Posted on 05/19/2008 12:38:10 PM PDT by seanmerc
Leave it to "Hezbollah Helen" to attack the only Middle East democracy on its 60th anniversary. FAIR WARNING/LEGAL DISCLAIMER: Horrific image follows...
Oops...meant to put the images in the comments section. My abject apologies! Is there a way to fix that?
Here’s the actual editorial:
The Israelis are celebrating the 60th anniversary of the creation of the nation of Israel.
The Palestinians have only to mourn the loss of their land and the oppression they have suffered as refugees in camps and caves since 1948, their life under military occupation and their humiliation at myriad Israeli checkpoints.
Defeats in wars that had U.S. military and financial support have left the Palestinians in despair. But all that is history now.
President George W. Bush has led a prestigious parade of statesmen and former statesmen — many of whom made Israel’s takeover possible — to the anniversary celebration in Israel.
Bush has supported Israel’s building of a 400-mile wall on Palestinian land that the Israeli government contends is needed to protect Israel. Bush has been meek in his criticism of Israel’s continued expansion of settlements on Palestinian land, slice by slice.
Bush was very upbeat at the ceremonial start of his visit to Israel, bursting with optimism for democratic change throughout the Middle East.
But reality set in when a rocket fired from Gaza exploded in a shopping center in a southern Israeli city, wounding 14 people, possibly more.
Bush is hoping he has a last chance to show something for his efforts in the Middle East as he prepares to ride into the sunset in less than a year.
Less optimistic was Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who said an Arab-Israeli peace deal “might be improbable, but it’s not impossible.”
Bush has found that one of his favorite rhetorical ploys — promoting “democracy” in the Middle East — can come back and bite him, as was the case two years ago when the Palestinian group Hamas won the election in Gaza. Democracy had gone too far in the eyes of the Bush administration. The president rejected the Hamas victory and helped Israel mount a blockade of Gaza, cutting off food and fuel supplies.
Palestinians hoping for a change in U.S. policy shouldn’t be looking to Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., the leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination. Obama — whose middle name is Hussein — is scared of being dubbed a Muslim or even seen as sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinians. Obama, who once indicated that he would talk to foreign leaders on all sides if he became president, has seen the light.
He sacked Robert Malley, a liberal Middle East expert, from his role as an adviser because Malley told The London Times that he had been in contact with Hamas as part of his regular non-campaign job.
That surely tells you something about Obama.
The likely GOP presidential nominee, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., is also an ardent supporter of Israel. So the Israelis have no worries about the November election. No one in recent years has done more for Israel than Bush. I expect streets in Tel Aviv will be named after him. A monument may even be built in his honor. According to Benny Morris, author of “The First Arab-Israeli War,” David Ben-Gurion, the first Israeli prime minister, once confessed that he, too, would wage perpetual war with Israel if he were a Palestinian.
Morris quoted Ben-Gurion as saying: “Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: We have come here and (have) stolen their country.”
No one can deny the victimhood of the Jews through the ages. But that does not entitle them to take it out on the Palestinians.
Helen Thomas can be reached at hthomas@hearstddc.com
DELETE that ugly disgusting picture! And the one of the animal too!
I’ve never read anything by this beast. Never wanted to. But I read this, and am horrified!
From Riehl world review - an interview with Thomas the “ethical” journalist who reports “objectively”:
Thomas: No, but I do think it is kind of sad when everybody who owns a laptop thinks they’re a journalist and doesn’t understand the ethics. We do have to have some sense of what’s right and wrong in this job. Of how far we can go. We don’t make accusations without absolute proof. We’re not prosecutors. We don’t assume.
Q: So if there’s this amateur league of journalists out there, trying to do what you do...
Thomas: It’s dangerous.
If only the good die young, Helen Thomas was created femtoseconds after the Big Bang....
Liberals never cease to amaze.
Ummmm, Hamas hijacked the democratic process Helen.
And Hitlery was whining about being compared to the nazis by way of appeasement.
HUH?
He did NO such thing...he pointed out the dangers of appeasement led to the success of nazi-ISM...
but there’s no chance of peneterating liberal brains.
Liberalism is a disease.
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Israel | Israel 101 MYTHS AND FACTS ABOUT THE ISRAELI PALESTINIAN CONFLICT
MYTH: “THE PALESTINIAN USE OF TERRORISM IS JUST BECAUSE THEIR CAUSE IS JUST.”
FACT: Terrorism has a clear and unambiguous definition – the deliberate targeting of innocent men, women and children for death or injury by a political or religious movement. No political or religious cause can justify such cold-blooded mass murder.
MYTH: “THE ISRAELI OCCUPATION OF THE PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES IS ILLEGAL.”
FACT: The Israeli military presence on the West Bank (and Gaza prior to Israel’s unilateral withdrawal in 2005) is not an “occupation.” The territories are disputed, and no nation had recognized sovereignty over them when Israel arrived there after winning its 1967 defensive war. The land has never been under Palestinian jurisdiction. Even during the years 1948-67 when Jordan controlled the West Bank, no Palestinian state was established or even talked about.
Since 1993, Israel has been trying to end its presence in the territories by negotiating an end-of-conflict agreement with the Palestinians. In interim agreements, Israel’s army has withdrawn from territories on the West Bank containing 98% of the Palestinian population, as well as from the entire Gaza Strip. Israel is the only “occupier” in the world which has been and continues to be willing to negotiate an end to its military presence. Meanwhile, Israel’s critics remain silent over China’s refusal to end its occupation of Tibet and India’s control of Kashmir.
MYTH: “ISRAEL HAS STOLEN PALESTINIAN LAND.”
FACT: Jewish historical and religious claims to the land date back to Biblical times. Since then, a continuous Jewish community has existed there up to modern times. Jewish immigration into Turkish Palestine – a neglected, sparsely populated area – began to accelerate from 1880 onward, with settlements built on land purchased legally from absentee landlords. As Palestinian Jewish settlements prospered, Arab migrants moved to Palestine in search of jobs. A large Arab population had not existed there before then.
MYTH: “ISRAEL IS EQUALLY TO BLAME FOR THE CONTINUING VIOLENCE.”
FACT: There is “no cycle of violence” between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs. There is only Palestinian terror and Israeli efforts to end it. Israel’s military actions are done in legitimate self defense. For example, when Palestinian structures are targeted, it is because those locations hide snipers shooting at civilians, contain basement weapons factories, or conceal arms smuggling tunnels. Israel has agreed to every cease fire negotiated since the outbreak of violence in September 2000. Without exception, every cease fire violation has been caused by Palestinian Arabs.
MYTH: “THE ARAB REFUGEES WHO LEFT ISRAEL IN 1948 AND THEIR DESCENDANTS HAVE A LEGITIMATE CLAIM TO COMPENSATION AND THE RIGHT TO RETURN.”
FACT: Most of the Arab refugees of 1948 left voluntarily at the urging of the surrounding Arab countries, who thought that they would easily destroy Israel in 1948. When against all odds Israel survived its war of independence, the Arab states failed to or even refused to absorb or integrate the Palestinian refugees within their borders – this despite their vast unoccupied territory and growing oil-based wealth. Instead, they forced the refugees to remain living under appalling conditions in dismal camps, using them as propaganda tools against Israel. In contrast, about the same numbers of Jewish refugees were forced to flee from Arab lands with no compensation, but most of them were immediately welcomed by and resettled in Israel. Out of the 100 million refugees created since World War II, Palestinian Arabs are the only refugee group in the world that has not been absorbed and integrated into their lands of refuge. Under the Roadmap to Peace two-state solution that Israel has accepted, Palestinian refugees could return to a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, as well as other countries willing to accept them. Some may also be allowed to return to Israel, but too many returning would threaten the Jewish majority of the Jewish homeland. Israel has also proposed compensation for Palestinian Arab refugees. A negotiated comprehensive peace agreement should encompass all of these issues, as well as compensation for Jewish refugees from Arab lands.
MYTH: “ISRAELI SETTLEMENTS ARE ILLEGAL AND AN OBSTACLE TO PEACE.”
FACT: Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza were built by Israel to address her security concerns about the surrounding Arab states whose armies had threatened or invaded Israel several times. Israel gave back settlements and an entire city, Yamit, to make peace with Egypt, and has been willing to apply the same “land for peace” formula with its other neighbors.
While experts may disagree about their legality, the settlements were accepted by the Palestinians as a negotiating topic in the Oslo peace process which began in 1993. But in summer of 2000, the Palestinians rejected a peace deal brokered by President Clinton that offered them more than 95% of the West Bank including the dismantling of most Israeli settlements.
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I see Helen Thomas (may she be blotted out) has been suffering from major brain flatulence again.
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