All Washington had to do was even make an offer to Israel about extending the moratorium on expanding the settlements, and retaliation started. (I personally reject the term settlers, it is reminiscent of the LIE about a people without a land in a land without a people – these are not settlers, they are COLONISTS BY FORCE)
Hardline settlers have adopted what they call a “price tag” policy under which they attack Palestinians, their fields or villages, whenever the Israeli government takes measures to curb settlement construction.
The US offer is bullshit, guns they will give Israel anyway, to stop settling for 2 months until the election is over ONLY reflects that Obama recognizes that the US Citizenry is tired of supporting this abomination, not any REAL determination by the administration to help a Peace effort, or help stop the ethnic cleansing being wrought on the Palestinians. But still – the settlers react violently to even a suggestion they have to stop their take-over of indigenous people’s lands.
The latest attempt to destroy the Peace talks by Netanyahu and frame it as the Palestinian’s fault is absurd. If one is continuing the conquest and pillage of the Second State in a Two-State solution, making refugees out of the people living there and filling it with hard liner Israelis? It cannot be said you wish Peace. What you wish is to make that area part of Israel, and shrink the lands down to small reservations on which the refugees can live.
They are changing reality on the ground, not by negotiations or treaties. It is theft, whether by gun or pen. These hard line Zionists wish to claim the Palestinian West Bank by force… whether renegade settler terrorism, or state-sponsored military action. They want every acre of Palestinian Land to belong to Zionist Jews and the “Arabs” run out.
http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Hardline_Israeli_ministers_oppose_fresh_moratorium_report_999.html
Palestinian witnesses said six armed men in a white car drove into Beit Fajjar village near Bethlehem at 3:00 am (0100 GMT) and spray-painted Hebrew insults on the walls before setting the building alight.
Some of the group were wearing Jewish skullcaps and at least one wore a mask, they said, adding that the men appeared to be settlers.
Several Korans and prayer rugs were incinerated in the attack, according to Ali Sawabta of the local municipality.
http://www.bullfax.com/?q=node-settlers-torch-west-bank-mosque-palestinians
The mosque, located in Lubban ash-Sharqiya some 10 kilometres (six miles) south of Nablus, was largely destroyed in the attack, said the town’s mayor, Jamal Daraghma.”The settlers set fire to the mosque. Witnesses heard the sound of their cars near the mosque at around 3:00 am and saw them through the window setting fire to the books inside,” Daraghma told AFP, saying most of the mosque had been destroyed.
So, lets take a look at who some of these “settlers” are, and their words about “settling,” and its effects killing the Peace Process.
Many defenders are American-born, extremist and young. They ignore the International condemnation of settling the Palestinian Lands of the West Bank; they seek to make it part of Israel proper by “law on the ground.”
Children who must walk adjacent roads to the settlements are being stoned every day, and even with their “guard” are not protected, nor are their adult attackers prosecuted for this.
http://www.voanews.com/english/news/middle-east/Israeli-Settlers-Pressure-Leadership-on-West-Bank-Se
ttlements-102447949.html
“We believe that we have a divine right to be here” – Jewish settler Ilana Radami.
“This is our home,” said Radami. “It doesn’t break us and it will not break us. We believe that we have a divine right to be here. That our God has given the right to be on this land, and no terrorist – no coward terrorist – that will try to shoot civilians on their way home or their way to work is going to be able to stop us from living here.”
Radami – originally from the U.S. – is among hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers in the West Bank who do not want a peace deal that would force them to vacate the homes they built on land the Bible says God promised to them thousands of years ago.
“We will continue building. We will continue living here. This is our land and we have every right to it,” she added.
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=56958
“It’s the most humane way to solve the situation,” Khantsis–who has just graduated from Stony Brook University, on Long Island, with a degree in computer science–says, sipping a soda in an Israeli-run kosher pizzeria in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, this past June. He acknowledges that he is advocating ethnic cleansing.
“I want them to bomb all of Gaza, even if they kill all the civilians,” Lenny says. “You have to firebomb all of Gaza and not let one Jew get hurt.”“We can erase them in no time,” Yehuda says of the Palestinians. “But the government won’t let us do it.”
Like most other settlers, Gottlieb doesn’t call the people in the nearby town “Palestinians.” That would imply that there was a country called Palestine. Sometimes they’re “Arabs,” but mostly he calls them “terrorists.” Gottlieb says he’s not afraid. “God’s with me,” he says. “This land has been ours forever.”
Aaron Gottlieb is 15 years old, speaks in a rapid-fire American accent, and has yet to have his first shave. He does not look like much of a threat, but he is part of a group that has many in Israel deeply worried: the Hilltop Youth.
Gottlieb grew up in New Rochelle, New York, and immigrated to Israel with his family when he was 9. Whenever he can get away from his yeshiva in the town of Petah Tikva, he spends the night, along with Yedidya Slonim and other teenage boys, at Shvut Ami. Their mission is simple: to establish Jewish homes on as many strategic hilltops as possible throughout the West Bank. According to Peace Now, an Israeli pacifist organization, there are about 100 such outposts. The mainstream settler movement has largely disowned this radical wing and its frequently violent acts.
“I very much believe I’m a threat to my own government,” Gottlieb says. “There will be no giving up.”
This is an excellent primer on the settlements, while also giving fresh advanced detail. 9 worthy minutes.
Right of Return for Jewish Israelis Only
http://theonlydemocracy.org/2010/10/israeli-court-welcomes-pre-1948-land-claims-from-jewish-israelis
-only/
It has been pointed out repeatedly, but now it’s official, the Israeli Supreme Court will accept your pre-1948 claim, if you are Jewish that is. In one of those cases that is a testament to presumably intelligent people’s ability to ignore the larger implications of their actions, the court has been ruling that Jews who left East Jerusalem during the founding of the state of Israel/ Palestinian Nakba/ Catastrophe have a right of return. I hope there are Palestinian refugees filing similar court cases, as many more of them were dispossessed during that time. I would love to hear an Israeli court explain why the Jewish Israelis claims are more valid.
So, you see, if you are a Palestinian whose centuries old farm was stolen? You may not return.
If you are a Jew whose property was assigned over by the 1948 agreement? You can evict Palestinians.
For those who argue that Israel has a population of Arabs with full citizenry rights, their Foreign Minister is again floating plans for a population exchange… removing Arabs from Israel in exchange for removing some of the settlers from the West Bank.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/lieberman-presents-plans-for-population-exchange-at-un
-1.316197
“A final agreement between Israel and the Palestinians has to be based on a program of exchange of territory and populations,” Lieberman told the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
Then there is always the requirement that Palestinians living in Israel declare their loyalty to “a Jewish and democratic state.”.
Yet Israeli settlers living in Palestine would never declare loyalty to the Palestinian State in which they reside.
Yet? In the United States even so-called Liberal blogs allow right-wing propaganda, nay, I would have to call it reprogramming disinformation to be spread every day blaming the Palestinians for the lack of Peace.
This is why Israel not only gets away with the horrifying war crimes committed 2 years ago when they rained White Phosphorus down on civilians in Gaza, nor this year when the attacked Peace Activists in International Waters. This is why the West Bank’s Palestinian population is under siege, their homes bulldozed, their wells filled, their olive trees clear cut, so they are left destitute and homeless and no one says a word.
Saying the Palestinians do not want Peace because they resist being slaves and refugees in god damned Warsaw-ghetto conditions is a flat out lie.
The Right-wing propaganda machine in these Unites States is strong, and carries more money and political clout than their peaceful counterparts. They write the lies that Zionationalist bloggers repeat like Nationalist Parrots here repeat when Beck says something. Mizrahi of The Israel Project is a Beck.
http://www.promisedlandblog.com/?p=3494
Now, Jennifer Mizrahi, Founder and President of TIP, has some concerns. Still, it’s not the expansion of settlements or the future of Israeli democracy that worries her. Her problem is J Street, which seems to deceive the Jewish-American public into thinking that opposing settlements is desirable.
This is what Mizrahi writes about the left-wing Jewish advocacy group on TIP Blog:
The real problem with J Street… is not that it misled people by hiding the fact that it received contributions from people whose support of Israel is suspect. Rather, it is that J Street uses a false premise to take time and resources from thousands of people – including American leaders — whose concern for Israel is unquestioned.
You get that? J street is dangerous because it makes pro-Israelis waste time and money on ridiculous ideas, such as actively engaging with the Israeli government over its control over the life of 2.5 [million]Palestinians in the West Bank.
Palestinians are killed every day. Their Mosques are burned down.
Let one Israeli be killed or one Synagogue burn and the wrath of the IDF punished civilians… all supported by US dollars and so-called US left-wing bloggers.
I want Peace in the Middle East…. but I want a FAIR and HUMANE peace that treats the Palestinians complaints for once with equity.
And all we have so far in the negotiations are an attempt to undermine them by Netanyahu, an attempt to provoke Abbas, and a complete disregard for the suffering in Gaza, who was not even represented at the table. This is no peace, this is an INSULT to peace.
Boycott, Divest, Sanction.
And not a penny more of MY TAX DOLLARS.
