Critics Decry "Whitewashed" UN Report on Gaza Flotilla

[P F Tinmore]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlLm1Ym3Pbc]As Turkey Freezes Israel Ties, Critics Decry "Whitewashed" UN Report on Gaza Flotilla 1 of 2 - YouTube[/ame]
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwRHJBAr0q8&feature=relmfu]As Turkey Freezes Israel Ties, Critics Decry "Whitewashed" UN Report on Gaza Flotilla 2 of 2 - YouTube[/ame]

 

[JStone]

Abdulateef Al-Mulhim, Commodore (Retd.), Royal Saudi Navy: What if Arabs had recognized the State of Israel in 1948?
Arab News, Mar 19, 2011

I HAVE been exposed to Palestinians since I was in first grade in Al-Hassa, Saudi Arabia They were my favorite teachers. They were the most dedicated and the most intelligent among all my instructors, from elementary to high school.

When I was attending New York-based SUNY Maritime college (1975-1979), I read a lot of books about Palestinians, Arabs and the Israelis. I have read every article about the many chances the Palestinians had and missed to solve their problem, especially the Camp David agreement between Egypt and Israel.

I have seen and read about the lives of the Palestinians in the US and other places. They are very successful in every field. And at the same time I saw the Arab countries at the bottom of the list in education and development. And I always ask the question: What if the Palestinians and the Arabs accepted the presence of Israel on May 14, 1948 and recognized its right to exist? Would the Arab world have been more stable, more democratic and more advanced?

If Israel was recognized in 1948, then the Palestinians would have been able to free themselves from the hollow promises of some Arab dictators who kept telling them that the refugees would be back in their homes and all Arab lands will be liberated and Israel will be sent to the bottom of the sea. Some Arab leaders used the Palestinians for their own agenda to suppress their own people and to stay in power.

Since 1948, if an Arab politician wanted to be the hero and the leader of the Arab world, then he has a very easy way to do it. He just shouts as loud as he can about the intention to destroy Israel, without mobilizing one soldier (Talk is cheap).

If Israel was recognized in 1948, then there would have been no need for a coup in Egypt against King Farouq in 1952 and there would have been no attack on Egypt in 1956 by The UK, France and Israel. Also there will be no war in June 1967 and the size of Israel will not be increased and we, the Arabs would not have the need for a UN resolution to beg Israel to go back to the pre-1967 borders. And no war of attrition between Egypt and Israel that caused more casualties on the Egyptian side than the Israeli side.

After the 1967 war, Israel became a strategic ally of the US because before this war, the US was not as close to Israel as people in the Arab world think. The Israelis fought in that war using mainly French and British weapons. At that time, the US administrations refused to supply Israel with more modern aircraft and weapon systems such as the F-4 Phantom.

The Palestinian misery was also used to topple another stable monarchy, this time in Iraq and replacing it with a bloody dictatorship in one of the richest countries of the world. Iraq is rich in minerals, water reserves, fertile land and archaeological sites. The military led by Abdul Karim Qassim killed King Faisal II and his family. Bloodshed in Iraq continued and this Arab country has seen more violent revolutions and one of them was carried out in the 1960s by a brigade that was sent to help liberate Palestine. Instead it made a turn and went back and took over Baghdad. Even years later, Saddam Hussien said that he will liberate Jerusalem via Kuwait. He used Palestinians misery as an excuse to invade Kuwait.

If Israel were recognized in 1948, then the 1968 coup would not have taken place in another stable and rich monarchy (Kingdom of Libya). King Idris was toppled and Muammar Qaddafi took over.

There were other military coups in the Arab world such as Syria, Yemen and the Sudan. And each one of them used Palestine as their reason for such acts. The Egyptian regime of Jamal Abdul Nasser used to call the Arab Gulf states backward states and he tried to topple the governments of these Gulf states by using his media and his military forces. He even attacked southern borders of Saudi Arabia using his air force bases in Yemen.

Even a non-Arab country (Iran) used Palestine to divert the minds of their people from internal unrest. I remember Ayatollah Khomeini declaring that he would liberate Jerusalem via Baghdad and President Ahmadinejad making bellicose statements about Israel, though not even a single fire cracker was fired from Iran toward Israel.

Now, the Palestinians are on their own. Each Arab country is busy with its own crisis. From Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Sudan, Yemen, Syria, Jordan, Somalia, Algeria, Lebanon and the Gulf states. For now, the Arab countries have put the Palestinian-Israeli conflict on hold.

 

[P F Tinmore]

So, this guy is saying that the Palestinians should have to surrendered to its foreign attackers in 1948?

 

[JStone]

So, this guy is saying that the Palestinians should have to surrendered to its foreign attackers in 1948?

Historian Sir Martin Gilbert...

On 15 May, 1948 six Arab armies, those of Egypt, Syria, Transjordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Iraq, invaded Israel. They advanced rapidly, threatening to destroy the one-day old State and drive its citizens into the sea. The Israelis resisted and after ten days were able to counter-attack

 

[P F Tinmore]

So, this guy is saying that the Palestinians should have to surrendered to its foreign attackers in 1948?

Historian Sir Martin Gilbert...

On 15 May, 1948 six Arab armies, those of Egypt, Syria, Transjordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Iraq, invaded Israel. They advanced rapidly, threatening to destroy the one-day old State and drive its citizens into the sea. The Israelis resisted and after ten days were able to counter-attack

On 15 May, 1948 six Arab armies, those of Egypt, Syria, Transjordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Iraq, invaded Israel.

No they didn't.

 

[JStone]

So, this guy is saying that the Palestinians should have to surrendered to its foreign attackers in 1948?

Historian Sir Martin Gilbert...

On 15 May, 1948 six Arab armies, those of Egypt, Syria, Transjordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Iraq, invaded Israel.

No they didn't.

By Fouad Ajami
The Wall Street Journal
June 1, 2011

It had been quite a scramble, the prelude to the vote on Nov. 29, 1947, on the question of the partition of Palestine. The United Nations itself was only two years old and had just 56 member states; the Cold War was gathering force, and no one was exactly sure how the two pre-eminent powers, the United States and the Soviet Union, would vote. The Arab and Muslim states were of course unalterably opposed, for partition was a warrant for a Jewish state.

In the end, the vote broke for partition, the U.S. backed the resolution, and two days later the Soviet Union followed suit. It was a close call: 10 states had abstained, 13 had voted against, 33 were in favor, only two votes over the required two-thirds majority.

Now, some six decades later, the Palestinians are calling for a vote in the next session of the General Assembly, in September, to ratify a unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood. In part, this is an appropriation by the Palestinians of the narrative of Zionism. The [UN] vote in 1947 was viewed as Israel's basic title to independence and] statehood. The Palestinians and the Arab powers had rejected partition and chosen the path of war. Their choice was to prove calamitous.

By the time the guns had fallen silent, the Yishuv, the Jewish community in Palestine, had held its ground against the combined armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Iraq. Its forces stood on the shores of the Red Sea in the south, and at the foot of the Golan Heights in the north. Palestinian society had collapsed under the pressure of war. The elites had made their way to neighboring lands. Rural communities had been left atomized and leaderless. The cities had fought, and fallen, alone. '"

Palestine had become a great Arab shame. Few Arabs were willing to tell the story truthfully, to face its harsh verdict. Henceforth the Palestinians would live on a vague idea of restoration and return. No leader had the courage to tell the refugees who had left Acre and Jaffa and Haifa that they could not recover the homes and orchards of their imagination.

Some had taken the keys to their houses with them to Syria and Lebanon and across the river to Jordan. They were no more likely to find political satisfaction than the Jews who had been banished from Baghdad and Beirut and Cairo, and Casablanca and Fez, but the idea of return, enshrined into a "right of return," would persist. (Wadi Abu Jamil, the Jewish quarter of the Beirut of my boyhood, is now a Hezbollah stronghold, and no narrative exalts or recalls that old presence.)

History hadn't stood still. The world was remade. In 1947-48, when the Zionists had secured their statehood, empires were coming apart, borders were fluid, the international system of states as we know it quite new. India and Pakistan had emerged as independent, hostile states out of the partition of the subcontinent in 1947, and Israel had secured its place in the order of nations a year later. Many of the Arab states were still in their infancy.

But the world is a vastly different place today. The odds might favor the Palestinians in the General Assembly, but any victory would be hollow.

The Palestinians have misread what transpired at the General Assembly in 1947. True, the cause of Jewish statehood had been served by the vote on partition, but the Zionist project had already prevailed on the ground. Jewish statehood was a fait accompli perhaps a decade before that vote. All the ingredients had been secured by Labor Zionism. There was a military formation powerful enough to defeat the Arab armies, there were political institutions in place, and there were gifted leaders, David Ben-Gurion pre-eminent among them, who knew what can be had in the world of nations.

The vote at the General Assembly was of immense help, but it wasn't the decisive factor in the founding of the Jewish state. The hard work had been done in the three decades between the Balfour Declaration of 1917 and the vote on partition. Realism had guided the Zionist project. We will take a state even if it is the size of a tablecloth, said Chaim Weizmann, one of the founding fathers of the Zionist endeavor.

Sadly, the Palestinian national movement has known a different kind of leadership, unique in its mix of maximalism and sense of entitlement, in its refusal to accept what can and can't be had in the world of nations. Leadership is often about luck, the kind of individuals a people's history brings forth. It was the distinct misfortune of the Palestinians that when it truly mattered, and for nearly four decades, they were led by a juggler, Yasser Arafat, a man fated to waste his people's chances.

Arafat was neither a Ben-Gurion leading his people to statehood, nor an Anwar Sadat accepting the logic of peace and compromise. He had been an enemy of Israel, but Israel had reached an accord with him in 1993, made room for him, and for a regime of his choice in Gaza. He had warred against the United States, but American diplomacy had fallen under his spell, and the years of the Clinton presidency were devoted to the delusion that the man could summon the courage to accept a practical peace.

But Arafat would do nothing of the kind. Until his death in 2004, he refrained from telling the Palestinians the harsh truths they needed to hear about the urgency of practicality and compromise. Instead, he held out the illusion that the Palestinians can have it all, from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean. His real constituents were in the refugee camps in Lebanon and Syria and Jordan, and among the Palestinians in Kuwait. So he peddled the dream that history's verdict could be overturned, that the "right of return" was theirs.

There was hope that the Arafat legacy would go with him to the grave.The new Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas had been a lieutenant of Arafat's, but there were hints of a break with the Arafat legacy. The alliance between Fatah and Hamas that Mr. Abbas has opted for put these hopes to rest. And the illusion that the U.N. can break the stalemate in the Holy Land is vintage Arafat. It was Arafat who turned up at the General Assembly in 1974 with a holster on his hip, and who proclaimed that he had come bearing a freedom fighter's gun and an olive branch, and that it was up to the U.N. not to let the olive branch fall from his hand.

For the Palestinians there can be no escape from negotiations with Israel. The other Arabs shall not redeem Palestinian rights. They have their own burdens to bear. In this Arab Spring, this season of popular uprisings, little has been said in Tunis and Cairo and Damascus and Sanaa about Palestine.

The General Assembly may, in September, vote to ratify a unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood. But true Palestinian statehood requires convincing a decisive Israeli majority that statehood is a herald for normalcy in that contested land, for Arabs and Jews alike.

Mr. Ajami is a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is co-chair of the Hoover Working Group on Islamism and the International Order.

 

[P F Tinmore]

In the end, the vote broke for partition, the U.S. backed the resolution, and two days later the Soviet Union followed suit. It was a close call: 10 states had abstained, 13 had voted against, 33 were in favor, only two votes over the required two-thirds majority.

The UN General Assembly passes resolution 181 recommending a partition plan for Palestine. The plan was sent to the UN Security Council for approval and implementation.

The UN Security Council decided to not implement the plan.

There was no partition of Palestine.

The Palestinians have misread what transpired at the General Assembly in 1947. True, the cause of Jewish statehood had been served by the vote on partition, but the Zionist project had already prevailed on the ground. Jewish statehood was a fait accompli perhaps a decade before that vote. All the ingredients had been secured by Labor Zionism. There was a military formation powerful enough to defeat the Arab armies, there were political institutions in place, and there were gifted leaders, David Ben-Gurion pre-eminent among them, who knew what can be had in the world of nations.

Israel is a foreign invasion and occupation of Palestine.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lw89UDZay4M&feature=related]Erakat caught on tape - YouTube[/ame]

 

[JStone]

Israel is a foreign invasion and occupation of Palestine.

Middle East Historian Bernard Lewis...

The adjective Palestinian is comparatively new. This, I need hardly remind you, is a region of ancient civilization and of deep-rooted and often complex identitites. But, Palestine was not one of them. People might identify themselves for various purposes, by religion, by descent, or by allegiance to a particular state or ruler, or, sometimes, locality. But, when they did it locally it was generally either the city and the immediate district or the larger province, so they would have been Jerusalemites or Jaffaites or Syrians, identifying province of Syria

The constitution or the formation of a political entity called Palestine which eventually gave rise to a nationality called Palestinian were lasting innovations of the British Mandate [1948]

Guy Milliere, Eminent Professor of History and Political Science, Sorbonne, Paris

No one had heard of a Palestinian people before the mid-1960s. They did not exist. Israel under the British Mandate until Israel' s Independence in 1948 was called Palestine. All Jews who were born there until i948 had the word « Palestine » stamped on their passports. The current Palestinians are those Arabs who, for a variety of reasons, decided to leave the land during the 1947 War of Independence, when five countries – Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq – attacked the 600,000 people in the fledgling state of Israel the day after its birth, hoping to kill it in the crib.
The War Against Israel Goes On- by Guy Millière | DRZZ.fr

Pulitzer Prize-Winning Writer Charles Krauthammer...

Israel is the very embodiment of Jewish continuity: It is the only nation on earth that inhabits the same land, bears the same name, speaks the same language, and worships the same God that it did 3,000 years ago. You dig the soil and you find pottery from Davidic times, coins from Bar Kokhba, and 2,000-year-old scrolls written in a script remarkably like the one that today advertises ice cream at the corner candy store.

Tel Dan Stele Verifying King David Dynasty 3000 years ago
The Tel Dan Stela and the Kings of Aram and Israel

Judaea Capta Coins Minted By Romans against Jews 2000 years ago
Judaea Capta coinage - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jewish Dead Sea Scrolls 2000 years old.
Dead Sea Scrolls - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Yale University Press: The Archaeology of Ancient Israel

In this lavishly illustrated book some of Israel's foremost archaeologists present a thorough, up-to-date, and readily accessible survey of early life in the land of the Bible, from the Neolithic era (eighth millennium B.C.E.) to the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the First Temple in 586 B.C.E. It will be a delightful and informative resource for anyone who has ever wanted to know more about the religious, scientific, or historical background of the region.
The Archaeology of Ancient Israel - Ben-Tor, Amnon; Greenberg, R. - Yale University Press

 

[P F Tinmore]

The native population consisted of Muslims, Christians, and Jews. None of them, including the Jews, wanted a foreign Jewish state in Palestine.

Israel violated the right to self determination of the native population, including the native Jews, when it unilaterally declared itself to be a state.

 

[JStone]

The native population consisted of Muslims, Christians, and Jews. None of them, including the Jews, wanted a foreign Jewish state in Palestine.

Israel violated the right to self determination of the native population, including the native Jews, when it unilaterally declared itself to be a state.

PBS Nova...

In the banks of the Nile in southern Egypt in 1896, British archaeologisit Flinders Petrie unearthed one of the most important discoveries in biblical archaeology known as the Merneptah Stele. Merneptah's stele announces the entrance on the world stage of a People named Israel.

The Merneptah Stele is powerful evidence that a People called the Israelites are living in Canaan over 3000 years ago

Dr. Donald Redford, Egyptologist and archaeologist: The Merneptah Stele is priceless evidence for the presence of an ethnical group called Israel in Canaan.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yvg2EZAEw5c]1/13 The Bible's Buried Secrets (NOVA PBS) - YouTube[/ame]

 

[P F Tinmore]

The native Jews had the right to self determination in their homeland. Israel violated their rights.

 

[JStone]

The native Jews had the right to self determination in their homeland. Israel violated their rights.

Dr. Wafa Sultan, Human Rights Activist, Among "Time magazine's 100 heroes and pioneers whose power, talent or moral example is transforming our world" Wafa Sultan - The 2006 TIME 100 - TIME.

I believe that any nation that grants equal opportunity to every citizen, regardless of race, religion, political affiliation, or gender, thereby, establishes its moral legitimacy.

According to this principle, Israel stands alone in the Middle East region, as a nation with moral legitimacy: it grants all citizens equal rights for men and women alike, freedom of religion, and freedom of speech and of the press. Not a single Arab or Muslim country in the surrounding region does the same. Nor do any of those Arab and Muslim nations allow their citizens personal freedom, or the right to maintain and express opposing points of view.

These essential qualities of life provide oxygen for the human soul; they are the kind of basic nourishment that is desperately missing in all of Israel's Muslim neighbors. Yet, the so-called humanitarian aid organizations at the United Nations direct all their energy to act against anything and everything Israel does. Let me ask: as every human being deserves to live in dignity, why has an enormous unbalanced portion of global aid gone mostly to Palestinians, while millions of underprivileged people all over the world suffer genuine, life-threatening deprivation?

Here is why: The United Nations time and again focuses its power on the perpetual manufacturing of false anti-Israel accusations. Painting Palestinians as perennial underdogs provides the perfect cover for their subversive effort. Without doubt, this trend encourages hatred and violence against the Jewish people in Israel and everywhere else. And that is exactly its point.

Those who love liberty and life will strengthen their ties and warm relations with Israel, and stand with her. Israel will continue to shine its light among all nations.

 

[P F Tinmore]

Irrelevant.

The native Jews had the right to self determination in their homeland. Israel violated their rights.

 

[JStone]

Irrelevant.

The native Jews had the right to self determination in their homeland. Israel violated their rights.

PBS Nova...

In the banks of the Nile in southern Egypt in 1896, British archaeologisit Flinders Petrie unearthed one of the most important discoveries in biblical archaeology known as the Merneptah Stele. Merneptah's stele announces the entrance on the world stage of a People named Israel.

The Merneptah Stele is powerful evidence that a People called the Israelites are living in Canaan over 3000 years ago

Dr. Donald Redford, Egyptologist and archaeologist: The Merneptah Stele is priceless evidence for the presence of an ethnical group called Israel in Canaan.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yvg2EZAEw5c]1/13 The Bible's Buried Secrets (NOVA PBS) - YouTube[/ame]

 

[P F Tinmore]

Yes there was a native Jewish population.

There is no dispute there. You can stop posting that.

 

[JStone]

Yes there was a native Jewish population.

There is no dispute there. You can stop posting that.

Eminent French Archaeologist and Near East historian Andre Lemaire, Directeur d'etudes at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, History and Philology Section of the Sorbonne, Specialist in West Semitic epigraphy

David's reign represents a glorious achievement. Seizing the opportunity occasioned by the weakness of Assyria and Egypt, a strong and brilliant personality, joined the houses of Israel and Judah, made Jerusalem the capital of both and used this unfication as the basis of his dominion. With this favorable international situation, David created for a time one of the most important powers in the ancient Near East.

Under Kings David and Solomon, Israel was transformed from a small territory into a larger united kingdom with vassal states subject to it. As the monarchy assumed an international role, other powers to the ancient Near East, such as Phoenicia and Egypt, were required to give due regard to Israel.

 

[P F Tinmore]

Yes there was a native Jewish population.

There is no dispute there. You can stop posting that.

 

[JStone]

Yes there was a native Jewish population.

There is no dispute there. You can stop posting that.

Historian Bernard Lewis...

The countries forming the western arm of the Fertile Crescent were called by the names of the various kingdoms and peoples that ruled and inhabited them. Of these, the most familiar, or at least the best documented, are the southern lands, known in the earlier books of the Hebrew Bible and some other ancient writings as Canaan.

After the Israelite conquest and settlement, the area inhabited by them came to be described as "land of the children of Israel" or simply "land of Israel" After the breakup of the kingdom of David and Solomon in the tenth century BCE, the southern part, with Jerusalem as its capital, was called Judah, while the north was called Israel

 

[P F Tinmore]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enTbBx622-8]85 sleepless Gaza Jerusalem.divx - YouTube[/ame]

 

[JStone]

Eminent Archaeologist and Historian, former Fulbright Scholar Eric Cline...

The claims that modern Palestinians are descended from the ancient Jebusites are madewithout any supporting evidence. Historians and archaeologists have generally concluded that most, if not all, modern Palestinians are probably more closely related to the Arabs of Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Jordan and other countries than they are to the ancient Jebusites, Canaanites or Philistines.