What am I supposed to do?!?!

[Rooster]

"However, just because they have that right doesn't mean that it can be at the expense of the native people."

The Palestienians are not native. The term didn't even exist until neighboring countries encouraged Arabs to enter Israel and attempt to settle. And as I said before, the land was Britain's to give away.

The Palestian people were a people invented with the sole intension of displacing the Israelis. It has been proven time and time again that they have no interest in co-existance. Until the PLA uses all of their reasources to start hunting down terrorists, the palestienians will get no sympathy from me.

[1stdeadeye]

Remember the UN offered both the Israelis and Palestinians their own countries. The Israelis accepted and set up their country. The Palestinians refused and demanded everything. They lost the ensuing wars. Tough luck.

THe Palestinians now hang their hat on a 50+year old UN resolution that they themselves rejected.

BTW,
The Jordanians are supposed to be brothers to the Palestinians and the Israelis the oppressors. Not much difference eh?

[Emily]

Back to the orginal topic....

Ask your parents to write a note saying they don't give permission for you to attend what ever assembly you don't want to go to.

Back when I was in high school, all I did was ask my dad and he wrote a note. But then again, the only shirts we couldn't wear were shirts that had cuss words on them. Ahhh back in the day, when life was easier.

As far as I know (my kids are still in elementary school), a school can't make you attend an assembly that your parents have't given you premission to. Now keep in mind, no note means permission, a note saying you cna't attend, means no premission.

Simply

[NJPaint]

Originally posted by 1stdeadeye
Remember the UN offered both the Israelis and Palestinians their own countries. The Israelis accepted and set up their country. The Palestinians refused and demanded everything. They lost the ensuing wars. Tough luck.

THe Palestinians now hang their hat on a 50+year old UN resolution that they themselves rejected.

BTW,
The Jordanians are supposed to be brothers to the Palestinians and the Israelis the oppressors. Not much difference eh?

New Jersey is about the size of Israel. Lets say, modern day, the federal government said, we are moving the New Jerseians to the western half of the state and giving the eastern half to the Kurds, since they have been oppressed for the last 100 years. And they moved all of us in NJ to the Western half. Then the Kurds came in and set up new lives in the eastern, ocean side of New Jersey. They were perfectly peaceful and minded their own business. Wouldn't you and I be fairly upset that we were kicked out of our homes? Okay, now some of the extremists among us started going crazy because they were forced into living somewhere else and everything they had was taken away. Pensilvania and New York don't want us, they will shoot us on sight if we enter their lands. So those extremists take up arms and try to retake their land. The federal government gets pissed off and gives the Kurds 3 billion a year to set up fortifications and defenses against the New Jersians. Even though its a group of extremists, they need to control people traffic into the newly founded Kurdistan. Now the UN comes along and says, we'll give you land, we'll split the country (NJ) in two, former NJsians get the West, Kurds get the East, don't fight. Well, ya, the Kurds will say, of course, thank you very much. Will the New Jersians accept it? They just lost half their land and are being told that this is going to be made permanent...

Wouldn't you be pissed off too? I've met you 1stdeadeye, I know that you are a reasonable person and stable for that matter. I don't think that you would go crazy because you were kicked out of your home and forced to live under occupation. However, think about just in general, the US population, aren't there at least a few extremists, people that under those conditions might resort to terrorist tactics to get their land back? I agree, I think that having someone like MLK lead in non-violent protest is the way out of this situation, violence is much more attractive to occupied people. Jews (as an ethnic group, not religious) need a place where they can feel secure and safe. But, just like them the Palestinians are an oppressed people and they need equal protection.

[NJPaint]

Originally posted by Rooster
"However, just because they have that right doesn't mean that it can be at the expense of the native people."

The Palestienians are not native. The term didn't even exist until neighboring countries encouraged Arabs to enter Israel and attempt to settle. And as I said before, the land was Britain's to give away.

The Palestian people were a people invented with the sole intension of displacing the Israelis. It has been proven time and time again that they have no interest in co-existance. Until the PLA uses all of their reasources to start hunting down terrorists, the palestienians will get no sympathy from me.

lol, "the term didn't exist" Palestine has been refered to as Palestine since before the middle ages. Prior to WWI, it was refered to as Palestine. Look at any British Map from WWI or WWII, it says Palestine. The term has been around for hundreds of years! Palestinians are the people who lived in Palestine in 1948. You are basically saying that nobody was there in 1948, that it was vacant land that the zionists invaded. "Neigboring countries encouraged arabs to enter israel" I have met many families who had plots of land in 1948 in Israel-proper, who are now living in the US. There were people there, if you want to ignore that, you are blocking out the truth. Who exactly immigrated to the area after the zionists arrived??? There were already people there...

[1stdeadeye]

Originally posted by NJPaint


New Jersey is about the size of Israel. Lets say, modern day, the federal government said, we are moving the New Jerseians to the western half of the state and giving the eastern half to the Kurds, since they have been oppressed for the last 100 years. And they moved all of us in NJ to the Western half. Then the Kurds came in and set up new lives in the eastern, ocean side of New Jersey. They were perfectly peaceful and minded their own business. Wouldn't you and I be fairly upset that we were kicked out of our homes? Okay, now some of the extremists among us started going crazy because they were forced into living somewhere else and everything they had was taken away. Pensilvania and New York don't want us, they will shoot us on sight if we enter their lands. So those extremists take up arms and try to retake their land. The federal government gets pissed off and gives the Kurds 3 billion a year to set up fortifications and defenses against the New Jersians. Even though its a group of extremists, they need to control people traffic into the newly founded Kurdistan. Now the UN comes along and says, we'll give you land, we'll split the country (NJ) in two, former NJsians get the West, Kurds get the East, don't fight. Well, ya, the Kurds will say, of course, thank you very much. Will the New Jersians accept it? They just lost half their land and are being told that this is going to be made permanent...

But NJ is two states! North and South Jersey! You need a passport to cross 195!

Seriously though. The analogy is flawed. Remember the Middle east is a hodge podge of made up countries. The rulers and borders were set by the west when they pulled out. Also remember the Palestinians and Jews fought the British TOGETHER!

Since we already own NJ, the analogy does not work.

Wouldn't you be pissed off too? I've met you 1stdeadeye, I know that you are a reasonable person and stable for that matter.

You take that back!!!!!

I don't think that you would go crazy because you were kicked out of your home and forced to live under occupation. However, think about just in general, the US population, aren't there at least a few extremists, people that under those conditions might resort to terrorist tactics to get their land back? I agree, I think that having someone like MLK lead in non-violent protest is the way out of this situation, violence is much more attractive to occupied people. Jews (as an ethnic group, not religious) need a place where they can feel secure and safe. But, just like them the Palestinians are an oppressed people and they need equal protection.

The way to that peace and co-existence is not at the barrel of a gun, but at the point of shame. Look at how South Africa and India changed. Peaceful non-violent resistence. As long as the Palestinians have suiceide bombers, peace will not happen. THe Israelis already said they will negotiate when the violence stops, so the Palestinians need to take Israel up on that. Problem is there are too many wackos in the mix!

[NJPaint]

I totally agree, that there are too many wackos on the Palestinian side. I think its understandable where their anger is from (I understand what is going through their head) but, their actions are vile and disgusting. However, look at what happend with Barak. Full Ceasefire, suicide bombings stopped, Arafat met with Barak and Clinton. The best offer given to Arafat was 96% of the land. He didn't take it. If you look at the deal, he was right to reject it. The best analogy is a prison. 96% of a prison is controled by the prisoners. However, it is that 4% that are the walls, cell doors, guard towers and weapons caches that make the rest totally controlable.

What Barak offered at Camp David was a formula for continued Israeli military occupation under the name of a "state."

The proposal would have meant:
no territorial contiguity for the Palestinian state,
no control of its external borders,
limited control of its own water resources, and
no full Israeli withdrawal from occupied territory as required by international law.
In addition, the Barak plan would have :

included continued Israeli military control over large segments of the West Bank, including almost all of the Jordan Valley;
codified the right of Israeli forces to be deployed in the Palestinian state at short notice;
meant the continued presence of fortified Israeli settlements and Jewish-only roads in the heart of the Palestinian state; and
required nearly 4 million Palestinian refugees to relinquish their fundamental human rights in exchange for compensation to be paid not by Israel but by the "international community."

(96% includes already land given back)

[NJPaint]

Originally posted by Rooster

And, my little prejudiced friend, when said people get tired of having crazed idiots blowing up busses full of their children, they will take away the freedoms of the people deliberately trying to kill their children.

Gaza Diary of Chris Hedge's Reporter for Harper magazine, published June 17, 2001. Hedge has also covered numerous hotzones of conflict.

"I sit in the shade of a palm-roofed hut on the edge of the dunes, momentarily defeated by the heat, the grit, the jostling crowds, the stench of the open sewers and rotting garbage. A friend of Azmi's brings me, on a tray, a cold glass of tart, red carcade juice."

"Barefoot boys, clutching kites made out of scraps of paper and ragged soccer balls, squat a few feet away under scrub trees. Men in flowing white or gray galabias -- homespun robes -- smoke cigarettes in the shade of slim eaves. Two emaciated donkeys, their ribs protruding, are tethered to wooden carts with rubber wheels."

"It is still. The camp waits, as if holding its breath. And then, out of the dry furnace air, a disembodied voice crackles over a loudspeaker."

""Come on, dogs," the voice booms in Arabic. "Where are all the dogs of Khan Younis? Come! Come!""

"I stand up. I walk outside the hut. The invective continues to spew: "Son of a *****!" "Son of a whore!" "Your mother's ****!""

"The boys dart in small packs up the sloping dunes to the electric fence that separates the camp from the Jewish settlement. They lob rocks toward two armored jeeps parked on top of the dune and mounted with loudspeakers. Three ambulances line the road below the dunes in anticipation of what is to come."

"A percussion grenade explodes. The boys, most no more than ten or eleven years old, scatter, running clumsily across the heavy sand. They descend out of sight behind a sandbank in front of me. There are no sounds of gunfire. The soldiers shoot with silencers. The bullets from the M-16 rifles tumble end over end through the children's slight bodies. Later, in the hospital, I will see the destruction: the stomachs ripped out, the gaping holes in limbs and torsos."

"Yesterday at this spot the Israelis shot eight young men, six of whom were under the age of eighteen. One was twelve. This afternoon they kill an eleven-year-old boy, Ali Murad, and seriously wound four more, three of whom are under eighteen. Children have been shot in other conflicts I have covered -- death squads gunned them down in El Salvador and Guatemala, mothers with infants were lined up and massacred in Algeria, and Serb snipers put children in their sights and watched them crumple onto the pavement in Sarajevo -- but I have never before watched soldiers entice children like mice into a trap and murder them for sport."

Or how about Physisians for Human rights report:

http://www.phrusa.org/research/forensics/israel/update_commentary.html

"the pattern of injuries seen in many victims did not reflect IDF [Israel Defense Forces] use of firearms in life-threatening situations but rather indicated targeting solely for the purpose of wounding or killing."

"the high number of gunshots to the head; the volume of serious, disabling thigh injuries; the inappropriate firing of rubber bullets and rubber-coated steel bullets at close range; and the high proportion of Palestinian injuries and deaths."

Amnesty international, Human Rights Watch and B'Tselem all report on torture methods used by the IDF on Palestinian civilians, including children. So I guess Palestinians aren't the only ones that target civilians, or children for that matter.

[Rooster]

"So I guess Palestinians aren't the only ones that target civilians, or children for that matter."

You are comparing collateral damage to a deliberate attack on children. Thats like saying the US was trying to kill Iraqi children during the invasion. Now if the Israelis were gathering the children into camps and herding them into gas chambers, that would be deliberately targeting children.

I'm sorry, but you have thrown your support to terrorists and scum. They deserve everything they have gotten, and deserve far worse. If someone displaced part of America, especially if that group was far stronger than America, I would expect our government to root out terrorists and punish them, rahter than support them. The Palestinians are asking, no they are begging for reprisals. If they didn't want to die, they would clean their own house. Instead the Israelis will do it for them.

[1stdeadeye]

I understand where you are coming from bro, but understand this: No matter what kind of state the Palestinians get, it will always be intertwined with Israel. The Palestinians need the jobs Israel offers, and Israel needs the labor force the Palestinians provide.

As for the right of return, this is over 50 years old. 2 generations have grown up in the refugee camps. Move on. The Arabs lost the wars against Israel. By all rights, Israel could take it all as spoils of war. The Barak plan might not have been perfect, but it was a start. If a Independent State of Palestine was formed, it would be the Haiti of the middle east: desperatly poor, violent and corrupt.

Remember it is Arafat and his kind that are looting the Palestinian Authority blind. There is plenty of aid flowing into the West Bank and Gaza that goes right back out. I posted a story from Paris about a month ago. Mrs. Arafat is under investigation for corruption and money laundering in France. SHe is living like royalty in Paris with her daughters on Palestinian money!

So by all means, let's have Israel pull back right now and give Arafat a country. Not a bright move.

I like Sharon's unilateral idea. Pull back from the Gaza Settlements all together, build your wall and then turn your back on them. Let their "Arab Brothers" step up and take care of them.

[tony3]

Why does everyone try to pick fights with the school systems? Stuff like that really annoys the crap out of me. You are damn lucky that you even get public schools, I think some people are forgetting this. I would really support if all public schools made kids wear jeans and a white tshirt to get rid of all this BS and your personal rights. I think all public schools should adopt some type of uniform to get rid of all this crap. Please grow up and go to school to learn, not how to pick fights.

[NJPaint]

Originally posted by Rooster
"So I guess Palestinians aren't the only ones that target civilians, or children for that matter."

You are comparing collateral damage to a deliberate attack on children. Thats like saying the US was trying to kill Iraqi children during the invasion. Now if the Israelis were gathering the children into camps and herding them into gas chambers, that would be deliberately targeting children.

I'm sorry, but you have thrown your support to terrorists and scum. They deserve everything they have gotten, and deserve far worse. If someone displaced part of America, especially if that group was far stronger than America, I would expect our government to root out terrorists and punish them, rahter than support them. The Palestinians are asking, no they are begging for reprisals. If they didn't want to die, they would clean their own house. Instead the Israelis will do it for them.

That is the point of those articles, "collateral damage" is complete bs. They target civilians in the same manner that the Palestinians do.

[NJPaint]

Originally posted by 1stdeadeye
I understand where you are coming from bro, but understand this: No matter what kind of state the Palestinians get, it will always be intertwined with Israel. The Palestinians need the jobs Israel offers, and Israel needs the labor force the Palestinians provide.

As for the right of return, this is over 50 years old. 2 generations have grown up in the refugee camps. Move on. The Arabs lost the wars against Israel. By all rights, Israel could take it all as spoils of war. The Barak plan might not have been perfect, but it was a start. If a Independent State of Palestine was formed, it would be the Haiti of the middle east: desperatly poor, violent and corrupt.

Remember it is Arafat and his kind that are looting the Palestinian Authority blind. There is plenty of aid flowing into the West Bank and Gaza that goes right back out. I posted a story from Paris about a month ago. Mrs. Arafat is under investigation for corruption and money laundering in France. SHe is living like royalty in Paris with her daughters on Palestinian money!

So by all means, let's have Israel pull back right now and give Arafat a country. Not a bright move.

I like Sharon's unilateral idea. Pull back from the Gaza Settlements all together, build your wall and then turn your back on them. Let their "Arab Brothers" step up and take care of them.

Don't get me wrong, I despise Arafat as much as I do, if not more than the Israelis. I've heard so many stories from Palestinians I know living in the US about how Arafat has screwed over the Palestinians. He is worse than the Israelis because he is on of the palestinians. He has the power to say, throw down your arms and start non-violent protests. Appeal to the US for aid by getting rid of our arms. Instead, he has looked towards his own personal gain. It is sad really.

The image that sticks in my mind is of what Arafat did with the Palestinian money meant for garbage removal. He was basically sent it to his wife and let the garbage rot on the streets. He isn't the kind of person that should be leading the people. THe Palestinians turn to Hamas because like the Black Panthers of the 1960s, they provide relief where the PLO won't. The have soup kitchens, set up schools etc. Then, when Hamas performs its attrocities, they follow along because Hamas is the group making life livable for them.

I seriously think that if the US, or Europe worked at ending the causes of problems instead of superficially allowing Israel to deal with the simptoms (setting up checkpoints and walls). We would see more progress, at least more proggress than we've seen in the past 50+ years. Israel will be more secure if they work at ending the suffering instead of trying to lock down 6 million people.

You are right, both sides do need each other. I like the idea of having one state, equal protection under the law. Anyone who believes in one person, one vote, equal protection under the law (including a just Justice system, not just one that Jews only can be lawyers in), anti-terrorist, and anti-racist I don't have a problem with and are on the right track.

[1stdeadeye]

Originally posted by NJPaint


Don't get me wrong, I despise Arafat as much as I do, if not more than the Israelis. I've heard so many stories from Palestinians I know living in the US about how Arafat has screwed over the Palestinians. He is worse than the Israelis because he is on of the palestinians. He has the power to say, throw down your arms and start non-violent protests. Appeal to the US for aid by getting rid of our arms. Instead, he has looked towards his own personal gain. It is sad really.

The image that sticks in my mind is of what Arafat did with the Palestinian money meant for garbage removal. He was basically sent it to his wife and let the garbage rot on the streets. He isn't the kind of person that should be leading the people. THe Palestinians turn to Hamas because like the Black Panthers of the 1960s, they provide relief where the PLO won't. The have soup kitchens, set up schools etc. Then, when Hamas performs its attrocities, they follow along because Hamas is the group making life livable for them.

So long as Arafat lives, there will never be peace!

I seriously think that if the US, or Europe worked at ending the causes of problems instead of superficially allowing Israel to deal with the simptoms (setting up checkpoints and walls). We would see more progress, at least more proggress than we've seen in the past 50+ years. Israel will be more secure if they work at ending the suffering instead of trying to lock down 6 million people.

You are right, both sides do need each other. I like the idea of having one state, equal protection under the law. Anyone who believes in one person, one vote, equal protection under the law (including a just Justice system, not just one that Jews only can be lawyers in), anti-terrorist, and anti-racist I don't have a problem with and are on the right track.

One state will never happen. The Palestinians are breeding faster then the Israelis! They would outnumber the Israelis and take over the state within 10 years. Thus the end of Israel. Two states are the only option. However they need to realize they a symbiotic and need each other.

If you really think about it, imagine the Middle East at peace. How many Billions of Dollars could the Palestinians and Israelis earn from tourism if all was safe. They would be one of the top tourist destinations in the world. But they would rather fight over scraps then earn a steak.

[NJPaint]

What do you mean by the end of Israel? You mean of a Jewish state? Yes, it will be the end of a Jewish state, that is what I have a problem with. Just as I don't like the idea of having the US lean 'christian' (even though I am Episcolalian). Jews having a safe haven in their holy land? I'm all for it. They deserve a place where they are safe from persecution. But a Jewish state? I don't like it. Especially in Jerusalem. The Jews claim it to be their sacred home. The temple of the Sepulcher and the Chuch of the Nativity are located front and center and they are places that I would like to go before I die. I am more worried about being shot by the IDF than I am of suicide bombers.

Take over the state? Depends on what you mean by take over. If a solid foundation can be laid, such as we have in the US, where race and ethnic background is a non-factor before the law, I see it as big of a problem as blacks vs. whites in this country.