LOL!! 
Posted on 11/27/2005 12:27:01 PM PST by Alouette
NABLUS, West Bank (Reuters) - Jewish settlers cut down and uprooted hundreds of olive trees on Palestinian farms near the West Bank city of Nablus on Sunday, residents and Israeli police said.
Settlers from the most radical enclaves in the occupied West Bank have often attacked farms since the start of a Palestinian uprising in 2000, in which settlers have often been targeted by militants.
Settlers say that the land, which Palestinians want for a state, is theirs by biblical birthright.
Residents of Salem said dozens of settlers from Elon Moreh chopped down hundreds of the town's olive trees, the main source of income for 5,000 residents.
"This is not the first time that settlers have cut down dozens of olive trees. Among them were trees more than 30 years old," said Adli Eshiya, a local councilor. Villagers said it was the sixth such attack this year.
Police said that at least 200 olive trees had been destroyed near Salem and that an investigation had begun.
A spokesman for Elon Moreh settlement, Benny Katsover, said he was not aware of the incident.
More than 245,000 settlers live in the West Bank, home to 2.4 million Palestinians. The World Court has said that all of Israel's settlements on land captured in the 1967 Middle East war are illegal. Israel disputes this.
Settlers' anger has grown more intense since Israel removed settlements from the Gaza Strip this year under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan for breaking from conflict with the Palestinians.
Although Sharon has said he has no further plans for unilateral withdrawals, he has said that some isolated West Bank settlements would have to go under any eventual peace deal. Elon Moreh is one of the smaller settlements.
"Root, root, root for the home team..."
Good question. Reuters, of course, claims Palestinians owned the trees, but if you read the article carefully, the are not private property, but communally owned by the "village of Salem."
In another incident, a private contractor (not a "settler" or even an Israeli) uprooted 200 olive trees near Bilin which has been the site of ongoing conflict over the security fence.
why were the settlers touching them (for needed pruning or not)?
Settlers were not touching them. Palestinians, as usual, blamed settlers for something they did not do.
No offense, but I won't be holding my breath for links supporting the accusation.
Not to mention what settlers, the IDF, and rich Jews do with Orange trees.
Really?
It does not apply to Arabs. They have relatively old civilization with cities. Very different from American Indians and as such not suitable object for same policies.
Jews are a 5000 year old nation-longer than the English,Poles and French combined.
English,Poles and French belong to the same Western civilization which is a continuation and modification of the ancient Greco-Roman civilization, which in turn used elements of Egyptian, Levantine and Mesopotamian civilizations.
Jews are not a civilization, they are a nation and a religion.
"My case"? That human beings were fighting for the land or resources and creating moral justifications for doing so?
Really? It was the Muslims that forced them out of Bethlehem.
Perhaps a mere fool..
LOL!!
Also, most people who live in the suburbs who have watched city tree crews work have seen roadside trees, and especially Palms, pruned back in a way that would alarm most who are unfamiliar with the particulars of tree care. One reason is to lengthen the time between prunings to save city maintenance resources. The trees grow back.
The olive tree in this particular picture will survive. One factor that caught my attention were the tears and breaks in the bark and branches, which at the least shows a sloppy, even careless job. Vandalism? Perhaps.
But in the wider Middle East PR picture most at FR have become familiar with, we certainly cannot draw conclusions from a single picture, and this particular series only returns three at Yahoo! of this same tree and Palestinian women. None with "hundreds" of trees "uprooted" and "destroyed," as chronicled in the news account from a reporter with what appears to be an Arab surname.
As we saw with the Jewish residents of Gush Katif before the expulsion, they were demonized and slandered in the press beforehand, with dire warning of violence and civil war. None of this came to pass. None of it. On the contrary, we saw quite the opposite as they modelled restraint and self-control.
Therefore, until we see much, much more substantial evidence to support the writer's lurid claims, we can conclude this particular news account is clearly slanted, even staged, and designed to specifically whip up anger against the Jewish inhabitants of the area, and to be expected by the same media which engaged in the same tactics to bully and demonize the Jews of Gush Katif. If there were "hundreds" of trees, you can bet the MSM would have provided pictures of them.
We will be seeing more of this as any further expulsion plans are advanced by Sharon, "the Quartet," and the rest of the world hostile against Israel. We should not be surprised by this.
When someone—anybody—finds the pictures of the "hundreds" of uprooted and destroyed trees, please feel free to post them.
"Palestine is the wrong name for their State. It should be called Anarchy."—FReeper sgtbono2002
"Then let's wait and see what the Arabs do after they take Gaza. There's nothing like Arab reality to break up a Jewish fantasy."—FReeper Noachian
A student told his professor he was going to "Palestine" to "fight for freedom, peace and justice,"—Orwellian leftist code words that mean "murder Jews."
The Nature Of Bruce ~
Thank you for this information. My gut reaction to Palestinian/Arab "news" is a wallop of skepticism. They lie and invent so much of their news it has been dubbed "Paliwood."
This news of eco terrorism is real --
ARSON INTIFADA - Israel is facing a new wave of "arson terrorism" by Palestinians, Fire and Rescue Services Commissioner Shimon Romach said, after multiple, deliberately set fires destroyed dozens of acres of land this week, The Jerusalem Post reports. Several fires were set by Palestinian arsonists in the Ben-Shemen Forest in the Modi'in region and in the Nataf Forest near Jerusalem, causing hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage.
http://www.icej.org/cgi-local/view.cgi?type=headline&artid=2004/04/22/506479486
Two Palestinians suspected of setting Negev forest fire
Police suspect two Palestinian men from the West Bank of setting fire to the Yatir Forest in the northern Negev also on Friday.
The blaze ravaged 70 dunams of land before four crews of Jewish National Fund firefighters managed to put it out.
Police chased the suspects, but gave up the search after they escaped to Palestinian villages in the southern Hebron Hills in the West Bank.
The suspected arsonists allegedly ignited six separate fires in the forest.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/objects/pages/PrintArticleEn.jhtml?itemNo=578537
JERUSALEM (JTA) -- Five Israeli Arab youths have admitted to setting fires in central Israel near an Arab village where police and residents recently clashed.
The fires were part of the four days of forest blazes that burned out of control in northern and central Israel last week, causing thousands of inhabitants to evacuate the area north of Haifa.
http://www.jewishsf.com/content/2-0-/module/displaystory/story_id/9770/edition_id/187/format/html/displaystory.html
Also in Ha'aretz, veteran commentator Meron Benvenisti has a thoughtful piece about the torching of forests by Arab Israelis, as part of their violent campaign in support of the Palestinians. The arson attacks have caused outrage in Israel, but as Benvenisti points out: "Many of the forests that were set ablaze were planted to hide the remnants of the Arab civilisation that once existed in this land - villages, cultivated fields, plantations and cemeteries. The planting of these "camouflaging" forests was intended to bury an important stratum in the history of this land and to ensure the burial would not be accompanied by any gravestone or marker. Those who have picnicked in the forests ... and are shocked by the attempts to set those forests ablaze, should remember they are living in the same land with people whose homes have been covered by such forests and who consider the green trees a memorial to their disaster." [sickening leftist BS from Ha'Aretz]
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,385214,00.html
This is my last warning. Don't push your luck.
I have met the "settlers", have you in anything other than print? I would be glad to live next to and among them. Not something I would do with the Arabs that live near them.
You seem a little biased. You know what, Arabs tend to flock to live around Jews. That is just history. Who is not fun to live next to is Palestinians. They tend to slaughter your children.
"The Arab Christians have nobody to defend them."
Sure they do. This Arab Christian
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanan_Ashrawi
Also see --
"The Arab Christians are represented by the Arab Catholic Church , by the Arab Orhtodox Church, the ArabLutherans, the Arab Anglicans, and many others(please visit http://www.al- bushra.org to find out about the Christians of the Holy Land). Those Churches have said and repeated that they are not and were not persecuted in any way by P.A., on the contrary they are very respected and many of their people are part of the P.A intself."
http://www.al-bushra.org/latpatra/ineedto.htm
Many Arab Christians are part of the PA. I guess they have chosen sides unlike you, of course.
It is interesting also to note that since the buy out of the Jerusalem Post, the last conservative newspaper left in Israel, more and more they are "jumping to conclusions" and printing false accusations without retractions against conservatives.
It sucks to watch Hitlers propaganda machine realized in a modern state. But then, Hitler was a radical leftist.
What's so funny ?
Look, I previously asked you to explain yourself and you did not. If you are incapable of doing anything besides acting like a ham-fisted bully then I have no choice but to ignore your threats. I understand that this site is the property of those who own it. So far I have never had a problem. But if I have to waste my time trying to decipher such worthless spew as what you have directed at me on this thread, then I have no option but to ignore you. It's that simple. Say something intelligent, or else zot me. But ENOUGH with the junior-hig school level pomposity!
You've been here long enough to know the rules. No personal attacks. Clear enough now?
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