Split: Who started the Arab-Israeli Conflict
- Status
Corocotta
Active member
About the SS patria I should say that in September, 1940, around 3,000 Jewish refugees from Vienna, Prague and Danzig were attempting to reach Palestine. In a convoy of four river steamers, they set sail down the Danube and reached the Romanian port of Tulcea where they transferred to three Greek cargo ships named Atlintic, Pacific and Milos. Conditions on board these three ships were horrendous, reminiscent of Japanese hell-ships later in the war. Eventually the ships reached Palestinian waters, but the British Colonial Office refused them permission to land. It was finally decided to deport the refugees to the island of Mauritius where a special camp was to be built. The three ships were then brought into Haifa harbour where the liner Patria was berthed. The refugees were then embarked on the Patria and as the last passengers from the Atlantic were coming on board, a tremendous explosion ripped the liner apart. The death toll amounted to 267 refugees killed. The explosion was the work of the Jewish underground army, the Haganah, who had meant only to damage the ship to prevent it sailing but had miscalculated the amount of explosives needed to disable the ship. Many say that this was no miscalculation and was deliberate murder of Jews by Jews, in an attempt to influence British immigration policy to Palestine.
Other acts of terrorism: The first act of air piracy in the history of civil aviation was carried out by Israel, in Dec. 1954, when a civilian Syrian airliner was forced down in Tel Aviv and its passengers and crew held for days, despite international condemnation.
In 1968, Israeli commandos blew up 13 civilian airliners at Beirut airport in Lebanon.
The first deliberate shooting down a civilian airliner was carried out by Israel, when a Libyan airliner was shot down by Israeli jet fighters over Sinai, in Feb. 1973, on the direct orders of Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, killing all 107 of its passengers and the entire French crew.
About the solution you are talking about: Palestina have never been a reconised country in the international comunity.
Other acts of terrorism: The first act of air piracy in the history of civil aviation was carried out by Israel, in Dec. 1954, when a civilian Syrian airliner was forced down in Tel Aviv and its passengers and crew held for days, despite international condemnation.
In 1968, Israeli commandos blew up 13 civilian airliners at Beirut airport in Lebanon.
The first deliberate shooting down a civilian airliner was carried out by Israel, when a Libyan airliner was shot down by Israeli jet fighters over Sinai, in Feb. 1973, on the direct orders of Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, killing all 107 of its passengers and the entire French crew.
About the solution you are talking about: Palestina have never been a reconised country in the international comunity.
Well, many people say alot of things. As far as I and common knowledge are concern, it was an error.
Hmmm, Syria is a hostile country...If a Syrian airliner crosses the border, naturallu it will be forced to land. The crew and passengers were realeased after a few days...Whats the problem here?
on the 26/12/68 granades were hurled at an EL AL airliner in Athens. As a respons Israel destroyed 14 aircraft in the Beirut international airport. 13 of these aircraft were owned by Arab Airline companys. The 14th was owned by Ghana, and was destoyed on error, after which Ghana recieved full compensation from Israel. The action was a signal to Arab countrys to cease support to actions against EL AL aircraft. No civilians were hurt.
A plane owned by Saudi, a hostile country to Israel, flew into what was know to eveyone as Israeli airspace. 2 Israeli F4 fighters scrambled to the air, and met the Saudi aircraft. The F4s signaled the airliner to land. The pilot did not obey the landing orders and continued fying into Israeli airspace. Israeli intel feard the aircraft might be used as a flying bomb, crashing into a civilian target. The F4s fired at the airliner and in its attempt to crash land it was destroyed, killing all the crew and passengers. In a post 9/11 view, id say that it is not an act of terror, what do you think?
The Palestinians never declared independence. How can you recognise a country that dosent recognize itself. I agree the Palestinians have sufferd alot, but they themselves caused much of it.
MontyB
All-Blacks Supporter
Hmmm maybe all this can all be summed up pretty easily, both Israel and the palestinians are guilty of terror attacks to the point that they are now indistinguishable. Neither side deserves any support and certainly neither has any claim to being in the right.
So we can sit here going point for point on who's actions are justifiable but I remain adamant that strapping a bomb to yourself and blowing up a bunch of civilians is no more justifiable than firing a missile into into a refugee camp and killing a bunch of civilians under the pretense that you are targetting a "militant".
So my conclusion:
Both sides are wrong.
So we can sit here going point for point on who's actions are justifiable but I remain adamant that strapping a bomb to yourself and blowing up a bunch of civilians is no more justifiable than firing a missile into into a refugee camp and killing a bunch of civilians under the pretense that you are targetting a "militant".
So my conclusion:
Both sides are wrong.
Nope, Im sorry, that is not the case.
Firstly, Israel dose not delibretly kill or wound civilians. Secondly, When Israeli soldiers deliberetly do so, they are court martialled.
And as to the Irgun and Stern Gang, not only was that 60 years ago, but it was unaccepted by Jewsih publuic opinion.
There is no comparison between the huge terror organization that the Palestinians have formed to anything Israel has ever done.
That is your right to think so. But the fact that you write "militant" instead of militant shows how much of an understanding you have. Also, if the Palestinians ever bothered to keep their militry and civilian lives apart of ach other, instead of hiding behind women and children like cowards, they could asave many civilians.
Walk a mile in Israeli shoes. You will find it a harsh, lonely mile. Its all easy from NZ...
MontyB
All-Blacks Supporter
Does Israel have some form of compulsory military service?.
If so then wouldnt it be fair to say that as long the Palestinians dont specifically target people below or above military age then thay are not killing civilians but more "out of uniforn soldiers"?
Now you may consider that statement stupid but in reality like yourself I am simply applying spin to make an unjustifiable act justifiable.
I use the term "militant" because of the old addage that one mans terrorist is another mans freedom fighter and nothing more, in a conflict where both parties are guilty of war crimes I think it applies.
1) The Palestinians dont have a military.
2) Perhaps if Isreali troops stopped opening fire on kids throwing stones just as many civilians would be saved.
You would think that however NZ has just got through suspending diplomatic ties with Israel over two of its agents trying to procure NZ passports illegally, now the question I ask you is why would such an above board and misunderstood nation want illegal passports if not for underhanded reasons?.
So please dont try holier than thou card you may find it backfires.
Actually while I stand by what I have said (that both sides are equally wrong) I am starting to think that it will end up in a breech of board rules which is not the intention so lets just agree to disagree and move on, I am happy however to argue specific points.
Thats all well and nice, but when you attack a buss full of school children, or a bus full of ultra orthodox jews (who dont serve), you do so to kill civilians and hit the "soft belly". Those are only a few examples. And I do not use "spins". I say what I think.
I really donst see how Hammas can be called anything but terrorists. Even the PLO....And even if an Israeli soldier commits such an act, he is not aterrorist. He is a criminal, and should be locked away.
1)Yes they do, the PLO.
2)Israeli troops do not open fire on kids throwing rocks. That is simply untrue. Israeli soldiers fire at people who shoot at them. Those people usually shoot from inside the stone thorwers. Palestinian chilren are cinically used by the terror orgs. Also, in some cases, it was discovered that they were acctually killed by Palestinian fire. Kids sohuldent throw tanks at soldiers in the middle of a battlefield.
Wow, are you saying that the Israeli intel uses iilegal passports. Thats is just so strange. I thought that you simply go to the border point with Syria and ask for a ride to Damaskus. Come on.
I really dont see how. You, as do many people who never felt what it is like for your country to be attacked, are simply not getting it.
I wish I could get it through to you somehow. If you were here I know I could. Simply talk to some of the people you speak of as "Israeli troops". These are my neighbors, my cousins, my father. That is me in lless than a year. You think I would preform war crimes?!
Seriously, I suggest you fly over here some time. Send me an Email, Id love to show you around..
MontyB
All-Blacks Supporter
Tell me if a NZer ends up imprisoned or worse in Syria because of this incident who should we blame, think the Israeli government will "fess up"?, what do you think the Israeli government would do if those same passports ended up in Hamas hands?.
I am saying that on a routine basis Israel breaks international law therefore it is very difficult to accept that your argument that it is solely Palestinians commiting crimes.
So which are they Terrorists or a Palestinian military because that raises a whole lot of other questions about those in detention being POW's or criminals.
Indeed I personally struggle to understand how civilians can get caught on battlefields I mean hell what were they doing in those refugee camps anyway everyone knows they are just parking lots for armour.
I would also challenge you to show me cases where an AK47 round has stopped an MBT or AFV so dont you think the response is out of proportion to the threat?.
Actually I have been there admitedly not for long (6 Months total) but I have seen "some" of Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Israel and to a large degree it is that knowldge that helps me formulate my opinion that the entire middle east is wrong.
yeah, but it was a dumb move, NZ had pretty good relations with isreal before this incident and i'm guessing it will be along time before things return to normal. new zealanders travel overseas alot, what do you think it would be like for our citizens if at every airport they arrived at they got a grilling in case they were an isreali spy? it was bad form.
i agree with monty on this (surprise surprise) alot of extra effort needs to be done on any peace plans becuase neither side is winning. with the palestinians being terrorists, but they are figting the heavy hand of isreal. thta's what we see on our TV's almost everynight
All intell agencys around the world break the law when it comes to their travel arangements. If a innocent NZer was arrested by Syria, well, that would be a Syria-NZ problem, as in any other situation where an NZer is arrested for no reason.
Non relating to their leagal status, they are involved in military action. Either way I would expect them to stop hding behind children and women.
Intresting. Firstly, most of the problem is not with them just living there. They go out to the street in the middle of firefights and throw rocks. A rock is not usually deadly, but if it thrown at when buiasy fighting armed terrorists it can lead to your death.
Now, an AK47 round cant stop an MPT or an APC. But it can and will kill people who are exposed in the turret or on foot. If you think Israeli fight only out of APCs than you are seriously wrong. Also, the Palestinians also use Machine Guns, RPGs, and huge AT mines. So no, killing someone that shoots at you dosent seem out of proportion to me.
Really, how long were you in Israel?
When will you realise that CNN loves an underdog?
MontyB
All-Blacks Supporter
There is a difference though and that is that we caught your lot.
However this argument is going nowhere fast neither of us are going to change the others mind.
On and off for about a month maybe a bit less, however (and you probably wont agree) of the 4 countries visited I really liked Jordan, found Israel ok and really disliked Egypt due mainly to security problems, the rest was just business.
SHERMAN said:
lol...never watch CNN as US journalism leaves alot to be desired, i prefer to watch the BBC and then flesh out any gaps in the coverage with local opinion and the net (places like this)
the NZ media is pretty much unbiased when it come to the middle east as we have no real stake in the region. spy's using a friendly counties passports is not on, remember mossad got cought in canada too.
. But that is probably because of the sheer volume of humint Israel is involved with...Israel will not allow peacekeapers here. The main issue was that no one in the UN bothered to make sure that the partition will be preformed in 1948. So the Arab nations invaded, and what ever the y got out of it, they sure as heck dident hand to the Palestinians. It is a tragedy, no doubt, but if you look for guilty parties the Arab countrys are more at blame that the UN.
Corocotta
Active member
I am sorry, but I do not trust any action that your Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, have done or will do in the future. We should remember his participation in the massacres of Sabra and Shatila:during the Israeli military invasion to Lebanon on June of 1982, called “Peace for Galilea”, killed hundreds of thousands of Lebaneses civiles. In spite of the powerful terror´s machinery of Israel, the Israeli Defense Minister, Ariel Sharon, felt the taste of the military failure and couldn´t defeat and destroy the Palestinian resistence of the Palestinian Liberation Organization-PLO and the Lebanese National Movement, releasing his criminal anger against the Palestinian Refugee Camps in Sabra and Shatila, murdering in 72 hours to five-thousand Palestinian Refugees, most of them children, women and old men that were unprotected after the PLO retirement of Lebanon and after the no-fulfillment of the contracted agreement by the internacional forces to protect the security of the Palestinian Refugees.
To 20 years of the Sabra and Shatila Massacre, in contrast to many other War Criminals that were taken to the International Courts, the War Criminal, Sharon, was rewarded with the democratic title of First Minister of Israel.
With old age Sharon printed again his Criminal mark against the Palestinian People, pulverizeing the Oslo´s Agreements, occupying again and destroying all the territory of Palestine. At the same time he pened to the President Yasser Arafat in his detroyed Presidence of Ramallah since the last 1st of December of 2001, imposing Sharon systematically his longed dream of Ethnical Cleaning of the Palestinian People.
http://www.palestina.int.ar/Sabra-Shatila/hsasha2.htm
To 20 years of the Sabra and Shatila Massacre, in contrast to many other War Criminals that were taken to the International Courts, the War Criminal, Sharon, was rewarded with the democratic title of First Minister of Israel.
With old age Sharon printed again his Criminal mark against the Palestinian People, pulverizeing the Oslo´s Agreements, occupying again and destroying all the territory of Palestine. At the same time he pened to the President Yasser Arafat in his detroyed Presidence of Ramallah since the last 1st of December of 2001, imposing Sharon systematically his longed dream of Ethnical Cleaning of the Palestinian People.
http://www.palestina.int.ar/Sabra-Shatila/hsasha2.htm
Corocotta
Active member
I also talked about the pressure some countries support to say yes to UN resolution 181:
The partition resolution required a 2/3 majority to pass, and it became evident that due to Arab pressure and resistance to the US by third-world countries, it might not pass. On November 25, a Tuesday, UN General Assembly members, acting as an ad hoc committee on Palestine, voted. The partition resolution passed the "committee" vote, twenty-five to thirteen with seventeen abstentions. However, this vote was one one short of the 2/3 majority that would be needed to pass the General Assembly itself.
The vote was postponed from Wednesday, giving the lobbyists Thursday, the Thanksgiving holiday, to change votes. The Arab countries exerted pressure against partition. Pressure from Zionists, US officials and former officials was brought to bear on countries that were intending to vote against partition. Greece was threatened with loss of foreign aid. Apparently on the prompting of former Secretary of State Stettinus, tire manufacturer Harvey Firestone threatened Liberia with a rubber embargo. Paraguay, the Philippines, Haiti and other countries reversed their positions and voted for partition. Though newspapers accused State Department officials of acting against partition, at least some State department officials were directly involved in lobbying for it. Dean Rusk, head of the State Department's UN desk in Washington, later wrote, "when President Truman decided to support partition, I worked hard to implement it....The pressure and arm-twisting applied by American and Jewish representatives in capital after capital to get that affirmative vote are hard to describe." The vote was again postponed to Saturday November 29, one more day, at the request of the Arabs. Greece voted against partition anyway, but other countries changed their vote. The partition resolution was duly passed.
As soon as the resolution passed however, the State Department went to work systematically to undo it. The Palestine problem was dwarfed by the problems arising in Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean, where country after country was falling under Soviet influence. The US was demobilizing rapidly and had to decide whether to maintain a military footing to counter the USSR, and to face the possibility of another war, that would increase US dependence on Arab oil. Truman was deluged with memoranda about the situation in Poland, in Czechoslovakia, in Greece, as well as with the Palestine question. The Presidential staff in those days was tiny, and Truman had to read each and every one of these documents.
Palestine was a side show, so the State Department could act more or less independently in many ways, and despite official support for partition, most State Department officials remained opposed. On December 5, the US declared an arms embargo in the Middle East, which prevented the Jews from getting arms, but did not affect contracts of the Arab states with Great Britain. The stand of President Truman on this embargo is unclear. Having withdrawn the means of defense, the State Department then tried to prove that the Jews would not be able to defend themselves in case of Arab attack. A secret memo on December 17 called for the US to renounce partition as impractical and asked that the US should convene a special session of the UN General Assembly to work out a "middle of the road" solution that would win support from Jews and Arabs. If this would be impossible, the US should favor a trusteeship plan, an idea that was favored by Loy Henderson, and that had been incubated for several months in the State Department.
http://www.mideastweb.org/us_supportforstate.htm
The partition resolution required a 2/3 majority to pass, and it became evident that due to Arab pressure and resistance to the US by third-world countries, it might not pass. On November 25, a Tuesday, UN General Assembly members, acting as an ad hoc committee on Palestine, voted. The partition resolution passed the "committee" vote, twenty-five to thirteen with seventeen abstentions. However, this vote was one one short of the 2/3 majority that would be needed to pass the General Assembly itself.
The vote was postponed from Wednesday, giving the lobbyists Thursday, the Thanksgiving holiday, to change votes. The Arab countries exerted pressure against partition. Pressure from Zionists, US officials and former officials was brought to bear on countries that were intending to vote against partition. Greece was threatened with loss of foreign aid. Apparently on the prompting of former Secretary of State Stettinus, tire manufacturer Harvey Firestone threatened Liberia with a rubber embargo. Paraguay, the Philippines, Haiti and other countries reversed their positions and voted for partition. Though newspapers accused State Department officials of acting against partition, at least some State department officials were directly involved in lobbying for it. Dean Rusk, head of the State Department's UN desk in Washington, later wrote, "when President Truman decided to support partition, I worked hard to implement it....The pressure and arm-twisting applied by American and Jewish representatives in capital after capital to get that affirmative vote are hard to describe." The vote was again postponed to Saturday November 29, one more day, at the request of the Arabs. Greece voted against partition anyway, but other countries changed their vote. The partition resolution was duly passed.
As soon as the resolution passed however, the State Department went to work systematically to undo it. The Palestine problem was dwarfed by the problems arising in Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean, where country after country was falling under Soviet influence. The US was demobilizing rapidly and had to decide whether to maintain a military footing to counter the USSR, and to face the possibility of another war, that would increase US dependence on Arab oil. Truman was deluged with memoranda about the situation in Poland, in Czechoslovakia, in Greece, as well as with the Palestine question. The Presidential staff in those days was tiny, and Truman had to read each and every one of these documents.
Palestine was a side show, so the State Department could act more or less independently in many ways, and despite official support for partition, most State Department officials remained opposed. On December 5, the US declared an arms embargo in the Middle East, which prevented the Jews from getting arms, but did not affect contracts of the Arab states with Great Britain. The stand of President Truman on this embargo is unclear. Having withdrawn the means of defense, the State Department then tried to prove that the Jews would not be able to defend themselves in case of Arab attack. A secret memo on December 17 called for the US to renounce partition as impractical and asked that the US should convene a special session of the UN General Assembly to work out a "middle of the road" solution that would win support from Jews and Arabs. If this would be impossible, the US should favor a trusteeship plan, an idea that was favored by Loy Henderson, and that had been incubated for several months in the State Department.
http://www.mideastweb.org/us_supportforstate.htm
not a single israeli participated in the massacres. it was only christian lebanese getting revenge for the thousands massacred by yasser arafat and his goons
the lebanon invasion began as a total success, staying there was what costed lives... but it is a totally justified war, as the PLO and syrian backers allowed terrorists to cross from lebanon into israel to commit murder terrorism and kidnapping over a long time... remember arafat came to lebanon after he was kicked out of jordan for doing the same thing
sharon has not done nothing of the sort you have claimed...
:sarcasm: oh and great link... :/sarcasm:
Corocotta
Active member
Well, i think he had a lot of responsability. read this:
http://www.sabra-shatila.be/english/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2255902.stm
http://www.indictsharon.net/
http://www.counterpunch.org/thomson0918.html
http://www.globalissues.org/Geopolitics/MiddleEast/TerrorInUSA/faq/Sabra.asp
Do you still think he was not responsable?? Come on!!!!!
http://www.sabra-shatila.be/english/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2255902.stm
http://www.indictsharon.net/
http://www.counterpunch.org/thomson0918.html
http://www.globalissues.org/Geopolitics/MiddleEast/TerrorInUSA/faq/Sabra.asp
Do you still think he was not responsable?? Come on!!!!!
- Status