Happy Birthday Israel!

[mrbaracuda]

Happy 60th and happy days to the fellow JREFers over there from Germany! :)

[Mycroft]

Woohoo!

:ISRAEL:

[mrbaracuda]

Woohoo!

:ISRAEL:

s1I6d0OTSOA

:clap::cs::hbd::cs::clap:

[Darth Rotor]

Ham sandwiches and scallops all around, on me.

DR

[Dr. Fascism]

Is this the appropriate place to make bulldozer jokes?

[mrbaracuda]

Is this the appropriate place to make bulldozer jokes?

Sure, go on. Haven't heard any. :rolleyes:

[rjh01]

Bulldozer jokes.
Well there was this bull that was dozing... I have not invented the rest yet.

[yairhol]

Thank you for the warm wishes.
We plan on staying here for a long long time.

:)

[a_unique_person]

http://www.theage.com.au/news/opinion/a-celebration-that-ignores-the-plight-of-palestine/2008/05/08/1210131163195.html



"IF YOU will it," wrote Theodore Herzl, the founding father of the Zionist movement, in 1902, "it is no dream."
The dream to which he referred was the establishment of a Jewish state in the Arab country of Palestine.
To realise the dream, he insisted, the Jews must be willing to seize the reigns of history by renouncing the classical Jewish tradition of pacifism and collaborating with European anti-Semites who supported the Zionist movement as a means of ridding Europe of its "Jewish problem".
Ultimately, the indigenous population of Palestine would have to be forced from the country.
In 1948 the dream was realised with the establishment of the state of Israel and the flight of the Palestinians from almost 80% of their homeland. Though some Zionist apologists have insisted that Israel did not practice a deliberate policy of ethnic cleansing, the displacement of the Palestinians was an indispensable part of the Zionist dream.
In a country that was overwhelmingly non-Jewish it would have been impossible to establish a Jewish state without the expulsion of its native population.
While the transformation of Palestine into a Jewish state was a sudden and violent event, however, Israel's subsequent transformation into a Jewish-Palestinian entity has been a gradual and predictable process.
In 1967 Israel conquered the remainder of Palestine, comprising of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. Because of the speed of the victory, the Israeli army was unable to carry out a comprehensive program of ethnic cleansing but nevertheless began colonising its newly occupied territories with Jewish settlers.
In 1973 Ariel Sharon boasted that Israel would "make a pastrami sandwich" of the Palestinians by building strips of settlements throughout the West Bank. In 1983 the former head of Israeli military intelligence, Professor Yehoshafat Harkabi warned that Israel's continued colonisation of the occupied territories would lead to the transformation of Israel into an Arab-Jewish state and the consequent "Belfastisation" of the area.
Today 450,000 settlers dominate 40% of the West Bank, while the ratio of Palestinians to Jews living between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River is nearing one to one.
...
Following the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, the British historian Arnold Toynbee described the Western powers' insistence that a non-Western people should be made to compensate European Jewry for a crime of which they were completely innocent as a "declaration of the inequality of the Western and non-Western sections of the human race".
Sixty years later the Palestinians are still paying for the Nazis' crimes.

Michael Shaik is the public advocate for Australians for Palestine. Antony Loewenstein is journalist and co-founder of Independent Australian Jewish Voices.

[Mycroft]

http://www.theage.com.au/news/opinion/a-celebration-that-ignores-the-plight-of-palestine/2008/05/08/1210131163195.html

...To realise the dream, he insisted, the Jews must be willing to seize the reigns of history by renouncing the classical Jewish tradition of pacifism and collaborating with European anti-Semites who supported the Zionist movement as a means of ridding Europe of its "Jewish problem".

Ultimately, the indigenous population of Palestine would have to be forced from the country...

That's revisionist garbage.

Herzl was very specific that his Utopian dream would include Jews, Arabs, and anyone who wanted to be a part of his new society, all living together in peaceful equality. He even described cute pastoral scenes where Muslims and Jews would walk together to their respective places of worship on Friday evenings while their Christian friends would go to their evenings entertainment.

The use of the term "collaborating" is typical revisionist language, where you exaggerate a truth beyond all recognition. Herzl didn't promote "collaboration" with anti-Semites, he merely stated that anti-Semitism would be a force that would promote Zionism, an obvious truth.

Point of fact, the indigenous population was not forced from the country, Israel is still 20% Arab. There were hundreds of thousands of Arab and Jewish refugees from that time.

It turns out that the writer of that piece, Michael Shaik and Antony Loewenstein are both affiliated with the Orwellian named "Australians for Justice and Peace in Palestine", apparently an Aussie version of the International Solidarity Movement, which seems even more willing to distort historical facts for their agenda than their American counterparts.

Shame on The Age for giving them an uncritical platform to spew their revisionist hate.

[portlandatheist]

Happy Birthday Israel!

[Darth Rotor]

Herzl was very specific that his Utopian dream would include Jews, Arabs, and anyone who wanted to be a part of his new society, all living together in peaceful equality.

And like most Utopian visions, this one fell short in practice, like the Utopian visions of the early Marxists. Why?

*Insert Utopian visionary voice here*

"Well, they wouldn't all think like me, the fools!"

DR

[hgc]

And like most Utopian visions, this one fell short in practice, like the Utopian visions of the early Marxists. Why?

*Insert Utopian visionary voice here*

"Well, they wouldn't all think like me, the fools!"

DR


Kind of brings to mind the illustrations in Jehovah's Witness literature of lions and lambs and human children all playing together. Not bloody likely. Herzl's dream was at least realistic, if not currently acheivable.

Oh, and Happy Birthday. It seems like just yesterday when it was the 25th.

[DoubtingStephen]

I wish for peace as a birthday present for Israel, peace with prosperity and good relations with her neighbors. I can wish for anything if I want to.