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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Jun 11, 2010 - 12:27pm PT
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"philo, You mean like hanging a seven year old boy for spying like an Islamic group did yesterday."
Fats, what does that have to do with Palestine, Palestinians or Israel's brutal and illegal occupation of Palestine?
"Jun 10, 2010 - 10:58am PT
To stand above an injured man and then finish him off with rounds from an assault rifle can by no ones estimation be described as an act of self-defense.
I thought the rifles were paintball rifles. The sidearms were the only live-ammo guns they took aboard as backups."
You posted it Skip.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, Ca.
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Jun 11, 2010 - 12:33pm PT
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I posted it, not Skipt.
Look at the facts. And watch the Israeli commando re-load in Ahad's video. That ain't a semi-auto rifle!!!!
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Jun 12, 2010 - 12:25pm PT
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http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/israel-s-greatest-loss-its-moral-imagination-1.295600
Published 14:02 11.06.10Latest update 14:02 11.06.10
Israel’s Greatest Loss: Its Moral Imagination
If a people who so recently experienced such unspeakable inhumanities cannot understand the injustice and suffering its territorial ambitions are inflicting, what hope is there for the rest of us?
By By Henry Siegman
Following Israel’s bloody interdiction of the Gaza Flotilla, I called a life-long friend in Israel to inquire about the mood of the country. My friend, an intellectual and a kind and generous man, has nevertheless long sided with Israeli hardliners. Still, I was entirely unprepared for his response. He told me—in a voice trembling with emotion—that the world’s outpouring of condemnation of Israel is reminiscent of the dark period of the Hitler era.
He told me most everyone in Israel felt that way, with the exception of Meretz, a small Israeli pro-peace party. “But for all practical purposes,” he said, “they are Arabs.”
Like me, my friend personally experienced those dark Hitler years, having lived under Nazi occupation, as did so many of Israel’s Jewish citizens. I was therefore stunned by the analogy. He went on to say that the so-called human rights activists on the Turkish ship were in fact terrorists and thugs paid to assault Israeli authorities to provoke an incident that would discredit the Jewish state. The evidence for this, he said, is that many of these activists were found by Israeli authorities to have on them ten thousand dollars, “exactly the same amount!” he exclaimed.
When I managed to get over the shock of that exchange, it struck me that the invocation of the Hitler era was actually a frighteningly apt and searing analogy, although not the one my friend intended. A million and a half civilians have been forced to live in an open-air prison in inhuman conditions for over three years now, but unlike the Hitler years, they are not Jews but Palestinians. Their jailers, incredibly, are survivors of the Holocaust, or their descendants. Of course, the inmates of Gaza are not destined for gas chambers, as the Jews were, but they have been reduced to a debased and hopeless existence.
Fully 80% of Gaza’s population lives on the edge of malnutrition, depending on international charities for their daily nourishment. According to the UN and World Health authorities, Gaza’s children suffer from dramatically increased morbidity that will affect and shorten the lives of many of them. This obscenity is a consequence of a deliberate and carefully calculated Israeli policy aimed at de-developing Gaza by destroying not only its economy but its physical and social infrastructure while sealing it hermitically from the outside world.
Particularly appalling is that this policy has been the source of amusement for some Israeli leaders, who according to Israeli press reports have jokingly described it as “putting Palestinians on a diet.” That, too, is reminiscent of the Hitler years, when Jewish suffering amused the Nazis.
Another feature of that dark era were absurd conspiracies attributed to the Jews by otherwise intelligent and cultured Germans. Sadly, even smart Jews are not immune to that disease. Is it really conceivable that Turkish activists who were supposedly paid ten thousand dollars each would bring that money with them on board the ship knowing they would be taken into custody by Israeli authorities?
That intelligent and moral people, whether German or Israeli, can convince themselves of such absurdities (a disease that also afflicts much of the Arab world) is the enigma that goes to the heart of the mystery of how even the most civilized societies can so quickly shed their most cherished values and regress to the most primitive impulses toward the Other, without even being aware they have done so. It must surely have something to do with a deliberate repression of the moral imagination that enables people to identify with the Other’s plight. Pirkey Avot, a collection of ethical admonitions that is part of the Talmud, urges: “Do not judge your fellow man until you are able to imagine standing in his place.”
Of course, even the most objectionable Israeli policies do not begin to compare with Hitler’s Germany. But the essential moral issues are the same. How would Jews have reacted to their tormentors had they been consigned to the kind of existence Israel has imposed on Gaza’s population? Would they not have seen human rights activists prepared to risk their lives to call their plight to the world’s attention as heroic, even if they had beaten up commandos trying to prevent their effort? Did Jews admire British commandos who boarded and diverted ships carrying illegal Jewish immigrants to Palestine in the aftermath of World War II, as most Israelis now admire Israel’s naval commandos?
Who would have believed that an Israeli government and its Jewish citizens would seek to demonize and shut down Israeli human rights organizations for their lack of “patriotism,” and dismiss fellow Jews who criticized the assault on the Gaza Flotilla as “Arabs,” pregnant with all the hateful connotations that word has acquired in Israel, not unlike Germans who branded fellow citizens who spoke up for Jews as “Juden”? The German White Rose activists, mostly students from the University of Munich, who dared to condemn the German persecution of the Jews (well before the concentration camp exterminations began) were also considered “traitors” by their fellow Germans, who did not mourn the beheading of these activists by the Gestapo.
So, yes, there is reason for Israelis, and for Jews generally, to think long and hard about the dark Hitler era at this particular time. For the significance of the Gaza Flotilla incident lies not in the questions raised about violations of international law on the high seas, or even about “who assaulted who” first on the Turkish ship, the Mavi Marmara, but in the larger questions raised about our common human condition by Israel’s occupation policies and its devastation of Gaza’s civilian population.
If a people who so recently experienced on its own flesh such unspeakable inhumanities cannot muster the moral imagination to understand the injustice and suffering its territorial ambitions—and even its legitimate security concerns—are inflicting on another people, what hope is there for the rest of us?
Henry Siegman, director of the U.S./Middle East Project, is a visiting research professor at the Sir Joseph Hotung Middle East Program, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He is a former Senior Fellow on the Middle East at the Council on Foreign Relations and, before that, was national director of the American Jewish Congress from 1978 to 1994.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Jun 12, 2010 - 01:12pm PT
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Hey man, this is not ME saying it. It is not Jimmy Carter or Helen Thomas either. It is one of your own. A highly regarded academician and survivor of Nazi germany.
If you don't like it get in one of your mindless miss-direction debates with him not me.
The truth will set you free...
...once you get over your fear of it.
Edit to add;
Topic Author's Reply - Oct 1, 2009 - 09:35am PT
President Obama has about eight weeks to get Iran to stop all development or Israel will strike.
The evil one
So Fats as the self proclaimed Oracle of SuperDelphiTopia how did this prognostication turn out?
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Jun 12, 2010 - 07:01pm PT
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So could Israel.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Jun 12, 2010 - 07:18pm PT
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Free SuperTopo get rid of Skipt.
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TripL7
Trad climber
san diego
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Jun 12, 2010 - 08:23pm PT
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philo- "or Israels brutal and illegal occupation of Palestine?"
??
"I will set your borders from the Red Sea, and from the wilderness to the Euphrates River. For I will place the inhabitants of the land under your control, and you will drive them out ahead of you. You must not make a covenant with them..." Exodus 23:31-32
God keeps His promises(covenants)!
"I will make you into a great nation...I will bless those who bless you, I will curse those who treat you with contempt." Genesis 1:2-3
President Obama(America)take note^^^^^^^^^^!!
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Jun 12, 2010 - 09:18pm PT
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Blow it out your O-ring TripL7. That "covenant" is a bullshit myth.
You apologists of Israel are so fond of saying that Israel is under a constant threat of annihilation from neighboring countries that have vowed to destroy the Zionist pariah state.
But if you read the babble of the "covenant" you can easilly say the same about the state of Israel. They are commited to the destruction of the Palestinian people.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Jun 12, 2010 - 11:14pm PT
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http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/a-nightmarish-experiment-1.295530
Published 01:18 11.06.10Latest update 01:18 11.06.10
A nightmarish experiment
Israel gave itself a nice present to celebrate the 43rd anniversary of losing its borders. The raid on the Gaza flotilla in international waters is like the first Lebanon War - as if in a nightmarish experiment, we seem to be examining the question: What happens when a country has no borders?
By Sefi Rachlevsky
Tags: Israel news
Israel gave itself a nice present to celebrate the 43rd anniversary of losing its borders. The raid on the Gaza flotilla in international waters is like the first Lebanon War - as if in a nightmarish experiment, we seem to be examining the question: What happens when a country has no borders?
Security fence along the Gaza Strip border
Photo by: IDF Spokespersons' Office
Israel's maritime attack did not happen by chance. A border is one of the fundamental factors that defines a country. Decades without one have distorted Israel's thinking.
It is self-evident that, just as a person cannot build in an area that he does not own, a country cannot build settlements outside of its borders. And yet Israel has settled hundreds of thousands of its citizens in areas that, according to its laws, are not part of the State of Israel.
It is self-evident that any couple can marry "without regard to religion, race or gender." And yet in Israel a Jewish man and a non-Jewish woman cannot legally marry. It's self-evident that there is no arbitrary discrimination, and yet it's enough to use the magic words "I'm a religious woman" or "I'm an ultra-Orthodox man" and the obligation to serve in the military evaporates.
It's self-evident that the education provided to children be based on democracy and equality. And yet in Israel, 52 percent of first-graders defined as Jews study in various religious school systems that teach students things like "You are considered a human being and the other nations of the world are not considered human beings."
They are taught that a non-Jew is not a human being, and that anyone who kills a non-Jew is not supposed to be killed by human hands; that women are inferior, and it is an obligation that males and females be separated; and that secular people, or anyone with secular family members, cannot enter these schools.
It is self-evident that racist education cannot be funded by the government and is illegal. And yet most of the country's first-graders receive such "compulsory education" from their government.
The results of this nightmarish experiment are self-evident. In the most recent elections, 35 percent of voters defined as Jews cast their ballots for avowedly racist parties - Yisrael Beitenu, Shas, National Union and their friends.
Critics in the Israeli media wake up only when mistakes are made. That is why - after initially cheering the declaration that "the flotilla will not pass" - they changed their tune following the imbroglio, turning into advocates of the twisted logic "be smart, not right." But what justice is there in an attack on civilians by soldiers on the open seas?
Like the territories, international waters are not Israel; they are outside its borders. A Turkish ship on the open sea is, in effect, a floating Turkish island. An Israeli attack on such an island is not all that different from sending the Israel Defense Forces to take on demonstrators at the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris. There, too, unpleasant people who are not friends of Israel can sometimes be found.
Turkey, which is a member of NATO, was not in a state of war with Israel before the attack. Attacking its citizens on territory that is by definition Turkish is another expression of the Israeli lunacy that lacks any kind of boundaries.
An attack beyond the border must be reserved for extreme cases involving a military target that represents an entity fighting against the country and when citizens are in danger. But civilian ships, that are not carrying weapons, but are bringing civilian aid to a population that is denied chocolate, toys and notebooks, are not nuclear reactors in Iraq, Syria or Iran.
A person who grows up without external borders tends to create distorted internal borders. That is the reason for the attack on Arab MK Hanin Zuabi and her colleagues. While there were certain Arab public figures who went too far in their statements, joining a civilian aid flotilla is one of those legitimate acts which are supposed to be self-evident.
And yet, what was self-evident became betrayal. And citizenship, one of the unconditional foundations of existence, has turned into something that can be revoked - in this case on the basis of ethnicity, a tactic used in fascist regimes. The street has returned to the atmosphere that prevailed under "responsible" opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu and led to the assassination of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin - and the next murder is in the air.
The Israeli deed at sea is liable to reach The Hague. The problem is that Israel has genuine enemies who want to destroy it. A country that does not do everything in its power to accumulate legitimacy, along with turning Iran into an entity that is losing legitimacy and can therefore become a target of activities to undermine it, is a country losing its basic survival instinct. Without borders, it turns out, you lose even that.
Young Israelis who have grown up without borders are now dancing and singing "In blood and fire we will expel Turkey" and "Mohammed is dead." If this keeps up, Israel will not make it to The Hague. The entity gradually replacing the State of Israel is liable not to exist long enough to get there.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Jun 13, 2010 - 01:07pm PT
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JPost.comIsrael
Photo by: Ariel Jerozolimski
Pregnant woman murdered in Ashdod
By YAAKOV LAPPIN
06/13/2010 18:58
Woman stabbed over spilled coffee; doctors try to save baby.
A woman who was eight months pregnant was stabbed to death by her neighbor in Ashdod on Sunday following an argument over spilled
coffee.
Tali Atar, 34, was repeatedly stabbed in the torso and neck by a 38-year-old mother of two who lived one floor below her, police said.
Atar was rushed to the Kaplan Medical Center in Rehovot in critical condition, where doctors battled to save her life and rescue her unborn child.
The baby was rescued by an emergency c-section operation, and is said to be in stable condition, but Atar succumbed to her wounds shortly afterwards, doctors said.
Police arrested the murder suspect after arriving at the building, and say the suspect, a mother of two, has linked herself to the stabbing.
"We arrived at the address after being notified of an incident," Supt. Meital Geref, spokeswoman of Lachish police, told The Jerusalem
Post.
Several reports said the two women had been involved in a long-standing and escalating feud, and that Atar was stabbed after being accused by her neighbor of deliberately spilling coffee outside of the suspect's apartment.
The two women allegedly met at the building's entrance, where the murder suspect produced a knife and proceeded to stab Atar.
"We are at the start of the investigation. We cannot yet confirm that there was a previous feud," Geref said.
She added that police received a report that garbage had been thrown outside of the door of the murder victim on Sunday morning.
"We had no previous complaints of violent incidents," Geref said.
Paramedics described finding Atar lying in a pool of blood outside of the building and commencing immediate attempts to save her life.
Atar, who had three children in addition to the new born baby, worked in a soup kitchen, family members said.
------------------------------
OOOH how very civilized.
If a "GOOD ISRAELI woman and mother is willing to murder another "GOOD ISRAELI" pregnant mother of three over a cup of coffee, no wonder they treat the Palestinians with such barbaric contempt for humanity. I am surprised no one wants to accuse the dead woman of using her baby as a human shield.
The evil violence of the fundamentalist Zionist forces are poisoning the very heart and soul of Israel. Peace will only occur when Israel is reformed.
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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Jun 13, 2010 - 04:38pm PT
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Philo, to try to use the actions of one obviously mentally ill outlier to justify the insanity of a murderous religious movement only makes you look foolish.
APA-Mogadishu-(Somalia) Islamist militants of the Hezbal Islam rebel group have killed two football fans and arrested ten others after attacking a house where fans were watching the World Cup game between Argentina and Nigeria in the Huruwaa neighborhood north-east of the capital Mogadishu on Saturday.
Residents say that heavily armed militants stormed a house where football fans were secretly watching the match, which has been prohibited in the Islamist-controlled regions in Somalia.
“Two young men who tried to jump over the wall were shot and killed while ten others including my husband and my teenage son were taken to Islamist custody in the village” Halima Ahmed, a mother of five children said in a telephone interview with APA on Sunday morning.
Islamist militia leader Sheikh Mohamed Abu Abdalla said that those in custody have broken the law and will be dealt with in accordance with Islamic law.
Prior to the World Cup opening, the Islamists in Somalia warned people against watching the matches, saying that it was not compatible with Islamic law and that those founding watching football will be brought before Islamic courts.
“Football descended from the old Christian cultures and our Islamic administration will never allow watching it. We are giving our last warning to the people,” Sheikh Abu Yahya Al Iraqi said, while addressing crowds in the Suqa Holaha village north of Mogadishu, hours before the World Cup kick off on Friday.
The president of the Somali Football Federation Said Mahmoud Nur who was reached for comment while in South Africa, declined to comment on the matter because of security reasons.
Meanwhile, residents in the southern Jubba regions have sent a complaint letter to the Al Shabab administration in the regions demanding permission to watch the world’s largest sporting event.
Reports say that representatives from the community including elders went to the Al Shabab administrative office in the southern port town of Kismayo Saturday requesting permission to watch the World Cup, but they were denied and told that they will be arrested if they ever again come with such demands.
In 2006, the Islamic Courts Union who were then controlling most of Somalia banned watching the World Cup, describing football as a “satanic act” and as a result, two football fans were also killed and scores arrested in the city of Dhusamareeb in central Somalia when heavily armed militants raided a cinema where they were watching a World Cup game.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Jun 13, 2010 - 05:37pm PT
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Why TGT? You all do that to Arabs all the time.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Jun 13, 2010 - 11:10pm PT
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In 2006, the Islamic Courts Union who were then controlling most of Somalia banned watching the World Cup, describing football as a “satanic act” Well, American football anyway.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Jun 14, 2010 - 11:10am PT
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Ha ha ha so phunny Anders.
Hey here is an idea that should appeal to the rabid, right wing, racists of the Republican party;
Forget what Helen Thomas said about Jews going back to where they came from. How about we all just demand that the Palestinians go back to where they came from?
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Jun 14, 2010 - 03:38pm PT
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"have you turned your house over to the impoverished Native Americans whose land you have stolen?"
Just a little reality check on history.
I did not steal native American lands.
My anscestors hadn't even arrived in this new world by the time most of that land theft occured.
In Palestine however the thievery happens everyday. There are scores of Palestinians who still have keys to homes they were forced out of. Sixty years is different than a few hundred years.
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ahad aham
Trad climber
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Jun 15, 2010 - 08:00am PT
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"Why should the Arabs make peace? If I was an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country. Sure God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God is not theirs. We come from Israel, it's true, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been antisemitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that? They may perhaps forget in one or two generations' time, but for the moment there is no chance. So, it's simple: we have to stay strong and maintain a powerful army. Our whole policy is there. Otherwise the Arabs will wipe us out."
David Ben Gurion
it got a street named for him in manhattan......
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Douglas Rhiner
Mountain climber
Tahoe City/Talmont , CA
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Jun 15, 2010 - 09:18am PT
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Oooops.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Jun 15, 2010 - 10:26am PT
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They need REAL food and medicine not junk snack food and sugary sodas. Why should the Palestinians let Israel have a PR bump for passing off junk food to malnourished children?
They won't let wheel chairs in for the amputee children but Doritos and Pepsi are supposed to be excepted with grateful praise. Bollocks!
Sixty years is hugely different than 300 years. Your people constantly slap the world's face with the myth of the covenant from thousands of years ago as what legitimizes their actions in Palestine. As I said before, many of the diss-possessed of the Nakba are still alive. Many of the terrorists of the Irgun and Stern gangs are still alive. The land of the Palestinians is being stolen everyday. There is a huge difference in these two situations.
Last time I checked Chief Ouray and Sitting Bull have been dead and decomposed since long before the founding of the modern State of Israel.
I'll tell you what Jeff, I'll give up my house after Israel gives up the illegal Occupation and make reparations.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Jun 15, 2010 - 10:49am PT
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Please explain with examples. Then I will counter with equally ugly racism from your side of reality.
What I do is present a counter points to the lies and obfuscation presented by DaftRat and others.
For example Jeff just posted an inflammatory link about the refusal of a load of crap from Israel. He wants to paint the picture that things are not all that bad in Gaza. What he doesn't bother to explain is that it was all empty junk food. That crap is POISON to severely malnourished children.
So you understand the foolishness of your accusation towards me let me explain that I have lots of family and friends that are Jewish. Not one of them would consider me remotely racist even when I present the same arguments to them that I do here on the Forum. It is hard to hear the truth and harder to look in the mirror when you know that what is being done is so wrong. I know it is hard to hear what I have to say but no-one who knows me would have the temerity to call me racist. It is a knee jerk reaction of the simple minded to defend the indefensible.
To your credit you were not stupid enough to attempt to label me an Anti-Semite. That is your domain.
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