I caught CBC World Report with Mideast correspondant Margaret Evans on Sunday, as I was somewhere on the road between Kenaston and Outlook. I didn’t have a pen to transcribe while I drove, so this is from memory. While I may have a few of the words wrong, I think this captures the essence;
The grey, overcast skies yawning over the Bethlehem refugee camp blend oppressively with the looming concrete slab that threatens tiny girls in a school that huddles in its shadow. Canada’s Foreign Minister is on a visit to the camp, unmoved by shattered walls torn bare by the deadly bullets of rampaging Israeli soldiers.
Disappointingly, Evans’ reporting overlooked the obvious summation – “Critics argue that Israel can no longer justify the continued existence of this leering grey scar of apartheid now that suicide bombings have all but ceased.”
Oh well. Maybe next time.
Mark MacKinnon has a related item for Monday’s Globe & Mail (buried near the bottom). Hamas warns Canada … “co-operate with the Islamic movements”;
When told that Mr. MacKay would likely have responded to his questions by insisting that Hamas still needs to meet the three conditions of the international community — denouncing violence, recognizing Israel and respecting the agreements signed by the previous Palestinian government — [Palestinian foreign minister Mahmoud Zahar] turned hostile.
“What borders of Israel should we recognize? The border that includes the Golan Heights? The borders it occupied in 1967, including Jerusalem? What type of Israel should we recognize? What is the constitution of Israel? And what is our border?”
Later in the interview, he suggested that there should be a single Islamic state stretching across the Middle East, adding that there was plenty of space in Canada to establish a Jewish homeland.
I hate it when they talk in code.
Note: Looks like CTV’s News Staff cleansed missed that last portion.
What we would like to ask the Hamas leader is what is wrong with the “Jewish homeland” called “Israel”; other than that it should not exist, according to Hamas.
Don’t look for any probing analysis from our MSM.
Read the piece in the Globe & Mail, and I’m glad that the Canadian government wants nothing to do with the Palestinian nutjobs. What struck me was the number of 170,000 unpaid civil servents in the Palestinian terrritories. I’m surprised that no-one in the MSM found this number a tad excessive, but I guess doing real work is not something the Palestinians are interested in doing.
This article reminded me of some of Niven’s laws such as:
Never throw shit at an armed man and
Never stand next to anyone throwing shit at an armed man.
The Palestinians obviously haven’t read much Niven as if they did they would realize that what they are doing is the equivalent.
When a situation involves using force to settle a dispute, there are going to be winners and losers. The Palestinians have lost and are lucky that Israel hasn’t opted for a final solution to the Palestinian problem; something well within their capabilities. The intelligent have departed for greener pastures leaving behind an angry mob of unemployed rapidly breeding Palestinians that have as their main export suicide bombers. If anything, we should be counselling Israel to get off their asses and deal with this mess in their backyard before we have to deal with it once it overflows.
BTW What was the temperature in Bethlehem at the time? I heard a reporter say they had been waiting in the cold.
Hamas gets upset because their government is associated with a major economic decline, casued in part by the removal of foreign teats.
Yes, Hamas is democratically elected. But nothing says we are forced to give them money, they seem to believe this is the case.
So Hamas won’t be our friends….I dont think they ever were so tell me what we have lost?
Finally, yes that kind of poison is common amongst Hamas, and is common amongst Hamas supporters in Canada. It would be nice to get them to say it on tape more ften so we can be clear about who and what we are dealing with.
But I have long said religously based states are generally not a good thing…the minor exceptions being Vatican City, Tibet….other states that are homeland for a religon, Israel, Pakistan.
So if you think Israel should go then I guess Pakistan should go as well as it was formed to be a carved out Muslim homeland from India.
Real politik sure can get in the way of some people’s version of reality. Israel is there, whether you agree with the logic to create it, or not. They will not be removed, unless it is done with nuclear weapons(can anyone say Iran?). The moonbat/dipper/librano crowd just don’t get it. Drop the anti-jewish bigotry, and just maybe we can all work towards a meaningful settlement. But as long as the moonbat/dipper/librano crowd are out there marching, protesting, etc, etc, etc, well, all it does is forment more hate because it enables the fanatics in the ME. MOONBAT IDIOTS!
Palestinians are one gigantic self-inflicted wound.
I’d trade 600,000 jews for our 600,000 Muslims.
Far less likely that the belligerant jews would blow up the peace tower than our peaceful unable to do wrong, Muslims.
OT but, there is a poll at the g&m that needs our help re Harpers first year. So far 49% of the voters say he has done a terrible job.
What a day, wake up, dion is addressing the liberal caucus, tonight Bush gives his state of the union, and in between Harper will celebrate 1 year in office. Guess who will get the most positive coverage on cbc.
Catch dions stmt re the CWB, something about the conservatives taking away free market choice for western and quebec and ont farmers. Someone tell him que and ont are not subject to the CWB, and that is one of the problems.
I think it is an error to equate the Israel-Palestine situation with Islamic fascism. The two are completely different in origin and nature – and solution.
Unfortunately, the Palestinians have in the past few years been exploited by the Islamic fascists, who are using it as an excuse for their actions, rather than dealing with the real causes of Islamic fascism (tribalism).
Neither Israel nor Palestine are going to disappear, despite the fervent wishes on both sides that each would do so. Israel, for its part, ought to recognize that the Palestinians are not ‘fake-Jordanians’; there is no need for them to all be ‘absorbed’ by Jordan as many Israelis consider; the Palestinians actually lived in the area for hundreds of years; the land was not empty when Israel was formed. That means that Israel should recognize Palestine, it should stop the occuption; it should stop building new towns on those occupied lands.
Palestine, for its part, should recognize that Israel exists (it has; Hamas hasn’t). But, the Arab states in the area should recognize Palestine as a democracy. My own view is that the Arab states have always been both indifferent to the Palestinians, considering them ignorant peasants – and, greatly opposed to the development of a Palestinians state (despite their public rhetoric in favor of such). The reason?
Because the Arab states don’t want a democratic arab state in their midst; they don’t want to, themselves, move into democracy – and don’t want any kind of example of such in their midst. The arab states have worked very hard to prevent Palestine from becoming a state; a democratic state.
So- you have two sets of states opposed to Palestine as a state. Israel – because it wants all the land and refuses to recognize Palestinians ..as ‘Palestinians’. The Arab States, because they don’t want an arab democracy in their midst. Who suffers? The Palestinians.
And by now, with both peoples steeped in mythic history, a generation of fictionalized experience – AND, Palestine being used by the Islamic fascists who can readily use it as an excuse for not dealing with the tribal dictatorships in their midst – it’s a hard situation.
Hmmmm a CPC foreign minister is “unmoved”…guess Mothercorp(se) needs someone who IS “moved” by genocidal anitsemitic fanatics… maybe they can persuade Sacha Trudeau to hand out condoms in the Palistinian refugee camps? Great moving mothercorp(se) story….however the Trudeau brat’s (and by extention, the Trudeaupian liberal cult’s) shallow alturism only “moves” this CBC-cultured anti-Israel cult closer to intellectual apartheid from rational, just thinking.
The only appropriate response to Hamas is: “Alright you primitve screw-heads, listen up. This…is my BOOMSTICK!”
The CBC Sunday programming has been an all day promotion of their left wing ideological slant for years. How anyone but a dyed in the wool idiotarian can stomach the garbage is a mystery. I wonder just how many people actually do listen to their BS!
What the CBC should be doing is airing a statement in front of and at the end of these programs that clearly announces the content to be opinion.
Failing to do this makes them just propagandists…
My email to CTV
Please tell me why you did not post the whole story. The globe ran this part also
“Later in the interview, he suggested that there should be a single Islamic state stretching across the Middle East, adding that there was plenty of space in Canada to establish a Jewish homeland.
The hatred for Israel runs deep in Mr. Zahar, who was among the founding members of Hamas 20 years ago and is now seen as the leader of its radical wing. At one point, he pulled a photograph out of his wallet of his oldest son, Khaled, who was killed in 2003 during an Israeli assassination attempt against Mr. Zahar. “Killed in my house. He is my son. What justified that?”
Angrily, he said that if Mr. MacKay did not see the logic of Hamas’s position, he needed a lesson on the history of the region.
Speaking in practised, if occasionally imprecise English, he said that Hamas members were not terrorists, but freedom fighters against the 40-year-old Israeli occupation, no different from the French Resistance to Nazi Germany during the Second World War.
He said it was Canada and the West that needed to change and reach out to the Islamic world now for the sake of future generations.
“Canadians have to change their extremist government, or else they’re going to lose their credibility as a neutral state,” he warned. “You cannot create a new enemy without a price.”
Did the part about one big Arab state not fit your anti-Iraeli bias, or was it the part about moving Israel to Canada?or was it demanding a regime change in Canada?
I thought your job was to report THE news not YOUR news
Mark Steyn would call this kind of thing “Creeping Sharia…”
“Later in the interview, he suggested that there should be a single Islamic state
stretching across the Middle East, adding that there was plenty of space in
Canada to establish a Jewish homeland.”
Sounds like Hamas has a “final solution” to that pesky Jewish problem…
hmmmm… that sounds sort of familiar.
*
its poetic isnt it.
The grey, overcast skies yawning over the Bethlehem refugee camp blend oppressively with the looming concrete slab that threatens tiny girls in a school that huddles in its shadow. Canada’s Foreign Minister is on a visit to the camp, unmoved by shattered walls torn bare by the deadly bullets of rampaging Israeli soldiers.
I did hear on the radio (CKNW) the Mr Zahar remarked the Spanish wanted to elect “extremists” before they “got the message” (terrorist attack).
ET – you remark, correctly, that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is just an excuse used by terrorists. But, what isn’t an excuse. You say that Israel must recognize Palestine. What about Oslo and Camp David, where they were given their homeland, but turned it down because of the excuse they couldn’t demographically overwhelm Israel with “right of return,” then went on fighting.
The Palestinians can blame themselves for their plight.
Hezbollah Terrorists Paralyze Lebanon
NewsMax.com Wires
Tuesday, Jan. 23, 2007
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Hezbollah-led protesters paralyzed Lebanon Tuesday, clashing with government supporters and burning tires and cars on roads in and around the capital to enforce a general strike aimed at toppling U.S.-backed Prime Minister Fuad Saniora.
What had been planned as a peaceful work-stoppage around the country turned into the worst violence since the pro-Syrian Shiite Hezbollah and its allies launched a campaign two months ago to oust the government.
Dozens were reported injured in Beirut amid stone throwing, fist-fights and scattered gunfire. Police said 34 people were injured by gunshots during clashes in central and northern Lebanon, including two bodyguards of a prominent pro-government politician. Commuters were stranded and business came to halt in many parts of the capital.
newsmax.com/archives/articles/2007/1/23/114038.shtml
= TG
Three photos at Michael Totten dot com
michaeltotten.com/
= TG
shamrock – the Oslo accords weren’t a recognition of a Palestinian state. They were to establish municipal types of governance by Palestinians in various towns and villages. Israel would continue to govern the territory as a state- ie, the resources, roads, transportation, foreign affairs. What ‘nation’ wouldn’t reject such an offer?
Again, both sides have to recognize each other as ‘states’. Israel’s offer was only to ‘allow’ a municipal type of self-government in certain towns. It didn’t recognize a Palestinian state. It didn’t recognize a Palestinian state government over Palestinian territory. The occupation, the Israeli governance, the settlements of the land, continued.
And then there are these thoughts to consider, which I’ve entitled: How We Can Get to Setting the World on Fire.
The Old Testament often speaks of the restoration of the Davidic kingdom in Israel, during the Messianic Age. At that time, God has promised to “…save My flock, and they shall no more be a prey…and I will set up one shepherd over them….” Then, “The nations also will know that I, the Lord, sanctify Israel…” (Ezek. 34:22–23, 37:28).
The Hebrew Prophets often spoke of that promised glorious kingdom, but they had little to say about the “one shepherd” of the kingdom. Evidently, they knew almost nothing about him, beyond the fact that out of Bethlehem “…shall one come forth unto Me that is to be ruler in Israel, whose origin is from of old, from ancient days….” “And he shall stand, and shall feed his flock…in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God…for then shall he be great unto the ends of the earth…” (Micah 5:1,3).
Thus, from early times, Judaism focused on the kingdom that will flourish in the Messianic Age, while Christianity and Islam focused on the “one shepherd” of that kingdom — of whom the Jews knew practically nothing. The trouble that came from those two related but separate subjects quickly surfaced.
The Jews, convinced that Christians and Muslims followed false prophets, paid no attention to their teachings about the coming “one shepherd”: “the Messiah, Jesus,” as Muhammad identified him. And the younger monotheistic families, each convinced it had supplanted the fathers of their faith, paid little or no attention to the promised sanctification of Israel in the Messianic Age. In fact, aside from acknowledging “the Messiah, Jesus,” the Koran doesn’t speak of that Age; its future concern is with “the Last Day,” the Judgment Day of mankind (The Family of Imran 3:114).
As it was in those early years, so it is today. Believers revere their own family’s messages, as their clerics interpret them, and they dismiss, as false or obsolete, all teachings that do not conform to their own. As long as each family’s shepherds aggrandize their own understanding of their own teachings and besmirch the others, they cannot “…turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers…,” as Malachi warned must happen, if the world is to be spared “utter destruction” (Mal. 3:24/4:6). Nor can bitterly divided and self-aggrandizing believers inspire unbelievers to turn to the God Who has promised to bless “all the families of the earth” through Abraham (Gen. 12:2–3).
ET- when Palestians elect a genocidal political party as their government, it demonstrates that, no matter what autonomy they are offered, positive action is hopeless.
Thus, the Palestinian people are mired in some sort of occupied refugee camp, with lots of blame to go around, including their leaders.
Militarily, Israel cannot be defeated by their Arab antagonists, so the misery of both sides of the fence will continue.
Is there really any peaceful solution at all?
ET,
The idea of the Oslo accords was to give the Paelestinians More and More cities, villages and teritorry GRADUALY. The agreed aim was a Palestinian state.
I quote:
“Barak offered to form a Palestinian STATE initially on 73% of the West Bank (that is 27% less than the Green Line borders) and 100% of the Gaza Strip. In 10 to 25 years the West Bank area would expand to 90% (94% excluding greater Jerusalem). The West Bank would be separated by a road from Jerusalem to the Dead Sea, with free passage for Palestinians although Israel reserved the right to close the road for passage in case of emergency. The Palestinian position was that the annexations would block existing road networks between major Palestinian populations. In return, the Israelis would cede 1-3 % of their territory in the Negev Desert to Palestine. Arafat rejected this proposal and did not make a counteroffer.”
This quotation is from Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taba_summit) and refers to Camp David.
Anything unclear over here? “Barak offered to form a Palestinian STATE”. And Arafat walked away.
Sorry to be the one to bring you the bad news, but it is not only the Arab countries who do not want a Palestinian state. The Palestinian themselves dont want it.
May I remind you that they have rejected in the past quite a few offers to have their own state. Both “The Peel Commission Partition Plans”
(1938) and the UN patition plan (1947) offered a very generous Palestinian state alongside a shrivelled Jewish state. In both cases the Jews accepted, Palestinians refused.
These people are so keen on destroying the infidels, that they are beyond hope. And yes, this have everything to do with Muslim fascism: its either their way or death. No compromise, no middle way.
alis,
thankyou for responding to ET – I have tried to point out these facts but to no avail – she still returns to:
“the Palestinians actually lived in the area for hundreds of years; the land was not empty when Israel was formed.”
If the putatively ancient nation of Palestinians had lived there for “hundreds of years”, then why did the UN have to change the definition of a refugee in 1948 to anyone who had lived there for 2 years?
if they had lived there for “hundreds of years”, then why do the photographs from the late 1800s and early 1900s show no “traditional Arab East Jerusalem”? (remember they had cameras back then)
The ancient ones could be celebrating their 60th anniversary of statehood if they accepted the UN partition plan of 1947
but the Arab/Israeli issue has nothing to do with nationalism or tribalism, its the jihad – Jews, living sovereign in their own state, is an affront to Islam
The ideas of “Palestinian nationalism” and “the Jews stole their land”, are simply this generation’s version of the “the Jews killed Jesus”
Ex says….**The ideas of “Palestinian nationalism” and “the Jews stole their land”, are simply this generation’s version of the “the Jews killed Jesus”**
I say “Bingo!”
The Columbia Encyclopedia tells us that the word, “Palestine,” comes from the word “Philistine.” When the Philistines moved to the land of Canaan, thousands of years ago, they settled along the Mediterranean coast, in the area we now call the “Gaza Strip.” The Philistines were an exceptionally united people. They built five major cities, including Gaza, and created a powerful federation. As testimony to their strength, the whole region became known as “Palestine.”
More than 3,000 years ago, a people known as “Hebrews” conquered Canaan/Palestine, and renamed the land “Israel.” As a tiny nation that worshiped One invisible God, the Hebrew society’s values and customs greatly differed from its neighbor nations that worshiped more than 2,000 visible gods. Still, for all its uniqueness, Israel survived for over 1,000 years.
Through the Hebrews, the world received the Ten Commandments, which tell men to love God and to “…love your neighbor as yourself…” (Deut. 6:5; Lev. 19:18). But, before the Hebrews had entered Canaan/Palestine, Moses spoke of a time when God would grow weary of their disobedience, and they would be “…driven out [of the land] to the farthest parts under heaven…” (Deut. 30:4). Then, they would become “…an oath and an astonishment and a curse and a reproach” (Jer. 44:12), a prophecy the world has definitely seen fulfilled! Yet, Moses also assured the Hebrews that eventually God “…will have compassion on you and gather you again from all the nations where the Lord your God has scattered you” (Deut. 30:3). After that, they will become “…a name and a praise among all the peoples of the earth” (Zeph. 3:20) — a prophecy we have yet to witness!
Atheists who, with arrogant certainty, dismiss the Prophets as liars or dupes, can deeply offend believers. But people who call themselves “believers,” while arrogantly annulling God’s unwelcome messages about Israel’s restoration, could be even more offensive to God.
The Prophet, Isaiah, warned, “Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight!” (Isa. 5:21). Muhammad explained, “They draw a line between God and His apostles, saying, ‘We believe in some but deny others.’” And Jesus cut to the quick of our problem in one sentence: “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken!” (Luke 24:25).
The Hebrew Scriptures foretold ancient Israel’s eviction, and the same Scriptures promised that someday Israel would be resurrected. No where on earth does a single line of any religion’s Scripture foretell the resurrection of a nation called Palestine!