Trau said:
Annihilation isn't something you can really take decades and decades to complete. The region called Palestine still stands and its peoples remain. As has been said, Israel could annihilate its enemies if it wanted to. But it doesn't.
Actually there's no time limit on annihiliation. Maybe they would do it quicker if it wasn't so important for them to play up this ficticious victim image and milk other countries for aid.
Fact is a large part of Palestine and the people don't remain. Vast numbers of Palestinians have been cleansed from their own land. Israelis's from the start intended to take the rest of the Palestinians land....
"While the Yishuv's leadership formally accepted the 1947 Partition Resolution, large sections of Israel's society - including...Ben-Gurion - were opposed to or extremely unhappy with partition and from early on viewed the war as an ideal opportunity to expand the new state's borders beyond the UN earmarked partition boundaries and at the expense of the Palestinians."
Israeli historian, Benny Morris, in "Tikkun", March/April 1998.
"In internal discussion in 1938 [David Ben-Gurion] stated that 'after we become a strong force, as a result of the creation of a state, we shall abolish partition and expand into the whole of Palestine'...In 1948, Menachem Begin declared that: 'The partition of the Homeland is illegal. It will never be recognized. The signature of institutions and individuals of the partition agreement is invalid. It will not bind the Jewish people. Jerusalem was and will forever be our capital. Eretz Israel (the land of Israel) will be restored to the people of Israel, All of it. And forever."
Noam Chomsky, "The Fateful Triangle."
Gandhi on the Palestine conflict - 1938
"Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French...What is going on in Palestine today cannot be justified by any moral code of conduct...If they [the Jews] must look to the Palestine of geography as their national home, it is wrong to enter it under the shadow of the British gun. A religious act cannot be performed with the aid of the bayonet or the bomb. They can settle in Palestine only by the goodwill of the Arabs... As it is, they are co-sharers with the British in despoiling a people who have done no wrong to them. I am not defending the Arab excesses. I wish they had chosen the way of non-violence in resisting what they rightly regard as an unacceptable encroachment upon their country. But according to the accepted canons of right and wrong, nothing can be said against the Arab resistance in the face of overwhelming odds."
Mahatma Gandhi, quoted in "A Land of Two Peoples" ed. Mendes-Flohr.
"Before the end of the mandate and, therefore before any possible intervention by Arab states, the Jews, taking advantage of their superior military preparation and organization, had occupied...most of the Arab cities in Palestine before May 15, 1948. Tiberias was occupied on April 19, 1948, Haifa on April 22, Jaffa on April 28, the Arab quarters in the New City of Jerusalem on April 30, Beisan on May 8, Safad on May 10 and Acre on May 14, 1948...In contrast, the Palestine Arabs did not seize any of the territories reserved for the Jewish state under the partition resolution."
British author, Henry Cattan, "Palestine, The Arabs and Israel."
"Menahem Begin, the Leader of the Irgun, tells how 'in Jerusalem, as elsewhere, we were the first to pass from the defensive to the offensive...Arabs began to flee in terror...Hagana was carrying out successful attacks on other fronts, while all the Jewish forces proceeded to advance through Haifa like a knife through butter'...The Israelis now allege that the Palestine war began with the entry of the Arab armies into Palestine after 15 May 1948. But that was the second phase of the war; they overlook the massacres, expulsions and dispossessions which took place prior to that date and which necessitated Arab states' intervention."
Sami Hadawi, "Bitter Harvest."
Are you completely ignorant of the history of that region? Jews have called the region home for 3,000 years.
Even if it was as simple as that would it make all the horrible things that I mentioned ok?
History of Region.
Are you ignorant of the Zionist immigration, expulsion of native people by immigrants, and do you what created all those Palestinian refugees in the first place?
"Nathan Chofshi - 'Only an internal revolution can have the power to heal our people of their murderous sickness of causeless hatred...It is bound to bring complete ruin upon us. Only then will the old and young in our land realize how great was our responsibility to those miserable Arab refugees in whose towns we have settled Jews who were brought here from afar; whose homes we have inherited, whose fields we now sow and harvest; the fruits of whose gardens, orchards and vineyards we gather; and in whose cities that we robbed we put up houses of education, charity, and prayer, while we babble and rave about being the "People of the Book" and the "light of the nations"'...
Israel's responsibility for Refugees - The Jewish military advantage was translated into an act of mass expulsion of more than half of the Palestinian population. The Israeli forces, apart from rare exceptions, expelled the Palestinians from every village and town they occupied. In some cases, this expulsion was accompanied by massacres [of civilians] as was the case in Lydda, Ramleh, Dawimiyya, Sa'sa, Ein Zietun and other places. Expulsion also was accompanied by rape, looting and confiscation [of Palestinian land and property]...
The Myth of Arab Intransigence - [The U.N.] convened a peace conference in Lausanne, Switzerland in the spring of 1949. Before the conference, the U.N. General Assembly adopted a resolution that in effect replaced the November 1947 partition resolution. This new resolution, Resolution 194 of December 11, 1948, accepted [U.N. Mediator] Bernadotte's triangular basis for a comprehensive peace: an unconditional return of all the refugees to their homes, the internationalization of Jerusalem, and the partitioning of Palestine into two states. This time, several Arab states and various representatives of the Palestinians accepted this as a basis for negotiations, as did the United States, which was running the show at Lausanne...Prime Minister David Ben Gurion strongly opposed any peace negotiations along these lines...The only reason he was willing to allow Israel to participate in the peace conference was his fear of an angry American reaction...The road to peace was not taken due to Israeli, not Arab, intransigence.
Conclusions - The new Israeli historians...wish to rectify what their research reveals as past evils...There was a high price exacted in creating a Jewish state in Palestine. And there were victims, the plight of whom still fuels the fire of conflict in Palestine."
Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe in "The Link", January, 1998.
I'll get to the rest tomorrow.
[Edit} Added the rest....
Trau said:
Are you ignoring that these countries provoked and/or attacked Israel first?
Care to explain that? Even if that were so would it give Israel the right to occupy areas of these countries, start building settlements, steal resources, and ignore many many UN and Security Council resolutions?
Okay, so now you're justifying the specific and deliberate destruction of civilians. How leftist of you.
I didn't justify it. I explained why it might occur. Maybe you can justify why
Israeli's originated these tactics?
Yeah, I can't imagine why, with their free and open societies, those people would hate freedom. I think they're just understood, really. Who are we to say what is right or wrong, anyway?
Was this supposed to relate to my point somewhow?
Bush and those around him are idiots. It isn't the war itself that is wrong but th eway it was fought.
It's pretty clear no matter how it was fought it's the wrong route.
