Originally Posted by senojekips

Possibly true, but I'm not convinced that you are correct for the reasons that I've outlined regarding other minorities around the world. I recognise "differences" in many people, but not on anything like the scale seen with the Jewish people. I worked for years on ships with Russian Officers and Mates, and Chinese crews, they were certainly different, but that did not mean that the great majority of them were not really decent people with whom I enjoyed my time very much.

I am going to drop this line of enquiry for the moment, as I believe that although nothing discussed so far has been in anyway untrue or unfair, it is a very contentious issue that could easily turn ugly very quickly. But it has certainly left me with a lot of food for thought.

I have my suspicions that if I got anywhere near as truthful, with the Zionists, as has been done with various Chinese and Somali forum members, this thread would be locked, and some of us would face possible banning. It is for this reason only, that I am "pulling my punches".

I don't disagree with you but the policy of the forum is not going to change therefore there is no point in fighting a battle you cant win, however I havent spent a lot of time in the middle east but from the time that I did spend there I found that once you got away from religion it was very difficult to spot the differences between Arab, Jew and Christian.

Everyone pretty much has the same goals in life world wide, which is basically to put food on the table and live life as best as possible.

Originally Posted by 3dgeo

Israel paid $13 million compesation for attack on USS liberty, the US TAXPAYER doles out over $10 million per day to Israel and the ship cost over $60 million.Where are the accountants??
According to the Christian Science Monitor,the cost of Israel to America has been over $1.6 TRILLION since 1973.http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/1209/p16s01-wmgn.html

But let's get back to Israel's attack on USS LIBERTY.
2 important notes that might not have been mentioned:
Previous1950's Israeli black flag operation code named Operation Susannah,(see Lavon Affair).
Egyptian Jews were recruited by infamous Mossad to firebomb US and UK targets in Egypt and pin blame on Nasser regime.Aim Of Israel leaders was to foment friction if not war with an Islamic country.US Eisenhower administration forcing Israel,France and UK to withdraw following their combined 1956 invasion of Egypt was building some goodwill
in the Arab world. This was intolerable for Israel.
So Liberty attack with unmarked Israeli planes was a continuation not an exception of Israel modus operandi.
War with the Islamic world has been policy for Israel.
Secondly on June 8,1967 USS Liberty with her state of the art eavdropping equipment was within 13-14 miles off of the newly captured Sinai town of El Arish were the IDF was carrying out mass executions of 300 unarmed Egyptian POW's.
Benyamin Ben Eliezar,future housing MK was in command of IDF Shaked Recon. group and is implicated in the El Arish massacre.
James Bamford's Body of Secrets claims one of the reasons the attack on Liberty was ordered by DM,Mohse Dayan was to coverup the war crime
The other was Israel's impending move on the much covetted headwaters of the Golan Heights.Water is the most precious in mideast.

Now this could be a good reason for the attack but the problem is that I can't find anything that says the massacre took place.

Originally Posted by MontyB

I don't disagree with you but the policy of the forum is not going to change therefore there is no point in fighting a battle you cant win.

Quite correct, I don't see it changing either, but that is no reason to not put up stuff that might cause others to think about what has happened in the past, the possible reasons behind it and the people who are living and dying in misery because of it today.

Here's 2 slices for you.

First slice:


As Evidence Mounts, Toll of Israeli Prisoner of War Massacres Grows


By Katherine M. Metres


"If I were to be put on trial for what I did, then it would be necessary to put on trial at least one-half the Israeli army which, in similar circumstances, did what I did."—Israeli Brig. Gen. Aryeh Biro, who admitted to killing hundereds of unresisting Egyptians.
In July 1995, the long, hidden story began to leak. Publication in the Israeli press of a study undertaken for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) briefly noted that 35 Egyptian "soldiers"—actually civilian Public Works employees, it was later admitted—were murdered during the 1956 Suez War, ostensibly because there was insufficient manpower to guard them (Davar, 7/21/95). After this little-noticed article was published, the military censor could no longer prevent the publication of historian Ronal Fisher's research on Israeli massacres of 273 Egyptians who, according to international law, should have been prisoners of war (Ma'ariv, 8/8/95).*
Former soldiers' recollections of the massacres they committed gained momentum, and soon a host of war crimes previously known only to the participants came to light in the mainstream Israeli press. Israelis admitted that in the 1967 Six-Day War, the IDF executed Palestinian POWs who were fighting in the Egyptian army, a thousand unresisting Egyptians, and dozens of unarmed Palestinian refugees.
The 1956 massacres occurred in the context of the lsraeli invasion of the Egyptian Sinai, which was planned in collusion with Britain and France in order to overthrow Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser and return the Suez Canal to European control. The war began when Israeli Battalion 890 parachuted onto the eastern side of Sinai's Mitla Pass. The battalion was commanded by Raphael (Raful) Eitan, who later helped carry out Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon and who played a role in the massacres of Palestinian and Lebanese civilian residents of the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in West Beirut.
The Israeli paratroopers rounded up 49 Egyptian and Sudanese civil engineers who were camped near the invaders. Later, when Eitan received orders to move on, the Israelis tied the workers' hands and executed them. Aryeh Biro, the commander who ordered the deed and subsequently was promoted to brigadier general, says his unit killed them because there was no manpower for guarding prisoners and he feared they could inform the Egyptian troops of the Israeli unit's whereabouts. Biro's action constitutes a clear violation of the international prohibition on the execution of innocent civilians.
Fisher's eyewitnesses continue: On the fourth day of the 1956 invasion, a truck approached Eitan's Israeli battalion at Ras Sudar in Sinai. One of the men on the truck fired "a few aimless bullets," but the truck stopped short when an IDF anti-tank grenade hit it, killing the driver. According to Shaul Ziv, who fired that grenade, the exchange should have ended then, since the men in the truck, Palestinian and Egyptian irregulars, were stunned and unmoving. Yet Biro ordered his men to shoot until the last of the 56 men in the truck was dead.
The Real Carnage Begins


And then the real carnage began. On the sixth day of the campaign, Eitan's battalion set out for Sharm al-Sheikh. Before the Israeli soldiers reached their destination, they killed at least another 168 Egyptians. (According to Biro himself, that number is low. He says his men killed "most of" a company of about 400. Prof. Israel Shahak, an Israeli writer and translator of Hebrew-language reports, says at least 2,000 Egyptians were killed.) The IDF says the "unit confronted an Egyptian division, a small part of which began a battle with our troops and was eliminated in the course of exchanges of fire. Most of the Egyptians were then taken prisoner and held until transferred to Israeli territory."
Independent Israeli historians disagree with the army's sanitized version of events. Uri Milstein, a right-winger, and Meir Pa'il, a former general associated with the far left, agree on this point. Milstein says that the Egyptians were surrounded by advancing Israeli units and "in the course of their attempt to escape, the Egyptians lost all of their operational capabilities and fell into groups, thirsty, hungry and exhausted, and then into the hands of Raful and his soldiers. The men of Battalion 890 understood that nothing would be done to them if they eliminated a few dozen or a few hundred POWs, as long as they won the war and returned home as heroes...Therefore, nearly every Egyptian who confronted him and his soldiers was eliminated in the course of the advance to the south."
Pa'il concurs: "In actual fact, what happened was that Battalion 890 met a disintegrated and defeated unit of the Egyptian army in Sharm al-Sheikh, a unit which could not fight and which was only seeking a way to be taken prisoner. If, nevertheless, there were several Egyptian soldiers who fired a bullet or two, no one really thought that they intended to fight. Raful saw that he did not have enough men to put in charge of the gathering of Egyptian soldiers who wanted to surrender and gave an order to kill all of them...For him, a soldier who takes a transistor radio as booty is a criminal. But a soldier who kills an Arab, hands up or hands down, is blessed."
In spite of the facts of history—ranging from the 1948 massacre of Palestinian civilians in Deir Yassin to the 1994 murders of Muslim men and boys at prayer in Hebron—many Israelis continue to see themselves as morally superior to their neighbors. The news of the massacres pierced this persistent myth once again. Predictably, the Israeli public reacted with shock. However, while some were shocked at the crimes ("How could we?"), others were shocked only at the revelation of the crimes ("Why did these former soldiers and historians reveal this damaging information now?").
Ben Dror Yemini, a Labor party activist, is an example of the latter. He asserted that the uproar over the massacres amounted to the "rewriting of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion." His reference to an infamous "plan" by Jews to rule the world, thought to be a fabrication of Czarist Russian secret police, was an attempt to paint those who have made the massacres public as self-destructive accessories to anti-Semitism. He concluded smugly, "Not everyone among our fighters is the best person in the world, but compared to what happened in other places, we the Jews are nevertheless almost angels" (Ma'ariv , 8/20/95).
In reality, Israeli forces' not infrequent failure to distinguish between armed enemy soldiers who have not surrendered, soldiers who have laid down their arms, and noncombatants has been far from angelic. For example, the day before the murders at Mitla, Israeli border guards had killed 49 Palestinian farmers, citizens of Israel. Their only crime was attempting to return to their homes in the village of Kufr Qassem which, unknown to them, had been placed under curfew while they were at work in their fields. Likewise, in 1967, after Israel occupied the West Bank, many families who had fled across the Jordan River during the fighting were shot by the IDF while they were trying to return to their West Bank homes (News From Within, 9/95). Just as reports of the 1956 massacres implicate Rafael Eitan, a prominent right-wing figure in contemporary Israeli politics, reports now coming out of Israel regarding the 1967 war pose a serious threat to the current Labor government, because they implicate "Fouad" Ben Eliezer, the minister of housing. Aryeh Yitzhaki, a mainstream historian, states that "in the Six Day War the IDF killed approximately 1,000 Egyptian soldiers who had ceased functioning as a fighting force." Apparently, Eliezer's Shaked unit was responsible for one-third of those murders, which occurred during an operation called "Gazelle Hunt" because the IDF slaughtered the soldiers as they retreated. (Ha'aretz, 8/17/95).

As Evidence Mounts, Toll of Israeli Prisoner of War Massacres Grows


By Katherine M. Metres

Second slice:



Dr. Yitzhaki reports that Palestinian volunteers in the Egyptian army were executed Nazi-style in E1-Arish, another area of the Sinai, in 1967. Gabby Biron, a right-wing journalist who witnessed the murder of about 10 POWs before being forced to leave, confirmed Yitzhaki's report. Biron says that Israeli intelligence officers put POWs one by one through a short interrogation. If the IDF determined by the prisoner's accent that he was Palestinian, he was taken behind the building, forced to dig his own grave, and shot. According to Holocaust survivors, the incident bears a striking similarity to Nazi tactics.
Were these crimes of passion or part of a planned campaign?


Were these crimes of passion or part of a planned campaign? Until a comprehensive investigation is undertaken, we can only speculate. As regards the "Gazelle Hunt" murders, Israeli leftist activist Eli Aminov says, "It is clear to any military expert that the order given to the Shaked patrol was part of a more extensive body of orders. This is evident from the large number of Egyptian soldiers killed in battle during June 1967 compared to the number of prisoners taken. The Egyptian army was crushed and fell apart after a few battles and most of it retreated in disorganization" (News From Within, 9/95).
Unsurprisingly, the Egyptian public is outraged by these reports. (Palestinians may be equally outraged, but for them the new reports merely elaborate on known atrocities that, however, Western reporters had refused to credit until Israelis confirmed the reports in print.) After Cairo's semi-official newspaper Al-Ahram reported that Egyptian officials found two mass graves near El-Arish in September said to contain the remains of POWs and unarmed civilians executed by the IDF in 1967, opposition papers called on the Mubarak regime to withdraw its ambassador from Tel Aviv in protest. The Muslim Brotherhood has linked its denunciation of the massacres with its opposition to the peace process.
From the center and left of the political spectrum, more than 200 prominent citizens formed a committee to seek justice. Egyptian judges and international law professors met at Cairo University to assert that Egypt has the right to demand extradition and to try those allegedly responsible. Several private lawyers have filed lawsuits against the Israeli government on behalf of the victims' families. The Egyptian Organization for Human Rights sent evidence to U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali and called for a full U.N. inquiry.
Prior Knowledge?


Some believe that the Egyptian government knew about the incidents before the recent reports were published in the Hebrew press. Aminov says that Nasser kept the information under wraps because he did not want the public to know the extent of the Egyptian defeat. Likewise, later governments, criticized at home and in Arab circles for making peace with the enemy, preferred not to make an issue of past atrocities. A physician who witnessed the massacres in 1956, Ahmed Shawki el-Fangari, wrote about them in his 1960 book Israel As I Knew It, but Egyptian authorities banned it (Geneive Abdo, The Dallas Morning News, 9/16/95).
However, the coverup theory is not altogether compelling. First of all, el-Fangari's book may have been censored for a variety of reasons. More importantly, it would have been difficult, after the fact, for the Egyptian government to determine the exact circumstances in which it lost soldiers. Finally, between Nasser's death in 1970 and the late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat's 1977 peace initiative, Egypt had every reason to reveal any knowledge of Israeli wrongdoing in order to mobilize the international community against Israel's occupation of the Sinai.
In any case, after a cautious initial reaction, the Egyptian government pledged that there would be no business as usual until Israel investigates the incidents and puts the guilty behind bars. The Ministry of Justice is compiling evidence to be used if Egypt takes legal action against Israel.
The Israeli government, embarrassed by the fact that some of the allegations came from the actual Israeli participants, belatedly apologized and offered compensation to the victims. In December, it also announced that it would undertake an investigation. However, according to the Israeli attorney general, his country will not prosecute because of its 20-year statute of limitations on crimes.
This excuse ignores the fact that war crimes are covered by international law, which does not impose a time limit on prosecution. No one knows this better than the Israelis, who continue to prosecute persons believed to be Nazi war criminals.
The legal instrument that covers these acts is the (Third) Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, to which Israel is a party. According to Stephen Marks, an international law professor at Columbia University and former U.N. official, the key provision is Article 4's definition of prisoners of war as "members of the armed forces of a Party to the conflict as well as members of militias or volunteer corps forming part of such armed forces that have fallen into the power of the enemy." Thus the acts described here appear to be grave breaches of international humanitarian law.
Israel says, in a phrase that rang through the incremental peace process engineered by the late Yitzhak Rabin, that the issue will be resolved not according to international law but through inter-state negotiation. "We don't think that putting history as the number one agenda item will benefit the relationship," Gideon Mark, spokesman for the Israeli Consulate in New York told the Washington Report in a Nov. 17 phone interview.
Making the issue its sole priority does not appear to be the intention of the Egyptian government, not least because its own human rights record contains serious violations incurred in its efforts to repress its violent and nonviolent Islamist opposition. Rather, its efforts seem in large part to have been prompted by public rage.
Furthermore, Egyptian Ambassador to the United Nations Nabil Elaraby noted in a Nov. 18 interview that Egypt does not condemn the Israeli government for the killings but merely wants the individual perpetrators to be punished. Asked if he is concerned by allegations that Egyptians have committed war crimes against Israelis, Elaraby says the Egyptian government is prepared to investigate and prosecute any such criminal.
Meanwhile, Israelis like Yemini have argued that the revelations are a right-wing conspiracy to sabotage the peace process, particularly the sensitive relationship with Egypt. Yet the information has come from all parts of the Israeli political spectrum. Indeed, many Israelis say that they knew about the incidents all along.
In fact, the only real controversy is whether the incidents should have been discussed so openly in the press. The late Prime Minister Rabin and a Belz Hassidic journalist named A. Avramson both called the revelations a form of "suicide." Others worried, "If Hezbollah knew that we murder prisoners of war—why should they not murder our men who fall into their hands?" (Michael Ben-Zohar, Ma'ariv, 8/17/95)
There is little doubt that the climate of impunity that accompanied the 1956 massacres made the 1967 atrocities possible. To usher in an era of Middle Eastern peace based on justice, the states of the region must come clean, establish a climate of responsibility by prosecuting past crimes, and thereby put the future on a more humane footing. Despite the wishful thinking of ideologues, there are no angels among Middle Eastern states. The only angels are the innocent dead. *Except for the Davar article, all translations can be found in Dr. Israel Shahak's "From the Hebrew Press," Woodbridge, VA: Middle East Data Center, October 1995. Katherine M. Metres is a graduate student in international affairs at Columbia University, where she is concentrating on human rights and the Middle East.

I would say to you my friend visit USS Liberty's survivors website.
www.ussliberty.org.

not only that'they also put them in camps and killed thier childrfenb with gas'then burned thier corpses.
jee 23 years before the allies destroyed entire countries and killed thousends of innocent people.
but ofcpurse if u can blame the minority that lives on the plane desert then why not?

What's your point EladBell? We should close eyes on war crimes because we have seen worse?

Let me give you a fair advice my Israeli friend. Nobody can survive with criminals in its ranks.
These people who talk about these warcrimes are the best friends Israel can have. They are asking Israel to be a better country by fighting its criminals.

Dont you think that these people are making enemies for Israel?

Even the US army is at war against the bad apples who dishonor their uniforms. Every serious army is doing that. By covering them, you just bring destruction on your country...

Originally Posted by MontyB

I suspect they stopped the attack once it became apparent that the Liberty had established communications with the rest of the fleet and that sinking the ship once it was impossible for them to deny that the knew the identity of the ship would have been an act of war.

I am not sure what point you are trying to make though, it seems you are trying to insinuate that either the Liberty started it by firing on the Israeli's or that the Israeli's were just playing with the Liberty either way I would suggest that neither account is accurate.

That the Israeli's attacked the Liberty is not denied by any side the only thing people do not understand or accept in its entirety is the official reasons for the attack.

You are wise my friend.
It's smoke and mirrors to hide the culprits' WAR CRIMES.
I would take the side of the survivors.
Holes have been shot thru all the Israeli versions,
but the apologists are still trying.
I have some more information my learned friend.

Moving away from the IDF Egyptian pow massacre:www.washington-report.org/backissues/0296/9602017.html to Israeli attack on Liberty.
As the Israelis unfolded their June 8th attack,not only were Liberty's antenea being shot up by unmarked IAF fighter planes,but her SOS transmissions were being jammed by attacking forces.Now US navy frequencies are pretty unique,so the Israelis had someone on the inside provide them with this classified info.
Convicted US Navy anylyst,Jonathan Pollard would have been too young,but there has been a long line of Israel spies in US navy.
Identifying transmissins blows the mistaken ID excuse out of the water.
See Operation Cyanide.
Fortunately for Liberty,crewman Terry Halbardier climbed up a mast and rigged makshift antenea and SOS made it through to US sixth fleet. "Miracalously" Israeli attack was called off.
Israel meant to sink that ship with all hands if signal had not gone out.
Terry Halbardier was awarded the silver star,Jun 1, 2009 www.consortiumnews.com/2009/060109a.html

For the people that claim several investigations cleared Israel's version of events,I say Bull. NO CONGRESSINAL INVESTIGATIONS were ever held.Now Liberty had the highest casuality rate for a US Navy ship since WWII,70%.Israeli forces used enough firepower to sink an aircraft carrier.Remember another of Israel's stories was that they thought they were attacking Egyptian ship,EL Quesir.
A sixty year old Horse carrier,a rust bucket half the size of Liberty, moored in Alexandria,and aways from the slaughter.
Israel intel. always fails when convenient!!lLiberty was a state of the art intelligence platform with radar dish and more antenea than you shake a stick at.El Quesir was an Egyptian horse transport from another century.
I reccomend reading Capt.Ward Boston 2002 admission.
Boston was USN JAG officer ordered by LBJ adminisration to whitewash investigation.www.scribd.com/.../New-Revelations-in-Attack-on-US-Spy-Ship-Chicago-Tribune Admiral John S.McCain(John McCain's Father) was in charge of the sham.
Amazingly,conclusions were arrived at within a week???
Yes, a week!
A takes more than a week to investigate a Barroom Brawl in Biloxie,Missisipipi!!!!

More INFO. can be found on Col. Pat Lang's sic semper tyrannis,and SURVIVORS WEMSITE: www.ussliberty.org

Originally Posted by LeMask

What's your point EladBell? We should close eyes on war crimes because we have seen worse?

Let me give you a fair advice my Israeli friend. Nobody can survive with criminals in its ranks.
These people who talk about these warcrimes are the best friends Israel can have. They are asking Israel to be a better country by fighting its criminals.

Dont you think that these people are making enemies for Israel?

Even the US army is at war against the bad apples who dishonor their uniforms. Every serious army is doing that. By covering them, you just bring destruction on your country...

the main problem is,and i have said that several times,is that u guys watch TV asnd u think u know exactly what is going on,which u do not.
example,today the IDF killed 3 terrorists,thier family saay it was an exuition.
what they havent told u was that these guys killed a Rabi two days ago.

so what u guys watch on TV is only part of whats really going on in Israel.
its the most easy way to say"stop it!!" 5000miles away from ground zero
but if u dont know the story from its two sides then u cant actualy judge.

my friend this is WAR!
and war has casuallty and each side tries to make the others die for thier coountry.
war has deads
waar has woundeds
war has coquest
wwelcome to realty where faryttales no longer excite
where everybody is a bad guy and where the yin aand yang both bleeds.
it may sound like a movie trailer but this is the reality 5000 miles away from your cozy homess where nobody ever shoot rockets aat u.
where u join the militaary for money and not to serve the casue that u belive in.
the weapon i have is for the defence of my people and every bullet i shoot comes so i can defened all that is dear to me in the world.
war is not a game for gentelmen.
it has no rules and war it self is a crime.
but u have forgoten what war is like
and forgot what its like to have passion to defend and protect all that is dear for u.
u need another world war.

Originally Posted by EladBell

the main problem is,and i have said that several times,is that u guys watch TV asnd u think u know exactly what is going on,which u do not.
example,today the IDF killed 3 terrorists,thier family saay it was an exuition.
what they havent told u was that these guys killed a Rabi two days ago.

so what u guys watch on TV is only part of whats really going on in Israel.
its the most easy way to say"stop it!!" 5000miles away from ground zero
but if u dont know the story from its two sides then u cant actualy judge.

my friend this is WAR!
and war has casuallty and each side tries to make the others die for thier coountry.
war has deads
waar has woundeds
war has coquest
wwelcome to realty where faryttales no longer excite
where everybody is a bad guy and where the yin aand yang both bleeds.
it may sound like a movie trailer but this is the reality 5000 miles away from your cozy homess where nobody ever shoot rockets aat u.
where u join the militaary for money and not to serve the casue that u belive in.
the weapon i have is for the defence of my people and every bullet i shoot comes so i can defened all that is dear to me in the world.
war is not a game for gentelmen.
it has no rules and war it self is a crime.
but u have forgoten what war is like
and forgot what its like to have passion to defend and protect all that is dear for u.
u need another world war.

Just a little bit extra to add to your list of things war has...

Since your country is a signatory to the 4th Geneva Convention (signed August 1949, Ratified June 1951) war also has rules.

Now given that we are discussing the "possible" shooting of hundreds of POWs (aka guys in uniform under lawful command) I would suggest that you are not going to get a hell of a lot of sympathy with the "we can do what we want" nonsense.