Israel: A Failing Experiment
Israel's First Minister of Education, Professor Ben-Zion Dinur (1954), said it most sharply; "In our country there is room only for the Jews. We shall say to the Arabs: Get out! If they don't agree, if they resist, we shall drive them out by force." (History of the Haganah.) With this theme as the explicit backdrop of a newly established State, it is no wonder that Israel has had little chance of being a normal member of the state of nations.
Individual Israeli achievements in fields like science and technology are impressive. However, for all modern intent and purpose, the State of Israel, as a state building model, is a failing experience -- ideologically, religiously, politically, socially and, if US favorite nation status were removed, possibly economically as well. Without immediate and decisive intervention from the world community to stop the ongoing Israeli aggression on Palestinians, Israel's intransigence and US-equipped regional hegemony will not only fuel another generation of Palestinians willing to sacrifice their lives in order to end Israel's illegal occupation, but will also further jeopardize Israel's basic premise that explicit religious discrimination, namely a Jewish-only state, is an accepted basis for statehood in modern times.
In spite of the above comments by Israel's First Minister of Education (and reinforced by many other Israeli leaders), Israel was founded on its infamous fallacy that it was built on a 'land with no people, for a people with no land'. Israel has utterly failed to persuade the world, and more recently more of its own people, that this was a valid premise for statehood. Also, given the fact that Historic Palestine was inhabited prior to Israel being created, Israel has been unable to ignore that this very same fallacy is a raw form of outright racism. Israel expelled more than one half of the indigenous Palestinian population in 1948. Ever since, Israel has assumed a policy of civil discrimination, political imprisonment, torture, deportations, beatings, collective punishment, political assassinations, settlement building, economic dominance, the list is endless and intensified after the Israeli military occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem in 1967. For being an 'empty' land, the complications that Palestine posed to the implantation of a Western state in the midst of the Middle East seemed overwhelming.
Since its inception, Israel has arrogantly refused to address the most crucial prerequisite of its establishment as a conventional State -- accepting the Palestinians -- those people that just happened to be living in that 'empty' land of Israel. The Palestinians, those that were forcefully expelled from their homes in 1948, 1967, and more recently in 2001, and have been living in squalid refugee camps throughout the region. The Palestinians, those that did not flee in 1948 and are now fourth class Israeli citizens. The Palestinians, those that have lived under Israeli military occupation in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem for over 34 years.
After five decades of conflict, and after nearly a decade of Palestinian political recognition of Israel on part of their lands, the Israeli people choose to sustain the conflict and elected another of its most notorious war criminals, Ariel Sharon. Sharon has been charged, as captain of the vanguard, to lead Israel into its sixth decade of conflict. Today, Israel seems determined more than ever to forcefully prove the original premise of its statehood - an Israel with moveable borders and a Jewish-only population. Ten Israeli Prime Ministers before Sharon, four of them after the signing of Oslo, failed. Prime Minister Sharon will fail as well. If Israel can not produce a leader to move the country from a pariah state to a member state of the Middle East, no one will be to blame for the consequences, no matter how severe, but the Israeli people themselves.
This should not come as a surprise for Israelis who have studied their own history. Israel's founding Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, understood it well when he said, "Why should the Arabs make peace? If I were an Arab leader, I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country. Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we came here and stole their country. Why should they accept that? (David Ben-Gurion quoted in "The Jewish Paradox" by Nahum Goldmann, former president of the World Jewish Congress.)
Similarly, it should be no surprise that Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, rushed to sign the now failed Oslo Peace Accords after calculating the historic ramifications of the political earthquake that took place when a
Palestinian leader, Yasir Arafat, politically recognized the State of Israel. Rabin paid for that signature with his life, which was taken by one of his own citizens, a fanatic Jewish student. This was as close as Israel has ever been in closing the last chapter of its establishment.
Every step of the way, as Israel further entrenched its illegal occupation of the Palestinians they have been continuously rewarded by the United States of America. Israel has been propped up, financially and politically, by every single US administration at the expense of internationally unconscious US taxpayers, fully obedient to the direction of the far-reaching Israeli lobby. What started as a US strategic ally in one of the most sensitive spots in the world during a Cold War that marred common sense, has rapidly digressed into a liability in an age of globalization that the United States alone is spearheading. While the Bush Administration continues to ignorantly turn a blind eye to Israel's blatant violations of international law and human rights, the United States runs the fear that the globalized world will start to question the moral authority inherent in the US's unfettered support of an Israel that publicly pursues a policy that only has the intransigence to move an entire region into long-term political and economic turmoil. Countries that have bought into the New World Order of Globalization should start to internalize the consequences to themselves, if the US, in a world it single-handily runs, chooses to defend the wrong side of history at its will.
Today, Israel must choose between continuing an illegal occupation and preserving the self-defined nature of the State of Israel itself. To think that both can peacefully co-exist is utter ignorance of history and human development. Also, for Israel to believe that the US will continue to jeopardize its New World Order of Globalization for the sake of fulfilling an Israeli illusion of Palestinian submission is a miscalculation to the nth degree.
Mr. Sam Bahour is a Palestinian-American, born and raised in Youngstown, Ohio, who relocated to his family's home in Al-Bireh, West Bank immediately following the signing of the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords. He is co-author of HOMELAND: Oral Histories of Palestine and Palestinians (1994) and can be reached at [email protected]
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Ben Gurion informed a meeting of Labor Zionists in Great Britain in 1938: "If I knew that it would be possible to save all the children in Germany by bringing them over to England and only half of them by transporting them to Eretz Israel, then I opt for the second alternative." Ibid., p.149.
As late as 1943, while the Jews of Europe were being exterminated in their millions, the U.S. Congress proposed to set up a commission to "study" the problem. Rabbi Stephen Wise, who was the principal American spokesperson for Zionism, came to Washington to testify against the rescue bill because it would divert attention from the colonization of Palestine. This is the same Rabbi Wise who, in 1938, in his capacity as leader of the American Jewish Congress, wrote a letter in which he opposed any change in U.S. immigration laws which would enable Jews to find refuge. He stated:
"It may interest you to know that some weeks ago the representatives of all the leading Jewish organizations met in conference ... It was decided that no Jewish organization would, at this time, sponsor a bill which would in any way alter the immigration laws." Ibid.
Chaim Weizmann, the first president of Israel, made this Zionist policy very explicit:
The hopes of Europe's six million Jews are centered on emigration. I was asked: "Can you bring six million Jews to Palestine?" I replied, "No." ... From the depths of the tragedy I want to save ... young people [for Palestine]. The old ones will pass. They will bear their fate or they will not. They are dust, economic and moral dust in a cruel world ... Only the branch of the young shall survive. They have to accept it.
Chaim Weizmann reporting to the Zionist Congress in 1937 on his testimony before the Peel Commission in London, July 1937. Cited in Yahya, p. 55.
a peaceable process.
So have you seen where the "peaceful Israelis" are constructing the so-called fences? Please read the newspaper.
Peace be with you.
--Yahya Bergum
- the economic dynamism and prosperity of Egypt
- the openness and democracy of Syria
- the tolerance of other faiths of Sudan
- the governmental stability of Somalia
- the absence of army interference in politics of Turkey
- the gentle treatment of opposition elements of Malaysia
- the women's right of Saudi Arabia
- the democracy of Algeria
- the separation of religion and politics of Iran
- the human rights of Libya
Being a single tiny Jewish state, surrounded by enemies determined to strangle it, is no excuse for the dreadful way Israel falls short of its Islamic neighbours.
1) It's the other way around, for the last 50+ years, Israel has oppressed Palestinians. Palestinians didn't make Jews leave Germany, Nazi's did. Palestinians didn't make Jews suffer in Pharoah's Egypt, the Egyptians of the time did. Palestinians ARE NOT oppressing Jews in the former USSR.
2) Palestinians have every right ot have high birth rates...take your obsene slurs somewhere else.
3)Jews are not God's chosen people according to God, and Moses (pbuh) in the bible, who curse them forever for their rejection of God's commandments. On the other hand, the Qur'an doesn't curse the Jews, your very own version of the present day bible instead, does.
Obviously a person like you, thinks a person who hates jews, is someone who is an anti-semite.
Now I will teach you...
Semite comes from the word Shem, or the people of Shem, the people of Prophet Noah (pbuh)... therefore there is no direct or indirect relationship between the Jewish people and the label of Semite. In fact, the label Anti-Semite can be applied to anyone who commits hate crimes against a group of people who speak a semetic language, there are 3 that I know of, and a 4th one I am not sure of...they are Hebru, Arabic, ______, and Aramaic. Jesus (pbuh) spoke Aramaic....so that means that the Jews who committed crimes against him and threw stuff at him and called him names, were being anti-Semetic since Jesus (pbuh) did speak Aramaic?....
My point to you is...wake up from you fantasy of "chosen people," get in touch with reality and what is going on in the world. Don't cite me with ZNN or Fox news either...Wake up and smell the humous. By the way, Zionism = Nazism, and Sharon = Hitler.
A Muslim.............Forever.
u wrote "Israel was recognised by the UN in 1948 as a Jewish State. End of story."
Dear my lovely friend, U r 100% correct! but did u check Israel border between 1948 until now? Did u measure their border properly? U only heard and read the story from Israel... try to look from Palestine side. Did u ever done it?
The last I heard, here in some of these United States, it was still a legitimate means of acquiring property - depending on the circumstances. Then again, the prior occupants have the right to take the lives of the encroaching party's members, in the course of reversing or forestalling the process.
So have you seen where the "peaceful Israelis" are constructing the so-called fences? Please read the newspaper already.
Peace be with you.
--Yahya Bergum
If more Christians would read what Jesus said and stopped listening to failed preachers who don't know Jesus well enough to know what he said, the world would probably be in a much better condition.
As the Jews have tried to take the land by force without recognition of the rights of the Palestinians to their land, they have brought justified anger and persecution upon themselves. Do the Palestinians not have the right to defend their homeland?
One might agree that the Jews need some land but one would then also agree that they would have to obtain it in a manner agreeable to all involved. Killing and stealing is a violation of all known laws including their own. Remember the words "thou shalt not kill" thou shalt not steal". How plain can it get?
Given that they wish to go against Gods will in such a violent way then it might be better for humanity that they stay dispersed and not be able to reinforce each other is such a reprehensible flaunting of Gods commandments.
Marcus please read history and travel to any Muslim country before you make judgements. The Jews of today are oppressing the Muslims all over the world with their power and influence, they are the ones who are waging war against us and demonizing us at the same time. God is Just, Allah doesn't give anyone the right to oppress others solely because of their geneology or race.
Christians have always had this flaw thinking that the oppressed should accept their fate because those doing the oppression have the God given right to do so, as they have thought at the time of the American and Australian native exterminations; they said the same when they colonized most of the world's countries and they continue today with their support of the zionist state.
As to John Norman, you are wrong about me. I hate violence, but I also hate tyranny wherever there is. I do not hate Jews, but I hate those who subjugate the Palestinians and those among them who hate Muslims.
To simply say what goes around comes around translates to "love death and killing" is really laughable. It is the law of God to punish tyrants, whether in this world or in the hereafter.
Any third party who comparatively reads our posts would find your posts being more close to reactionary than mine.
What sick Armageddonist Christians like need to do is give your lovely "chosen people" your personal property. Your own western guilt has nothing to do with the Palestinian people.
A Christian.....
To the contrary, trolling Muslim websites makes you look quite like the jewish clown that you are. As I stated earliar you are boring and ever so predictable. Why dont go join the IDF instead of wasting time posting here ? I didnt think so...
Ahmed: I'm afraid you are completely ignorant. You should do some homework before making yourself look completely silly on these pages.
Muslim: Your love of death and killing is all too apparent in your remarks. They are deplorable.
We Muslim are always ready to critisize the world but rarely reflect on our own short comings.
The racist policies of many Muslim nations will only allow people citizenship based on their race and ancestry.
Get over yourself and your petty jewish fascism.
Jews should be grateful to Muslims who saved them from European extermination in the middle ages and in WW2. There are numerous historical facts that Jews were treated best in Muslim lands than any other lands, especially compared to the west. Jews had their golden age with wealth and sholarship in Muslim countries. This fact is hated by the zionist who want to demonize Muslims for their interest in usurping the lands of Muslims.
I say to the zionist, go on continue being arrogant, continue with your oppression, do more injustice, it will all go back to you one day, that is the justice of God, as Allah has punished previous unjust people so will Allah punish you. Just look at all the great powers that ruled before, they no longer exist, so will your power disappear when Allah sees it fit.
I mean this in absolute sincerity: arrange a plea bargain for my brother (and enemy) Saddam Hussein to run Palestine - as part of his sentencing. If you don't like that idea, my next suggestion would be to ask Syrian brother Sheikh Mohsen al-Qaqa (who is expressly anti-American) to occupy Palestine at the head of a contingent of the Syrian army.
May Allah (subhanahu wa ta'ala) have mercy on us all. Assalamu alaikum.
--Yahya Bergum (a Muslim American nationalist)
PS. I fasted for Yom Kippur this year. I have, however, submitted that effort to Allah (subhanahu wa ta'ala) as a "make-up day" for one of the days of fasting I missed last Ramadan. The Glory is Allah's.
The Christians were told the Jews were no longer the chosen people and to love their neighbor as themselves and yet they blindly support what the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians and promote racism and xenophobia.
Woe to those that can't tell the difference between good and evil. It is a simple task after all. But they are trapped. There are spirits that can confuse a human into thinking good is evil and evil is good. And if anyone worships something other than The Creator they will be abandoned to violence to their soul. Take a look at Bush. He supports the Israelis, says "you are either with us or against us" and plunges two countries into utter chaos. And then he wonders out loud "why do they hate us". If anyone has lost control of their frontal lobes Bush has.
It doesn't really matter whether you worship a prophet (pfoG) or worship your own race (pfoG) you are trapped as soon as you start worshiping other than God, for humans have no protection from such spirits but The Creator.
So how do you live within a world in which the majority don't know and can't tell how sick they are? You set out to heal the world and create peace. This cannot be effective without first reviving monotheism, returning peoples attention to The Creator. The stair steps to heaven are closed by God from the top down but God reopens them from the bottom up.
Inna lillahi wa inna ilaihi raji'un.
La ilaha ill Allah. Muhammad-ar Rasool-Allah.
A'uthoo billahi minash-Shaitanir-rajeem.
--Yahya Bergum
India is also a terrorist state, look at what its doing now, to the Muslims living in its borders. Surely, you remember what happened to the Muslims living in Gujrat... the burning of masses of innocent people to death, b/c their religious beliefs differ from yours...that is TERRORISM.
How is it that India proudly boasts of its possession of nuclear weapons, yet cannot feed a good portion of its people? A walk down the streets of Bombay confirms this. In this day and age, young children are being forced to become prostitutes, to support their families. Is this an accomplishment, in your eyes? I consider it a failure.
You say that "Yemen, Afghanistan, Sudan, Algeria, Kuwait,Saudi Arabia, Libya, Iran, Iraq..." are "failure" states...is that why they have higher literacy rates than India? Being able to read and write, that sounds like a failure to you?
Let's examine the conflict in Kashmir...again, terrorist bad-boy India continues to perpetuate its aggressive actions toward the Muslims that occupy this land, denying them the most basic right of self-rule (autonomy)..hmm...sounds familiar, no? RIGHT, ISRAELI treatment of Palestinians is the same thing!!!
Lastly, the statistics show that "Health officials fear that as the virus spreads through China and India, the world's two most populous countries, cases of HIV infection in this region may surge up to 25 million cases by the year 2010, dwarfing the problems seen in sub-Saharan Africa. " (taken from Encarta.com)
now, before labeling a state as being a "failure", shouldn't we look at where we're coming from first? Don't judge someone, unless you yourself want to be judged.
Anyone who has a fundamental understanding of European history, knows that what the European Jews went through, at the hands of Hitler, bears a most striking resemblance to the Israeli treatment of the Palestinians. History does repeat itself.
How unfortunate, then, that the US, proclaiming itself to be a beacon of freedom and independence in the Western World, stands by and supports this "Palestinian Holocaust". But it doesn't stop there. The American media, controlled completely by the Zionist lobby, further distorts the facts, with regards to the Israeli occupation. All the time, you hear that Israelis are being attacked, harassed, bombed, etc...what about the IDF and its actions against the Palestinian population? Sharon is a war criminal and Israel is a terrorist state. These are simple facts.
If a boy throws a rock at an ARMED SOLDIER, what kind of idiot can conclude that this boy was A THREAT TO THE EXISTENCE OF ISRAEL? Throwing the rock? Unjustified, an act of terrorism. Pumping 80 bullets into that boy's body, that's ok, its self-defense. Then you talk about biased.
The Israeli occupation of Palestine is somewhat like what happens if someone seizes your home from you and throws you out into the streets, then proceeds to attack you from inside your own home...try to understand that it's still your home, its rightfully yours.
As far as Israel goes, our nuclear neighbor in the Middle East has the most UN Security Council violations, possesses nukes, and continues to perpetuate a MORE GROTESQUE VERSION OF THE jewish HOLOCAUST ON THE PALESTINIANS. I say more grotesque because this time, the world is deaf to the suffering of the oppressed.
Israel was recognised by the UN in 1948 as a Jewish State. End of story.
As for your claim that Muslims protected Jews: sometimes they did and sometimes they didn't. The fact remains, that Jews like Zoroastrians, like Hindus, like Christians were, what we would today call, second-class citizens, subjected to discrimination, humiliation and persecution. No amount of looking at Muslim history through rose-tinted glasses will change the facts. Muslims need to wake up and re-examine their history, just as Western culture has had to inrespect of colonialism and imperialism. The sooner you do it, the sooner we can sit over a coffee and talk about many things. Until you do it, there will be no meeting of the minds.
When I was young I used to watch movies about the W. W. Two and I felt sympathetic to Jews about what Hitler has done to them. Now what they do to the Palestinian people, it is Cruel, Barbarian and Merciless. This has to stop! What goes around will come around.
There are many good Jews in the world:
http://www.jewsforjesus.org/
http://www.jews-for-allah.org/
its not israel vs palestinians its israel vs muslims,
so if anyone is under illusion that extermination of palestinians will solve the problems then i think he is quite naive.
israeli occupation over al aqsa and persecution of fellow muslims aggrieves heart of every single muslim from morocco to philipines.
so israel can exterminate palestinians but cannot muslims.
Israel is bound to fail wether its experiment or a state, for injustice and falsehood never wins how so much powerfull they might be.
this is lesson which you can read from history of of human existance on this planet if you are not aware of it.
"let not disbelievers think our postponing of punishment is good for them, we only postpon it for they can increase in transgression, for them is disgracing torment.""
ISREAL IS A SELF-DECLARED JEWISH STATE
ISRAEL IS A SELF-DECLARED JEWISH STATE
If one sets aside for a moment the notion of a "Jewish" state and simply examines the behavior of these so-called statesmen one clearly sees the hypocrisy. The Israelis hold the indigenous Palestinians responsible for all their problems and seek their "final solution" in exterminating them, in the same manner as the Nazis did to the Jews.
They can stifle the efforts of the UN because they have bought America's veto, but they'll never quell the outrage because they are openly, blood thirsty tyrants.
It is baffling to me that Jews have more hatred toward Muslims and Arabs than they do toward their foremost persecutors the Europeans.
The state of Israel was established by the notion that Jews will never be safe among Europeans due to the long history of oppression they have suffered in those countries.
The irony is that the persecuted European Jews have adopted the Western culture of intolerance and dehumanization of non European people and are now oppressing the Eastern people.
How fast have the Jews forgotten they used to have safe refuge among the Muslims. When the German nazi were killing Jews in Eastern Europe and in the former Yoguslavia many were saved by the Muslim minorities, who hid them in their houses to their personal risk.
Today, the Jews are at the forefront of the persecution and oppression of Muslims.
History has taught us this simple rule, what goes around comes around. Justice will be done sooner or later, because Allah exists and is aware of all that we do.
For the sake of world peace, the jewish terrorist state must be dismantled and its leaders tried for war crimes.
Surely the Lord of the worlds has given Israel much more than the ground on which it currently resides. What might perhaps be a potential application of one of the protections that the Lord of the worlds has given Israel?
Shalom Aleichem - and Allah bless.
--Yahya Bergum
Israel is not an experiment. Experiments are done to obtain new insights into existing theories and to revise those theories when necessary or to come with new theories; when completed, they are stopped. Israel is a REAL entity whose effects are being felt throughgout the muslim world; muslims have been fighting it for the last 55 years; it defeated the mighty arab armies in 1948, 1956, 1967 and even in 1973, which forced Egypt to sign peace treaty. You don't sign peace treaties with 'experimental' organizations, only with live and real ones.
Israel is not a 'failed state' like Yemen, Afghanistan, Sudan, Algeria, Kuwait/Saudi Arabia (no independent foreign policy), Libya, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan. Would anybody like to call these states as 'experiments'!. It is hard to call any of these as states (most of them are lawless), not even to talk of being nations. Israel is a very smart state; US guarantees its existence and even pays for it. Does anybody guaranty the existence of any of the muslim states?. If middle east had no oil, nobody would even pay any attention to them.
US never accepted 'indians' as part of its system and slughetered them; today the 'indian' population is less than it was when white man came to americas. Is US an 'experiment'? No, it is real entity and the entire world takes note of it.
"Why should Arabs make peace?". This comment is perfectly understandable. White men took over "indian" land and "Indians" never made peace with the US/Canada till they were finally defeated; then "Indians" had no choice. May be Palestinians will have to go through the same phase; probably by that time the palestinians will not exist anymore and the problem will go away.
Get real folks.
"Palestine" was certainly not an empty land when Jews started their return but neither was it an Arab state. It was a Turkish province and the British and the League of Nations had the right to dispose of it, a right recognised in international law. It should be a sobering thought for Arabs and "Palestinians", an entirely new nationality that arose only in the last eighty years, that had the Turks not lost the war, the "Palestinians" would still be without a state. Did the Kurds receive a state from the UN?