Can Mitchell turn Jerusalem into Belfast? »
Posted By hyperbola 10 months, 1 week ago in ReligionUS President Barack Obama's appointment of former Senator George Mitchell as his new Middle East envoy is a good choice. Mitchell showed even-handedness uncharacteristic of US officials when he led a fact-finding mission to the region in 2000.
Had its recommendations been followed -- cessation of all violence and a full freeze of Israeli settlement construction on occupied Palestinian land -- the peace process might have made progress. Mitchell, who is already in the Middle East, helped broker the 1998 Belfast Agreement, the key to ending decades of strife in Northern Ireland. Because of historical similarities, that peace agreement is an important precedent for Palestinians and Israeli Jews.
As Israeli Jews did to Palestinians, Protestants institutionalized their own culture and religion as the official creed and violently suppressed expressions of nationalist identity. In the words of its first prime minister, Northern Ireland's seat of government at Belfast's Stormont Castle was a "Protestant parliament for a Protestant people." Catholics faced systematic discrimination in jobs and housing.
Like Irish nationalists, Palestinians will never recognize the "right" of another group to discriminate against them. Like Protestant unionists did, Israeli Jews insist on their own state. Israel's "solution" is to cage Palestinians into ghettos -- like Gaza -- and periodically bomb them into submission just so Israeli Jews, their relative numbers dwindling, can artificially maintain a Jewish state.
By 2010, Palestinians will outnumber Israeli Jews in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip combined. The two groups can no more be totally separated than Protestant unionists and Catholic nationalists in Ireland.
If Mitchell is allowed to apply Northern Ireland's lessons, then there may be a way out. But he goes to Jerusalem with few of the advantages he brought to Belfast. The Obama administration remains committed for now to the failed partition formula of "a Jewish state" and a "Palestinian state" and maintains the Bush administration's misguided boycott of Hamas, which overwhelmingly won Palestinian elections in 2006. And the Israel lobby -- much more powerful than its Irish American counterpart -- warps US policy to favor the stronger side, an intransigent Israel committing war crimes. If these policies don't change, Mitchell's efforts will be wasted and escalating violence will fill the political vacuum.
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hyperbola
Military brat (14th generation American) with unassuaged wanderlust. By age 11, schools in four states and three foreign countries (in 3 languages). Left home at ...
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Endoscopy10 months, 1 week ago
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One major difference here.
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In Ireland the two sides were supposedly Christian and when they resorted to violence they were going against the Bible.
In Israel the terrorists use the Quran, hadith, and Muslim scholars to say these things they are doing is right. Suicide bombers believe according to the Quran and hadith that if they die killing enemies of Islam including other Muslims they will go to paradise immediately. That is the only sure path to Allah that Muslims have.
How do you deals with people like that.
The following is a link to how depraved these people are.
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,250...
This woman arranged for 80 young women to be raped so she could later convince them that martyrdom was the only way to escape the shame.
Destroying a young woman's life so she could turn them into suicide bombers. How do you think that George Mitchel or anybody else can have an impact on the behavior of the Islamic terrorists that believe they are doing the will of Allah in doing these horrendous things.-
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cherev10 months, 1 week ago
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"How do you deals with people like that."
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You kill them and anyone who supports them in any way.
"Destroying a young woman's life so she could turn them into suicide bombers. How do you think that George Mitchel or anybody else can have an impact on the behavior of the Islamic terrorists that believe they are doing the will of Allah in doing these horrendous things."
George Mitchell will help them. That's his purpose. Yes, I know it's not supposed to be, but that's the way it is. He's not there to arrange a peace. He's there to get Israel to make one-sided suicidal concessions so that the Arabs can have a better chance to exterminate them. -
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hyperbola10 months, 1 week ago
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No more depraved than the zionists endo. After all, they ethnic cleansed over 7 million christians and moslems over the last century. And, the zionists are desperate to prevent any peaceful solution, even if they have to commit crimes against humanity like Gaza. There is only one solution that is consistent with the modern world and American democracy.
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Why the Only Solution for Jews and Palestinians is a One State Solution
For a durable solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Bible and the Quran must be de-politicized. In political terms, de-politicization means a single secular democratic state for Jews and Palestinians. In provoking the enmity of their age-old Muslim friends, Zionism has disserved the long-term interests of the Jewish people.
...For a durable solution to the Arab Israeli conflict, a single democratic and secular state for Jews and Palestinians needs to evolve. A single state promises a more durable long-term solution than the two-state solution, currently in vogue. The two-state solution is inherently unstable for four reasons:
1. First, demographically, a purely Jewish state is impossible to attain.... The Zionist dream of creating an exclusive state for the Jewish people in Palestine is unsustainable in the long-term...
2. Secondly, intractable issues stand in the way of a two-state solution: Jerusalem, borders, security for Israel and for Palestine, water rights, settlements, and the refugees’ right-of-return. Since the signing of the Oslo Agreement on September 13, 1993, none of the thorny issues has been resolved....
3. Thirdly, even if a miracle patches up a two-state agreement the extremists on both sides would undermine the agreement. The extremists believe that they are divinely ordained to keep-up the struggle until they control the entirety of the land....
4. Fourthly, the Arab masses w ill shun a Zionist state. Judging from Israel’s peace treaties with Egypt (March 26, 1979) and Jordan (October 26, 1994), relations among the Egyptian and Jordanian masses and Israelis failed to develop beyond small diplomatic missions.
Western democratic and secular ideals should inspire the development of a single, democratic, and secular state for Palestinians and Jews. There are three reasons in support of such a development:
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hyperbola10 months ago
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Nope engineer, I just don't like racist ethnic cleansers - especially when they have 7 million christian and moslem victims. Seems you are a racist engineer that doesn't believe in the most fundamental principles of american democracy. Simple things like:
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"""We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."""
What would your reaction be if the baptists stated that they are the "master race" and jews and other religions are only second class citizens in the USA , if they are not simply ethnic cleansed from the country? If you oppose that, but support zionist ethnic cleansing in Palestine, then you are clearly simply a racist.
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obama-watchComment removed: Hard Banned
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