A picture's worth a thousand words...

[sunnystarr]

When I saw this last week it struck me that maybe the Palestinian people have a lot to be upset about. Honestly with all the back and forth on the Israel/Palestine issue over my lifetime I had just tuned it out. I read and saw Exodus and that was the end of the matter. There's just so much one has time to be informed on after all. Besides, as a German immigrant, I already felt a great deal of national guilt so no matter what I was pro-Israel.

I then read about the 15 year old kid, Tariq Abu Khdeir, from Tampa, Florida who "was beaten by Israeli forces while on a trip to the middle east to visit relatives."

The youngster, who is of Palestinian / American heritage, was arrested by Israeli authorities on suspicion of being involved in a violent protest surrounding the death of his cousin Mohammed Abu Khdeir.



http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2695345/American-teen-beaten-Mideast-returns-Florida.html

He denied any involvement and after 9 days of house arrest was released and then returned home to Florida.

This kid has been in the US since he was five. I'm sure he's a typical teenager, albeit one who has the misfortune to be Arabic in a post-911 America. How confusing it must be for him to suffer for events which lack any personal memory.

But as kpete reported here that wasn't the end of it. http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025266180

According to Hassan Shibly, Abu Khdeir's legal counsel and the director of the Florida branch of the Council on American–Islamic Relations, Israeli police burst into the family home in Shufat on Friday and destroyed furniture and emptied cabinets. Shibly said the police then arrested and detained Abu Khdeir's uncle and two other cousins without charges.

Those men are still under arrest.

Then a DU member, Karmadillo, posted a fascinating read (it's worth going to the link he/she posted to read the whole article) by author Michelle Cohen Corasanti. http://www.democraticunderground.com/113470924

These are the lessons the Holocaust taught me: We must never be bystanders to human suffering. “Never again” means never again for any people ever again. When the horrors of the Holocaust were uncovered, there was a need to find a place for the survivors to go. The west, didn’t want us so they were happy to give us Palestine. And they were happy to buy the fallacy that Palestine was “a land without a people for a people without a land”, and that we made the desert bloom. Let’s be honest, Palestine already had a people, the Palestinians, and the vast majority of whom were not Jewish. Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Acre, Haifa, Nazareth, Jaffa and many more cities were already well-developed. These cities were made of stone and contained universities, hospitals, schools tea houses and hotels. There were trains, sea ports and international trade and travel. The desert we brought to bloom was the land on which we built Tel Aviv in 1909, and that’s it.

I truly have been enlightened over the past few days thanks to DU and that graphic which appeared on my FB page. The suffering is heartbreaking and makes us feel so helpless. Having been unexpectedly lead to take a more probing look at this issue, I just can't agree with a policy that appears to me to be an incremental ethnic cleansing carried out over enough time that the world wouldn't take notice. We have such a short attention span after all.

My prayers for peace to the region and all its people continue.

[Fred Sanders]

1. Land in Germany was the logical place for a Jewish state, but religion triumphed over reason again.

[hack89]

7. What utter nonsense

How could you create a Jewish homeland surrounded by their mortal enemies who just murdered millions of them? How do you create a state that could be defended and truly independent?

[Fred Sanders]

12. The German majority were terrorized by the fascist government, the majority could have accepted it,

under new government.

[hack89]

13. The "good" German myth has been debunked

Millions of Germans of all kinds, both military and civilian, willingly participated in the Holocaust. It was not done by a small group of crazies out of sight. The Holocaust was a true national effort involving every facet of German society.

[840high]

19. Truth.

[sunnystarr]

21. What nonsense!

What the majority of Germans knew was that that Jews were being torn out of their homes and places in ghettos and concentration camps. Concentration camps didn't have the same meaning that we think of today. That didn't exist until after the war when the truth came to light. Did the people protest? No they were too afraid. Those that expressed public criticism were sent to the camps as well. Don't think it would be different here. How many protested when we placed the Japanese and Germans in concentration camps here?

How many in the world stand up now to atrocities we've witnessed in all corners of the world?

The fact is that there were many working underground against the Hitler regime. My father was one of them. My mother refused to join the Hitler youth group. There were countless others who were just like them.

The fact is that Hitler wouldn't have been able to do all the horrendous things he did without the backing of major American corporations. Read octafish's repost from 2002 to refresh your memory. http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025269074

[hack89]

22. Half of the Jews were murdered outside of concentration camps

as the military rounded up Jews, herded them to killing fields, and watched the SS kill them. Millions of German soldiers knew exactly what happened.

When it was decided extermination camps were needed, they were designed and build by the finest German engineering firms. The gas used to kill Jews was manufactured by the finest German chemical firms. The German railroads not only kept excellent records of all the Jews that were transported to their deaths, they billed the SS for each passenger over the age of four.

Those Jews not immediately killed were sent to slave labor. Hundreds of German firms used slave labor - they bid on prime lots in the Auschwitz region to access to the promised steady supply of workers.

Those American firms did not create the camps. They did not create the gas. They did not brutally murder them.

[roguevalley]

14. no. they knw and helped. they saw and allowed it.anti semetism was cultural for eons

[tblue37]

24. Read _Hitler's Willing Executioners_. It is chilling. nt

[wyldwolf]

11. Northwest United States - since native Americans are of the lost tribes of Israel

[L0oniX]

16. FFS ...the ghost of Herbert Armstrong.

[wyldwolf]

17. Lol

[BillZBubb]

2. In the graphic, the malignancy is spreading and it isn't benign.

[malaise]

3. K & R

for truth

[Uncle Joe]

4. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, sunnystarr.

[obxhead]

5. Israel

US backed Terrorists.

Doubt it?

Let someone come to your house and just section off a chunk of land.... because they can. I'm betting you would fight back.

[sunnystarr]

6. I have to add a little personal information

in the form of a poem I wrote years ago. It speaks to the national guilt one feels when your mother land is responsible for horrendous acts against a people. I was almost 8 when I left Germany and it didn't take long for me to learn about the Holocaust:

Preamble

Born in the midst of human suffering
With death more a friend than a foe
Born in the belly of a maniacal concept
That rocked the world back on its nomized heels
To glare with anguished shock at its skeletal soul
Born to be part of a human race
While the dust of murdered millions
Hung heavily in the air
Waiting...
To be part of my first breath
So began I in anomie
And my justification to be

World events psychologically define us. The closer they are in relation to us the more the effect.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

8. "History supplies little more than a list of people who have helped themselves to the property

"History supplies little more than a list of people who have helped themselves to the property of others." Voltaire

[hack89]

9. Choosing war in 48 obviously was not the wise choice. nt

[rickyhall]

15. Looking at the graphic one might think, "Bow to the inevitable."

Maybe the only thing left is to move the remaining Palestinians to neighboring countries and the killing would end were it not for Hamas' determination to push Israel into the sea, which is what Muslims have always wanted but it ain't gonna happen. The Palestinians unfortunately have always been the pawn of the Arabs to destroy Israel. I'm not taking sides I'm trying to be practical.

Now you can can attack me, but I've spoken my mind.

[L0oniX]

18. Exceptionalism ...it's not just for the USA.

[DinahMoeHum]

20. Goes to show you: there's NOTHING "noble" about being oppressed. . .

. . .or being in poverty; and those things do not necessarily make better human beings out of those who used to be poor and/or oppressed. Especially among children. The only things they learn at that point are about survival at any cost, at an age when they should be enjoying simply being children.

[ieoeja]

23. Given that the green shaded area in the first picture did not exist in 1946 ...

... it makes for a very poor starting point.

Most of that land was owned by sheiks in Cairo, Damascus and Istanbul who were more than happy to sell the land to Jewish immigrants. "Palestinians" owned very little land.

And very few "Palestinians" were kicked off the land after it was sold to Jews. Jews actually had a majority in the cities. They continued the share-cropping practices of those distant sheiks.

Also, most of that green region was just plain empty. This is no different than those Republican "look at how red the country is" maps showing the vast empty regions in the western US as red.

"Yeah! The dirts is Republican!"

Or in this case, "look! The empty desert is Arab!"


So your graphic shows the empty land is almost 99% Muslim. Yet Muslims only made up 58% of the population.

http://www.palestineremembered.com/Acre/Maps/Story574.html