Sophia,
I appreciate your reply and your very civil tone. I respect you for responding and I think we probably have much more in common in our thinking than is readily apparent in this first communication. The fact that you also want peace is an important issue.

I don't deny that there are problems in many countries and less tolerance than there should be for those who are different. Of course, I am upset and saddened at the government of Iran's treatment of Bahai's, but I have no hatred of the Iranian people. It is the government that sets policies.

I wish that you had been at the counter-walk so that you could have seen that our efforts at silence and peaceful demonstration were thwarted by name calling, kicking, attempts to block our banner and to tear it from our hands (luckily, I had tied the banner to our wrists with ribbons). You probably would have been a voice of moderation.

My dearest wish would be to sit down and have a discussion in a civil and open-minded way and find the commonalities we share in an effort toward peace and reconciliation.

Also, I wonder if you have been to the West Bank? My opinions before I went there to see it for myself were very different from the opinions I hold today. I also wonder if you have read Ilan Pappe's book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, or The Other Side of Israel by Susan Nathan. Pappe's book takes many of its facts from Ben Gurion's own diary and from de-classified military reports.

No land is perfect, no people are blameless, but thank God we have the right to speak out in the U.S.

By the way, I do not speak as a representative of Code Pink or any other organization. My responses are my personal views and are not meant to represent an organization's policy. These are my deeply held moral beliefs based on reseach and first-hand experience.

This is key to Felgran's perversion of historical record:

"I know that when Hamas sends crude rockets into Southern Israel they are doing only what the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto did to defy those who would do them harm."

What gradually emerges as a tactic from the rabid Left is this type of softcore Holocaust denial, this sort of trivialization of who the Nazis were and who their Jewish resisters or victims
were.

Here is a description of Warsaw ghetto reality and context:

"Dr. Edelman was one of a handful of young leaders who in April 1943 led a force of 220 poorly armed young Jewish men and women in a desperate and hopeless struggle against the Germans.

He was 20 when the Germans overran Poland in 1939, and in the months that followed he watched as they turned his Warsaw neighborhood into a ghetto, cutting it off from the rest of the city with brick walls, barbed wire and armed sentries. By early 1942, as many as 500,000 Jews had been herded into the area.

In worsening conditions of hunger and brutality, the ghetto residents, wearing the obligatory Star of David armbands, were forced to sew military uniforms and produce other war materials.

Then, starting on July 22, 1942, the ghetto population began to shrink ominously. Each day, armed Germans and the Ukrainians serving with them prodded and wedged 5,000 to 6,000 Jews into long trains, which departed from the Umschlagplatz, a square at the southern end of the ghetto. At times they lured people onto the trains with loaves of brown bread. The Germans said the trains were going to factories where work conditions were better."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/03/world/europe/03edelman.html?_r=1

Here is what Gaza looks like:

http://contentious-centrist.blogspot.com/2008/09/lauren-booths-concentration-camp-chic.html

________

I agree that freedom of speech must be defended even when its practitioners are reprehensible individuals.

Two examples come to mind, illustrating both the ugliness of Felgran's march and the principle of freedom of expression which is a foundational stone of democracies:

The first is the famous Nazi/Skokie Conflict:

http://www.nytimes.com/1981/11/17/arts/tv-skokie-nazis-march-in-illinois.html

The second is the march organized by "Right-wing activists Itamar Ben-Gvir and Baruch Marzel... in Umm al-Fahm, Israel's largest Arab city on December 15th.

In late October the High Court of Justice agreed to allow Ben-Gvir and Marzel to lead a march through Umm al-Fahm in mid-November. The march will not take place in the center of town, but will pass through adjacent areas.

The march still must gain approval of the chief of Israeli police before it will be allowed to proceed. If it is approved, it will require the deployment of large police forces in order to secure the participants.

Leaders of the Umm al-Fahm municipality have vowed to not allow the parade to happen, even if it gains police approval.

Peace Now General Secretary Yariv Oppenheimer blasted the move, saying "the miserable decision to allow this racist march embarrasses Israeli democracy."

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1042222.html

In either case it is clear what kind of values and sentiments inform Felgran's experimentation with freedom and intimidation.

Sweet, sweet Kathy. Your naivity is overwhelming.

Ilan Pappe? Read Michael Oren. Benny Morris.

Your self-education seems to have many holes as your original comment was filled with innacuracies and outright lies.

Go forth and learn some more.

You sound like an earnest young woman who only wants the best for the world and make it filled with sweetness and light and little unicorns. Well, so do we (well, without the unicorns, that is). The difference is we know that it takes strength to make peace and that turning the other cheek may work fine for the West; the Moslem world is another story.

Thank you, Noga, well said.

Kathy, I wish we could sit down and talk.

This will have to do in the meantime.

First, I regret to say I haven't been to the West Bank but I have friends (Israelis) who have and they concur it's a mess in some regards.

It's important to realize however that this is the result of a long continuum of bad choices, not least of which was the rejection of the UN Partition Plan followed by the 1948 war and subsequently the deliberate ethnic cleansing of Jews from Judea and Samaria and the Old City of Jerusalem - where notably they had been resident for 3400 years.

Then, Jordan annexed the land. There was no attempt by any Arab body to create a Palestinian Arab state.

In fact the term "Palestinian" referred to the Jews. It was only later when groups like PLO, created to "liberate" Israel BEFORE the 1967 war and therefore to destroy it, that the term "Palestinian" came in popular usage to mean a separate group of Arab people.

It is true however that some local people have referred to themselves as "Filistini" for a long time - the idea of Arab unity or an Arab nation is a recent construct I think.

Regardless, in 1948 the refugees from the war were specifically and deliberately referred to as "Arabs", members of the "Arab nation" and included people who'd only lived in the territories for 2 years.

This, like UNWRA, is unique to the Palestinian Arabs - the hundreds of millions of refugees from other conflicts are considered settled after a generation and are only considered refugees from a place if they've been there for a generation.

Two years is unheard of in any other context and it points to the particularly dangerous and politicized nature of the Arab/Israeli conflict, which can be seen as the continuation of a long war against the Jewish people.

That's really the only thing that explains the exceptional handling of the Palestinian Arab people and their continuing presence in "refugee camps" 60 years after the initial war and the refusal of other Arab states to accept them as citizens.

After the 1967 war the Israelis tried to get people out of the West Bank camps, improve conditions and build homes for them but they were told to desist.

As I mentioned above, the Arab nations rejected any attempts at normal relations and refused to accept the land in return for peaceful relations. Thus matters gradually worsened and people in the camps bore children and grandchildren and greatgrandchildren, all raised on a sense of grievance.

In Arab states like Lebanon they are separate, living essentially in ghettos to this day and many blame them for various catastrophes like starting the Lebanese Civil War as well as counterattacks from Israel.

The fact that the Jewish refugees from the Arab world are essentially unknown, lost everything also, received no aid except from their fellow Jews, somehow hasn't entered this equation, nor do people understand much about the violence and threats against their lives or their unequal status under Christianity and Islam.

This is however part of the essential backdrop of the Arab/Israeli wars; it explains a mindset, a fear of "the other" and a greatly underestimated religious bigotry that prevails to this day, and which continues to contribute to violence and makes real peace and even civil government impossible - look again, for example, at Iraq and Afghanistan and at the uneasy situation in Lebanon.

In any case, I think the Palestinians have suffered doubly because they were initially victimized by war but then have been maintained almost as a weapon, a weapon against the very existence of Israel.

The camps in Lebanon for example are hosts to all sorts of radicalization and incitement, much coming via Syria, some having originated in the former Soviet Union as a weapon against the West.

They are heavily armed and have been launching pads for attacks on Israel and also against the Lebanese, and in return have been viciously attacked and even bombed by the Lebanese Army and of course Lebanon itself was finally invaded by Israel in an attempt to drive away the PLO, which had also attacked Jordan.

Nahr al Bared in Northern Lebanon was literally destroyed by the Lebanese Army a couple of years ago in order to catch or kill some 700 militants. Approximately 30,000 people were then homeless.

The Lebanese don't want these people, though they emanate from only a few miles south, are Sunni Arabs like the Lebanese Sunni Arabs - yet they fear them, discriminate against them economically and politically. Nobody has a clue how to disarm them, they believe they will one day retake Israel.

Apparently nobody has figured out what will happen to the 7 million people who now live in Israel. Or worse, they know exactly what will happen to them.

The leaders of Hezbollah have said as much and this is true of Hamas as well and the verbiage from various Arab leaders has been frightening since before the 1948 war. Taken in context with the Shoah and thousands of years of other horrors, this must be taken seriously and it helps explain Israeli security measures (I hope).

The fact is, there's a tendency to try and minimize this rhetoric, minimize the threat, refer to the rockets as if they were toys, and totally underestimate the effects of terrorism, war and exterminationist rhetoric on the people of Israel and this is deeply upsetting, it seems to reflect the idea that their lives are not worth living and not worth saving.

It also seems to be setting them up for a catastrophe, another catastrophe like the Shoah, and for well-meaning Western leftists to participate in such a travesty is shocking and helps, I think, explain the response to demonstrations against Israel particularly in Jewish areas on Shabbat!

As for Ilan Pappe - there is a lot of controversy surrounding his work (to say the least). He stands accused of misintepreting facts, indeed of creating facts, that are unsupported by any other form of documentation. YOu should do some reading about him before accepting at face value what he says.

His claim that "Plan Dalet" was implemented in order to expel the Palestinian Arabs is untrue as far as I know.

In fact Plan Dalet was a last ditch plan to save the Yishuv which was being badly beaten in the run-up to the 1948 war. In effect a civil war broke out when the UN Partition Plan was revealed. As stated above the Jews accepted, the Arabs including elements of the Palestinian Arabs refused. Violence ensued, including atrocities committed by both sides.

Most significantly, Jerusalem, not included in the Partition Plan, was cut off from the coastal plain and under seige. 100,000 Jews lived there, 1/6 of the Jews in Mandate Palestine, and they were starving and under attack. The roads were fraught with danger, civilians were under attack and the British had disarmed and blockaded the Jews.

To the best of my knowledge Plan Dalet was a limited evacuation of a few Arab towns intended only to shorten the defensive lines and make it possible for the Yishuv to make a stand. They were in danger of losing the war before the war even began and only a near-miracle saved the people of Jerusalem.

You should know by the way that this miracle, the "Burma Road", could not have come to pass without Arab assistance.

The notion that all the Arabs were against the Jews is false. Many remained and are citizens to this day and some serve in the IDF. The Druze are drafted like the Jews.

I've read letters of prominent Zionist rabbis, notes from the 1930's and '40's, and nowhere in any of them did I see anything amounting to an intention to harm or transfer or disappear the Arabs. This had been considered by some of the British.

At worst, the rabbinim and other Jewish leaders were naive. They underestimated the drive for Arab nationalism, they dismissed it and didn't understand it, and they didn't understand why the local people didn't embrace Socialism and modernity and an opportunity to live in a modern democratic state. They totally underestimated the depth of tradition and they missed completely the meaning of religion and the Christian and Muslim point of view about Jews, especially liberated female Jews.

There were and are more extreme points of view among the Jewish community. These did not evolve from the ideals of Zionism but rather from the bitter experience, I think, of violence in the Yishuv. Some religious ideals though are more intractable. The idea of carving up the land of Israel is anathema to many people. At some point, religious Muslims, Jews and Christians will have to reach a point of mutual tolerance and respect on these issues. Religious Jews would probably consent to live as citizens of an Arab state on the West Bank if they were well treated.

Right now I don't think this is possible. I think they'd be killed.

Do you think I am wrong? Read the incitement from Sabeel, from Orthodox preachers in Jerusalem, from radical Muslims and other Palestinian leaders. Palestinian nationalism has become a religious cause and the settlers also think they have a holy cause.

This is difficult to deal with in real world terms. It can be done if people fall back on the unity of their love for the same G*d but not otherwise, not if any one group demonizes and fears the others.

Returning to history - know this also: the Arab population, far from having been displaced by the Jews, grew enormously during the Mandate Era. This was partially due to immigration because of the improved economy but also to better medical care that saved the lives of countless people who'd have died of childhood diseases, in childbirth or of other mishaps without Western (British and Jewish) medical care.

So as you see the picture is much more complex than that presented by certain highly controversial academics, whose work is challenged by other, very serious historians, by people who were THERE and by people whose philosophy formed the basis of Zionism.

I think this is important for an essential reason besides the reason of fact: it is necessary to pull the stinger from the scorpion's tail before people can reconcile. As long as people are taught to believe that they were deliberately harmed there can be no reconciliation, period. This is true also of the Jewish population which fears the Arabs.

It's essential also that people not regard extremist views, including those of Hamas, Pappe or the most radical settlers, as indicative of some broad concensus let alone "truth".

There are extremists, there were in the past - let them not destroy the future of us all, but let us try to deal with facts that can be supported and views that support the possibility of a better future!

Such extremism and distortions of history and intent belie the fact of Jewish/Arab cooperation which was common in the past and which is ongoing even today, and in which lie the seeds of a hopeful future.

So, going forward, I think it's important to see the West Bank, the camps, etc, in the context of a decades-long struggle marred by good intentions, evil intentions, misunderstandings, bigotry, fear - but mostly, mostly it's the result of war. The West Bank is a war zone essentially. It's officially a "disputed territory" and it's being disputed. The UN bears some responsibility for this, but also Arab leaders who wouldn't accept the land in return for recognition of Israel and peaceful relations; the fact that people live in refugee camps after 60 years, only a few miles from the Mediterranean coast, is insane and it is cruel. It is wrong and it's cruel that people wouldn't let the Israelis build housing for the people. It's wrong that the surrounding Arab states, besides Jordan, wouldn't naturalize the Palestinians who fled, maintaining them instead as a weapon.

It's wrong IMO when Israelis have exploited the weak, it's wrong that some of us have fallen prey to fear and bigotry against Arabs simply because they're Arabs, and they we haven't tried to learn more about our own Oriental roots.

I think it's important that people not believe ipso facto in the idea that Israel is some kind of an evil, nor build on misojudaic constructs, nor ignore the violence that menaced the Yishuv in the past or Israel today. It is important to recognize that revisionist Zionism, the "Iron Wall," the arming of Jews in Mandate Palestine, stemmed not from a philosophy but as a reaction against violence in the Mandate as well as the war on the Jews in Europe. They overlapped, you see. British antisemites helped inflamed violence against Mandate Jews, radical Arab elements sided with Hitler, moderate Arabs were victimized and war ensued.

The threat to the people of Israel remains and as long as this is true the Palestinians will have no decent future either. Somebody has to break this chain. I don't see how promoting the most radical of anti-Israel texts and canards will help, I just don't.

And, I think it's extremely important that people view Israel in the context of the broader Arab League, including North Africa and the Middle East, as well as the deeply distressed and violence-torn region including Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran.

Finally, I think it's vital that human rights activists pick the right targets.

It's significant that tiny, totally open Israel is the target and not the horror of women in bags or the hanging of gays or the lashing and imprisonment of rape victims, the repression of ideas and creativity, the burning of music shops, the banning of dance, the punishment of journalists - the lack of freedom everywhere, the ongoing genocides - the mass rapes in Africa - suicide terror in Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan...

Is this because Israel is an easy target and the darkness is not?

Firstly, Sophia you should mention the the Turks pulled a lot of those "Bosnians", they had forcibly converted to Islam, out of their homes and shoved them into "Palestine".

Secondly, I met some elderly folk who made it to Israel after being kicked out of Morocco in 1948 and they showed me the trees they had planted on the slopes of Givat Hamore, while living in tin shacks and tents down in the valley. How they literally broke holes into the rock to put earth and planted their trees.
As for the state of the land one should read "The Innocents Abroad" by Mark Twain:

There is not a solitary village throughout its whole extent [valley of Jezreel] -- not for 30 miles in either direction... One may ride ten miles hereabouts and not see ten human beings. ... For the sort of solitude to make one dreary, come to Galilee ... Nazareth is forlorn ... Jericho lies a moldering ruin ... Bethlehem and Bethany, in their poverty and humiliation... untenanted by any living creature... A desolate country whose soil is rich enough, but is given over wholly to weeds ... a silent, mournful expanse ... a desolation ... We never saw a human being on the whole route ... Hardly a tree or shrub anywhere. Even the olive tree and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil had almost deserted the country ... Of all the lands there are for dismal scenery Palestine must be the prince. The hills barren and dull, the valleys unsightly deserts [inhabited by] swarms of beggars with ghastly sores and malformations. Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes ... desolate and unlovely ...

Yes, the Turks charged a tax for any tree with the result that apart from the odd olive the rest disappeared.
After 1918 the Jews cleared the swamps and removed malaria from the daily diet, broke rocks, planted trees and started farming the desert; and the British started bringing in Syrians and Egyptians as they parceled out the rest of the Turkish caliphate.

Ilan Pappe, that revisionist historian who twisted anything he could get out of Ben Gurion's writings to prove his point and succeeded in having the theses of some of his doctoral students thrown out for fictional history.
Imagine being awarded a doctorate and then having it revoked after other historians complained?
He took umbrage at the University's actions and left the country in high dudgeon.
Benny Morris responsible for some of the revisionism has gone back on a lot that he wrote at the time and that puts Pappe's work in an even poorer light.

Hello, Cynic,

Yes, thank you for pointing that out about the Bosnians.

There were also Turkmen, Kurds, others from around the Empire - hardly indogenes of "historic Palestine".

Mark Twain is eloquent is he not? Yet, some would have us return to this desert of a past, to desolation, poverty and humiliation - why?

Does it satisfy, in the West, some vision of a "biblical" past?

Or is the awfulness of the past preferable to the present day reality of modern Israel?

If so - why?

Hello to all,
It is late, I'm tired, I cannot absorb all of the info right now, but I want to go on record with 2 very important things:

1. I do not deny the Holocaust...I just don't think it should be used as an excuse for doing an injustice to another group of people. Never again means never again to anybody.

2. I absolutely condemn anything that David Rolde does, any sign he carries, any message he sends. If he is at any event that I am at, I distance myself from him. I had not known that he was planning to join the AAPER walk, or I would have asked him not to come. He is a hate-monger and I have told him that his methods and his message are abhorrant to me. Please mark that well...David and I are as far apart on issues as the sun is from the earth.

kathy felgran,

Here is a post on you.

http://www.solomonia.com/blog/archive/2009/10/whats-become-of-the-jewish-zionist-press-1/

You are SO BRAVE to not deny the Holocaust!

If you could only get your islamofascist friends to not deny the Holocaust too, stop idolizing hitler, stop idolizing Jew killers, stop idolizing al qada, stop dehumanizing Jews as "the sons of pigs and monkeys".

by the way mr cynic.
amnesty international says that there is a problems also concerning water in plaestian ( you know those sort of humnatrian reports that condemnd killing 1400 palestenians in gaza for 13 soldiers,.. and 1000 lebanease for 2 soldiers....you know)

so can you ask this morrocan jew (or jew morrocan...whatever comes first ) that was kicked fom moroco did he bring water with him to israel to justify that jews get 700liters per day of water for 200 to plaestenians. because maybe jews also bought water with them to palestian, or they use more water to make the world greener. because your insight is so importent.

http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/report/israel-rations-palestinians-trickle-water-20091027

arabian, don't you realize that MOSES, who arab thieves call Mussa, was a JEW.

Moses, aka Mussa, lived BEFORE your false prophet, your murderous prophet muhammed.

The JEWS were in ISRAEL before your so-called "palestinians" created themselves in 1965.

The Middle East has NEVER been all muslim, and will NEVER BE all muslim.

When will saudi arabia provide restitution to the Jews of Medina who were massacred by your barbaric prophet mohammed?

‘Ms.’ Felgran:

You are a hypocrite and a liar. The Jewish community, including the well-intentioned souls who responded to your comments, has been much too tolerant of your antics. That time has come to an end.

Pro-Israel activists have been dealing with you and your ilk for years. We are sick of your anti-semitism, your harassment, and your lies.

You compare us to Nazis yet claim you want civilized dialogue. You interrupt our private celebrations and then scream when we march along a public sidewalk. You claim to want peace, yet support those who murder Jews in terror attacks. You pretend to support ‘tolerance’, yet deliberately schedule a march through a Jewish neighborhood on Shabbat, past synagogues, in an area where many Holocaust survivors live. You say you are Jewish, but you are not. You do not deserve one iota of sympathy or respect.

To catalogue just a few of your deceptions: AAPER – the organization you represent – is not for ‘equality’. It is for the elimination of Israel as a Jewish state. Your literature and website demand that descendants of Arabs who attacked their Jewish neighbors (and lost) during Israel’s War of Independence now be allowed to claim property they abandoned over sixty years ago, whether they actually owned title to that property or not. The admitted purpose of this attempted ‘land grab’ is to destroy Israel as a Jewish state. Of course, you make no mention of the corresponding rights of the 850,000 Jews who were expelled penniless from Arab nations during the same time. This is not ‘equality’ – it is a deliberate attempt to destroy Israel through the one-sided application of ‘rights’ which have never, at any time in history, been granted to any group of people. You don’t want equality, you want to appropriate land, homes and businesses which are not and never have been yours.

Code Pink-Boston also supports the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state. Speeches at CP’s October 17th rally called for undoing “sixty years” of Jewish presence in Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Netanya. Numerous CP members (including leaders Marilyn Levin, David Rolde, and Sara Roche-Mahdi) have stated in writing that Israel should not exist. Your claim that you ‘don’t want to destroy Israel’ is proven false by your own statements. In fact you very much do wish to destroy Israel; you just don’t want to admit it.

Your denial of responsibility for choosing the time and place of the march is similarly false. You are well aware that Saturday was chosen to make it more difficult for observant Jews to protest. As you admit that you chose the route because you are familiar with the area, you surely knew of the many synagogues on Beacon and adjoining streets that the march would pass, as well as the many elderly Holocaust survivors among Brookline residents. CP’s discussion board gleefully discusses the effect of Palestinian flags on a “Jewish neighborhood on the Sabbath”. Having already admitted that the time and place of the ‘silent’ march was to harass and intimidate Jews, it is ludicrous for you to now attempt to say you have no responsibility for that decision.

The description of the march is also a fabrication. No one was kicked – I was present when the alleged victim complained and there was no one near him. I do, however, have a written admission that your group ‘pushed’ and ‘shoved’ the pro-Israel supporters, and tried to pull the banner from our hands. This was also mentioned in the Jewish Advocate article and comments, which you certainly read. To claim now that it pro-Israel supporters who did this is the reverse of the truth (as well as being physically impossible-the ‘Palestinian’ flags were held above head level, unlike the Israeli flag which was carried as a banner). If events actually happened as you claim, why did you wait until now – over two weeks after the march and our reports of your physical assaults - to say so?

There are numerous other fabrications in your comment. You told the Jewish Advocate that you are a Jew - another lie. You claim you behaved civilly during the march – another lie - I was present and heard your invective towards the pro-Israel marchers, including me. Several of us were threatened with beatings by various AAPERS if we did not “get out of [their] way”. You heard all this and more, yet never did I hear a word of protest from you or anyone else from AAPER.

Your feeble attempt to blame Israel for years of Arab terrorism and hate constitutes another lie. I’m not going to delve into history here, there are other forums for that and I have better uses for my time. Yet is instructive to note that we have never heard a work from Code Pink, AAPER, or any other pro-Arab organization about Arab support of terrorism, Arab anti-semitism, the mistreatment of minority religions (including Christians) in Arab countries, the Arab suppression of women, the teaching of hatred in Arab schools and in government-controlled media, the Arab campaign of genocide in the Sudan, slavery in Arab nations, or any other or the numerous violations of human rights which regularly occur in Gaza, the ‘West Bank’, and every other part of the Arab world. The theme of ‘silence’ for your antagonistic walk was appropriate – you are silent about all of this and more.

All in all, your so-called ‘march’ was nothing more than an attempt to recreate the infamous bid of American Nazi Party to march through heavily Jewish Skokie, Illinois. And just like in Skokie, your march failed. Perhaps you will learn something from this and decide to spend your energy fighting the real human rights abuses of the world – in Darfur, in Saudi Arabia, in Afghanistan, and in other nations where children are enslaved, where women are beaten and stoned to death for being raped, and where ‘honor murders’ are a daily occurrence. Or you could choose to fight the very real abuses of human rights by Hamas, whose murderous thugs have killed far more Arabs than any action by Israel. Those people are crying out for your help. What is your response?

Sophia,

Does it satisfy, in the West, some vision of a "biblical" past?

According to David Solway Winston Churchill's understanding of hatred of the Jews was:
Western civilization’s revolt against its own central values as manifested in art, science and political and religious institutions.

Let's face up to a fact that many of the reasons ascribed for Jew hatred is pure projection.
The double standards applied not just to Israelis but to Jews in general, be it in business deals or whatever is obvious when one sees the same behaviour exhibited by the other, glossed over.
Just look at the hypocrisy of the "human rights" jingoists.

Several thoughts, re Kerry Hurwitz, to Arabian, and to Ms. Felgran:

Well Kerry Hurwitz' comment puts this all in a different light. I'd sure like to hear a response from Ms. Felgran.

It's particularly interesting to me that a route through a neighborhood where Holocaust victims live featured Palestinian flags, on Shabbat. Then we get a comment that defending the Saturday march along the lines, "the world doesn't stop on your sabbath".

Ouch.

I can't imagine a march protesting any of the 56, 57 Muslim states on Friday, past a mosque.

Can you?

Arabian, with the Bosnians: I think there were people from Bosnia uprooted by the Sultan as well. Apparently that's a separate issue from the people you mention.

I'd like to hear more about these people, the sharkas, if you have any links or can recommend some books?

Also to Arabian, about the water: water is a very serious issue.

I can't speak to the AI allegations because I don't know the facts. If it's true I hope remedies are found.

However, I do know this: there are mudflats in the Euphrates because of dams in Turkey. There is a terrible drought in Syria. There is a real scarcity of fresh water throughout North Africa and the Middle East and much of Asia, further east, is desert too as you know.

We suffer from drought in the US also, forests are burning and long term the health of our farmlands is a matter of concern.

Water is more precious than gold and we all have to work together - TOGETHER - to ensure that regions which have water can help pipe it to regions that do not, that dams don't do more harm than good and that desalinization plants go online ASAP.

Meanwhile types of farming and grazing that
destroy topsoil and waste water should be examined. In America, improper farming early in the 20th century nearly destroyed our topsoil and caused the "dustbowl" during the Depression.

The Sahara is growing every year. The Soviets destroyed the Aral Sea in order to plant cotton in Uzbekistan and Kazahkstan. The oceans themselves are choking on pollution.

Possibly there is water deep in the earth and if possible, wells should be dug to access it.

There's a pipeline project in the works to take water from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea and this requires cooperation between Israel, the PA and Jordan.

It's important that international coordination like this progress immediately and not just in the Middle East. Huge regions of Africa also suffer drought and people die, enormous numbers of people suffer and die of famine and thirst.

There's drought in the US as well. Afghanistan used to be fertile, now the soil is saline. This is from past irrigation apparently, and although the Soviets tried to reclaim the soil they were unsuccessful. This might be an issue for the lower Colorado River too, one of America's richest agricultural regions

So let's work together because we are all in deep trouble.

In any case it isn't right to blame the Jews from Morocco for a shortage of water in the Middle East. They fled for their lives and the desert long predated their arrival. And, they came from Israel in the first place.

As to the increase in Jewish population in Israel, the Arab population has boomed.

The Palestinian population, at current birthrates, doubles every 15 years. The Egyptian population, every 19.

There are 300 million Arabs in the Middle East, less than 6 million Jews.

I think humanity as a whole has to take a good look at the environment, try to save it and share our resources as best we can, and find ways to use the huge salt water reserves in the oceans at least to water crops. We need to continue efforts to reclaim soil that's suffering from salt deposits. The Aswan Dam has caused trouble in this regard as well as messing up the ecology of the Nile.

I think we need to responsible about the size of our families, considering the impact on the planet and this includes all the other living species on the globe as well as each other.

Blaming our brothers for stealing water (or land, or whatever) is absurd in this day and age when we can see our tiny planet from outer space. We're pretty much alone out here and we need each other!

***

As to the Ms. Felgran's comment that the Holocaust shouldn't be used as an excuse to commit injustices: I don't think it is being used but I'll grant the point anyway.

Nobody should use events in the past to justify injustice in the present day.

This goes double for the Naqba.

The victims of the Shoah are dead. Millions of people were torn from their homes, humiliated, stripped of their hair, enslaved and murdered - by the millions. After they were dead their gold teeth were extracted. Their hair was used for mattresses.

The victims of the Naqba fled a war zone. They lost their homes, their communities. They kept their lives.

Regardless of the vast differences between Shoah and Naqba, I think it's time for the victims of the past (if they can still speak that is) to speak on behalf of the people living now, on behalf of the young people and their future children, and help us find the wisdom and compassion to move forward - together - we have all suffered enough.

Let's give the children of the future a better chance, a better world, and bury this sword between us.

Great posts, Sally and Nappy Head. You both know how to call it.

Melanie Phillips has an excellent column about how the Arabs treat each other - which is much, much worse than anything Israel has ever done. Her post refers to British-funded terrorists, but the U.S. funds the same terror organizations.

(from Britian's Mail on Sunday):
Yesterday a senior official from the semi-autonomous Palestinian Authority (PA), which runs the West Bank and its security agencies, admitted for the first time that torture, beatings and extra-judicial killings have been rife for the past two years, with hundreds of torture allegations and at least four murders in custody, the most recent in August.

... Support for the new department follows the disclosure by The Mail on Sunday in January that Britain spends £20million a year funding the forces responsible for the abuse. Most of their victims are accused of involvement with Hamas, the radical Islamist party that seized power through violence in the Gaza Strip in 2007. The Palestinian Authority in the West Bank is controlled by the rival Fatah party.

... In the region’s largest city, Nablus, Nasser al-Shaer, a former Manchester academic who was deputy prime minister in the short-lived Hamas Palestinian Authority government elected in 2006, said many of those released from detention in recent months were telling the same story – of torture, including beatings, being suspended from the ceiling and electric shocks.

Fatah are of course the party that Britain and the US represent as 'moderate' and legitimate partners in the 'peace process'.

Might we now see moves by 'human rights' activists to arraign British officials and politicians for having funded the torture of Palestinians by Palestinians? And if not, why not?

As Tom Gross observes:

Meanwhile, as Palestinian detainees are being tortured to death in Palestinian Authority jails, Palestinian prisoners (including convicted terrorists) in custody in Israel are studying for Israeli university degrees (at Israeli taxpayers’ expense) and also given cable TV, IPods and dental treatment – but international human rights groups criticize Israel, whose deputy foreign minister and former ambassador to Washington Danny Ayalon narrowly escaped being arrested in Britain for ‘war crimes’ yesterday.

And the world community that routinely and harshly condemns Israel even when Israel hasn’t done anything wrong, has failed to condemn the Katyusha rocket fired from Lebanon which narrowly missed an Israeli town last night. It is a strange world.

What is your response, Kathy Felgan?

You are not Jewish, Felgan. There is no such thing as a "cultural Jew", any more than there are "cultural Catholics" or "cultural Bahais". Eating a bagel does not give you license to speak for the Jewish people, which is what you claim to do. Once you convert to another religion, you are no longer a Jew. Being descended from Jews does not make you a Jew once you have renounced that religion. That's the way Nazis thought; apparently you have more than one thing in common with them. And you lose the right to claim it's your "personal business" when you lie about your religion in public.

You don't stand for "equality", what you want is to put an end to Israel and all that implies. And it is the height of arrogance to demand "civility" when you deliberately desecrate a neighborhood of survivors on a holy day.

You have no answer to the contradictions that were pointed out or to the questions you were asked. That’s because your thinking is wrong and your beliefs are fueled by bias and misguided emotions. If you used half of the time you spend accusing others in examining yourself, the world would be a far better place.

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