Court clears Israeli army over death of U.S. activist

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HAIFA, Israel (Reuters) - An Israeli court on Tuesday rejected accusations that Israel was to blame for the death of American activist Rachel Corrie, who was crushed by an army bulldozer during a pro-Palestinian demonstration in Gaza in 2003. Corrie's family had accused Israel of intentionally and unlawfully killing their 23-year-old daughter, launching a civil case in the northern Israeli city of Haifa after a military investigation had cleared the army of wrong-doing. ...




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"One of the most dispiriting aspects of the Middle East conflict is the inability of both sides to see that their enemy also has legitimate claims to the territory in dispute. Palestinian rejection of the right of Jews to live in their ancient homeland is absurd and immoral. But so is the notion that Palestinians on the West Bank are somehow immigrants, and should be punished as immigrants until they agree to enjoy their punishment." -jefferey goldberg
 
Palestinian rejection of the right of Jews to live in their ancient homeland is absurd and immoral.
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Can you explain why it is absurd and immoral?

Many people of European descent have "ancient" homelands mine would be England and even further back Scandinavia but I suspect it is Scandinavians who would find it absurd and immoral if tomorrow I decided to take back what "might" have been my families 1200 years ago by evicting the current inhabitants and then taking over neighbouring territories to bring in more former Norsemen from around the world.

Now I am sure VDKMS will find this thread and start disputing everything until he gets down to the last desperate argument of "but look what Israel has done with the land, all the Palestinians wanted to do was farm goats and grow dates" I would remind him that if I steal his car, give it a new paint job and overhaul the engine it doesn't make it any less stolen.
 
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montty, i don't think the israeli-palestinian saga is comparable to any other scenario. it is unique in history. tell me, if you were a jew in germany in the 1930s, and every single country in the world shut its doors to you, would you not escape to palestine if you had the chance? this is not a black/white conflict. it is a complex/multifaceted one, with two peoples whose history is bound up in the same land. thus i support two states for two peoples. hell, i'd accept even only giving 5% to the israelis and 95% to the palestinians, as long as the israelis got some state. remember, if there was no israel, there would be about 600,000 more people to add to the holocaust body count. if only most of my family could have immigrated to palestine they would be alive today
 
benaakatz said:
montty, i don't think the israeli-palestinian saga is comparable to any other scenario. it is unique in history. tell me, if you were a jew in germany in the 1930s, and every single country in the world shut its doors to you, would you not escape to palestine if you had the chance? this is not a black/white conflict. it is a complex/multifaceted one, with two peoples whose history is bound up in the same land. thus i support two states for two peoples. hell, i'd accept even only giving 5% to the israelis and 95% to the palestinians, as long as the israelis got some state. remember, if there was no israel, there would be about 600,000 more people to add to the holocaust body count. if only most of my family could have immigrated to palestine they would be alive today
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No it isn't unique, complex nor multifaceted, German Jews left Germany in the 1930s because they were being persecuted and went to Palestine in such numbers that they decided they wanted their own country in a land they had immigrated to, it is refereed to as colonialism around the world.

In order to ensure this happened they imported European Jews by the boat load after the war and started to take over at which time as the natives decided they had had enough and fought back at which point they were pretty much driven from their land by a bunch of European boat people who have continued to take more land from these people as the need arose.

The simple answer to this problem was to have stopped immigration after 1945 as the European Jews were in no peril as Hitler and the boys were well in truly gone and given the ones in Palestine the option to go home and reclaim their land and property there or become part of Palestine.

Oh and lets not get into the holocaust guilt thing again:
1) 10-12 Million died in the holocaust that means we seem to have forgotten 4-6 million minorities and ethnic groups that were slaughtered as well none of them got a country that I recall.

2) The Holocaust was a German thing as I don't recall the Palestinians gassing anyone.
 
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what about the eastern galilee? the jews have been the indigenous majority there since the time of the canaanites
 
benaakatz said:
what about the eastern galilee? the jews have been the indigenous majority there since the time of the canaanites
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Indigenous Jews would obviously stay there and become part of the Palestinian process, I can only assume that since they got on well enough with other groups in the region they would still be happily working together but before you get carried away please understand that a European Jew is not the same as a Canaanite Jew because as you so rightly point out they were just Canaanites with a different religion just as for example a New Zealand Catholic has no right to just move into the Vatican.

The problems in the region are caused by the European Jewish migration to Palestine not the indigenous Jewish population.
 
Fine, i understand that people will always see this issue two ways. I just want to make the point that there are a large subset of people, jews and non-jews, who are moderate zionists, and support the right of the jewish people choosing to express their national self determination in PART of their homeland. Obviously we support the Palestinians' right to self determination in their homeland for the very same reason. The tragedy is that they happen to share the same piece of land. And the other tragedy is that the palestinian state should be much bigger. The Arab leaders of the day chose an zero sum, all for nothing, war of extermination instead of painful compromise back in 1947. But look at the huge state the palestinian people would have today if their leaders said yes to the two state solution (as all arab and muslim states do today in the arab peace initiative of 2002). If you discount the negev, (which arguably should've become an independent bedouin state, since neither palestinians or israelis lived there), the palestinian state covered the majority of the region, (their 900 villages spread from gaza to lebanon, and in the 1947 partition, they would've been given the majority of this area). abbas says today that the biggest mistake the palestinians ever made was rejecting the 1947 UN partition plan. His words, not mine. By the way, Abbas also says that he would never deny the Jewish people's connection to the land of Israel. In a way, he's more zionist than you
 
I would suggest that Abbas is speaking based on today's conditions not and not those of 1947, but lets be honest here Israel would never have accepted the 1947 borders anymore than they will accept the 1967 borders, in my opinion Israel will agree to anything just as long as it can take bits of land as it sees fit another words as they will accept a peace of convenience.

They may make the right rumblings about wanting "peace" but any time they get the chance for peace there just happens to be an excuse to stir up the hornets nest which usually involves a helicopter strike on a "militant".

I believe that the only chance for peace in the region will be at end of an Israeli defeat which forces them to accept reasonable terms until then there will always be a new settlement or "militant strike" to keep the status quo simmering along.
 
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