That poster is sick! It is wrong!
The schoolchild shot while "walking to school" completely left the route to her school and instead walked far away into a closed military zone straight at an IDF guardpost!

The people who really have NO QUALMS about killing children---Israeli or Palestinian---are the suicide bombers (ALL of them Palestinian) who PURPOSELY kill AS MANY CHILDREN AS THEY CAN!!

Israelis don't DANCE IN THE STREET when Palestinian children are killed.

WHEN YOU WAGE A WAR IN A POPULATED AREA!! (as Arafat did when he began his intifada) then children get killed in the crossfire.

What about the abuse of Palestinian children who must play in bomb factories? What about the abuse of children for ENCOURAGING them to commit suicide and mass murder?

I am sickened that you think this is okay.

Obviously form your reation it is a VERY effective poster. I love it.

Whatever Palestianians do or dont do, it doesnt change the fact that Israeli soldiers shoot children. Two wrongs dont make a right.

"...it doesnt change the fact that Israeli soldiers shoot children."

Yes. Israeli soldiers shoot children...

...who are firing guns at them.

...who are attacking them with a knife

...who are approaching them with explosives strapped to their waist and bags of nails to make sure there is more deadly shrapnel.

...who have breached fences in order to attack Jewish settlements.

...who are planting booby-traps of explosives

...who are shot accidentally while the IDF is targeting a suspect KNOWN to be planning more attacks against innocent Israeli civilians.

Israelis soldiers do NOT

...shoot children while walking to school

...shoot children while sitting at a desk in class

...shoot children while they are lining up coming in from recess.

Sometimes, especially when Hamas fires qassam rockets into Israel from Palestinian neighborhoods, when the IDF FIRES BACK children get killed too. It is IDF policy to minimize any civilian casualties in all operations. When an IDF fires a weapon at a suspect, the policy is to aim at an arm or leg as a preferred target, to minimize the loss of life if the situation allows it. In Santa Cruz, the SCPD have orders to SHOOT TO KILL every time they fire at a suspect. But we go way out of our way to condemn the Israelis, when none of you are getting qassam rockets on your head.

Israel does not shoot children.
Unless you want to say that every country
in the world shoots children because sometimes children get shot in every country.

But MORE children get shot when they live in a war zone. Clearly it was the Palestinians who started the intifada in 2000 which is resulting in the deaths of Israeli and Palestinian children.

You know, considering how many teenage boys go and throw rocks EVERY DAY in agressive packs of male violence at IDF checkpoints and outposts, its not all that surprising that 621 (almost ALL boys for some reason) have been killed in the last 4.5 years.

Thats 138 Palestinians aged 15 or under per year killed

Of these, some were killed by Palestinian bullets
Of these, some were killed while transporting explosives

Of these some were killed as they themselves were armed with guns (remember the photo of the 12 yr old Palestinian girl and the rifle?? No wonder you freaked to see that! Its too much evidence YOUR chosen people actually perpetrate much of the violence that the entire population is victimized by.

"...it doesnt change the fact that Israeli soldiers shoot children."

Yes. Israeli soldiers shoot children...

...shoot children while walking to school

...shoot children while sitting at a desk in class

...shoot children while they are lining up coming in from recess.

...who are walkng to school

...who are playing with dolls

The damn buggers would just grow up to be suicide bombers anyway.

Nice try, but the above post is not by me. I would never admit to what the Israeli government actually does.

When an IDF soldier goes on patrol, they count the bullets they give him/her. When they return from the patrol, they count the bullets again.

IDF soldiers must account for any bullet fired while they were on duty.

If an IDF soldier breaks directives, and shoots an unarmed civilian, they will be arrested and charged with a crime. Israel has done this with many soldiers, and some are sitting in jail right now.

You can bet your ass that there are no Palestinian policemen in jail for having fired at an unarmed Israeli civilian.

But you smarty-pants don't even bother to investigate what Palestinian police do. You are too busy repeating fictional accounts of the brutality of IDF soldiers.

One of the tests of whether someone is an anti-semite is, do they believe EVERYTHING bad about the IDF but IGNORE any information to the contrary.

You better look out!

You better not shout!

You better not cry, I’m telling you why!

The IDF is coming to town.

Their counting their bullets,

Their checking them twice,

Gonna find out who’s little body gets put on ice,

The IDF is coming to town.

Heed you own words, Johnson.

"Just saying it doesn't make it true."

You're too funny!

Reply to Bicker: You have hit on one of the reasons I keep coming in here and putting up with so much abuse from you and your fellow posters.

And that is Goebells Big-Lie theory. That is, if you say something often enough, even if it is not true, and evidence for that is easily available, if you tell a lie often enough, it has the tendency to become "true" in the minds of the general public.

So when you come in here and say Israel is a racist, colonialist,genocidal, imperialist,expansionist, apartheid state that has no rights for poor, indigenous, starving, peaceful Palestinian freedom fighters I just can't let you get away with it.

You can't tell the big lie in here and not have me to deal with.

You have hit on one of the reasons I keep coming in here and putting up with so much abuse from you and your fellow posters.

And that is Goebels Big-Lie theory. That is, if you say something often enough, even if it is not true, and evidence for that is easily available, if you tell a lie often enough, it has the tendency to become "true" in the minds of the general public.

So this is my tactic. I, like my fellow Zionists, have learned much from Joseph Goebbels.

The Palestinian people; walled off, denied basic human rights, starved, tortured, and facing mass murder; face the same situation as Jews did in the ghettos of Europe under the Third Reich, minus the gas chambers and crematoria that came later. The Zionist government instead prefers to drive the majority of Palestinians from their homeland through violence and never allow them the right to return while allowing Jews from everywhere to immigrate.

Becky Johnson would have us believe that Syria and Jordan are responsible for the refugees created by Israel!

And then she throws this one at us:

Besides liars liars Israel occasionally, but rarely, allows a few Palestinians back into their homeland where they can face racist and religious discrimination, economic strangulation, house demolition, extreme restrictions of movement, and the murder of their children.

Why haven't the Jordanians or the Syrians accepted their Arab brothers into their country?
Why won't they grant citizenship, even to the Palestinian children born there?

When Israel was inundated with penniless Jewish refugees from dozens of Arab countries between 1948 and 1951, they accepted them. They found homes for them. And schools for their children. There are no internal Jewish refugees.

But in Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan (a country which is 60% Palestinian but ruled by the Hashemite minority!!)they dont allow Palestinians to become citizens. They are left to live in sqalid camps for decades.

Whazzzup with that????

Maybe they are racist against Palestinians?
Or maybe every time the Palestinians move into an area, the bloodshed and the violence begin?

"The Zionist government instead prefers to drive the majority of Palestinians from their homeland through violence and never allow them the right to return while allowing Jews from everywhere to immigrate."

THIS IS FALSE.

THIS IS THE TRUTH.

The Israeli government instead prefers to tolerate and care for the majority of the Palestinian people, inside their native homeland, resorting to violence only in self defence or the defence of others, and developing good criterion and proper regulatory processes so that as many who fled during the 1948 can be reintegrated into Israel and become citizens, at the same time serving as the national homeland for Jewish people anywhere in the world.

Becky Johnson says, "Maybe every time the Palestinians move into an area, the bloodshed and the violence begin?"

Replace “Palestinian� with “Jew� and this would be regarded hate speech and removed from Santa Cruz IndyMedia. Why is racist hate-speech against Palestinians more acceptable?

Becky Johnson is a total racist who blames Palestinians for their oppression everywhere they go.

I've pointed out that Israel bares the primary responsibility for turning Palestinians into refugees, but I've never let Jordan, Kuwait, and other capitalist Arab countries off the hook. Palestinians are denied human rights and treated as a source of cheap labor by the imperialist puppet governments of the Arab world, just as they are denied their basic human rights in Israel.

I, unlike Becky Johnson, call for an end to U.S. military aid to these repressive governments. Johnson, on the other hand, agrees with the exploitative monarchies that see the Palestinians as troublemakers to be denied rights, exploited, and murdered at will.

Racist Johnson also says, "There are no internal Jewish refugees."

This is false. Black and Arab Jews face extreme racism in capitalist Israel.

Black and Arab Sephardic Jews do face discrimination inside Israel from some Ashkenazi Jews, but none of this discrimination is encoded into law (such as happened in South Africa).

Racism is a problem in every country in the world (with the possible exception of Japan which has a mono-culture of Japanese).

The Israeli govt. has instituted programs to try to re-educate people away from racist attitudes.

Black and Arab Jews are NOT internal refugees. They don't live in camps. They are full citizens and have full citizenship rights.

Israel is a society where racism is the law.

The main internal refugees in Israel are those who speak Arabic.

Jews that are Arab or Black also face extreme racism. In the 1980s much was made of Israel saving Black Jews in Ethiopia. The story that got less coverage was that racist Israel treated these people so badly that many went home.

As for the supposed lack of racism in capitalist Japan, I must say that you are once again not informed. Here is an article I wrote soon after Sept. 11 that covered racism in Japan:

Japanese Longshore Workers Resist The War,
Racist Government Cracks Down On Korean Japanese

By STEVE ARGUE
200 Japanese dockworkers at Sasebo Port have been
refusing to load war armaments for the U.S. led war
against Afghanistan. Their action also includes a
daily one-hour shut down of the port demanding an end
to Japanese involvement in the war on Afghanistan and
opposing the enactment of Japan's new "anti-terror
laws" that curtail civil liberties.

The Japanese government's role in the so-called war
on terror has included the sending of aircraft, naval
vessels, and 1,600 personnel to the Indian Ocean as
back up for the terror bombing of Afghanistan. While
not directly participating in combat the Japanese role
is to lend support to the war.

Japan's constitution presently forbids the sending
of troops into foreign combat. That constitution was
enacted under the dictates of the United States after
the Japanese government's defeat in World War 2.
Today the Japanese government is moving towards
overturning that part of the constitution. The
resistance in the Japanese working class to Japan
moving into the world military arena is strong after
enduring Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and after having seen
brutal Japanese imperialist war policies including the
1937 rape of Nanjing and the enslavement of "comfort
women" for sex.

While Japan has not played a direct military role
in the world since 1945, Japan is a very powerful
imperialist country in an economic sense. Today the
Japanese ruling class wants to couple its ability to
bully and exploit third world countries economically,
with the ability to bully militarily just as the
United States does. The visit by Japanese Prime
Minister Junichiro Koizumi to a memorial for Japanese
militarism called the Yasukuni Shrine, coupled with
new official textbooks that blatantly cover up the
crimes of Japanese imperialism while enslaving Asia,
and moves to overturn Japan's pacifist constitution
are important warnings to the Japanese working class
and the people of Asia about the direction the
Japanese ruling class is moving.

A factor in the anti-war sentiment at Sasebo is
their location. Sasebo is very close to both
Hiroshima and Nagasaki and is located in between. The
U.S. atomic bombing of those two cities during World
War 2 killed hundreds of thousands of civilians.
After the first bomb was dropped President Truman
addressed the nation saying, "The world will note that
the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a
military base". Neither city was a military target,
but the American people were lied to then just as we
are lied to today.

Despite the lies in the American corporate media
and lies of the U.S. government we now know through
European and other foreign mainstream media that over
3,500 civilians have died in the U.S. bombing of
Afghanistan. These Afghani civilians had nothing to
do with September 11th. This civilian death count
was meticulously tabulated by Prof. Marc Harold of the
University of New Hampshire who compiled the
information from the foreign press up until Dec. 10th.
More civilians have died in the bombing since.

The dockworkers of Sasebo know that the targeting
of civilians is never justified. The horrors
experienced by the people in Nagasaki and Hiroshima
were partially meant to attain an immediate
unconditional surrender from the Japanese government
in order to avoid an invasion and for the U.S. to
avoid the Soviet Union gaining a role in post war
Japan. Whether one agrees with these goals or not the
atomic incineration of hundreds of thousands of
civilians coupled with burns, radiation illness, and
birth defects has no justification.

Today the U.S. government wants us to think that
the murder of civilians on September 11th justifies
the death and destruction the U.S. has carried out
against Afghanistan. Yet long before September 11th
the U.S. government has been carrying out terror
bombing killing 5 million in Korea, 3 million in
Vietnam, well over a million in Iraq through bombing
and sanctions, thousands in Panama, and millions
through proxy wars including propping up the racist
and genocidal government of Israel and putting the
Taliban in power in Afghanistan.

The dockworkers of Sasebo know that the killing of
civilians is not justified, and they are taking one of
the most profound actions in the world to stop the
killing. They are showing, by their small example,
how the workers of the world have the potential
ability to stop imperialist war. That potential
ability can be found in the fact that we can stop the
shipment and production of war armaments.

The example of the Sasebo workers continues to be
very relevant. The so-called war on terror, the Bush
Administration tells us, is not over. While the U.S.
government has not yet finished their objectives in
Afghanistan they are looking towards carrying out wars
in Somalia, Iraq, Sudan, North Korea, Cuba, Libya, and
Yemen. In addition the U.S. is heavily involved in
giving billions of dollars of military support to the
Colombian death squad government against a powerful
peasant insurgency, and giving even more support to
the deadly racist government of Israel against the
Palestinian people.

So-called War On Terrorism Targets Korean Japanese

On November 28th Bush named North Korea as one of
the potential targets of the so-called war on
terrorism. The next day the Japanese government began
a campaign of repression against the Korean Japanese
communities. In the Tokyo area Japanese police
arrested 15 leaders of the General Association of
Korean Residents in Japan (Chongryon). Their offices
were ransacked and the treasurer of the organization
was taken from the hospital to jail.

Forty-seven different Korean Japanese businesses
were raided as well. These businesses included banks
and savings and loan operations which are very
important to the Korean Japanese because Japanese
Koreans cannot get a loan from a Japanese bank.

The Japanese government, like the U.S. government,
is using September 11th as an excuse to crack down on
dissent. Today in the U.S. it is Arabs and Central
Asians who are being scape-goated for Sept. 11th as the
rights of all workers are being eroded. In Japan it
is 700, 000 Korean Japanese who are the most direct
victims.

The Korean community in Japan has long been a
victim of racism. They are relegated to the worst and
lowest paying jobs just as America's victims of racism
are. As a result of this and their history most
Korean Japanese are anti-capitalist and sympathetic to
North Korea. North Korea is looked to for
successfully resisting both Japanese and American
imperialism.

The U.S. attempt to impose a puppet government on
all of Korea was done following Japan's defeat in the
Second World War. The resistance of the Korean people
to Japanese imperialism was soon directed against the
U.S. occupation of their land, especially with the
United States using the same individual puppet
government officials to oppress the Korean people as
Japan had.

Facing stiff resistance from the Korean people to a
U.S. occupation of their land the United States went
to war. The 1950-1953 U.S. war against the Korean
people was a slaughter of horrendous proportions.
Five million Koreans were killed in a war that
included an early bombing campaign that did not leave
a building standing.

A sort of stalemate was reached at the end of the
war dividing the country between North and South. The
U.S. continues to occupy the south with 40,000 U.S.
troops aimed not just at the North Korean deformed
workers state, but also at the Korean working class as
a whole. South Korea is far from democratic.
Hundreds of union leaders have been imprisoned in
South Korea this year alone including KCTU President
Dan Byung-Ho. Thirty-six socialists are imprisoned in
South Korea as well for organizing strikes and
publishing books.

The Asian financial crisis a few years ago hit both
Japan and South Korea hard and the economic crisis is
not over. For the bosses it is their intention to make
the workers pay ever more through lay-offs, union
busting, and political repression while the
capitalists enjoy the wealth they've made off of
labor. The militant labor movement of South Korea
that continues to stand up despite repression, and the
Japanese Sasebo workers standing up against war and
political repression are two powerful examples of what
the labor movement as a whole can do in the fight for
a better world.

A potential U.S. war once again on the Korean
peninsula is a potential war that must be fought
against. It is the right of the Korean people to
decide their own government without U.S. intervention
as it should be the right of the people of Afghanistan
to decide their own future.

Afghanistan

Due to U.S. bombing and military assistance to the
"Northern Alliance" Mujahideen the reactionary Taliban
regime appears to be gone. The U.S. put the Taliban
in power to begin with.

The U.S. has brought together the forces to make up
a new transitional government in negotiations held in
Bonn. Excluded from the Bonn talks were the left
progressive former PDPA, now renamed the PVAP. Also
excluded was the "Alliance for democracy in
Afghanistan" in which the Social Democratic Party of
Afghanistan plays the pivotal role and who were
leaders in the uprising against the Taliban in Herat.
In addition the Revolutionary Association of the Women
of Afghanistan (RAWA) was excluded.

Instead the U.S. brought together the King and the
various Mujahideen forces of the "Northern Alliance"
who are known for their abuses of women including mass
rapes and throwing acid into the faces of women
liberated from the veil. By supporting the most
reactionary elements in Afghanistan and excluding all
of those who to some degree advocate women's rights
and democracy, the U.S. government is continuing to
impose misery on the Afghan people. That misery flows
directly from the U.S. intervention that began in
1979.

In 1978 the PDPA came to power in Afghanistan.
Their program of women's rights and literacy campaigns
infuriated fundamentalist mullahs. By 1979 the CIA
was in Afghanistan financing these religious fanatics
who organized the Mujahideen in a holy war against
literacy and women's rights. The Soviet Union,
fearing a fanatical Islamic state on their border
moved in to put down the U.S. backed Mujahideen
rebellion.

The Mujahideen waged their misogynist holy war
against women and literacy with billions of dollars in
U.S. aid and with the profits made off of the heroin
trade. Their tactics included murdering women for
teaching little girls how to read and write, throwing
acid into the faces of women who had become liberated
from the veil, and skinning Soviet soldiers alive who
were defending the PDPA government from the CIA's
Mujahideen.

It is the factions of these mercenary killers the
U.S. government installed back into power on Nov. 13th
as a result of murderous U.S. bombing and other direct
aid to the northern Mujahideen.

The rule of the Taliban also flowed directly out of
earlier U.S. support to the Mujahideen, and Pakistani
dictatorship. Many of the fanatics of the Taliban
were recruited out of the Mujahideen. The Taliban
were organized and financed with direct assistance
from the U.S. supported Pakistani dictatorship and
secret police in an attempt towards imposing a
friendly stable government. Osama bin Laden was one
of the recipients of this U.S. aid, first for the
defeat of the PDPA government, and later in the
attempt to impose a friendly and stable Taliban
government that would benefit Pakistani and U.S.
economic interests. The U.S. got neither, but they
were still trying up until this year. In fact the
clerical fascist regime of the Taliban received 120
million dollars in U.S. aid in the year 2001 alone.

U.S. interests go beyond getting rid of the Taliban
and alleged terrorists. The real desire is a stable
government that can defend oil and gas interests. The
Taliban was not capable or completely willing to give
U.S. oil and gas interests exactly what they wanted.
These points were made clear by John J. Maresca, vice
president of Unocal, when he explained Unocal's desire
to get at billions of barrels of Central Asian oil
with a pipeline through Afghanistan. He explained
this in testimony before a House committee on Feb. 12,
1998 saying, "From the outset, we have made it clear
that construction of our proposed pipeline cannot
begin until a recognized government is in place that
has the confidence of governments, lenders and our
company."

The U.S. government now sees King Zahir Shah as the
puppet to give Unocal what they want. Yet this will
not be easy to impose. Two of the countries that also
want a hand in Central Asian oil are Russia and Iran.
Both countries are giving backing to forces made up of
nationalities that were murdered by King Zahir Shah
when he was in power.

The now capitalist Russian government backs the
Tajik Islamic fanatics under the leadership of Ismail
Khan, while Iran backs various Hazara groupings.
Meanwhile the U.S. is trying to re-impose on top of
these forces King Zahir Shah, who during his reign in
power carried out ethnic cleansing against the Tajik
and Hazara nationalities.

So-called "peace keeping" troops are being sent in
an attempt to maintain stability. Yet it is not in
the interests of the Afghani people or the working
class of the United States, Japan, or any other
country to re-impose King Zahir Shah on the people of
Afghanistan. We are not the ones who will profit when
UNOCAL gets its billions of barrels of Central Asian
oil, but it will be our class, working people in
uniform from various countries, who are likely to die
imposing a King for the profits of UNOCAL. All
imperialist forces out Afghanistan and the Red Sea
now! No to war against North Korea! Workers of the
world strive to follow the example of the Sasebo
dockworkers to stop the madness of our rulers!

STEVE WROTE: "Israel is a society where racism is the law."

BECKY: This is not really true, now, is it Steve?
You are basing your ENTIRE thesis on the fact that Israel has been set up since day one as the homeland for Jewish people anywhere in the world.

What you call racism, is really a favoritism. It was a needed and vital response to the racism and genocide against the Jewish people which occurred just prior to the Holocaust and during the Nazi holocaust.

Much of the world was horrified by what Hitler did, both in his expansionism, and his genociding the Roma,the homosexuals, the mentally retarded, and the Jews.

World sympathy allowed and promoted setting up a State where Jewish people, throughout the world, could come, find refuge, and become citizens.

This is not "racist" as you would like gullible indyreaders to think. It's just the opposite. It was supported by a world who was appalled by the racism the Jews had suffered. A sort of affirmative action for Jews.

Likewise, Arab Muslims, who lived in Palestine prior to the foundation of Israel in 1948, were invited and accepted into Israeli society without any pressure to convert to Judaism, or any loss of rights because they are not Jewish.

Steve--you just can't stand to have one, tiny, Jewish country in the world. There are dozens of Islamic countries---some don't allow ANY Jews to live there. THAT is racism. I don't see you writing reams and reams of diatribe against their truly racist governments.

Israel recognizes 15 separate religions. Israel has religious freedom for all. Israel protects Islmic religious sites EVEN THOUGH THEY WERE BUILT ON TOP OF THEIR MOST HOLY SITE!!

Israel's tolerance for other races and religions is both encoded in their religion (Judaism calls for tolerance and friendship with foreigners) but also in their government.

You MISSED MY POINT COMPLETELY about Japan. I said that any country which has different races living there, has a problem with racist attitudes among some of its people. Israel is no exception. My point about Japan, is they are almost ALL Japanese and don't have much contact with people of other races.

Oh, and there are NO internal Ethiopian or Black Jewish refugees in Israel. Another one of your falsehoods.

Stupid Johnson writes, "What you call racism, is really a favoritism."

Steve, since you are so smart,(and I am so stupid) why don't you tell us where to find the Jewish refugee camps. You told us all about them (since you are such an expert on everything) in a previous post. So where are they?

Oh, and what are the borders of Palestine?
I've been reading your posts and I'm soooooo confused. You keep talking about percentages of Palestine but won't say where 100% of Palestine is. Maybe you could post a map of Palestine.
that would help clear a lot of things up.

Palestine is in the hearts of an entire people who are denied basic rights and a homeland by the heartless and racist Zionist government of Israel.

Today the realities of the boundaries of Palestine occur inside of what Zionist founder Jabotinsky referred to as the Iron Wall.

On Jabotinsky Rabbi Judas L. Magnes, President of the Hebrew University Jerusalem wrote, “by definition a Jewish state means that Jews will govern other people, other people who live in this Jewish state…Jabotinsky knew this long ago. He was the prophet of the Jewish state...In his early writings he said: ‘Has a people ever been known to give up its territory of its own volition? Likewise, the Arabs of Palestine will not renounce their sovereignty without violence.’�

On the morals of Jabotinsky’s plans and his desire to extinguish all hopes of the Palestinian people he is as clear in the “Iron Wall� as Hitler is of his intentions in “Mein Kampf� with Jabotinsky stating: “To the hackneyed reproach that this point of view is unethical, I answer ‘absolutely untrue.’ This is our ethic. There is no other ethic. As long as there is the faintest hope for the Arabs to impede us they will not sell these hopes – not for any sweet word nor for any tasty morsel, because this is not a rabble but a people, a living people. And no people makes such enormous concessions on such fateful questions, except when there is no hope left, until we have removed every opening visible in the Iron Wall.�

In 1940 Jabotinsky states in “The Jewish War Front�: “Since we have the moral authority for calmly envisaging the exodus of the Arabs, we need not regard the possible departure of 900,000 with dismay. Herr Hitler has recently been enhancing the popularity of population transfer.�

The West Bank and Gaza, denied the economy Palestinian labor has built in Israel, are not a viable Palestinian homeland. They are actually Israel’s giant open air prisons. The borders of the Palestinian and Hebrew speaking republics will need to be radically redrawn at the time of the socialist revolution against the Zionist Israeli government and the Hashemite Monarchy of Jordan.

End U.S. military aid to the murderous and repressive governments of Israel and Jordan!

So Steve Argue can't put his money where his mouth is. All he gives us is tired quotes from 1940 that are supposed to mean something. We all know what happened from 1940 on, Steve.

The reason you won't post a map of Palestine is that if you were honest, you would post the 1921 British Mandate for Palestine map which included Jordan and parts of Iraq. The 1917 Balfour resolution in Great Britian promised the Jewish people they could make a national homeland in Palestine. But in 1921, the British, in order to appease Arab leaders, closed all areas of Palestine to Jewish settlement that later became Jordan and Iraq. This left only 25% of Palestine for a Jewish National homeland.

Then again in 1947, the United Nations divided up the remaining land again, to give Half to the Arabs for an Arab state of Palestine.

This means that the partition plan in 1947 only offered the Jewish people about 14% of Palestine for a national homeland.

Steve Argue would have us believe that this was an unfair allocation which impacted the native Palestinian Arab population. He ignores the Jewish population that had been there in some numbers since before the Roman times.

No wonder he can't post a map of Palestine. It would show that all his previous claims are without merit.

Speaking of Jordan, since its already 60% Palestinian Arabs, why not make it a democracy, and then you'd have your Palestinian state overnight!!

Stupid Johnson writes, "Speaking of Jordan, since its already 60% Palestinian Arabs, why not make it a democracy, and then you'd have your Palestinian state overnight!!"

Looking at past posts, it is I, not Becky Johnson that calls for an end to U.S. military aid to Jordan. Likewise there is no room for the racist murderous state of Israel in the world.

As I just said:

The West Bank and Gaza, denied the economy Palestinian labor has built in Israel, are not a viable Palestinian homeland. They are actually Israel’s giant open-air prisons. The borders of the Palestinian and Hebrew speaking federated republics will need to be radically redrawn at the time of the socialist revolution against the Zionist Israeli government and the Hashemite Monarchy of Jordan.

End U.S. military aid to the murderous and repressive governments of Israel and Jordan!

P.S. Quotes from the father of the Zionist state contain the original sin of that government, and do in fact mean something.

Steve, I checked with my Dafka sources and they sent me this:

The PLF is a faction of PFLP. The same as DPFLP. They split off from the leadership.Abu Nidal was the ringleader on the Achille Lauro. See:

judaism.about.com/library/1_terrorism/bl_terrorismisrael_c_pfl.htm

IF Argue endorses the PLF then he still endorses a terrorist group per the US state department.

BECKY: I personally don't give a shit what the State Dept. says about whether an organization has terrorist affiliations or not. To me, I don't want to support any organization that uses violence, endangers innnocent civilian life, uses terror of the general population as a method, or uses suicide bombers.

This puts me at odds with my own government (USA) many times (see past posts for lists of my anti-war work). And since I am a citizen here, I feel a greater responsibility to affect US policy than of any international country or people.

When it comes to Israel, it's the one place on earth where you can make a case that the people NEED to be heavily armed or they WILL BE KILLED if they aren't.

However, my continued support for the $3 billion a year for Israel (and the $2 billion a year to Egypt) are based solely on those being provisions of the 1979 peace treaty between Israel and Egypt.

I don't think we should tinker with this. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

I do not justify ANY act by Israel where it used violence for violence's sake, where innocent civilian populations were intentionally or recklessly harmed, or where any Jewish suicide bomber was used (I'm not aware of ANY Jewish suicide bombers ). Building a wall might not be popular, but it doesn't spread terror. So my standards are the same for how I judge (from the safety of my beachside Californian community)how Israel uses its military vs. how Arafat, the PA, and the Palestinian terror groups use their military powers.


But when it comes to your support of the PFLP or the PLF, I have to ask you, how you can justify your support when they use these methods?

I mean these guys pushed an old man into the sea, dumping him from his wheelchair!! Steve, you should completely disassociate from these organizations right now.

Just so you don't think I've completely lost my mind, I'm well aware that the USA backed Manual Noriega in Panama, then later imprisoned him, backed Saddam in his war with Iran, then later waged war on him twice, backed Osama bin Laden in his opposition to the Soviet presence in Afghanistan, but now are hunting him down as the prime suspect in the 9/11 bombing. I'm well aware of the US backed Contras in Nicaragua and the death squads in El Salvador and Columbia, trained in America.

I opposed all of these and still do.

And in the Yugoslavia war, where was the "genocide" Clinton told the American people was going on against the "ethnic Albanians" (they don't like to say they are pro-Muslim).
We blame Bush for his WMD hoax, but Clinton used a false genocide hoax as well.

So I am just reminding the readers (who probably haven't been as politically active as I have for as long as I have) that I am no spring chicken when it comes to looking at US policy around the world.

Is US aid to Jordan a bad idea? Probably. Given the US track record, likely. But I don't have any specifics and as such will wait until such time as I feel I have something more to offer regarding the wisdom of continuing this aid.

Doesn't it?

Now Johnson wants to change the subject.

The PLF and the PFLP are not the same organization, despite what Johnson’s supposedly "well informed" Dafka sources tell her. The PLF split from the PFLP in the 1970s. The PLF was the small splinter group that carried out the Achille Lauro hijacking in the 1980s, not the PFLP.

The PLF carried out this action in a desperate attempt to free 50 of their comrades from the Israeli prison / torture chambers. This, however, does not justify the one civilian death that took place.

As for Johnson’s position on 5 billion dollars in military aid the United States sends to the repressive governments of Israel and Egypt every year falling under her category of “if it aint broke don’t fix it�; sometimes I truly wonder what planet she is from.

Of course Johnson thinks that the racist state of Israel is not broke and not racist because as she said, “What you call racism, is really a favoritism." Sure, it is separate and unequal, but that is O.K. because Jews are better people.

And then Johnson wants to complain about the treatment of women in the Arab world, but she refuses to call for an end to U.S. military aid to the same governments that she complains about. People who stand up to the anti-woman governments in Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere are murdered with weapons supplied by the United States, but this is not an issue to her.

She is a racist hateful person with no solutions and only arguments for the continuation of the status quo.

My solution is for leftists to urge their contacts in Arab countries to drop their endless hatred against the Jews and Israel, and instead move to accept the existance of the only Jewish country in the world.

Its already there. Its been there for 56 years now. It has 6 million people, and its not going to go away.

The shortest path for peace, is for the Palestinians to end their intifada --which has resulted in nearly 4000 deaths (on both sides) since Sept. of 2000. And for Palestinians and Arab countries to end their enmity with Israel.

This is the shortest path to peace and justice.
All issues about housing, water, borders, refugees, rights, etc. can be solved through sincere negotiations and resolved in a fair manner so that all people get their needs met.

Why Steve Argue continues to advocate for the destruction of Israel is beyond me.

I don't know why anyone would think he is a peace advocate for doing so.

No amount of desire for peace on Becky Johnson's part will change the fact that the Palestinian people are oppressed and the Zionist government is the oppressor. U.S. support for the oppressor is prolonging the war.

My criticisms of Arafat were always from the left. When Arafat negotiated for the current "two state solution" I pointed out that it would not work because Palestinians would only have control of the poorer areas of Palestine where there was/is no real basis for an independent economy. Instead of being a truly independent nation the Palestinians continued to be forced to work for racist Zionists for employment while the Palestinian Authority took on the role of capitalist government administrators of the new Israeli Bantustans/open air prisons.

I oppose all capitalist governments, including the PA and the Kingdom of Jordan. This, however, doesn’t mean that I’m neutral when it comes to Israel’s murderous invasions of Jenin and Gaza etc.

The current state of the situation has shown that Yasir Arafat's strategy of negotiations with the Israeli government has achieved nothing, that the Israeli government can not even keep their word on earlier agreements, and that there will not be peace for either the Palestinian or the Hebrew speaking population until the Israeli state is abolished and in its place a socialist and democratic secular nation is built with federated republics of Palestinian and Hebrew speaking nationalities that have a separation of church and state where the civil rights of all nationalities are guaranteed. Only a socialist movement that represents the rights of the entire working class and speaks uncompromisingly against the discrimination and violence meted out to the Palestinians by the Israeli State will be capable of making such a revolutionary transformation. Likewise such a movement cannot see the Hebrew speaking population as the enemy and must instead target the repressive apparatus of the Zionist state.

A first step toward ending the oppression of Palestinian people and the war that is being carried out by Israel is to end U.S. military aid.

Steve wrote: "No amount of desire for peace on Becky Johnson's part will change the fact that the Palestinian people are oppressed and the Zionist government is the oppressor. U.S. support for the oppressor is prolonging the war."

BECKY: Your knee-jerk charges of oppression ignore the fact that the checkpoints, the security barrier, and the incursions into Jenin and Gaza were ALL TO STOP THE TERRORISM that the PA agreed to stop when it signed the Oslo Accords. You blame Israel of breaking agreements, but the first phrase of the first line in the first paragraph of Bush's roadmap for Peace calls for the PA to stop the terrorism in their own community. It is the PA that has not kept its word. The "oppression" you shout about is nothing but necessary security measures Israel must take to protect its own people.


STEVE WROTE: "...there will not be peace for either the Palestinian or the Hebrew speaking population until the Israeli state is abolished and in its place a socialist and democratic secular nation is built with federated republics of Palestinian and Hebrew speaking nationalities that have a separation of church and state where the civil rights of all nationalities are guaranteed."

BECKY: First, they are the Israelis not the "Hebrew-speaking people." Your language betrays your intent to delegitimize the Israeli people. Jews have lived in the area for 3,300 years and have a legitimate right to live there.
You make false claims that the Palestinians are the indigenous people who were "driven out" by the new Israeli govt. The facts of course are quite different.

First, the vast majority of Arabs fled on the advice of their Arab leaders. 2nd, most Arabs in the region are as newly arrived as the Israelis are, and 3rd, the population on the West Bank has increased 3-fold since 1967 so the Israelis are obviously not driving anyone out now.

Israel right now is a democratic, socialist, yes, SECULAR nation. The only thing Jewish about Israel is that any Jew who wishes to move there, will automatically be granted citizenship.
Other than that, Israelis have free medical care and a number of other socialistic programs so that Israel has virtually no homeless people.

All citizens have the right to vote whether they are Jewish or not. Your DEMAND that Israel be destroyed is very dangerous. Your call to continue the intifada is a call for more war, more killing, more death. Israel is all right now how it is.

Stupid Johnson writes, "BECKY: Your knee-jerk charges of oppression ignore the fact that the checkpoints, the security barrier, and the incursions into Jenin and Gaza were ALL TO STOP THE TERRORISM"

No Johnson, they were all done to conduct terrorism.

The classic definition of terrorism is when civilian populations are randomly attacked or killed in order to terrorize the general population.

Only the Palestinian terror groups target civilians.

The Israeli army conducts non-terror activities such as checkpoints, searches, and a passive barrier to prevent attacks before they happen.

Sadly, even during "truce" periods, Israel must repel an average of 21 attacks a day. Not all of these make the newspapers. Some are knifings and shootings. Sometimes suicide bombers are caught before they act and are disarmed.

There is not a day that goes by, that the Israeli army does not prevent at least one attack from being carried out.

Israel has no desire to terrorize the Palestinian people. It is true, that when the IDF is forced, by the failure of the PA, to hunt down known and wanted terrorists, the general population is also terrorized. But this is not the intent or purpose of the IDF.

However, when Hamas, Islamic Jihad, or Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade carry out an attack, they DO mean to terrorize the general population.