Her passion is to broaden global and cultural understanding in order to implement a comprehensive and just international security policy. Her focus is to encourage critical thinking and participation in forming a comprehensive foreign policy beyond the use of force.
and she asserts that she wants to promote:
...the passion and desire to encourage political awareness...[to] see the possibility of creating a new political system. One that is holistic and just...to think critically, debate and discuss global issues from every angle...that we are all interconnected, across political, ethnic, racial, religious and national lines...that all sectors - economic, political and social - must come together to create comprehensive solutions for all people...[and] finally, that violence is an unfortunate option, one that need not be chosen if we have used our ability to think, question, discuss and most importantly listen.
Alright, now that we have that out of the way, in, perhaps, in our way, what interested me about her thinking and how she views the reality I and my friends live is here:
While Israel did declare a unilateral ceasefire after the latest violent exchange, without Palestinian agreement I might add, both are still lobbing lethal weapons at each other. The Palestinians are launching crude missiles at Israel (18 in the first two days of Clinton's visit), and Israelis continue to drop bombs on the Palestinian border with Egypt.
Well, they are crude but they are intended to kill, they have killed and have made dozens of near-misses at locations that were exclusively civilian including kindergartens and schools and shopping centers and they have turned thousands into traumatized individuals. And in other locations as well (like this report today: A Palestinian spotted while throwing Molotov cocktails at Israeli vehicles near the West Bank community of Halamish was shot dead by IDF soldiers Wednesday. Another Palestinian was injured by the troops. The IDF said the two were throwing the firebombs at military and civilian vehicles, causing them to burst into flame. The army said that the firebombs were thrown at an IDF jeep traveling ahead of a civilian vehicle through the West Bank.)
And yes, Israel does possess and uses better ordnance but if Hamas or whoever would stop attacking and initiating terror activity, we would have to respond in this or that degree of severity. And I do not appreciate what seems to be a suggested equivalence of violence.
And she continues:
And if all this wasn't enough, Israel has ramped up its settlement activity over the past year.
Ramped up?
I searched: 1. To act threateningly or violently; rage. 2. To assume a threatening stance. or maybe: 7. (of animals) to stand or move with the forelegs or arms raised, as in animosity or excitement. 8. (of a lion or other large quadruped represented on a coat of arms) to rise or stand on the hind legs. 9. to rear as if to spring. or this: 1. To spring; to leap; to bound; to rear; to prance; to become rampant; hence, to frolic; to romp. 2. To move by leaps, or by leaps; hence, to move swiftly or with violence. 3. To climb, as a plant; to creep up.
I am bedeviled and nonplussed.
It's enough we have to deal with opposition to organic growth. No, not this:
Kingsbarns [A conservation village situated between St Andrews and the East Neuk of Fife] is a 'Wider Fife Settlement' where we can expect: "smaller scale development which will be identified through Local Plans. The approach for these settlements will be one of organic growth to meet local needs for both housing and employment.
What I refer to is growth in terms of new babies, what George Mitchell opposed.
But let's get back to Tricia:
The sad truth is that the Israelis and Palestinians are locked in an endless war for a land they both call their own. Both parties believe God gave the land to them. (Maybe God did and they both need to share it).
The "Two-State" rhetoric currently being pushed by the U.S. and its international allies neither ensures Israeli security or Palestinian self-determination. Much to everyone's dismay, their destinies are intertwined. Israelis have not, and will not, allow Palestinians to govern their own borders, airspace or -- as history has shown -- democratic process. The only solution is for the two groups to work and live together.
...The idea is a very hard pill to swallow. A warring past is not easy to forget. Israelis and Palestinians will have to work together to resolve a mound of grievances and heal decades' worth of wounds...Israelis and Palestinians must work side by side as one. Unless, that is, everyone prefers more war or wants to try moving more than 460,000 Israeli settlers from what is supposed to be the future Palestine. I assure you that will not be pretty...
For three decades now, I and my wife, have stressed that peace is between peoples and that what one population group undergoes, the other must be treated similarly.
If my "organic growth" is restricted, my neighbor's must be as well for as long as no agreement is fixed. If I am forced to move out of "Palestine", why should not Arabs be requested to do the same. If peace means no Jews in the Arab territory, then why not no Arabs in the Jewish territory?
Of course, I hope neither of this happens but the value-base of a political arrangement cannot be immoral and unjust. Jews belong in the Land of Israel, their patrimony, their internationally recognized historic homeland and no Arab terror, -not that of 1920, 1929, 1936-1939, the war of "extinction" 1947-1949, nor the fedayeen of 1949-1956, the PLO/Fatah starting in 1964 or the Hamas beginning in 1987 - will succeed.
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8 comments:
"If I am forced to move out of "Palestine", why should not Arabs be requested to do the same."
You already took care of that. Forgot? Millions of Palestinian misplaced in several countries and refugee camps.
No, you know me by now, I rarely forget. If you go here you can read about how the whole Partition or Cantonisation policy was promoted by the British, leaving the Jews little ability to try to work things out and overcome, one way or another, the Arab terror. Or go here to read about other non-Jews who promoted moving incalcitrant Arabs away from their victims.
In December 1944, the British Labour Party actually adopted a Conference Resolution supporting transfer of Arabs from Palestine, not all, to Iraq (funny, Saddam transferred them out of Kuwait 15 years ago).
Population transfer was a big post-War World Two phenomenon (here).
Can you guess the identity of the persons in this description? -
"A distinct and regular method appears to have been followed in the destruction of villages, group by group, for the last two months, which destruction has even reached the neighbourhood of the _____ headquarters. The members of the Commission consider that, in the part of the _______ occupied by the _____ army, there is a systematic plan of destruction of _______ villages and extinction of the Muslim population. This plan is being carried out by _______ bands, which appear to operate under ______ instructions and sometimes even with the assistance of detachments of regular troops"?
If you're sure those are Jews/Zionists and Arabs, you're wrong. Check. And the man who alleviated the sufferning received a Nobel Peace Prize for his solution: transfer.
funny, Saddam transferred them out of Kuwait 15 years ago
What are you talking about, Yisrael? Palestinians were expelled from Kuwait after the Gulf war.
Why don't we stay on topic here.
"policy was promoted by the British, leaving the Jews little ability to try to work things out and overcome, one way or another, the Arab terror"
Seems Jews saw the way clearly and that was war and terror.
What happened in Haifa?
Milstein ("No Deportation, Evacuation"): "The commander of the Carmeli Brigade, Moshe Carmel, feared that many Arabs would remain in the city. Hence, he ordered that three-inch mortars be used to shell the Arab crowds on the market square. The crowd broke into the port, pushing aside the policemen who guarded the gate, stormed the boats and fled the city. The whole day mortars continued to shell the city, even though the Arabs did not fight. "
Ben-Gurion: " In many [Palestinian] Arab neighborhoods in the west one sees not a single [Palestinian] Arab. I do not assume that this will change. . . . What had happened in Jerusalem. . . . is likely to happen in many parts of the country. . . in the six, eight, or ten months of the campaign there will certainly be great changes in the composition of the population in the country."
"I do not accept the version [i.e. policy] that [we] should encourage their return. . . I believe we should prevent their return . . . We must settle Jaffa, Jaffa will become a Jewish city. . . . The return of [Palestinian] Arabs to Jaffa [would be] not just foolish." If the [Palestinian] Arabs were allowed to return, to Jaffa and elsewhere, " and the war is renewed, our chances of ending the war as we wish to end it will be reduced. . . . Meanwhile, we must prevent at all costs their return," he said, and, leaving no doubt in the ministers' minds about his views on the ultimate fate of the [Palestinian] refugees, he added: "I will be for them not returning after the war."
Then again Ben Gurion: "The war will give us the land. The concepts of "ours" and "not ours" are only concepts for peacetime, and during war they lose all their meaning"
"was not surprised" at the Arab exodus and that "we should prevent Arab return at any cost." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 191-192)
"The Arabs of the land of Israel [ Palestinians] have only one function left to them -- to run away." (Benny Morris, p. 218)
With no emotions, ten days later, while Ben-Gurion was on a tour of the Galilee, he describes Palestinian exodus in his dairy as follows:
"and many more still will flee." (Benny Morris, p. 218)
All here http://poetryforpalestine.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!92AA638F9B6EA940!2576.entry?sa=783571655
And he acted on his words.
1948 war and Al-Dawayima massacre:
'One commander ordered a sapper to put two old women in a certain house ... and to blow up the house with them. The sapper refused ... The commander then ordered his men to put in the old women and the evil deed was done. One soldier boasted that he had raped a woman and then shot her. One woman, with a newborn baby in her arms, was employed to clean the courtyard where the soldiers ate. She worked a day or two. In the end they shot her and her baby.'
The soldier-witness, according to Kaplan, said that:-
'cultured officers ... had turned into base murderers and this not in the heat of battle ... but out of a system of expulsion and destruction. The less Arabs remained--the better. This principle is the political motor for the expulsions and the atrocities
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Dawayima_massacre
And it goes on and on, sadly....
I wrote "15 years ago", nothing about before, during or after.
It seems that: "At the end of the Gulf War Kuwait expelled some 400,000 Palestinians because the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat had aligned the PLO with Saddam Hussein, who had invaded Kuwait. The exodus took place during one week in March 1991, after Kuwait was liberated from Iraqi occupation."
You said "funny, Saddam transferred them out of Kuwait 15 years ago". I never heard of anything of the kind, so, I asked what you were talking about. Saddam's Iraq went out of its way to accommodate those Palestinians it accepted, so, it wouldn't make a lot of sense to me if Saddam transferred any Palestinians. I still don't understand what you meant.
Galia's ignorance is gross. Arab irregular forces starting killing Jews shortly after the UN general assembly resolution of 11-29-1947.Then began to attack Jewish neighborhood's. Jews fled from south Tel Aviv and various parts of Jerusalem and elsewhere in the country already in December 1947. Arabs were firing into Tel Aviv from mosque minarets in Yafo [Jaffa]. In Jerusalem, all but one of the Jewish families in the Shim`on haTsadiq quarter, north-by-northeast of the Orient House and American Colony Hotel. fled toward the end of December 1947. The one remaining family fled in the first ten days of January 1948. The nearby Nahalat Shim`on quarter was evacuated by the British in Jan. 1948, after the Jews had repulsed an armed Arab attack followed by British confiscation of the Jews' guns. The nearby Siebenbergen Houses [בתי זיבנברגן ] were made Judenrein soon afterwards [this quarter held the Mandelbaum Gate on part of it, and now Road 1 and 3 new hotels]. Hence, the first residential quarter in the country from which people were driven out in the war and could not go back after the war was Shim`on haTsadiq in Jerusalem, in that part of the city occupied in May by the Jordanian Arab Legion. On the other hand, Jews could return to south Tel Aviv after the war.
Today's Arab semantic deception calls Shim`on haTsadiq, the other named quarters, as well as the Old City, parts of: "traditionally Arab East Jerusalem." This is obviously a big lie as I have indicated. By the way, in 1900, the Old City had a Jewish majority population, which was decreased by Arab harassment and --starting in 1920-- by Arab pogroms enjoying British protection. The Jews have been a majority in Jerusalem since 1853, according to French historian and diplomat, Cesar Famin, whose book of 1853 was quoted and paraphased by Karl Marx in his article in the New York Tribune of 15 April 1854.
Great blog!!
Thanks for sharing.
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