In memory: Rachel Corrie (1979 - 2003)

[Yonoz]

Four-apartments Building was bombed at 12 midnight, beacuse there are wanted man sleeping in ground apartment!

That was indeed an unfortunate incident. The official statement attributed this unneeded loss of life to an intelligence fault, saying they thought the building was empty. Whatever the cause, that incident raised a lot of objection in Israel and a plea to the supreme court (case 8794/03) was issued by a group of emminent Israelis - including reserve pilots who made a petition announcing they would not participate in future strikes in the territories - to start an investigation into the unnecessary loss of innocent lives, and is currently in its final stages. There was even graffiti sprayed on to the cars of airforce pilots.
But have you ever looked at what http://www.embajada-israel.es/politica/Shehada1.html ? Here's a short resume:
http://www.amnesty.org.il/israel/ua_israeli.html - 30 dead, 140 wounded.
Dolphinarium bombing
The Sbarro family restaurant bombing - 15 dead, including a couple and their children aged 2, 4, and 14; two girls aged 15 and 16; a 33yo dr. and his 8yo daughter; a pregnant woman; and 18 year old waitress, and more.
http://www.hrw.org/press/2001/12/isrl1214.htm - 10 dead.
http://www.education.gov.il/children/page_39_b.htm - 5 teenagers dead.
Emmanuel bus bombing - 9 dead, including a father and his 8 months old daughter, and a premature baby delivered in the ER after the mother was seriously injured.

 

[Yonoz]

Again you just twist my words!

Really?

Native people knew about your new trees centuries ago since Kanaan / Phoenicians and crusaders wars. But they knew that the ecological system and water resources in Palestine are not satisfy for these new types of trees …. So they were not enthusiastic to plant it.

What I'd like to know is how the native people in Palestine know about Eucalyptus before Sir Joseph Banks. Let's see just how bad they are for the ecological system in the ME:

In Egypt, where it is converted to particleboard, it is useful for its bank stabilisation/erosion-control properties, as well as its ability to survive while inundated by flood waters. Since the 1880s, red gums have helped to eradicate malarial swamps in Israel, reforest barren areas denuded by the firewood-hungry Ottoman Empire, and supply timber, shade and protection from marauding Arab armies. Also suitable for turnery, flooring, furniture, panelling, etc.

I hope I don't get flamed for using such a pro-Israeli site...

I said those settlers brought new trees (from their origin countries –mainly Europe) with them which consume a lot of water. These trees are not suitable in Middle East which suffers from water shortage …

There weren't many Australian settlers, and Eucalypts aren't native to Europe. Do you just make historical facts up? What do you base that last comment on - have you anything to back that up?

Israel just steals the water of Syrian Golan heights (100%), South Lebanon (Wazani and Litani rivers), Jordan valley and West Bank (85%) to irrigate these trees.

Israel is downstream from Lebanon. How can it steal water from Lebanon if the rivers flow from Lebanon? It seems you need to read up on http://www.wws.princeton.edu/~wws401c/geography.html . A few select quotes:

Eighty percent of the basin, however, is in Israel, Jordan, and the West Bank, which do not have other significant surface water sources, and have only limited groundwater sources. Jordan relies on the surface waters of the basin for 75% of its water needs, while Israel relies on the surface waters for only 30% of its water consumption because it has larger aquifers from which to draw water. Syria relies on the basin minimally, for the Euphrates River and other smaller basins fall within its borders. Israel and Palestine have an combined 1.4 BCM/yr of renewable water resources, with an additional 450 MCM/yr captured by Israeli water reuse and rainwater collection for a total of about 2 BCM/yr. Already a deficit of water exists between what is used and what is available in the environment. In 1994, Israel and the Palestinian territories used approximately 2.1 BCM of water.

The figures for Israel and the Palestinian territories are combined, because Israel supplies the Palestinians from its national infrastructure, even in times of conflict. Israel also provides water to villages in South Lebanon and quite a substantial amount to Jordan, in excess of the amount set by the treaties between the two states.

There are no (real) desert in Palestine, we have dry land in the south with fertile soil , but no water resources.

I'm assuming by "Palestine" you mean also the State of Israel, and then it depends on how you define a desert. I think it's acceptable to say it is a place with little rainfall (let's settle for under 20mm/year), which would make a very large part of Israel a genuine desert.

It is not wonderful job to steal the water of other nations and to irrigate these lands.

The southern part of Israel is irrigated by water from the national carrier, originating in the Sea of Galilee, like most of Israel. The carrier was constructed in the 50's, and supplies the West Bank and Gaza as well. A lot of water is supplied from seasonal catchments that capture water that would otherwise flow to the Mediterrenean, and some of the agricultural water is supplied from treated sewerage. In Eilat, on the Red Sea, there is a desalination plant supplying water to that region.

It is appreciated if Israel uses its nuclear reactors to produce fresh water instead to plan how to annihilate ME or to prepare for Armageddon – nuclear winter.

Israel uses its electricity (which is derived from coal since it's not advisable for it to develop a dependence for oil) to desalinate water from the Red Sea and there are more desalination plants being constructed. I'll ignore that last childish comment, it has no place in a serious debate.

There are a lot of desert areas in Australia, so why you did not go there and convert it to green land?

Surely you're not being insensitive to the Australian Aborigines.

 

[Yonoz]

The problem that they count only Israeli victims and ignore the barbarism of the occupation army!

While I have acknowledged events such as Deir Yassin and Kefar Qana, you systematically ignore any comments on Palestinian terrorism. IMO you are the one ignoring barbarity here.

Here information about the occupation crimes from the Israeli human right center. This is the official Israeli center of human rights and it is recognized by the Israeli government and the international organization.

Would you stop making things up? From the B'Tselem site:

B'Tselem is independent and is funded by contributions from foundations in Israel, Europe, and North America that support human rights activity worldwide, and by private individuals in Israel and abroad.

I'm sure it's fully recognised for tax purposes etc. but your description is quite an exaggeration. A lot of Israelis feel B'Tselem is too pro-Palestinian, and I'm sure there's a reason why the official government statistics often differ from B'Tselem. Regardless of that, can you show a Palestinian organisation of similar caliber dedicated to the abuse of Israeli rights by Palestinians?

Palestinian human right centers show worse statistics, but I would like to present what Israeli mentioned:

Fatalities
9.29.2000-4.20.2005 Occupied Territories Israel
Palestinians killed by Israeli security forces 3168 56
Palestinians killed by Israeli civilians 35
Israeli civilians killed by Palestinians 218 438
Israeli security force personnel killed by Palestinians 219 83
Foreign citizens killed by Palestinians 10 32
Foreign citizens killed by Israeli security forces 10
Palestinians killed by Palestinians 150
**********************************************
Additional data (included in previous table)Occupied Territories Israel
Palestinian minors killed by Israeli security forces 642 1
Israeli minors killed by Palestinians 34 79
Palestinians killed during the course of an assasination 288
Palestinians who were the target of an assasination 181
Palestinians killed by Palestinians for suspected collaboration with Israel 111
***********************************************

What's your point? These figures don't distinguish between Palestinians involved in violence and innocent ones. Is Israel too successful in dealing with Palestinian terrorism? Would you rather see more dead Israelis?

(P.S: those Israeli civilians in Occupied Territories are ''militant settlers" , so I do not agree with the report to describe them as civilians.

How would you define civilian then? What makes them "militant"?

Additionally, most of the "Foreign citizens killed by Palestinians" are those who have dual nationality.)

It's funny how you can get into the small details when you want to.

 

[Yonoz]

From the previous statistics:
Israel killed 642 kids while Palestinian killed 79 kids.

You don't see too many Israeli http://www.dci-pal.org/english/Display.cfm?DocId=277&CategoryId=8 .

Those Israeli kids who murdered in occupied land (34) are responsibility of Israeli government-their militant parents-Palestinian (who attacked them).

You've just justified murders of innocent children. What kind of human being are you? I think the death of 10 month old Shalhevet Pass is the responsibility of one man - Muhhamad Amro, the sniper who shot her, no matter what her parents did or where they live. It takes a very deranged mind to open fire on a father carrying a 10 month old baby with a stroller through the scope of a sniper rifle.

You can observe also that what Settlers (parent of those kids) murdered 35 Palestinian civilians.

You justify the murders of their children, and now you're calling them murderers. You are not interested in peace. You are interested in perpetuating this conflict to feed your need for retribution.

This is documented Israeli official sources and I am sure the Palestinian human right sources double the numbers of Palestinian victims, but the truth will be somewhere between.

This is a private Israeli source, not an official one. The official Israeli sources make the basic distinction between innocent Palestinians and those participating in violent conflict.
It's nice to know you're the authority deciding on what is true and where it is to be found.

I said before, I am against murdering any human, and I do not believe in wars.

Just a few lines above you justified the murder of innocent children.

I feel sad for victims from both sides …. But the problem, they count the Israeli victims (as American media do) and do not count the Palestinian …

You just proved how sad you feel for children of settlers. Stop your hypocricy.

This means they believe that Jews blood is superior to Palestinian blood.

I fail to see how you rationaly arrive at that conclusion.

 

[russ_watters]

This is documented Israeli official sources and I am sure the Palestinian human right sources double the numbers of Palestinian victims, but the truth will be somewhere between.

I said before, I am against murdering any human, and I do not believe in wars. I feel sad for victims from both sides …. But the problem, they count the Israeli victims (as American media do) and do not count the Palestinian …
This means they believe that Jews blood is superior to Palestinian blood.

Not only is the second part simply not true, you contradicted it before you even said it! You cannot cite an Israeli source for a Palestinian death count, then say that Israelis (or Americans) do not count Palestinian victims.

 

[Informal Logic]

An interesting update:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7967481/page/2/

‘A longer view’

These subtle new pressures on Israel, U.S. officials say, reflect a desire in the Bush second term to begin to address some of the underlying causes of the hatred directed at the United States in the Islamic world, as well as some practical realities that grow out of the wars in Iraq and against al Qaida and the surging price of energy.

Right.

“The longer view includes making it clear that the United States wants the Palestinian people to have a state, a democratic state, and that the United States wants the Islamic world to enjoy the fruits of democracy. We think that’s the long-term way to guarantee peace because democracies just don’t tend to attack other democracies.”

Wrong.

...Ehud Barak, Israel’s former prime minister, says a new round of violence [would] exasperate a Bush administration and severely strain ties with Israel now that Washington has more pressing priorities in the Middle East since 9/11.

...after hundreds have been killed and billions of shekels lost and after an internal rift, we will no longer succeed in preserving all the large settlement blocs inside Israel. At the end of the great shortcut, we'll find ourselves withdrawing to a line that is worse than the line to which we could withdraw now. We will find ourselves on a line that is very close to the Green Line" -- a reference to the Israeli frontiers that existed before its seized the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Golan Heights in 1967.

And it would be bad to return to borders as originally established because why?

 

[Yonoz]

And it would be bad to return to borders as originally established because why?

Because those borders are not agreed upon.
Any major withdrawal will have to be coordinated with the PA, but Israel and the PA cannot agree on the borders at the moment.
After the Oslo accords most Israelis lost any trust they had in the Palestinians. Not only were the PA's security forces not stopping the violence, they were actually creating much violence themselves. Today, when a city is handed over to PA control, Israel hands over a list of militants. The PA is expected to collect all weapons from them or to integrate them in their security forces and thereby become directly responsible for their actions. The aim for this is to generate some trust that would enable Israel to perform larger concessions. That is the core of the current stage of the peace process.
Ehud Barak is dispised by most Israelis, from both left and right. The left holds him responsible for the miserable state of the Labour party, the right remembers his generous offers to the Palestinians just before he lost the elections. Right now he is conducting all types of media stunts to draw some attention and pave a path to running for the elections again. I would take anything he says with great doubt.

 

[Curious6]

Any person who takes an impartial view of the conflict can clearly see that the whole situation regarding the Palestinians as refugees is self-inflicted. Had they accepted UNGAR 181 (the UN Partition Plan) in 1947, which was a just compromise between the two parties and reasoned logically (i.e. not start the 1948 war) they would have had their own country, and (most) problems would have been solved.

 

[Curious6]

Let's hope that Abu Mazen proves to be more honest than his predecessor and that he will be co-operative towards a just peace negotation. I'm skeptic regarding the Road Map, and I wonder what the consequences of the withdrawal from Gaza will be.

 

[Mk]

Two years ago , An Israeli army bulldozer crushed Rachel Corrie as she tried to stop the demolition of a Palestinian home.

((Friday, March 18, 2005

Corrie family seeks answers at hearing

ELLYN FERGUSON

GANNETT NEWS SERVICE

WASHINGTON -- The family of Rachel Corrie continued Thursday to press for a more thorough investigation into the 2003 death of The Evergreen State College student in the Gaza Strip. ))

Website of Rachel

http://www.rachelcorrie.org/

last minutes before death of Rachel with pictures:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Corrie

Last emial of RACHEL:
((February 7 2003

Hi friends and family, and others,

I have been in Palestine for two weeks and one hour now, and I still have very few words to describe what I see. It is most difficult for me to think about what's going on here when I sit down to write back to the United States. Something about the virtual portal into luxury. I don't know if many of the children here have ever existed without tank-shell holes in their walls and the towers of an occupying army surveying them constantly from the near horizons. I think, although I'm not entirely sure, that even the smallest of these children understand that life is not like this everywhere. An eight-year-old was shot and killed by an Israeli tank two days before I got here, and many of the children murmur his name to me - Ali - or point at the posters of him on the walls. The children also love to get me to practice my limited Arabic by asking me, "Kaif Sharon?" "Kaif Bush?" and they laugh when I say, "Bush Majnoon", "Sharon Majnoon" back in my limited arabic. (How is Sharon? How is Bush? Bush is crazy. Sharon is crazy.) Of course this isn't quite what I believe, and some of the adults who have the English correct me: "Bush mish Majnoon" ... Bush is a businessman. Today I tried to learn to say, "Bush is a tool", but I don't think it translated quite right. But anyway, there are eight-year-olds here much more aware of the workings of the global power structure than I was just a few years ago. ))

You guys put it so politely, I just say: "What an idiot!"