"a land ripped apart and scarred, the lives of its people blighted. Gaza is decaying under the weight of continued devastation, unable to function normally ...The decline and disablement of Gaza's economy and society have been deliberate, the result of state policy -- consciously planned, implemented and enforced ... And just as Gaza's demise has been consciously orchestrated, so have the obstacles preventing its recovery."posted by adamvasco at 2:07 AM on March 24, 2010 [5 favorites]
HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON, U.S. secretary of state: New construction in East Jerusalem or the West Bank undermines that mutual trust and endangers the proximity talks that are the first step toward the full negotiations that both sides say they want and need.Bibi: Israel's Dick Cheney
And it exposes daylight between Israel and the United States that others in the region hope to exploit. It undermines America's unique ability to play a role, an essential role, in the peace process.
After watching Netanyahu's government over the past year, I have concluded that he is actually not serious about the Iranian threat. If tackling the rise of Iran were his paramount concern, would he have allowed a collapse in relations with the United States, the country whose military, political, and economic help is indispensable in confronting this challenge? If taking on Iran were his central preoccupation, wouldn't he have subordinated petty domestic considerations and done everything to bolster ties with the United States? Bibi likes to think of himself as Winston Churchill, warning the world of a gathering storm. But he should bear in mind that Churchill's single obsession during the late 1930s was to strengthen his alliance with the United States, whatever the costs, concessions, and compromises he had to make...An Apartheid State
Iran's rise has also placed Israel in the unusual position of being on the same strategic side as the major Arab states, as well as the United States. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan are all deeply worried about the hegemonic ambitions of Iran, particularly if it obtains nuclear weapons. A core Israeli objective should be to strengthen this tacit alliance. What the moderate Arab states ask for, again and again, publicly and privately, is that Israel make some progress—even if only for appearances' sake—on the peace process. The single biggest challenge for these countries is that Iran has appropriated the Palestinian cause, which makes it difficult for, say, the Egyptian government to take a public stand that is hostile to Tehran. Lowering the temperature on this issue would benefit the Arab states, strengthen their will to stand up against Iran, and contribute directly to Israeli security.
But Israel right now appears to be largely unconcerned about the dangers that gather, or at least unwilling to make any real concessions to deal with them... Over the past decade, in various public forums, Arab statesmen led by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia have declared that they would be willing to normalize relations with Israel if the Palestinian problem were resolved. The Palestinians in the West Bank have extremely good leadership, with President Mahmoud Abbas committed to a peaceful path to a two-state solution and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad committed to a competent, clean, and effective Palestinian government that focuses on economic growth, not violence. Yes, there are problems—Hamas being the central one—but compared with any previous point in their history, the Palestinians are being led wisely.
Meanwhile, the central problem persists: Israel rules more than 3 million Palestinians who will never become citizens of Israel and yet do not have their own state. As they multiply, Israel's status as a democracy becomes more and more complex; the country looks more and more like an island of rich Israelis set in a sea of Palestinian serfs. If gradually the two-state solution becomes impossible to implement—because of Israeli settlements, Palestinian rejectionism, whatever—Israel's own Arab population will threaten the state's Jewish character, and be even further radicalized. Israel will be left with only the institutions of government, having undermined both its democracy and its Jewish character...
Israel has adopted a purely military response to these security threats but throughout history, the most durable security has come from political arrangements that reduce or eliminate external threats. Bibi Netanyahu makes bold speeches about protecting Israel but when it comes time to act, he has cobbled together a coalition of extreme parties, made concessions to them on crucial issues, given them free rein to undermine Israel's broader security, and pandered to his public's most populist instincts—all to ensure than he can sit in the prime minister's chair.
"Approximately 90 percent of its work is in social, welfare, cultural, and educational activities," writes the Israeli scholar Reuven Paz.That's nine babies for every unit of bathwater we throw out by implying that Hamas is all about-- or even mostly about violence and terrorism. Eight Israelis died in 2008 (the peak year for rocket and mortar attacks) as the result of rocket fire and shelling from Gaza, and four of those casualties occurred during Operation Cast Lead. That sucks, and fuck the Al-Qassam Brigades for doing it and fuck Hamas for funding them, but the numbers just don't support the continued assertion that Hamas is a big-T Terrorist organization.
The main obstacle is the fact that demographic trends show the likelihood of a near-term majority Arab population west of the Jordan River (including the land within the internationally recognized borders of the state of Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza). The probability that Palestinians would constitute an electoral majority in a binational state is seen by many Israeli Jews as a threat to the very premise of Israel, which is imagined as a state for the Jews. A 2000 poll soon after the outbreak of the second intifada found 18% of Israeli Jews supported a binational solution.posted by zvs at 10:29 AM on March 24, 2010
In September 1919, Hitler penned his first political document, stating that the Jewish question would eventually be solved by the removal of the Jews from Europe altogether. According to Hitler, this removal would not be carried out in an emotional fashion, with pogroms and the like, but rather executed with typical German thoroughness and efficient planning. For Hitler, the Jewish question was the essential question for all Nazis. In fact, Hitler was obsessed with Jews and was determined to find a "final solution" for getting rid of them. However, his early writings and statements cannot be viewed as a blueprint for the murders put into effect so many years later.I'm not trying to say that the Nazis were at all squeamish or that they were forced to do it or anything like that, only that had originally intended to 'ethnically cleanse' Europe, and the Final Solution only started it became impossible for them to do that, because they were starting to lose the war.
Throughout the 1930s, Hitler believed that mass emigration was the answer to the Jewish problem. The anti-Jewish legislation passed in Germany from the time Hitler rose to national power in January 1933 to the outbreak of World War II in September 1939 was designed to convince and later coerce the Jews to leave the country. In January 1939 Hitler spoke before the German parliament. He criticized the free world for not taking in Jewish immigrants and warned that the consequences of war would include the "annihilation" of European Jewry. Experts debate whether that statement should be interpreted as a direct articulation of Hitler's intention to murder the Jews, or whether it was just Hitler's manipulative way of leaning on the free world to take in Jewish immigrants.
In 1939, after the German invasion of Poland, an additional 1.8 million Jews came under German control. Hitler did not immediately order their extermination. Instead, a plan was formulated whereby all Jews living within the Reich were to be exiled to a reservation in the Lublin district of the Generalgouvernement. The Nazis attempted to implement this Nisko and Lublin Plan, however it never came to fruition. By the spring of 1940, it was clear that the Lublin program was no longer the answer to the Jewish question, as Poland did not have enough territory to spare for the Jews.
The next phase in anti-Jewish policy, introduced in May 1940, was the Madagascar Plan—a plan to deport all of Europe's Jews to the island of Madagascar, a French colony in Africa. However, the Germans were defeated in the Battle of Britain just a few months later, rendering the Madagascar idea unfeasible.
The Germans attacked their former ally, the Soviet Union, in June 1941. Mobile killing units called Einsatzgruppen, along with regular army, police units and local collaborators immediately began the systematic murder of the Jews in the Soviet Union. This was the first time that mass systematic extermination was implemented as a method of solving the Jewish question.
Pretending the Nazis just couldn't spare the resources to move the Jews to Madagascar because they had declared war and it didn't go so well is moronic. That would be the whole "read a book" thing.How is it moronic if it's true? I didn't say they weren’t running around murdering jewish people in a disorderly fashion or anything like that, but clearly exile had been the clearly stated original plan, which they couldn't do because the war was going badly. Those are the facts, regardless of how "moronic" you feel they are. Perhaps you should try reading a book yourself. Because, you know, apparently reading any book makes you more knowledgeable about all topics!
Attorney General: I would refer to the meeting in Prague on 10 October 1941, in which mention was made of deporting these fifty thousand, with the participation of the Accused. [...]This sufficiently refutes your claim that military losses led the Germans to change their minds about Madagascar: on the tenth of October the Germans were on the outskirts of Moscow and Stalin had order the Communist Party to evacuate the capital. There was probably no point at which Hitler seemed more victorious. But there's more.
Accused: Yes, and I have already said that once these
transports started rolling, the "Final Solution" could
obviously no longer mean Madagascar.
Q. [...] I want to know what practical steps were taken toSecond, Eichmann was confronted with a letter from 20 May 1941 banning Jewish emigration from France and Belgium "given the Final Solution of the Jewish Question which will undoubtedly come about". The letter was dated 20 May 1941. To put this into context, Hitler was at least nominally an ally of Stalin at this point. He wasn't facing a second front. None the less, his subordinates were being guided by plans for a "Final Solution of the Jewish Question" that involved banning the emigration of Jews from France and Belgium despite the fact that the whole point of the Madagascar Plan had been to remove them from Europe.
promote the Madagascar idea according to Dannecker's plan.
A. [T]he entire Madagascar Plan got bogged down by red tape,
so that when finally the whole thing was ready for
submission at ministerial level, it had been overtaken by
developments. But I was not responsible for the fact that
it was out of date - it was the people at the top who were
responsible.
Presiding Judge: So the answer is that nothing practical was
done to implement the plan. Is that correct?
[...]
Accused: Yes, Your Honour.
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posted by nevercalm at 10:52 PM on March 23, 2010