The Palestine thread

[seafoid]

Continuing the series "Judaism today" here's a video where a Jewish settler explains to his Palestinian neighbours
"if you behave youselves you can be our slaves when the Messiah comes"


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEgKT0cIOZk&feature=player_embedded

and that will now be justified by our resident Zionist. 

[Ball DeBeaver]

Why would I want to justify the Israeli equivalent to Willie Fraser?

Bizzaro

[muppet]

Why would I want to justify the Israeli equivalent to Willie Fraser?

Bizzaro

I am still convinced you are from Hammas.

[Dougal Maguire]

I'm convinced he's the Israeli equivalent of Willie Fraser

[seafoid]

A Derry Palestinian support group has donated a minibus to a school in the Gaza Strip.

The 'Derry to Gaza' group raised money throughout the north west to purchase the vehicle, which will now form part of a land convoy travelling to Gaza to bring aid to the locals.

Members and supporters of the group gathered at Free Derry Corner on Friday afternoon to see the vehicle off as it began the journey to Gaza.

Betty Doherty from the group said it was the third time people from the city have taken part in a land convoy to Gaza.

"This will be the third vehicle we have delivered; first was the ambulance in 2009/10 just after operation 'cast lead,' and then two years ago we also delivered a minibus to a deaf school in the Gaza Strip," she said.

Ms Doherty said the group also donated tools to the Gazan people.

"Along with the minibus we will also be concentrating on construction tools as there is a severe shortage of tools available in Gaza even to carry out maintenance work, this is due to the blockade which still remains in place as part of Israel's collective punishment policy against the people of Gaza," she explained.

She also said the Gaza to Derry group will continue to support the Palestinian people with future projects.

"This convoy is aimed at sending solidarity and easing the suffering of the illegally imposed blockade in whatever small way it can. We realize that sending aid has not and will not bring an end to the siege on Gaza. However we are in contact with the Truth justice Peace group, and will be working with them in summer on a project that aims to set up trade between Gaza and the rest of the world," she said.

She thanked everyone from across the north west who supported the fund raising appeal. "We would like to take this opportunity to thank the children of Gaelscoil Bhun Crannacha, the people of Derry for their support and everyone involved in organizing and fund raising for this project," she saidt

Fair play. When groups like that one in Derry send help to Gaza it is about more than just equipmwnt. It tells the people in Gaza that they are not forgotten and that Israel's story is bs. It is like the Magdalen Laundries. Innocent people hidden away from the world, in this case because they are not Jewish.

[Ball DeBeaver]

I read this book a couple of years ago. Here is a review by someone who captures it perfectly.


Pictures Worth a Thousand Lives

A review of The Other War: Israelis, Palestinians and the Struggle for Media Supremacy, by Stephanie Gutmann


By Joseph Tartakovsky

Posted January 6, 2006

Stephanie Gutmann is a talented American journalist who has covered the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for a variety of publications. The Other War is a carefully researched, on-the-ground account of the media skirmishes that take place each day and collectively determine how that conflict is portrayed to the world. Her book, detailed and convincing, is written with a wry wit that makes it a pleasure to read, despite the gravity of her subject.

The first half of The Other War is a series of vivid reconstructions of the major incidents in the Second Intifada, which the late Yasser Arafat launched in fall 2000. Parallel to the "actual ground war in which people died," she writes, "there was a war of competing narratives played out in the mass media." Her argument is that this war of narratives is often the more consequential of the two. Of course, propaganda wars in concert with real wars have been in fashion since Moses said some things about the Amalekites, and on the same territory no less. But after 35 centuries, something changed. "[T]he first Gulf War happened and television producers discovered world conflict as a riveting form of 'reality programming.'" Technology was the enabling factor: "Satellites, digital cameras and the internet made transmission of text and visual content nearly instantaneous." Today's media war is driven by the same ancient impulses, but now, like the technology on which it relies, it is instant and infinite.

Gutmann believes that Israel has been steadily defeated on the media front, and with deadly consequences. In March 2002, for instance, Israeli army planners were preparing a full-scale assault against West Bank terrorist networks. But they recalled the public-relations pummeling the country had endured during the previous two years, in which the United Nations, Amnesty International, Physicians for Human Rights, and others routinely condemned Israel for "excessive force." And so, instead of lightning air strikes, Operation Defensive Shield relied on door-to-door raids, resulting in the deaths of 23 Israeli soldiers. Military superiority over its enemies is no advantage if Israel is continually dissuaded from using it.

In the media war, Israel has three disadvantages. The first is an open society, which allows reporters (and filmmakers and activists and human-rights observers) the freedom to roam, record, and interview in first-world comfort. This has saddled Israel with what may be the world's highest per capita concentration of reporters. Jerusalem is host to 350 permanent foreign news bureaus, as many as New York, London, or Moscow; the volume of reportage on Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank is 75 times greater than on any other area of comparable population. This obsessive attention necessarily distorts, by casting the Israel-Palestinian war in a theatric, world-historical light.

In the last decade, around 4,500 Israeli and Palestinian lives have been lost to the fighting. The Russo-Chechen war has killed 50,000 (11 times as many), the Darfur crisis has killed 180,000 (40 times as many), and the Congolese civil war has killed 3.5 million (778 times as many). But very few Americans can call to mind images of the ghastly violence in Chechnya, Sudan, or Congo—or even identify the warring parties—because these are places so dangerous that the New York Times simply cannot responsibly send a reporter there, much less a bureau.

* * *

If freedom is disadvantageous, this goes double when you happen to abut a shameless, propagandizing Arab dictatorship. According to Gutmann, the Palestinian Authority under Arafat used "the combat theatre (the West Bank, Gaza, and inside Israel) as a kind of soundstage." Those famous scenes of Palestinian boys with rocks confronting soldiers, for example, are usually choreographed. Palestinian youths, exhorted by parents, teachers, and their televisions to pelt Israeli soldiers, are so conscious of the media presence themselves that they often don't start in with the stones until photographers arrive. Israeli soldiers are actually forewarned of clashes when film crews suddenly materialize. (Coalition forces have experienced the same phenomenon in Iraq.)

How do these reporters or photographers, on a quest for dramatic stories and footage, know where the "spontaneous" violence is to "erupt"? One or another foot soldier in their "small army of Palestinian fixers" is tipped off by the attackers. The Associated Press, Reuters, and Agence France-Press (which together supply 80% of news images to the world media) require the assistance of natives who speak the local language, know who's who, and can get things done. These hired locals, in turn, make decisions about where to drive and what to translate (or leave un-translated).

The Palestinian regime isn't brutal in the way of Saddam Hussein's Iraq, but its operatives are trained in the same school of media manipulation. On September 12, 2001, as the Middle East awoke to the attacks in New York and Washington, D.C., Palestinians in several cities took to the streets. The celebration in Nablus, estimated at 3,000 people, was filmed by an A.P. photographer who forwarded the footage to his bureau in Jerusalem. Before it hit the wire, the photographer called his bureau again, this time sitting in the Nablus governor's office with guns to his head. The reporter lived, but the truth did not. The A.P. was told by the Palestinian Authority that it "could not guarantee their safety" in the future unless the A.P. learned to be "more careful."

Regime propaganda is pervasive. TV spots feature inspirational poetry like "how beautiful is the scent of the land, which is fed from the waterfall of blood, springing from an angry body." In April 2002, an Israeli drone flying above a funeral procession in the city of Jenin caught on tape a Palestinian corpse falling off his bier, reproving his handlers, then hopping back on. It happened again in the midst of a crowd, sending bystanders fleeing in terror. It was part of an effort to inflate both the body count and the number of photo-ops.

Israel's third disadvantage is media convention itself. Gutmann reminds us that all news is constructed: "Behind every picture there is a long story and a regiment of people who brought that particular picture, of all possible pictures, to you." And construction is rarely better than its architects: "producers sitting in carpeted, climate-controlled studios in New York and London are making war their subject…. [A]nd journalists, dumped on the ground with little prior knowledge, are forced to condense and 'package' terribly complex and crucial events." The general leftism in the news media gives reporters and producers many ways of introducing their bias into the simplified narrative: "David and Goliath, Poor versus Rich, the Third World versus Western Colonialism, Man versus Machine, even you-in-third-grade versus those-guys-who-always-beat-you-up after school." With Israel and the Palestinians, the overall result is "Large Mechanized Brutes versus Small Vulnerable Brown People."

* * *

The second half of The Other War is a series of introductions to the cast of characters in this Middle East media drama, among them naïve and flamboyant journalists, venturesome photographers, spin doctors, soldiers and terrorists, and Gutmann's personal "fixer," renamed for his protection. Her interview with the Jerusalem Post's Khaled Abu Toameh, probably the most famous Palestinian journalist, is particularly trenchant, not least because unlike any other Palestinian working within reach of the Palestinian regime, Toameh seems uniquely able to say whatever he pleases. (Gutmann says he is protected from on high by Israelis.)

Two of Gutmann's "case studies" from the beginning of the Second Intifada illustrate the character of this media war and the obstacles that Israel faces: the shooting death of a young Palestinian, and the lynching of two Israelis. According to CBS News's Richard Roth, these two episodes became "defining symbols of the conflict for those on each side."

On September 30, 2000, film footage became available to the world showing a Palestinian boy, Mohammed al-Dura, who, cradled in his father's arms, is shot by Israeli soldiers. Or so it seemed. Subsequent analysis, based especially on firing angles and ballistics examinations, called the story into doubt. Israel, in fact, was probably not responsible for the shooting. But by the time the Israeli army released the findings about its unlikely guilt, the Pietà -like image had zipped around the world, eventually appearing on a Belgian postage stamp, inspiring renamed streets and squares across the Arab world, and co-starring in the propaganda film extolling the execution of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

On October 12, 2000, less than two weeks after the al-Dura incident, two Israeli reservists took a wrong turn while driving home and were arrested by Palestinian police, taken to the local station, and lynched by a mob. One photographer happened onto the scene:



Within moments [the crowd was] in front of me and, to my horror, I saw that it was a body, a man they were dragging by the feet. The lower part of his body was on fire and the upper part had been shot at, and the head beaten so badly that it was a pulp, like red jelly…. My God, I thought, they've killed this guy. He was dead, he must have been dead, but they were still beating him, madly, kicking his head. They were like animals.


The crowd tore the photographer's camera from him and smashed it. But a colleague managed to capture the infamous image of one of the murderers holding up his bloody hands for a cheering crowd.

The two scenes provided visual scripture from which reporters sermonized about symmetry, suffering on both sides, and cycles of violence. But Gutmann discerns the tragedy, for Israel, precisely in the asymmetry:


The images were frequently paired—by the news media. But it was a forced symmetry, created by the media for its convenience and because it was more soothing and less complicated to represent the situations as the same. Consider just the two pieces of videotape by themselves, which was all anyone had to work with at this time: In 'Ramallah' we actually see perpetrators at work—men hoisting a body to a window ledge, then shoving it off the ledge to a crowd below, whom we then see all too clearly stomping and stabbing it. In 'al-Dura,' however, we see a boy collapsing, apparently shot. That is all. In one story, most of the who, what, where and why is answered. But in 'al-Dura,' virtually everything, except that two people were shot at in front of a wall, is essentially a mystery.



Less of a mystery is that the "al-Dura" cameraman became a minor celebrity, treated to interviews at European media conferences. The "Ramallah" cameraman, on the other hand, remains unknown, while death threats forced his bureau chief to flee the region.

* * *

Towards the end of her book, Gutmann details some of Israel's long-overdue—and successful—efforts to reverse the tide in the media war. Because her observations throughout are so scrupulous and clear-eyed, her belief that things are taking a turn for the better is encouraging, even if it remains a little hard to believe.

As Gutmann says, nearly every evil of the last three centuries—racism, apartheid, militarism, colonialism, fascism, ethnic cleansing, genocide—is routinely invoked against Israel. These are not so much criticisms of policy, mind you, but of Israel's existence, for it is understood that regimes dedicated to such evil deserve to be eliminated, not reformed. Are such criticisms confined to the political fringes? If they were, Gutmann wouldn't be able to cite a 2004 poll in which 68% of Germans agreed that Israel now conducts a "war of extermination" against Palestinians. There are ten times as many Palestinians today as in 1920, I might point out to the Germans, but fewer Jews.

At the close of The Other War, Gutmann writes: "Looking at the virulent, vituperative tone of European coverage, and particularly at how openly jeering it grows when Israel tries to defend itself in the media war, it is hard to imagine that any Israeli public relations staff with any amount of resources at its disposal could have an impact on Europe." She's right; there must be something more to it, and she alludes, briefly, to anti-Semitism. Earlier in the book, she mentions the hard Left's fixation with Israel and the brutality of Arab propaganda. But each receives only glancing notice. The logical next step—accounting for the forces behind and beyond the media—is outside the scope of her important book, but nevertheless essential to the whole truth about "the other war."


https://www.claremont.org/publications/crb/id.1249/article_detail.asp

[seafoid]

"Gutmann believes that Israel has been steadily defeated on the media front, and with deadly consequences"

That's because the Israeli story is bollocks and thinking people can't be expected to sell it.   

As Gutmann says, nearly every evil of the last three centuries—racism, apartheid, militarism, colonialism, fascism, ethnic cleansing, genocide—is routinely invoked against Israel.

Racism- Jew only roads
Apartheid- the West Bank
Militarism- the IDF recruitment system
Colonialism- the settlers, the whole notion that the land of the palestinians belongs to all the Jews everywhere
Fascism- patience, my dear 
Ethnic cleansing - 1948 
Genocide - not yet

[Ball DeBeaver]

Report: 40-year-old Palestinian prisoner dies in PA custody
By JPOST.COM STAFF

03/02/2013 14:01


A 40-year-old Palestinian prisoner being held in Palestinian Authority custody in Jericho died on Friday, Palestinian news agency Ma'an cited a senior Palestinian official as saying.

Ayman Mohammad Sharif Samara, who was detained on charges of assault, was reportedly suffering from diabetes, hypertension and other medical conditions.

Ma'an reported that the PA attorney-general denied Samara was tortured or beaten during interrogations and said an autopsy will be performed on his body.

http://www.jpost.com/Headlines/Article.aspx?id=305067


I demand an independent inquiry and that UN security council pass a resolution that palestine should be carpet bombed. No other action will be good enough. It's bad enough al aqsa brigade members dying in Israeli jails, without PA jailors torturing and killing their own civilian prisoners. What is the world coming to?

[Dougal Maguire]

The irony is that the Israelis have in the past carried out acts of the very nature you describe for much less

[give her dixie]

Apartheid anyone?

Israel introduces 'Palestinian only' bus lines, following complaints from Jewish settlers


Starting on Monday, certain buses running from the West Bank into central Israel will have separate lines for Jews and Arabs.

The Afikim bus company will begin operating Palestinian-only bus lines from the checkpoints to Gush Dan to prevent Palestinians from boarding buses with Jewish passengers. Palestinians are not allowed to enter settlements, and instead board buses from several bus stops on the Trans-Samaria highway.

Last November, Haaretz reported that the Transportation Ministry was looking into such a plan due to pressure from the late mayor of Ariel, Ron Nahman, and the head of the Karnei Shomron Local Council. They said residents had complained that Palestinians on their buses were a security risk.

The buses will begin operating Monday morning at the Eyal crossing to take the Palestinians to work in Israel. Transportation Ministry officials are not officially calling them segregated buses, but rather bus lines intended to relieve the distress of the Palestinian workers. Ynet has reported that fliers are being distributed to Palestinian workers notifying them of the coming changes.

Any Palestinian who holds an entrance permit to the State of Israel is allowed by law to use public transportation. Officials at the Samaria and Judea District Police have said there is no change in the operation of the rest of the buses, nor is there any intention to remove Palestinians from other bus lines. But Haaretz has in the past reported incidents when Palestinians were taken off of buses, and witnesses at checkpoints say that such incidents are ongoing.

Ofra Yeshua-Lyth is a member of Machsom Watch, a female advocacy group monitoring West Bank checkpoints. She says that recently, Bus 286 from Tel Aviv to Samaria arrived at a checkpoint filled with Palestinian workers. She filed the following report:

"Police officer Advanced Staff Sergeant Major Shai Zecharia stops the bus at the bus stop. Soldiers order all the Palestinians off the bus. The first thing they do is collect all their identity cards as they get off. One by one, the Palestinians are told to go away from the bus stop and walk to the Azzun Atma checkpoint, which is about 2.5 kilometers away from the Shaar Shomron interchange. All of them responded with restraint and sadness, at most asking why. Here and there they received answers such as, 'You're not allowed on Highway 5' and 'You're not allowed on public transportation.' Advanced Staff Sergeant Major Zecharia gave some vital information to one of the older Palestinians who had arrived there, telling him: You should ride in special vans, not on Israeli buses."

In response to the report, the Transportation Ministry said it "has not issued any instruction or prohibition that prevents Palestinian workers from riding the public bus lines in Israel or in Judea and Samaria. Furthermore, the Transportation Ministry is not authorized to prevent any passangers from riding those lines."

"The two new lines that will be run as of tomorrow (Monday) are intended to improve the services to Palestinian workers that enter Israel via the Eyal Crossing," the ministry's statement continued, adding that the new lines will replace the "pirate" driving services who have been transporting Palestinian workers "at exorbitant prices and in an irregular fashion."

According to the ministry, the new lines will depart from the Tzofim area near Qalqilyah and will transport workers to their places of work in the Sharon region and Tel Aviv, at "especially cheap prices." For example, the tariff for traveling to Kfar Sava or Raanana will be NIS 5.1, and to Tel Aviv will cost NIS 10.6. This is compared to some NIS 40 that passengers have been charged by the private transportation services for each direction, the ministry said.

"The new lines will lessen the burden that has formed on buses as a result of the increase in numbers of working permits provided to Palestinians, who are permitted to work in Israel and will contribute to the improvements of services, for the betterment of Israelis and Palestinians as one", the statement said.

The Samaria and Judea District Police have yet to respond to the report.

http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/israel-introduces-palestinian-only-bus-lines-following-complaints-from-jewish-settlers-1.506869

[Ball DeBeaver]

Hypocrisy anyone?




Custody Deaths: A Tale Of Two Places

While the death of a Palestinian in an Israeli jail brings global headlines – are those in Palestinian jails met with silence?

4:28pm UK, Thursday 28 February 2013


Tim Marshall

Foreign Affairs Editor




The death of another Palestinian in Israeli custody has quite understandably generated headlines in many countries, including Israel.

It is the subject of questions in the Israeli parliament, and debate about Israel's human rights record.

Contrast this with a subject which rarely gets headlines, and which fails to spark debate; the conditions of Palestinians in Palestinian jails. Few people speak for them, their fate does not generate demonstrations or agonised debate, nor righteous anger in the outside world.

The circumstances surrounding the death of Arafat Jaradat,  in an Israeli prison are contested.

The Israeli government initially said he died of a heart attack. A Palestinian doctor, present at the post-mortem, said he died under torture at the hands of the Shin Bet security service. The results of the post-mortem will be made public next week and the Israelis say they may allow international observers access to the documentation.
Thousands attended the funeral of Mr Jaradat
The Palestinian minister of prisoners said there were signs of torture on several parts of Mr Jaradat's body. The Israeli health ministry responded that the marks could have been caused by medics attempting to resuscitate the prisoner - an explanation his family rejects.

Whatever the truth, there has been an outpouring of anger with demonstrations in the West Bank, denunciations in the media, and a symbolic one-day hunger strike by 3,000 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.

The Israelis have called for calm, but the situation is volatile and there may be violent clashes in the coming days if protests continue.

The anger - and the volume of the debate - is partially due to the status of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons among the Palestinian population. Many of them are regarded as heroes in the struggle for statehood, a view shared by campaigners abroad.

For ordinary Palestinians, demonstrating against Israel can be inherently dangerous as they often end up confronting Israeli troops, but it does not bring them into conflict with their own government, and that bring us to the untold story.

Palestinians are well aware that few people will stand up for them if they are taken into the police stations and prisons run by the Palestinian authorities in either Gaza or the West Bank. They know that torture in these establishments is routine and that deaths in custody occur there as well.

For example, Ibrahim Akram al A'araj was beaten to death in a Gaza police station in 2011. In the same year, Hassan Muhammad al Hamedi died after being tortured by police, and Adel Saleh Rizeq Rizeq died in police custody. His family said he had been tortured to death but the police said he drank chlorine.

The Independent Commission for Human Rights, the official ombudsman for Palestine, has documented the hundreds of illegal detentions and beatings administered by a Palestinian police force in the West Bank, which is both funded and trained by the EU.

Between January 2009 and July 2012, it received 584 complaints of torture and inhuman treatment in the West Bank alone. Despite the volume of complaints, Human Rights Watch says it cannot find a single case in which a Palestinian official has been punished for serious abuse.

The Palestinian authorities are said to use the "Shabah" as a routine method of torture. This is where the detainee is forced into excruciatingly painful stress positions for prolonged periods.

The Shabah was used by the Israelis as well but was banned by the Israeli Supreme Court in 1999. However, Palestinian prisoners and several activist groups say the Israelis still engage in torture on a regular basis.

If the allegation that Arafat Jaradat, died under torture is ever proved, it would generate more headlines and, hopefully, criminal proceedings. But who will speak for the Palestinians suffering in Palestinian jails? Human Rights Watch will, Amnesty International (of which this writer is a member) will, the Independent Commission for Human Rights will. And most of the people who would publicise the brutality of Mr Jaradat's death will ignore them.


http://news.sky.com/story/1058280/custody-deaths-a-tale-of-two-places

[Ball DeBeaver]

Apartheid anyone?

Israel introduces 'Palestinian only' bus lines, following complaints from Jewish settlers


Starting on Monday, certain buses running from the West Bank into central Israel will have separate lines for Jews and Arabs.

The Afikim bus company will begin operating Palestinian-only bus lines from the checkpoints to Gush Dan to prevent Palestinians from boarding buses with Jewish passengers. Palestinians are not allowed to enter settlements, and instead board buses from several bus stops on the Trans-Samaria highway.

Last November, Haaretz reported that the Transportation Ministry was looking into such a plan due to pressure from the late mayor of Ariel, Ron Nahman, and the head of the Karnei Shomron Local Council. They said residents had complained that Palestinians on their buses were a security risk.

The buses will begin operating Monday morning at the Eyal crossing to take the Palestinians to work in Israel. Transportation Ministry officials are not officially calling them segregated buses, but rather bus lines intended to relieve the distress of the Palestinian workers. Ynet has reported that fliers are being distributed to Palestinian workers notifying them of the coming changes.

Any Palestinian who holds an entrance permit to the State of Israel is allowed by law to use public transportation. Officials at the Samaria and Judea District Police have said there is no change in the operation of the rest of the buses, nor is there any intention to remove Palestinians from other bus lines. But Haaretz has in the past reported incidents when Palestinians were taken off of buses, and witnesses at checkpoints say that such incidents are ongoing.

Ofra Yeshua-Lyth is a member of Machsom Watch, a female advocacy group monitoring West Bank checkpoints. She says that recently, Bus 286 from Tel Aviv to Samaria arrived at a checkpoint filled with Palestinian workers. She filed the following report:

"Police officer Advanced Staff Sergeant Major Shai Zecharia stops the bus at the bus stop. Soldiers order all the Palestinians off the bus. The first thing they do is collect all their identity cards as they get off. One by one, the Palestinians are told to go away from the bus stop and walk to the Azzun Atma checkpoint, which is about 2.5 kilometers away from the Shaar Shomron interchange. All of them responded with restraint and sadness, at most asking why. Here and there they received answers such as, 'You're not allowed on Highway 5' and 'You're not allowed on public transportation.' Advanced Staff Sergeant Major Zecharia gave some vital information to one of the older Palestinians who had arrived there, telling him: You should ride in special vans, not on Israeli buses."

In response to the report, the Transportation Ministry said it "has not issued any instruction or prohibition that prevents Palestinian workers from riding the public bus lines in Israel or in Judea and Samaria. Furthermore, the Transportation Ministry is not authorized to prevent any passangers from riding those lines."

"The two new lines that will be run as of tomorrow (Monday) are intended to improve the services to Palestinian workers that enter Israel via the Eyal Crossing," the ministry's statement continued, adding that the new lines will replace the "pirate" driving services who have been transporting Palestinian workers "at exorbitant prices and in an irregular fashion."

According to the ministry, the new lines will depart from the Tzofim area near Qalqilyah and will transport workers to their places of work in the Sharon region and Tel Aviv, at "especially cheap prices." For example, the tariff for traveling to Kfar Sava or Raanana will be NIS 5.1, and to Tel Aviv will cost NIS 10.6. This is compared to some NIS 40 that passengers have been charged by the private transportation services for each direction, the ministry said.

"The new lines will lessen the burden that has formed on buses as a result of the increase in numbers of working permits provided to Palestinians, who are permitted to work in Israel and will contribute to the improvements of services, for the betterment of Israelis and Palestinians as one", the statement said.
The Samaria and Judea District Police have yet to respond to the report.

http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/israel-introduces-palestinian-only-bus-lines-following-complaints-from-jewish-settlers-1.506869

Cheaper fares, regular direct route and replacing illegal services. Give me apartheid any day.

[muppet]

BDB why do you bother typing? Is there not someone, somewhere that you can oppress?

[Ball DeBeaver]

Op-Ed: Note To Kerry: Kyrzakhstan & Palestine Are Both Myths


Published: Saturday, March 02, 2013 9:12 PM

And"East Jerusalem" does not actually exist. "East Jerusalem" is what the Bible means when it refers to Jerusalem.




Moshe Phillips, AFSI
Moshe Phillips is a member of the executive committee of the Philadelphia Chapter of Americans for a Safe Israel / AFSI. The chapter's website is at: www. phillyafsi. com and Moshe's blog can be found at phillyafsi. blogtownhall. com.
► More from this writer





On John Kerry's first international trip as U.S. Secretary of State he made a gaffe worthy of Joe Biden. The headline of London's Telegraph read "John Kerry invents country of Kyrzakhstan"and the Daily Mail asked "Where's that exactly, Mr Secretary of State? John Kerry makes up new country 'Kyrzakhstan."

But  more than just fodder for the British press, Kerry's blunder exposes the truth that he is not the expert on international affairs that the mainstream media, Obama Administration and J Street all vehemently claimed.


And at this time, when Kerry created Kyrzakhstan out of thin air, there is no time like the present to remind Kerry and the rest of the denizens of Foggy Bottom that "Palestine" and "East Jerusalem" are just as mythical as "Kyrzakhstan."


Let's recall what actor, comedian and pundit Larry Miller (Pretty Woman, The Nutty Professor and The Princess Diaries) wrote in an April 2002 essay titled "Whosoever Blesses Them: The Intifada and its Defenders" for The Weekly Standard (it went viral and by mistake was almost always credited to Dennis Miller):


"The Palestinians want their own country. There's just one thing about that: There are no Palestinians. It's a made up word. Israel was called Palestine for two thousand years. Like 'Wiccan', 'Palestinian' sounds ancient , but is really a modern invention. Before the Israelis won the land in war, Gaza was owned by Egypt, and there were no  'Palestinians' then, and the West Bank was owned by Jordan, and there were no 'Palestinians' then. As soon as the Jews took over and started growing oranges as big as basketballs, what do you know, say hello to the 'Palestinians,' weeping for their deep bond with their lost 'land' and 'nation.' So for the sake of honesty, let's not use the word 'Palestinian' any more to describe these delightful folks, who dance for joy at our deaths until someone points out they're being taped."


(Larry Miller's original essay can be found here:)


Another lesson important for Secretary Kerry to hear before he visits Israel is that "East Jerusalem" does not actually exist. "East Jerusalem" is what the Bible means when it refers to Jerusalem.



Let's not use the word 'Palestinian' any more to describe these delightful folks, who dance for joy at our deaths until someone points out they're being taped.
Words, and especially names, have meaning. Especially in today's ever changing Middle East.

So, just what is "East Jerusalem"and why is adding the word "East" to describe part of Judaism's holiest city and Israel's capital of any serious magnitude?


East and West in Israel are not simple geographic terms as they are in the U.S. Northeast Philadelphia, the Upper East Side in Manhattan and East L.A. are used to denote neighborhoods and sections of a city. In Israel, where Judea and Samaria have been labeled as the "West Bank", things are different. The term "West Bank" was created by Arab propagandists to de-emphasize the area's inherent Jewishness and to disassociate the land from the Bible and the State of Israel. East Jerusalem was similarly invented.


What is "East Jerusalem"?


In the Christian Bible. every single instance when a specific location in Jerusalem is mentioned. it refers to an area that many at the State Department would now like to see given to the "Palestinian" Arabs. The term "East Jerusalem" cannot be found in a Christian Bible. And that is because "East Jerusalem" is about as real as Santa Claus.


The prayer "Next Year in Jerusalem!" that Jews recite at the close of the Yom Kippur service and at the highpoint of the Passover Seder refers to ancient parts of Jerusalem that the State Department Arabists include as part of this mythical creation of "East Jerusalem" in its unholy "Palestinian" Arab state. There is no "East Jerusalem" in Judaism.


According to Wikipedia: "East Jerusalem refers to the part of Jerusalem captured by Jordan in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, and subsequently by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War. It includes Jerusalem's Old City and some of the holiest sites of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, such as the Temple Mount, Western Wall, Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher."


So, "East Jerusalem" is Jerusalem's Old City and its surrounding neighborhoods. The original and oldest parts of Jerusalem are in this "East Jerusalem".


There has never been in history an independent municipal entity known as "East Jerusalem" just as there has never been an independent national entity known as "Palestine" -  just as there has never been a Kyrzakhstan.


When anti-Israel extremists created the term "East Jerusalem", it was for one reason. They wanted to rip Israel's capital apart in order to defeat Israel. This effort tragically gained full force with the Oslo Accords. This was fully explained in the B'tzedek Online Journal on December 30, 1996 in an editorial titled "The War Has Just Begun":


"The Oslo Accords are indeed the fulfillment of the PLO "salami" strategy. That is to say, Israel shall be destroyed not through overt military action of Arab nations, but through the whittling away of Israeli resolve and slow but determined territorial expansion of a Palestinian state. Slice by slice Israel will be carved away by the knife of terrorism and world opinion, both deftly handled by the Israeli created Palestinian entity."


The very name Jerusalem means city of peace, city of completeness and city of perfection. This was something that Bible-believing Americans of all faiths in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were taught. See Hitchcock's Bible Names Dictionary (1869) and Easton's Bible Dictionary (1897) for more on the fascinating derivation of the name Jerusalem.


A  Jerusalem that is not complete is just not Jerusalem.


As Secretary of State, Kerry can do much to show he understands what Jerusalem really is. The U.S. government has failed to relocate the American Embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv for over ten years. The Jerusalem Embassy Act was passed by the U.S. Congress on October 23, 1995 and the law reads that "Jerusalem should be recognized as the capital of the State of Israel; and the United States Embassy in Israel should be established in Jerusalem no later than May 31, 1999″.


"For Zion's sake I am not silent, and for Jerusalem's sake I do not rest," reads Isaiah 62:1. For Jerusalem's sake contact your Congressperson today and demand that he or she pressure John Kerry and the Obama Administration to honor the Jerusalem Embassy Act.


http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/12960

[seafoid]

The prayer "Next Year in Jerusalem!" that Jews recite at the close of the Yom Kippur service and at the highpoint of the Passover Seder

I can't believe that for more than  1800 years decent Jews prayed to God and God delivered them today's Israel. I can't believe they prayed for torture, for white phosphorous and fo people likem BDB to represent them. I can't believe Netanyahu and his fellow sociopaths have anything to do with religion.  I can't see what the point of all the praying was.