Israeli Children Expendable?

RE: Three Cheers for the UN!

>Check out the voting patterns in the Western Cape, and the

>policies of the DP in South Africa.

Hey, you lying sack of garbage - I attempted to locate the Ben-Gurion quote you cited (which did not, by the way, even remotely suggest support for apartheid; only the part which you conspicuously paraphrased, but did not quote, did that), and it's nowhere to be found. I even put the quote in Google and . . . nothing. Where did you get that quote from?

In fact, Ben-Gurion frequently made clear that he would do everything he could to make sure Israel did NOT resemble apartheid South Africa:

<<Even before the State of Israel was established, Jewish leaders consciously sought to avoid the situation that prevailed in South Africa. As David Ben-Gurion told Palestinian nationalist Musa Alami in 1934 (http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/History/Human_Rights/Israel_&_apartheid.html):

We do not want to create a situation like that which exists in South Africa, where the whites are the owners and rulers, and the blacks are the workers. If we do not do all kinds of work, easy and hard, skilled and unskilled, if we become merely landlords, then this will not be our homeland (Shabtai Teveth, Ben-Gurion and the Palestinian Arabs: From Peace to War, London: Oxford University Press, 1985, p. 140).>>

You constantly fabricate quotes and facts here, making up whatever you want and then refusing to provide citations because they don't exist. Worse, you cowardly abandon what you say everytime it's proven to be wrong and then retreat to some unrelated, lesser point without acknowledging what happened.

You began by claiming that there are no street signs in Israel in Arabic. When that was proven to be a lie, you went back 25 years and tried to claim that Menachem Begin did that - as though states are judged by what they did in the past rather than the present.

Worst of all, you focus exclusively on Israel without ever answering why all of the worse abuses around the world - and particularly in the Middle Eastern Arab states which you worship (how many street signs are in Hebrew in Indonesia or Egypt?) - prompt nothing but indifference from you, making clear that your problem isn't with human rights abuses but with Israel.

I don't know why anyone would debate these issues with this bacteria. I think it's awesome to be able to discuss this or any other issue with people who have diametrically opposed viewpoints, particularly if you think those views are repugnant, because it's an incomparably valuable way to gain otherwise unattainable insight into those views.

But for it to be worthwhile, it's necessary to have a shared minimum degree of intellectual honesty and integrity, and someone who makes things up and refuses to cite them and runs around in argumentative circles addressing nothing is the antithesis of this.

RE: Three Cheers for the UN!

><<Even before the State of Israel was established, Jewish

>leaders consciously sought to avoid the situation that

>prevailed in South Africa. As David Ben-Gurion told

>Palestinian nationalist Musa Alami in 1934

>(http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/History/Human_Rights/Israel_&_apartheid.html):

Curious quote that predates both the formation of Israel in 1948 and the adoption of formal apartheid in 1949. Might you allow that his views might have evolved somewhat thereafter....?

>We do not want to create a situation like that which exists

>in South Africa, where the whites are the owners and rulers,

>and the blacks are the workers. If we do not do all kinds

>of work, easy and hard, skilled and unskilled, if we become

>merely landlords, then this will not be our homeland (Shabtai

>Teveth, Ben-Gurion and the Palestinian Arabs: From Peace to

>War, London: Oxford University Press, 1985, p. 140).>>

Ditto.

>You constantly fabricate quotes and facts here, making up

>whatever you want and then refusing to provide citations

>because they don't exist. Worse, you cowardly abandon what

>you say everytime it's proven to be wrong and then retreat to

>some unrelated, lesser point without acknowledging what

>happened.

I suggest that you have a look at: Ben-Gurion and Jewish Foreign Policy - Giora Goldberg Jewish Political Studies Review Abstracts

Volume 3, Numbers 1-2 (Spring 5751/1991). Of course, no doubt the good professor will be denounced as a self-hating jew too?

It has been some time since I have searched google for these references, but you should understand that given the many references to Israel and apartheid, including very recent ones, it is becoming harder to pin point these references.

At any rate, it is curious that it remains the official policy of Israel not to discuss the Israel/South Africa alliance, and when asked to apologize for his role in that alliance Shimon Peres refuses to apologize. So I suppose folks can form their own judgements. Was Israel a frienmd or a foe of apartheid from the time of David Ben Gurion? Is developi

RE: Three Cheers for the UN!

Is developing a WMD program with another country more consistent withthat country being a friend or foe, you decide.

RE: Three Cheers for the UN!

>do voting records in SA list

>religion?

Have you heard of exit polls? I suppose you dispute similar exercises when conducted by the NYT after American elections?

RE: Three Cheers for the UN!

>And you keep mentioning things people have said or even feel

>without citing them, ....

When I post the citations, the responses vary from denial to complaints about bandwith which one will you choose this time?

(As for the Benny Morris quotes, I think the burden is now on you to do your own archival research here.)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/1957644.stm

Monday, 29 April, 2002, 11:55 GMT 12:55 UK

Tutu condemns Israeli 'apartheid'

Tutu said 'oppression' would not bring security

South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu has accused Israel of practising apartheid in its policies towards the Palestinians.

The Nobel peace laureate said he was "very deeply distressed" by a visit to the Holy Land, adding that "it reminded me so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa".

The Jewish lobby is powerful - very powerful. Well, so what?

Archbishop Desmond Tutu

In a speech in the United States, carried in the UK's Guardian newspaper, Archbishop Tutu said he saw "the humiliation of the Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like us when young white police officers prevented us from moving about".

The archbishop, who was a leading opponent of apartheid in South Africa, said Israel would "never get true security and safety through oppressing another people".

Archbishop Tutu said his criticism of the Israeli Government did not mean he was anti-Semitic.

"I am not even anti-white, despite the madness of that group," he said.

Jewish lobby

The archbishop attacked the political power of Jewish groups in the United States, saying: "People are scared in this country, to say wrong is wrong because the Jewish lobby is powerful - very powerful. Well, so what?

"The apartheid government was very powerful, but today it no longer exists.

Tutu said Israeli checkpoints were humiliating Palestinians

"Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Pinochet, Milosevic, and Idi Amin were all powerful, but in the end they bit the dust," he said.

Speaking at a conference called Ending the Oppression in Boston, Archbishop Tutu told delegates Jewish people had been at the forefront of the struggle against apartheid in South Africa.

He asked: "Have our Jewish sisters and brothers forgotten their humiliation? Have they forgotten the collective punishment, the home demolitions, in their own history so soon?

"Have they turned their backs on their profound and noble religious traditions?"

The archbishop said that while he condemned suicide bombings by Palestinian militants against Israel, Israeli military action would not bring security to the Jewish state.

Israel must "strive for peace based on justice, based on withdrawal from all the occupied territories, and the establishment of a viable Palestinian state on those territories side by side with Israel, both with secure borders," he said.

http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/meast/9910/20/mandela.arafat/

Nelson Mandela gets warm welcome in Gaza

Former South African leader calls on Israel to pull out of occupied lands

October 20, 1999

Web posted at: 9:34 p.m. EDT (0134 GMT)

JERUSALEM (CNN) -- Palestinians gave Nelson Mandela a hero's welcome when he visited Gaza Wednesday, and the former South African president said he would press Israel to release all Palestinian prisoners.

"It is a realization of a dream for me to be here to come and pledge my solidarity with my friend Yasser Arafat," Mandela said.

Mandela also addressed a special session of the Palestinian assembly, telling legislators that "the histories of our two peoples correspond in such painful and poignant ways that I intensely feel myself at home amongst my compatriots."

Mandela, who fought against white minority rule in his homeland, and Arafat, the Palestinian leader, say they nurtured each other through some of their most difficult times as each worked toward the goal of self-determination for their peoples.

VIDEO

Correspondent Jerrold Kessel reports on former South African President Nelson Mandela's visit to Gaza

Windows Media 28K 80K

Mandela recalled a time when both movements were treated as pariahs by the international community -- a period that saw the forging of close bonds between the Palestinians and his African National Congress.

"The long-standing fraternal bonds between our two liberation movements are now translating into the relations between two governments," Mandela said.

But Mandela's visit was more than symbolic. He touted the political message that Israel needs to give up all occupied Arab land -- including the Golan Heights and southern Lebanon -- in return for its total recognition within safe borders.

Mandela said he has no doubt that Palestinian leader Arafat "is eager for peace. He is a passionate fighter for peace."

However, some Palestinian critics of Arafat say he has not emulated Mandela's much-praised democratic path in South Africa.

"I don't think (Arafat) has the potential to achieve our dream," opponent Abdul Jawad Salah. "In fact, he has shattered our dream."

Though his speech to the assembly was strongly supportive of the Middle East peace process, Mandela elicited thunderous applause when he stated his opinion that violence becomes an option when peace talks break down.

"Our men and women with vision choose peace rather than confrontation, except in cases where we cannot get, where we cannot proceed, where we cannot move forward," he said.

"Then, if the only alternative is violence, we will use violence," he said. That earned two thunderous minutes of rhythmic applause.

Correspondent Jerrold Kessel and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

RE: Truth Squad

They certainly taught you strangely at the "Send In This Matchbook Cover and You Too Can Be an International Paralegal" School! Unless, of course, you went to the Damascus or Baghdad campus!

Most "international paralegals" understand that nation-states almost never act for altruistic reasons and almost always for pragmatic ones. Ben-Gurion's statement is merely a reflection of this: South Africa was the home of a large, wealthy and influential Jewish community that was also strongly Zionist and supportive of the creation of Israel. There were no such communities in sub-Saharan Africa, then referred to, less-politically-correctly, as Black Africa. (I don't think at the time of these quotes that anyone was much aware of the existence of a significant Jewish community in Ethiopia.) As the Jewish homeland, Israel has a very strong interest in protecting the safety and well-being of Jews everywhere, just as the government of Hungary, for example, expresses a strong interest in protecting the rights of Hungarian minorities in other European countries like Slovakia and Romania. THAT's the obvious basis for Ben-Gurion's remark, which does not, in any way, include an endorsement of South Africa's racial policies, which he evidently opposed.

National interest requires sleeping with strange bedfellows, and Israel's relationships with South Africa and Taiwan during the Arab boycott years is just one example. But it's no stranger than Nixon and the Communist Chinese. Since then, the U.S. continues to suck up to China, in spite of the near-daily horrendous human rights violations there and the never-ending occupation of Tibet with its attempts to overwhelm the native culture and population by massively settling Han Chinese in the occupied territory. Can you explain to us, Auntie S, why you're not so exercised about that situation, and why you aren't posting hourly about it on a site devoted to male escorts? Is it because there aren't any Jews involved?

RE: Three Cheers for the UN!

great. point me to the exit polls, then.