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SIMPLE MATH CONCERNING PALESTINIAN LAND
by JONAS
Wednesday, May. 21, 2003 at 3:39 PM
joeskillet@yahoo.com
For Pittsburgh Indymedia: A summarized math equation for the problem concerning Palestinian land, etc. (For the lay men).
United Nations "Partition Plan" to the Palestinians:
You are going to have 47% of the 100% which was originally yours.
"Oslo Agreement" to the Palestinians:
You are going to have 22% of the 100% which was originally yours.
Barak's "Generous Offer" to the Palestinians:
We are going to give you 80% of 22% of 100% of the land which was originally yours.
Sharon's "Peace Plan" to the Palestinians in 2,000:
We are going to give you 42% of 80% of 22% of 100% of the land which was originally yours, and this 42% will remain under continuous curfew.
"American Zionists" to the Palestinians:
According to our version of the Bible you are entitled to 0% of 42% of 80% of 22% of 100% of the land which was originally yours.
The "Road Map" to the Palestinians that Bush envisions:
� If you stop your resistance to the occupation (which we call terrorism), and
� your refugees give up their right of return to their ancestral homes, and
� you agree to only elect officials acceptable to Bush and Sharon, and
� you agree to lock up all your resistance fighters, and
� you agree to drive your cars only on roads that Sharon assigns for your use, and
� you do not object to the 'wall' that Sharon is building, and
� you agree not to claim Jerusalem as your capital, and
� you agree that your children's school curriculum only includes courses and books approved by the Israeli government, and
� you agree not to give birth to more than three children per family,
then Sharon might consider negotiating with you on the 42% of 80% of 22% of 100% of the land which was originally yours.
Boo hoo hoo
by George K.
Thursday, May. 22, 2003 at 9:48 AM
dodgerambler@yahoo.com
So, whats your point? Are you going to cry a river for any people that supposedly were living somewhere "first"? Are you going to start "boo-hoo"-ing for the "american" indians?
Get over it - the Palestinians LOST.
People are not equal. Winners DO impose their will. Such is life.
Palestinians::Native Americans
by Dan P.
Thursday, May. 22, 2003 at 12:36 PM
Native Americans and Palestinians were botth screwed out of their land.
Besides the most obvious difference of there not being large number of Native American refugees being held under military occupation by the US Army, the most key and fundamental difference between the two is that Native Americans can be free and equal citizens of America under our law.
Only those Palestinians who happened to reside west of an arbitrary armistice line drawn in 1949 get to be citizens of Israel, and they arre second class citizens who get discriminated against in every way. Those east of the line live under Israeli military rule yet are not even citizens. This, my friend, is the problem.
Israel is free to keep the land, all of it, if they wish, but they cannot deny rights to the indigenous population. Our crimes against the Native Americans is (largely, there are still injustices today but not compartively speaking) historical, whereas the injustices against Palestinians are ongoing.
On the Native Americans
by Observer
Thursday, May. 22, 2003 at 10:21 PM
Just a quick note: The Native Americans weren't subjected to
some injustices, they were systematically
exterminated. The word I think I'm looking for is genocide.
led you to my answer
by George K.
Saturday, May. 24, 2003 at 11:54 AM
dodgerambler@yahoo.com
You came up with the correct answer!!! Genocide!!!
Unfortuantely, if the Pali's get anything that goes their way, and gain a little strength, they will begin a campaign of genocide against Israel. This cycle has gone on for ....how long? Centuries?
It can only end one way?
Just as the struggle with the "native" americans has (and I use that term "native" loosely).
If the weaker group cannot relent and accept acculturation, then it must be and will be exterminated. AS long as it resists, it will be put down. Do you honestly think that can go on forever???
IN all honesty, shouldn't the Pali's relent for the future of their children and integrate with Israel, to form a much larger country? The conflict only weakens them, when they could win much more from the inside....
Response to Geoge K's
by Dan P
Saturday, May. 24, 2003 at 9:19 PM
Hello George. I hope you don't take any of this personally, but your logic is flawed and your history is incorrect.
First, I don't think there has ever been a point where Palestinian resistance to Zionists has constituted anything near genocide. Secondly, the conflict most certainly has not been going on for "centuries" as Zionism is most certainly not that old, witih the first Zionist immigration to Palestine happening at the conclusion of the 19th century. Jews and Arabs lived in peace in Palestine for centruies prior to Zionists started immigrating with political ambitions. Even minor conflict did not develop until the 1920s between Zionists and Arabs. And violence most certainly did not reach the level that it is at today until al-Nakba/Israeli Independence in 1948.
There is no option for Palestinians to relent. What are you asking them to give up? Their homes? Their lives? Those who live in the territories now already tried to avoid the conflict, in 1948, and look where it got them.
The last sentence of your post is ignorance. The PLO, from its formation in 1964 until Israel and the US pressured it into working towards a two state solution in 1988, always always always seeked a single "integrated" (well, to be fair, early demands had recent Zionist immigrants returning to where they came, but that was largely rhetoric and later dropped) state in the land of Palestine/Israel. Integration is not an option for Palestinians. If Israel offered full and equal citizenship to the Palestinians and annexed the territories, the conflict would end tomorrow. But Israel is, by design, a Jewish state and this conflicts with the demographics of the area.
There is no shortage of Israelis who are worried about the fact that Israel has an Arab minority and that one day Jews may not have a clear majority of their country. To accept more Palestiniani Arabs as citizens of Israel? Current Israeli leaders would never in a million years go for that. Even most current Israeli leftists (Uri Avnery, etc.) wouldn't go for that.
George K...
by pjd
Monday, May. 26, 2003 at 1:10 AM
You wrote: "People are not equal. Winners DO impose their will. Such is life."
Thank you for your frankness. Your perspective is called "fascism".
Do you display an American flag at your home? You shouldn't, because the USA's founders would find your perspective repugnant, and they fell a bit short in their views of equality themselves.
So, please find an uninhabited island somewhere and go there.
uh
by josh
Monday, May. 26, 2003 at 12:28 PM
Thank you for your frankness. Your perspective is called "fascism".
So when we went in and imposed our will on the Germans to make them stop killing millions of innocent people we were fascists? Just because the winning side imposes its will on the losing side doesn't make it fascism, it's just how things work. If the winning side isn't trying to get the losing side to change something why did they even go to war?
New Facts?
by George K.
Tuesday, May. 27, 2003 at 11:12 AM
dodgerambler@yahoo.com
I appreciate the commentary. Here is a news story (take it as lightly as you feel you need to) that somewhat highlights my viewpoint that we in America like to think that we are "enlightened" as to what occurs in other places of conflict, but we can never truely know what occurs there. Such as the Pali conflict...unless BOTH sides back off, the only endgame is extermination of one side or the other. Can you blame Israel for being ruthless when it is either you or them? Some of you take a far too naive view of a savage world.
Most people are not nice.
Saddam's parades of dead babies are exposed as a cynical charade
(Filed: 25/05/2003)
UN sanctions did not kill the hundreds of infants displayed over the years - it was neglect by the former regime, Iraqi doctors in Baghdad tell Charlotte Edwardes
The "baby parades" were a staple of Saddam Hussein's propaganda machine for a decade. Convoys of taxis, with the tiny coffins of dead infants strapped to their roofs - allegedly killed by United Nations sanctions - were driven through the streets of Baghdad, past crowds of women screaming anti-Western slogans.
The moving scenes were often filmed by visiting television crews and provided valuable ammunition to anti-sanctions activists such as George Galloway, the Labour MP, who blamed Western governments for the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children.
But The Telegraph can reveal that it was all a cynical charade. Iraqi doctors say they were told to collect dead babies who had died prematurely or from natural causes and to store them in cardboard boxes in refrigerated morgues for up to four weeks - until they had sufficient corpses for a parade.
Many of the children died, they say, as a result of the Iraqi government's own neglect as it lavished funds on military programmes and Saddam's palaces in the knowledge that it could blame sanctions for the lack of medicines and equipment in hospitals and clinics.
"We were not allowed to return the babies to their mothers for immediate burial, as is the Muslim tradition, but told they must be kept for what became known as 'the taxi parade'," said Dr Hussein al-Douri, the deputy director of the Ibn al-Baladi hospital in Saddam City, a Shia district in eastern Baghdad.
"The mothers would be hysterical and sometimes threaten to kill us, but we knew that the real threat was from the government."
Asked what would have happened if he had disobeyed the orders, Dr al-Douri replied: "They would have killed our families. This was an important event for the propaganda campaign."
Dr al-Douri, who has worked for 10 years as a paediatrician, said the parades were orchestrated by officials from the ministries of health, information and intelligence.
He said: "All 10 hospitals in Baghdad were involved in this and the quota for the parade was between 25 and 30 babies a month, which they would say had died in one day.
"We had to tell the babies' families that it was a government order and that they would be paid to keep quiet. The reward was sometimes in money, the equivalent of $10 per baby, or in food: rice, sugar and oil."
The government then ordered members of the Iraqi Women's Federation, an organisation funded by the regime, to line the streets of Baghdad and wail and beat themselves in mock grief.
"They portrayed an image of mothers in mourning for their recently dead children," he said. "It was too dangerous not to follow the orders. We were very afraid. The families were afraid, too."
Dr al-Douri showed The Telegraph the morgue where babies' bodies would be stored in cardboard boxes before being transferred to wooden coffins carrying their names and sometimes photographs.
Dr Amer Abdul al-Jalil, the deputy resident at the hospital, said: "Sanctions did not kill these children - Saddam killed them. The internal sanctions by the Saddam regime were very effective. Those who died prematurely usually died because their mothers lived in impoverished areas neglected by the government.
"The mortality rate was higher in areas such as Saddam City because there was no sewerage system. Infectious diseases were rampant.
"Over the past 10 years, the government in Iraq poured money into the military and the construction of palaces for Saddam to the detriment of the health sector. Those babies or small children who died because they could not access the right drugs, died because Saddam's government failed to distribute the drugs. The poorer areas were most vulnerable."
He added: "We feel terrible that this happened, but we were living under a regime and we had to keep silent. What could we do?"
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Response to Dan P
by George K.
Tuesday, May. 27, 2003 at 11:23 AM
dodgerambler@yahoo.com
Dan,
I am talking centuries in terms of a much broader view of history. The middle east has been consumed in conflict for millenia (since the Roman occupation? Before?).
As for my last sentence of my post being ignorant, I don't claim to know the fine details of the political movements in the region. What I do know, by studying some history of cultures meeting, dominant cultures will wipe the minority cultures out. Only the artificial construct of the UN prevents Israel from doing so when threatened now. As terrorist acts continue and public outrage against them grows, don't you see that the only solution is extermination?
Extermination?
by Dan P
Wednesday, May. 28, 2003 at 2:21 AM
The day I consider extermination of a people to be a solution to anything is the day that I am too saddened by the world we've created to continue living in it.
The "terrorism" and "public outrage" that you mention can be applied as arguments to exterminate both Israelis and Palestinians; in Israel and in the United States the media tends to portray the Palestinians as those who are behind the most heinous violence, wheras in Europe and the Arab world Israelis are shown to be behind the most heinous violence.
I have seen more than my fair share of pictures of dead Palestinian babies, killed by the Israeli Army during "defensive" maneuvers, such as dropping a one ton bomb on a house that holds a sleeping man and his family (read: several children), because the man was accused of being affiliated with Hamas. To me, that's absolutely no more legitimate than saying a suicide bombing isn't terrorism because you're likely to kill reservists in the Israeli Army.
Extermination is never a solution. Even if your sick mind can come to the conclusion that it is, who do you exterminate? Neither side could begin an exterimination campaign and survive when the rest of the world finds out about it and decides to act.
![[masthead]](/images/masthead_140.png)