Al buys Al

Skeptical Science probably believes this is good news,
Skeptical Science: From Al Gore to Al Jazeera

markx;
With all due respect, you are having a Skeptical Science moment there.
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If you have any respect for my viewpoint, you might ask yourself why I am gently suggesting to you that you are off base? Do you think this is the forum to have a debate about the facts on the ground in the middle east? Do you really want me to start dropping some facts on you? I’m trying to avoid a confrontation here, but your assertions are ill founded, out of context, and in many cases simply wrong.
Terrorists hijacking planes in the 70’s? Here’s a fact for you. Jordan murdered 100,000 Palestinians in the 70’s in a period of just a few days. Did that make any headlines? Did anyone care? That map you linked to doesn’t have the names of the communities because the Jordanians bulldozed them into the desert and erased them forever. Where was the public outcry? Where was the press coverage? When Israel was evacuating Jews by airlift from Sarajevo and planned to take as many Muslim children as possible with them before the Serbs broke through into the city, did you know that the beloved leader of the Palestinians threatened to walk out of the Oslo accords if they did? Shame on Israel for buckling to the pressure. And shame on Arafat and all those champagne diplomats who caved to him because he’d rather that those children die than let a single muslim with a positive view of Jews into the country.
That fence you wail about? Did you know what a bargain the Israeli’s got on the building materials? Yasser Arafat took the materials donated by Egypt to rebuild Gaza and sold them at bargain prices to Israeli contractors. His wife and daughter are living on the hundreds of millions, possibly billions, that were stolen from them. While promoting the very terrorism that prompted the building of the fence in the first place, Arafat was profiting from the fence being built.
I wrote another ten paragraphs, and just deleted them. As I said, this isn’t the forum. But I am bluntly telling you that you are off base. Much propaganda is spouted to fan the flames of hatred and keep the conflict alive. You are, by repeating it, playing into the hands of those who hate peace and use the Palestinians as a proxy army to fight someone else’s war.

Thank you all for your comments. You know I have deliberately avoided the debate about the Palestine/israel conflict, to any extent that is. it was not the discussion i wanted to provoke. It is a fascinating story for those that care to follow it and it’s not even slightly indicative of the wider mid east political situation. The fact that the geo-political situation of today is a by-product of a wider, earlier war has little bearing on what goes on today. But I’m simply not going to get deeper into that as it has never been my intention and i don’t want to give a select few a reason to misconstrue my position further.
Let’s just say that some of you appear to know less of the truth than you no doubt believe you do and clearly have no intention of changing that. which to me merely illustrates the point i was initially making.
It’s disturbing to see what is supposed to be a skeptical group be so closed minded on a position because it messes with their pre-conceived conclusions. I will concede that many a name in this particular thread are new names and are just chest-beating and bloviating because they believe I have insulted their ‘team’.
Personally i try to avoid saying things to a man on the internet which i am unable or unwilling to say to his face. I’d suggest that some of you would not be so bold were you looking me in the eye.
I’m past caring if I’ve made enemies now. I explained myself in clear English, many of you accept that explanation and understand my position and where i was going, some even challenging me on the actual point I was making, which i thank you for but I’ve lost the will to debate it now. Some of you have still wilfully ignored my explanation and painted me as something i clearly am not.
I will ‘craw’ back into my hole’ now.
Once again my sincere apologies to Anthony and the mods if i have caused them any unwanted attention or work in this thread.

davidmhoffer says: January 3, 2013 at 9:14 pm
“……… Jordan murdered 100,000 Palestinians in the 70′s in a period of just a few days.
…….When Israel was evacuating Jews by airlift from Sarajevo and planned to take as many Muslim children as possible with them before the Serbs broke through into the city, did you know that the beloved leader of the Palestinians threatened to walk out of the Oslo accords if they did? ……
……fence you wail about? Did you know what a bargain the Israeli’s got on the building materials? Yasser Arafat took the materials donated by Egypt to rebuild Gaza and sold them at bargain prices to Israeli contractors…….
……..this isn’t the forum. ……..Much propaganda is spouted to fan the flames of hatred and keep the conflict alive. …….. a proxy army to fight someone else’s war….”
Certainly there are some things there I have not heard of David. And certainly, I am not surprised by the story that Arafat was terribly self-serving and corrupt.
And they may well all be true, but none of them serve as any evidence that the Palestinians have not been grievously wronged from the start, and continue to be grievously wronged. These are just additional wrongs heaped upon them by their own and others.
I agree with the points as summarized in the last quoted paragraph above, especially that this is not the forum for it, and except to note that there are at least two proxy sides to that war and its propaganda, I will say no more of it here.
Regards, Mark.

markx;
Certainly there are some things there I have not heard of David. And certainly, I am not surprised by the story that Arafat was terribly self-serving and corrupt.
And they may well all be true, but none of them serve as any evidence that the Palestinians have not been grievously wronged from the start, and continue to be grievously wronged. These are just additional wrongs heaped upon them by their own and others.
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You’ve missed my point. There is much more you don’t know. Every fence, check point, policy and community has a story behind it, A complicated story. If you don’t know that story, you cannot judge. That mapped you linked to is a frozen point in time. There are reasons for everything on that map, some of which I agree with and some of which I do not. The difference between you and me is that I know enough of the history to draw informed conclusions. Someone looking at that map and nothing else will draw the precise conclusions that map was intended to foster. It is a propaganda piece and was intended to mislead in the precise manner which you are using it.

davidmhoffer says: January 4, 2013 at 6:57 am
“You’ve missed my point.”
And you have missed mine.
Lets forget the map. And all the disasters of history. It is in fact a very simple story:
Summary. If you walk into another man’s country behind someone else’s gun, then proceed to take it off him a piece at a time with the backing of the world’s most powerful friend, while all the time saying “If only he would be nice about this it would hardly hurt at all”, and then blame him for the absolute disaster you create within his society, by my standards you are in the wrong.

Coupla maps in here, from B’TSELEM:
http://www.btselem.org/maps
B’TSELEM – The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories was established in 1989 by a group of prominent academics, attorneys, journalists, and Knesset members. It endeavors to document and educate the Israeli public and policymakers about human rights violations in the Occupied Territories, combat the phenomenon of denial prevalent among the Israeli public, and help create a human rights culture in Israel.
Not sure whose “propaganda” you may say that is, but it is probably not Arab.

Did anyone read the latest statements translated from AN ARABIC speech by Egyptian’s great hope, President Mohamed Morsi, ‘Israeli-Palestinian negotiations are “a waste of time and opportunities” as Arabs and Muslims get nothing out of engagement with “the descendants of apes and pigs,”.’
If one wants to know what the Arab nations really think, they must listen to the speeches, directed at their own people.
‘ “the Zionist and American enemies for the sole purpose of opposing the will of the Palestinian people.” Therefore, he stressed, “No reasonable person can expect any progress on this track.”
“Either [you accept] the Zionists and everything they want, or else it is war,” Morsi said, “This is what these occupiers of the land of Palestine know – these blood-suckers, who attack the Palestinians, these warmongers, the descendants of apes and pigs.”
If Al Jazeera reports these speeches, then they provide us with a better understanding, of who, we are really dealing with. GK

davidmhoffer says: January 4, 2013 at 9:03 am
“……. keeps the Palestinian people enslaved ……” Perhaps they prefer some choices in which type of slavery they receive:
Israeli Settlements: Time Magazine (Three Days ago)
By Karl Vick Dec. 31, 2012

At the start of 2012, the Israeli advocacy group Peace Now, which seeks a two-state solution, warned that the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was building Jewish settlements on the West Bank at a pace that, if allowed to continue, would carve up the land to a point that would doom the possibility of a viable Palestinian state.
Twelve months later, that pace has nearly quintupled. In one week of December alone, Netanyahu’s government pushed forward plans for 11,000 homes beyond the Green Line that marked Israel’s 1967 border — nearly as many settler homes as were approved in the previous 10 years combined. ….

http://world.time.com/2012/12/31/the-west-banks-2012-the-year-of-the-israeli-settlement/#ixzz2H1g8EVdE
There is no intention by current Israeli government to leave the Palestinians anything. And I doubt there ever was.

markx;
At the start of 2012, the Israeli advocacy group Peace Now
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You keep quoting the opinions of other people rather than becoming familiar with the facts themselves and drawing your own conclusions. And you accuse me of being a Skeptical Science acolyte?

davidmhoffer says: January 4, 2013 at 9:54 am
“…accuse me of being a Skeptical Science acolyte…?”. Sorry, that one must have really stung, you keep bringing it up: It was light hearted reference to their style of redirecting discussion. It was not meant as a wounding insult, but I now see it could be taken that way by someone who perhaps regards them even less favorably than I do. In that instance, I do apologize.
There is nothing light hearted about the rest of this discussion though:
davidmhoffer says: January 4, 2013 at 9:03 am
“….1948 => Jordan seizes West Bank…[a note, with British trained troops under the leadership of British officers…]…. Egypt seizes Gaza. …… ”
As is often said in here, you don’t get to make up your own facts, and nor should anyone get to start history where they see fit:
“Britain’s high commissioner for Palestine [from 1928 to 1931], John Chancellor, recommended total suspension of Jewish immigration and land purchase to protect Arab agriculture. He said ‘all cultivable land was occupied; that no cultivable land now in possession of the indigenous population could be sold to Jews without creating a class of landless Arab cultivators’…The Colonial Office rejected the recommendation.”
John Quigley, “Palestine and Israel: A Challenge to Justice.” http://www.ifamericansknew.org/history/origin.html
David also said: “…..You keep quoting the opinions of other people rather than becoming familiar with the facts themselves and drawing your own conclusions….”
Well, I’m quoting from articles I have read over many years of reading up on the subject, and mainly the ones I think are in the right. You were expecting perhaps personal interviews?

Well, I’m quoting from articles I have read over many years of reading up on the subject, and mainly the ones I think are in the right.
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Mainly the ones that come from bigoted sources that play directly into the hands of those who keep the conflict alive.