injunction, He will bring upon us (may we be spared) terrible punishment. THIRD Aside from arising from exile, all the deeds of the Zionists are diametrically opposed to the Faith and the Torah. Because the foundation of the Faith and Torah of Israel, is that the Torah was revealed from heaven, and there is reward for those who obey it and punishment for those who transgress it. The entire People of Israel is required to obey the Torah, and whoever doesn't want to, ceases to be part of the congregation of Israel. FOURTH -- Aside from the fact that they themselves do not obey the Torah they do everything they can to prevent anyone they get under their power from fulfilling the commands of the Torah, the claims to freedom of religion are lies. They fight with all of their strength to destroy the Faith of Israel. The Zionists claim that they are the saviors of Israel, but this is refuted by twelve things: FIRST -- If one contemplates the two thousand years of our exile, take any hundred years even the hardest, one will not find as much suffering, bloodshed, and catastrophes for the People of Israel s in the period of the Zionists. And it is known that most of the suffering of this century was caused by the Zionists, as our Rabbis warned us would be the case. SECOND -- It is openly stated in books written by the founders of Zionism that the means by which they panned to establish a state was by instigating anti-Semitism, and undermining the security of the Jews in all the lands of the world, until they would be forced to flee to their state. And thus they did - They intentionally infuriated the German people and fanned the flames of Nazi hatred, and they helped the Nazis, with trickery and deceit, to take whole Jewish communities off to the concentration camps, and the Zionists themselves admit this. (See the books Perfidy, Min Ha Meitsor, etc.). The Zionists continue to practice this strategy today ,they incite anti-Semitism and then they present themselves as the "saviors". Here are two replies given y Leaders of the Zionists during World War II, when they were asked for money to help ransom Jews from the Nazis. Greenbaum said "One cow in Palestine is worth more than all the Jews in Poland." (G-d forbid). Weitzman said, The most important part of the Jewish people is already in the land (of Israel) and those who are left, are unimportant (May we be spared). THIRD -- We see that most of world Jewry, Lives in security and under good physical conditions, and have no desire to go live in the Zionist state. Whereas many people have left the Zionist state to live under better conditions in other lands. FOURTH -- The Zionists make a great deal of propaganda to induce people to immigrate to their state. If their state is so beneficial why do they have to make so much propaganda. FIFTH -- Because nobody wants the Zionists to "save" them. The only way they can get immigrants is by promising poor people material benefits. And even then very few people respond. SIXTH -- The Zionists State is always threatened by the dangers of war. Whereas the rest of world Jewry lives in peace and security, (Except in a few places where the Zionists have undermined their security and fanned the flames of hatred) SEVENTH -- The Zionists state could not continue to exist without economic support from Jews living outside of the Zionist state. EIGHTH -- The Zionist state is on the verge of economic collapse, and their money is nearly worthless. NINTH -- The Zionists state persecute all Jews who are loyal to their faith. TENTH -- They start wars that endanger the Jewish People, for the sake of their own political interests. ELEVENTH - According to the Torah the path of safety is following ways of peace not starting fights with other nations, as the Zionists do. TWELFTH -- Even if the Zionists could and would provide physical security it would be at the expense of our Faith and Our Torah. And the true People of Israel prefer death rather than life at such a cost. It is therefore clear that Zionism is not the savior of the people of Israel. Rather it is their greatest misfortune. Even though there are some observant Jews and rabbis, who approve of the Zionists, this is not the opinion of the Torah. The Zionists have enough control over the American news media to make sure that only their side of the story is heard. They make it look like all Jewry and their rabbis are Zionists, but this is false propaganda. The most important Rabbis and the majority of religious Jewry are opposed to Zionism, but their voice is not heard because of Zionist control of American news media. The Zionist terrorize everyone who speaks out against them. That part of the Jewish masses which is fooled by Zionist propaganda puts pressure on their Rabbis not to speak out. Between the terror and the pressure of the masses most of the Rabbis are prevented from speaking out. We bring three testimonies of the true opinion of the Torah. 1) In the past two thousand years of the dangers and sufferings of exile not once did any of the Sages of Israel suggest that we make a state to protect ourselves. And in every generation we had thousands of Sages well versed in the Torah. 2) We have thousands of legal work of Torah law that have been handed down to us by the Sages of all generations. Not once do we see a word suggesting the establishment of a state. What we do find is warnings against it. 3) The founders of Zionism were all atheists who denied the Torah. And all the Torah Sages of that time opposed them and opposed Zionism, saying that Zionism would lead only to destruction. However the true People of Israel will never change their nature or give up their faith because of the strength the Creator gives them. Zionism is a foreign growth in the body of the Jewish People. The end will be that it will rid itself of this foreign growth and remain pure. Zionism has overcome the Jewish people by force. With fraud and terror, but none of this will help them because the truth will always remain with the help of the Creator. Zionism will not replace the Jewish People. The Jewish People will remain strong in their faith and the Zionist state will cease to exist. It is therefore, our demand that the State that calls itself ISRAEL, should cease to exist. Since this won't be done, we demand that they cease to call themselves "Israel", because their entire being is in complete opposition to the true People of Israel. The true People of Israel deny them permission to call themselves by that name. The Zionist leaders have no right to set themselves up as the representatives and spokesmen of the true People of ISRAEL. Since we know they will not fulfill this demand either we feel that at least we cry out the truth. And the truth will always remain the truth, by no means or force can the truth be changed. Even if all the world would say that one and one are three, the truth will remain that one and one is two. Let the truth be declared. The use of the Name "ISRAEL" by that state is a complete falsification. The People of Israel have nothing to do with that state. Zionism and its state have no share and no part in the true ISRAEL. www.netureikarta.org/ ========= We need to help. (english) Julia 9:07am Thu Apr 11 '02 comment#169334 This is terrible, these people are really brave. They need our support!! =========== ZIONISTS ARE ANTI-SEMITES (english) FREE PALESTINE 9:20am Thu Apr 11 '02 comment#169340 Click for full size picture The same zionists who whine to the world that they are the victims of "anti-semitism" are the worst perpetrators of anti-semitism. Just ask the seven victims mentioned above. The zionazis supported the German nazis during World War II with their claim that "One cow in Palestine is worth all the Jews of Europe". Anti-semitic then, anti-semitic now. STOP ANTI-SEMITISM! SMASH ZIONISM! ONE ZIONIST, ONE BULLET! ========== So what's new? (english) Harq al-Ada 10:28am Thu Apr 11 '02 comment#169384 All intelligent beings on this plantet have long known that the terrorist organization Zionism groups monsters who are anti-Jewish, as well as antisemites, fascists, terrorists, religious fanatics, and racists? What's the news? =========== these people have saved the honor of judaism (english) an athiest 10:43am Thu Apr 11 '02 comment#169399 i first discovered the neturai karta last month when they reported burning the star of david in stamford hill london. theyre absolutely genuine, even though IMC Israel disputes it, and i can once again respect jews knowing that they are not all cynical zionist operators. ====== Thank the Lord... (english) Brian 2:57pm Thu Apr 11 '02 comment#169605 whichever Lord you have, thank Him for these brave people. If you have no Lord (and I personally don't), thank Providence. I never knew that this stream of Jewish thought existed - my idea of an Orthodox Jew was someone evil like Meir Kahane. May their belief spread far and wide. The true nsture of a country is in it's people - if good people like these are against Zionism, there must be a reason. As another poster said - one Zionist, one bullet. ----------------------------------- 169278 http://www.thenation.com/ doc.mhtml?i=special&s=breytenbach20020410 An Open Letter To General Ariel Sharon (english) Breyten Breytenbach 7:04am Thu Apr 11 '02 (Modified on 7:23am Thu Apr 11 '02) article#169278 As was the case with the South African regime, the preferred methods by which you hope to subjugate the enemy consist of force and bloodshed and humiliation. Paris, April 7, 2002 Sir, You don't know me. There's no reason why you should and little cause for you to listen to what somebody like myself may have to say. I don't imagine you have time to pay attention to views that do not correspond to your own. In fact, I'm convinced that you do not listen to anybody who doesn't say what you wish to hear. Should it interest you, I'm a writer born in South Africa now living and working abroad. For some time back there I also grew up among a "chosen people" who behaved as Herrenvolk--as all those who believe themselves singularized by suffering or entrusted with a special mission from God. I apologize if my comparative allusion to Israel as Herrenvolk hurts because of the echoes from a recent past when, in Europe, so many Jews were the victims of a purported "final solution." But how else is one to attempt describing the comportment of your armies when one is flooded by the horror of what you're doing? These rough equivalences don't come lightly. As a writer I'm deeply apprised of the need to keep the words uncluttered of any urge to rouse easy emotions. This is what facile comparisons do--they nullify understanding the complexity of the observed phenomena by a rush of outrage heating the throat and staining the adversary with the vomit of borrowed or vicarious condemnation. Apartheid was not Nazism, though to say so was a striking slogan. And the policies now perpetrated by Israeli forces on the Palestinian people should not be equated with Apartheid. Each one of these processes and systems is evil enough to merit a thorough description of its own historical singularity. And yet... There are similarities and differences: This blind competition, on both sides, to be recognized as more-victim-than-thou; cloaking atrocities in the "divine" right to self-defense; the shameless manipulation of perceptions and the mendacious lying; the concomitant brutalization of your own society; the disdain shown for the humanity of the Palestinians--indeed, denying even the most elementary humane treatment to a terrified and trapped civilian population... It is all only too familiar. The underlying assumptions informing your actions are racist. As was the case with the South African regime, the preferred methods by which you hope to subjugate the enemy consist of force and bloodshed and humiliation. Cynically, you think you can get away with this as long as you play up to the supposed vital interests of the United States. I don't think you really care a Jaffa fig for America's interests. You probably despise them for being blinded by their own material crassness and their ignorance of the world. True, your used-car-salesman doppelgänger, Netanyahu, deploys this craft of crude propaganda more openly, as if he were a dirty finger tweaking the clitoris of a swooning American public opinion. But you too, by opportunistically echoing the semantically challenged American President (and putting words in his mouth), who describes every "other" as a terrorist, have shown that you take the rest of the world for fools. Surely, not all of us agree that the highest good in the world is America's greed for cheap oil, and that we should hence be expected to adhere to the inviolability of corrupt regimes in the region! There is a more pernicious red herring that needs to be smelled out forthwith. It is blatantly averred, again and again, that any criticism of Israel's policies is an expression of anti-Semitism. With that assertion the argument is supposed to be closed and sealed. Of course, I reject this attempt at censorship by thus disqualifying the grounds for debate. No amount of suffering--be it of the Tutsis, the Kurds, the Armenians, the Vietnamese, the Bosnians or the Palestinians--can confer immunity from criticism. (And, to put it sadly, no amount of persecution would seem to vaccinate people against perpetrating the same practices they suffered from.) No appeal to the incitement or supposed promises of some Holy Land edicted by One God can condone the exactions carried out by an invading and occupying army-- or, for that matter, the cold-blooded massacres of innocents ordered by fanatic warlords in the name of resistance. No reference to some ostensibly sacrosanct "Greater Israel" can camouflage the fact that your settlements are armed colonies built on land shamelessly stolen from the Palestinians, festering there as shards in their flesh, or snipers' nests, intended to thwart and annul any possibility of Palestinian statehood. There can be no way to peace through the annihilation of the other, just as there is no paradise for the "martyr." I find this "anti-Semitism" allegation utterly deplorable, especially coming from Jewish intellectuals who so often constitute the reasonable, rational and creative backbone of Western societies. Why should we be subjected to this special pleading, or look the other way when it is Israel committing crimes? Is what's sauce for the goose then, in some Yahweh-inspired way, not sauce for the gander? No, General Sharon, past injustices suffered cannot justify or excuse your present fascist actions. A viable state cannot be built on the expulsion of another people who have as much claim to that territory as you have. Might is not right. In the long run, your immoral and shortsighted (and finally stupid) policies will furthermore weaken Israel's legitimacy as a state. Recently, I had the opportunity of visiting the territories for the first time. (And yes, I'm afraid they can reasonably be described as resembling bantustans--for only too often are they reminiscent of the ghettos and controlled camps of misery one knew in South Africa.) I only glimpsed Israel briefly, upon entering and then later leaving after spending a night in the opulent but dismally deserted David Intercontinental Hotel of Tel Aviv. You may say my view is fatally one-sided. Perhaps. Though one is always within sight of Israeli demarcation lines, checkpoints, tanks and armed outposts in the West Bank. I wondered, are your two peoples really all that different? You are of a similarly diverse mix of cultures and origins, you are all of you diaspora people, you are equally intelligent and quick-witted and excitable. You may well be brave in similar fashions. On both sides there are creative minds of exceptional integrity at work. On both sides, also, there are an extraordinary number of self-serving, power-hungry individuals, fanatics with their spirits obfuscated by this God-nonsense. Or using that as a pretext. As provocateur--cold-blooded and cruel--you stand out among your peers. In your dogged but ill-considered attempts to subvert previous agreements and to scupper the possibility of peace--except for the peace of the graveyard and of exile, premised on the "total transfer" or "disappearance" of the Palestinian entity--you are bringing turmoil to the region. This you probably planned for. It remains to be seen whether the growling of your principals in Washington will inflect your campaign of calculated terror and wanton destruction--or whether it is but a smokescreen behind which to better align the "free world's" war on "terrorism." And for the domination of resources and a global control of markets and cheap oil and "democracy." The few days I spent there, with the delegation of the International Parliament of Writers, left me with a mixed bag of strong but conflicting impressions. How small Palestine is! How inextricably linked your peoples are. The stones everywhere. The topography of names familiar from the Bible. The beautiful light. The attempts to make the place look like Switzerland by planting out-of-place conifers. The inhospitality of the land, except for lush coastal plains. How abysmally sad the villages are, reminding one of the lifeless and apathetic towns of East Germany. The green lights in the mosques and all the unfinished habitations. The ugliness of the architecture everywhere--the ubiquitous light-gray limestone building blocks. The inanity of your occupation--all those lit-up detour roads built for the exclusive use of settlers and Israeli citizens. The surly pettiness of your controls at checkpoints, having little to do with security and everything with the primitive urge to humiliate, frustrate, harass and drive to insane rage an occupied population. The extreme youth of your soldiers, and sadly they are so obviously well-cultivated boys and girls. The ruthless rapaciousness with which you destroy the possible Palestinian economy and steal their goods. The ancient revenge--bulldozing houses, destroying olive groves. The equally primitive sight of armed positions under camouflage netting and Israeli flags in commandeered houses. Your vaunted "democratic" media lying to your own people, denying the war crimes carried out by your troops. The Berlin walls around your settlements in Gaza (and behind them university extensions, research institutes, American-linked hotels, golf courses), and then the rubble of destroyed Palestinian quarters looking now like Ground Zero. The way little kids looked us straight in the eye, apparently uncowed, but then we were told that they're probably all traumatized not only by the hovering dogs of your gunships and your prehistoric tanks and your men in uniform shooting at everything that moves, but by all the hyperactive adults around them. The old kerchiefed women in some refugee camp screaming that you, Sharon, will never make them move, that they chased away your soldiers "like dogs." Proffering abuse, also, at the spineless Arab states and the cowardice of their own Palestinian Authority. The ebullience of the intellectuals and artists under siege in Ramallah--arguing, laughing at their own plight. How they all say, "We don't want to be heroes, we don't want to be victims, we just want to lead normal lives." Their wry despair. Mahmoud Darwish: "There is too much history and too many prophets in this small land." The visit to Abu Ammar, Yasir Arafat, a holed fox, his waxed yellow hands clinging to the empty clichés of "a peace of the brave" and "the conscience of the international community." A bourgeois lady lamenting the desecration of the Palestinian landscape. And a human rights lawyer claiming: "We are grateful to Sharon for two things--he united all the Palestinian factions and he took away every option except to resist." Later on, the same haunted man, chain-smoking and with the sweat of death already on him, remarked bitterly that repression has penetrated the skin of the people, and that now they have nothing else to defend themselves with except their skins. Thus the human bombs. For these will be my contrasted conclusions: You have not broken the spirit of the Palestinian people. Quite the contrary--they are now more resolute than ever to build a state; it doesn't matter how much you bully them. They saw the renewed onslaught coming, they knew you were but playing footsy with General Zinni--probably in agreement with Dick Cheney. They also know that, since you have now made them stronger, you must strike harder and deeper, because you are caught in a conundrum of your own making. Like Bush in his crusade against the infidel and the disobedient, you have to accelerate your distention of international public ethics and flaunt common sense even more, and throw good moral money after bad political assessments. They know that nothing they can do will appease you, short of turning turtle. They fear you will have to compound this crime against humanity which you are committing at present, that you may indeed break their hopes for a secular, modern and democratic state responsible to its population, and bring forth the devil among them. They also know that this will profoundly divide and weaken Israel. But you don't care, do you ? This is the pity and the horror. The pity and the h .. . . ----------------------- 169250 Monbiot at common dreams on us (indyans): The power of indymedia - don't change it. (english) George Monbiot 5:32am Thu Apr 11 '02 (Modified on 6:42am Thu Apr 11 '02) article#169250 The movement to which many of the peace activists risking their lives in Ramallah and Bethlehem belong has no name... because they have always put practice first and theory second, its members have proved impossible to categorize. Whenever it appears to have assumed an identity outsiders believe they can grasp, it morphs into something else. World Bank to West Bank The Movement Written Off After September 11 is Demonstrating Its Worth in Palestine by George Monbiot Two sets of human shields are in use in the West Bank. The first is less than willing. The Israeli army, like some of the terrorist groups it has fought, has been taking hostages. Its soldiers have been propelling Palestinian civilians through the doors of suspect buildings, so that the gunmen they might harbor have to kill them first if they want to fight back. The second set of human shields has deliberately placed itself in the line of fire. Since the army's offensive in the West Bank began, hundreds of Israeli peace campaigners and foreign activists have been seeking to put themselves in its way. At great personal risk, members of the International Solidarity Movement have sought to protect civilians by making hostages of themselves. It is a display of extraordinary courage and self-sacrifice. It is also the latest incarnation of a movement which just months ago was left for dead. The movement to which many of the peace activists risking their lives in Ramallah and Bethlehem belong has no name. Some people have called it an anti-globalization or anti-corporate or anti-capitalist campaign. Others prefer to emphasize its positive agenda, calling it a democracy or internationalist movement. But, because they have always put practice first and theory second, its members have proved impossible to categorize. Whenever it appears to have assumed an identity outsiders believe they can grasp, it morphs into something else. It is driven by a new, responsive politics, informed not by ideology but by need. After September 11, this nameless thing appeared to vanish as swiftly as it had emerged. The huge demonstrations planned for the end of September against the World Bank and IMF in Washington became a small and rather timorous march for peace. Most US activists, cowed by the new McCarthyism which has dominated American discourse since the attack on New York, kept their heads down. Commentators dismissed the movement as a passing fad which had rippled through the world's youth, as widespread and as insubstantial as Diet Coke or the Nike swoosh. But those who dismissed it had failed to grasp either the seriousness of its intent or the breadth of its support. The television cameras always focused on a few hundred young men dressed in black and running riot, intercut occasionally with the wider carnival of protest. But they seldom permitted its participants to explain the sense of purpose which propelled them. So most outsiders failed to see that the commitment of many of the people involved in these protests is non-negotiable. The movement is no more likely to go away than the governments and corporations it confronts. Its survival is assured by its ability to become whatever it needs to be. Last month 250,000 protesters travelled to Barcelona to contest the assault on employment laws and the public sector being led by Tony Blair, Silvio Berlusconi and Jose Maria Aznar. This month some of them moved to Palestine. Among those in the British contingent are people who have helped to run campaigns against corporate power, genetic engineering and climate change. They were joined this week by members of the Italian organization Ya Basta, which helped to coordinate the protests in Genoa. For the movement which came of age in Seattle, the World Bank and the West Bank belong to the same political territory. If the protesters simply shifted as a mob from one location to another, their efforts would be worse than useless. But one of the key lessons this rapidly maturing movement has learned is that protest is effective only if it builds on the efforts of specialists. Like most of the Earth's people, the foreigners on the West Bank became visible when they began to bleed (five British campaigners were injured last week by the Israeli army's illegal fragmentation bullets), but some outsiders have been working there for decades. New arrivals join long-established networks and do what they are told. Among the bullets and the bulldozers, the movement is discovering a courage long suspected but seldom tried. Protesters have moved into the homes of people threatened with bombardment by the Israeli army, ensuring that the soldiers cannot attack Palestinians without attacking foreigners too. They have been sitting in the ambulances taking sick or injured people to hospital, in the hope of speeding their passage through Israeli checkpoints and preventing the soldiers from beating up the occupants. They have been trying to run convoys of food and medicine into neighborhoods deprived of supplies; and seeking to encourage both sides to lay down their arms in favor of non-violent solutions. They are becoming, in other words, a sort of grassroots United Nations, trying with their puny resources to keep the promises their governments have broken. Perhaps most importantly, the peace campaigners are the only foreign witnesses in some places to the atrocities being committed. Using alternative news networks such as Indymedia and Allsorts, they have been able to draw attention to events most journalists have missed. They have seen how Palestinians, told by the Israeli army that the curfew had been lifted, have been either shot dead when they stepped outside or seized and used as human shields. They have witnessed the sacking of homes and the deliberate destruction of people's food supplies. They have seen ambulances and aid trucks being stopped and crushed. On March 28 one peace protester watched Israeli soldiers in jeeps hunting women and children who were fleeing across the fields on the outskirts of Ramallah, trying to shoot them down in cold blood. And, by becoming the story themselves, as they are beaten and shot, the foreigners have brought it home to people who were dismissive of the murder and maiming of indigenous civilians. The movement's arrival on the West Bank is an organic development of its activities elsewhere. For years it has been contesting the destructive foreign policies of the world's most powerful governments, and the corresponding failures of the multilateral institutions to contain them. Rather than echo the thunderous but effete demand of commentators on both sides of the Atlantic that Yasser Arafat (a man currently unable to use a flushing toilet) should stamp out the terror in the Middle East, the campaigners are, as ever, addressing those who wield real power: Israel and the governments who supply the money and weaponry which permit it to occupy the West Bank. The movement has always been a pragmatic one, as ready to protest against Burma's treatment of its tribal people or China's dispossession of the Tibetans as the IMF's handling of Argentina. In Palestine, as elsewhere, it is seeking to place itself between power and those whom power afflicts. Everyone else is demanding that somebody should do something about the conflict in the Middle East. The peace campaigners are doing it. ---------------------------------- 169197 "Commanding Heights" on PBS is Privatization drivel