9 Injured in ongoing Balatta refugee camp invasion, Nablus, West Bank

by David C. Tue Nov 04, 2003 22:11

Aron, thank you from keeping us reminded of the day-by-day reality of life under occupation. It is easy to get lost in the 'big picture' of the situation and forget what is being done to real people with real lives every day.

Although from the ground the situation must look hopeless for ordinary palestinian people I suggest the situation might not be as hopeless as it appears. For example the recent EU poll shows that the moral plight of the palestinians is shining through despite the billions of dollars spend on propaganda by the zionist thugs (a good example of this thugish propaganda is the organized zionist backlash against recent awarding of the Sydney Peace Prize to Dr Hanan Ashrawi).

Good will win. Evil will lose. This should bring hope to Palestinians and put deep fear into the 'greater israel' zionists...

by kokomero Wed Nov 05, 2003 19:01

Before reading any more Zionist propaganda concerning the Palestinians, read this!

Israeli & Zionist Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) section is the most frequently visited section at PalestineRemembered.com. Initially, it evolved based on our correspondence with many Israelis and Zionists who visited the site, and over time it has emerged into the current version. Currently, the section is becoming an important resource on the internet that presents the Palestinian version of events.

If you are an Israeli or a Zionist, most likely this booklet will challenge your beliefs to the core. Because of that we urge you to be open minded and unemotional until you read the Palestinian side. It should be NOTED that most of our research has been based on declassified Israeli and Zionist archives, which was researched by Israeli and Jewish historians. We have gone the extra mile to properly reference each stated fact and quote at the footnote of each page, to use multiple sources including several pro-Israel historians, and to link each FAQs to other useful online resources for other points of view.

Since the Israeli version of events is widely available on the internet and from most Western media outlets, this booklet is not meant to present the Israeli official version. So it is assumed that the reader is well versed in evolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict (such as the Balfour Declaration, UN partition, 1948 War, Nakba & refugees, Zionism, occupation, settlements, … etc.), and who is also interested in reading the other side of the story.

From our point of view, we consider many of these FAQs to be racist and baseless, and because of that we have decided on adopting the “facts in your face” style of writing. So we apologize upfront if our style seems confrontational or overwhelming, however, we have concluded that this approach is deemed necessary to counter such arguments and questions.

Note that each of the responses was meant to be as independent as possible from the other responses. So be free to jump to your favorite FAQ right away with little attention to the presented sequence. Also note that we have repeated some facts in a few responses to achieve the independence of each response. So if you find yourself reading a familiar paragraph, please be free to skip over it to the next one.

Finally, this booklet is not meant for publication nor for profit, but rather as a print friendly companion to the website. So please be free to print and circulate as long you do not change any of its contents. The permanent URL link to this document will always be:

http://www.PalestineRemembered.com/Download/Israeli-ZionistFAQ.doc

which will be periodically updated to reflect newly added FAQs and research.

The FAQ contains Palestinian rebuttals of the following Zionist disinformation

Most Palestinians want to destroy Israel and deep in their hearts they want to drive all Israeli Jews into the sea

The Arabs rejected the 1947 U.N. partition of Palestine, and consequently attacked the Jewish state, and lost the 1948 war

Seven well armed Arab armies attempted to destroy the poorly armed Jewish State in 1948, Arabs were the aggressors from the start

Palestinians in 1948 left their homes based on the orders of their leaders at the time, & that was their choice

Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East, and if more Arab countries were as democratic as Israel, peace would happen in no time

Hajj Amin al-Husseini collaborated with Nazis during WWII. Since he was the leader of the Palestinians, they are responsible for his collaboration with the Nazis

Palestine's inhabitants were mostly a nomadic society who mostly immigrated to Palestine from neighboring countries

Palestine was a destitute place until Israelis made its desert bloom

Palestinians never had a country of their own, nor did they have a distinct culture or a distinct language

The Land of Israel was promised to the descendents of Isaac by God through the prophet Abraham

Arafat was offered at Camp David a deal that no Israeli leader had presented in the past

Palestinians are not the only people to have been subjected to population transfer, it is normal in human history

Why Arabs don't welcome their Palestinian Arab brothers?

How could Palestinians send their kids to riot against Israeli soldiers? They are responsible for the high rate of casualties among their kids

Israelis are the strongest in the Middle East and Arabs will never defeat it

The Right of Return for all Palestinian refugees to Israel proper is unacceptable to most Israeli Jews

Arabs fail to understand the unique and special connection Jews have for Eretz Yisrael 71
Too bad that Arabs understand ONLY the language of force

by pat c Thu Nov 06, 2003 16:02

Beneath the ongoing conflict in the Gaza Strip is a groundwater crisis that's rapidly depriving Palestinians of drinkable water. Israeli, Palestinian, and French geoscientists have worked out a way to save Gaza drinking water while offering Israelis and Palestinians a rare opportunity to work together and solve a problem for their mutual benefit.

The Mediterranean Coastal Aquifer is shared by Israel and the Palestinian Authority. It's quickly becoming contaminated with salts, nitrates, and boron, with many wells already exceeding international health standards, explains geochemist Avner Vengosh of Ben Gurion University in Beer Sheva, Israel (until Feb. 2004 Vengosh is on sabbatical at Stanford University in California). Vengosh will present both the source of the groundwater problem and a possible solution on Monday, November 3, at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America in Seattle, WA.

In a joint Israeli, Palestinian, and French/EU study of the geochemistry of the area, Vengosh and his colleagues -- Erika Wienthal of Tel Aviv University, Amer Marie of Al-Qud University and Alexis Gutierrez and Wolfram Kloppmann of BRGM, France -- have discovered that over pumping of groundwater by the Gaza Strip's 1.3 million people has caused the groundwater level to drop. This has created a slope in the groundwater table, allowing the naturally saline groundwater from Israel to flow steadily westward and spoil the aquifer under the Gaza Strip.

As if that wasn't enough bad news, the booming population growth of the Gaza Strip is bound to make matters worse. By 2010 the 40-kilometer by 15-kilometer Gaza Strip is expected to house 2.6 million people, says Vengosh, taking the water situation from bad to dire.

"The problem is not lack of water, but water quality," said Vengosh. "We see it as a potential time bomb."

To head off even more troubling times, Vengosh has worked with his Israeli, Palestinian, and French colleagues to see what can be done. "We were able to work with Palestinians, which is quite rare," he pointed out, regarding the work that's already been accomplished.

The multilateral team developed a plan based on numerical groundwater modeling that could stop the flow of saline water from Israel and defuse the "time bomb." The modeling indicates that the drilling of several large wells on the eastern boundary of the Gaza Strip would tap the saline Israeli water that is moving into the Gaza Strip and slow its progress into the freshwater supply. That would go a long way toward preserving what's left of the potable water under the Gaza Strip. What's more, the saline water from the same boundary wells could be desalinated and used in Palestine to help offset the growing demand for water there.

"They are already talking about desalination on the coast," said Vengosh. By investing the same money for such a desalination facility along the Israel-Gaza Strip boundary instead, not only could useable water be produced, but also an aquifer could be saved, he says. "From the Israeli point of view they would not lose anything," Vengosh says, since the Israeli groundwater that would be pumped is now too salty to be of use to anyone.

Another potential benefit of the boundary well proposal is that it could set a political precedent. "It could enhance cooperation between Israel and the Palestinians," said Vengosh. "Most of the time when we talk about water problems it's a mechanism for enhancing conflicts. But on the Gaza Strip no one is going to lose. So it's a mechanism for cooperation."

by Aron Thu Nov 06, 2003 16:09

On Tuesday, after the army finally pulled out of Balatta, having been there for between 12 and 15 hours, they had shot and wounded 15 people, 8 with live ammunition and 7 with rubber bullets.

by David C. Thu Nov 06, 2003 20:31

I have often wondered which specific mechanism the Israelis would use to ethnicly cleanse the palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank.

Water might be it (ie 'poision the wells').

Perhaps Arab countries should finance a large-scale desalination plant for Gaza, in order to test the Israeli reaction. My guess is that they would blow it up.

by Aron Fri Nov 07, 2003 07:58

Lets be honest, if the Arab countries offered to build a desalination plant the Israeli's would simply object to good ol' USA, stating it was a security risk and aided "terrorist organisations" and the USA would simply apply more economic and political pressure to the relevant countries until the idea was dropped, lets not be so crass as to bomb it, that might make Israel look uncivilised or something.

Some West Bank villages have to buy their water from tankers as the settlements have stolen the natural supply used by Palestinian villages for hundreds of years. I think you can even buy bottled water bottled in a settlement from land and a water source stolen from Palestinians, inside the West Bank.

by kokomero Fri Nov 07, 2003 16:56

A 10-year-old Palestinian boy, Mahmoud Kayed, was shot east of Gaza City early today as he trapped birds near the border fence with Israel, hospital officials said. A 12-year-old companion suffered a wounded leg.

Palestinian security officials said that the children had come under fire from a tank. Soldiers fired a mounted machinegun and launched a tank shell, the officials added. Doctors said that the boy was killed by two bullets.

Witnesses and medics said the boy had been hunting with a net tied to a string. Palestinian doctors said that four other Palestinians hunting birds - a popular hobby among Gazan youth - have been killed by soldiers in the same area over recent months.

by David C. Fri Nov 07, 2003 21:03

The Israeli campaign to take palestinian land is primarily a media campaign, not a military campaign, because a positive (or at least not-too-negative) PR environment is a necessary precondition for Israel to exercise the vicious, sociopathic ethnic cleansing that will gain it more land. Denying water to the palestinian population fits within that PR goal. Machine-gunning or gassing hundreds of thousands of people does not.

But think about the media resources arrayed on both sides:

On the zionist side:
- A multi-billion dollar direct propaganda campaign (Hello Avi!)
- The full use of all US state propaganda resources (they call it 'public diplomacy')
- A significant % of the world's private media resources
- Control over access to and information about the occupied territories

On the palestinian side:
- Yasser Arafat's child-like PR skills, plus a bunch of poverty-strickin lefties?

And yet 2/3 of Europeans and probably 3/3 of the rest of the non-US world (excluding Micronesia and the Marshal Islands, of course!) think that Israel is the world's greatest war-monger.

Why? Because any decent, honest human being who knows the basic facts and has no vested interested in the outcome will always side with the Palestinians. (The basic fact is that land is being stolen by force).

PR/Propaganda/Public Diplomacy will never be a match for truth and decency. Israel's 'greater zionists' will lose, because they are ruthlessly and sociopathicaly stealing land and everyone can see that.

There's a story in Haartz today titled "Israel has become bad for the Jews".

Ain't that the truth...

by David C. Fri Nov 07, 2003 21:12

Oh yeah. And the zionists also have the 'anti-semite' slur to hide behind if anyone trys to critize their brutality and ruthlessness.

Imagine being open to critism of racism if you dared to speak out against Charles Taylor's Liberia... That's that the 'greater Israel' zionists have acheived and it may be their most powerful propaganda weapon.

Personally I believe that anyone who uses Judaism to cover genocide and ethnic cleansing is a profound anti-semite. Decent Jews everyhere should have nothing to do with these people.