HAMAS Admits They Are Cowards

[Penn]

The possible source hate, or one of them...

I am posting this with a disclaimer it is the statement of the author. It in no way infers or implies, or represents, in any way my personal view.


ByLARRYPORTIS via verizon.net news

Larry Portis is a professor of American studies at the University of Montpellier, France and a founding member of Americans for Peace and Justice in Montpellier.

Between the Balfour Declaration in 1917 and the creation of the United Jewish Agency in 1929, the evolution of political vocabulary in relation to ethnic groups in Palestine accompanied the emergence of an increasingly difficult geopolitical problem.

At the time, notions of nationhood were at the center of all questions of foreign affairs. Although touted as a solution to collective conflicts in general, national self-determination was at best a tenuous idea that tended to obscure the re-composition of empires or, at least, the transfer of their control from one powerful entity to another.

Spokespersons for the Zionist movement intervened actively in the US popular press during this period of transition between the defeat of the Turkish Empire (end of 1917) and the eventual implementation of the British Mandate in Palestine (April 1920). This journalistic activity was particularly important in the United States because financial donations from the large and relatively wealthy Jewish population in the US were vital to the Zionist project in Palestine.

Contrary to predictions of stability under the British Mandate, British control was inaugurated by riots caused by increased Jewish immigration. In July 1921, after one year of the new British administration, the Literary Digest noted that fears concerning the Zionist project were articulated in Palestine and also in neighboring countries and in the United States. Reviewing reactions to the events in Palestine in Arab-American publications, the Digest found, as did Arab newspapers in the Middle East, that there was a careful distinction drawn between attitudes concerning Jewish people and those concerning Zionism. In Al-Bayan, a Syrian newspaper published in New York, it was feared that there was much misrepresentation “as to the real ground of opposition in Palestine to Zionism”. This concern was echoed by the Meraat-ul-Gharb (New York) asserting that “the people of Palestine do not hate the Jews, but hate Zionism.” The Syrian Eagle (New York) found it ironic that it was the Palestinians who were being accused of religious fanaticism when it was the Zionists who were immigrating to Palestine out of “religious sentimental” motivations. The editorialist then asked: “Has it come to this, that we must plead with England for possession of our own country, and prove to a credulous world that Palestine really does not belong to the Zionists?”

Although it was never explicitly stated, confusion existed over how to refer to the members of different ethnic groups in Palestine. In an article in the Literary Digest of November 5, 1921, for example, reference is editorially made to “Arab Mohammedans”, “native Christians” and “Jewish colonists”. But this circumspection is in contrast to the ethnic characterizations of Chaim Weizmann, president of the Zionist Congress, who in the same article referred simply to “Jew and Arab”, or to those the British High Commissioner for Palestine, Sir Herbert Samuel, quoted as approving “the legitimate aspirations of the Jewish race (my italics)”. Samuel (who was Jewish) tended to reduce the population of Palestine to “the Jew”, on the one hand and “the Arab”, on the other.

[Penn]

Even as he attempted to allay the fears of the non-Jewish population of Palestine, Samuel systematically employed a schematic vocabulary that obscured perceptions of the situation. For him, the “Jewries of the world” were simply attempting to establish their home “in the land which was the political, and has always been the religious, center of their race.” Several years later, the political secretary of the World Zionist Organization, Conrad Stein, castigated the “few mischief makers” who were “doing their best to keep the two races in Palestine apart.” (my italics)

In 1926, an anonymous “Friendly Visitor” wrote in the magazine Living Age about the “racial situation” in Palestine stating that “up to the present the two races are living side by side without intermingling” explaining that such exclusiveness was good because the Zionist policy was not to exploit Arab labor, but rather to encourage Jews to work in all sectors of the economy. The idea was that separate development, avoiding ethnic segmentation of the work force, would lead to more rapid improvement of Arab living standards: “as soon as the Arabs' standard of living has risen and the wages of the two races are equalized such discrimination will automatically disappear.” In addition, Jews must be encouraged to do agricultural labor, for “[n]othing but agriculture can change the Jews from a nation of traders into a nation with a normal distribution of its people into all branches of productive labor. The movement to the farm is the corner stone of racial regeneration.”

Zionist spokespersons incessantly emphasized that the Jews were a separate and distinct people or race. At the same time, the Muslim and Christian Palestinians were also referred to as a racial group: the “Arabs”. Less and less were the different participants in the drama designated as Europeans and Palestinians, or Jews, Muslims, Christians or Druzes. Increasingly, only two groups seemed to be present: the “Jews” and the “Arabs”. In only a few years, non-Jewish representatives of the region would also begin to speak in terms of “race” when referring to the different ethnic groups in Palestine.

Arnold Toynbee, the famous historian, raised a related question in The New Republic in 1922. For him, the trouble in Palestine lay in the imposition of a western idea — nationalism — in a region culturally unprepared for it. Palestine, regardless of its religious complexity, was in fact “a comparatively homogeneous country”. But a western political idea called “nationality” and the rise of national feeling in Palestine has “produced two effects. On the one hand, the Moslem and Christian Arabs began to feel themselves one with their Arab neighbors, especially with those of Syria, from which Palestine is divided by no physical boundaries. On the other hand, the Palestinian Jews, especially the agricultural colonists, and, still more, a majority of the Jewish ‘Dispersion’ all over the world, began to look forward to making Palestine eventually their own in the sense in which the United States belongs to the American people or France to the French.” Toynbee observed that the commitment of the British, United-Statesian, French and Italian governments to the “hazardous experiment” of the implantation of Zionism in Palestine would lead to more and more explosions of violence.

By the end of 1922 the future of social conflict within Palestine, and the uses of Palestine by powerful states, had been thoroughly discussed. The nature of Zionism as a nationalist political movement, its uses by the governments of the major western countries, the determining events in the creation of an almost intractable political situation, all of these dimensions of the “question of Palestine” were well known by educated readers. The way towards the eventual creation of a Jewish state seems to have been traced out well in advance of the actual event.

By the late 1920s, outbreaks of ethnic violence in Palestine tended to reinforce the idea that the population was divided into two irreconcilable camps.

[Penn]

One result was the attenuation of disagreements between Jewish people over the legitimacy of the Zionist project. The creation of a reorganized Jewish Agency supportive of the colonization of Palestine, but not declaredly Zionist, seems to be related to the situation.

In November 1928, the Literary Digest cited a variety of Jewish-American periodicals (such as the American Hebrew in New York, the Jewish Tribune in New York, the Jewish Exponent in Philadelphia, and the Canadian Jewish Chronicle in Montreal) in which various “non-Zionist” spokespersons expressed their solidarity with the Jewish immigration to Palestine. At a conference in New York organized by the jurist Louis Marshall, Marshall proclaimed: “there are no longer Zionists and non-Zionists. We are all Jews together.” “American Israel”, ran the conclusion, “is at last united in a ‘pact of glory’ […] for the up-building of Palestine.” Here, the use of the term “Israel” in reference to the Jewish population of the United States is significant for its “national” implications. The expression “Israel”, used to designate a people seen as a nation, will eventually denote the nation as concretized in the “nation state”.

When the United Jewish Agency was officially formed at the Zionist congress at Zurich in August 1929, its creation announced a new phase in the conflict over the destiny of Palestine.

The new Agency created at the Zionist meeting was composed of one-half non-Zionist members. The importance was that these non-Zionists promised to support the pursuit of the Jewish projects in Palestine, projects that, in fact, are properly called “Zionist”. But now the Jewish colonization of Palestine was no longer presented as a specifically Zionist project, but rather as a “Jewish” aspiration. Consequently, the demographic transformation of Palestine no longer expressed the same degree of dissension among Jews.
To refer to “Zionists” would henceforth tend to be perceived as an implicitly critical assessment of the project itself. The new political correctness was not the word “Zionist”, which implied a secular political movement in favor of a particular ethnic group, but rather a new application in this particular political context of the word “Jewish”. Replacing “Zionist” by “Jewish” consensually united all members of the confessional group in the same project by agreeing to not to disagree over modes of expression and ultimate goals.

It is possible that the new consensus among non-Palestinian (European and North-American) Jews, symbolized by the United Jewish Agency, contributed to the tragic events accompanying its emergence. The inter-ethnic violence of August 1929 may have been directly related to the creation of the United Jewish Agency. This is the opinion of the well-known writer John Gunther, who was not unfriendly to the Zionist cause. According to him, “the formation of the Agency was a direct factor contributing to the riots, because it incited outbursts of chauvinism by Jews in Palestine, and this led to Arab retaliation.”
Whatever the case, the decade of the 1920s saw the emergence of ethnic hostilities in Palestine that would not be resolved by the eventual creation of the state of Israel. The dilemma of “national” identifications linked to racialist notions is a field for political exploitation that has remained all-too-fertile and tempting for demagogues of all persuasions. In this particular case, by incessantly juxtaposing the two terms, “Jew” and “Arab”, often in a context of comparative evaluation detrimental to the latter, a confusion was created between, on the one hand, religious confession and, on the other hand, culture regardless of religion.

From a Zionist standpoint, such terminological amalgamation was perhaps necessary in order to unite Palestinian Jews and the new arrivals. The “Jew-Arab” dichotomy

[Penn]

was also convenient in that it drove a wedge between Jewish and non-Jewish Palestinians. The problem was (and is) that the terms refer to populations, real people, who were encouraged to see themselves and “the others” as different in some qualitative way.

Is not surprising that the term “race”— that in the nineteenth century had connotations that were as much cultural as racial — should be used in reference to the general characteristics of both broadly defined groups. It is unfortunate, however, that “Jews” and “Arabs” came to be thought of as such separate peoples. All the old “orientalist” prejudices of the nineteenth century, including anti-Semitism, could now be applied in a new geopolitical environment in which great-power interests would, once again, be justified by the principle of national self-determination, but this time by helping to create a national entity where the people designated as its active population were not only a minority but also recent immigrants. It was a project legitimized in great part by the idea that “Arab” populations were incapable or unready to assume responsibility for their political destinies.

After the interwar period the term “race” was avoided in reference to the “Jewish-Arab” conflict (because of the prominence of racist ideology in the carrying out of the genocide perpetrated by the Nazi regime against Jews and others). But are racialist connotations excluded from such terminology? Certainly not. Even after the creation of the state of Israel and the emergence of the new mode of referring to the conflict as “Arab-Israeli”, invidious connotations remain attached to the term “Arab”. This is, alas, but one example of how imprecise or misleading language is a tool for political manipulation that holds out the promise of instilling tenacious prejudices, all in the interest of ethnic cleansing.

Israel was created on this basis, and its culture and law are infused with racist presumptions. The very idea of a “Jewish state”, the low-intensity ethnic cleansing operative as state policy, the “law of return” designating Israel as “homeland” for all “Jews” regardless of their existing citizenship or their geographical origins, the biological definition of the term “Jew” (those who are born of a “Jewish” mother), the genocidal practices of control and repression inflicted upon those uprooted from their land and homes in the territories appropriated in 1948 and those living in the territories occupied in June 1967 (see the UN Convention on Genocide for the definition), the second-class status suffered by non-Jewish Palestinians in Israel, all of these things stem from a racialist conception of ethnicity. The Zionist movement was founded on this conception, and in spite of wordplay or wishful thinking the Zionist state continues its long-term project unabated.

[TCO]

Sorry for just jumping into a good convo here. First I must applaud the range of perspectives on this site and on this topic in particular. I have the following to add if you please...

Israel must be maddenly frustrated at their inability to control their AO even with all of the military backing of the U.S. Let's face it this fight has never been a fair one in terms of weaponry or assets. A couple of Palestinian kids use a few slingshots against some Israelis and they respond with Apachees.

The entire case is a false argument anyway. Hamas could never, in a million years, prevent a few terrorists in Gaza from firing a few rockets over the border. It's silly and unrealistic. It's like blaming the police department of a U.S. city of 1.5 million people for not preventing all the murders that take place. It is just silly, if a small number of people want to operate outside the rules they will always be able to do that to some degree. Always.

So, tactically Hamas just runs circles around these guys. Not from a bodycount perspective of course but from a long term strategy perspective. The harder Israel strikes back with their JDAMs the more foolish and helpless they look. It just shows that Israel cannot take a punch. Conversely, the Palestinians are willing to take huge losses to achieve their goals. Israeli behaviour will be their own ultimate undoing. They are an increasingy demographic minority and already run the region like Apartheid South Africa in the 1950's. It's simply not sustainable. The sooner they learn to get along with their neighbors the better off they will be. Let's not forget that their mere presence is what is really in question here. Unfortunately, we stopped talking about that a long time ago but the mere fact that Israel exists is the issue. They are uninvited guests who entered the scene after a thousand year absence.

If this fight were 'fair' in terms of armaments it would have been over a long, long time ago.

[JJ_BPK]

Originally Posted by Penn

After the interwar period the term “race” was avoided in reference to the “Jewish-Arab” conflict (because of the prominence of racist ideology in the carrying out of the genocide perpetrated by the Nazi regime against Jews and others). But are racialist connotations excluded from such terminology? Certainly not. Even after the creation of the state of Israel and the emergence of the new mode of referring to the conflict as “Arab-Israeli”, invidious connotations remain attached to the term “Arab”. This is, alas, but one example of how imprecise or misleading language is a tool for political manipulation that holds out the promise of instilling tenacious prejudices, all in the interest of ethnic cleansing.

Israel was created on this basis, and its culture and law are infused with racist presumptions. The very idea of a “Jewish state”, the low-intensity ethnic cleansing operative as state policy, the “law of return” designating Israel as “homeland” for all “Jews” regardless of their existing citizenship or their geographical origins, the biological definition of the term “Jew” (those who are born of a “Jewish” mother), the genocidal practices of control and repression inflicted upon those uprooted from their land and homes in the territories appropriated in 1948 and those living in the territories occupied in June 1967 (see the UN Convention on Genocide for the definition), the second-class status suffered by non-Jewish Palestinians in Israel, all of these things stem from a racialist conception of ethnicity. The Zionist movement was founded on this conception, and in spite of wordplay or wishful thinking the Zionist state continues its long-term project unabated.

Penn

Great find and I believe accurate is the context of the 20th century..

BUT,, It does not answer WHY the Zionist movement became so active and WHY the Zionist move to create a home of their own in the Middle East.

For that part you need go back another 3400 years to the Book of Exodus and Moses.

This is a small quote from wikipedia. I'll use it in context of this discussion, not for accuracy but to reference a point in time when Jew started to become Zionist.

The Book of Exodus takes up the narrative many years after the close of the Book of Genesis, at the end of which the Israelites were dwelling in relative harmony with the native Egyptians in the Land of Goshen, the eastern part of the Nile Delta. After Joseph died, a new pharaoh came to power who was hostile to the Israelites and enslaved them.

According to the Book of Exodus, Moses was a son of Amram, a member of the Levite tribe of Israel, having descended from Jacob, and his wife Jochebed.[6] Jochebed (also Yocheved) was kin to Amram's father Kehath (Exodus 6:20). Moses had one older (by seven years) sister, Miriam, and one older (by three years) brother, Aaron.[6] According to Genesis 46:11, Amram's father Kehath immigrated to Egypt with 70 of Jacob's household, making Moses part of the second generation of Israelites born during their time in Egypt.


Moses in front of Pharaoh by Haydar Hatemi, Persian Artist.In the Exodus account, the birth of Moses, on 7 Adar[8] 2368[9] (about Feb-Mar 1391 BCE), occurred at a time when the current Egyptian Pharaoh had commanded that all male Hebrew children born be killed by drowning in the river Nile. The Torah and Flavius Josephus leave the identity of this Pharaoh unstated. Jochebed, the wife of the Levite Amram, bore a son and kept him concealed for three months.

The fight/flight of the Jews started long before Islam.

Mohamed inflamed his brothers by re-igniting the hatred of the Jews, using the Old Testament and the story of the Pharaoh. Remember the Torah, Bible, & Qur’an share large sections of the old testament, and portions of the new..

At the turn of the 19th to 20th century, a new political world was starting to developed. Out went the monarchs and in came a litany of democratic and autocratic new orders.

All based on "NEW" views with "NEW" views of who was good and who were the bad guys..

At the same time Ford was cranking out the Model "T", while trying to crush unions..

At the same time Russia was dumping their feudal system for Communism.

At the same time the little German PFC was searching for a cause..

At the same time T.E. Lawrence was trying to create a NEW WORLD for the Arab's and crush all non-believers in th Middle East..

The Jews, as an enlightened, educated, and in some terms wealthy "bunch" decided to move their "NEW" views to a central location. Thus was born the "NEW" politics of Zionism, and a hope for a place of their own.

The Jews RE-started Mose's quest to find the promised land..

This is a very abbreviated and some might think over simplified story. It is much more and there are many many other reasons associated with the fighting in the Middle East.. I offer it in the bigger picture..

Back to the thread,,

Do the results justified the means???

In the context of the last 3500 years,, I think so..

And until the religious fanatics are gone,, I think we can look forward to at least another 1000 years of fighting...

My $00.0002

[The antihero]

Sparta made all of his young males warriors to save its elders, women and children. The men lived a dangerous, unconfortable and highly regimented life so that the rest of society would be protected and free to live according to their customs.

In your average civilized society you sacrifice a few warriors to save the rest, in a totalitarian regime you sacrifice the whole society to save the war. The latter is what Hamas is claiming. The whole palestinian population can die as long as the sacred struggle against evil zionism continues.

If this is courage is a very nihilistic one, sort of those guys who kill their whole family before committing suicide. I think it is just egotism of the worst totalitarian kind.

Just my .02

[Richard]

Originally Posted by JJ_BPK

BUT,, It does not answer WHY the Zionist movement became so active and WHY the Zionist move to create a home of their own in the Middle East.

In preparation for a FAO assignment to the AmEmbassy-Bonn, I underwent an MA program in West European and Hebraic studies at Indiana University. Learning Hebrew was a real challenge, but one of my courses was a History course on Zionism and the State of Israel. The professor was a rabbi and the course one of the most memorable of the many courses I've taken over the years.

Zionism as we know it today came out of the East European socialist and growing antisemitic movements of the latter decades of the 19th Century. The core thought was that the diasporal Jews had misinterpreted the idea that they were to await God's approval to return to the lands of the tribes of Israel, and that they had to unite to force a return to those lands to show God that they were indeed worthy, once again, of his trust. Theodr Herzl, the movement's leader, first posited the position at the First Jewish Congress in Basle in 1897.

A couple of good books on the subject are "Crossroads to Israel: 1917-1948" by Christopher Sykes and "Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict" by Charles Smith. Amos Oz's "In the Land of Israel" is also a good read for insight into the modern Israeli psyche.

As for the current foofarah--it is interesting to watch Hamas try a previously relatively successful tactic against Israel...but without the support they once had from the likes of Syria, Iraq, and Iran...and at a time when the world's opinion is pretty unsympathetic towards known terrorist organizations. I wonder which of the current jihadi supporting states--if any--will now step forward and help a 'brother in need' out of a jamb of which they created.

Richard's $.02

[Penn]

Originally Posted by Richard

Zionism as we know it today came out of the East European socialist and growing antisemitic movements of the latter decades of the 19th Century. The core thought was that the diasporal Jews had misinterpreted the idea that they were to await God's approval to return to the lands of the tribes of Israel, and that they had to unite to force a return to those lands to show God that they were indeed worthy, once again, of his trust. Theodr Herzl, the movement's leader, first posited the position at the First Jewish Congress in Basle in 1897.

The power of myth....




Thanks for the leads on the books.

[Penn]

Richard, Could you expand on this statement and how it impacts the thoughts proceess of Isreal today? : Zionism as we know it today came out of the East European socialist and growing antisemitic movements of the latter decades of the 19th Century.

[Team Sergeant]

If this begins to become a "religious" argument/discussion I'll be closing the thread.

Just an FYI.

Team Sergeant

(Where's Odin when I need him?)

[SF-TX]

From the Jerusalem Post today:

The IDF warned that terrorists using civilians as human shields would bear full responsibility for their fate. The IDF spokesperson emphasized that "anyone who hides a terrorist or weapons in his house is considered a terrorist," adding that "the residents of Gaza are not the target of the operation."

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satelli...cle%2FShowFull

[MO]

If they use women and children as shields to save their own lives they cannot be seen as anything but cowards. If they use them equally willing to died with them then it is rather Spartan and a greatly misunderstood sign to the western world that only the destruction of their society will end this war. So the only real question is what tactics will make them stop or how do we prep our society to accept a war against and destruction of everyone who supports these radicals.

[FMF DOC]

Originally Posted by Penn

pure and simple it’s a tactic and as a tactic, it should be addressed accordingly, .

I haft to agree with Penn on the above quote. Whatever the views of the rest of the world and however they label it (and most westerns have very weak stomachs) it is a very effective tactic that will continue to catch even they well trained off guard at times and inflict casulties.

[alright4u]

Originally Posted by Penn

It’s a different value system, in their mind Allah has forgiven their actions. There is no contrition; they and their human shields are Allah’s will, they act in the belief that the Koran permits all for the sake of the religion, but you already know that, what I am trying to say is: it has nothing to do with labels like coward, pure and simple it’s a tactic and as a tactic, it should be addressed accordingly, it has to be taken into consideration and understood in order to combat the guilt involved and the judgment call afterwards that are inherent in our value system.

Having never fought Islamic followers I will defer to those who understand their mind. Somehow, I would think you must understand their minds/value system, then destroy what they value. I do not know.