Is movie "Munich" propoganda?

[Cyrus]

[ QUOTE ]
Would you consider Mr. Shahak to be a "devout" practioner of Judaism?

[/ QUOTE ]

No. He was an "old-fashioned liberal".

[ QUOTE ]
[From an Israel Shahak obit :]
<font color="white"> . </font>
Shahak underwent two major conversions in his life. Aged 13, he scientifically examined the evidence for the existence of God and found it wanting. Then, shortly after the l967 six-day war, he concluded from observation that Israel was not yet a democracy; it was treating the newly occupied Palestinians with shocking brutality.



[/ QUOTE ]

[Gamblor]

The religious fundamentalists in Israel supposedly represent "the conscience" of Israel and, thus, remain immune to serious criticism about their statements or actions.

You sound more clueless every day, but perhaps you'll clarify this for me: in Israel, the religious are the black hats, who have no security voice because they basically don't agree with having an army at all. Any tragedy that befalls them is part of God's will.

If you mean the knitted Kippas, well, they are criticized left and right. But they do love the land more than anyone and would be perfectly happy to share it with the Palestinians if they believed that it could be done in safety. But you'll continue to analyze the situation in terms of theory and books you've read and some "idea" of what it's like here, while I watch and see what happens in reality on the ground.

So, do you even know which ones you're talking about?

[Gamblor]

1. Zionism was not a response to the holocaust but a direct offshoot of 19th century racial-supremacist colonialism. Israel remains a proud and determined ethnically supremacist state, unabashedly pledging perpetual adherence to the racist ideology of its founders.

This is a sick joke. Israel is directly a response to centuries of European and Arab social and violent discrimination against Jews that culminated in the Holocaust. One of the main components of the discrimination was that the Jews were not a legitimate people because they had no homeland, and as such this ethnic homeland is a direct response to that discrimination.

2. Israel was born through an act of mass ethnic cleansing, precipitated by massacres, indiscriminate killings and rape, and throughout its history has been a serial cross-border aggressor.

Can someone explain to me how such ideas even enter your head? If any of this were true Israel would not exist today. There is simply no way that such assertions have any degree of truth considering that Israel currently enjoys the support of Jewish and non-Jewish communities around the world, who surely would not stand for such actions. Perpetuating such myths completely destroys any credibility you could ever enjoy except in the eyes of those who already believe such nonsense.

3. Israel has killed more innocent civilians than all Arab terrorists in history and terrorism, defined as the deliberate use and threat of violence against civilians to accomplish political ends, has been a continuous Israeli practice since its founding and before. The worst offenders (Begin, Shamir, Sharon) rank among Israel's most powerful and respected leaders.

Israel continues to concede land given up in conquest - Israel legally conquered the areas in the 1967 war and continues to give up conquered land in favour of empty Arab promises to reign in terrorists. The creation of Area A is a direct concession on the part of Israel and was met with a wave of terror. Israeli responses and the Arab deaths that ensue therefrom can not be considered "terror" by any account.

4. Israel has never accepted that the Arabs of Palestine are entitled to the same national right that Israel considers absolute, inviolable and even sacred for Jews: a national home in the land where they and their ancestors were born.

This is absolutely correct and will remain that way until there is a degree of hope that such a state and israel's peace and security are not mutually exclusive.

Most of what you have written here is the official Arab propaganda line disseminated as a rationale for Arab wars against Israel, which historically have been intended as ethnic cleansing programs in lands seen as exclusively Arab.

[twowords]

[ QUOTE ]
1) Do you really think the UN partition plan failed because the Arabs wanted the spasely populated underdeveloped desert in the south, or because they didn't want to Jews there at all.

2) Nasser did close the straight to Isreali shipping. Check your facts.

3) The forced withdrawal of the UN peacekeepers and the stationing of troops in the Sinai was a direct breach of the most important part of the peace treaty. There was no excuse for it and the fact that it led to war is no shocker.

4) If there was no plan to invade Isreal why would Nasser say this upon finalizing his military alliance with Jordan:
"Our basic objective will be the destruction of Israel. The Arab people want to fight."

Rhetoric, I think not. You don't openly call for the destruction of a country, make military alliances with its nieghbors, station huge troop contingents on its borders, and blockade its ports because you want to make a statement.

We are lucky Isreal's leaders had the foresight to launch a pre-emptive strike, because if they had not the war could have turned out much differntly and Isreal might not exist today.

[/ QUOTE ]

1) By the time hundreds of thosands of Jews had immigrated and violence was breaking out, neither side wanted the other side in British Mandate Palestine. Period. And remember there were only 5,000 Jews there at the turn of the century, they only were able to immigrate because the Arabs in British Palestine did not have control of the country/state/area, the British did. Like I said, when you start your history before 1948, you may understand it better.

2) Check your reading of my post.

3) The arguments that the Israeli invasion of 1967 "was no shocker" and that the Arab states were responsible for starting the war are at least presentable, although in the context of the previous decades it is largely dismisable. I would not be surprised if we disagreed on this. However, I am glad this appears that you have given up on the pre-emptive war assertion, which is just laughable if you study the wars' sequence of events in any detail.

4) Studying the Middle East history of this time shows that the rhetoric used by Nasser and others to maintain power, rally the continient, and ensure popular support contrasted significantly with their more realistic foreign policies. Many nations in the Middle East considered the ultimate goal to be a Palestinian state in the place of Israel, which likely would involve perhaps a few massacres followed by mass exodus by Jews and the those remaining subjagated similarly to the Palestinians in the West Bank have been over the years. In other words, about the same thing that happened with the creation of Israel. In this light, you could consider 1967 to be a "preventative war" on Israel's part, embarked on because the combined Egypt/Jordan/Syria might someday be capable of conquering Israel and 1967 was as good a time as any to take them down a notch. Again, this argument is presentable, if not ultimately believable, and at least an improvement on the pre-emptive assertion.

"We are lucky Isreal's leaders had the foresight to launch a pre-emptive strike, because if they had not the war could have turned out much differntly and Isreal might not exist today."

Ahhhhhhhhh, your're going to drive me crazy.

[Cyrus]

[ QUOTE ]
You sound more clueless every day ... you'll continue to analyze the situation in terms of theory and books you've read ... do you even know which ones you're talking about?

[/ QUOTE ]

Don't worry, I know perfectly well what I'm talking about. I am simply not going (for the moment) to get too much detailed about it all lest it gets too esoteric for the gallery.

Try to refute the man Shahak first.

[Gamblor]

Religious fundamentalism has been prevalent in Israeli policies (and politics) for decades, disproportionally to the percentages that the religious parties are scoring in elections.

This is true as part of the original deal ben Gurion signed with the religious parties at the time of the original pre-Israel Yishuv. ben Gurion, wanted to be inclusive of all Jews in the formation of the State in order to ensure the state would be a haven for all Jews, religious or not. As a result, he allowed the religious a certain degree of control over social policy. The most blatant example is the current law prohibiting civil marriage and refusing ordainment of rabbis that are not up to the ultra-religious standards. This control is perpetuated by the fact that no israeli government has won a majority and thus have had to court the religious parties in order to form governments.

The point of all this is that while Israel still has her domestic political problems, the religious have far less influence of security policy than you would have the 2+2 population believe, and they do not preclude any security measures Israel has taken in order to protect her citizens from the Arab threat that extends from Iraq to Lebanon to Egypt, and that includes building the most powerful military in the Middle East. Even then, only the liberal religious, not the ultra-religious, have any positions in government.

Oh and one more thing:
Some guy's opinion of Shahak and others

[Chris Alger]

1. You: "Israel is directly a response to centuries of European and Arab social and violent discrimination against Jews that culminated in the Holocaust. One of the main components of the discrimination was that the Jews were not a legitimate people because they had no homeland, and as such this ethnic homeland is a direct response to that discrimination."

This is backwards. Zionism is predicated on the claim tha you have so often made yourself: unlike Jews, Palestinians are not a legitimate people, but merely undifferentiated Islamic Arabs without any culture or even legal or national rights. Their lands and lives are therefore, and I'm quoting you here, "up for grabs." This racist attitude among Zionists is only slightly less prevelant today as it was when when Zionism's catch-phrase was coined in the early 20th century: "a land without a people for a people without a land." Of course, the land had "a people" and those people had to be ethnically cleansed from it, a fact the Israel and its supporters continue to obstinately deny in the face of all evidence.

As for the history, the Yishuv and its Biltmore program demanding not merely a Jewish homeland in Palestine but an exclusivist Jewish state were in place before the outbreak of WWII. The ideology, the army, and all other essential ingredients for Jewish statehood and the inevitable displacement of the indigenous population were in place before the holocaust began and proceeded indepdendently from it.

2. Me: "Israel was born through an act of mass ethnic cleansing, precipitated by massacres, indiscriminate killings and rape, and throughout its history has been a serial cross-border aggressor."

You: "Can someone explain to me how such ideas even enter your head? If any of this were true Israel would not exist today. There is simply no way that such assertions have any degree of truth considering that Israel currently enjoys the support of Jewish and non-Jewish communities around the world, who surely would not stand for such actions. Perpetuating such myths completely destroys any credibility you could ever enjoy except in the eyes of those who already believe such nonsense."

My sources for these claims, mostly Jewish and Israeli, have been cited to you again and again. The particular phrase I used comes from IDF historian Aryeh Yitzakhi: Zionist militia in the 1940's committed "indiscriminate killings, massacres and rapes." For voluminous evidence, see Benny Morris's The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited.

Your sources say things that embarrass Israel, therefore they are anti-Israel, therefore they are the result not of historical evidence but an irrational anti-Israel (perhaps anti-Semitic) bias, and are therefore unacceptable. Which reduces to claims that contradict my belief are therefore wrong. This kind of "reasoning" is a staple of right-wing punditry on all sorts of topics, hence the right-wing obsession with perceived bias: once you've got "bias," they think the argument is over.

But I digress as you perfectly well know that my claim is absolutely true, as it's been proven to you time and time again. After all, it was your hero, Ze'ev Jabotinsky, quoted all over the website of the Betar group you belong to, who acknowledged the necessity of ethnic cleansing: <ul type="square"> "All colonization must continue in defiance of the will of the native population. Therefore, it can continue and develop only under the shield of force which comprises an Iron Wall through which the local population can never break through. To the hackneyed reproach that this point of view is unethical, I answer, 'absolutely untrue.' This is our ethic. There is no other ethic."[/list](The Iron Wall). Shifting to the left side of the spectrum, Jabotinsky's nemisis Ben-Gurion agreed: "I support compulsory transfer. I do not see anything immoral in it." And Moshe Sharret: "We have not come to an empty land but we have come to conquer a country from people inhabiting it."

So I won't waste time reading your post further. If you want to seriously argue and offer up historical evidence, do it. If you want to rant and rave, find someone else to read it.

[Gamblor]

The particular phrase I used comes from IDF historian Aryeh Yitzakhi: Zionist militia in the 1940's committed "indiscriminate killings, massacres and rapes."

Your article does nothing to cite Yitzhaki's writings. Alam can only hope we do not actually open up his book.

[lehighguy]

I disagree with your assertion that the Arab alliance was not a serious threat in 1967, and that they weren't planning to invade Isreal. It is clear they had the equipment, manpower, and training to do so, as well as support from the Soviets if anyone tried to come in on Isreal's behalf.

If they had been able to coordinate thier offensive, if the Eyptian Air Force hadn't been destroyed on the ground, the effort would likely have been successful and Isreal wouldn't exist today.

This all seems rather straightfoward to me looking at the relative strength of both sides, thier stated goals, and thier actions leading up to the war. You can disagree, but I think you are in error. In fact, I think your a little nuts if you think the Arabs wanted to play nice or didn't have the capability for war.

[Chris Alger]

"Your article does nothing to cite Yitzhaki's writings. Alam can only hope we do not actually open up his book."

I'm not aware that Yitzhaki has ever written a book. But the response is simple: yes it does. That's what the little number 7 is at the end of the paragraph containing the quotation, what the reading public recognizes as a footnote. It cites the Yitzhaki's quote to "Erlich, Guy, 'Not Only Deir Yassin', Ha'ir, 6 May 1992." As for never opening a book, it is clear that you have never read Morris or anything else above crude hagiography and the Arab-hating websites you frequent.

And what are the sources for your claim that the claim that "there is simply no way that such assertions [e.g., Israeli ethnic cleansing] have any degree of truth?"

As usual, zilch.