OPINION & EDITORIAL
No more excuses for Israel
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Also by Natalie Mikhail:
- No more excuses for Israel (November 12, 2004)
- Bush appears poised to claim 2nd term (part one) (November 3, 2004)
- A messy situation in Haiti cries for international help (October 21, 2004)
- Saudi women barred from voting in upcoming election (October 14, 2004)
- Darfur genocide needs end (September 23, 2004)
Related Stories:
- Israel, not Palestine, wants war to continue (March 7, 2002)
- Arafat's death is a boon for peace (November 12, 2004)
- 'Two roads diverged...' (September 14, 2004)
- The killing needs to stop (April 11, 2002)
- With departure, little change (November 4, 2004)
by Natalie Mikhail
Friday, November 12, 2004
Last summer I walked through the enormous piles of rubble of the Muqata in Ramallah where Palestinian National Authority President Yasser Arafat sat under house arrest for three years. Directed by men carrying machine guns, I entered Arafat’s bare-walled conference room. After about five minutes of anxiety, the short, feeble leader, with his trademark black-and-white checkered khafia, walked in, kissed my hand and signaled for the guards to leave the room. I had a brief private meeting with Arafat. But even then, you could see the exhaustion and frustration in his eyes. He was soft-spoken and polite. The wrinkled lines on his face revealed how the last 55 years had taken a toll on his health and emotions. It was a very surreal experience. Sitting right next to me — in the flesh — was one of the most controversial figures of the 20th century.
Arafat, born in Cairo in 1929, began his lifelong fight for Palestinian rights as a teenager when he smuggled weapons into Palestine for use against the British occupiers and Jews fighting for their independence. In 1948 he fought in the Arab-Israeli War. Dismayed by the Arab armies’ poor performance and the establishment of the State of Israel, Arafat returned to school to obtain an engineering degree from the University of Cairo and became the leader of the Palestinian students.
In 1958 he founded Al-Fateh, an underground group of Palestinian nationalists determined to engage in an armed struggle against Israel in order to win independence for the Palestinians. By 1964, he devoted his life to the Palestinian cause, organizing guerilla raids into Israel from Jordan and helping to form the Palestine Liberation Organization. While the PLO was an umbrella organization of several groups of Palestinian resistance movements, Al-Fateh emerged as the strongest. The dismal performance of Arab armies against Israel in 1967 led Al-Fateh to take control of the PLO, electing Arafat as chairman of the executive committee.
After trying to establish a state-within-a-state in Jordan, and later Lebanon, Arafat was expelled to Tunisia where he formed a reputation as a political, rather than military leader, gaining wide support for the Palestinian cause in the international community. After the first Intifada, Arafat became more conciliatory toward Israel and began talks for a peaceful resolution to the conflict. Motivated in part by its inability to reign in new Islamist groups, such as Hamas, which ironically Israel helped establish and promote to counter the increasing influence of the P.L.O., Israel agreed to the Oslo Accords in 1993, giving Arafat permission to return to the Occupied Territories and establish the Palestine National Authority in 1995. In 1996, Arafat was elected president with 88 percent of the vote.
Regrettably, Arafat proved to be incapable of governing democratically and was guilty of corruption and nepotism. His failure to improve the lives of Palestinians, combined with the intransigent right-wing Israeli government, which dragged its feet in withdrawing from the Occupied Territories in order to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, and the violent attacks against Israeli civilians by militant groups, weakened Arafat to the extent that he either could not, or was afraid to, clamp down on terrorism. When he had an opportunity to make a final peace in 2000 at Camp David, though the “generosity” of the take-it-or-leave-it Israeli offer is debatable and has become somewhat of a myth, Arafat lacked either the courage or the political strength at home to work with the proposals to achieve a settlement. A second Intifada began and the violence continued. In December 2001, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon placed Arafat under house arrest and used Arafat’s shortcomings as a pretext to stall withdrawal from the Occupied Territories.
Despite Arafat’s failure to improve the lives of Palestinians and to realize their dream of an independent state during his lifetime and his obsession with power, no one can deny his lifelong struggle to bring the plight of the Palestinians to the attention of the world and to bring them to the position where an independent state would be imaginable considering the long-held policies of the Israeli and American governments against any such thing.
No matter what his enemies and critics may think or say, Arafat made an enormous contribution to his people. Shakespeare’s eulogy for Julius Caesar by Mark Anthony best sums up the tragedy of Arafat’s life: “The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones.”
So what happens next? Both Palestinians and Israelis are weary from the conflict that has taken so many innocent lives. The Palestinian cause for freedom and independence, just as was the Zionist struggle, is larger than one man. The Palestinians will elect new leaders who will not be under the constraints that were, rightly or wrongly, on Arafat.
However, Israel now faces a major test. It can no longer use Arafat as an excuse for not taking bold actions for peace by easing restrictions on the Palestinians, withdrawing from the West Bank and Gaza, releasing prisoners and accepting the inevitable. Yes, the Palestinian government must fight corruption and terror, but it cannot do it alone. Israel has a responsibility to do its part to prove to the Palestinians that there is hope and that it will accept a peaceful and viable Palestinian state. Otherwise, Hamas’ influence will only grow. Terrorism feeds on hopelessness, which in turn endangers security.
The best security and hope for peace for both Israelis and Palestinians is in respecting one another’s human, civil, political and economic rights.
Natalie J. Mikhail (nmikhail@badgerherald.com) is a senior majoring in journalism and international relations.
Anonymous (November 12, 2004 @ 1:33am):
Easy, the Israelis and their US-based propaganda machine will fabricate accusations and horror stories about the next Palestinian president, and cry to the whole world that they don't have a partner for peace, while systematically destroying the Palestinian daily life and infrastructure.
As long as we, the US public, are not looking behind the headlines, and not requiring our government to change course, and stop pouring our money to the Israelis, then it will stay the same.
Anonymous (November 12, 2004 @ 6:54am):
Yes, let's pour money into those who suicide bomb on a consistent basis...
Anonymous (November 12, 2004 @ 8:00am):
Arafat was a terrorist of greater scope than even Osama bin Laden. If you don't get that, you're even dumber than I thought.
Anonymous (November 12, 2004 @ 8:34am):
Natalie, you need to read more about Yasser Arafat's doings to see what a liar he really was. If you're so lame that you were impressed by him smiling and kissing your hand, then you have got to be the biggest bimbo.
Historically, Arafat and Hamas have climbed in and out of bed together for a long time. Only when he was recently under pressure from Israel and the U.S. to denounce terrorist acts did his love affair with Hamas start to fizzle. While you sympathize with the Palestinians, how about sympathizing with Israeli families whose loved ones were murdered by Palestinians suicide bombers. By the way, the British supplied the Palestinians with weapons to fight against Jewish refugees. The Palestinians and the British were allies, not enemies.
I'm also interested in hearing your take on the tens of millions of dollars meant for the Palestinian people that were siphoned off by Arafat and sent to his wife in France for safe keeping.
C'mon Natalie! If you really want us to belive that your opinion is unbiased, try coming up with a more convincing statement. Write something that proves beyond a doubt that you even bothered to study Middle-East history.
Anonymous (November 12, 2004 @ 9:42am):
I wonder how many Palestinian widows will get $22,000,000 dollars per year. Will the Palestinian people get any benefit from the billions that Arafat stole? They don't seem to have benefited from all the death caused by Arafat.
Anonymous (November 12, 2004 @ 9:49am):
Lose some weight chubby
Anonymous (November 12, 2004 @ 9:57am):
"Lose some weight, chubby"
I know you are, but what am I?
Seriously, when did they let 2nd graders start posting on the opinion board? Grow up and criticize with some intellect.
Anonymous (November 12, 2004 @ 10:06am):
While Arafat's mantel as the "Father of Palestine" is dubious given that he is singularly responsible for the failure of a Palestinian nation to emerge, his credentials as the "Father of Modern Terrorism" are solid. In the late 1950's, he co-founded Fatah, the "Movement for the National Liberation of Palestine." His métier, and thus Fatah's, was the sneak attack on soft Israeli targets, the better to maximize carnage and fear. The first efforts were ham-handed: failed attempts in 1965 to bomb the national water carrier and the railroad. But the organization soon hit its stride, successfully attacking villages and civilian infrastructure. By 1969, Arafat was the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the umbrella group he never ceased to dominate after merging Fatah into it a year earlier. The PLO had a single purpose: the destruction of Israel.
Actually, make that two purposes. The PLO was also a fabulously profitable criminal enterprise. Though Arafat purported to have made it big in the engineering business in Kuwait, British investigators, as Stephens reported, concluded after a searching probe that his wealth stemmed from sidelines his organization maintained in "extortion, payoffs, illegal arms-dealing, drug trafficking, money laundering and fraud" that yielded billions. Throughout his career, moreover, Arafat proved a master at culling funds -- whether from levies on strapped Palestinian workers or gushing subsidies from starry-eyed European and American governments. From these, he skimmed millions and stashed them throughout the world -- including in Israeli banks -- keeping his wife on a lavish $100,000-per-month allowance in Paris while his people starved, and, of course, blamed Israel for their troubles.
http://www.nationalreview.com/mccarthy/mccarthy200411120827.asp
Anonymous (November 12, 2004 @ 10:24am):
"'Lose some weight chubby'
I know you are, but what am I?
Seriously, when did they let 2nd graders start posting on the opinion board? Grow up and criticize with some intellect."
I'm going to have to side with the original poster on that one, she is indeed chubby and should lose some weight
Anonymous (November 12, 2004 @ 10:31am):
Congratulations on having a murderer kiss your hand.
Anonymous (November 12, 2004 @ 1:51pm):
wow, what incredible zionist extremism and brainwashing.
interesting how the rest of the world has reached consensus on support for a palestinian state. time and time again in the united nations we see resolutions siding with palestinians against israel's illegal occupation with votes like 120-3. the only two consistent dissenters are israel and the united states, along with occasional client states pressured by the us to side with them.
arafat is certainly guilty of corruption. and yes, he sure was a sucker for suha, funneling millions of dollars to her. she is terrible. and he is a fool for her. but it's not like arafat lived in decadence. he lived in a battered compound which was his virtual prison, unable to travel outside of it.
nelson mandela called arafat a friend and expressed solidarity between the african national congress and the plo's mutual struggles for liberation from foreign occupiers.
arafat made a hard decision at oslo, a tremendous move on his part. he also made the right decision at camp david, which was also a very difficult decision, but the right one. a non-contiguous palestinian "state" that included mandatory israeli military controlled checkpoints, limited control of water supply, and refusal to hand over the west bank and dismantle settlements was never a truly serious peace offering from israel. no nation on earth would comply with such an agreement. it is horribly unjust to expect the palestinians to accept such scraps from the israeli table.
Anonymous (November 12, 2004 @ 1:52pm):
wow, what incredible zionist extremism and brainwashing.
interesting how the rest of the world has reached consensus on support for a palestinian state. time and time again in the united nations we see resolutions siding with palestinians against israel's illegal occupation with votes like 120-3. the only two consistent dissenters are israel and the united states, along with occasional client states pressured by the us to side with them.
arafat is certainly guilty of corruption. and yes, he sure was a sucker for suha, funneling millions of dollars to her. she is terrible. and he is a fool for her. but it's not like arafat lived in decadence. he lived in a battered compound which was his virtual prison, unable to travel outside of it.
nelson mandela called arafat a friend and expressed solidarity between the african national congress and the plo's mutual struggles for liberation from foreign occupiers.
arafat made a hard decision at oslo, a tremendous move on his part. he also made the right decision at camp david, which was also a very difficult decision, but the right one. a non-contiguous palestinian "state" that included mandatory israeli military controlled checkpoints, limited control of water supply, and refusal to hand over the west bank and dismantle settlements was never a truly serious peace offering from israel. no nation on earth would comply with such an agreement. it is horribly unjust to expect the palestinians to accept such scraps from the israeli table.
Anonymous (November 12, 2004 @ 5:17pm):
"...it is horribly unjust to expect the palestinians to accept such scraps from the israeli table."
Exactly what was Israel's obligation to "help" the Palestinians anyway. Is it supposed to be like "Give us money and we'll stop bombing you"? Sounds more like extortion to me. Hey, Arafat didn't seem to think that his people really needed those millions that kept pouring in from the rest of the Arab world, so he kept secretly sending a big chunk of it to his bank account in France. Some leader, huh?
When will you stupid liberals finally stop persecuting Jews yourselves? It's no small wonder that Jews still take up liberal causes anymore. Personally, I wouldn't blame them if they just worried about themselves from now on. That in itself has become a lot of hard work. Go back to class and graduate, then the world will be willing to listen to your opinion
Anonymous (November 12, 2004 @ 5:19pm):
Natalie, Israel does not need to justify anything to you. You're just an ignorant little college student who doesn't know what she's talking about. Get a life!
Anonymous (November 12, 2004 @ 6:32pm):
So Palestinians blow themselves up with the expressed purpose of killing as many Israeli civilians as possible, and Israel is wrong?
Suppose local Indian tribes decided that they were sick of being occupied by all of us Americans. Suppose they started blowing themselves up on our public buses and in our shopping malls to protest having had their land stolen from them -- and in their case, the land really was stolen, whereas the Jews had at least as good a claim as the Palestinians to the land that is now Israel. Suppose the Indians occasionally sent suicide bombers to blow themselves up in our college dining halls or in restaurants on State Street. Suppose they used ambulances to transport suicide bombers and bombmaking materials.
Would we call these Indians terrorists? I think most of us would. We we claim that they were doing something wrong? Again, I think most of us would, even if we believed they had some legitimate grievances.
The point is simple: if you think Israel needs to justify its actions to you, you're an idiot. If you think Israel is in the wrong simply because it's more powerful than the Palestinians, you're wrong -- the Palestinians are backed by the entire Arab League, which is collectively much stronger than Israel -- and you're an idiot. If you think Israel shouldn't exist because it's a Jewish state, you're a racist.
Anonymous (November 12, 2004 @ 6:35pm):
Natalie is probably one of the terrorist loving idiots who wants to bring the PSM terrorist organization's annual conference to our campus next year. Sign the petition against the conference!
http://www.petitiononline.com/stopPSM/petition.html
Anonymous (November 13, 2004 @ 12:07am):
I'm sick of you pro-palestinian hippie college idiots. they need a state, isreal oppresses them, american propoganda against arabs, blah blah blah. the palestinians have no god-given right to any land. they have no right to any land, period. supporting them just to be contrary to american policy like you college dipshits do makes you ignorant morons.
Anonymous (November 13, 2004 @ 12:23am):
And neither does Israel, which is essentially a creation of the US vicariously via the U.N.
I don't care either way really.
What's with insulting the author for her picture? That's low...
Anonymous (November 13, 2004 @ 8:36am):
"And neither does Israel, which is essentially a creation of the US vicariously via the U.N."
Bullshit. The entire membership of the UN voted in 1947, and the vast majority supported the establishment of Israel, including the entire Soviet bloc. Just about the only member nations that opposed the establishment of the State of Israel were the Arab nations. When they lost the vote, five of them sent their armies to attack Israel immediately.
Anonymous (November 13, 2004 @ 10:00am):
Way to go Natalie Mikhail! Keep up the awesome writing!
Anonymous (November 13, 2004 @ 10:32am):
Natalie, I won't insult you with comments about your weight, but beauty does not equal brains! You obviously haven't read about Mideast history, as mentioned by another poster. If you had, you'd know that the Palestinians have been following the wrong person(Arafat) for far too long. Arafat always was a terrorist. Hamas hated him only because he wasn't extremist enough. If Hamas decides to grab control of the Palestinian Authority, then you could in no way hold the Israelis responsible for however they choose to handle the situation. Hamas wants Israel destroyed, plain and simple. The Palestinians themselves didn't want Jewish refugees around in the beginning either. For that, the Palestinians got what they deserved.
Also, the British were in bed with the Palestinians and the rest of the Arab world because they wanted cheap oil. Fortunately greed did not prevail over human rights. Israel managed to defend itself with the help of France, The US and Czechoslovakia, to name a few. You also have not heard of the Holocaust. Six million Jews were systematically murdered in four-and-a-half years by the Nazis because the rest of the world was filled with doubt as to whether their claims of persecution were valid. After Germany's defeat, the world learned a hard lesson. Anyone like you who thinks Israel has no right to exist as a nation after an atrocity like that has got to be either brain-dead or never had a brain to begin with!
You're all grown up now, Natalie. When are you going to finally start school?
Anonymous (November 13, 2004 @ 3:27pm):
look for israel on a map prior to 1948. you won't find it. you know what it will say? it says "palestine".
there are palestinians still alive today who were forced from their homes by israeli terrorists.
if you forcibly occupy an entire nation of people, take their homes, bomb their neighborhoods, deny them basic rights, massacre thousands of them at a time, then you should expect a little bit of resistance.
Anonymous (November 13, 2004 @ 7:43pm):
"if you forcibly occupy an entire nation of people, take their homes, bomb their neighborhoods, deny them basic rights, massacre thousands of them at a time..."
They weren't forcibly removed from anywhere until they started the war themselves, they weren't 'massacred' by the thousands and THEY were the ones who were denying basic rights to Jewish refugees. They had ruled Palestine for centuries before Jewish refugees came pouring in.
The Palestinians were not the first one there, nor did they ever have a right to deny anyone else entry. Tough cookies if that don't suit ya!
Anonymous (November 13, 2004 @ 8:11pm):
"look for israel on a map prior to 1948. you won't find it. you know what it will say? it says "palestine"."
And do you know where the name Palestine came from? When the Roman Empire conquered Judea, as the land was known back then, they looked for any way they could to subjugate the natives -- Jews. One way they came up with was replacing the name of the Jews' country with something derived from the name of their ancient enemy, the Philistines. That's when Judea became known as Palestine.
Check any literature on the region before 1948 and you'll find that the Jews who lived there at the time were called Palestinians. You'll also find that the region you refer to as Palestine actually consists of both modern-day Israel and the Kingdom of Jordan. So since the Palestinians already got 78% of the land of Palestine in the form of Jordan, and since more Jews were actually expelled from Arab countries than Arabs were expelled from what became Israel, and since the vast majority of the Arabs you claim were expelled left voluntarily with the encouragement of the invading Arab armies, your argument that occupation and oppression justifies attempted genocide against Jews isn't just bloodthirsty and racist, it's also idiotic and just plain wrong.
Anonymous (November 13, 2004 @ 9:10pm):
What is it about Madison liberals that they have to make total assholes of themselves? First they claim to fight for the rights of oppressed everywhere, then they turn around and make an exception for Jews. What is it about Jews that they must be exempt from human rights protection. This has been the case for at least a couple thousand years. Do you Madison liberals have an explanation for this?
Anonymous (November 13, 2004 @ 10:36pm):
"What is it about Madison liberals that they have to make total assholes of themselves?...Do you Madison liberals have an explanation for this?"
Yes.
You're generalizing, idiot.
I'm one of those "Madison liberals" you hate so much. Arafat's death was the best news I've gotten all month. He was responsible for more murders of Jews than any person since Hitler, and I am just as disgusted as you are by those people who view him as a great leader or a champion of Palestinian rights. In addition to murdering thousands of Jews, he's also the reason why the Palestinians don't have a state of their own and why so many Palestinians live in poverty while his wife lives in a luxury apartment in Paris with a $100,000 a month allowance.
But it's not just "Madison liberals" who reveal their anti-Semitic tendencies when it comes to the Israeli-Arab conflict. There are plenty of conservatives who hate Israel and Jews in general, even here in Madison. And with friends like you, people who paint all liberals with the same brush, don't make things any easier.
An example: many conservatives favor instituting a policy of prayer in public schools. Do all conservatives support this policy? Of course not! Imagine a Jewish conservative in an area with few Jews. In such places, prayer in public school would inevitably become Christian prayer. This would create a hostile environment for that conservative's children. It's hard enough to be a token Jew surrounded by Christians without having to endure forced public recitation of Christian prayer. It's hard enough being a student in public school in general without having one's differences made so readily apparent, but that's what Christian prayer in public schools would do, and that is one of the many reasons why most Jews, even conservatives, oppose school prayer. Yet if we used your logic in portraying liberals as a single entity with no dissenting voices, we would have to conclude that all conservatives favor instituting Christian prayer in public schools. Now it would seem that you are the one persecuting Jews.
There's a simple solution to this idiotic and simpleminded attitude that many liberals have towards conservatives and that many conservatives have toward liberals around here. Those liberals should grow up and realize that evil can be defined objectively and that people like Arafat fit that definition. At the same tiem, those conservatives should get their heads out of their asses and realize that they make mistakes too.
Anonymous (November 13, 2004 @ 10:52pm):
"They weren't forcibly removed from anywhere until they started the war themselves, they weren't 'massacred' by the thousands and THEY were the ones who were denying basic rights to Jewish refugees. They had ruled Palestine for centuries before Jewish refugees came pouring in.
The Palestinians were not the first one there, nor did they ever have a right to deny anyone else entry. Tough cookies if that don't suit ya!"
sorry, but they were forcibly removed. ask serious historians and respected jewish scholars like raul hillberg whether they were forcibly removed.
and yes, they were massacred by the thousands at chatila and sabra.
you clearly know absolutely nothing about palestine. palestinians had not ruled their own land for centuries beforehand. they had been fighting for liberation previously from the ottomans and then the british and now european zionists.
"tough cookies" is a great foreign policy argument by the way. i don't know why more heads of state don't use it when trying to negotiate peace settlements in the middle east.
Anonymous (November 13, 2004 @ 11:15pm):
"Check any literature on the region before 1948 and you'll find that the Jews who lived there at the time were called Palestinians. You'll also find that the region you refer to as Palestine actually consists of both modern-day Israel and the Kingdom of Jordan. So since the Palestinians already got 78% of the land of Palestine in the form of Jordan, and since more Jews were actually expelled from Arab countries than Arabs were expelled from what became Israel, and since the vast majority of the Arabs you claim were expelled left voluntarily with the encouragement of the invading Arab armies, your argument that occupation and oppression justifies attempted genocide against Jews isn't just bloodthirsty and racist, it's also idiotic and just plain wrong."
you seem to be invoking the "scholarship" of joan peter's joke of a text, "time immemorial" which has been proved a fraud and a hoax, most notably by professor norman finkelstein.
look, the plo are the ones who agreed to give close to 3/4 of palestine to israel. the negotiaions now are about gaza, the west bank, and jerusalem. arafat and the plo made a tremendous diplomatic move at oslo by giving up claims on the rest of palestine. they have agreed to acknowledge the state of israel but israel must acknowledge palestine.
and the palestinians have not been attempting "genocide" against the jews. the ratio of dead civilians is 3 to 1 in favor of israel. if anyone is facing genocide in this conflict, it's the palestinians.
and lastly, i'm incredibly offended by your accusation that i am bloodthirsty or support genocide against ANYONE. i didn't even say i agreed with palestinian violence. i don't. but i do understand why it exists and it's not because they "hate freedom" or "are commited to driving the jews into the sea."
if it was palestinians with cobra choppers, tanks, and rockets slaughtering jews with rocks then i would be making just as fervent a defense for them.
we cannot allow the dialog to be hijacked by extremists like hezbollah or jewish settlers. they do not want peace. they want perpetual war, perpetual bloodflowing, and eternal hatred. but the ball right now is in the court of israel and the u.s.
Anonymous (November 14, 2004 @ 12:00am):
you should also note that the palestinian jews who lived there lived in relative peaceful co-existence with palestinian muslims and christians before the ashkenazic european jews flooded the area. you will also note that they were not ashkenazic. a good chunk of them were sephardic and shared more in common culturally with the other palestinians.
Anonymous (November 14, 2004 @ 12:06am):
natalie,
thanks for your great article. please don't let any of these right wing jerks get to you. you wrote a very thoughtful, sophisticated, and fair piece.
and lastly, you are a hottie with a heart and a talent for writing. please keep it up.
Anonymous (November 14, 2004 @ 3:19am):
"...please don't let any of these right wing jerks get to you."
No, a lot of us are left-wing. We just don't like double-standards.
Anonymous (November 14, 2004 @ 4:01am):
But she is a hottie...lol
Anonymous (November 14, 2004 @ 4:01am):
But she is a hottie...lol
Anonymous (November 14, 2004 @ 4:20am):
oops posting issues... hottie lol pass the peroxide plz.
I just read one of her other "articles." She suggest we negotiate with terrorists! What the hell are they teaching now at UW? Good lord! How retarded!
Anonymous (November 14, 2004 @ 4:59am):
Natalie, why don't you just move to an Arab country and marry one of those terrorist assholes? You seem to have a passion for adventure and a fetish for bad boys.
Anonymous (November 14, 2004 @ 6:30am):
"But she is a hottie...lol"
Yeah, but that wasn't until after her boob job...oops! Sorry, Natalie, I forgot I promised I wouldn't tell. Forgive me.
Anonymous (November 14, 2004 @ 7:38am):
Boob job? And her picture is still cropped. Natalie, if you got it, flaunt it!
Anonymous (November 14, 2004 @ 8:37am):
"look, the plo are the ones who agreed to give close to 3/4 of palestine to israel."
When exactly did they do that? The PLO wasn't founded until the 1960s, when Israel already existed and over 3/4 of historic Palestine was already the Kingdom of Jordan. And at that time, the PLO charter called for genocide against the Jews. In fact, it still does.
You shouldn't "invoke" scholarship if you haven't read any of it yourself.
Anonymous (November 14, 2004 @ 11:27am):
Given the comments here, it's obvious that if Natalie doesn't have anything intelligent to write, then she should go the way of all other bimbos and try fashion modeling. Go ahead, Natalie, give it a whirl. You'll make far more money that way.
Anonymous (November 14, 2004 @ 12:55pm):
"When exactly did they do that? The PLO wasn't founded until the 1960s, when Israel already existed and over 3/4 of historic Palestine was already the Kingdom of Jordan. And at that time, the PLO charter called for genocide against the Jews. In fact, it still does.
You shouldn't "invoke" scholarship if you haven't read any of it yourself."
----
uhh, have you heard of oslo? try looking it up doofus.
Anonymous (November 14, 2004 @ 1:03pm):
Are you implying that Israel had a claim on Jordan, but gave it up out of generosity or desire for peace with its neighbors?
Anonymous (November 14, 2004 @ 4:30pm):
"uhh, have you heard of oslo? try looking it up doofus."
Uhh, have you? Look at what the Oslo Accords required of the Palestinians and look at what they actually did. The PLO charter still calls for genocide against Jews. Why would anyone want to make peace with them?
Anonymous (November 14, 2004 @ 4:31pm):
"Are you implying that Israel had a claim on Jordan, but gave it up out of generosity or desire for peace with its neighbors?"
I don't know what the other poster was thinking, but I would say that both Jews and Arabs had a claim to the land, but that Arabs already got almost 80% of it and have made every effort to kill the Jews in the remaining 20%. Attempted genocide shouldn't be rewarded.
Anonymous (November 14, 2004 @ 5:13pm):
from the oslo accords, signed by arafat:
"... those articles of the Palestinian Covenant which deny Israel's right to exist, and the provisions of the Covenant which are inconsistent with the commitments of this letter are now inoperative and no longer valid"
it is true that the charter has not been officially revised. but it never called for "genocide against the jews." again, what are the civilian casualty rates from the intifada? it's 3 dead palestinian civilians for every israeli. and the casualty rate amongst palestinian children is even higher. and yet you continue to invoke images of anti-jewish genocide coming from palestinians. it's a cheap trick.
Anonymous (November 14, 2004 @ 5:25pm):
"and yet you continue to invoke images of anti-jewish genocide coming from palestinians. it's a cheap trick."
Actually, it's common sense: People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.
Anonymous (November 14, 2004 @ 6:00pm):
Yasser Arafat is nothing but a Nazi dressed up as a Palestinian nationalist. He comes from a lineage of Arab leaders who worked closeily with Hitler in his campaign to exterminate the Jews and continued to fight against the Jews in the world even after the end of World War II.
A prime example is the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Hajj Amin al-Husseini. As the leader of the Arabs in Palestine during the 1930s he called a jihad to annihilate the Jews of Palestine. In his own words: "I declared a holy war, my Moslem brothers! Murder the Jews! Murder them all!" He incited anti-Jewish riots that caused the death of hundreds of Jewish settlers, including in the Jerusalem Riots of 1929 and 1936-1939, and the Hebron
Riot of 1929, in which the entire Jewish population of Hebron was massacred. An early supporter of Hitler, he sent emissaries to Berlin in December 1937 and in May 1939 suggesting collaboration. Adolf Eichmann intended to meet him during his 1937 trip to Palestine and failed because the British limited his stay to 48 hours. Later, during his stay in Berlin, Husseini became a friend and frequent visitor to Eichmann. When the war broke out, Husseini moved to Iraq, where he supported a pro-Nazi coup in 1941 orchestrated by Hitler. The coup failed, and he had to flee Iraq. Husseini found a warm welcome in Berlin. Shortly after his arrival there he gave a speech in which he called the Jews "the most fierce enemies of the Muslims" and an "ever corruptive element" in the world. Received as a personal guest of Hitler, he was put up in a mansion known as the "Islamische Zentralinstitut," which had been a Jewish Hebrew school before its confiscation, and he was given a princely salary of $20,000 a month, which came from assets stolen from the Jews by the SS prior to their execution.
SS chief Heinrich Himmler took Husseini under his wing, taking him on tours to Auschwitz, where Husseini urged the guards to greater diligence in running the gas chambers. Himmler financed a Muslim clearical academy in Dresden for Husseini to train graduates who would introduce Nazi rule into Muslim lands. In return, Hesseini recruited Bosnian and other Muslim volunteers for the SS, who wore special uniforms with a Nazi-adorned fez as headgear. Twenty thousand of them formed a special SS unit in Croatia known as the "Hanfar," meaning "sword," where they fought against
partisans in Bosnia, massacring civilians (including 90% of Bosnia's Jews), burning countless Serbian churches and villages, and controlling the area.
Husseini frequently gave speeches on Berlin radio, in which he exhorted the Nazis in their common cause. In one he said, "Kill the Jews -- Kill them with your hands, kill them with your teeth! This is well pleasing to Allah!" He gave similar speeches to his Arab brethren, such as the one in which he said, "Arise O sons of Arabia, fight for your sacred rights. Slaughter the Jews wherever you find them. Their spilled blood pleases Allah, our history and religion. That will save our honor."
The condition that Mufti had set on his support was permission to exterminate the entire Jewish population of Palestine following Hitler's victory. He tried to persuade the Germans to extend the extermination policy to North Africa and Palestine and even made plans for the construction of a death camp outside of Nablus to implement the Final
Solution for the region. Although he was unsuccessful in his efforts to persuade the Nazis to bomb Tel Aviv and to parachute agents into Palestine to poison Tel Aviv's wells, other efforts of his to increase the number of Jews killed were more successful. He successfully lobbied against a plan Hitler was considering in 1943 that would have allowed Jews to leave Hungary, with the result that 400,000 Hungarian Jews were exterminated. He
intervened against a deal Eichmann was about to make with the British government that would have exchanged 5,000 Jewish children for German POW's. His violent protest to Himmler against a Red Cross attempt in late 1942 to trade German prisoners for 10,000 Jewish children sent from Poland to the Theresienstadt camp resulted in the exchange being cancelled and the children's deaths.
After the war, Husseini was wanted for war crimes, but escaped to asylum in Egypt. Hungary's attempts to extradite hum were blocked, and he lived out his life as a hero in the Arab world. His passing in 1974 was widely mourned by the masses. Today he is venerated as a hero by the PLO. Under the tutelage, several of his younger relatives rose to prominence in the Arab world, including his "nephew," Abd al-Rahman abd al-Bauf Arafat al-Qud al-Husseini, more commonly known as YASSER ARAFAT. In 1985, Arafat declared it an honor to follow in his footsteps, and in 2002 Arafat, in an interview, referred to him as "our hero."
Anonymous (November 14, 2004 @ 6:17pm):
First of all, Arabs were displaced from Palestine because they were told to leave prior to the Arab war against Israel in 1948. Israel survived the attack. The Arab population was displaced by Arab countries.
Second of all, the the Arab population in Palstine/Israel in 1948 was about 160 thousand. Today it is abot 1.2 million.
So why did so many Arabs initially emigrate to Israel, and why has this movement continued? Well, probably for the same reason people come to the United States: political freedom and economic opportunity.
Far from being mistreated, the Arab population in Israel and in the territories administered by Israel has been freer than the population in any Arab state. Arabs in Israel vote. They elect leaders to the Knesset. They have their own political parties. They have their own newspapers. They have full rights to citizenship. They are free to speak their minds. There is more freedom for Arabs in Israel than in any Arab state.
Finally, land cannot possibly be the contentious issue because the Arab and Muslim states in the region already have 800 times as much territory as Israel. The Arabs have 50 times the population of Israel. The Arabs have all of the oil reserves of the region. They have 21 states of their own -- all varying shades of police states. It's difficult to imagine how one more will bring peace to a region that has known some of the most devastating and costly wars of the last century.
A sizeable percentage of the so-called Palestinians are actually arabs of Jordanian descent. So why aren't these Palestinians given the right of return to Jordan or to other Arab lands?
Anonymous (November 14, 2004 @ 6:18pm):
Yesterday afternoon my Jewish roommate's car was vandalized. Someone scratched a swastika on her passenger-side door.
Natalie, you are a total Nazi bitch! And so are all your stupid liberal friends! Fuck all you Madison liberal bastards! Go to hell and I hope you get one tuition increase after another! Thank God I go to MATC!
Anonymous (November 14, 2004 @ 6:47pm):
Natalie and all you other anti-Jewish posters, you are all just a bunch of anarchistic punks. Anything the US Government is for you're against; anything the US Government is against you're for. Agree to disagree, that's what the game is really all about. Ten years from now you will all change your tune and deny you were ever part of the activist scene. You will realize that you wasted so much time protesting instead of going to class. Then who are you going to blame? Jews? Uncle Sam? Your dope dealer? Your mother? Your high school guidance counselor?
Hell, anywhere but where the blame really belongs. Right? so go ahead and waste your time on things that won't matter to you ten years down the road. Everyone else here will just graduate, get jobs and laugh at you when we're flipping through the ol' yearbook.
Anonymous (November 14, 2004 @ 10:08pm):
"it is true that the charter has not been officially revised. but it never called for "genocide against the jews." again, what are the civilian casualty rates from the intifada? it's 3 dead palestinian civilians for every israeli. and the casualty rate amongst palestinian children is even higher. and yet you continue to invoke images of anti-jewish genocide coming from palestinians. it's a cheap trick."
1) The charter is still the de facto Constitution under which the Palestinian Authority operates. It calls for the Jews to be "driven into the sea" -- and you think that isn't a call to commit genocide against the Jews of Israel? Do you think Jews are fish? Or like Jesus, can they all walk on water?
2) The casualty rate is 3:1 primarily because a) some Palestinians have a tendency to blow themselves up accidentally before they ever get a chance to kill innocent people, and b) because Palestinian terrorists have a habit of hiding themselves and their weapons in mosques, schools, hospitals, and other places where lots of civilians are likely to be. They do this because they know that the Israelis have no choice but to attack them and if they park themselves in areas with lots of innocent people, there will be innocent victims to make the Israelis look bad.
Anonymous (November 14, 2004 @ 11:11pm):
right, cuz the israelis never do things like shoot rockets from helicopters in broad daylight at moving cars in busy palestinian streets full of people and merchants. that doesn't happen all the time at all.
and you're right, jews aren't fish. jeez, who are all these crazy liberal anti-jewfish haters and when will they learn that jews can't walk on water. terrorist scumbags.
Anonymous (November 14, 2004 @ 11:33pm):
"right, cuz the israelis never do things like shoot rockets from helicopters in broad daylight at moving cars in busy palestinian streets full of people and merchants. that doesn't happen all the time at all."
That's kind of the point. When terrorists intentionally hide themselves in large crowds of innocent civilians, armies don't always have the option of delaying attack until the field of fire is clear. The blame for the deaths of the innocents lies with the terrorists, who hide in large crowds with the intention of drawing fire in order to kill as many innocents as possible and blame it all on Israel.
Anonymous (November 15, 2004 @ 12:35am):
you must be dizzy from all your spinning.
these aren't rockets being shot into firezones where israelis are taking fire from. these are rockets being fired into unsuspecting crowds of palestinian civilians who are minding their own business. there are more dead palestinian children in this intifada than there are total dead israelis.
recently one innocent 13 year old palestinian girl was not only shot dead by an idf soldier, he then emptied the rest of his clip into her head WHILE SHE LAID DYING AND THEN RELOADED AND ADJUSTED HIS GUN SETTING TO FULL AUTOMATIC TO EMPTY ANOTHER FULL CLIP INTO THE ALREADY DEAD GIRL'S BODY.
like i said, expect resistance when you commit these kind of acts through an illegal occupation.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3748054.stm
http://www.rense.com/general39/target.htm
http://www.showmenews.com/2004/Sep/20040920News010.asp
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6070793/
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,96142,00.html
Anonymous (November 15, 2004 @ 12:39am):
i suppose you will argue now that terrorists were hiding inside the palestinian girl's dying body and that it was a terrorist trap to force the idf to empty entire clips into the bodies of innocent already dead palestinian little girls.
Anonymous (February 26, 2005 @ 7:25pm):
http://www.rense.com/general39/target.htm
Nice source...
