ISREAL IS THE BIGGEST THREAT TO WORLD WIDE PEACE

[allthumbs]

I think it's high time the U.S.A. put it's pecker back in it's pants and stay home.

[scott_harpell]

trask said:

I think it's high time the U.S.A. put it's pecker back in it's pants and stay home.

 

true dat.

[mattp]

I'd say the time for that would have been about a year ago, Trask. What do we do now, in your esteemed opinion? Do you think we ought to just pull out?

[scott_harpell]

lets just finish this job and get/stay the fuck out of the M.E. until they have all killed each other. just come down really fucking hard if something happens on our home turf. Unfortunately that is now much more likely.

[lI1|1!]

in the ny times today :

 

In Die-Hard City, G.I.'s Are Enemy

By DEXTER FILKINS

 

Published: November 4, 2003

 

 

ALLUJA, Iraq, Nov. 3 — In the epicenter of anti-American hatred, even the most generous of gestures is viewed with a suspicious eye.

 

The day after 16 American servicemen died when their helicopter was shot out of the sky here, a group of American soldiers tossed handfuls of candy from their Humvees to the Iraqi children who lined the road.

 

"Don't touch it, don't touch it!" the Iraqi children squealed. "It's poison from the Americans. It will kill you."

 

The Humvees rumbled past, and the candy stayed in the dirt.

 

Loathing for the American occupiers looms everywhere in this hardscrabble city, where Saddam Hussein won strong support in exchange for privileges and patronage. Hatred laces the conversations. It hangs from the walls. It burns in the minds of children. As nowhere else in Iraq, Falluja bristles with a desire to confront the American soldiers, to kill them and to celebrate when they fall.

 

Although large number of Iraqis elsewhere are cooperating with the Americans, for the soldiers trying to pacify this Hussein stronghold, the road seems long and hard.

 

"These people hate the Americans," said Specialist Emily Donaghy, who lives behind high walls on an American base outside town. "It's going to take generation after generation before these people realize what America has done for them."

 

On Monday, American soldiers picked over the scene of the sharpest demonstration yet of the locals' passion: the shooting down, with a surface-to-air missile, of an American helicopter loaded with soldiers.

 

The downing of the helicopter, which crashed and burned in a field outside of town, prompted celebrations from many local residents. While anti-American feeling does not extend to everyone in Falluja — G.I.'s have found a handful of allies — it is difficult to find anyone here willing to express appreciation for the American presence.

 

The strong feelings were evident here early on when American soldiers killed 18 anti-American protesters during a clash in April.

 

Even a group of American-trained Iraqi police officers, who American officials hope will help crack down on the insurgents, could not bring themselves to say anything positive about the occupation.

 

"We want them out of here," said an Iraqi officer who gave only one name, Ahmed. He said he and his colleagues were threatened by local Iraqis for collaborating with the Americans, but he said his detractors had it all wrong.

 

"I don't work with the Americans; I don't take orders from them," Mr. Ahmed said. "I am doing this for my country."

 

Falluja lies in the heart of what is known as the Sunni Triangle, an area stretching west and north of Baghdad that was the foundation of support for Mr. Hussein. It is this area where most attacks on American soldiers have been carried out. They began in the spring and have continued since. On Monday, a bomb near Tikrit, Mr. Hussein's hometown 100 miles north of here, killed another American soldier, Reuters quoted the United States military as saying.

 

In other parts of the country, in the north and in the south, Iraqis often welcome the Americans as their liberators and as their tutors in fostering democratic rule. .

 

In places like Falluja, people often had a direct stake in Mr. Hussein's rule, receiving preferential treatment in hiring and larger salaries.

 

One of the lucky ones was Saad Hamid, who operates a sidewalk tea stand in downtown Falluja. Before the war, he said, he worked in an Iraqi arms factory, earning almost $1,000 a month, an extraordinarily high salary here. Then the Americans arrived, the arms factory was closed, and Mr. Hamid lost his job. Now he pours tea for pennies a glass, and he nurtures his resentments.

 

Mr. Hamid remains a faithful follower of the deposed Iraqi leader. To illustrate, he held up two pieces of Iraqi currency for an American visitor, the old Iraqi note, with the visage of Mr. Hussein, and the new one issued since the Americans took over, which contains no such figure.

 

"The old currency is better," he said, pointing to the face of Mr. Hussein, "because Saddam is on it."

 

A day after the downing of the helicopter, a company of American soldiers stood guard over the site as a huge crane lifted the wreckage from the ground and loaded it into trucks. Officers said Monday that many of those killed and wounded on the helicopter were from the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment, based in Fort Carson, Colo.

 

"We are gathering up all the pieces," Capt. Scott Kirkpatrick said.

 

Pentagon officials said Monday that the American military had counted about 20 attacks on allied aircraft by similar surface-to-air missiles since June. Pentagon and military officials said preliminary reports indicated that two missiles had been fired. It appears that the attackers fired twice so that if the first missile missed, the flight path of the second could be adjusted to compensate, a Pentagon official said.

 

Just down the road from the site of the crash, a crowd of young men and boys gathered to watch. Some carried small pieces of the helicopter they had picked up since the crash.

 

One man in the crowd was Khalid Abdullah Jassem. Like the others, he exulted over the crash of the American helicopter, yet at least one of the reasons he gave for his feelings seemed misplaced.

 

Whenever the Chinook helicopters flew overhead, Mr. Jassem said, the American soldier stationed at the back of the helicopter always hung his feet out of the back door. Showing the bottoms of one's shoes, in a person's home, for example, is a sign of disrespect in the Muslim world.

 

Informed that American soldiers manning the gun at the rear of Chinook helicopters usually sat the same way regardless of the country they were in and meant no offense, Mr. Jassem shook his head.

 

"I didn't like Saddam, but he was better than the Americans," he said.

 

For all the intensity of the fighting here, the Americans show no signs of turning back. Over the weekend, the downtown office of Falluja's American-backed mayor was attacked eight times, often in daylight. The mayor was beaten up, and the American liaison office was destroyed.

 

Capt. Ryan Huston, who spent two sleepless nights defending the police station, seemed hardly bothered by the attacks.

 

"They are trying to take over this town and turn it into a stronghold," Captain Huston said. "And we are not going to let them do it."

 

 

so basically when saddam left power these people lost out. of course they hate the u.s. now. is it really about religion? i don't think so, i think it's about money and power as usual. relax trask, the rules of the world haven't changed, you've just started believing some of the hype. i'm not saying the dumb motherfucker who decides to be a human bomb doesn't believe that hype a thousand times more than you do, i'm just saying it still boils down to money and power, and then all the fucked up shit people will believe if it makes them feel better about their pathetic lives.

[allthumbs]

mattp said:

I'd say the time for that would have been about a year ago, Trask. What do we do now, in your esteemed opinion? Do you think we ought to just pull out?

Yep. Pack it up and head home.

[mattp]

[scott_harpell]

trask said:

mattp said:

I'd say the time for that would have been about a year ago, Trask. What do we do now, in your esteemed opinion? Do you think we ought to just pull out?

Yep. Pack it up and head home.

 

i am starting to agree... with the attitude ot the french and germans... as well as the iraquis.... its pretty much a damned if you do damned if you dont... just the damned if ya do saves a lot of money and U.S. casualties.

[iain]

can't pull out until WMD are unearthed! any day now!

[scott_harpell]

iain said:

can't pull out until WMD are unearthed! any day now!

 

dude... i have this feeling that as soon as we get done constructing some ghetto looking WMD with arabic painet all over it, we will find them!

[scott_harpell]

Hmmm... I am glad though that Saddam is out. 262 mass graves and counting... what a monster.

[AlpineK]

trask said:

mattp said:

I'd say the time for that would have been about a year ago, Trask. What do we do now, in your esteemed opinion? Do you think we ought to just pull out?

Yep. Pack it up and head home.

 

I just want to say that I was against going into Iraq for the reasons that are becoming painfully obvious right now. Sure there was no doubt in my mind that we could roll over their military, but trying to maintain control over a country where there are thousands and thousands of fly by night gorilla soldiers is ridiculous. On top of that we have little if any international support; and there was never a clearcut reason for war. In Gulf war 1 Iraq invaded another country; In Afganistan Osama Bin Laden was running terrorist camps. There was never a clearcut reason to go into Iraq.

 

Now we're fucked, and this is all the fault of GW's administration.

[allthumbs]

I've fucking had it with Bush the Cocksucker too. He's a goddamn menace and the sooner we vote the arrogant, incompetent bastard out of office the better.

[scott_harpell]

trask said:

I've fucking had it with Bush the Cocksucker too. He's a goddamn menace and the sooner we vote the arrogant, incompetent bastard out of office the better.

 

too bad the coke-head will win come november.

[allthumbs]

I'm not so sure. Americans have had a belly-full of his horseshit.

[scott_harpell]

trask said:

I'm not so sure. Americans have had a belly-full of his horseshit.

 

they also have the biggest bellies in the world. figurativley and actually.

[bunglehead]

Yeah, it sucks, but the Democrats just don't know how to put up a good opponent.

I've had it with G "dubya" B as well. The sooner we're rid of him, the better.

[Dave_Schuldt]

trask said:

You know what I find really sad? The fact that people are willing to die over fucking religion. It's not important which religion...pick one and you'll find ignorant pilgrims willing to die for it. I can understand fighting and dying over money, or women, or food, or honor, but over some pie in the sky makes no fucking sense to me. It's a sad state of affairs, folks.

 

Yes indeed, religion is a powerfull tool too often used for evil purposes.

[Pencil_Pusher]

Ditto on trask's version of religion and war. I agree, let Israel fend for themselves. As for Iraq, pull out of occupation and instead guard booty of war: oil. What a mess.

[catbirdseat]

mattp said:

I'd say the time for that would have been about a year ago, Trask. What do we do now, in your esteemed opinion? Do you think we ought to just pull out?

It has been proven that the Pull-Out Method is an ineffective form of birth control. Oopps, wrong thread.

[Scott_J]

The establishment of Israel as a country for displaced Jews was a mistake. England, United States, France, Canada, etc should have taken in the people at the end of WWII. This would have made more sense. But no, the powers to be did not want Jews living in their boundaries either. That is the real truth and that is why the country of Israel was spawned. It was not to follow some BS from the bible, but that made for a good story. Let the poor Jews think we are doing them a favor and lead them to the "promised land". Christ we led them to hell.

 

 

[RobBob]

Sisu, I am not a post-WWII scholar, bu I believe that Jews wanted their own nation. Let's not 'enable' Isael's unacceptable colonizing effort by casting them as victims. Especially when the rest of the western world is affected by their actions, and we give them the tremendous aid $ that we do.

[lI1|1!]

RobBob said:

Sisu, I am not a post-WWII scholar, bu I believe that Jews wanted their own nation. Let's not 'enable' Isael's unacceptable colonizing effort by casting them as victims. Especially when the rest of the western world is affected by their actions, and we give them the tremendous aid $ that we do.

 

my recollection of this (historically, not being there) was that before wwII hitler wanted to send all his jews to england to get rid of them. england said no. many of these jews were poor and uneducated so they wouold have been an imigration problem for the UK, or maybe they just didn't want them. anyway, after the holocost some fingers were pointed at the UK for their refusal, so they partly covered their asses by creating isreal. they were also killing two birds with one stone because they knew they couldn't hold on to their empire but they kept a little bit of it if they put some 'friendlies' there.

[bunglehead]

You guys are WAAAAAY off about the formation of Israel.

The idea of a Jewish state was being kicked around as early as 1897, during the first Zionist Congress in Vienna, Austria. And FYI, its was the Balfour Declaration, drafted by prominent Jewish members of the British cabinet in 1917, that laid out the foundations for a lawful return of the Jews to Palestine. So Israel was not an afterthought or a consolation prize of what happened druing WWII.

Not to mention the fact that Jews are ORIGINALLY from Palestine/Israel, so it's not like some random spot on the map was picked.

[Scott_J]

This doc. that I found does not paint a nice picture. If anyone can find another view please post it or the link. The more the better.

 

The Birth of Isreal

The state of Israel was proclaimed by the Jewish leader, David Ben Gurion, on May 14, 1948, and officially came into being on the 15th, after British Mandatory rule ended at midnight. In many minds, the birth of Israel is closely identified with the Nazi terror in Europe and the Holocaust, but in fact the conception of and planning for a Jewish state had begun some 60 years earlier.

 

The Messianic idea of returning the Jews to their "promised land" had been a Puritan religious belief since the 16th Century. In the mid-19th Century, British politicians saw another value: that of having in place in the Middle East a Jewish entity sympathetic to the British Empire.

 

Two phenomena made real these and the Jews' own previously vague aspirations of "return": the burgeoning European nationalism of the time, from which the Jews felt excluded; and the massacres, or pogroms, carried out by Tsarist Russia against its six million Jews, the largest single Jewish population in Europe, which spread into the Ukraine and Poland.

 

By the 1880s, groups of desperate Russian and other Eastern European Jews were settling in Palestine, which was under the somewhat tenuous authority of the Turkish Ottoman Empire.

 

The visionary Austrian-Jewish journalist, Theodore Herzl, clarified and gave political weight to the concept of Jewish nationalism - or Zionism - and a national home for the Jews in Palestine at the first Zionist Congress at Basle, in Switzerland, in 1897. He won wide Jewish backing for it, and tried, at first unsuccessfully, to encourage the British Government to support it.

 

It was not until World War I, when British forces were at the gates of Jerusalem, in November, 1917, that the British Foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour, anxious for Jewish support in the war, issued his epic yet ambiguous Declaration.

 

This said the Government viewed "with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine..."

 

The Turks defeated, the British ruled Palestine as a military authority from 1917 until 1922. Then the League of Nations awarded Britain the Mandate to govern Palestine and prepare its citizens for self-government. From that moment, Jewish immigration from Europe increased phenomenally, with the British Cabinet pledged rigorously to honour Balfour's promise of a Jewish homeland, as it was interpreted by the Zionists.

 

Already during the 1930s, the displacement of the Arab population began The Arabs of Palestine, not even referred to by name in Balfour's document, were increasingly angry at what they feared would be their eventual replacement and domination by an alien, inspired and technologically superior people of different religion.

 

Bloody inter-communal rioting broke out during the 1920s, the most notorious example perhaps being the massacres of some 60 religious Jews in the town of Hebron, about 20 miles south west of Jerusalem.

 

The situation intensified in the 1930s as Nazism spread across Europe, bringing more persecution and more and even more sophisticated and determined Jews to Palestine.

 

The Arabs were incensed. In 1936, they rose in armed revolt, mainly against the British rulers they saw as authors of their plight.

 

But they were disorganised, factional and poorly equipped.

 

British soldiers searching Arabs during the revolt in the late 1930s By 1939, the British had crushed the uprising, ending for good effective Arab resistance to the Mandatory Power and the Zionist planners, and leaving behind a fractured Palestinian-Arab society.

 

The Arab resentment, however, did force the British, first, to abandon a plan to partition Palestine into Arab and Jewish sectors; and seriously to restrict Jewish immigration at that very crucial moment, in 1939-40, when Hitler was at his most dangerous, conquering Europe and launching his mission to exterminate the Jewish people.

 

The British idea was that the Arabs would rule Palestine, inside which would be established a finite Jewish entity. It was the Zionists' turn to be outraged and to work, successfully, to explode this stratagem.

 

In 1948, the Jews in Palestine managed to establish their own state, Israel. The price to pay were decades of war and violence.

 

The contrast between the growing Jewish society in Palestine - the Yishuv - and the indigenous, mainly Muslim Arab population could not have been greater.

 

In 1917, two-thirds of the roughly 600,000 Arab population, were rural and village-based, with local, clannish loyalties and little connection with the towns. What passed for "national" Arab leadership was based in the towns, though there was little national identity. Two or three established, rival families dominated Palestinian politics.

 

The majority of the Jews arriving in Palestine were well organised, motivated and skilled. In the early 1920s, they set up an underground army, the Haganah, or Defence. A Jewish shadow government was set up, with departments which looked after every aspect of society: education, trades unions, farmers, the "kibbutzim" settlements that spread across Palestine, the law, and political parties.

 

During World War II, Haganah fighters joined the British Army, acquiring military skills and experience. Not so the Arabs.

 

At the same time, extremist groups such as the Irgun Zwei Leumi and the Lehi, or Stern Group, began a brutal campaign of assassinations, bombings, kidnappings, intimidations, disruptions and sabotage. Their actions were directed against Briton, Arab and even Jews.

 

During the World War, the Zionist movement clearly defined its objective as a dominant Jewish state in Palestine. Deep plans were laid.

 

After 1945, as the facts and consequences of Hitler's death camps became evident, the Jewish underground intensified the terror campaign to oust the British, whom they accused of Arab sympathies. Jewish organisations tried to restart unlimited immigration.

 

Enormous emotional and political support for the Zionists came from the United States. The enfeebled postwar British Government no longer had the strength or the stomach to control Palestine or try to find a middle way that would suit both Jews and Arabs.

 

Arabs rioted followed the UN vote

 

Britain handed the problem to the United Nations. On November 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly voted to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab sectors.

 

There was violent and total Arab opposition, but wild Jewish acclaim. Fighting started almost immediately.

 

Even before the mandate ended, in April and May, Jewish fighters moved to protect, consolidate and widen the territory for the new Jewish state. Often they attacked areas designated for Arabs, and tried to depopulate Arab areas in the planned Jewish sector.

 

On April 9, Jewish fighters massacred more than 200 Palestinian villagers, including old people, women and children, in the West Jerusalem village of Deir Yassin, causing widespread panic and greatly augmenting the flight of Palestinians from their homes across the country.

 

As the Jewish authorities had predicted, Arab armies from Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon tried to invade Palestine as soon as the British forces actually left. But the Arab campaign was a generally badly organised, uncoordinated affair with untrained units who were no match for the Haganah and, later, the Israeli Defence Force.

 

The Palestinian militias and other Arab irregulars were also easily crushed.

 

There was one exception: the British-trained and British-officered Arab Legion, under the command of King Abdullah of Jordan. But it was constrained financially and politically by the British-dominated King, who had already colluded with the Jewish leaders on territorial matters and who had ambitions in Palestine.

 

The Arab Legion, therefore, was restricted to defending territory in and around East Jerusalem and the Old City and on the West Bank of the Jordan, which it did successfully.

 

By the middle of 1949 up to 700,000 of about 900,000 Palestinian Arabs had left the affected region, forced out by a combination of Jewish/Israeli terror tactics, the frightening thrust of war, the contagious panic of local residents, fractious and incompetent Arab leadership, the flight of some richer and therefore influential families and the actual sale of Arab land to the Jews without coercion, often by absentee Arab landlords.

 

These Palestinians had fled from their homes for ever, though they did not know it at the time. They ended up in the refugee camps of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egyptian-run Gaza and in the Palestinian territory of the West Bank, which was ruled by the Jordanian King Abdullah, as was Arab East Jerusalem.

 

Those Palestinian refugees and their descendants in the region now number more than three million. Israel has since refused to allow the refugees to return as long as Arab states remain pledged to its destruction, often claiming that there was no room for them anyway.

 

Peace treaties and agreements with Egypt, Jordan and the Palestinian movement have not altered this.

 

In 1917, there had been 50,000 or so Jews in Palestine. By 1948, they had become 650,000 Israelis. At the same time, the majority of Palestinian Arabs had left Israel; only 200,000 or so withstood the war and other depradations and remained in Israel.

 

Israel became a state on May 15, 1948, and was recognised by the United States and the Soviet Union that same day.

 

Israel's Arab neighbours , however, united their forces to drive the Jews out of Palestine.

 

BY: Tim Llewellyn.

Edited November 4, 2003 by sisu_suomi