Your assertion about the respective targets of Israeli and Palestinian violence is so ridiculous and Orientalist that it doesn’t even deserve a detailed rebuttal. Suffice it to say, even IDF officers don’t claim that they never target civilians.

Of course Palestine was not deserted. Arabs lived there. So did my grandfather. The Israelis did not just show up and conquer, Palestine was to be divided between Jews and Arabs, but than Israel was attacked by every one of it’s neighbors, though such things happen. Of course both Israelis and Palestinians both die, but the difference is that Palestinians intentionally only kill civilians, while the Israelis target Militants (yes, civilians do die in wars, unfurtunately). As for your comments about Israeli empire, they are the height of stupidity. Perhaps you should go look up “empire” in the dictionary before throwing around those big words. Empire involves controling OTHER countries. Israel just wants it’s corner of the sandbox, and it is perfectly willing to live alongside the arabs as long as they don’t blow up our buses or fire Katyushas at us. But have you ever even been to Israel?

He lives in a lovely little Zionist fantasy land where the Palestinians all came from other Arab states, yes that’s right Will, Palestine was completely empty when the first Jewish settlers arrived. All the accounts to the contrary are just anti-semitic lies aren’t they? Jaffa was deserted wasn’t Will, the Zionists had to operate the port by themselves when they first landed. As for Jerusalem, it was completely deserted, home only to a few goats.

“Palestina” was indeed the Roman name for the country which was later called Palestine. But the name stuck, rather like “Britannia,” which became the name of a country called Britain.

Israeli lives do not count for nothing, Will. In fact an analysis of the New York Times newspaper seems to indicate that roughly 28 Israeli lives is about equal to 100 Palestinian lives. No doubt those nice kind settlers would dispute that figure, regarding it as way too generous.

Despite Palestine being, as you say, completely deserted, some land was indeed purchased by the Zionists prior to 1947, the figure generally agreed upon is a massive six percent of the country, mainly close to the coast. Israel currently occupies well over 72% of Palestine, which has to be one of the most succesful thefts of all time.

Britain, France, and other colonial powers gave up their empires in the second half of the twentith century, Will. It’s high time Israel gave up it’s empire too.

- Steve.

You also fail to mention that the word “Palestine” was coined by a Roman Emporer to replace the name of Israel. So in a way you continously say the arabs are the Jews of the Diaspora which is not true.

You fail to mention how many Jewish children, women and men have been murdered in the name of Allah as though their lives count for nothing.

The fact is, the land was purchased from arabs and turks, taken over by arabs again, won in war and now must be given back? I find it strange that you and your ilk don’t challenge every nation on earth to give back land it has taken in war including the United States and Britain.

But, I can see it is obvious you are a hater of the jewish people and can’t bother yourself with such trivial matters as this.

Hypocrites.

Will

Officials from MI5, MI6, GCHQ and the police a few weeks before the London attacks: “Events in Iraq are continuing to act as motivation and a focus of a range of terrorist-related activity in the UK”

Along with such dangerous radicals as the British and American intelligence services, we in the anti-war movement warned Tony Blair for a long time that invading Iraq would increase the risk of a terrorist attack by Islamists here in Britain.

Sadly, last week we were proved right.

I find it interesting what you consider to be “minor incidents”. “Minor incidents” such as the dispossession and killing of Palestinians at the hands of the state of Israel. Would you find such incidents “minor” if they involved Israelis? I doubt it.

Concerning the history of occupations, I think you miss-read what I said. In my post “Elections under occupation” I referred to it as “currently the longest military occupation in the world” not ‘the longest military occupation in history’ – hence the Egyptian and Jordanian occupations are irrelevant to the point I made because they are in the past. Furthermore, I was talking specifically about international law. Otherwise the list could probably include almost every state in the world, depending on your definition of occupation. Puerto Rico is not occupied, it is annexed. It’s people have full US citizenship. It’s interesting you make this comparison, considering that in 1967 Israel consciously denied the inhabitants of the West bank and Gaza strip Israeli citizenship because of “the demographic problem” – i.e. there would have been too many Arabs in the “Jewish state”. Chiapas is a state of Mexico and no-one, including the Zapatistas claims otherwise. Western Sahara was occupied by Morocco in 1976. Chechnya and Aceh (Banda Aceh is a city, not the province) concern secessionist movements, which started in 1990 and 1976 respectively. Kashmir (for all it’s complexities) also concerns a secessionist movement. Whatever we may think of the fact, Tibet has never been recognised internationally as anything but a region of China. This status has been accepted by India as well as Communist and Nationalist China, and to my knowledge, has never been officially questioned by the United States. Do I really need to run through the status of Palestine in international law, and the reams of UN resolutions calling on Israel to withdraw from the West bank and Gaza?

Ethnic cleansing refers to “policies of forcibly removing people of another ethnic group”. I mentioned neither genocide nor the Holocaust. The situation in Hebron does no warrant those terms, which is why I didn’t use them (not sure why you’re bringing them up). I have not even used the word Holocaust, let alone compared it to Israel’s policies so I’m not sure what you’re referring to. I did not blame any acts of Palestinian terrorism on Israel. Rather, I sought to contextualise them as a response to the brutal oppression and state terrorism Palestinians are at the mercy of (the terrorist acts themselves are the responsibility of the actors – hence my words “root cause”). Does this justify terrorism against Israeli citizens? Of course not. If we are concerned with stopping terrorism, we have two options. We can bury our heads in the sand and say that the perpetrators are simply motivated by mindless, unthinking evil which we have no effect on whatsoever. Or we can seek to address the injustices that cause give rise to support for fanatics, combined with police work against the perpetrators.

Concerning anti-semitism; again, you put words in my mouth. I did not say that anti-occupation activists “couldn’t possibly be anti-semitic”, as you claim. Furthermore, I understand the difference between anti-semitism and encouraging it elsewhere. What I did do was ask exactly how “acting against the military occupation of another people which is the root cause of terrorism within Israel encourages hatred of Jews”, which you still have not explained. You are right to say that Israelis who act against the occupation have “just as much of a chance as any other Israeli of dying in a suicide bombing”. Which is exactly why they act the way they do when they see what the occupation does to both peoples.

I don’t think you are going back far enough in your estimation of suicide bombings. Why not compare the number of suicide bombings before the occupation to now? Find out for yourself when the first Palestinian suicide bombing happened (clue: long after 1967). As for your claims about the wall stopping suicide bombings, do you have credible figures to back this up? I would genuinely like to see some. Furthermore, if the main concern of the Wall is security, why is it not built on the Green line, or within Israeli territory, as would be permitted under international law?

Aggression was defined at Nuremberg as “the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole”. Simple enough. My point was that states engaged in violence against other states or nations almost always seek to discredit opposition to their actions by claiming it is motivated by hatred of the people within that country, rather than disagreement with the policies of the government. Hence, opponents of Israel’s policies are slandered as “anti-semites”, regardless of the facts. Aside from the sheer dishonesty of this tactic, it has the effect of drawing the attention away from real anti-semites, who do of course still exist (mainly in Europe, as has been the case historically). If you’re making the point that all states are violent, I actually agree that the nation state is an inherently violent institution. The difference, though is that militarily weak states, such as Luxembourg (or Costa Rica) aren’t going to be able to get away with it.

You assume that I’m not involved in action against other injustices in the world, which I am to the extent that I am able – a single person is not Amnesty International. As to my prioritising the occupation of Palestine, it is based on a simple principle. I believe we are primarily responsible for the predictable consequences of our own actions. In other words we should pay attention to the crimes of our own states first. The British state has a long history of imperialism in the whole region and bears a large burden of responsibility for the problems there, especially in Israel and Palestine. Furthermore, the British state continues to supply military aid and equipment to Israel, as well as diplomatic support (though not to the same extent as the US government). I’m not in Chechnya or Darfur because I don’t see any specific call or indigenous movement (such as the ISM for example) for westerners to go and help on the ground. Also, it’s because Israel perpetrates ongoing crimes against the Palestinians – as bad as the massacre in Hama was, can you point to ongoing crimes of the Syrian occupation comparable to that of Israel’s in the West bank and Gaza? Finally, it just comes down to personal feeling as to where I feel comfortable that I can play my small part in making a difference.

The comment that it crossed my mind to delete was your first one which, you have to admit, was a bit silly and didn’t make any real points. In the end I decided that it was best to leave it there. Once you started making actual arguments, there was no way I was ever going to delete them, as engagement is preferable to censorship.

As to the article you posted, despite the headline there is nothing in the body of the article to suggest that any international or Israeli threw stones. Palestinians are all too aware of the practise of the IDF of using live ammunition to injure or even kill Palestinian demonstrators, so while I do not agree with the throwing of stones in this way, it is understandable in the context of the situation. I suggest that readers of these comments check both the article you posted and this Haaretz article for a more balanced view:

Gandhi Redux
17:17 09/06/2005, Haaretz

Arab and Leftist Demonstrators Take Out Soldier’s Eye
Jun 05, 2005, Iyar

[edited to replace body of article with link to the source - admin]