Israel must tear down barrier: UN

[Padraig OCinnead]

Maybe they (UN, EU and ICJ) could get the Israelis to give the coordinates to the IDF military installations to their enemies. (remember that's Israeli DEFENCE Force)
Oh, and they could also post the timings when it would be best to attack them. While they're at it they could gather in large groups in Tel Aviv markets so legions of Palestinian suicide bombers could blow their women and children apart because there was no barrier impeding their nefarious deeds.

Once again our brave Canadian politicians sat on the sidelines and abstained from showing a bit of integrity. Soft diplomacy at it's best my ash.

Here's the link
http://www.cbc.ca/story/world/national/2004/07/20/israel_barrier.html

Just by .02

 

[Infanteer]

I don't know why, but the UN Security Council seems to be a pack of closet anti-Semites.  They are quick to condemn Israel for any violent action, and yet openly invite terrorists (Arafat) as a representative.

 

[SFontaine]

 

[Spr.Earl]

I'll finaly make comment.

I'm sick and tired of being made to feel guilty because of WW2 and the Jews yet I was not even born and that how the current press has made me feel for the past few decade's.

It does not matter who is right or wrong it is still a War Crime to kill the innocent whether it was in WW2 or to day in the Middle East wheather they be a Jew or a Palestinian

I just wish we could get a balanced view in regards to the Middle East.

My first real contact with a Jew was as a kid when I first came to Canada in Edmonton,his name was Hiemie Stein and we ended being very good friend's,he ate in our house I ate in his.
We played on the Sinagog step's and the old Rabbi used to come and chase us away.
His uncle who as a miserable so and so lived a few house up from us and Hiemie explained "You see the tattoo? Me Hu? Hiemie told me to watch and you will see it"
Yup he was a Survivor.

I just wish we get the real truth,yet building a Wall should be one of latst thing's they should do in reagrd's to the last War and the Warsaw Gehtto,in my mind it's a bad omen.

Oh I offen wonder what ever happened to Hiemie,we did have fun and were good freind's.

 

[Infanteer]

I have no guilt for the actions perpetrated against the Jewish people before and during WWII.   They are yet another tragic saga of the human condition.

However, I do have problems when Israel is condemned for dealing harshly with groups that have as their stated aim the destruction of Israel and its people.   I would hold no different a view if it were people of a different group in that position.

 

[Spr.Earl]

But Israel has more than one policy,we only see is the so called Official Policy.

Read the latest from France in regards to Sharon's latest commnet's about Anti Semite's.
They are from the Jewish Population!!

 

[Spr.Earl]

Sharon 'not welcome' in France


Mr Sharon's remarks have caused anger in France
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is not welcome in France until he explains his call on French Jews to move to Israel, the French president has said.
No date had been set for Mr Sharon to visit France, but Jacques Chirac's office said it would not be considered until "an explanation is forthcoming".

On Sunday Mr Sharon made the call due to what he said was "the spread of the wildest anti-Semitism" in France.

French politicians and Jewish leaders have reacted with indignation.

But an Israeli spokesman sought to play down the remarks, saying Mr Sharon's comments to the American Jewish Association in Jerusalem had been badly reported.

While Mr Sharon urged French Jews to move to Israel because of anti-Semitism, Israel has also encouraged Jewish immigration for demographic reasons.

If the current population trends continue, it is estimated that Jews will be outnumbered by non-Jews in the territory that Israel controls within 10 to 15 years.


'Seething'

The BBC's Caroline Wyatt in Paris says Mr Sharon's remarks have left the French government seething with ill-concealed rage.

The Elysee Palace said: "[France] has let it be known that from today an eventual visit by the Israeli prime minister to Paris, for which no date had been set, would not be considered until such an explanation is forthcoming."

The statement followed a request from the foreign ministry for an explanation from Israel of the "unacceptable comments".


French Jews have also found Mr Sharon's comments unhelpful.

Richard Prasquier of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions was quoted by French news agency AFP as saying Mr Sharon had poured "oil on the fire in an unacceptable fashion."

France has suffered a wave of anti-Semitic attacks coinciding with renewed fighting in the Middle East.

The latest French government figures show 510 anti-Jewish acts or threats in the first six months of 2004 - compared with 593 for all of last year.


France has seen a spate of attacks against Jewish targets

Mr Sharon acknowledged that France had made efforts to tackle the problem but still said his advice to French Jews was that moving to Israel was "a must and they have to move immediately".

Correspondents say there is irritation in France at the idea that life for Jews there is becoming dangerous - especially as the government has made every effort to show that anti-Jewish acts will be severely punished.

A week ago President Jacques Chirac rushed to condemn an apparently anti-Semitic attack on a Paris train that turned out to be a hoax.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3908441.stm

 

[Gunnerlove]

Remember long ago when Palestine was a country dealing with a problem. The problem was terror bombings of markets and police stations and assassinations by Jewish terrorist organizations. Now they took controll and are dealing with what they started. Have you looked at a map of Palestine? Nothing is left and a group of people with nothing to lose has nothing to fear as death is better than slavery.
I feel sorry for all the non combatants living in Palestine because they are paying the price for the ongoing actions of an arrogant government.

If the demographics change enough in 15 years perhaps peace will finally return to the region, or they could just look to South Africa because their system worked so well.

 

[SFontaine]

There has never been a country called Palestine. There was a British controlled place but that does not count. Fact is the UN set down land for an Israel and land for a Palestine. Arabs weren't happy and they attacked the week old country of Israel.. Now they're still defending against people who do not want to see Jews have their own land. Simple as that.

 

[K. Ash]

Remember long ago when Palestine was a country dealing with a problem. The problem was terror bombings of markets and police stations and assassinations by Jewish terrorist organizations. Now they took controll and are dealing with what they started. Have you looked at a map of Palestine? Nothing is left and a group of people with nothing to lose has nothing to fear as death is better than slavery.
I feel sorry for all the non combatants living in Palestine because they are paying the price for the ongoing actions of an arrogant government.

I feel sorry for all the families who have lost loved ones due to Palestinian terrorist bombs.

If the demographics change enough in 15 years perhaps peace will finally return to the region, or they could just look to South Africa because their system worked so well.

I feel sorry for all the families who have lost loved ones due to Palestinian militants with bombs straped to their chests. 

 

[Padraig OCinnead]

The opinion by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) declaring Israel's security barrier illegal is questionable on at least two counts.

One is the issue of whether the ICJ has legitimate jurisdiction in the case. A significant minority of United Nations members take the view that it does not.

A resolution passed by the UN General Assembly on Dec. 8 posed this question to the ICJ: "What are the legal consequences arising from the construction of the wall being built by Israel, the occupying power, in the occupied Palestinian territory?"

The vote on the resolution was 90 in favour and eight against, with 74 abstentions.

Members voting negatively or abstaining may have believed the ICJ should refrain from considering the question because its mandate is to arbitrate disputes between and among states, a condition not met in this case.

Then there is the politics of the General Assembly and the ICJ's readiness to give its seal of approval to this political tilt.

The Arab-Muslim states have demonstrated repeatedly that they can deliver a bloc of 50-plus votes in the assembly on any issue. Third World countries hold a bloc of another 50 votes, and together these groups make up a nearly impregnable force on the floor of the world's parliament of nations.

The ICJ lent credence to the politics of those whose ideology is fixed on Israel's destruction.

This voting muscle was displayed, for instance, when the General Assembly's infamous "Zionism-is-racism" resolution was passed.

Judge Thomas Buergenthal of the United States gave the lone dissenting opinion in the case of Israel's wall. He wrote that the ICJ advisory opinion on the question was improper because "the court did not have before it the requisite factual bases for its sweeping findings; it should therefore have declined to hear the case."

As Buergenthal indicated, the ICJ failed to consider impartially the context in which Israel began erecting a security barrier. Without the unrelenting terror of elements of Palestinian society that embrace the creed of Osama bin Laden and Muslim fascists -- Hamas, Islamic Jihad and various other groups engaged in suicide bombings -- there would have been no reason for the wall.

In denying this, the ICJ lent credence to the politics of those whose ideology is fixed on Israel's destruction.

These elements, through their insidious influence on Arab-Muslim governments, can muster majority votes in the General Assembly and win support from world bodies under a cloak of respectability.

The consequences of such politics in fuelling violence, hate, resentment and anti-Semitism in the region and beyond will remain with us for a long time.

For critically thoughtful Muslims, and non-Muslims who care about such matters, Islam in practice has been perverted by the spread of fascist politics in the Arab-Muslim world. Muslims who resist fascism within their midst and seek a just peace with Israel are intimidated, coerced and, where possible, killed as was the one-time president of Egypt, Anwar Sadat.

Justice cannot be done to Palestinians by conceding to bigotry against Jews and Israel. And there will be no progress for democracy or economic development in the region, as Sadat realized, without unambiguous acceptance by Arabs and Muslims of Israel's right to exist peacefully.

Those who deny Israel's right to defend itself, behind the cover of the ICJ opinion, are lending support to the entrenched anti-Semitism of the Arab-Muslim world and abetting its resurgence elsewhere.

The court has subverted justice by misapplying the principle that two wrongs do not make a right -- a teaching of Jesus, who was both the founder of Christianity and a prophet of Islam.


http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/Columnists/London/Salim_Mansur/2004/07/21/550433.html

From Padraig, the bog trotting mic,

The reason why I posted this editorial in full was to show how a large bloc of voters in this assembly could take control of it's voting agenda and sway the UN to come out with such a preposterous boneheaded vote. Many of these rogue nations are themselves are guilty of vicious human rights abuses, so they are no human rights advocates as the vote outcome would predict.

The whole point that I disagree with is not so much the obvious anti semitism,  I can't see into their dark little hearts. It's that I disagree with any group of nations telling one lone nation (with very few allies) that it cannot take any precautions to defend itself against any transgressions. You might remember the arms embargo in FRY in the early nineties. It affected only those who required these weapons to defend themselves against the predictable outcome of ethnic cleansing.  The right of self defence is one basic to all people. The barrier/wall/fence is just another tool that they can and should use for their very survival, one not so deadly as pre-emptive rocket attacks against Hamas leadership, or the razing of possible camps housing the arms smuggling tunnels where all these supposed desperate young people are encouraged by their entrenched elders to go off to paradise via a chest load of semtex as long as it takes some 8 yr old kids in a bus. The very entrenched elders who only recently have had any retribution wrought unto them by those pre emptive strikes.

 

[Gunnar]

The UN has ceased to function as an organisation guaranteeing human rights.  It was started as an attempt to have a World Policeman, or World Court that would do these kind of things.

Then they invited Communist China and Russia into the group.  That was the death of the UN.  No communist country has ever stood for human rights, and no communist country ever will.  Since Russia was there at the inception, the handwriting was on the wall at that point.

The UN has been systematically anti-US, anti-Israeli (I won't say anti-Semite because, although they hate to be reminded of it, Palistinians are Semitic too) because the US never stands up for itself.  It constantly apologises for being a free country and tries to negotiate with its destroyers.  How, except by negotiation of this sort would Libya be on the Human Rights Council?  And you wonder why there seems to be a slant in the UN???

As a recent example:

Iraq has WMD.  We will go in to eliminate the threat.
UN protests, and is correctly treated as irrelevant by Bush.
Iraq invaded, conquered, straightened out.
Bush "apologizes" for trying to protect America - Iraq was really about getting rid of bad ol' Saddam, and bringing clean water and democracy to Iraqis, we're sorry.
Arab nations now see that the US doesn't really have a moral leg to stand on - they're apologizing!  Now the hand-wringing and petitions to the UN can start.
World vilifies the US, who constantly tries to tell the world about all the good things they're doing in Iraq:  it wasn't about defense, it's because we care!
World replies that you don't care enough.  You're just a bad guy.  US caves, gives concessions, negotiates with UN members and Arab league so that they'll like it a bit more.

If you go out to be liked, you won't be respected.  If you go out to be respected, you probably will be liked, but even if you're not, people don't mess with you.

==========
Notice the different policy they pursued in Afghanistan, and how the world is quiet about it.

Afghanistan has terrorists.  We will eliminate them.
UN, and even Arab countries can't fight them on this after 9-11.
US invades, conquers Afghanistan.  Kicks out unpopular government who allowed terrorists free reign, *incidentally* freeing a number of Afghanis.
US sets up replacement government which is friendly to the US.  Does not apologise.  Brings benefits of civilization to Afghanis because they are there, and because they can.  Does not attempt to justify their invasion in these terms, because they KNOW they were justified.
UN and the Liberal press keep their unsanitary sewers closed.

 

[winchable]

the UN set down land for an Israel and land for a Palestine. Arabs weren't happy

And why should they be?
The Arab inhabitants of the territory didn't commit the holocaust, which is what brought the issue of a Jewish homeland to the forground. Now they are expected to live in permanent refugee camps like dogs. I don't condone suicide bombing as an appropriate response to any percieved injustice, but, how can anyone expect the Palestinians to accept the situation? I don't disagree that the Jews deserve a homeland, whatever their reasons, but at the expense of another?

The UN Mandate and British partitioning is the reason we find the whole region in conlfict today.
You couldn't have put two more incompatable people in the same area. Looking back to the Philistines and Hebrews, they were in constant conflict. Each side slaughtering the other on more than one occasion, unlike today, the Philistines were essentially the dominant side.

No one here will be able to give a definitive answer about what to do, and if they can, your talents are at waste here...Go...mediate.
Neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians (and I'm not just talking the minority who would go so far as to kill themselves and others) are going to be perceptive to the idea of the other maintaining complete control over the entire region.
The best idea, I suppose, would be a 2 state scenario. But like any other conflict theres always a minority who refuse to think of the larger picture, and both sides have guilty parties when it comes to this.

Anyway, the wall, it's not such a bad idea in the short term. Keeps the bombers where they are. But I believe all it is going to do is enforce the idea that the Israelis are uncooperative with regards to finding a permanent solution to the problem.
Of course, it will provide for some great footage (Think Berlin wall coming down) when they do find a permanent solution and both groups can live side by side (yeahyeah...optimism) and they knock it down.

Hang on let me take off my rose-coloured specs.

The wall won't keep everyone out, the Israelis will have to step it up and use their nuclear program that they don't have. The focus of every terrorist cell in the world will be instantly brought to Israel..which will understandably get very pissed off. Endgame, Checkmate and the world comes to a fiery end which I will miss out on because I've built my bomb shelter like everyone else on my block.

I will emerge to a small rock floating through space...there will be one other person on that rock, who as it turns out, is a beautiful Israeli girl..we will mate, creating a species of Arab/Israeli children, who will at first get along by finally reconciling the two religions and races into one. Unfortunately there is a minute discrepancy between the two religions (One side believing I, am the father of the religion, while the other side believes my Israeli counterpart is the matriarch and hence the more important of the two....not that it matters we've been dead for hundreds of years) and a splinter religion is formed.

The two religions fight long after our smaller rock crashes into a large planet similar to the old earth. The two sides now have the ability to procreate and grow larger and larger, until thousands of years later, the two sides have been moved into a small country via poor diplomacy on behalf of a group of countries who have decided they are superior enough to decide where the originators of the entire planet should live. Hence we find them, after hundreds of years have past and hundreds of measures have been taken by each side to ensure the other one is as uncomfortable as the other. As I said, we find them in this small piece of land where they stand toe to toe ready to fight each other to the death...


Pardon the longwindedness, I should know better, but I started writing the little history of mankind and I just kept going.

 

[1feral1]

The UN is nothing  but a useless toothless tiger, and sadly I dont have much respect for the organisation anymore. There was a time not so long ago I thought differently.

The wall in Israel must remain (along with other extreme measures) until these hidious killings of the innocent general populus stop.

I am NOT pro Israel by any means, but look whats going on. Often I view both sides in this 'tit for tat' killing spree, as both being as bad as one another.

The wall is a fact of survival, and will be there for a long time yet.

Regards,

Wes

 

[K. Ash]

Che you must have been out of breath after that one...or your fingers must have been tired or something...ah you know what I mean.

 

[RCA]

Part of the issue is where the wall is. Israel has the right to defend its own land, but parts of the wall are occupying disputed land. The wall will only insight more violence, thus furfilling a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Palestinians are displaced people moved to make room for the creation of Israel (as a side note, the British considered the Israeli's terrorists back in the late 40's because if actions against them trying to force them out of the mandate).

It seems a lot consider the Israelis always in the right, and the Palestine's always in the wrong. It is not that simple. Suicide bombing of civilians is just as wrong as helicopter gunships firing into populated areas, eliminating designated targets, but killing bystanders as well.

One other point. Israel can ignore an UN resolution because its basis  is anti-semitic and they have the US's backing. However, wasn't that one of the reasons for going to war in Iraq?

 

[Tpr.Orange]

One of the things that has failed to be mentioned through out the news is what in fact the wall has already done for Israel. Most people find it offensive and that its on the disputed property but let me tell you, I was in Israel 6 weeks ago, The wall has brought terrorist attacks within   Israel down 65%. The wall has also made it harder for arms to be passed throught the westbank and gaza strip. Do i think the wall is effective heck ya... do i think Israel should take it down and risk more terrorist attacks and arms trading ...heck no...I think many people voicing their opinion on this topic haven't heard both sides. but at least for now you are educated a little bit better on the Israeli side of things before automatically going against Israel like many people have been. And yes i do understand that in the areas in which this wall is going up there are decent hard working Palestinians. Unfortunatley there are many more violent and offending People in those areas that need to be kept out.


well just a little rant.

 

[Brad Sallows]

Were the Arab inhabitants of the new state of Israel displaced, or did they displace themselves?

Did the Arab inhabitants of the new state of Israel make war on the new state, or did neighbouring countries make that decision?

Has the point of the 55 Years War been to resettle the refugees or to exterminate Israel?

 

[jutes85]

Were the Arab inhabitants of the new state of Israel displaced, or did they displace themselves?

Did the Arab inhabitants of the new state of Israel make war on the new state, or did neighbouring countries make that decision?

Has the point of the 55 Years War been to resettle the refugees or to exterminate Israel?

1. When the Arab nations declared war against Israel (Jewish Settlements), they (Arabs) promissed that Palistinians that they would quickly exterminate the Jews and expel them. This did not happen however. The Arabs that stayed in the Jewish settlements were then granted full citizenships and a life inside Israel. The Arabs that left, settled into refugee camps or the Gaza Strip or West Bank. So basically, those who left, screwed themselves over, those who stayed, lived a "peaceful" life inside Israel.

2. Israel never declared war on any Arab country. The surrounding countries declared war on Israel in 1967, known as the Six Day war. Basically, Israel defeated them in Six Days and took even more land in a strong offensive.

3. For the past 55 years, the Arab's objective was always to exterminate Israelis and Jews. Israel always wanted peace, however, the refugee problem was not their main problem.


If the Arabs (Palistinians) put their weapons down, there will be peace.
If the Israelis put their weapons down, there will be no more Israel.

 

[Tpr.Orange]

If the Arabs (Palistinians) put their weapons down, there will be peace.
If the Israelis put their weapons down, there will be no more Israel.

That right there is the most bang on thing i have heard anyone say in regards to this issue KUDOS jutes that is 100% correct.