I can't tell you how many people call me Jew. They make fun of me because I'm cheap. But when someone is in crisis, they always come to me. Shit, every homeless person at work knows me. I'm free therapy for all my friends. In fact I'm on to fixing my third relationship and causing my second marriage for troubled couples (the results yet to be determined). I'm a regular Ruth Westheimer. Generous, small, dirty minded, and very loving.

Whenever someone used to draw swastikas on my locker or folders at schools, I always confronted them with facts. Inevitably, those people became my best friends, and changed considerably away from being Nazi's. Whenever I was not welcome at a party, I gave my best, and was always asked to come back. Last week I went to a bachelorette bash, and was actually thanked for pitching in extra when everyone bailed.

For me, this is so indicative of my culture and race. Yes, we may bargain on things we buy. But we never ever put a price on love. When it comes to emergencies and special occassions, that's where the money we save comes in handy.

So it's no surpise to me that people may misinterpret the thrifty manner in which Jews are raised. It's no surprise Israelis in particular are misinterpreted to have done nothing for Palestinians. Everyone likes to assume the Jews are bad.. Still, here are the cold hard facts.

"In 1975, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution slandering Zionism by equating it with racism. In his spirited response to the resolution, Israel's Ambassador to the UN, Chaim Herzog noted the irony of the timing, the vote coming exactly 37 years after Kristallnacht.

Zionism is the national liberation movement of the Jewish people, which holds that Jews, like any other nation, are entitled to a homeland.

History has demonstrated the need to ensure Jewish security through a national homeland. Zionism recognizes that Jewishness is defined by shared origin, religion, culture and history. The realization of the Zionist dream is exemplified by more than five million Jews, from more than 100 countries, who are Israeli citizens.

Israel's Law of Return grants automatic citizenship to Jews, but non-Jews are also eligible to become citizens under naturalization procedures similar to those in other countries. Approximately 1,000,000 Muslim and Christian Arabs, Druze, Baha'is, Circassians and other ethnic groups also are represented in Israel's population. The presence in Israel of thousands of dark-skinned Jews from Ethiopia, Yemen and India is the best refutation of the calumny against Zionism. In a series of historic airlifts, labeled Moses (1984), Joshua (1985) and Solomon (1991), Israel rescued almost 42,000 members of the ancient Ethiopian Jewish community.

Zionism does not discriminate against anyone. Israel's open and democratic character, and its scrupulous protection of the religious and political rights of Christians and Muslims, rebut the charge of exclusivity. Moreover, anyone — Jew or non-Jew, Israeli, American, or Saudi, black, white, yellow or purple — can be a Zionist.

Writing after "Operation Moses" was revealed, William Safire noted:

“...For the first time in history, thousands of black people are being brought to a country not in chains but in dignity, not as slaves but as citizens.”18



By contrast, the Arab states define citizenship strictly by native parentage. It is almost impossible to become a naturalized citizen in many Arab states, especially Algeria, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Several Arab nations have laws that facilitate the naturalization of foreign Arabs, with the specific exception of Palestinians. Jordan, on the other hand, instituted its own "law of return" in 1954, according citizenship to all former residents of Palestine, except for Jews.19

To single out Jewish self-determination for condemnation is itself a form of racism. When approached by a student at Harvard in 1968 who attacked Zionism, Martin Luther King responded: "When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You're talking anti-Semitism."20

The 1975 UN resolution was part of the Soviet-Arab Cold War anti-Israel campaign. Almost all the former non-Arab supporters of the resolution have apologized and changed their positions. When the General Assembly voted to repeal the resolution in 1991, only some Arab and Muslim states, as well as Cuba, North Korea and Vietnam were opposed."

Since it's inception Israelis have built hundreds of schools and hospitals in "Occupied Palestine". Like no other occuying force, Israelis allowed the people sworn to kill them into their homes for work. They allowed them free passage across borders. They allowed freedom of religion. And they never once tried to rebuild their true temple or destroy the Al Aqsa Mosque. Several Jewish holy sites have been destroyed however. On top of repeated stonings from the upper position of the mosque towards the old men who selflessly pray at the small section of wall below.

In Israel today, no Arab is ever turned down for the best of medical care. In fact they prefer Israeli hospitals. No seperate fountains exist nor are there seperate housing quarters(except in the most volatile of Jerusalem). Many Arabs live in major Israeli cities, and vote as well. Many Jews are not able to enter Arab sections, such as the holiest site of Hebron which claims the graves of Israel's patriarchs. This is why they remain segregated, due to Arab violence. When I was a child, before the first intifada, I used to buy lambskin coats at the Arab market of Jerusalem. Before I returned the second time, people began stabbing random Jewish and British tourists. It was no longer safe to go.

My cousin is an ambulance driver. Although he lost several of his brothers to bombings and war, he still picks up and saves hundreds of Arab lives a month. Every time he is in Hebron his vehicle is stoned.

He has even had to argue with people who would not get into the ambulance because he was a Jew. Naturally, he just threw them in.

It is understandable that Palestinians, who are Syrians, Greek Phillistines, and some of Roman decent, are wishing to have a homeland also. It is also understandable that perhaps Israel has played a heavy hand in the wake of it's inception due to fervor generated by millenia worth of crusades, pogroms, second class citizenship, and genocide.

However, it is absolutely not understandable that a corrupt leadership in Palestine which advocates martyrdom should be supported or defended. Imagine MLK advocating martydom? In fact, it is not simply martyrdom that leads Israelis to institute what has been miscontrued as Apartheid type violations.

Avowed racim is common practice in Palestine and has been in practice undeniably in the Middle East since pre Roman times. There is no lack of literal reference to killing Jews in particular. Friends of Jews are often killed as well simply for sharing businesses. Peacemakers on both sides are called everything from traitor to enemy of state.

For whatever it's worth, the U.N. has always been consistently negative towards what they helped create, despite the fact that Israel aids many countries during earthquakes and is a small breadbasket for the EU.

Israel has saved many more lives than it has harmed.

It is time for the left to recognise the contribution, the uncolonial nature of people from 100 countries coming together to be where they know by fact their ancestors lived. This is actually anti or reverse colonialism. Only the Palestinians have decided how far back to go for heritage rights. And physical evidence is apparently invalidated.

Jews not only need protection, but are protecting American interests in the region daily. No one in Israel ever advocated the Iraq war formally. All intelligence on Iraq is for the U.S. to have, and it was Israeli analysts who actually said a war with Sadam could be disastrous for the region.

So for those who lack facts, please try reading from both sides of the story and meeting in the middle. Palestinians are notoriously untrue to historical fact, Jews are notoriously attached to biblical nonsense. but let it never be said that Jews didn't try to give everything, schools, roads, food, jobs, and hospitals, to Palestinians who were robbed of these things by their own racism.

I nominate the above for the annual Science Fiction prize - whatever that is called. Probably the Electron Toilet Bowl or something like that.

I think it's going to be tough to have reconciliation until there's a greater acknowledgement of the larger pattern of Israel's history: that it is more like whites moving across America than a nation merely existing. (And, many ethnic groups don't have states.)

Of course, by this, I mean that an entire race of people were basically obliterated to make room for American expansion.

Therein lies the problem. American's aren't really interested in fessing up to the fact that we've broken almost all the treaties we ever made with American Indians. They aren't interested in an objective understanding of American expansion.

Why would they be interested in an objective understanding of Israel's history? Objectively, what happened was: Europeans colonized Palestine, not only to establish a "homeland", but also to establish a base for European interests. We're still living out this history.

The Pilgrims came to America for religious freedom. An objective look, though, shows, pretty conclusively, that the Puritans were a small and powerless force compared to mercantile capitalism and European interests. Philosophically, they were insignificant compared to the Enlightenment.

And no amount of "respect" for American Indians really undoes the fact that American expansion came at their expense, and it involved a lot of bloodshed, racism, and broken promises.

Why are humans so obsessed about race? We, like my cousins the dogs are one with the wolf and coyote. We are but one richly varied race of two legged territorial monkeys. Get real. Race is but another tool of division used to promote rational for theft , like purging a people from wanted real estate by force. There is an enemy and it threatens our collective existence as a race and culture by having declared war on us.

It was never our war.

What are the Facts?

Conflict is endemic in the Middle East. The Palestinian problem is only one of the many conflicts in the area. It is being kept alive by the PLO and others who, for their own political purposes, wish to keep this matter unresolved.

Virtually every Arab state has been in armed and bloody conflict with its Arab neighbors. Egypt occupied Yemen for eight years. Morocco and Algeria are constantly at each other. Libya has clashed with Egypt, Tunisia, and the Sudan. The two Yemens regularly war with each other. Saudi Arabia spreads largess in order to appease all potential enemies. Yet it presses territorial claims against the smaller states of the Gulf. Kuwait worries about Iraq, which claims it in its entirety. In the heart of the Middle East, Syria constantly threatens Jordan. It tirelessly works to overthrow the regime in Baghdad. Its designs on Lebanon are well known. Iraq is one of the most aggressive, and though at present much concerned with its war with Iran, spews subversion and terrorism against its Arab neighbors.

The record of aggression by Arabs against non-Arab states is as bloody. Libya has invaded Chad. It is involved in subversion and conspiracy on a global scale. Syria is in constant conflict with Turkey and has vowed to annex the Turkish region of Alesandretta, "as soon as we settle the score with the Zionist enemy."

Iraq, of course, is a special case. It perceived post-revolutionary Iran as weak and ripe for plunder. The six-year war shows no sign of abating. It is one of the bloodiest conflicts in recent world history.

Domestic violence is a constant in the Arab world. Virtually every Arab leader has been the target of assassination. In Syria, an officer corps dominated by the minority Alawites suppresses dissent with mass murder. In February 1982, President Assad's forces killed up to 25,000 civilians in the city of Hama and, according to The New York Times, "turned half the town into a parking lot."

And then, of course, there is Lebanon. Feuding sects in that unhappy country have battled each other for centuries. Since the outbreak of open civil war about ten years ago, as many as 200,000 people have died. There is no end in sight.

But the Arabs reserve their most aggressive fury against the non-Arabs living among them. Arab violence against the Jews, inside and outside Israel, is common knowledge. But Berbers, Kurds, Copts, Circassians, Christians, and Blacks are mercilessly persecuted and, where possible, bloodily exterminated. Blacks are routinely kept as slaves in Sudan and in Saudi Arabia. The slaughter of the ancient Assyrian community in Iraq, the cruel fate of over 500,000 Blacks in southern Sudan, and the forcible resettlement of over 200,000 Kurds are a few examples of this never-ending bloodshed.

None of these conflicts has anything to do with Israel. All of this fury would continue unabated if Israel did not exist. Violence is a fact of political life in the Arab world. The root causes of upheaval in the Arab world are the Arabs' radicalism, their religious fundamentalism, and their xenophobic hatreds. The "Palestinian problem" could have been solved almost 40 years ago. It's being kept alive by those whose political purposes it serves. It's not he cause of this violence. It's just one of its many manifestations.

The above post is just another neo-con attempt to oppress and besmirch the Arab culture and their unique self expression through time-honored atrocities, massacres and wholesale genocide. Clearly, the author is trying to turn the very tennents of multiculturalism around in such a way as to lay blame for the MILLIONS of slaughtered arabs at the feet of the victims themselves instead of blaming the JEWS and their US BACKED systematic war on Islam.

Only a Jew can murder or oppress an Arab. ANything else should be celebrated as cultural diversity.

We Lebanese from all ethnic groups; Arabs, Phoenicians and Armenians, and from all religions Christians , Muslims and Jews reject the Syrian occupation for Lebanon.

We Support the American Sanctions against Syria to force its fascist regime to stop its barbaric acts against the Lebanese people.

Syrian ethnic cleansing in occupied Lebanon The Syrian regime has been working on changing the ethnic and religious demography of Lebanon by replacing its people. Since 1990, Syrian occupation of Lebanon has forced more than 35% of the Lebanese to leave their country. The Syrian-appointed government in Lebanon naturalized around half a million Syrians and Palestinians that is equal to 20% of the Lebanon population This mass displacement project is accompanied with regular persecution, arresting, kidnapping, torturing and assassinating of the Lebanese.

http://www.lgic.org/en/help_syria.php