looks like a repeat of the night of the long knives

Thanks Robert...a little more:

http://www.petitiononline.com/pappe/petition.html

To:  Haifa University, Israel
We the undersigned, members of both the Israeli and international academic communities, wish to express our dismay at Haifa University’s decision to subject Senior Lecturer Dr Ilan Pappe to a trial.

We have strong reservations about the attempt being made by the University Prosecutor and the Dean of Humanities Professor Yossi Ben Artzi to revoke Dr Pappe’s tenure and fire him because he made harsh statements sent by e-mail about individual professors and has allegedly defamed the institution as well as asked for intervention of some professional associations.

Dr. Pappe, who holds a rank roughly equivalent to a tenured Associate Professor, criticized the institution and its procedures following the nullification of a highly controversial Master’s thesis that documented the fates of 5 Arab villages in northern Israel during the 1948 war. The thesis, which was originally approved with an excellent grade, was later nullified following pressure from veterans groups. These groups threatened a libel suit because the thesis portrayed them as possibly being responsible for a massacre. Dr Pappe unequivocally asserted in his e-mail postings that the thesis was nullified not on professional or scholarly grounds, but for personal and political reasons.

While we do not take a position on either the nullification of the thesis or on Dr Pappe’s assertions, we call on the University of Haifa to rescind its prosecution of Dr Ilan Pappe for the following reasons:

* First and foremost, the revocation of tenure is usually conditioned upon a legally proven criminal act or deviance from academic standards. If there was an ethical violation, it lacked the severity to justify use of academia’s ultimate weapon, the revocation of tenure.

* The University of Haifa must avoid the appearance of using its institutional powers to exact revenge on an individual faculty member engaging in legitimate criticism of authority. This is the very core of academic freedom. Without such freedom, the continued existence of the university itself is in jeopardy.

* Dr. Pappe is considered a political dissident. Revoking his tenure cannot be viewed but as political persecution—an act which completely contradicts the idea of university.

* Establishing a precedent for firing a faculty member on such weak and unusual grounds constitutes a grave danger both to higher education and the entire Israeli society. Especially in these days, when freedom in Israel is under attack, the university should be a stronghold of freedom.

Therefore, out of respect and concern for academic freedom in Israel and the image of the University of Haifa, we strongly urge that Haifa University authorities reconsider this decision.

Sincerely,

The Undersigned

http://www.ilanpappe.org/

link to Dr. Pappe’s website.....

Comment #78646 by Cyrena on 6/16 at 7:37 pm
comment #78670 by P.T. on 6/16 at 9:44 pm
Comment #78712 by ardee on 6/17 at 7:40 am
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THE 1948 ETHNIC CLEANSING OF PALESTINE ILAN PAPPÉ

“This article, excerpted and adapted from the early chapters of a new book, emphasizes the systematic preparations that laid the ground for the expulsion of more than 750,000 Palestinians from what became Israel in 1948. While sketching the context and diplomatic and political developments of the period, the article highlights in particular a multi-year “Village Files” project (1940–47) involving the systematic compilation of maps and intelligence for each Arab village and the elaboration—under the direction of an inner “caucus” of fewer than a dozen men led by David Ben-Gurion—of a series of military plans culminating in Plan Dalet, according to which the 1948 war was fought. The article ends with a statement of one of the author’s underlying goals in writing the book: to make the case for a paradigm of ethnic cleansing to replace the paradigm of war as the basis for the scholarly research of, and the public debate about, 1948.

ON A COLD WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON, 10 March 1948, a group of eleven men, veteran Zionist leaders together with young military Jewish officers, put the final touches on a plan for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine1. That same evening, military orders were dispatched to units on the ground to prepare for the systematic expulsion of Palestinians from vast areas of the country2. The orders came with a detailed description of the methods to be used to forcibly evict the people: large-scale intimidation; laying siege to and bombarding villages and population centers; setting fire to homes, properties, and goods; expelling residents; demolishing homes; and, finally, planting mines in the rubble to prevent the expelled inhabitants from returning. Each unit was issued its own list of villages and neighborhoods to target in keeping with the master plan. Code-named Plan D (Dalet in Hebrew), this was the fourth and final version of vaguer plans outlining the fate that was in store for the native population of Palestine3. The previous three plans had articulated only obscurely how the Zionist leadership intended to deal with the presence of so many Palestinians on the land the Jewish national movement wanted for itself. This fourth and last blueprint spelled it out clearly and unambiguously: the Palestinians had to go.

The plan, which covered both the rural and urban areas of Palestine, was the inevitable result both of Zionism’s ideological drive for an exclusively Jewish presence in Palestine and a response to developments on the ground following the British decision in February 1947 to end its Mandate over the country and turn the problem over to the United Nations. Clashes with local Palestinian militias, especially after the UN partition resolution of November 1947, provided the perfect context and pretext for implementing the ideological vision of an ethnically cleansed Palestine.

Once the plan was finalized, it took six months to complete the mission. When it was over, more than half of Palestine’s native population, over 750,000 people, had been uprooted, 531 villages had been destroyed, and 11 urban neighborhoods had been emptied of their inhabitants. The plan decided upon on 10 March 1948, and above all its systematic implementation in the following months, was a clear case of what is now known as an ethnic cleansing operation.”
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Here is the link for the rest of Dr.Ilan Pappe’s, an Israeli historian and a professor, article “The 1948 Ethnic Cleamsing of Palestine”:

http://71.18.226.238/final/en/journals/printer.php?aid=7175

With a Yiddish name LilMamzer makes no attempt to hide an affiliation with the State of Israel. It is a damn shame that so many jews, blinded by the achievement of a Homeland for all Jewry, sees not the atrocities committed by the State against the Arab populace, from the very first.

Until very recently histories of the inception of Israel were censored by the government to exclude the sad and shabby way these survivors of the Holocaust took farms and homes that had been in Arab hands for hundreds of years. There are now such histories available and all interested in the facts of this conflict among cousins should take the pains to read them.

I do not support the cause of the Palestinian people OVER that of the State of Israel nor do I support Israel over those who were kicked out of their own homes by the Israelis in 1948-56. It is unfortunate that so many see this as a jew vs arab conflict, it is certainly not that at all.

The crux of this issue is that the government of Israel has carried out a heinous policy of extermination and brutality against a people who seek only a homeland of their own. This might be seen as rather ironic in the light of the causes for that state to come into being. How do they justify denying that which they themselves received?

For those unfamiliar with the events of 1948:

Britain held the colony of Palestine which was given, following the dictates of the Balfour Declaration, to the survivors of the Holocaust as a state in perpetuity. Desiring to regain sway over this former colony the Brits decided that, if the arabs began slaughtering these “poor survivors” world sentiment would demand that Britian retake power to end the violence.

They ( the Brits) turned over the police stations (little forts) and many weapons to the arabs and incited them to violence. They then sat back and awaited a call for their return. Of course it didnt turn out at all like they planned, obviously, as the future Israelis had some pretty clever terrorists of their own, like the Stern Gang as example.

Given that the reception given these refugees was violent one might understand the initial hostility and injustice of Israeli towards arab, but it has been far, far long enough for sanity and rationality to have returned to the government and, if one sits in the cafes and coffee houses of Jerusalem or Haifa, one hears exactly that sentiment from many young Israelis as well.

I forgot the most important part. The Islamic agenda is not the Elephant in the room. The Middle East Region has always been inhabited by the practitioners of Islam.

I think the Elephant in the Middle East is Israel.

And obviously, they haven’t allowed themselves to be “ignored”.

For lilmamzer at (78669) I’m pretty sure you’ve missed my point, since it’s a neutral one, based on historical fact, and current on the ground facts.

My point was that unless we happen to be there, (in the West Bank, or the Gaza strip, or any other of the many refugee camps and settlements that are militarily controlled by Israel to this day) where NONE of the Palestinians have ANY rights to self-determination, it doesn’t much MATTER what ANY of us thinks.

The continued point, was that Hamas is and was the choice of the Palestinians in a democratic election. Another point is that Islam is the religious and cultural tradition of the REGION, (minus the New Kids on the block - Israel, who is obviously NOT an Islamic tradition).

I am not “blessing” the attacks on Israel over the past 40 years, any more than I am blessing the total and complete distruction, (by Israel) of an entire population. No. I am not doing that.

I AM suggesting the same thing that most other academics and others have suggested over the past several decades, and that is that the people of the area, who have occupied it for centuries and centuries, should NOT have been encaged like animals, and forced to live under Israeli occupation, with no rights to determine their own status/identity/etc,etc. In other words, their independence. And I think I also mentioned, that they have NEVER been allowed that opportunity, via the normal routine business of nations.

And, at the end of the day, human beings in all cultures, WILL RESIST such treatment. Period. Asymetrical warfare is now, and has always been, the tool of the weak against the all powerful.

Do I approve of “suicide bombings”? OF COURSE NOT!!! Do I UNDERSTAND exactly WHY they have occurred? You’re damn skippy I do. Every single young “bomber” sent into that conflict over the past 2 decades has already figured out, that THEY have NOTHING TO LOSE, because that is how miserable life is for them in these occupied territories. I understand perfectly, that human beings, (and most other living creatures) will generally retaliate against such repression and abuse. Desperate people do desperate things, and for many, (most) freedom is the ultimate possesion.

As soon as Israel, (controlled by the Cheney Crowd) figures out WHY all those rockets are landing on them...(and come on, how much of a “contest” is that, when Israel is armed to the teeth with every nuclear gadget in the book, not to mention it’s huge conventional army?) Maybe if they just “release” this encaged population, and stop the continued ethnic cleansing of all Arabs, they wouldn’t have to worry about these piddly rockets, or suicide bombers.

Jobs, self-determination, dignity, etc, etc...those kinds of things keep potential “bombers” off the streets.

“Yeah, Hamas, is alright.”

As opposed to Zionists, who do such things as drive over an American coed with a bulldozer or attack the USS Liberty in international waters.

Lilhamzer, why do I suspect that you’re an apologist for Israeli brutality?  Here’s your chance to prove me wrong by announcing your opposition to the illegal settlements and occupation of the indigenous Palestinian people’s land.

#78646 by cyrena, speaking of Hamas pretending to ‘free’ the BBC’s Alan Johnston, you wrote:

They don’t believe in these sorts of behaviors, so maybe they’ll rescue him.

No, not THOSE sorts of behaviors, just more benign behaviors such as launching a thousand Kassam rockets at Israeli civilians, sending waves of homicide-bombers into Israeli cafes, busses, kindergartens, in search of Israeli civilians to massacre.

Yeah, Hamas, is alright.

#78646 by cyrena:

And NO, I DON’T find ANY government system under Shari’a or any OTHER religious system, to be “acceptable”, because I’m a die-hard secular feminist.

But you just posted this:

I wasn’t “apologizing” for Hamas, since I don’t have a problem with Hamas.

You are incoherent.

And then you say:

Meantime, Hamas is NOT the Taliban, so study up more on their actual ideology, (besides the Islamist agenda)

Besides the Islamist agenda????

Yeah, try ignoring the elephant in the room.

lilmamzer to number 78629
....Now if it was YOUR family that had to suffer these depredations under Hamas, that would be another story, of course.....

Actually, my family HAS suffered, for many, many, generations. The Palestinians are not “suffering” under Hamas. They’ve been “suffering” under Israel. Period. Hamas would never have come into existance, if not for Israel’s horrific treatment of ALL Palestinians. There would never have been a need.

And NO, I DON’T find ANY government system under Shari’a or any OTHER religious system, to be “acceptable”, because I’m a die-hard secular feminist. So, I don’t believe ANY government should base their civil codes on a religious interpretation of ANYTHING, including the Bible. (And that pretty much explains why I don’t think it’s the least bit acceptable that the Zionists “ethnically cleansed” all of them from their native homeland, and have held them in captivity ever since, based on their selective interpretation of something from the Bible several jillion centuries ago, that says it’s this was all perfectly OK.

That’s just MY opinion though, and admittedly, it doesn’t matter, because you’re right, I have not been personally subjected to this “particular” incident of genocide. (There have been so many, that we have to be careful in distinguishing them from one another.)But more to the point, neither I or any other US citizen ELECTED Hamas to represent them. The Palestinians elected them, and if they didn’t elect “your side” or Cheney’s side, or the side that Israel was prepared to keep collborating with, then that’s just the way “democracy” is.

Just maybe, if that process of democracy had been allowed to work without interference, you wouldn’t have your family subjected to the Coup that finally had to take place.

Meantime, study up on the ideology. Last I read from the live feed, Hamas had gone in search of the British reporter that was kidnapped by (Fatah maybe?) and has been held since March. They don’t believe in these sorts of behaviors, so maybe they’ll rescue him. I think I read where they had publically chastized the “looters” as well, and told them to return whatever they stole during the coup. (even though the majority of it was petty sorts of “survival theft”, like perpetually poor citizens looking through rubble for the barest of necessities, as opposed to the massive looting of Iraq, that the US failed to stop when they invaded that country).

So, I could go on....but my point is that Hamas, whatever their “religious” agenda might be, is NOT of the al-Qaeda type religious radical extremism, or even the Taliban’s extremism, (which was funded and encouraged by the US to begin with).

The trouble is that we don’t say anything at all, for decades, as Israel has pounded all of these people, and now all of a sudden it becomes the fault of the “radicals” who have in fact been democratically elected by the people. We can’t talk out of both sides of our mouths, and “encourage” all of this “democracy stuff” for the Palestinians, and then decide that we don’t want them to have that after all, because we don’t like the representatives that they’ve chosen. Nor can we cluck our cheeks when they decide to carry on with it, by whatever route they are forced to.

Meantime, Hamas is NOT the Taliban, so study up more on their actual ideology, (besides the Islamist agenda) and then you can discuss it more reasonably.

#78623 by cyrena:

I wasn’t “apologizing” for Hamas, since I don’t have a problem with Hamas.

Well, there you have it.

And you won’t have a problem with Hamas as they turn Gaza into Hamastan, complete with Taliban-style brutal misogyny and enforced sharia?

Of course, they’re just Arabs, so you won’t complain. Now if it was YOUR family that had to suffer these depredations under Hamas, that would be another story, of course.

That’s soft bigotry, at the very least.

I wasn’t “apologizing” for Hamas, since I don’t have a problem with Hamas. HAMAS isn’t the group that has kept the Palestinians from “escaping” Gaza or the West Bank for the past 40 years. Isreal has the franchise both of those prisons.

The reality on the ground is that Hamas has tried working within the system. The Palestinians have tried working within the confines of the system as well, which is how they came to elect Hamas in the first place.

Neither Abbas or Sadat before him, has done enough to assure the general welfare of these people, and both of those leaders, as well as the Palestinian Authority, have been rife with corruption, and those 1.5 million on the Gaza strip, have lived in misery. 

So, I think I mentioned before, that it doesn’t really MATTER if the U.S., or any of the rest of us, “don’t like” Hamas, or consider them a “terrorist” group, because they haven’t been “terrorising” any of US, (here in the US) and they’ve been the only resource for basic survival, to the millions of Palestinians that would have otherwise persihed by now, in the Gaza Strip.

So, you, us, we, can critize all we want, about Hamas and/or Hezbollah, but the bottom line is that they had to make a change, because it’s just been too damn long.

Hazmaq, Thanks for the link but I wouldnt believe World Net Daily if it said that the sky was blue and up! This is a blatant extremist right wing website and not for those who actually think.

lilmamzer Yup you sure are...shouldnt you actually attribute quotes to those who actually posted them? Just asking

You seem like the apologist for brutality.

#78609 by P. T. wrote:

Opposing U.S. and Israeli terrorism and occupation does not mean supporting Hamas generally.  That should be obvious to anyone who managed to get beyond grade school.

Read the following previously posted comments in this thread, why don’t you?
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#78487 by P. T. wrote:

In the occupied territories, he and Israel are arming and funding pro-Fatah death squads to attack Hamas.  Hamas acted while it still had the chance in Gaza.

Apologizing for Hamas’ brutality at the very least.
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#78492 by cyrena wrote:

And I agree, Hamas had to act. They’ve tried everything else, and nothing has worked.

Poor Hamas! They had no choice but to prevent ordinary Palestinian Arabs from leaving Gaza to escape the running gun battles in the streets, and parade half-naked captured Fatah men around before shooting them point-blank in front of their families. Poor Hamas! They just HAD to do it.

More apologizing and excusing the behavior of barbarians.
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#78517 by ardee wrote:

Nationalist’s like Hamas have earned the support of their people and deserve a place in the government of Palestine just as suredly as Hizb’allah deserves a place in Lebanon.

This one doesn’t even deserve parsing - it’s so blatantly boot-licking.

Opposing U.S. and Israeli terrorism and occupation does not mean supporting Hamas generally.  That should be obvious to anyone who managed to get beyond grade school.

Three of four comments so far support Hamas.

Happy now, Robert Scheer?

P A T H E T I C

#78517 by ardee on 6/16 at 6:24 am
You asked for proof of U.S. aid to Fatah?  This article, from an American based neocon website, expresses it’s fury at U.S. support for Fatah, whom they deem also a ‘terrorist’ organization. 
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ ID=53800

The U.S. Israel and Hamas all approve of Abbas now.  And the ‘Quartet’ supports the Abbas government.  So
let’s hope Abbas notes the failures of Bush, Rice, Olmert, Blair and Fatah to separate the Palestinian people from their lands and can rise above the hard line thinking of greedy self serving politicians to finally make real progress in the Middle East.

Nationalist’s like Hamas have earned the support of their people and deserve a place in the government of Palestine just as suredly as Hizb’allah deserves a place in Lebanon.

I am unaware of the arming of pro-Fatah forces by the US, I would appreciate some linkage to this. It is not unbelievabe given the acknowledged goal of Hamas to install a radical Islamist government in Palestine and the ease with which Fatah can be bought and paid for....
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5016012.stm

The real pity here is that the Palestinian people suffer greatly while the two forces, Hamas and Fatah are played like violins.....

Indeed this is the case P.T. This is what one of the White House talking heads had to say today..

“...No one wants to abandon the hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people in the Gaza Strip to the mercies of a terrorist organization,” a White House spokesman, Scott Stanzel, said in Washington.”

Can you believe it? Of course we can. This is SOP. Meantime, it made me gag.

And I agree, Hamas had to act. They’ve tried everything else, and nothing has worked.

The Bush admininistration’s man Elliott Abrams (convicted during the Iran-contra dustup) is trying the same thing in the occupied territories as he did in Central America.  In the occupied territories, he and Israel are arming and funding pro-Fatah death squads to attack Hamas.  Hamas acted while it still had the chance in Gaza.