You can label Israel however you want. The more important issue is weather or not the security measures they have taken come from a legitimate sense of threat and self preservation. I think it does. It’s easy to snipe from the sidelines when we live in a country where we don’t face those types of choices.

balb,

I wasn’t refering to him. I meant us as Canadians. I am very familiar with Haaretz. I read the online version often.

Since Shlemazl is on holiday with his family, I suppose it’s up to me to pick up the slack.

SL, aren’t you like a little late to the party quoting what one Israeli Jew said a year after the fact? This has been discussed endlessly so what’s the point of bringing it up now? Isn’t one of the great strengths of the internet the ‘immediacy’ of it all?

Be that as it may, because you have a few Israelis claiming Israel is an alleged ‘apartheid’ state does not make it so – even when your Jew seal of approval takes the lead from Jimmy Carter, the original presidential Jew hater. And yes, I mean that as I have listened to his bible tapes with his commentary on Judaism and the Jews.

But if Israel is the ‘apartheid’ state you suggest it is - why am I unable to ascend the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism, and say the Shema, the first prayer a Jew learns and the last prayer a Jew is to say without being arrested by the Israeli police? Even if I am so much as just mouth the words I am still liable to be arrested and have my arse thrown into jail. Apparently, a Jew praying in the holiest site in Judaism, in the Jewish homeland, is considered a criminal offence. And why - because it offends the religious sensibilities of Muslims – a minority group in the Jewish homeland. An Arab can buy land and build a home in Israel but if Jew buys land from a Palestinian in the West Bank the Palestinian Authority will execute the Arab seller. Explain to me how the Palestinian Authority is not acting like an apartheid state by keeping these kinds of laws on their books.

I am not surprised you don’t know about the Temple Mount prayer thingy. Most people don’t and actually it was rather Ariel Sharon’s point of going to the Temple Mount in the first place - which some claim set off the second infitada. But if a Jew, in the Jewish homeland cannot go to pray in the holiness place in Judaism, isn’t there something remarkably wrong here? Of course, the press preferred to cover the reaction to Sharon’s ascending the temple mount rather examine the rationale and meaning behind his act.

Perhaps one day we will have that discussion – after all how many acknowledged Zionists actually read or visit StageLeft on a regular basis? Nor am I surprised that there has been an ideological falling out among your Jewish friends with “Zionism”. Zionism was always a religious concept first and foremost. Zionism or the return to Zion was happening long before Herzl’s socialist Zionist movement but Herzl attempted to lift the ideals of Zionism and divorce it from its religious concept; thereby remaking it into a socialist secular ideal as a response to anti-Semitism in Europe. This is why the whole idea of establishing a Judaism colony in Uganda was openly debated but ultimately rejected and acknowledged that no Jews (in significant numbers anyway) could be enticed to going and establishing a Jewish enclave in Uganda. Zionism today has mostly come full circle and returned to its religious roots.

As far as an Arab buying land a home in Israel, it is done all the time. There are no roaming groups of homeless Arabs running around Israel …although there are the Bedouin…Even the JNF, which only administers a part of the land of Israel has now opened the door to Arab ownership – I will admit this state of affairs came about via a ruling handed down by the Israeli supreme court but that is one of the wonderful about the Jewish state which I take great heart from. If I faced a case of discrimination in the West Bank under the Palestinian Authority - there is very little legal recourse or even hope of having any wrong righted.

SL,

Since the threat to Isreal posed by Palestinian terrorists and every single country surrounding it is very real, I don’t think they care about what the rest of the world or history thinks about them. Nor should they. I’m sure they’re more concerned with survival.

Balbulican, I’ll try harder next time – re: senior Israeli journalist. Contrary to what you may have been lead to believe; Ha’aretz’s influence is rather limited in Israel. In fact, the daily is not even the first or second most widely read daily newspaper, and without its English language edition; I seriously doubt its influence would have seeped out into the wider world…although, it is first among the latte sippers on Sheinkin Street in Tel Aviv.

Believing Ha’aretz’s hype is kind of like suggesting the Toronto Sun is Canada’s paper of record. If you don’t know much about daily life in Israel, how would you know if there is a serious disconnect between Ha’aretz’s ‘premier’ journalists, like say - Gideon Levy or Amira Nass and the Israeli street? Menachem Begin once quibbled, the last time a Ha’aretz journalist agreed with any Israeli administration was during the British Mandate.

So the question becomes; if Danny Rubenstein speaks alone in a forest and a tree falls; do we hear it or do we even care? And to refer to Israel as an “Apartheid” state is not the first time a senior Israeli journalist has done so. Amira Nass & Levy have been saying so for years - the only difference is the Anglo int’l press generally ignores them.

Dr. Dawg, the problem with you is that you are far too romantic for your own doggy goodness. I understand why you bark so very ferrously for all those you perceive as the underdog, and overall, it is commendable but the Israeli Palestinian conflict is not top dog/underdog conflict – things are rarely what they appear to be. Here is a link for you to ponder and ask yourself; how in this alleged bastion of misery do Palestinians manage to live so well in the West Bank?

http://shilohmusings.blogspot.com/2007/03/arab-mansions-part-1.html

http://shilohmusings.blogspot.com/2007/03/arab-mansions-part-2.html

Certainly, most Israelis in Israel or even in the settlement communities of the disputed territories rarely build these homes at this level of opulence. And if this is possible - why are there still Palestinians in refugee camps - unless it is for the Palestinian leadership to use them cynically for photo-ops and cries of more money, more money.

There is there is the old ‘evil settlers’ cutting down the Palestinian olive trees scenario but guess what Dawg? The Palestinians have been caught over and over cutting down their own trees at the end of the harvest and claiming the evil settlers did it in order to demand compensation from the Israeli government for their trees. Apparently, it has been quite the successful swindle until an enterprising Israeli settler caught the Palestinians doing it on tape. Here’s the link – although the news report and video are all in Hebrew I think you can get the gist of it.

http://www.inn.co.il/News/News.aspx/135793

Here’s a link to the English translations which was carried in Maariv – the largest Israeli daily. http://imra.org.il/story.php3?id=31859 or http://blog.camera.org/archives/2006/12/palestinians_cutting_olive_tre.html

But why do you think this story had almost no play in the international press – although it was carried far and wide in the Israeli papers?

Although, I am curious as to why you won’t deal specifically with the Palestinian laws governing the selling of land to Jews – your links deal mostly with the separation of roads - specifically highway 443 but what belies your contention is just why there is no longer Palestinian access to highway 443 as it wasn’t always this way.

I would ask you how many Jewish lives must be taken, how much Jewish blood must be spilled just for the sake of being a Jew in one’s ancestral homeland - I would ask you how many Jewish mothers must sit impotently reciting Tehillim for a child was body is covered by third degree burns from a tossed Molotov cocktail thrown through the window of a car before you say – Okay, I understand why the Israeli government would close the road to Palestinian traffic. What’s your magic number? 1, 5, 10, 15, 20, 50, 100 – or maybe, sadly, there is no number.

Dawg, night is coming and I have to run. If I remember, I will check in on Sunday.

I could respond with a few links of my own. Good grief, Kateland, you know I like and respect you, but what’s next? That the Palestinians are bulldozing their own houses to gain international sympathy?

It would be nice if the Israeli colonists would allow the Palestinians enough water to keep their dirt farms going. Just for starters:

Settlers attack Palestinian olive harvesters, kill one

Gazans reclaim destroyed farmland

Policy of Destruction: House Demolition and Destruction of Agricultural Land in the Gaza Strip

Question of the Violation of Human Rights in the Occupied Arab Territories, Including Palestine

Thousands Displaced by Israeli Demolitions in Gaza

Palestinian farmland seized by settlers