A Wildfire Is Burning All Illusions in Israel

[mudplanet]

The devastating fire has revealed a sad truth: Israel has prioritized offensive military capacity so extensively that it has completely neglected the welfare of its citizens.

"When I look out my window today and see a tree standing there, that tree gives me a greater sense of beauty and personal delight than all the vast forests I have seen in Switzerland or Scandinavia. Because every tree here was planted by us." -- David Ben Gurion, Memoirs

"Why are there so many Arabs here? Why didn't you chase them away?" -- David Ben Gurion during a visit to Nazareth, July 1948

Four days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced plans to place thousands of migrant workers in a prison camp deep in the Negev Desert because, as he claimed, they pose a "threat to the character of country," a burning tree trunk fell into a bus full of Israeli Prison Service cadets, killing forty passengers. The tree was among hundreds of thousands turned to ash by the forest fire pouring across northern Israel, and which now threatens to engulf outskirts of Haifa, Israel's third-largest city. Over the last four days, more than 12,300 acres have burned in the Mount Carmel area, a devastating swath of destruction in a country the size of New Jersey. While the cause of the fire has not been established, it has laid bare the myths of Israel's foundation.

read the rest at: http://www.alternet.org/story/149087/a_wildfire_is_burning_all_illusions_in_israel/

[Jackpine Radical]

1. Gee-Whjat other country does this remind me of?

" its government has prioritized offensive military capacity and occupation maintenance so extensively that it has completely neglected the country's infrastructure, emergency preparedness and most of all, the general welfare of its citizens."

[mudplanet]

2. Wait! Wait, don't tell me.

[bemildred]

3. I know, I know, the USSR!

:-)

[mudplanet]

4. You've got one answer right

and we know where it got them

[shira]

5. The 2nd quote of Ben Gurion is a fake and this article is crap...

The Israel hater who wrote the article wasn't even honest enough to mention why the 40 Prison cadets died.

They were on their way to a prison to save Palestinian inmates.

Imagine an obsessive 'critic' of Arab or Muslim regimes who uses a humanitarian disaster in one of those countries in order to defame and slime those nations, going so far as to utilize fake quotes and leave out critical context that sheds a positive light on the dead victims.

:eyes:

Max Blumenthal is a disgusting hatefilled bigot.

[mudplanet]

7. Palestinian inmates? Is there a prison in Israel that holds only Palestinians? If these people are

in prison for non-political crimes, why are they segregated from "Israeli" criminals? Is Blumenthal an Israel hater, or simply someone that doesn't agree with some of the policies and actions of the Israeli government?

[shaayecanaan]

6. Excellent article, well worth reading...

there is a lot of interesting stuff in there, particularly the involvement of the US televangelist crowd in planting these forests on the ruins of Arab villages. Israel has been carrying out similar "reforesting" projects in the West Bank. There was a recent article posted here that objected to Palestinians clearing these "forests" and replacing them with olive trees.

There are currently fires in Lebanon as well, in the cedar forests. Fortunately they are not as fire prone as the rather more artificial pine forests that have been planted in Israel.

[azurnoir]

8. So the Israeli government has no problem, with this?

But it seems that nothing can stop the JNF's drive to "green" the land. Even in the parched Negev desert, the JNF is advancing plans to plant one million trees in a plot called "GOD TV Forest." To accomplish the highly unusual feat of foresting a desert, the Israel Land Administration has ordered the expulsion of the Bedouin unrecognized village of al-Araqib, home to hundreds of Israeli citizens who have lived in the area for more than 100 years and who have served in the army's frontline tracker units.

The Israeli government has tried time and again to force the people of al-Araqib into an American Indian reservation-style "development town," but they have refused. The village has been razed to the ground by bulldozers on eight occasions, but each time the residents have rebuilt their homes, hoping to outlast a ruthless campaign to destroy their way of life.

What about the strange name for the proposed forest? It is a reference to GOD TV, a radical right-wing evangelical Christian broadcasting network that hosts faith-based fraudsters like Creflo Dollar and rapture-ready fanatics like Rory and Wendy Alec.

And why is GOD TV bankrolling the JNF's ethnic cleansing campaign in the Negev desert? According to its website, "GOD TV is planting over ONE MILLION TREES across the Holy Land as a miraculous sign to Israel and to the world that Jesus is coming soon."

I read yesterday that one of Israel's Deputy Prime Ministers and Minister of Internal Affairs.
Yishai had refused fire engines because they were from a Christian source

http://www.jpost.com/NationalNews/Article.aspx?id=198183

[shaayecanaan]

9. I think Christian fire engines spout holy water or something...

They probably had their reasons. Well done on finding that article, though. Just another strange twist in a bizarre tale.

[bemildred]

10. Whoa. nt