In the last six months that I have been reading indymedia I have got used to the level of biased and have been able to filter most of it out. However this last report is just incredible, full of inacuracies, half truths and in part just downright lies.

There is no "popular uprising" in Iraq, the people involved are almost all either religious fanatics or overseas fighters. For proof of the=is see the people who are being captured and killed, not many everyday Iraqis there.

Please support the ordinary people Iraq who need your help and prayers.

I know at my University most activists regard indymedia as a joke and don't bother with it but please get backto facts and we can all trust you again.

You may be taken more seriously if your words weren't such obvious LIES. The entire world knows what's happening inside Iraq, and your pathetic attempts at Doubt Casting are useless.

Also, if you are going to make such accusations, then perhaps you should actually try backing them up with something.

Here's a link to an Iraqi blogger who does think the current violence is an uprising.

 http://raedinthemiddle.blogspot.com/

Perhaps you are better informed?

What ? The blogger listing the facts from Baghdad ???? I presume you are joking. Not even a first year Sociology student would be fooled by that obvious nonsense.

The indoctrination and insanity of you people becomes ever more apparent, and would be funny were it not so sick. There is not any popular uprising in Iraq, there are Islamic fundamentalist and fascist thugs, probably trained by Iran and helped by Iran's agents, trying to take over the country. They want to impose sharia law and create a Saudi-style theocracy. Not very nice people ey? Even if this were a 'popular uprising' I would demand it be crushed, just like I would a 'popular uprising' by Nazis in post-liberation Germany.

Oh and btw the Infidata was never a popular uprising. Palestinian officials have admitted on numerous occasions that they planned the whole thing and Ariel Sharon's 'provocative' visit to a Jewish holy site was just the excuse. The violence even began before his visit, and it had already been arranged and agreed that he could visit, then suddenly the Palestinians said their police wouldn't protect him, so they had to bring their own. Terrorists then organised violence, terrorist atrocities, etc. Schools and so on were shut down and everyone ordered to go to the 'protests', put on buses and sent there (just like in Stalinist states where everyone 'voluntarily' or 'spontaneously' demonstrates in favor of a crackdown on revisionism or rightist tendencies or whatever).

Look Spooks, you can try to persuade yourself about whats going on-- but the fact of the matter is that your terrorist American friends, despite their huff and puff about 'foreign fighters', havent captured more than a handful of non-Iraqis.

This is an Iraqi insurrection, driven by a mixture of Iraqi nationalism and Islamic solidarity -- and its in every city of the country

Hey I know you get paid to lie, but you might as well be better informed. Have a look at the piece by the American journalist William Pfaff (usually fairly center-right in his spin):

NEW NATIONALISM THAT UNITED IRAQ


Sunday April 11, 2004
The Observer

Tony Blair and George W. Bush must come to grips with the fact that they are not fighting 'terrorism' in Iraq, they are fighting nationalism - a struggle they will lose sooner or later.

Whatever the mixture of religious and national passion that has gone into creating the crisis in Iraq - and whatever its component of jihadist exaltées from Afghanistan and apprentice mujahideen from Birmingham and the Paris suburbs - it is essentially a nationalist phenomenon. It is of limited effect as yet, but with explosive potential for the region.

The military effort to suppress the multiple uprising may succeed in driving it underground for a time.

This kind of war all but inevitably produces exemplary punishments of civilians, destruction of homes and reprisals against the families of men fighting the occupation. This can suppress resistance in a given place for a given time, but it promotes hatred and has a brutalising effect on the troops involved, who can be demoralised by serving in a moral climate of reprisals, 'wasting' civilians and an inability to distinguish between enemy combatants and non-combatants.

Such measures have a long and depressing history in guerrilla warfare and popular resistance against occupiers. They serve chiefly to reinforce the political claims of the resistance and discredit those of the occupier.

This is the classic paradox of war against nationalism. Its short-term successes tend to produce long-term costs not only in the war zone but also at home, by undermining the political acceptability of occupation policy.

Bush calls himself a 'war President'. The war in Iraq is conceived as part of his 'war on terror', essential to his political identity. Blair is an intelligent man. He knows that an awakening in Asian and Arab nationalism ended the British Empire. He appears to have convinced himself that the coalition forces' achievement in overturning Saddam Hussein has nullified Iraqi nationalism.

The United States ought to know about nationalism, having been thrown into the worst crisis in modern American history (at least until the one that now impends) by its war against Vietnamese nationalism. However, Americans are forget ful and the President tells them that 'we know how good we are', implying that anyone of goodwill elsewhere must have the same opinion. (Only the French would think otherwise, as a neo-conservative writer has said.)

Bush and Blair are confident of their own good intentions. Are they not proposing to hand over 'sovereignty' to the Iraqis within 12 weeks?

This is the second crucial illusion of the coalition partners. They went into Iraq to overturn a despot and his government. They succeeded. Most in Iraq seem deeply grateful.

But the coalition assumed no responsibility for what immediately followed. Despite its promises of stabilisation and reconstruction, it delivered Iraqi society to chaotic pillage and has failed to establish order during the year that has followed the fall of Baghdad.

Coalition officials plan to hand over sovereignty to an Iraqi provisional government at the end of June (although the disorders would seem to make this improbable). A political process would then begin, which would eventually produce an elected federal government. However, what is, or was, to be handed over is not sovereignty but a limited authority over Iraq's domestic affairs, to be exercised under the supervision of the US (and Britain, should it wish to continue as the American deputy in this enterprise).

The US does not intend to leave Iraq. The coalition headquarters is to become an American embassy with a staff of 3,000 officials, the largest American diplomatic station in the world.

Washington expects to maintain permanent military bases in the country (one of the motives for the invasion), garrisoned by as many as 100,000 troops, and to supervise Iraq's provisional government and the new one to be elected. The latter is expected to be a close ally of the US and provide its strategic base in the region.

To say this is not to make a polemical or conspiratorial interpretation of what is happening. All of this is on the public record. American plans are widely discussed and American intentions generally acknowledged by the officials involved.

A sovereign government by definition possesses a monopoly of armed forces within its frontiers and is in complete control of its economy, resources, and foreign relations. None of this would be true for the Iraqi government now projected.

That Iraq should become a client state is the logical assumption of a foreign policy, which, since the Soviet Union's collapse, has taken for granted that as the sole superpower the US has both opportunity and obligation to exercise decisive influence, and when necessary, decisive power, in all the world's important regions. It does so, it believes, in the general interest.

This is not an assumption that either history or common sense recommends. As the distinguished American diplomat and historian George Kennan wrote a few years ago, such an American assumption is 'unthought- through, vainglorious, and undesirable'.

It is a policy that eventually would be resisted by every government with a commitment to national autonomy. It would reinforce the international isolation of the US. It undermines and would eventually break the Atlantic alliance - the democratic community of nations. In Iraq, it leads towards prolonged conflict. What can be done? The alternative is to do what the coalition is nominally committed to do: to cede real sovereignty to an Iraqi government formed under international auspices.

Coalition troops should be removed with such deliberate speed as may be possible. During this crisis the most important (and most difficult) effort would be to convince the Iraqis that such had become the coalition's intention. They would have to be convinced that the coalition did indeed intend to devolve real political power to a truly sovereign Iraqi government and would not maintain military forces in that country other than at the invitation of a sovereign government.

William R Polk, a former US government official and the founder of the University of Chicago's Middle Eastern Studies Centre, has recently emphasised the importance of the US making clear not only that it will leave Iraq, but that during the period that it remains 'it will not ... build its companies into the Iraqi economy [or] seize or denationalise Iraqi oil; [and that] it will immediately move to dilute its unilateral power by allowing serious political and commercial activities by other powers, and political and security activities under UN auspices'.

There are two grave objections. The first is whether it may not be too late to halt the tragic drift towards enlarged conflict between occupation forces and the Iraqi population. The other is whether the US is capable of such a policy change. This administration is not. A new administration might be able to redirect policy, although that remains unsure.

The most useful thing that could be done now would be for America's allies - Tony Blair the most important among them - to stop telling Washington that the Iraq occupation 'must not fail' and instead tell it that the occupation has already failed; that only policy reversal can save the US, its allies, Iraq and the region from generalised conflict.

Christ you people are paranoid and insane. You think I'm some kind of spook? I'm 16 yrs old!! I used to believe your bullshit, but in only a few years, I saw through it. Arab nationalism and religious fundamentalism? Hey, what a great recipe! Now we can really get that genocide of the Jews that we want! Try to get your head out of Chomsky, Pilger, etc's arses and take a look at the facts for yourself. Information is abundant on the internet, if you just look. Why not look at

 http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/myths/mftoc.html

for a pretty good, truthful guide to the Israeli-Arab conflict. Ever know that in 1921 (roughly, I think) something like 2/3s of 'Palestine' was chopped off by the British and called Transjordan? Ever remember that there were only at most 650,000 Palestinian refugees, and that they were told to leave by Arab commanders and generally urged to stay by the Jewish leaders? That there were in fact far more Jewish refugees, brutally expelled by the Arabs? Ever realise that the PLO was set up before Israel controlled the West Bank and Gaza, which were ruthlessly and brutally controlled by Jordan and Egypt, and that in its original constitution it said it had no objection to this?

Why not read through it a bit. If its all evil propaganda, you should be able to refute it. Just open a Chomsky book and I'm sure you'll find that all the facts are exposed in great detail as evil lies. If not, and they are just ignored and unmentioned, you might have to ask yourself the troubling question - have I been tricked?

Well your Israel obsession at least explains why you are working so hard on Easter weekend!

Look Bud, this is a thread on Iraq not Israel, but just for you (and others)

follow this link to the history of the Deir Yassin Massacre, as prepared by, among others, the Jewish Israeli historian Benny Morris:

 http://www.deiryassin.org/mas.html

Early in the morning of Friday, April 9, 1948, commandos of the Irgun, headed by Menachem Begin, and the Stern Gang attacked Deir Yassin, a village with about 750 Palestinian residents. It was several weeks before the end of the British Mandate. The village lay outside of the area that the United Nations recommended be included in a future Jewish State. Deir Yassin had a peaceful reputation and was even said by a Jewish newspaper to have driven out some Arab militants. But it was located on high ground in the corridor between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and one plan, kept secret until years afterwards, called for it to be destroyed and the residents evacuated to make way for a small airfield that would supply the beleaguered Jewish residents of Jerusalem.

By noon over 100 people, half of them women and children, had been systematically murdered. Four commandos died at the hands of resisting Palestinians using old Mausers and muskets. Twenty-five male villagers were loaded into trucks, paraded through the Zakhron Yosef quarter in Jerusalem, and then taken to a stone quarry along the road between Givat Shaul and Deir Yassin and shot to death. The remaining residents were driven to Arab East Jerusalem.

That evening the Irgunists and the Sternists escorted a party of foreign correspondents to a house at Givat Shaul, a nearby Jewish settlement founded in 1906. Over tea and cookies they amplified the details of the operation and justified it, saying Deir Yassin had become a concentration point for Arabs, including Syrians and Iraqis, planning to attack the western suburbs of Jerusalem. They said that 25 members of the Haganah militia had reinforced the attack and claimed that an Arabic-speaking Jew had warned the villagers over a loudspeaker from an armored car. This was duly reported in The New York Times on April 10.

A final body count of 254 was reported by The New York Times on April 13, a day after they were finally buried. By then the leaders of the Haganah had distanced themselves from having participated in the attack and issued a statement denouncing the dissidents of Irgun and the Stern Gang, just as they had after the attack on the King David Hotel in July 1946. A 1987 study undertaken by Birzeit University's Center for Research and Documentation of Palestinian Society found "the numbers of those killed does not exceed 120".

The Haganah leaders admitted that the massacre "disgraced the cause of Jewish fighters and dishonored Jewish arms and the Jewish flag." They played down the fact that their militia had reinforced the terrorists' attack, even though they did not participate in the barbarism and looting during the subsequent "mopping up" operations.

They also played down the fact that, in Begin's words, "Deir Yassin was captured with the knowledge of the Haganah and with the approval of its commander" as a part of its "plan for establishing an airfield."

Ben Gurion even sent an apology to King Abdullah of Trans-Jordan. But this horrific act served the future State of Israel well. According to Begin:

Arabs throughout the country, induced to believe wild tales of "Irgun butchery," were seized with limitless panic and started to flee for their lives. This mass flight soon developed into a maddened, uncontrollable stampede. The political and economic significance of this development can hardly be overestimated.



Of about 144 houses, 10 were dynamited. The cemetery was later bulldozed and, like hundreds of other Palestinian villages to follow, Deir Yassin was wiped off the map. By September, Orthodox Jewish immigrants from Poland, Rumania, and Slovakia were settled there over the objections of Martin Buber, Cecil Roth and other Jewish leaders, who believed that the site of the massacre should be left uninhabited. The center of the village was renamed Givat Shaul Bet. As Jerusalem expanded, the land of Deir Yassin became part of the city and is now known simply as the area between Givat Shaul and the settlement of Har Nof on the western slopes of the mountain.

The massacre of Palestinians at Deir Yassin is one of the most significant events in 20th-century Palestinian and Israeli history. This is not because of its size or its brutality, but because it stands as the starkest early warning of a calculated depopulation of over 400 Arab villages and cities and the expulsion of over 700,000 Palestinian inhabitants to make room for survivors of the Holocaust and other Jews from the rest of the world.

Why do you doubt the views of an Iraqi blogger? He's reasonably well known, he's not made up. The tiniest piece of research can confirm this.

Why should I accept your view on the facts in Iraq above that of an Iraqi citizen in Iraq? I'ld consider an opposing view from another Iraqi as evidence to back up your beliefs, but to just dismiss his views as 'obvious nonsense' reveals you for the fool you are.

[btw IMC moderators, don't delete all these comments, I'm sure people will find them interesting. After all, I'm only a lying Zionist so it shouldn't threaten their beliefs.]

So instead of reading the link I suggested which refutes all the Palestinian propaganda myths, instead of refuting the few examples of facts that contradiction the Palestinian propaganda, you write some propaganda about Deir Yassin.

So I will try to refute some of what you said, despite the fact that I am no expert on Israel.

For starters, Deir Yassin had Arab militants in it, when the Irgun sent in the truck with the loadspeaker in it was shot at. There was a fight between the Arabs and the Irgun in which fighters, and obviously unfortunately some civilians, were killed. This was exaserbated by the fact that the Arab soldiers/militants were disguising themselves as women, which often made innocent women, who did not properly follow orders, a target. Civilians were told to do certain things to avoid fighting, make sure there aren't any fighters amongst them, and all that stuff that happens in every war. Some 'women' who realised they were about to be exposed pulled out guns and opened fire on the Irgun, who then lashed out and killed some women, probably many of whom were innocent.

The claims of rape were all Arab propaganda, and the whole massacre idea was a total lie. In the 90s a BBC documentary exposed this, and interviewed the Arab translator (or something) who helped invent it, and he said he regretted it, because it had the wrong effect - instead of galvanising the Arabs in hatred of the evil Jews, Arabs fled in terror, fearing the evil Jews.

The reason the Haganah and so on say there was a massacre is for political reasons. The left in the 30s etc had insisted on total pacifism and non-retaliation against constant attacks, pogroms, etc by Arab extremists. The 'Revisionist' movement said this was wrong and formed the Irgun and so on to fight back. The left didn't like this movement which threatened its popularity, and so tried numerous ways to slander it - calling it terrorist and so on. In fact the Irgun was never terrorist, and its stated goal was to carrying out attacks on property to get the British to leave - they gave warnings before hand to evacuate, even though this often endangered their operations. This is not to say they never did bad things, but that was not their goal. The left slandered the Irgun with this alleged massacre that never took place for purely political reasons. The IDF has even put the 'massacre' in their official history, because it was created by the left.

So there you go.

Oh yeah I forgot to say, in like 1948 or something a law in Israel was passed which said that all property of fleeing residents was to be protected and no-one was allowed to take it over.

And why did Israel absord 900,000 Jewish refugees, but the Arabs not one single Palestinian? There is practically a system of apartheid against the refugees in Arab countries, even in the best countries they have no real rights, and in many they aren't even allowed to work. But it makes great propaganda for Palestinians to suffer like this!

Kat says"see the people who are being captured and killed, not many everyday Iraqis there." That is an insult to the many Iraqi civilians who have lost their lives under the US/UK atrocities. It is total bullshit. Perhaps you should check the reports odf people there. Your university sounds like a joke. Lots of trolls on Indymedia at the moment
includinbg right wing christian/jzionist/islamic fantics - get out a bit more you pathetic overpriviliged scumbags.

Presumably the massacres in Iraq are so bad that even an ardent supporter of Israel can't justify them - so they try and shift the debate to what did or didn't happen in 1948 etc.

IRRELEVANT. This thread is about eyewitness reports from occupied Iraq. If people/trolling software want to debate the rights and wrongs of the occpation of Palestine they can do that on a message forum or on a newswire thread that actually has something to do with Israel. Otherwise its just clearly distraction tactics.

I'm using 'distraction tactics'???? I have no tactics!!! I merely posted a comment, and then another guy replied, and the argument expanded into one about Israel-Palestine. He was the one who posted a tonne of stuff about Deir Yassin, I had merely suggested that people read up on the facts a bit more before coming to their conclusions.

For your information I am not right-wing, I am left-wing, I used to think anarchism could work but now I think it won't really and am on the moderate left, although I don't just accept dogmas and am more interested in the truth. Philosophically I am definately left-wing and find the right abhorrant in this regard at least. Likewise I am not Christian and in fact am extremely atheist and hate all religions - including Islam btw, a religion which, despite being far less moderate and liberal than its Jewish and Christian counterparts is always defended by the left-wing so-called secularists. I am only a Zionist in the sense that I believe in the right of the Jewish people to self-determination and their right not to be massacred by Nazish anti-semites.

Oh and you might want to remember, the left used to support Israel and the Jews, and Zionists were at the forefront of the anti-fascist struggle in Britain along with Stalinists, and post-war, to prevent the re-emergence of fascism in Britain, some Zionist Jews coming back from Israel set up a group to carry out attacks on fascists, which prevented the re-emergence of fascism here. Israel also fought the British fascists who went to fight for another genocide of the Jews remember, and the British right was always anti-Israel. This only changed in the 60s when the Soviets began backing the Arab fascist tyrannies and gave them a glossy socialist overcoat.

Why do you lot find it neccessary to slander your opponents? I haven't called any of you the idiot activist types who think they're right about everything with a religious quality and think everything is black and white and really radical when in fact they know nothing about society and the world and are really just students trying to seem clever and fashionably anti-everything. Why? Because that's a stereotype that doesn't neccessary apply even to the IndyMedia lot, and because it's totally irrelevant to the issues. I am backed up by the facts, and so do not need to recourse to petty insults.

As for what the original report is about, its just pro-Islamic fundamentalist, pro-Arab fascist nationalism, blame-everything-on-America bullshit. Despite opinions on the Iraq invasion, how can anyone, let alone people who call themselves the left and claim to care about people, support these murderous terrorists?

What nobody here understands is that a man in a uniform who kill's an unarmed civillian is a hero. If the unarmed civillian's sister pick's up a gun to defend herself from the hero she's a terrorist. Q.E.D.

If we remeber this we'll all get along a lot more easily.

Lest face it, no NeoCon, Southern Baptist or New Labour politician ever let the facts get in the way of a good plan. Anyone remeber WMDs. Anyone like to recall that Syed Moqtada al Sadr is a leader with some following amongst the majority Shi'a population, the same people left to die by the Americans in 1991? Al Sadr's daddy was killed by the Ba'athists in 1999 - is he a remnant of the old regime, and if the old regime is so awful why is the CPA using the expertise of the Mukhabharat (that's Saddam's secret police for those of you who only speak American) to "sort out" anyone who disagrees with it's systematic plundering of Iraq's wealth.

Let's not delude ourself that America is bringing Democracy to Iraq when it can't even provide it at home. A country where the loser in the Presidential electionis the one who gets 51% of the popular vote isn't in a position to export democracy to anyone, and certainly not out of the bomb doors of a B52. If you want to see the future of Iraq under the "benevolent" rule of America look no further than Afghanistan. Two and a half years on the only people who are happy are the drug barons the US needed to supply the troops die on the ground for them. In Iraq the winners will be the oil companies and Chalabi's rabble of ex-convicts and other ne'erdowells.

If you don't want to face these unpalatable facts I don't really care because you are, as individuals and collectively, of no consequence, mere drones of capitalism doomed to die after leading useless, worthless lives. Pathetic really.

I have family in Iraq and can 100% tell you that Naomi is telling the truth. It might get some pro-war people "upset" but then who cares what they think anymore.

And all you pro-peace KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK! Thank you!

Peace/ Nadia
 http://www.4iraqis.net/portal
 http://www.occupationwatch.org

In case you didn't realise Red Trevor American elections, like many in democracies, aren't always neccessarily most-number-of-votes wins. It's most-number-of-states-wins, which isn't always the same as the preceding. This means that I could win 99% of the vote in 25 states, and the opponent could win 51% of the vote in the other states, and that opponent would become president. The amount by which you win in each state is irrelevant, its how many states you win. This is because its a federal system and each state has a lot of power. The alternative would be to have a federal government based on the most number of votes, which would never be able to implement decisions properly because the majority of states would be against it.

Oh and btw the oil companies you hate so much? They all support the Arabs and the Palestinians and have spent a lot of money trying to spread anti-Israel propaganda. But wait, you do it for free don't you? I'm sure they'll be grateful!

dfdf or whatever you're calling yourself at the moment. Fact - Al Gore won over 50% of the popular vote across your shoddy little country. If it was a democracy he and not the half witted Dubya would now be President.

Please give examples of anti-Israel propaganda propagated by oil companies. If any such existed the siren wail of the Zionist spin machine would have been heard as it swung immediately into action. Writs would have flown in all directions and grovelling, almost certainly undeserved, appologies would have been demanded and received.

Israel's record speak's for itself: there is no need to embellish it in any way. A simple exposition of the facts is enough to condemn the Zionist state for the vile entity that it is. In your undying and unquestionning lust for the Israeli killing machine you should pause and consider that a significant minority of the jewish population of Israel no longer has the stomach for Ariel Sharons insatiable quest for lebensraum.

I'm not American but I think you should at least try and understand how the government system there works before you draw your conclusions. Individual states have a lot of power and its a federation. The majority wins in each state. If you have 1 more Republican state than Democrat state then the Republicans form the government. That's my understanding of it anyway. I think in one of Clinton's elections he actually got less total votes too.

Oil companies info:

According to a 1974 report of the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on Multinational Corporations, the ARAMCO consortium — Exxon, Mobil, Texaco and SOCAL — attempted to block America's emergency airlift to Israel during the 1973 war. The companies also cooperated closely with Saudi Arabia to deny oil and fuel to the U.S. Navy.27

On other occasions, the major oil firms have advocated the positions of the Arab countries, particularly Saudi Arabia. The major oil companies vigorously lobbied Congress on behalf of the sale of F-15s in 1978 and AWACS aircraft in 1981. Together with Saudi foreign agents, these corporations enlisted many other American firms to lobby on the Saudis' behalf.28 Saudi Arabia has a powerful lobby in the United States because hundreds of America's largest corporations do billions of dollars worth of business with the Kingdom. “And each of these corporations,” Hoag Levins noted, “had hundreds of subcontractors and vendors equally dependent on maintaining the good graces of Muslim leaders whose countries now collectively represent the single richest market in the world.”29


Available on the site I suggested in my first post.

And as for people in Israel in 'peace' movements and so on, these are a minority, the vast majority of Israelis knows that to get peace you don't give in to terrorists who don't want peace. Don't here much about the mass demonstrations against withdrawal of settlements and so on though do you? Don't here much about the thousands of citizens exempt from service (too ill, too old, etc) who volunteered, and the thousands of soldiers who volunteered extra hours, when they heard about the so-called refusniks?

There was also a massive peace movement hear in Britain that wanted us to give in to the Nazis.

Oh yeah you know you think America isn't a democracy because Gore got slightly more of overall votes? Well let's compare it to an anarchist federation.

It's an anarchist society and we're trying to decide whether or not to give up on a certain industry. Every neighbourhood commune has its vote and elect a delegate to represent their views. Those delegates then elect another delegate to represent the majority view of those delegates. And so on. Until you get a bunch of people at the top in a committee, and a decision is come to.

So basically, it could be that 49% of the delegates were anti-the idea, with 100% backing of their electors, but 51% of delegates are pro-the idea, with 51% backing. More people would in fact be anti-the idea than pro-, but the pro- would win.

Or another system. Each neighbourhood elects a delegate and those delegates all come to a big meeting to hold a vote and come to a decision. Again, 51% of the delegates could be pro- but with 51% of their members backing them, and 49% anti- with 100% of their members backing them.

The only other way to do it would be to hold continual referendums, which isn't what anarchists propose.

So there we have it, anarchist society, according to you, isn't democratic.

I can see why the zionists are so defensive of the brutality of the US forces in their illegal, murderous occupation of Iraq. Cos its looking more and more like Palestine by the day. Seems they share a growing common disregard for the humanity of those that they illegally occupy, and the spin looks the same, feels the same and tastes the same.......

Here's Naomi Klieins latest update:

An Iraqi intifada

Now the war is being fought in the open, by people defending their homes

Naomi Klein in Baghdad
Monday April 12, 2004
The Guardian

April 9, 2003 was the day Baghdad fell to US forces. One year later, it is rising up against them.
Donald Rumsfeld claims that the resistance is just a few "thugs, gangs and terrorists". This is dangerous wishful thinking. The war against the occupation is now being fought out in the open, by regular people defending their homes and neighbourhoods - an Iraqi intifada.

"They stole our playground," an eight-year-old boy in Sadr City told me this week, pointing at six tanks parked in a soccer field, next to a rusty jungle gym. The field is a precious bit of green in an area of Baghdad that is otherwise a swamp of raw sewage and uncollected rubbish.

Sadr City has seen little of Iraq's multibillion-dollar "reconstruction", which is partly why Moqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi army have so much support here. Before the US occupation chief, Paul Bremer, provoked Sadr into an armed conflict by shutting down his newspaper and arresting and killing his deputies, the Mahdi army was not fighting coalition forces, it was doing their job for them.

After all, in the year it has controlled Baghdad, the Coalition Provisional Authority still hasn't managed to get the traffic lights working or to provide the most basic security for civilians. So in Sadr City, Sadr's so-called "outlaw militia" can be seen engaged in such subversive activities as directing traffic and guarding factories from looters. In a way, the Mahdi army is as much Bremer's creation as it Sadr's: it was Bremer who created Iraq's security vacuum - Sadr simply filled it.

But as the June 30 "hand-over" to Iraqi control approaches, Bremer now sees Sadr and the Mahdi as a threat that must be taken out - along with the communities that have grown to depend on them. Which is why stolen playgrounds were only the start of what I saw in Sadr City this week.

In al-Thawra hospital, I met Raad Daier, a 36-year-old ambulance driver with a bullet in his lower abdomen, one of 12 shots fired at his ambulance from a US Humvee. According to hospital officials, at the time of the attack, he was carrying six people injured by US forces, including a pregnant woman who had been shot in the stomach and lost her child.

I saw charred cars that dozens of eye-witnesses said had been hit by US missiles, and local hospitals confirmed that their drivers had been burned alive. I also visited Block 37 of Sadr City's Chuadir district, a row of houses where every door was riddled with holes. Residents said US tanks rolled down their street firing into their homes. Five people were killed, including Murtada Muhammad, aged four.

And I saw something that I feared more than any of this: a copy of the Koran with a bullet hole through it. It was lying in the ruins of what was Sadr's headquarters in Sadr City. On April 8, according to witnesses, two US tanks broke down the walls of the centre while two guided missiles pierced its roof, leaving giant craters in the floor and missile debris behind.

The worst damage, however, was done by hand. The clerics at the Sadr office say that US soldiers entered the building and crudely shredded photographs of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the top Shia cleric in Iraq. When I arrived at the destroyed centre, the floor was covered in torn religious texts, including several copies of the Koran that been ripped and shot through with bullets. And it did not escape the notice of the Shias here that hours earlier, US soldiers had bombed a Sunni mosque in Falluja.

For months the White House has been making ominous predictions of a civil war breaking out between the majority Shias, who believe it's their turn to rule Iraq, and the minority Sunnis, who want to hold on to the privileges they amassed under Saddam Hussein's regime. But this week the opposite appears to have taken place. Both Sunni and Shia have seen their neighbourhoods attacked and their religious sites desecrated. Up against a shared enemy, they are beginning to bury ancient rivalries and join forces against the occupation. Instead of a civil war, they are on the verge of building a common front.

You could see it at the mosques in Sadr City on Thursday: thousands of Shias lined up to donate blood, destined for Sunnis hurt in the attacks in Falluja. "We should thank Paul Bremer," Salih Ali told me. "He has finally united Iraq. Against him."

George Bush didn't even win in the manner you describe

 http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=122&row=2

He won by illegally removing hundreds of black voters off the voting register who shouldn't have been removed

http:/news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/cta/progs/newsnight/palast.ram

if you have realplayer and want to see a good BBC newsnight piece on it.

Second, providing arms to the government Saudi Arabia does NOT help the anti-Israeli cause. The Saudi government is a repressive regime that does nothing to help the Palestinians, and uses the weapons for internal repression of those forces that are actually progressive in the country. Keeping Saudi Arabia under the rule of powerful, corrupt leadership is within the interests both of the US, and of Israel. Saudi Arabia is not an Islamic state. The house of Saud uses its interpretation of Islam to oppress the people, all the while they go to the West, gamble in casinos, fly in prostitutes from the Philippines. If countries like Saudi Arabia and Jordan ever fell under a geniune leadership that looked out for the interests of their people, then Israel and US interests would be at risk.

Think about it. As long as Saudi Arabia remains in the state it is in, we can point our finger at it and say how bad it is. And yet, the British put the house of Saud in power, and American weapons keep them in power. They are a staunch ally in the 'War Against Terror', and yet they are the biggest terrorists in the region. Israel can pretend that the oppression it deals out to the Palestinians is not so bad, because compared to its neighbours in the region, it is not. But I ask you, who gives both Israel and Saudi Arabia the money and the weapons with which to carry out large scale political repression?
Iran and Syria are not half as bad as Saudi Arabia. How is it, then, that they fall on the axis of evil, while Saudi does not. To be honest, the repression that takes place in Iran is not even as bad as that perpetrated by Israel!!! Yet Iran is supposedly the next looming menace in the region.

Finally, regarding Deir Yassin, here is a thorough, historic account
 http://www.findarticles.com/cf_0/m2082/2_63/72435149/print.jhtml

The viallge had signed a peace treaty with a neighbouring settlement. Yes, when paramilitaires tried to enter, they were fired at, by the villagers themselves, not by any Arab League forces. What would you do if Zionist terrorists came to drive you out of your village!!! In fact, the villagers were able to hold of the Irgun and Stern Gang, until the regular Hagganah forces came and sorted them out. There was probably rape and sexual abuse, as reported by British forces. But because of taboos in Islamic culture, if anything they were underplayed. Finally, the massacre only stopped when Jews from the nearby settlement actually came down and shouted at the militias to stop. An early incarnation of the peace movement.

Finally, about peace movements in the second world war. Hitler was a facist threat to us. He had a modern army capable of taking on Europe. Iraq and Afghanistan were third world countries, with out of date armies, and starving populations. If anything, we are like the anti-nazi movement in Germany. ( there's a great film about them called White Rose ). At first people were called upon to 'Support our boys abroad', even if they disagreed with the reasons they were there. Finally, it became simply treasonous to criticise the war, and any resistance members who were found were killed. Luckily, its not quite that bad, although people can be arrested and detained without charge, and convicted on 'secret evidence'. What slippery slope are we going down?

The guy I replied to talking about American elections was trying to make out that America wasn't a democratic system. Vote-rigging is a totally different matter. There are widespread allegations of vote-rigging in America and always have been, JFK with the mafia, even with Clinton. I know all about the Florida thing I read Greg Palast's book. However, given these types' tendency to twist everything against America and so on, I don't trust it fully. And as I'm no expert on all the allegations and so on, I'm not going to get involved in it.

Saudi Arabia does huge amounts to help the anti-Israel, Islamic fundamentalist cause. 95% of the Saudi upper classes support Bin Laden's cause according to polls, and Saudi 'charities' give huge amounts of funding to terrorist organisations all over the world, and help spread fundamentalist Islam.

The regime IS Islamic, to say otherwise is nonsense. Unless of course every single mullah in Saudi Arabia is lying and they aren't really Islamists. Islam is oppressive and always has been, just like most other religions such as Christianity. Whether Muslims can turn Islam into a more liberal and moderate religion is up to them, and many have, and I'm not going to pass judgement on what is or what is not a legitimate interpretation of the Qu'arn. To make out that Saudi Arabia isn't Islamic is nonsense though.

The US only supports Saudi Arabia because of oil interests. They are silent on its support for terror and so on for this reason. Practically every major US politician has links with the Saudis. Bush for example is involved in the Carlyle group which the Bin Laden family (which, contrary to propaganda, has not split with Osama) is heavily involved in. The Saudi BinLadin construction group even rebuilt a bombed US embassy in the 90s, which Osama bombed!

Iran on the other hand gives much support to Hamas and Hizbullah and has expansionist aims in Iraq and so on. It's a totalitarian theocracy like Saudi Arabia. Syria also supports these people, and occupies Lebanon. Both countries also have chemical weapons and nuclear ambitions (well, Iran anyway not so sure about Syria).

You have posted a lot of stuff about Deir Yassin, but you still can't answer the fact that a BBC documentary interviewed the guy who made it up, and he openly admitted it, but said he regretted it because it caused Arabs to flee rather than fight. And the simple fact remains that the Irgun, despite the odd atrocity, was never a terrorist organisation, as it did not target human life. Whatsmore, Deir Yassin was an isolated incident and as you yourselves know, Irgun were a minority movement, and you yourself have admitted that the Arabs fired at the militia men. Even if it did happen, which in my opinion it definately did not, that proves nothing. It proves that one atrocity was committed by a tiny minority in a brutal war in which the aim of the Arabs was extermination of the Jewish people just 3 yrs after Hitler failed.

Saddam Hussein, before the Gulf War at least, had a massively powerful army, and chemical and biological weapons, and was the leader of the most extreme of the anti-Israel countries. The foreign minisiter guy, Tariq whatever, has btw said that Jews are the descendents of dogs and pigs. The Arab countries are far more powerful than Israel, but Israel at least has nukes, which prevents another major attack.

The Palestinian movement was created by a rich mufti who in the 20s organised anti-semitic pogroms and attacked peaceful Arabs, and then in the 30s and 40s sided with the Nazis. He organised SS divisions in Bosnia which butchered Jews. He inspected concentration camps and expressed a worry that they weren't killing Jews fast enough. He got Hitler's assurance that when Hitler invaded the Arab world the Jews would be liquidated and the mufti would rule the Arab world. Arafat still expresses his admiration for this guy and describes himself as his loyal soldier.

The PLO are the real fascists, and Israel are the anti-fascists.

Saudi Arabia is not an Islamic regime in the same way that the Christian Fundamentalists who support Israel because they believe it's the route to Armageddon, those pesky Christian zionists, are not really Christian. Fir example, the Qu'ran does not speak about stoning women to death who have committed adultery.
 http://www.understanding-islam.com/related/text.asp?type=rarticle&raid=199

Instead, these countries suffer from the same plague that has struck all religions, including Christianity, Judaism, Hindusim etc, which is that powerful rulers use a powerful clergy to keep the population under tight control, picking and choosing those bits of a religion that suit their purposes, and killing in the name of God.

In this same way, Israelis are controlled by the ideology of zionism, which excuses them from carrying out any number of crimes, in the name of the 'security' of the 'jewish state', and that includes torture, arbitrary assassination, and justifying the killing of children who are disproportionately victims of the occupation.
I went out to Palestine and worked with an older Jewish lady. She had gone out there some years back to build the Jewish State, a socialist dream she had, the idea of making a brand new country based on socialist principles in an empty land. But when she had gone there, she saw that the land was not empty, and that the people who had been living there for hundreds of years previously were being terribly oppressed and driven from their land. In her words 'I saw the Jewish state turn into the Nazi state and I was absolutely heartbroken'.

The problem is, there is a dream of zionism, which is very beautiful and attractive, the building of a barnd new utopia on empty land, and then there is the reality, which is occupation and the taking of somebody elses land, and the continuing cycle of violence and oppression that results from that.

Here is a list of massacres around 1948
 http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/List%20of%20massacres%20committed%20during%20the%201948%20Arab-Israeli%20war
To show it was not an isolated incident

Here is a refutation of those very fringe groups who deny the massacre took place
 http://www.deiryassin.org/op0005.html

Incidentally
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_David_Hotel

An infamous incident committed by the Irgun is the bombing of the King David hotel. It was one of the first 'terrorist acts' in history. I would like you to explain to me how that was not a terrorist act, and how the massacres of Arab villagers were not, while the attacks of the Palestinian and Iraqi resistance are. Is it because they have brown skin, and speak arabic?

Back to the subject of Saudi Arabia. It is true we support it because of oil interests. It is the same reason that we support Israel, as our 'little ulster in the middle-east', as one British politician called it. One of the prime roots of the problems in the middle-east, though, is that we have consistently propped up and supported tyannical regimes in the region as ways of securing those interests. ie) the US will do anything to prevent the popular opposition to the Saudi regime from overthrowing it because it is anti-west. The classic example is Iran, where the CIA overthrew the democratically elected prime minister of the country, Premier Mossadeq, and replaced him with the Shah, because Mossadeq was planning to nationlaise the oil. Thus sending the message that we don't want democracy in the middle-east, we want strong regimes that look out for our interests.

 http://www.democracynow.org/index.pl?section=middleeast&subsection=29

Democracy is such a fragile form of government. It doesn't work when you constantly have a bigger power muscling in and trying to affect the political process. Exactly the same thing happened when the US overthrew the government in Chile and put Pinochet in power. And the same thing is happening now in Venezuela, and this is the reason Iraq will never have a credible democracy under US plans, because at the end of the day, the US know who they want to rule the country, and they will damn well make sure they get in.

As to Israel being the enemy of facism, it is hard to see that when it's ruled by Likud, which is itself a far-right party.
Here is an interesting definition of facism
 http://www.couplescompany.com/Features/Politics/Structure3.htm

I think a lot applies to Israel, and to the PA as well, I admit I am not a lover of the PA, and also to the US.

I don't mean, by the way, to be downright hostile, or to make you look stupid. If you geniunely believe yourself to be left wing, though, you have to take note that in the middle-east, there is no left wing influence. Israel is right wing, there is a heavy right wing US influence in the region, and all the Arab regimes are basically fascist as well. The fact that Israel is such a fascist country is sad, considering that Judaism had traditionally been the home of the left wing. Perhaps a classic quote was when a Palestinian at a conference I was at said 'Jews don't understand socialism'. Excuse me? What about Marx, then!!! And you still have people like Chomsky, and impressive theologians like Marc Ellis. The best work I've done is working with projects that have brought Jews and Palestinians together, like Deir Yassin remembered, and that's the way forward. If the Israelis move away from US corporate interests, and instead take note of the interests of their arab neighbours instead, including acknowledging the basic injustice of what was done in 1948, they could get some acceptance in the region. But it's unrealistic to expect that the middle-easts only superpower will move away from the sponsor state that provides that power. And so I continue to dread what will happen in the coming years, because all I can see is fire and blood for all concerned, as Iraq will eventually spill over to the rest of the middle-east, I'm sure.

Here is another interesting fact about the Stern Gang

 http://www.palestineremembered.com/Acre/Palestine-Remembered/Story420.html

In case you doubt the source of my last posting

 http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/biography/stern.html

Ok here's a reply.

1. Saudi Arabia stuff:

It seems from the link you provided that the issue of stoning adulterers is debateable and open to different interpretations. That site said openly that lashing was correct for adulterers anyway. The more extreme interpret it as pro-stoning, the more moderate as not. To deny that Saudi Arabian Islam is a genuine branch of Islam is ubsurd, just like arguing that when the Catholic Church was tyrannical it wasn't genuinely Catholic. You might want to remember that Islam was always a tyrannical system with the Ottomans, from Mohammed onward. I don't see why you're going out of your way to defend a religion that is far less moderate than the ones you attack.

You can't blame everything on rulers or clergy rather than the religion. Christianity, not priests and popes, has been responsible for anti-semitism. Judaism contains many brutal anti-women laws to the best of my knowledge, but Jews now mostly ignore these. Fundamentalist Jews aren't not Jews, they just have a less moderate and liberal interpretation.

2. 1948 massacres etc

At the King David Hotel British officials were seen joking beforehand about a zionist plot to blow it up. Why? Because they had called before hand to warn them to evacuate, but they ignored it, and civilians died. The British, not the Irgun, are to blame for those deaths.

You have listed a bunch of alleged massacres but the fact is that, even if some massacres were committed (and I bet only a few of those alleged massacres really happened), they were crimes of war, and nothing compared to the Arabs. They freely admitted it would be a 'war of extermination' like the crusaders and the would drive the Jews into the sea, and all Jewish POWs were tortured to death (which is why so many killed themselves rather than be captured). They butchered tonnes of civilians in situations which were nothing to do with the war.

3. Deir Yassin

I am no expert on this, but skim-reading your article, I noticed a few untruths:

- Deir Yassin, WAS of massive military value and the holding of that and another village basically gave them control and defense over a huge amount of strategically important defensive territory
- As to Arabs being driven in trucks though Jerusalem, Begin, or whoever (can't remember the name), claimed to have prevented a massacre of these people
- interviewed Arabs said there was no massacre
- the entire case for the massacre rested on the testimony of one Israeli leftist (and it was this account that everybody hears), whose actual JOB was to try to discredit the Revisionist movement who the left absolutely detested, and he claimed X (can't remember name) invited him there, but X later said that he never invited him, and he wasn't even there, and everyone there has said he wasn't there.
- in a previous account it was claimed that the villagers could hear everything, even people talking from where they were, and there was no warning. In this account it says that the loudspeaker got stuck in a ditch, but surely they still would have heard it? And anyway in what I've read that is disputed.
- reason for high amount of civilian deaths amongst civilian casualties seems to me most likely because it happened at close range. They were moving around the civilians when a guy dressed as a woman pulled a gun, one soldier then opened fire, spraying people with bullets. His comrades were shocked and outraged but he claimed the guy was pulling a gun and this was subsequently confirmed.

This site gives evidence that it never happened:

 http://emperors-clothes.com/gilwhite/deiryassin.htm

and

 http://emperors-clothes.com/archive/milsteindeiryassin.htm

is an excert from a book.

The major facts to remember are that the Zionist left detested and hated the Revisionist movement and didn't want to co-operate with them at all, and had been actively suppressing them prior to the war. It was looking for a way to discredit them. A leftist whose role was to discredit the right made claims about a massacre that he wasn't even at. The left used it to discredit and attack the right. The Arabs used it as propaganda. The right also used it to provoke fear and demoralisation amongst the Arabs and help Israel win the war and hence prevent a genocide of the Jews.

It is a fact that the Irgun was not a terrorist organisation as its job was to target property, and they always gave warnings. If the Irgun were really that bad they wouldn't bother with warnings.

So the worst case scenario, if it actually happened, is that the Irgun, a minority movement considered extremist and fascist and condemned by the majority left, massacred some civilians, in part as revenge for the killing of one of their leaders, and in part to provoke fear and demoralisation amongst the Arabs, make them lose the war, and prevent a genocide of the Jews which the Arabs openly admitted was their goal. Deir Yassin had great strategic importance so clearly the goal cannot have been only to committ atrocities if such atrocities did happen.

Atrocities happen in every war. In the Spanish Civil War 10,000s of alleged rightists were murdered by the Republican side, as were thousands of priests. The goal? To stop them taking power and creating a fascist tyranny. So lets say Irgun murdered 110 people, including many civilians. The goal? To stop a genocide of the Jews and the destruction of the state of Israel. Therefore even if it did happen you can't slander the Irgun like you do, let alone the Israeli left or the state of Israel in general.

4. Irgun etc fascists?

Your sites have alleged that the Irgun, Stern, LEHI, whatever, all the Revisionist movement, were fascists. In my opinion they weren't fascists. The documents etc you site could easily have been faked too, or could have been by a minority in the movement.

According to you we cannot blame the Palestinians and Arabs for collaborating with the Nazis, being funded by them, etc, so even if they did seek funds from Italy and Germany, why can't this be understood in terms of wanting to fight the British, the enemy of my enemy is my friend, and so on? The fact is that the mufti guy did not just collaborate, he actively participated in the holocaust in the Balkans and was arranging for its extension to the Arab world. This shows his true anti-semitic Nazi colours. He had previously organised pogroms in which the whole Palestinian movement took part. He set up Fatah, the Palestinian nationalist movement (after the WW2 btw, and he never renounced his beliefs or actions), which Arafat later inheritted. Arafat has called himself his loyal soldier and stuff. All these facts help show the Nazi and anti-semitic colour of the Palestinian movement from start to present. The Irgun on the other hand could according to you have wanted help from the Italians or Nazis, based on the enemy of my enemy is my friend, totally different from an actual ideological thing.

The left, who were the vast majority, denounced them as fascists and so on, but their real motivation in this was to prevent a loss of popularity, and all Jews in Palestine benefitted from their fighting back against the Arabs when the left refused to retaliate. But lets say that ideologically the Irgun etc were basically fascist, which they weren't. Well the left clearly was not fascist, so why do you use the actions of the Irgun to discredit the left as well which detested them so much?

Whatsmore, in Israel there has always been a huge Arab minority with exactly the same democratic rights as Jews, and they elect Arabs to parliament, despite some of these people's open support for the destruction of Isreal. If they were fascists, they would not have allowed Arabs to remain in Israel.

The book that that site refers to is they claim incredibly pro-Israel, but it is in fact a pro-Israeli left history that amazon reviewers claim insults anyone not part of the left, and so his claims about the Stern could be lies, as the left has been proven many times to have falsified history to their advantage and to discredit the right.

5. Is it because they have brown skin, and speak arabic?

No it's because their aim are things like fascism and Islamic fundamentalism and they murder innocents in order to achieve this. The Irgun's aim was get the british out of Israel, and their method was the destruction of property, not innocents, which is why they always gave warnings.

6. Support for Israel

The US has only supported Israel since 1967 and before then was leaning towards neutrality, or the Arabs. It changed its mind then because Israel crushed its Soviet-backed enemies, and they thought that Israel was the only state in the Mid East that would remain pro-Western. Israel is a tiny, poor country. It is just 18% of historic Palestine (what the British promised them), and has just 6 million heavily concentrated people, the Arabs have over 300 million and huge desert lands and oil fields. Why on earth would the US support Israel because of oil?? The Arabs have the oil! It is US support for Israel that led to oil boycotts in the 1970s and so on.

7. Replying to your ending comments

Israel is very much left-wing compared to the rest of the countries. Since the 80s it has been becoming more capitalist, but before then it was very socialist. Over 90% of land is state owned and run by collectives, which even in the past attacked the family unit which the left dislikes, giving children their own homes seperate from their parents. Much of the industry is state-owned or worker-run, though it is now becoming more free market.

In the Arab countries on the other hand there are no trade union or striking rights, and they are all fascist tyrannies. Israel is a democracy in which even fascist Arabs can elect fascists to parliament.


Now the left likes anti-upper class stuff a lot, so I thought you might like to know a bit about al-Hajj Amin and the Palestinian movement. He denounced anyone who sold land to Jews as a traitor and murdered them for doing so. This meant that poor Arabs who wished to sell their land for the high prices Jews were offering (they often paid even more than they had to because they didn't want to cause trouble for who they bought it off) were intimidated or killed, or just couldn't sell it. The real reason for this was that if there is less land for sale, prices go up, and so the big landlords could make more profits. al-Hajj Amin himself and his family were involved in selling land to Jews, and this greatly increased their profits, but screwed over the poor Arabs.

You might also want to know that the Zionists in the 20s made a pact with some Palestinian leaders with the anti-imperialist goal being the liberation of Israel-Palestine from the British. al-Hajj Amin on the other hand was a British puppet and cared only about getting rid of the Jews, not anti-imperialism.

Just read your thing in Stern.

I am not totally sure about it as the site it is on, the one I gave you, seems to give pretty much the left-wing position, which is kind of why I posted it as you will be less sympathetic to one that is critical of the left.

It seems however that he advocated continuing the struggle against Britain during the war. Note that the Irgun suspended their attacks. Clearly his position was extreme, but kind of understandable given that Britain was promoting and giving power to the anti-semitic pogromist mufti guy, and massively restricting Jewish immigration.

His alleged proposals for an alliance with the Fascists or Nazis are based on the fact that he thought that the Nazis and Italy had won the war, and remember, he was more extreme even than the Irgun which you hate so much, which was considered fascist by the left which you hate so much. It has to be understood that at this time no-one (other than intelligence services, etc) knew about the Final Solution. All that was really known for sure was that the Nazis instituted anti-semitic policies, aimed originally at getting Jews to leave Germany. His proposals were based on his ignorance of what the Nazis were really doing, his belief that Britain was the main problem, and that the Nazis had already won the war anyway nd so it would be better politically if they made an alliance, as if they did not, they would be butchered as the Nazis would side with the Arabs, and if they did, they might be saved.

Rather than discussing a tiny minority of extremists who may or may not have proposed or done bad things why not read through the basic stuff on that site I gave you and which you linked back to me?

Here are some survivors testimonies, released from British files some 25 years later
 http://www.deiryassin.org/survivors.html

I've seen quite a bit of video testimony as well.

Here is a large compilation of evidence for the Deir Yassin massacre as put together by a zionist group

 http://www.ariga.com/peacewatch/dy/dycg.htm

In particular the bit about 'Is Meir Pail’s testimony authentic?'

'the evidence that the Irgun and Lehi perpetrated a massacre at Deir Yassin is overwhelming. It comes from numerous independent sources, Jewish and Arab, Haganah and dissidents and it is recorded on film. It does not depend on the testimony of any one person.'

In particular, the Wikipedia article has some good testimonies as well

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

'Eliahu Arbel's eyewitness account

Eliahu Arbel arrived at the scene April 10. He was an Operations Officer B of the Haganah's Etzioni Brigade.

I saw the horrors that the fighters had created. I saw bodies of women and children, who were murdered in their houses in cold blood by gunfire, with no signs of battle and not as the result of blowing up the houses. From my experience I know well, that there is no war without killing, and that not only combatants get killed. I have seen a great deal of war, but I never saw a sight like Deir Yassin (Yediot Ahronot, 1972-02-05) '

I just want to ram this point very firmly down that the Deir Yassin massacre DID happen, and you should be careful about the evidence you site from 'the emperors new clothes' site. Its a bit like if I published all my evidence from something I'd seen on Indymedia...

So we get to the worst case scenario, which is that it did actually happen, and I won't dispute with you that atrocities happen in every war. And so, therefore, it is good grounds for reconciliation. Part of what worked in South Africa was the truth and reconciliation commission, in which the sins of the past were admitted, and people came to terms with them. Deir Yassin, and the other massacres committed, were the primary reason the Palestinians left their homes, because they were, on the whole, farmers, not fighters.

I'm not even going to try and defend the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, or Yasser Arafat, both of whom I have no love for. That both should be seen as symbols of a geniune struggle for national liberation is not helpful. In times of war, people rally around donkeys, and this applies to this love of Ariel Sharon as well, or the fact that people are rallying around George Bush, despite the fact his policies are making the world a more dangerous place, and policies which were pursued with extreme incompetence. Now both Iraq and Afghanistan are in serious trouble, and absolutely nothing came out of the 'roadmap'.

Suffice to say, that in Palestine, anti-semitism grew as a result of Arab knowledge of zionism, and Herzl's book 'The Jewish State'. It's not as though they were immigrating to Palestine to live alongside the Arabs in Palestine. From the outset, there was an agenda to annex the land and create the state of Israel on Palestinian land. People like the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem could use that genuine grievance to further their own agenda. It is similar to the way in which the BNP play on British concerns about immigration, although as far as I know, there are no plans afoot to create a Pakistani state in Britain.

I think the majority of those who immigrated would have been happy to live alongside the Arabs, and vice versa. In fact, I believe many Arabs even worked in Jewish settlements. But the actions of certain players on all sides concerned, British, Jewish and Arab created a spiral of violence, which led to where we are today. A big part of this was fuelled by the Zionist agenda to create a proper state in the region, and the Arab backlash against that. That in turn is fuelled by Jewish fury and humiliation during the holocaust and before, and to be honest, what else would you have done if you had been through that, and had a chance to start again somewhere else, even if that meant pushing aside a few arab villagers.

But ultimately, a crime committed in a moment of crisis is still a crime, and again, thats why there is need for acceptance and reconciliation with what happened in the past, because the more Israel denies what it has done, the angrier the Arabs get. Think about it from their perspective. A bunch of Europeans turn up, fleeing persecution perpetrated by other Europeans, NOT by Arabs, and claiming they had a right to the land because they had lived there 2000 years ago, and they want to create a state on your land. And in the course of various conflicts, they drive you from your land. Wouldn't you fight to get your land back?!?! From their perspective, it is very simple. Our land was taken and we must get it back. From the zionist perspective it is far more complicated to justify the position. I don't think it can be justified, though it can be understood. There are very good reasons why Israel was created, but I think zionism is a self destructive ideology that advocates that Jews and non-Jews inherently cannot live together, using some of the same propoganda that fascism used AGAINST the Jews.
 http://www.aldeilis.net/zion/zionrac12.html

As you can tell, I can write bucketloads of stuff on this subject, when I should be revising. Its important to take the time out, though, to write and try and understand why we are at the positions we have reached. Tell me, though, why is all this hatred directed against the Muslims all of a sudden. Historically, Jews had lived far better in Muslim countries than in Europe. To get back to the point about religion, Islam is not inherently an oppressive religion, like the other religions. Look at Hinduism, and how the caste system was perpetuated, even though it is not something that is actually inherent within Hinduism. How is it that Christians perpetrated the Crusades, one of the most un-Christian of episodes in history. To tackle the point about Judaism, if the conditions were right, there are things in the Torah and Jewish writings that could be used, and are used in small circles, that suppress the people, and oppress women. But in fact, the dominant ideology is not Judaism, but Zionism, which can have a very secular flavour to it. Muslims throughout the world are acting in a very un-Islamic way.

I keep the company of many Muslims who believe in the spiritual truth inherent in all religions based on the verses in the Qu'ran teaching how 'God sent a messenger to every nation on the Earth'. And they would be happy to respect the Jews, again like it says to do in their religion, except that Israel keeps committing these crimes against the Palestinians. Instead, they use verses which command them to wage war against those who wage war against them. Islam states you can fight if you have been attacked. But you cannot force people to convert 'There is no compulsion in religion'.
There is a difference between Muslims and Islam, just like I don't judge Christians by the actions of George Bush, or Jews by the actions of Ariel Sharon. You should actually study the religion before you pass judgement on it. And I would hope you could make the distinction between what is spiritual truth, and what is dogma.

Ok, about the Deir Yassin thing again.

This site:

 http://emperors-clothes.com/gilwhite/deiryassin.htm

claims that there was no massacre. Perhaps there was, and perhaps that is just revisionist. It is however true that a Palestinian propagandist admitted to inventing the charges of rape to a BBC documentary, and that the Israel left was looking for a way to discredit the right. Perhaps the massacre took place, but at the time the Israeli left's claims were, it seems to me, based on a desire to discredit the right when it did not actually know a massacre took place (they made up and exaggerated figures too), and also the media reporting of it was based on the claims of Arab propagandists, some of which has at least shown to be lies.

The Irgun and so on were smeared and lied about by the left on many occasions, and their reputation as terrorists or fascists is not deserved, so again, this raises doubts about Deir Yassin and other alleged atrocities.

Many have also claimed that the village was innocent civilians and that it was just a plain massacre, clearly false, as there was a fight against Arab fighters. It is also most likely the case that the Jews did send in their truck with a loudspeaker warning, even though this meant they lost the element of suprise - showing how human they are. There have been many lies spread by those claiming there was a massacre. It may well be that the Revisionists have also lied and there was indeed the unneccessary murder of civilians, and perhaps the truth is somewhere inbetween.

I still believe basically that it didn't happen however, this link

 http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/History/deir_yassin.html

argues it briefly and well.

I am no expert, and do not wish to get embroiled in a huge debate that is really a matter for the scholars.

I do however wish to defend the Israelis against unfair representation of the truth, and portrayal of them as ethnic cleansers and so on.

The Jews were also not responsible for anti-semitism in the Arab world and against Israel, and did everything they could to make peace with the Arab population. For starters, Zionism was not the colonial movement it is presented as by anti-Zionists, Jews had maintained all sorts of links with their homeland since their expulsion, and Jews still lived there.

Karl Marx even wrote of the Jewish MAJORITY in Jerusalem in the 19th century, who he described as oppressed, even though he himself was quite anti-semitic. Dhimmi (or whatever) meant that Jews and Christians were 'protected' people, ie. they gave into the superiority of the Islamic forces, but, if they paid extra taxes, could continue their religion. This was not however a nice situation, and it basically was an inferior status. They could not build new churches/synagogues, could not have a house bigger than nearby Muslims, couldn't resist physical assaults by Muslims, etc, kind of like an apartheid or the treatment of indigineous peoples in America or Australia. In here lies one of the central reasons for the whole conflict - Jews were supposed to be an inferior people, not equals.

Jewish immigration to Palestine was also largely from the Middle East, and happened before the Zionists came up with the idea. Then European Jews began going there to flee persecution. All land was bought legally, and they even paid higher prices to poor people. It was also not permitted to buy land that would put people out of work, and usually large parts of deserts were bought.

At this point there was no such thing as 'Palestinians', they were simply Arabs, and there was extensive immigration of Arabs from Syria, Iraq, etc. Anti-semitic propagandists and the anti-Zionists of the day claim that Jewish immigration was bad for the Arabs, put them out of jobs etc. But in fact the Jewish immigration resulted in a huge economic boom and expansion, which is why Arabs from all over began flocking to the country. The anti-semites demanded that the British restrict Jewish immigration, which they did, dramatically, but illegal Arab immigration was permitted - kind of destroying any claim that what they opposed was immigration putting them out of jobs.

In the 1948 war 900,000 Jews were brutally expelled from Arab countries and fled to Israel, which, despite being poor and a tiny strip of land, absorbed them. The majority of Israel's population from then was actually Middle Eastern, and even today, after 100,000s of Russians have immigrated to Israel, about half the population is Middle Eastern. To call it a colonial or European settler state then is ridiculous.

Palestine at the time was just a British creation, and in 1921 (I think) 2/3s of it was chopped off and named Transjordan, and Jews were not allowed to by land there. Palestine had never existed as a state, the only state that had every existed there was Israel, and Jews had always been there, if at times a minority. The King of Jordan himself always said that Jordan was Palestine and Palestine was Jordan, which is true. The PLO was formed in 1965, at which point the West Bank and Gaza were controlled by Jordan and Egypt (brutally), and it said in its consitution that it had no objection to that. Its goal was to liberated Palestine, all of it, from the Jews, ie. genocide. The idea of Palestinian nationalism was created in 1967. The horrible conditions in which the Arab countries keep the refugees (who they are responsible for, as they started the war and told them to flee) adds to this propaganda, and the idea has been to present it as a national liberation struggle.

This was the same goal as the Arab armies in 1948, and Azzam Pasha, Secretary General of the Arab League, promised: “This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades.”

In 1956 or 1967 (can't remember) Egyptian President Nasser promised that he would enter Palestine with blood on the ground or something.

Even today the Palestinians have not changed their position. Arafat and his chums during the Oslo period openly said (in Arabic only) that the Oslo peace process was a trojan horse and they were going to be in a jihad against Israel and so on, and they have admitted (in Arabic, to Arab rallies) that they planned and organised the infidata.

As you can see, the aim of the Palestinians is genocide, and the original sin does not lie with the Jews, but with anti-semitic propagandists.

Now for conditions with the occupation. It is inevitable that any military, particularly in a situation like this, will commit human rights abuses. But the only reason the Israeli army is in those areas is because the terrorists, with Arafat's support, continue to butcher Israeli civilians. In fact the occupation has always been extremely benign. Since 1967 the economy flourished, and Palestinians were allowed to elect their officials, even though it often meant the election of extremists. Even today, Palestinians are allowed to go to Israel to work, despite the terrorists risks.

One human rights allegation is that the Israeli army stops ambulances at checkpoints, to the detriment of the injured's health. This is, unfortunately true. But the only reason that ambulances, of all things, are stopped and searched at checkpoints, is because on many occasions Palestinian terrorists have actually used ambulances to get into Israel and carry out atrocites. Once again, we see that the Palestinian terrorists, not Israel, are to blame.

Anyway I hope that answers some of the stuff and can persuade you to support Israel. I see that you are not a propagandist and seem to be neutral, but the fact is that neutrality between victims and attackers, Jews and anti-semites, is not right.

Anyway shouldn't post too much more I've also got to revise!

Oh, I also forgot to mention. My views visavi Israel would actually be regarded by the majority of Israelis to be extreme, because I have no faith in the 'peace process', as the Palestinians are not committed to peace. The official history of the IDF, official history text books in Israel, politicians, etc all say that Deir Yassin happened. There is no denial in Israel, on the contrary, they have accepted that, despite the evidence that it did not happen. The vast majority also accept the idea of a Palestinian state, even though raising Arafat in this way has only meant more violence and more deaths, and a Palestinian state would STILL be committed to genocide, and would represent an even bigger security threat. This shows how much Israelis even today are committed to peace, to the extent that they damage their own security, and have nothing to apologise for.

There may have been no country called Palestine, but there were people who lived in that land, and who were dispossessed.

 http://www.palestineremembered.com/Acre/Right-Of-Return/Story432.html

You cannot tell me that there was nobody living in Jaffa or Haifa, Maggedo and especially in Jerusalem before the Jewish immigration. If you remember the crusades at all, I seem to recall it was European invaders trying to take the land from the Muslim inhabitants. The only reason there was no such thing as Palestine is the same reason there was no Iraq, Kuwait or Saudi Arabia. It was all Arabia. There were a whole bunch of arbitrary divisions following the first world war, and the British and French made these countries out of thin air, finding random kings to rule over them. But that doesn't change the fact that there were thousands of people living in the villages and towns in what became British Mandate Palestine, and that they had been there for considerably longer than the Jews. In fact, many were Jewish, and many were converts descended from the Jews, and in terms of blood and ethnicity, if such things matter, they probably had more Jewish blood in them than many of the European Jewry that immigrated in. Maybe its not a matter of blood, but in how you self define. But if I suddenly define myself as Jewish, and decide to move to an Israeli settlement, what gives me more right to that land than the Palestinian who had been farming it for centuries?

I agree with you to a point about Jewish immigration. It is the same way the BNP attack immigration in our country. I think that Jewish influence in the region would have been and eventually will be a positive thing for both peoples, just as the Arab influence will be a good thing for them. But there was always this agenda, and the Arabs were always aware of it, of creating a Jewish state on what was their land. The British have a lot to answer for here, because they promised the land to the Arabs, in exchange for them fighting the Turks. They promised it to the Jews, in the Balfour declaration. And then they decided they wanted to keep it for themselves. But what right did the British have to promise it to anyone?!?! Surely the land belonged to the people who lived there? The British basically played their same game of playing two sides off against each other, divide and conquer. The Arabs see them as complicit with the Jews. the Jews saw them as conspiring with the Arabs. In fact, the British did both, and so the seeds of hatred were even more deeply sown.
I think you can see arab anti-semitism as a direct response to zionism. It had never existed in such a way before, certainly when compared to Europe, and although the People of the Book were indeed second class citizens, it was based on religion rather than on race, and when you look at the way the rest of the world was treating blacks, for example, the Arab world was remarkably tolerant. By todays standards, it was not, and it is not, but in history this is the exception rather than the rule.
I'd like to remind you that Israel was a firm supporter of Apartheid South Africa, selling arms to them even during the embargo. And for various reasons, including the consequences of not serving in the army, Israeli arabs are second class citizens.

The aims of the Palestinians and of the Arab league were, and to an extent still are, the liberation of all of Palestine. Even if there is a two state solution, for the Palestinian, what is a basic injustice has not been dealt with. That's why I believe in a one state solution, in which both peoples can live in all the land together in a single secular country. That solves the problem of all those pesky settlements, as well. But of course, it runs completely against even the left-wing zionist ambition of having a majority Jewish state. And they worry that if the Palestinians return, they would be overrun. But let me ask you, how can the Jews of Israel be overrun? When I say one state, I don't say surrender. In South Africa, there were no reprisals against the Whites, despite them being a much smaller minority, because they were still strong, and they still had strength, and any attempt to do to them what Mugabe is doing in Zimbabwe would result in a terrible civil war. And some of the black rhetoric against the white man was every bit as chilling as the quotes you gave me.

From my experience of Palestinians, from my time over there, I can tell you the majority want to live in peace. But they just keep seeing Israel taking more and more of their land. Even during the peace process, there was settlement building, and Palestinians lost their land because of it. Every peace offer is seen as a way of taking MORE land, and never giving any of what has been taken back. That is the problem. There are partners for peace, but very few Israelis seem capable of seeing things from the Palestinian point of view. Every peace negotiation has been about negotiating how much of what the Palestinians still retain they can keep. And that is insulting. It is a bit like if you come and steal half of my cake, and then want to negotiate with me over how much of my remaining half I can keep.

The complication lies in the fact that there were certainly compelling reasons for taking that land, even if they weren't just reasons, ie) European anti-semitism. But that land was taken none-the-less, and there are thousands of dispossessed refugees as a consequence. Surely it was Europe that should have paid the price, not the Palestinians.

About the occupation being essential to secure Israel, I again disagree. A refusenik IDF Major told me his view that the occupation was there to secure the settlements, not Israel proper. He was a zionist, but he felt the occupation would destroy Israel. If all the troops guarding all the settlements were pulled back and simply sat on the green line, Israel would be far more secure. Instead, because of this complicated network of settlements and settler roads, the Israeli army is deployed in a manner much harder in terms of protecting against suicide bombers, for example, and there are numerous options open for a bomber with ingenuity to slip by. I even heard a story of one bomber paying the russian mafia so a russian settler would drive him into Israel in a nice Jewish taxi.
The same applies to the wall. If the wall went along the green line, it would be much easier to defend, and cheaper as well. However, the occupation is all about the settlements.

OK, that's the last long post of the night

Ok, another long post. I think this is a bit dodgy doing it all on this Iraqi Infidata thing, and it'll disappear off IndyMedia soon probably, so if you'd like to continue the discussion after this my email address is  leavethemonkeyalone@hotmail.com

I'm not denying that there were people there before the Jewish immigration, but there was no such thing as the Palestinian people, or Palestinian nationalism, or anything like that. The Muslims arrived in the 7th Century, and so technically the Jews were there first anyway (although thats not a justification). Jews always maintained their links with their homeland, and no other state ever existed there. Palestine was just a regional place, not a nationality. The people in Palestine were people born there, Arabs, and Arab immigrants. Given the huge amount of continuing Arab immigration after Jewish immigration was restricted in the 30s and so on, most of the Palestinians are in fact just Arabs. Whatsmore, up until 1967 when the West Bank and Gaza were controlled be Egypt, there was much cross-migration then.

Jews from Europe don't have a right to push indigineous peoples off the land, and, fortunately, that's not what they did. They always bought the land legally and cared greatly about the people to make sure they didn't dispossess them and make them poor. When Israel was created, it was given in total slightly more than the Palestinians, because it was given a huge desert in anticipation of future settlements. Jews come to Israel to get away from anti-semitism, and Israel has always tried to absorb them. This is in fact quite BAD for the Jewish state in some ways because this continual absorbtion of refugees has cost them a hell of a lot of money.

Settlements in the territories are a tricky matter. The thing is that withdrawing to the Green Line won't solve Israel's problems and her security. Parts of the West Bank and Gaza are vital for security giving the advantage to Israel if attacked. If Israel had the assurance of everyone that there would never be any more wars then it could give them all back, but as it stands, with no peace, Israel needs to retain some areas.

The wall/fence is not being built along the Green Line because that would be a political statement and become a future border, and because the whole point of the wall is to protect people, including the settlers.

Settlements have been built in some areas to ensure Israeli control of the strategic points vital for Israel's security. These settlements started long after the PLO's campaign, and Israel actually left a suprisingly long time before building anything. You also have to remember the fact that many of the settlers have lived there for a long time and been born there, and why is it neccessary for a Palestinian state to be Jew-free and for them to be ethnically cleansed?

As for the refugees, Isreal has always offered to accomodate them. Isreal until recently paid most of the money for the camps, and even after the war got 100,000 to return. A law was passed saying homes and property were to be protected, not looted etc. They will give compensation. They cannot however allow them all to return to Israel, for starters because, due to their high birth rate, there are now millions of refugees. President Nasser himself said that if Palestinians return, Israel will cease to exist. They can go into a Palestinian state, but for them to return to Israel itself is ridiculous (as there are people living there), especially when you consider that these refugees are some of the most extreme against Israel.

There is also the added fact that the only reason these people remain refugees is because of the Arabs. Isreal absorbed the 100,000s of Jews the Arabs expelled, despite being so poor. The Arab states have oil money galore, but keep the refugees in squalid conditions for propaganda purposes, and don't allow them to work, become citizens, vote, etc.

There is also the fact that the Arab states have never mentioned the fact that they expelled 900,000 Jews and stole their property, something for which they too should be compensated.

Israeli Arabs have rights, its not an apartheid system. This is despite the fact that they sometimes have been caught working with terrorists, and that many openly want the destruction of Israel. They elect Arab speakers to parliament. Not serving in the army would be seen as a blessing by most! But I expect, if it is true, that it is because they might let terrorists get away, might sabotage operations, and so on. A bit unfair to do it on ethnicity, but its easier than doing a huge background check on everyone (if that is indeed true). Israeli Arabs actually own more land relative to population than they should, they are 20% of the population, and own 3% of the land, Israeli Jews are 80% of the population, and own just 3.5% of the land (rest is state-owned and rented out).

I agree with you that the main problem was the British. Instead of giving power to the peaceful Arab leaders in Palestine who were friendly to the Jews, they consistently promoted an anti-semitic pogromist. They played them off against each other in order to keep control, and carved places up into countries that made no sense. If they had had good intentions, such as giving independence, it would never really have been neccessary for the Irgun to revolt, in which case there would have been less civilian deaths.

The only reason the Palestinians are paying the price is because the Arab states launched a brutal war to exterminate the Jews. If they had not, and had accepted the partition, apart from perhaps a few extremists, it would have been alright.

The Palestinians, when they talk of liberating Palestine, mean all of Palestine, including Isreal, from the Jews. Their schoolbooks tell children that there is nothing better than dying for Allah while killing Jews, and that all of historic Palestine (including Isreal) belongs to them. This is what they say in Arabic too. In English, they change it to one about occupation and human rights abuses and so on.

The goal is extermination, so it doesn't matter how much Isreal gives away, whether it removes every single settlement or just most of them, whether it withdraws to the Green Line or keeps strategic points. (The left btw I think would be prepared to withdraw practically everything, even more so than the right.)