Israeli newspaper claims 'Israel wants to be raped by the USA'

Israel did infact exist in history, however, at the time of the Second World War it did not. Jews were dispersed around the world, mainly in Europe and America and post WW2, Britain and America gave them the land (wrongly) to form the Israeli state.

 

Britain and America didn't 'give' anybody anything. The move to re-establish the Jewish homeland came from a League of Nations Mandate, an organisation which the United States wasn't even a member of, and decades before the Holocaust happened.

 

|| The Mandatory shall be responsible for placing the country under such political, administrative and economic conditions as will secure the establishment of the Jewish national home, as laid down in the preamble, and the development of self-governing institutions.

 

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1922mandate.html

 

that's another of the widespread myths/misconceptions of this subject - that Israel was some sort of 'consolation prize' for the Holocaust, bestowed by the guilty and appalled/sympathetic West. It simply was not. The whole point of the 1922 British Mandate was to re-establish Israel.

The land was however promised by the British just 7 years earlier to the Arabs in order to secure their support and participation in ejecting the Ottoman armies.

The Zionist representatives at the Council did not have the support of the majority of Jews at the time, they wanted to go to the USA not get involved in taking over someone else's country and it was only when the US put up immigration controls that as did the other signatories to the agreement that Jews began having to go to Israel. I fear that the support for a Zionist Israel had more to do with European and US racism than it did any support for Zionism within the Jewish community.

The 1922 agreement you provide a link to talks about protecting the rights of all the people in the area. At the time just 5% of the population was Jewish. Nothing was done to prevent Histradut and Haganah attacks on the Arab majority. Resulting in the 6 month strike of 1936 and following guerilla activities that were ruthlessly put down by the Haganah and British forces resulting in thousands of Arab deaths.

The Arab League was compelled to act in 1947 (by not agreeing the traty) because of the injustice of the situation and popular support for the plight of the palestinians in their own countries. But their involvement was only half hearted and they were suing for peace immediately, the Arab leaders were in the pockets of the West and they knew full well they did not have the military strength to win a war, but they couldn't go along with it either because of strength of feeling of solidarity amongst their populations. The Arab nations supplying the men for the army actively prevented people joining it, so there were only ever 15,000 maximum. The zionists had 30,000 regular troops and 32,000 second line troops. The war was precisely what the Zionists wanted and they ruthlessly began their ethnic cleansing at Deir Yassin, where the Arabs were given 15 minutes to leave their homes before the Irgun attacked killing over a hundred of women and children.

Deir Yassin was just one of many examples of the ethnic cleansing carried out by Ben Gurrion. Creating the 4 million Palestinians we have today the majority of which remain in refugee camps, today in abject poverty, dreaming of their land stolen from them.

the usual pile of utterly one-sided nonsense and blatant untruths from Wildcat. There's so much of it, it's difficult to know where to start, but I'll try :

The land was however promised by the British just 7 years earlier to the Arabs in order to secure their support and participation in ejecting the Ottoman armies.

there you go again with the McMahon letters garbage, which is just, as usual with all your posts, the fake revisionist Arab take on history. I bet Wildcat thinks he or she is smart, but unfortunately for them, they haven't got the first clue what they're talking about.

The Arab case can be summarised as :

"the UK has made a deal with the Hashemites to help in the creation of an Arab kingdom on all Arab lands (including Palestine) in return of the Arabs’ support for the UK in the WWI. However, after the war UK did not fulfill their commitments"

don't expect to see it in the famous 1960s movie, 'Lawrence of Arabia' - heck, the Titanic didn't break in half just before it sank, either -but one should note that first of all the Arabs did not or could not live up to their obligation to revolt against the Turks, and that most were conscripted (together with, in some cases, Jews) by the Turks and fought for them, not with the British.

yes, some of the Bedouins in the desert did do so, but even “Colonel” Lawrence, in his more sober moments, wrote that the endeavor was a wasted effort. The Arabs primarily fought, not with the British, but for the Turks.

back to the McMahon letters :

Henry McMahon, author of the famous “McMahon Letters” exchanged with Sharif Hussein, the Hashemite leader, is on record saying in 1937:

|| I feel it my duty to state, and I do so definitely and emphatically, that it was not intended by me in giving the pledge to King Hussein to include Palestine in the area in which Arab independence was promised

Palestine and Lebanon were areas excluded from the area of Arab independence in the letter dated 24 October 1915.

In his book “A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East”, David Fromkin writes (pp. 182-186):

|| On 24 October 1915 McMahon replied in quite different spirit to Hussein. …he reluctantly agree to enter into a discussion of specific territories and frontiers; but as he evidently was unwilling to assume personal responsibility for making definite commitments, he used language evasively. On the one hand, he agreed that after the war the Arabs should have their independence; but, on the other, he indicated that European advisers and officials would be needed to establish the administration of Arab countries, and insisted that these advisers and officials should be exclusively British. In other words, any “independent” Arab kingdom in the postwar Middle East would have to be a British protectorate.

|| What territories should be included in the British-protected independent Arab kingdom? McMahon replied by dividing the lands claimed by Hussein into four areas and explaining that Britain could not bind herself to support Hussein’s claims in any one of them.

|| McMahon began by remarking that Hussein must give up claim to territory west of the districts of Damascus, Aleppo, Homs and Hama….

|| In the eastern portion [iraq]… McMahon observed that the established position and interests of Britain were such that she would have to establish “special administrative arrangements” with respect to them; whether such arrangements would leave any room for an assertion of Arab sovereignty – and if so when and to what extent – was left unsaid.

|| In the western portion – Syria and Palestine – Britain could extend assurances to Hussein only in those territories “in which she can act without detriment to the interests ofher ally France.” Since France at the time claimed those territories in their entirety… it followed that Britain could not pledge support for Arab claims with respect to them either – not even to Damascus, Aleppo, Homs, and Hama.

|| That left only Arabia, which at the time was divided among a number of leaders, of whom Hussein was one. Britain at that time enjoyed treaty relationships with other Arabian chiefs, including Hussein’s rival, Ibn Saud. In his letter, McMahon pointed out that he could not promise anything to Hussein that would prejudice Britain’s relationships with other Arab chiefs. By process of elimination, therefore, Britain did not bind herself to support Hussein’s claims anywhere at all….

|| McMahon, an experienced bureaucrat, had seen the need to be completely noncommittal….

|| Gilbert Clayton, who strongly opposed defining Britain’s relations with the Arabs until the war was over, believed that the McMahon letters had succeeded in putting the matter off and in avoiding the giving of any meaningful commitment. Months later Clayton summarized what McMahon had done by writing that “Luckily we have been very careful indeed to commit ourselves to nothing whatsoever.”

|| Hussein replied to McMahon that he could not accept the Aleppo-Homs-Hama-Damascus formula. …So he failed to reach agreement with McMahon, but felt compelled to support the Allies nonetheless: the Young Turks were going to depose him, so he had to rebel against them whether Britain met his terms or not.

|| In a conversation some years later…, Hussein indicated that with regard to Palestine and also with regard to Lebanon and the other lands in the Middle East, he did not regard matters as having been settled… [and] being subject to negotiation at the Peace Conference. According to Hogarth, “He compared ourselves and himself… to two persons about to inhabit one house, but not agreed which should take which floors or rooms.”

|| …In early 1916 Aziz al-Masri, the Arab secret society leader, wrote… that Britain could not achieve her objectives in the Arabic-speaking Middle East unless she were willing to leave its peoples free to exercise full and genuine independence. …they did not want British domination or a British protectorate….

|| Al-Masri had spotted the falseness in the British position. Kitchener and his followers badly wanted to win Arab support but were unwilling to pay the price the Emir Hussein demanded for it; so instead they were attempting to cheat, by pretending to meet Hussein’s demands when in fact they were giving him the counterfeit coin of meaningless language.

|| Though Clayton and his colleagues did not know it, Al Masri, Al-Faruqi, and the Emir Hussein were offering Britain coin that was equally counterfeit. Hussein had no army, and the secret societies had no visible following. Their talk of rallying tens or hundreds of thousands of Arab troops to their cause, whether or not they believed it themselves, was sheer fantasy.

CONCLUSION

No agreement was reached.

There was no tangible promise made.

The British kept their word - within the explicit exclusions made in the letters.

Something approaching 99% of the Ottoman near-east became Arab countries.

what does this tell us?

That the 'Israel bashers' like Wildcat are crying foul because the other 1%, the Jewish homeland - where Jews, despite foreign Arab/Muslim occupation and colonization - had lived continuously for 3300+ years, was promised to the Jews.

At the time just 5% of the population was Jewish.

blatant untruth. This figure refers to the whole of the Mandate prior to it's being split into two parts, one part of which was to become a Jewish and a new Arab state, the other part, which is now today's Jordan, where no Jews were to be allowed to settle in that part of their historic homeland.

what the Wildcats of this world want to push under the carpet, while emphasising the influx of Jews during the Mandate period, is the extent of Arab immigration into Palestine at the same time. The Arab population growth close to the predominately Jewish areas was far greater than in those areas where there were comparitively few Jews.

290% Haifa (home of a new port & industry)

158% Jaffa (adjacent to the new city of Tel Aviv, built on sand dunes by Zionist Jews).

131% Jerusalem (where Jews pioneered construction beyond the old city walls).

In contrast:

37% Bethlehem

42% in Nablus (the largest city in what would become Trans-Jordan’s “West Bank” in 1948).

78% in Jenin (a slightly higher figure, but this is because it's closer to Jewish areas, which is why it later became the suicide bomber capital of the world).

immigrating Arabs were drawn by Jewish and British development. Yassir Arafat himself was one of these immigrants, born in Egypt, but immigrated to Mandate Palestine around 1940. Sheik Qassem himself, the Hamas icon, was another one - he immigrated from northern Syria. Is there anyone out there who can tell us precisely why these Muslim dudes have a perfect right to be, not just Palestinians, but iconic Palestinian leaders, when their Jewish counterparts, who may have been born in exactly the same places, are, according to the cheap propagandists, these alien, foreign invaders?

Creating the 4 million Palestinians we have today the majority of which remain in refugee camps.

refugees that have been systematically denied citizenship by their Arab host countries with the exception of Jordan. I wonder what Wildcat would think if the British or any western government were to deny citizenship to Somali or other refugees/asylum seekers for generation after generation that had fled their homes following the civil war there in the 1990s. Instead, they are showered in many cases with benefits, health care, housing, and educational facilities. Why couldn't the Arabs, despite their huge oil wealth, do the same?

The Arab League was compelled to act in 1947

nobody is 'compelled' to refuse peaceful coexistence and compromise and start aggressive wars, just like nobody is 'compelled' to attach high explosives to their backs and blow up totally innocent civilians in crowded marketplaces, pizza parlours, and buses.

The Arab nations supplying the men for the army actively prevented people joining it, so there were only ever 15,000 maximum

the only reason men were prevented from joining Arab armies is because they were unfit for military service. 80% of Egypt's male population of fighting age would have been a complete liability in the field and were rejected.

again, the figure (where did they Wildcat it from?!) of 15,000 is total nonsense. Does Wildcat really believe this garbage, or are they just the usual cheap propagandist, lying for the cause?

Transjordan's Arab Legion was considered the most effective Arab force by military analysts. Armed, trained and commanded by British officers, this force amounted to around 12,000 men.

at the beginning of the war, Egypt was able to put a maximum of around 40,000 men into the field. By the time of the second truce the Egyptians had 20,000 men in the field in thirteen battalions equipped with 135 tanks, and 90 artillery pieces.

Syria had 12,000 soldiers grouped into three infantry brigades and an armoured force of approximately battalion size. The Syrian Air Force had fifty planes, the 10 newest of which were World War II-generation models.

Iraq's force in the field ultimately numbered around 15,000 to 18,000 men.

set against this forimdable force were the new state of Israel's - whose declaration of independence was recognised very quickly by the United States, the Soviet Union, and many others of the world's countries - forces.

These initially numbered slightly less than 30,000, rising with mobilisation to a final total number of around 105,000.

then Wildcat gets somewhat upset

as usual with the Wildcats of this world, after they've finished spouting the one sided nonsense and total claptrap, they get the violin out and try to pull on the heartstrings by highlighting a single case of abuse by the Irgun prior to the war, i.e. in this case, the Deir Yassin incident, more often referred to by the Arab propaganda machine as a 'massacre'.

Most "massacres" (as listed by Arab propaganda) were the killing of a handful of people. Often they were armed men and unintended civilian casualties killed during (not after!) the fighting. According to Benny Morris, the total number of Arabs massacred was in the hundreds (and he has documented a mere 12 cases of rape. Even 1 is too many, but this counters Arab propaganda that first claims the Arabs were forcefully driven out, and then falls back to the lie that the Arabs fled because those who didn't were raped and massacred - as if this was routine and as if those who didn't flee were raped and massacred ; there are well over a million Arabs living in Israel today that prove otherwise.

In contrast, most of the Arab fighting forces (other than the British trained and led Arab Legion) didn't take prisoners. There were no survivors in areas that they successfully attacked.

all Jews were ethnically cleansed from those regions captured by the Arab forces. Those Arabs that stayed in Israel during the war became full Israeli citizens with equal rights under the law.

Hi Calippo, I'm involved in a less heated discussion in a similar topic on another forum out there and as you're far more clued up than me on things like this, I wondered whether perhaps you've got anything to say about the content of this link: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/06/books/review/Goldberg-t.html?_r=1...

Jews come in all shapes, sizes & colours.

I'm going to hold you to that. Find me a rectangular three inch tall (and four wide) green Jew!

I love peace not war. And guess what. I'm ready to fight for it. See you later.

the usual pile of utterly one-sided nonsense and blatant untruths from Wildcat. There's so much of it, it's difficult to know where to start, but I'll try :

 

The land was however promised by the British just 7 years earlier to the Arabs in order to secure their support and participation in ejecting the Ottoman armies.

 

there you go again with the McMahon letters garbage, which is just, as usual with all your posts, the fake revisionist Arab take on history. I bet Wildcat thinks he or she is smart, but unfortunately for them, they haven't got the first clue what they're talking about.

 

<Snip>

 

CONCLUSION

 

No agreement was reached.

 

There was no tangible promise made.

 

The British kept their word - within the explicit exclusions made in the letters.

Not the conclusion of the 1939 report on the issue to Parlaiment, which thoroughly examines the evidence and comes to a different conclusion. Rather than bore you with the argument that what was referred to as excluded from the promises to the Arab was just the northern Syria coastline, I will leave that to you to read from the link. What I will do is highlight the last but one paragraph

So during the first world war the british were actively recruiting arabs to join the arab revolt in the area of Palestine based on the promise of self determination.

 

At the time just 5% of the population was Jewish.

 

blatant untruth. This figure refers to the whole of the Mandate prior to it's being split into two parts, one part of which was to become a Jewish and a new Arab state, the other part, which is now today's Jordan, where no Jews were to be allowed to settle in that part of their historic homeland.

 

[/Quote]

 

I worked out 5% from figures in a book by John Rose.

 

The number given for 56,000 Jews in Palestine at the end of the first world war is corroborated here Ref

 

He also gave a figure for a million arabs in the area (2/3rds of the way down this page). I can't find a independent reference for that figure. But I note that Wikipedia gives the Jewish population as 10% and elsewhere I have found references to 8%. My 5% appears to be an exaggeration, but it doesn't detract from the general point that the area was mostly Arab.

 

what the Wildcats of this world want to push under the carpet, while emphasising the influx of Jews during the Mandate period, is the extent of Arab immigration into Palestine at the same time. The Arab population growth close to the predominately Jewish areas was far greater than in those areas where there were comparitively few Jews.

 

<Snipped>

[/Quote]

 

Do you have a reference for those figures? They look interesting however, not surprising, in that imnmigration is the nature of any city.

 

 

Creating the 4 million Palestinians we have today the majority of which remain in refugee camps.

 

refugees that have been systematically denied citizenship by their Arab host countries with the exception of Jordan. I wonder what Wildcat would think if the British or any western government were to deny citizenship to Somali or other refugees/asylum seekers for generation after generation that had fled their homes following the civil war there in the 1990s. Instead, they are showered in many cases with benefits, health care, housing, and educational facilities. Why couldn't the Arabs, despite their huge oil wealth, do the same?

 

[/Quote]

 

We give refugees asylum, we don't give them citizenship. Your comparison is spurious. Also since you mention the Arab leadership and their wealth it is worth pointing out that Western foreign policy in the area has been consistently opposed to democratisation eg. the overthrow of Abd al-Karim Qasim in Iraq, Operation Ajax in Iran, the british support for the repressive sultan of Oman in the 50s etc. etc.

 

The Arab League was compelled to act in 1947

 

nobody is 'compelled' to refuse peaceful coexistence and compromise and start aggressive wars, just like nobody is 'compelled' to attach high explosives to their backs and blow up totally innocent civilians in crowded marketplaces, pizza parlours, and buses.

 

[/Quote]

 

The 1947 solution was a compromise on one side only and blatantly unfair: "The partition plan granted 55 per cent of Palestine to the Jews who were 30 per cent of the population but owned only 6 per cent of the land (and this land, it should always be remembered, had been purchased before the war from Arab landlords by Zionists who then evicted the peasant farmers). Nearly 400,000 Arabs, a number nearly equal to the number of Jews, were to live in the area assigned to the Jewish state. The Arab state was to include 10,000 Jews and 725,000 Arabs in the remaining 45% of Palestine." John Rose

 

The Arab nations supplying the men for the army actively prevented people joining it, so there were only ever 15,000 maximum

 

the only reason men were prevented from joining Arab armies is because they were unfit for military service. 80% of Egypt's male population of fighting age would have been a complete liability in the field and were rejected.

 

<snip>

 

[/Quote]

 

Ok I got the figures wrong, I was quoting just the Arab League forces.

 

then Wildcat gets somewhat upset

 

as usual with the Wildcats of this world, after they've finished spouting the one sided nonsense and total claptrap, they get the violin out and try to pull on the heartstrings by highlighting a single case of abuse by the Irgun prior to the war, i.e. in this case, the Deir Yassin incident, more often referred to by the Arab propaganda machine as a 'massacre'.

 

Most "massacres" (as listed by Arab propaganda) were the killing of a handful of people. Often they were armed men and unintended civilian casualties killed during (not after!) the fighting. According to Benny Morris, the total number of Arabs massacred was in the hundreds (and he has documented a mere 12 cases of rape. Even 1 is too many, but this counters Arab propaganda that first claims the Arabs were forcefully driven out, and then falls back to the lie that the Arabs fled because those who didn't were raped and massacred - as if this was routine and as if those who didn't flee were raped and massacred ; there are well over a million Arabs living in Israel today that prove otherwise.

 

In contrast, most of the Arab fighting forces (other than the British trained and led Arab Legion) didn't take prisoners. There were no survivors in areas that they successfully attacked.

 

all Jews were ethnically cleansed from those regions captured by the Arab forces. Those Arabs that stayed in Israel during the war became full Israeli citizens with equal rights under the law.

 

This would be the Benny Morris that accepts the ethnic cleansing but seeks to justify it? "[t]here are circumstances in history that justify ethnic cleansing." Ref.

 

Morris, a person who Michael Palumbo criticises for bias:

Morris' regard for documentation is indeed commendable, were it not for his tendency to choose sources which support his views, while avoiding those document collections which contain information inconsistent with his principal arguments. His decision not to use the testimony of Israeli veterans is unfortunate, since some of them have spoken candidly about Israeli atrocities and expulsion of civilians at Deir Yassin, Lydda-Ramle and Jaffa.

Ref

 

Ilan Pappe accuses him of the same bias. As does Norman Finkelstein and Nur Masalha who accuse him of ignoring Arab testimonies, reports from UN officials and British sources. Ref

 

Reports like those from Count Folke Bernadotte, the UN mediator who was assassinated by the Stern gang with the approval of Yitzhak Shamir. Ref of reports of looting (the info on his assassination comes from wikipedia)

Interesting Haaretz article -

"An invention called 'the Jewish people'"

- about a book entitled When and how was the Jewish people invented? by Shlomo Zand, a professor of history at Tel Aviv University:

http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/959229.html

There never was a Jewish people, only a Jewish religion, and the exile also never happened - hence there was no return..... It's all fiction and myth that served as an excuse for the establishment of the State of Israel, he asserts...

 

We find, then, that the members of a variety of peoples and races, blond and black, brown and yellow, became Jews in large numbers. According to Zand, the Zionist need to devise for them a shared ethnicity and historical continuity produced a long series of inventions and fictions, along with an invocation of racist theses...

Rather than start a new thread on the attacks on Gaza that just yesterday resulted in the deaths of a 6 month old child and 4 boys playing football. I'll post on this thread since Angle has ressurected it.

According to the Independent, 64 % of Israelis want their Govt to engage in the peace talks that Hamas have been attempting to initiate. Instead we get Israeli ministers threatening Gaza with holocaust, helicopter gunships firing rockets in to civilian areas and now the invasion of the Jabaliya refugee camp with reports of indiscriminate targetting of civilians. Ref

When will Israel learn that occupations only result in resistance struggles that Hizbollah have already shown they can't win.

4 boys playing football.

according to Btselem, the boys were playing 100 metres away from where militants had fired rockets into Sderot. The Israelis expressed regret for the incident, which was directly caused by terrorists attacking Israel from built up areas where if Israel responds and inadvertently harms civilians, they can claim a propaganda victory.

The killing of four children – ‘Ali Dardona, age 8, Muhammad Hamudah, 9, Dardona Dardona, 12, and ‘Omer Dardona – and wounding of two others while they played soccer in the street, east of the Jabalya refugee camp on 28 February. B'Tselem’s investigation indicates that Qassam rockets may have been fired earlier about 100 meters from where the children were.

Instead we get Israeli ministers threatening Gaza with holocaust

wrong. Wildcat, do you actually care about the facts of the matter or do you just make everything up to suit your pre conceived notions?

This widely reported story, which misrepresents what the word 'Shoah' means in the Hebrew language (the BBC news article changed their headline which originally included the word 'Holocaust' following complaints), was based on a quote from ONE (not more) OPPOSITION MK, NOT a minister, and NOT part of the Israeli government.

When will Israel learn that occupations only result in resistance struggles that Hizbollah have already shown they can't win.

In the run-up to Camp David and hoping to make peace also with Syria, in May/June of 2000 Israel withdrew from its 6-mile wide security zone in southern Lebanon (designed to keep rockets out of range of Israeli population centers). The UN certified that Israel had withdrawn to the international border. In July of 2006, Hizbullah fired rockets into Israeli population centers and conducted a simultaneous raid across the the internationally recognized border to kidnap hostages. After a failed rescue attempt, Israel bombed roads and runways to prevent Hizbullah from moving the hostages. In response, Hizbullah fired hundreds of rockets into Israeli cities. Israel then invaded Lebanon to take out the rocket launchers. Within a month Israel was in control of southern Lebanon up to the Litani river. Most medium and long-range rockets had been destroyed. Roughly 1/4 of Hizbullah terrorist fighters (700-800) were killed and another 1/4 injured. Israel lost about 120 soldiers. In a ceasefire agreement, the Lebanese Army (with international assistance) took over Hizbullah positions. Based on the results of the war, Nasrallah apologized to the people of Lebanon for starting it... but nonetheless claimed "victory". In Israel, there have been inquiries on why the war didn't go better. Since the war's end the border has been quiet. Lebanon has been without a Prime Minister since November.

It does no such thing, except for people whose standards are so low that they consider Hizbullah surviving the war to be a "victory" and that any constructive criticism in Israel is "proof" that Israel "lost" the war.

It's like one player taking a 100 stroke handicap and still not ending up anywhere near par pretending to have "won" when the other player (with a negative handicap) ends up a few stroke over par.

Or like if Ronaldo bemoans the fact that he made some mistakes, made a few bad passes and missed an open goal, then that is proof that Manchester United lost, when in actual fact they won the game 3-1 instead of 5-0.

It's like an "A" student being critical of himself for getting a 90, while the flunkie is proud of getting a few answers right and getting a 10.

It is the sound of one hand clapping, and it's complete nonsense.

Israel certainly didn't lose, and Hizbullah certainly didn't win (recall Nasrallah apologized to the people of Lebanon for starting a war that ended so badly for them).

laughably, some claim that Israel totally demolished Lebanon... and then pretend that Israel "lost" the war and Hizbullah "won". Both these statements can't be true - yet they can be and are false (most of the destruction in Lebanon was repaired within 100 days of the end of the war).

I'd argue that, if anything, the present situation represents a victory for Israel. During the war, 1/4 of Hizbullah's terrorist fighters were killed (with a similar number wounded). By the end of the war, most Hizbullah terrorists were driven north of the Litani river. Today, for the first time in decades, the Lebanese side of the internationally recognized border between Israel and Lebanon is patroled not by a terrorist group but by the Lebanese Army (with international assistance).

In the last year and a half since the end of the war, the border has been the quietest it has been in decades.

peace talks that Hamas have been attempting to initiate.

Israel cannot negotiate with Hamas until they change their convenant that threatens Jews with genocide, recognises existing agreements and of course Israel itself, which they have not.

....and his attack dog of a Jewish wife ...

Is that better or worse than a crocodile wife? Your arguments lead me to believe that you would be able to provide accurate definitions of both therms.

your reply 42 also needs addressing :

responding to your claims about Morris. The Israel-bashers can never make their minds up about him. As long as Morris is saying what the Israel-bashers would like to hear, then he is a great man, with impeccable scholastic credentials. Yet when other aspects of his research reveal documents that the Israel-bashers would rather pretend didn't exist (e.g. calls by Arab leaders for Arabs in Palestine to abandon their homes - without being "expelled"), suddenly there is an attempt to dismiss Morris (impeaching your own witness).

and as for quoting Illan Pappe, then that really is a laugh. Even the Israel-bashers find it hard to criticise Morris' methods, and tend only to disagree with the conclusions he draws. But Pappe comes in for terrible criticism for HIS methods of 'research'.

http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040322 &s=morris032204

|| Pappe regarded history through the prism of contemporary politics and consciously wrote history with an eye to serving political ends.

|| Pappe allowed his politics to hold sway over his history.

|| Pappe in effect tells his readers: "This is what happened." This is strange, because it directly conflicts with a second major element in his historiographical outlook. Pappe is a proud postmodernist. He believes that there is no such thing as historical truth, only a collection of narratives as numerous as the participants in any given event or process; and each narrative, each perspective, is as valid and legitimate, as true, as the next.

Prof. Karsh, of Oxford's King College, writes:

|| truncated, twisted, and distorted [primary documents].... systematically distort the archival evidence to invent an Israeli history in an image of their own making

To push his own viewpoint as legitimate, Pappe is the staunch post-modernist, advocating that there's no single historical truth. And yet then he insists that his version is the one single historical truth.

One day he believes that witness' memory, even years after the fact, is more vital than a primary written document. But if the next day it turns out that the witness' testimony doesn't match his "truth", it is disregarded.

This is bad science, but obviously the Israel-bashers identify with it because it matches their twisted idea of "integrity" - adherence to the cause, regardless of the evidence or historical truths.

Throughout 1916 and the greater part of 1917, the attitude of the military and political officers of the British Army was clearly based on the understanding that Palestine was destined to form part of the Arab territory which was to be constituted after the War on the basis of independent Arab governments in close alliance with Great Britain."

excuse me, but since when was the UK government a military dictatorship, and soldiers and generals made political decisions related to foreign policy?

the underlying thrust of your argument is that the British reneged on their promises to the Arabs. But as I've already shown with the analysis of the McMahon letters above, they did no such thing.

Israelis have long believed that a large constituent of the UK Foreign Office was or has been and even still is - or at least until 9/11 shifted the goalposts - 'pro-Arab'. I myself have met many Israelis who believe this, and that it was them, the Zionists, and not the Arabs, that were sold out by the British prior to 1948.

many Israelis maintain that the British did their best to undermine the Jewish state to curry favor with the Arab states (once the presence and importance of oil was discovered).

The situation was so embarrassing in 1920-21 that what was widely thought to be a nakedly anti-semitic British military administration was replaced by a civilian body. In 1922-23, as I've mentioned before, without the required approval of the League of Nations, Britain partitioned Mandate Palestine (what many Zionists had understood to be the Jewish-state-to-be) into a western/Jewish "half" (22%) and an eastern/Arab "half" (77%).

In the decades which followed, while Jewish immigration into the Jewish "half" was carefully monitored and controlled by the British, the Arabs would stream in - uncounted - from eastern to western Palestine, where they tended, as I've mentioned above, to settle in those areas that had been developed by Zionists and the British, rather than the 'Arab' towns, where few Jews lived, such as Ramallah and Nablus, which grew far less fast in the Mandate period.

When the British finally withdrew in 1948, enabling the Jewish state to declare independence in accordance with the 1947 UN partition compromise, eastern/trans-Jordanian Arab Palestine had already been independent (as Trans-Jordan) for 2 years.

As a final parting ***** You gesture, despite knowing the Arab intention to launch a war against Israel upon their withdrawal, the British turned over all their police and military posts (even those in what was to be the Jewish "quarter" (12%) following the 1947 partition) to Arab parties.

Once that Arab war came (a mere few hours after the British departure), an arms embargo was placed on the region. While ostensibly this sounds even-handed, consider that the surrounding Arab states which attacked Israel all had established armies (complete with infantry, naval and air forces) while Israel had nothing but light arms to defend itself.

this idea of the British 'selling out' the Arabs doesn't stand up to the slightest scrutiny.

How come the Arab state of Trans-Jordan[ian Palestine] - already independent for two years by 1948 - had the Arab Legion, the premier army in the region, equipped and trained by the British - and under the command of British officers, if the British were 'selling out' the Arabs?

(The only good thing about this was that the Arab Legion, unlike other Arab forces, took prisoners in the 1948 war - all the other Arab armies took none).

It could have been worse for the Zionists. Just look at how Kurdistan was wiped off the map between the Treaty of Sevres and the Treaty of Lausanne.

Wildcat, if the British hadn't sold-out the Kurds for Arab oil, would you claim that Kurdistan, like Israel, was another instance of 'western colonialism?'

Jews who were 30 per cent of the population but owned only 6 per cent of the land

more dishonesty. This implies that Arabs owned the other 94%, but of course they did not.

Jews privately owned 8.6% of this land, not 6%, but what people like Rose would rather ignore is that resident Arabs only owned 3.3% of it. Arabs who mostly fled Israel prior to and during the war abandoned another 16.9%. The rest (71.2%) belonged to the Mandatory power, Britain, having taken over from the previous owners, the Turks - who may have been Muslims, but were definitely NOT Arabs.

http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache:st4se98i7P4J:www.jcrc.org/israel/npr/NPR%2520Report%2520FINAL%25201-19-03.pdf+whereas+Jews+privately+owned+8.6%25+of+this+land,+resident+Arabs+only+owned+3.3%25%3F&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=uk

i]The 1947 solution was a compromise on one side only and blatantly unfair: "The partition plan granted 55 per cent of Palestine to the Jews who were 30 per cent of the population but owned only 6 per cent of the land

this figure is often quoted source by the Israel bashers as usual dishonestly referring to only the WESTERN section of British Mandate Palestine, the EASTERN section having already been split into two in 1922-23. This figure also ignores Jerusalem - which had a Jewish majority by 1880.

In 1922-23, "Palestine" was partitioned. The 77% east of the Jordan River, known as Trans-Jordanian Palestine, was to be an exclusive Arab state (no Jews allowed). The 22% west of the River (cis-Jordan) was to be a Jewish state (the last 1% is the Golan Heights which Britain gave to Syria).

In 1947, it was the 'Jewish' "half" (22%) which was again partitioned - this time by the UN, not the British - between Arabs and Jews. This time the Jews were allocated 54% (of 22%), yielding a net 12% of the original British Mandate Palestine.

65% of the land given to the Jews was the then unsettled, and believed to be unsettleable,

Negev desert. At that time only a few Bedouin lived south of Beersheba, and the Arabs didn't even claim it. Many Zionists felt that this was a cheap way of placating the Jews.

Jews were the majority in the area allocated to the Jewish state.

here is a map of the '47 partition plan, Look at it again:

http://www.mideastweb.org/unpartition.htm

In the Arab portion, there is contiguity between the environs of Gaza & Sinai, and between Trans-Jordan (as it was then known) and what became the "West Bank".

The Jewish state is just as discontinuous as the second Arab state in Palestine, with 4 segments meeting at one "4 corners" point.

As for giving the Jewish state a port on the Red Sea at Eilat, which is a frequent whine, why not? The Arabs already had a port at Aquaba.

If you want to complain, why not about a lack of access of the Jewish state to Jerusalem (with its Jewish majority)?!

It was a compromise. It wasn't what either side wanted. But whining about the Arabs not getting what they wanted while ignoring that the Jews didn't either is banal.

The partition was by the UN, not the British.

And most Jews/Israelis would have been very happy had the UN enforced it rather than see the world leave the Jews/Israel to fend for themselves.

Consider that while surrounding Arab countries had standing armies (Trans-Jordan's Arab Legion was armed, trained and led by the British!), Israel had no tanks or anti-tank weapons, no navy and next to no air-force or anti-air defenses.

What did the UN do? It imposed an arms embargo on both sides. On the face that seems even, but given that the Arabs already had major arms and Israel did not, it clearly wasn't.

ever since Oil was discovered in Arabia and its strategic importance realized, the British did everything they could to abandon their commitments to the Jewish homeland in order to curry favor with the Arabs.

And to take up Calippo's point in the previous post

If you want to complain, why not about a lack of access of the Jewish state to Jerusalem (with its Jewish majority)?!

how about complaining about the equally important fact that in East Jerusalem the Arabs are destroying valuable and important archaeological sites simply in order to destroy the evidence of a strong Jewish presence dating back thousands of years.