Yes, this is good Bahu.  Most people don't realize this nor know that the Wahabi have been Islamic radicals for a very very very long time.

The Saudi thieves were able to invade and annex the British-allied Kingdom of Hejaz because Britain abandoned her Hashemite allies in Hejaz like Britain abandoned her Hashemite allies in Syria.

It seems there is a strange nostalgia in all this. A return to the more innocent days when big powers decided the structure of the world. Israel has existed as a state for more than 6 decades and there is no question of any return to Palestine. However Israel expanded its UN mandated limits after 1967, the Yom Kippur war. A return to the 1967 border and the honorable statehood to the Palestineans will go a long way.

I think the peace movement within Israel is also raising the same set of concerns. Not all Israelis are gung-ho about the settlements in occupied territories and the economic blockade of GAZA does not have the support of the main stream Israeli population. Only the right wing supports the blockade.

Go a long way where, Bahu?

A long way toward the destruction of Israel?  Because that's where the Palestinians are going.

Why should we believe that Hamas & Hizbollah will accept anything less than complete & total return of all lands currently part of the state of Israel?  That is their declared objective, after all.

What 1967 borders?

In 1967 Israel was surrounded by a cease-fire line that the Arabs didn't accept as a border.

What would a return to the "borders" of the time when no Arab state even recognised Israel do for peace?

Bahu, most Israelis do not see the disputed territories as "occupied territories", just like Saudi-Arabia doesn't see Mecca as "occupied territory".

And most Israelis support blocking weapons from reaching Gaza. In fact most Israelis wanted a much tougher and sooner response to the rocket attacks.

Note that the rocket attacks from Gaza didn't bother the settler movement much. The "settlers" don't live at the border with Gaza. They live in the "West-Bank".

And for any kind of statehood the Arabs will have to accept such a statehood.

But they rejected it every time it came up, last in 2000 when Bill Clinton devised his plan for a "Palestinian" state.

Why on earth does anybody think that any problem in the middle-east can be solved by creating another Arab state?

All the problems in the middle-east were CAUSED by the creation of too many Arab states. Why continue?

Why 1967 is considered the date at which a settlement can be achieved? Agreed the Arabs did use the Palestenian issue to force Israel into a war which the Arabs lost and lost badly. And also the 1973 war showed that right upto the 2008 Gaza invasion the IDF held the upper hand. Now the world has changed. A newer generation has grown that does not want a militarised state of existence.  I believe that the Arabs are not interested in a solution as that would deprive them of the sole point on which they agree. But USA must enfoprce an equtable solution with ARAB PARTICIAPTION IF possible or unilaterally if necessary. And Obama has pledged as much. The issue now in the Gaza blockade. By mishandling the situation the Israeli Government has once again brought the issue of Palestine to the foreground.

Another Arab state is not a solution. But Palestinians are not entirely Arabs.

It's the existing Arab regimes, old people, that want peace. The young generations want blood.

Look at Egypt. It's young people demonstrating against Israel and old people defending it.

It's the newer generations that want war.

But they are. Most of them are Muslims, all of them speak Arabic. The "Palestinians" of northern Israel are culturally and linguistically indistinguishable from Lebanese Arabs. The "Palestinians" of Gaza are culturally and linguistically indistinguishable from Egyptians. And the "Palestinians" from the Jordan valley are culturally and linguistically indistinguishable from "Jordanian" Arabs living in the same Jordan valley.

I think it's time to acknowledge that the borders drawn by the British were arbitrary ones and that "Palestinians" are simply Arabs who happened to live within the borders of one British territory but not another.

The "Palestinians" are simply Arabs and "Palestine" never existed outside the minds of Roman and British (and later Arab) imperialists.

Gaza is certainly suffering mightily from the blockade.  No doubt there were some desperately needed tiaras & veils on the flotilla.

Oh, yeah, life is tough in Gaza.

The blockade absolutely has to be lifted.

Guess what, ask a liberal if it shouldn't be a higher priority to bring food to Darfur because Gaza is looking so much better than African cities, the liberal will explain to you that while it is OK for Africans to live in poverty, it is not OK for Arabs. Really!

(Not that Gaza is "poor" in the real sense of the word. Most of Egypt is poorer.)

The only issue I have with Gaza is the lack of religous freedom.  I've had some friends killed there because of their religion (this happens in most Arab/Islamic controlled areas though).   Gaza is a nice place.  I like the food of that region.  You can get everything fresh there.

Leauki, don't forget about North Korea!  The people there are suffering through an oppressive blockade as well.  All the people in charge in Gaza and West Bank look like little kids throwing a tantrum because they're not getting what they want and that's all they're doing until they get what they want.

Land for peace hasn't worked, why keeping trying it?  and one must asking why isn't it working?

Religious freedom in Gaza may or may not be the issue. Living conditions there are horrencous. And the world recognises it.

The international community, or what passes for the international community i.e. the 5 members of the UNSC have unanimously agreed that the blockade has to be lifted.

Did you read the link?  Can you provide alternative evidence?

I did see the link and Commentary certainly has a point of view. I am basing my judgement on pressrepotrs from US media and the Arab world. There is a shortage of medicines, essential supplies, fuel and even food. The tunnels have been closed and the people are suffering. I think Israel can allow humanitarian aid and I think Israelis are smart enough not to allow weapons and other such things. In the name of security Israel cannot enforce collective punishment.

The world will "recognise" (aka believe) whatever it wants as long as the Jews are "evil".

I see press reports that claim that living conditions are "horrendous" but they never show pictures or present any numbers or facts. Then I see few press reports that show normal living conditions in Gaza.

How do you fake lots of pictures of cars and vegetable markets in _Palestinian_ news papers???

If you believe Arab press reports you can just as well believe that Jews drink the blood of Christians because that is reported regularly too.

The fact is that there is no shortage of medicines and essential supplies, certainly not of fuel and absolutely not of food.

You might be confusing Gaza with Darfur as many people seem lately.

I think the Arab press no longer sensationalises the relationship between Arabs and Jews. Certainly the "evil" atributed to them is more from Europeans than Arabs. Remember that Jews and Arabs lived peacefully in the centuries after the Crusades. Anti-semitism is a European phenomenon.

You must read a different Arab press than I.

I grant you that there have been Arab media FAR better informed and more sympathic towards Israel than European media. Educated Arabs are not quite as dumb as "educated" progressive Europeans.

But that's the same media who do not tell the stories of a starving Gaza.

If you believe those Arab media who say that Gaza is starving you should also believe them that Jews drink the blood of Christians. Or, if you don't believe the latter, you should get used to the idea that they also lied about the former.

However, it is only the European media who attribute evil to Israel (and Jews) while pretending to be neutral. The anti-Israel Arab media do not lie about their bias or agenda.

How would I remember that?

The stories I heard from Israelis whose parents and grandparents fled persecution and murder in Arab countries certainly don't back up that thesis, and neither does the fact that most of the Arab world is now Jew-free (or the demand that any "Palestinian" state be Jew-free).

Only last year the last 200 Jews fled Yemen because they couldn't live with their houses firebombed on a daily basis. How did Europeans bring antisemitism to Yemen?

It is true that under Ottoman rule Jews were not mistreated much. I'll grant that they were not mistreated at all, if you like.

But as soon as Arabs took over, ALL non-Arab groups, most of all the Jews, were murdered and persecuted or at best discriminated against.

European fascists have added the specific racial antisemitism to the mix, but what happened to all non-Arab peoples cannot be explained by pointing to European antisemitism.

Arabs and Jews lived peacefully under Ottoman rule (until they both revolted in WW1). But the story that Jews lived peacefully under Arab rule is an urban legend. The newly-created Arab states didn't lose much time expelling their Jews and murdering their Kurds or Africans or whatever non-Arab element they found living in those "Arab" states.

I've been to Gaza.  For the most part its a nice place.  If you don't mind the occasional harassment from armed militants.  If you believe the news what about this whole debacle pertaining to international waters and peace activist.  If they slap the word peace/freedom in front of any word it must be truly for peace or freedom.

Let's remove ourselves from this current situation and take a look at another.  Take a look at the Anthropogenic Global Warming Scandel, yes that was all the rage of yesteryear but its still going on.  What was the media reports of before the scandel broke? How about after?  When ever anything become politicalized it seems to turn horrible false.  I use the word horrible here because factual information  is short and hard to come by, WHERE'S THE BEEF!

Aww Leauki, how could you! Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh............ Stop spoiling all the fun.  My website bloodojews its already hard to keep in  premiere product in stock and now look at what you've done!

Perhaps we should ask the UN to censure Israel for the Christian blood thing. It sounds worse than enforcing a blockade.

As the (sometimes) wise Dr Guy has told me: for a liberal it matters not whether there is evidence but only the seriousness of the allegations.

Agreed. European?American liberals fudge the truth in much the same way as they hailed Stalin as a great liberator and went ga-ga over Mao-tse-tund. So it is no surprise that Arabs are better informed.

As far as memories go, the Azhkenezi and Shepardic jews who migrated to Palestine after the European inspired HOLOCAUST construct their national meories of Israel around the theme of perscecution and the memory of the German Holocaust. In Palestine, the Jews had no such memory and when Israel was created in 1949 were suddenly struck by a whole different historicasl narrative.

I think you too agree that the situation was much different during the Ottoman period and too much water and blood has flowed down for that example, unfortunately, to be relevant.

Yes.

Jews migrated to Judaea and Israel before the Holocaust. They did not just show up in 1949. That wouldn't make sense anyway. How many European Jews were left at that point?

Sephardim mostly didn't have memories of the Holocaust.  A few lived in the Netherlands but most lived in Turkey, Morocco, and Israel even before the first (European) Aliya (immigration wave to Israel).

But the Sephardim are not the issue. Morocco and Turkey were not very antisemitic places. (Morocco still isn't.)

It's the Mizrachim, i.e. "eastern" Jews from Egypt, Syria and Iraq who were being persecuted long before the Holocaust and ever since. They fled to Israel between 1920 (end of Ottoman Empire) and 1967 (Six-Day War). It is those Jews who know few of the stories commonly told about how Jews and Arabs lived in peace together in the past. (The smaller community of Temanim, Yemenite Jews, had a similar fate.)

Imazighen (the natives of "Arab" Morocco and Algeria) can tell you how they are being discriminated against. But the main problem is the fate of ALL non-Arab peoples in the "Arab world", especially in Egypt, Sudan, Syria, Yemen and Iraq.

Tell a Kopt in Egypt that "Jews and Arabs lived in peace" and he might just wonder why the Muslims lived in peace with the Jews but not the Christians.

Tell an Aramaean in Syria the story and he will be surprised because he doesn't remember the Arab regime being very nice to anyone, let alone the most hated minority.

Ask a Kurd in Iraq about how much love the Arab regimes had for non-Arab peoples. Or ask an Assyrian about the situation even today.

More Jews fled from Arab countries to Israel than Arabs from "Palestine" to Arab countries.

And it was NOT because "Jews and Arabs lived in peace".

I'll never understand why the world apparently agrees that all the land the Ottomans lost is automatically "Arab" until proven otherwise.

Why is it not Kurdish, Jewish, Assyrian, Aramaean, Koptic, Amazighish or Nilo-Saharan until the Arabs bring up a reason for why they ought to control all the land?

I gather not.

Bahu, you are better than that.  You know that both those sources have an agenda that is in conflict with the existence of Israel.  You are saying that you are asking Castro to describe freedom in Cuba!

I accept his media reports as evidence IF he agrees also to believe the story about the blood of Christians told by those same media outlets.

The Irish Times, in a move that is certainly not antisemitic in nature, has decided that Jews can own land they bought if Europeans grant permissions but only if it remains clear that the land is still the property of the non-Jewish seller. Jewish neighbours are then an "expense".

Europe, as a whole, decided to assuage its guilt in the cheapest possible way – by meeting the Jewish need for a sanctuary at someone else’s expense.

It piously hoped that Israel would be nice to those whose land it had been granted, but it was tacitly grateful that the historic consequences of the Shoah would essentially be played out elsewhere.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2010/0608/1224272053591.html?via=rel?via=rel

Also "never again" refers to stopping weapons from getting to people who want to murder Jews.