It's very simple, a well practiced and understood policy... 'divide and rule'. All empires or wannabe's do it. Whether for purposes of domination, or for distracting those that could be a problem, it works.

Note: That's an observation, not an approval, in case anyone goes 'off on one' that I approve of the method.

 

I'll heed and pass on Gabriel Ash's advice for dealing with trolls:

Trolls need a special low-content diet. Please, please, those of you who feed the trolls–you know who you are–don't!

Jonas, You are of course correct but the ultra-lefties will never quite admit that Jews, just like Arabs, are both native indigenous inhabitants of historic Palestine. To admit this means you admit that Jews ALSO have right to a homeland in the region. Throughout the 30s and 40s, it was clear that having two countries (3 including Jordan) was the best solution, as it is now. They will make statements like Jews are not a race thus don't deserve a country (of course Muslim Arabs do), as if there is some cosmic "rule book" on who deserves a country. Jews are clearly a separate group that had countries/kingdoms in the past. Kingdoms in the past are not the reason for a Jewish country, the fact that they were native indigenous inhabitants of historic Palestine throughout the Ottoman and British period is. Or you will hear stuff like "one-state" solution, as if 22 (or so) Arab countries were not enough, somehow Jews must submit to no country. Negotiating the 2-state solution is the only answer, always was, always will be.

Yes, Palestinians have lived under the occupied rule of several colonial powers throughout history: Romans, Babylonians, Ottomans, etc. Jews have also had a presence and, in ancient times, kingdoms in the region for millennia. I agree that we should look at the evidence. What one finds when we do is that Jews and Arabs have an equal hold on that land, so any just settlement recognizes the rights of each parties, correct?

It has been obvious for a long time that the Palestinians, like any other people, deserve their own homeland as did the Jews during the Zionist period. But they ought to be ashamed to have HAMAS as their representatives.

I also think they are "vile" and "disgusting", but I also think the Israeli and US leadership is "vile" and "disgusting". Both those camps have also caused infinitely more death and suffering than Hamas have done. So you agree Gaza is "an open-air prison". Whose fault is that? Is that not a huge crime? Pangaea Oslo, Norway

sorry for the duplicate; couldn't tell if it had posted successfully

I can't tell if you're referring to me, sk. If so, no, I'm still here. I simply "bade ... farewell" to Paul Street, who at first seemed to have some interesting views but, the farther along in time I kept up, became quite hyperbolic to the point that challenging them became an exercise for setting oneself up for verbal abuse.

But as for the topic at hand, yes, Morris does want to complete the "ethnic cleansing" project; he justifies it by adding, to paraphrase, "Well how do you think we have all of these Arab-Islamic states?" Unfortunately, the founding of a nation-state seems to require some level of dispossession and violence.

As for HAMAS, I will not bend with my earlier description of it as a vile, disgusting organization. They, as this anonymous fellow points out, are indeed explicit in their intent to not only ignore Israel's presence as a Jewish state but also to obliterate it. The good news is that they have their strongest hold on Gaza, which is quite accurately described as "an open-air prison." Some achievement.

Let's look at the evidence, shall we? Do you think there is most evidence supporting that the Jews want to drive the Palestinians into the sea, or that the Palestinians want to drive the Israelis into the sea? You just can't run away from facts. Israel occupies Palestinian land. Despite a massive international consensus on a solution of the conflict, Israel refuses to give back the land they took. In the process they are breaching countless UN resolutions. What you're mentioning above just makes the case even worse. Not only are Israel now occupying Arab land, but Palestinians have lived under occupation for centuries. I wonder how you would feel if you and your people had lived under occupation for centuries. Let's just imagine it was the other way around. Israel had nothing to defend itself with except rocks, while the Palestinians had advanced weapons systems, military installations, a large squadron of warplanes, gunships, gunboats, tanks etc etc. Palestinians didn't think it was enough to kill and oppress the Jews though, they wanted even more land. So they built a wall deep on Israel's territory to expropriate more land. But that wasn't enough either. They wanted more. So after bombing Jews for a while, driving many out of their homes and out to neighbouring countries, Palestinians started building settlements in the middle of Israel. They then built roads criss-crossing Israel, that Israelis could not use. To make sure Jews couldn't get to Palestine to visit their friends and families or work, they set up countless checkpoints, many in the middle of Israel. to make sure Jews would never get out of poverty, they put strong restrictions on what Jews could import or export, and physically shut off Jewish cities from each other, making intra-country trade impossible. But that wasn't enough. Oh no. In addition Palestinians grabbed the taxes the Jews got from the little they were allowed to export. This was only handed over to Jews when they got too close to economic collapse. After all, they didn't want them all to die. That would be cruel. And perhaps the media would take a peek at what was going on too. Nobody wants bad PR. Despite all this, the Jews managed to hold a fair and just election, and a party that wanted to end the occupation and oppression by the Palestinians won the election. The Palestinians then tightened the grip even more, virtually stopping all money from entering Israel. They even got their friends from across the world to do the same, in an effort to stop the evil Jews from wiping the nice Palestinians into the sea. Pangaea Oslo, Norway

Benny Morris, the well known Israeli historian, wrote the following about causes of Arab anti-Semitism in Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-2001:

Fear of territorial displacement and dispossession was to be the chief motor of Arab antagonism to Zionism down to 1948 (and indeed after 1967 as well).

Morris, no bleeding heart liberal, later mused about completing the ethnic cleansing of all Arabs (including those inside Israel proper) from his beloved nation-state.



P.S. Is it just me or do others also think someone who recently bade us farewell is now trolling as 'Anonymous'?

Hamas' comments about wanting ALL of Israel, killing Jews, destroying Israel, etc. are well catalogued. Whatever you say about Israel, this is painfully hard to deny. It is clear from Hamas' charter and numerous interviews, statements, etc. that Hamas' does not want their "land back" (as if they ever had it, since it was Ottoman, British, Egyptian/Jordanian, now controlled by Israel, so the word "back" makes no sense, it is simpler to say they just "want it"). It is clear that Hamas does not just want Gaza and West Bank, in your words "back", what they really want is all of Israel as well, and all of Israel not with Jews.

If you want, I can give you links to many statements confirming this, and any casual read of Hamas' charter will say the same. One can always say that it is not true and deny deny, but you lose credibility when you choose to ignore so much evidence.

Some say Ahmedinejad did not say "wipe Israel of the map" that he actually meant something else and this is interpreted wrong. Recently, Iran's OWN state news web site posted the translation to this and used the exact words "wipe off the map." I read an article that this was recently posted in Iran. Here is the link: http://www.iribnews.ir/Full_en.asp?news_id=200247

 

Admittedly, I know little about Hamas save the following: they are a vile, disgusting group that has brought suicide terror to a fine art to redress their "grievances," namely that they want (by "their land") all of Eretz Israel and will not give the Jews an inch.

No they don't. They want their land back. Pangaea Oslo, Norway

Wouldn't make a difference either way; the Nazis wanted to annihilate the Jews. Hamas wants to throw them into the Mediterranean.

"I am in blood / Stepped in so far, that should I wade no more, / returning were as tedious as go o'er."


Sir Peter Tapsell, a Conservative MP who opposed the Iraq war, described it as "a strategic, political and humanitarian blunder of historic magnitude". He added: "Our Prime Minister is, figuratively speaking, more deeply steeped in blood than any Scottish politician since Macbeth. We need an inquiry to tell us how he led us into this disaster and to make sure that no vainglorious and ignorant prime minister can ever do so again."

Finally the warcriminal has given up power in the UK. He hadn't even stepped down before the bad news arrived that he would be a special envoy to the Middle East. This seems to be confirmed now, so I suppose it's not a bad joke on behalf of the world. So the warmonger from Iraq and Afghanistan now moves a bit West to destroy yet another country ("Palestine") - if it's possible to destroy it even more. You don't know whether to laugh or cry. It's just so cruel. Kill a man, and you go to jail. Kill a million men, and be applauded. What a fair and just world we live in... Sometimes I hope an asteroid would hit us and destroy earth, before this horrible species is able to expand our evil to other planets. Pangaea Oslo, Norway

The BBC is payed for by a £10/month "TV license" that anyone owning a TV must pay. The blind do get something like a 50% reduction! It is also paid for with advertising, apperently, since BBC America is commercial. Like PBS, the fact the 'beeb' is publicly funded makes scant difference. Hardly surprising, a lot of harmfull things are publicly funded, the military, e.g. (I actually think Channel 4 of ITV is actually marginally better in its political coverage.) Ostensibly BBC is a private corporation, but their reporting on the current war on Iraq, as one of many examples, would seem to refute the suggestion that the company is in any sense independant. 

In iraq and afghanistan , its a massacre.. In Palestine yep the rational is , its not a massacre, Palestinian are being encouraged at a civil war

Well, let's be a bit rational here. There's been no massacre of Arabs in "Palestine" (at least lately). Sure, economic sanctions are horribly atrocious and takes tens of thousands of lives each year. But it's no massacre. Poverty gives the same result everywhere: people die from lack of food and medicine. Sometimes they die as a direct result of sanctions, such as in "Palestine" and Iraq, and other times they die as a result of a terribly unjust system, as in Africa. It's wrong to label either as massacres. The former is easily avoidable though, and naturally crimes against humanity (not sure if it is per international law, but it should be). The actions of the West is so beyond belief it's hard to fathom. It's unlikely the people responsible will pay the price, but I at least hope history will correctly label them as criminals on a massive scale. My educated guess is that capitalism has killed more people than all wars, massacres and sanctions put together (even if we characterize wars as not a result of demand and supply in capitalism/the current economic system). How any rational human being can say that capital is more important than life, is beyond me. But that's the system we live in today. Just to take one example: African capital can easily enter the European market, but Africans themselves cannot, generally, go to Europe to get jobs. In other words, African capital trumps Africans. The same is true to various degrees across the globe. Pangaea Oslo, Norway

What Bush is doing is very simple, it is called a cold massacre of arabs.

A former American president seems to think that's the plan as well.

First of all the Amnesty Report say nothing about the claims that the propaganda in Ha'aretz are putting forward. The Amnesty report is critical of both sides, and gives them equal blame for casualties. That is what a fair and unbiased report looks like. How often do we see that in the mainstream media? Second, it is obvious that this violence is connected to the occupation and the US/Israeli support of Fatah. Whether they have tried to incite a "civil war", I don't know, but that has been the result. Hopefully things will cool down now when there has been a military victory for Hamas, but there are no guarantees. It is not the Muslims' fault that there is now "civil war" in Iraq and "Palestine". In both areas this has happened due to external aggression and influence. There was no civil war in Iraq before the US (and its clients) invaded, and there was no civil war in "Palestine" before the West started its atrocious boycott of the Palestinian government. This has caused horrible suffering in both areas. The West is drenched in blood. That isn't to say that there is NO blame on Fatah, Hamas, Shiites and Sunnis. They are the ones ultimately carrying out the actions. I'm simply saying that they wouldn't have carried them out if it wasn't for the external aggression and divide and conquer strategies. It would have been much better if the unity government stayed in place, and if both Shiites and Sunnis focused their aggression towards the occupiers (as most do, btw). I agree with your final point. I'd like Arab leaders to be more vocal about the violence. But more importantly, I'd like to see a lot more leaders, both Arabs and non-Arabs, to condemn the occupations of "Palestine" and Iraq. It's the occupations that are fuelling the violence. Pangaea Oslo, Norway

Odd, I was looking at the white 3D, not the dark negative space. I stand corrected -- that does look an awful lot like a swastika, though I still don't think it was intended to be. Either way, though, I think whoever let it pass must've realized. I suspect if you were to see the full, uncropped graphic, it wouldn't look so much like a swastika.

...and maybe it worked. Years, decades of driving people deeper and deeper into misery and despair does this. It's quite possible that the Israeli-US plan has borne fruit, and is now actually in the process of finally destroying Palestine from the inside. So I do definitely, absolutely blame the governments of Israel and the US, who brought this situation about with unflinching deliberation, and I won't exonerate all the other governments that refused to speak up. WTO-ruined Farmers in India drink pesticide; that's what despair does. Anthropologists recognize cultural suicide under extreme adversity.

Maybe we should run a contest to see how many fallacies can be identified in Anonymous' reasoning. 

While US and Israeli actions are reprehensible, we have to call a spade a spade as well. Hamas/Fatah and Iraq Shiite/Sunni are fault themselves for slaughtering each other. The cruelty of Muslim vs. Muslim in these places is just shocking, and it can't just be blamed on others.  I'd like to see some Arab/Muslim leadership be more vocal in condemning this violence as well.

anonymous: this looks like a palestinian civil war caused by the Israeli and the Americans, this is a perfect example of the negative influence america's diversive policies radiates all over the middle east... Look at Iraq today, another civil war caused by the US. Please next time sign up a name, sometimes its difficult to differenciate the anonymous from others anonymous..

Amnesty Extremely Concerned for Gaza Situation

LONDON, JUNE 14, 2007 (WAFA) - Amnesty International said the political violence in the Gaza Strip is escalating, reaching unprecedented levels in recent days, and is putting the civilian population more and more at risk.

It said in a press release, Amnesty said 130 Palestinians have been killed and several hundreds injured in the past month alone in clashes between the security forces and their proxy militias loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah party or to Prime Minister Isma'il Haniyeh's Hamas party.

Most of the casualties have been gunmen, but scores of unarmed civilian bystanders, including several children, have been killed or injured by Fatah and Hamas gunmen, who have been firing at each other in the streets and from the rooftops of buildings in residential areas of Gaza City and elsewhere in the Gaza Strip.

Gunmen from both sides have shown utter disregard for fundamental human rights principles. On 13 June unidentified gunmen fired on unarmed demonstrators, who were calling for an end to the armed clashes, in Gaza City and Khan Younes, in the south of the Gaza Strip, injuring several protesters. Also on the same day two Palestinian employees of the United Nation Relief and Work Agency (UNRWA), the main relief agency in the Gaza Strip were killed and two others were injured in the crossfire of Fatah-Hamas clashes.

Armed groups from both sides have carried out execution-style unlawful killings of captured rivals, and have abducted scores of members of rival groups and held them hostage, to be exchanged for friends and relatives held by their rivals.

Educational institutions have also been damaged as a result of reckless gun battles and indiscriminate attacks, and the escalating violence has prevented many high school students from taking their final exams. All aspects of life in the Gaza Strip have been virtually paralyzed, with terrified residents trapped in their homes but unable to feel safe even there.

In a separate incident, gunmen from the armed wings of Fatah and Islamic Jihad used a "TV" sign to disguise an armoured vehicle which they used to carry out an attack on an Israeli army post on the dividing line between the Gaza Strip and Israel on 10 June. Such actions increase the risk that Israeli forces may attack journalists operating in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, mistaking them for gunmen in disguise.

(19:55P) (16:55GMT)

I have followed BBC for a long time. They were good once, but are no longer. I hardly ever watch the channel anymore due to the bias in its reporting. The gap between CNN and BBC is almost wiped out by now. Hardly a good thing. There hardly any news anymore FFS. When I zap by them, it's usually business 'news' or reporting about some irrelevant story saying nothing about anything. The funding of BBC and the Norwegian Broadcasting Channel (NRK) is the same (at least I think so). Compared to the private channels both are less bad, but overall neither has an honest reporting of facts "on the ground", and rarely stories are put into context. NRK still have some honest reporters it's worth listening to, but there is more and more self-censorship going on. It's the same in BBC. I'm sure most of their journalists are very knowledgeable, but this does not show in the reports. It's not like we demand all reporting to reflect our views, that would be wrong, but we should expect some reports to at least mention the undeniable facts about the conflict. Pangaea Oslo, Norway

Thanks for the insight into Israeli propaganda. Pangaea Oslo, Norway

Shock, Awe and Dread in Gaza - Quiet returned to the streets of Gaza all at once this week. Gunmen (not members of Hamas) have disappeared from the streets, apparently due to a fear of the Hamas Executive Force. And now that Hamas has banned people from masking their faces, that phenomenon has also ceased. Hamas traffic cops dressed in civilian clothes now stand guard at intersections. At the same time, Iz a-Din al-Kassam, the Hamas military wing, is constantly searching the homes of suspects, collecting weapons of members of the Palestinian security services, and responding to the actions of the armed clans. The Durmush clan, which is holding BBC journalist Alan Johnston, is the last bastion of opposition to Hamas in Gaza.
The quiet can be attributed, at least in part, to the fear Hamas struck into residents' hearts last week. Testimony collected from the days of fighting indicates that Hamas imposed a methodical system of terror and scare tactics intended to deter, shock and frighten Fatah operatives and Gaza residents in general. Every Hamas patrol carried with it a laptop containing a list of Fatah operatives in Gaza, and an identity number and a star appeared next to each name. A red star meant the operative was to be executed and a blue one meant he was to be shot in the legs - a special, cruel tactic developed by Hamas, in which the shot is fired from the back of the knee so that the kneecap is shattered when the bullet exits the other side. A black star signaled arrest, and no star meant that the Fatah member was to be beaten and released.
Hamas also killed innocent Palestinians, with the intention of deterring the large clans. To overpower the Bakr clan from Shati, Hamas removed all the family members from their compound and lined them up against a wall. Militants selected a 14-year-old girl, two women aged 19 and 75, and two elderly men, and shot them to death in cold blood. (Ha'aretz June 22)

sorry, that was a 3d svastika and a ugly one on top of this.. If tha BBC is representative of the british people lets make the gap of the english channel wider from europe..

You are wrong my friends! First of all BBC is not funded by the government, but it is publicly funded. Secondly, BBC represents the diverse range of opinions in the UK, and not everybody in the UK thinks like as we might do. You have to look at the average reporting over a time period, and not base your judgment on a single story.

 

I disagree. It looks like a swastika. You can see the end of one of the 'spikes', and parts of the circle around the swastika. Pangaea Oslo, Norway

As much as I'm on record as despising the BBC, and as horrific as I find their coverage of the Mideast, I'm also pretty sure I know what a swastika looks like, and that's not one. Yeah, it's a poor choice because it leaves the impression of a swastika, but it clearly is not one. The graphic's name is 'sinkstone', and it looks like it was intended to represent a maze to me. It's a terrible graphic, but I'm not sure it is evidence that the BBC is THAT biased (even though it IS that biased).

this reminded me of paul street article, something like : the nazification of everything america hates... same old tactics are used to denigrates arabs again..

Can't see anything there now, so they must have removed it. Shows the obvious bias in their reporting on the conflict though. Just as the case with the USA, Israel, by default, cannot carry out aggressive actions. No matter what they do, it's defence. People with their head on top of their neck would not call the Nazi occupation of France (and crimes there) defence. Pangaea Oslo, Norway

It has been removed from that page. May be they got ashamed.

 I believe BBC is probably the most effective Propagandist in Western World. They have all the smoke and mirror "Public Accountability", independence , editorial control  etc to fool people.

 My guess is they have never opposed a war waged by UK Government.

 After all, What one can expect from an organization founded by a guy who waged a propaganda campaign on behalf of Government against coal miners and other strikers?

Wait a minute--the BBC are terrible; and at the end of the day it's the terrible-irresponsible reporting that does harm (to the extent that people believe it, at any rate--probably not many who are politically effectual, in reality), not this silly graphic.

Here's an ex-BBC employee's take on BBC coverage of Israel/Palestine conflict.