I want to thank the organizers of this conference, The Perils of Global Intolerance. It is a great honor for me and it is a privilege really to be among today's distinguished speakers.
I came here as a friend of the State of Israel and the Jewish people. I came to protest this Durban conference which is based on a set of lies. It is organized by nations who are themselves are guilty of the worst kind of oppression.
It will not help the victims of racism. It will only isolate and target the Jewish state. It is a tool of the enemies of Israel .
The UN has itself become a tool against Israel . For over 50 years, 82 percent of the UN General Assembly emergency meetings have been about condemning one state - Israel . Hitler couldn't have been made happier!
The Durban Conference is an outrage. All decent people will know that.
But friends, I come here today with a radical idea. I come to tell you that there are peoples who suffer from the UN's anti-Israelism even more than the Israelis. I belong to one of those people.
Please hear me out.
By exaggerating Palestinian suffering, and by blaming the Jews for it, the UN has muffled the cries of those who suffer on a far larger scale.
For over fifty years the indigenous black population of Sudan -- Christians and Muslims alike --- have been the victims of the brutal, racist Arab Muslim regimes in Khartoum .
In South Sudan , my homeland, about 4 million innocent men, women and children were slaughtered from 1955 to 2005. Seven million were ethnically cleansed and they became the largest refugee group since World War II.
The UN is concerned about the so-called Palestinian refugees. They dedicated a separate agency for them, and they are treated with a special privilege.
Meanwhile, my people, ethnically cleansed, murdered and enslaved, are relatively ignored. The UN refuses to tell the world the truth about the real causes of Sudan 's conflicts. Who knows really what is happening in Darfur ? It is not a "tribal conflict."
It is a conflict rooted in Arab colonialism well known in north Africa. In Darfur, a region in the Western Sudan , everybody is Muslim. Everybody is Muslim because the Arabs invaded the North of Africa and converted the indigenous people to Islam. In the eyes of the Islamists in Khartoum , the Darfuris are not Muslim enough. And the Darfuris do not want to be Arabized.
They love their own African languages and dress and customs. The Arab response is genocide! But nobody at the UN tells the truth about Darfur .
In the Nuba Mountains , another region of Sudan , genocide is taking place as I speak. The Islamist regime in Khartoum is targeting the black Africans - Muslims and Christians. Nobody at the UN has told the truth about the Nuba Mountains .
Do you hear the UN condemn Arab racism against blacks?
What you find on the pages of the New York Times, or in the record of the UN condemnations is â¤|Israeli crimes⤠and Palestinian suffering.
My people have been driven off the front pages because of the exaggerations about Palestinian suffering.
What Israel does is portrayed as a Western sin. But the truth is that the real sin happens when the West abandons us: the victims of Arab/Islamic apartheid.
Chattel slavery was practiced for centuries in Sudan . It was revived as a tool of war in the early 90s.
Khartoum declared jihad against my people and this legitimized taking slaves as war booty.
Arab militias were sent to destroy Southern villages and were encouraged to take African women and children as slaves.
We believe that up to 200,000 were kidnapped, brought to the North and sold into slavery.
I am a living proof of this crime against humanity!
I don't like talking about my experience as a slave, but I do it because it is important for the world to know that slavery exists even today.
I was only nine years old when an Arab neighbor named Abdullahi tricked me into following him to a boat. The boat wound up in Northern Sudan where he gave me as a gift to his family. For three and a half years I was their slave going through something that no child should ever go through: brutal beatings and humiliations; working around the clock; sleeping on the ground with animals; eating the family⤠s left-overs. During those three years I was unable to say the word â¤|no.â¤
All I could say was ³yes,² ³yes,² ³yes.²
The United Nations knew about the enslavement of South Sudanese by the Arabs. Their own staff reported it. It took UNICEF - under pressure from the Jewish -led American Anti-Slavery Group -- sixteen years to acknowledge what was happening. I want to publicly thank my friend Dr. Charles Jacobs for leading the anti-slavery fight.
But the Sudanese government and the Arab League pressured UNICEF, and UNICEF backtracked, and started to criticize those who worked to liberate Sudanese slaves. In 1998, Dr. Gaspar Biro, the courageous UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Sudan who reported on slavery, resigned in protest of the UN's actions.
My friends, today, tens of thousands of black South Sudanese still serve their masters in the North and the UN is silent about that. It would offend the OIC and the Arab League.
As a former slave and a victim of the worst sort of racism, allow me to explain why I think calling Israel a racist state is absolutely absurd and immoral.
I have been to Israel five times visiting the Sudanese refugees. Let me tell you how they ended up there. These are Sudanese who fled Arab racism, hoping to find shelter in Egypt . They were wrong. When Egyptian security forces slaughtered twenty six black refugees in Cairo who were protesting Egyptian racism, the Sudanese realized that the Arab racism is the same in Khartoum or Cairo . They needed shelter and they found it in Israel . Dodging the bullets of the Egyptian border patrols and walking for very long distances, the refugees' only hope was to reach Israel 's side of the fence, where they knew they would be safe.
Black Muslims from Darfur chose Israel above all the other Arab-Muslim states of the area. Do you know what this means!!!?? And the Arabs say Israel is racist!!!?
In Israel , black Sudanese, Christian and Muslim were welcomed and treated like human beings. Just go and ask them, like I have done. They told me that compared to the situation in Egypt , Israel is "heaven."
Is Israel a racist state? To my people, the people who know racism - the answer is absolutely not. Israel is a state of people who are the colors of the rainbow. Jews themselves come in all colors, even black. I met with Ethiopian Jews in Israel . Beautiful black Jews.
So, yes Š I came here today to tell you that the people who suffer most from the UN anti-Israel policy are not the Israelis but all those people who the UN ignores in order to tell its big lie against Israel: we, the victims of Arab/Muslim abuse: women, ethnic minorities, religious minorities, homosexuals, in the Arab/Muslim world. These are the biggest victims of UN Israel hatred.
Look at the situation of the Copts in Egypt , the Christians in Iraq , and Nigeria , and Iran , the Hindus and Bahais who suffer from Islamic oppression. The Sikhs. We -- a rainbow coalition of victims and targets of Jihadis -- all suffer. We are ignored, we are abandoned. So that the big lie against the Jews can go forward.
In 2005, I visited one of the refugee camps in South Sudan . I met a twelve year old girl who told me about her dream.
In a dream she wanted to go to school to become a doctor. And then, she wanted to visit Israel . I was shocked.
How could this refugee girl who spent most of her life in the North know about Israel ? When I asked why she wanted to visit Israel , she said: "This is our people." I was never able to find an answer to my question.
On January 9 of 2011 South Sudan became an independent state. For South Sudanese, that means continuation of oppression, brutalization, demonization, Islamization, Arabization and enslavement.
In a similar manner, the Arabs continue denying Jews their right for sovereignty in their homeland and the Durban III conference continues denying Israel⤠s legitimacy.
As a friend of Israel, I bring you the news that my President, the President of the Republic of South Sudan, Salva Kiir -- publicly stated that the South Sudan Embassy in Israel will be built--- not in Tel Aviv, but in Jerusalem, the eternal capital of the Jewish people.
I also want to assure you that my own new nation, and all of its peoples, will oppose racist forums like the Durban III. We will oppose it by simply continuing to tell the truth! Our truth!
My Jewish friends taught me something that I now want to say with you.
AM YISROEL CHAI !
The people of Israel lives!
Thank you
Showing posts with label Progressives Should Support Israel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Progressives Should Support Israel. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 2, 2013
These are the words of Simon Deng, once a Sudanese slave. He is addressing the Durban Conference in NY.
I want to thank the organizers of this conference, The Perils of Global Intolerance. It is a great honor for me and it is a privilege really to be among today's distinguished speakers.
I came here as a friend of the State of Israel and the Jewish people. I came to protest this Durban conference which is based on a set of lies. It is organized by nations who are themselves are guilty of the worst kind of oppression.
It will not help the victims of racism. It will only isolate and target the Jewish state. It is a tool of the enemies of Israel .
The UN has itself become a tool against Israel . For over 50 years, 82 percent of the UN General Assembly emergency meetings have been about condemning one state - Israel . Hitler couldn't have been made happier!
The Durban Conference is an outrage. All decent people will know that.
But friends, I come here today with a radical idea. I come to tell you that there are peoples who suffer from the UN's anti-Israelism even more than the Israelis. I belong to one of those people.
Please hear me out.
By exaggerating Palestinian suffering, and by blaming the Jews for it, the UN has muffled the cries of those who suffer on a far larger scale.
For over fifty years the indigenous black population of Sudan -- Christians and Muslims alike --- have been the victims of the brutal, racist Arab Muslim regimes in Khartoum .
In South Sudan , my homeland, about 4 million innocent men, women and children were slaughtered from 1955 to 2005. Seven million were ethnically cleansed and they became the largest refugee group since World War II.
The UN is concerned about the so-called Palestinian refugees. They dedicated a separate agency for them, and they are treated with a special privilege.
Meanwhile, my people, ethnically cleansed, murdered and enslaved, are relatively ignored. The UN refuses to tell the world the truth about the real causes of Sudan 's conflicts. Who knows really what is happening in Darfur ? It is not a "tribal conflict."
It is a conflict rooted in Arab colonialism well known in north Africa. In Darfur, a region in the Western Sudan , everybody is Muslim. Everybody is Muslim because the Arabs invaded the North of Africa and converted the indigenous people to Islam. In the eyes of the Islamists in Khartoum , the Darfuris are not Muslim enough. And the Darfuris do not want to be Arabized.
They love their own African languages and dress and customs. The Arab response is genocide! But nobody at the UN tells the truth about Darfur .
In the Nuba Mountains , another region of Sudan , genocide is taking place as I speak. The Islamist regime in Khartoum is targeting the black Africans - Muslims and Christians. Nobody at the UN has told the truth about the Nuba Mountains .
Do you hear the UN condemn Arab racism against blacks?
What you find on the pages of the New York Times, or in the record of the UN condemnations is â¤|Israeli crimes⤠and Palestinian suffering.
My people have been driven off the front pages because of the exaggerations about Palestinian suffering.
What Israel does is portrayed as a Western sin. But the truth is that the real sin happens when the West abandons us: the victims of Arab/Islamic apartheid.
Chattel slavery was practiced for centuries in Sudan . It was revived as a tool of war in the early 90s.
Khartoum declared jihad against my people and this legitimized taking slaves as war booty.
Arab militias were sent to destroy Southern villages and were encouraged to take African women and children as slaves.
We believe that up to 200,000 were kidnapped, brought to the North and sold into slavery.
I am a living proof of this crime against humanity!
I don't like talking about my experience as a slave, but I do it because it is important for the world to know that slavery exists even today.
I was only nine years old when an Arab neighbor named Abdullahi tricked me into following him to a boat. The boat wound up in Northern Sudan where he gave me as a gift to his family. For three and a half years I was their slave going through something that no child should ever go through: brutal beatings and humiliations; working around the clock; sleeping on the ground with animals; eating the family⤠s left-overs. During those three years I was unable to say the word â¤|no.â¤
All I could say was ³yes,² ³yes,² ³yes.²
The United Nations knew about the enslavement of South Sudanese by the Arabs. Their own staff reported it. It took UNICEF - under pressure from the Jewish -led American Anti-Slavery Group -- sixteen years to acknowledge what was happening. I want to publicly thank my friend Dr. Charles Jacobs for leading the anti-slavery fight.
But the Sudanese government and the Arab League pressured UNICEF, and UNICEF backtracked, and started to criticize those who worked to liberate Sudanese slaves. In 1998, Dr. Gaspar Biro, the courageous UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Sudan who reported on slavery, resigned in protest of the UN's actions.
My friends, today, tens of thousands of black South Sudanese still serve their masters in the North and the UN is silent about that. It would offend the OIC and the Arab League.
As a former slave and a victim of the worst sort of racism, allow me to explain why I think calling Israel a racist state is absolutely absurd and immoral.
I have been to Israel five times visiting the Sudanese refugees. Let me tell you how they ended up there. These are Sudanese who fled Arab racism, hoping to find shelter in Egypt . They were wrong. When Egyptian security forces slaughtered twenty six black refugees in Cairo who were protesting Egyptian racism, the Sudanese realized that the Arab racism is the same in Khartoum or Cairo . They needed shelter and they found it in Israel . Dodging the bullets of the Egyptian border patrols and walking for very long distances, the refugees' only hope was to reach Israel 's side of the fence, where they knew they would be safe.
Black Muslims from Darfur chose Israel above all the other Arab-Muslim states of the area. Do you know what this means!!!?? And the Arabs say Israel is racist!!!?
In Israel , black Sudanese, Christian and Muslim were welcomed and treated like human beings. Just go and ask them, like I have done. They told me that compared to the situation in Egypt , Israel is "heaven."
Is Israel a racist state? To my people, the people who know racism - the answer is absolutely not. Israel is a state of people who are the colors of the rainbow. Jews themselves come in all colors, even black. I met with Ethiopian Jews in Israel . Beautiful black Jews.
So, yes Š I came here today to tell you that the people who suffer most from the UN anti-Israel policy are not the Israelis but all those people who the UN ignores in order to tell its big lie against Israel: we, the victims of Arab/Muslim abuse: women, ethnic minorities, religious minorities, homosexuals, in the Arab/Muslim world. These are the biggest victims of UN Israel hatred.
Look at the situation of the Copts in Egypt , the Christians in Iraq , and Nigeria , and Iran , the Hindus and Bahais who suffer from Islamic oppression. The Sikhs. We -- a rainbow coalition of victims and targets of Jihadis -- all suffer. We are ignored, we are abandoned. So that the big lie against the Jews can go forward.
In 2005, I visited one of the refugee camps in South Sudan . I met a twelve year old girl who told me about her dream.
In a dream she wanted to go to school to become a doctor. And then, she wanted to visit Israel . I was shocked.
How could this refugee girl who spent most of her life in the North know about Israel ? When I asked why she wanted to visit Israel , she said: "This is our people." I was never able to find an answer to my question.
On January 9 of 2011 South Sudan became an independent state. For South Sudanese, that means continuation of oppression, brutalization, demonization, Islamization, Arabization and enslavement.
In a similar manner, the Arabs continue denying Jews their right for sovereignty in their homeland and the Durban III conference continues denying Israel⤠s legitimacy.
As a friend of Israel, I bring you the news that my President, the President of the Republic of South Sudan, Salva Kiir -- publicly stated that the South Sudan Embassy in Israel will be built--- not in Tel Aviv, but in Jerusalem, the eternal capital of the Jewish people.
I also want to assure you that my own new nation, and all of its peoples, will oppose racist forums like the Durban III. We will oppose it by simply continuing to tell the truth! Our truth!
My Jewish friends taught me something that I now want to say with you.
AM YISROEL CHAI !
The people of Israel lives!
Thank you
I came here as a friend of the State of Israel and the Jewish people. I came to protest this Durban conference which is based on a set of lies. It is organized by nations who are themselves are guilty of the worst kind of oppression.
It will not help the victims of racism. It will only isolate and target the Jewish state. It is a tool of the enemies of Israel .
The UN has itself become a tool against Israel . For over 50 years, 82 percent of the UN General Assembly emergency meetings have been about condemning one state - Israel . Hitler couldn't have been made happier!
The Durban Conference is an outrage. All decent people will know that.
But friends, I come here today with a radical idea. I come to tell you that there are peoples who suffer from the UN's anti-Israelism even more than the Israelis. I belong to one of those people.
Please hear me out.
By exaggerating Palestinian suffering, and by blaming the Jews for it, the UN has muffled the cries of those who suffer on a far larger scale.
For over fifty years the indigenous black population of Sudan -- Christians and Muslims alike --- have been the victims of the brutal, racist Arab Muslim regimes in Khartoum .
In South Sudan , my homeland, about 4 million innocent men, women and children were slaughtered from 1955 to 2005. Seven million were ethnically cleansed and they became the largest refugee group since World War II.
The UN is concerned about the so-called Palestinian refugees. They dedicated a separate agency for them, and they are treated with a special privilege.
Meanwhile, my people, ethnically cleansed, murdered and enslaved, are relatively ignored. The UN refuses to tell the world the truth about the real causes of Sudan 's conflicts. Who knows really what is happening in Darfur ? It is not a "tribal conflict."
It is a conflict rooted in Arab colonialism well known in north Africa. In Darfur, a region in the Western Sudan , everybody is Muslim. Everybody is Muslim because the Arabs invaded the North of Africa and converted the indigenous people to Islam. In the eyes of the Islamists in Khartoum , the Darfuris are not Muslim enough. And the Darfuris do not want to be Arabized.
They love their own African languages and dress and customs. The Arab response is genocide! But nobody at the UN tells the truth about Darfur .
In the Nuba Mountains , another region of Sudan , genocide is taking place as I speak. The Islamist regime in Khartoum is targeting the black Africans - Muslims and Christians. Nobody at the UN has told the truth about the Nuba Mountains .
Do you hear the UN condemn Arab racism against blacks?
What you find on the pages of the New York Times, or in the record of the UN condemnations is â¤|Israeli crimes⤠and Palestinian suffering.
My people have been driven off the front pages because of the exaggerations about Palestinian suffering.
What Israel does is portrayed as a Western sin. But the truth is that the real sin happens when the West abandons us: the victims of Arab/Islamic apartheid.
Chattel slavery was practiced for centuries in Sudan . It was revived as a tool of war in the early 90s.
Khartoum declared jihad against my people and this legitimized taking slaves as war booty.
Arab militias were sent to destroy Southern villages and were encouraged to take African women and children as slaves.
We believe that up to 200,000 were kidnapped, brought to the North and sold into slavery.
I am a living proof of this crime against humanity!
I don't like talking about my experience as a slave, but I do it because it is important for the world to know that slavery exists even today.
I was only nine years old when an Arab neighbor named Abdullahi tricked me into following him to a boat. The boat wound up in Northern Sudan where he gave me as a gift to his family. For three and a half years I was their slave going through something that no child should ever go through: brutal beatings and humiliations; working around the clock; sleeping on the ground with animals; eating the family⤠s left-overs. During those three years I was unable to say the word â¤|no.â¤
All I could say was ³yes,² ³yes,² ³yes.²
The United Nations knew about the enslavement of South Sudanese by the Arabs. Their own staff reported it. It took UNICEF - under pressure from the Jewish -led American Anti-Slavery Group -- sixteen years to acknowledge what was happening. I want to publicly thank my friend Dr. Charles Jacobs for leading the anti-slavery fight.
But the Sudanese government and the Arab League pressured UNICEF, and UNICEF backtracked, and started to criticize those who worked to liberate Sudanese slaves. In 1998, Dr. Gaspar Biro, the courageous UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Sudan who reported on slavery, resigned in protest of the UN's actions.
My friends, today, tens of thousands of black South Sudanese still serve their masters in the North and the UN is silent about that. It would offend the OIC and the Arab League.
As a former slave and a victim of the worst sort of racism, allow me to explain why I think calling Israel a racist state is absolutely absurd and immoral.
I have been to Israel five times visiting the Sudanese refugees. Let me tell you how they ended up there. These are Sudanese who fled Arab racism, hoping to find shelter in Egypt . They were wrong. When Egyptian security forces slaughtered twenty six black refugees in Cairo who were protesting Egyptian racism, the Sudanese realized that the Arab racism is the same in Khartoum or Cairo . They needed shelter and they found it in Israel . Dodging the bullets of the Egyptian border patrols and walking for very long distances, the refugees' only hope was to reach Israel 's side of the fence, where they knew they would be safe.
Black Muslims from Darfur chose Israel above all the other Arab-Muslim states of the area. Do you know what this means!!!?? And the Arabs say Israel is racist!!!?
In Israel , black Sudanese, Christian and Muslim were welcomed and treated like human beings. Just go and ask them, like I have done. They told me that compared to the situation in Egypt , Israel is "heaven."
Is Israel a racist state? To my people, the people who know racism - the answer is absolutely not. Israel is a state of people who are the colors of the rainbow. Jews themselves come in all colors, even black. I met with Ethiopian Jews in Israel . Beautiful black Jews.
So, yes Š I came here today to tell you that the people who suffer most from the UN anti-Israel policy are not the Israelis but all those people who the UN ignores in order to tell its big lie against Israel: we, the victims of Arab/Muslim abuse: women, ethnic minorities, religious minorities, homosexuals, in the Arab/Muslim world. These are the biggest victims of UN Israel hatred.
Look at the situation of the Copts in Egypt , the Christians in Iraq , and Nigeria , and Iran , the Hindus and Bahais who suffer from Islamic oppression. The Sikhs. We -- a rainbow coalition of victims and targets of Jihadis -- all suffer. We are ignored, we are abandoned. So that the big lie against the Jews can go forward.
In 2005, I visited one of the refugee camps in South Sudan . I met a twelve year old girl who told me about her dream.
In a dream she wanted to go to school to become a doctor. And then, she wanted to visit Israel . I was shocked.
How could this refugee girl who spent most of her life in the North know about Israel ? When I asked why she wanted to visit Israel , she said: "This is our people." I was never able to find an answer to my question.
On January 9 of 2011 South Sudan became an independent state. For South Sudanese, that means continuation of oppression, brutalization, demonization, Islamization, Arabization and enslavement.
In a similar manner, the Arabs continue denying Jews their right for sovereignty in their homeland and the Durban III conference continues denying Israel⤠s legitimacy.
As a friend of Israel, I bring you the news that my President, the President of the Republic of South Sudan, Salva Kiir -- publicly stated that the South Sudan Embassy in Israel will be built--- not in Tel Aviv, but in Jerusalem, the eternal capital of the Jewish people.
I also want to assure you that my own new nation, and all of its peoples, will oppose racist forums like the Durban III. We will oppose it by simply continuing to tell the truth! Our truth!
My Jewish friends taught me something that I now want to say with you.
AM YISROEL CHAI !
The people of Israel lives!
Thank you
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Social Media Express Strong Support for Israel
Only a small percentage of the conversation was neutral as most users shared strong opinions about the difficult issues involved in the peace process.
In the seven days following Obama's speech, fully 55% of the conversation on blogs on the issue has been in favor of Israel and opposed to a move to the 1967 borders, while 19% has been in favor of the Palestinians and the creation of an independent state. About a quarter, 27%, was neutral.
On Twitter and Facebook, the tone of conversation was similar with 60% pro-Israel compared to 20% pro-Palestinian and 20% neutral.
These are the results of a special edition of the New Media Index from the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism, utilizing computer technology from Crimson Hexagon. Based on more than 48,000 blog posts and 430,000 posts on Twitter or Facebook, this report goes beyond the normal methodology of PEJ's index of new media to look at the specific themes and tone of the online conversation related to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.
(The regular weekly list of most linked-to news stories on blogs and Twitter, and a write-up of the top news videos on YouTube, is available here. In that analysis, which focuses on links to specific news stories, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was not as prominent.)
Social media users who sided with Israel criticized Obama for not backing the U.S. ally strongly enough and consequently not upholding American values. Many used phrases suggesting Obama had "thrown Israel under the bus" or "stabbed Israel in the back."
Supporters of the Palestinians were mostly critical of Israel's actions and declared that Israel continues to be an occupying power backed by the U.S. Some were critical of Obama for backing Israel too strongly and not supporting Palestinians they saw as fighting against colonization.
Only about a quarter of the conversation identified on blogs, Twitter, and Facebook on the subject was neutral. This was slightly less than the 28% found in a PEJ analysis of social media regarding the 2010 controversy over the "Ground Zero" Mosque using Crimson Hexagon. It was significantly less than an analysis of election night 2010 where 41% of the messages on Twitter were "neutral." Other analysis of social media debates, in testing the coding software, also found higher levels of neural discussion. In those cases, social media were used more often to pass along straightforward news accounts. This past week, though, in talking about this most recent discussion of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, social media users focused more on expressions of opinion.
The pro-Israeli tone of conversation also stayed relatively constant throughout the week examined. On blogs, the ratio of support for Israel over the Palestinians was virtually the same on May 19, the day of Obama's speech (55% to 19%), as it was on May 25 (54% to 20%).
On Twitter and Facebook, there was a small change over time away from the pro-Israel position, but not enough to see a significant change in the overall makeup of the conversation. On May 19, 62% of the discussion was pro-Israel compared to 20% pro-Palestinian, while a week later the makeup was 54% to 23%.
Pro-Israeli Posts
Some users of social media expressed clear and straightforward support for Israel.
"We must stand with Israel," tweeted Vicki Shroyer.
"When we say never again. We mean never again. Israel always reserves the right to defend itself," added Adriana RM.*
A few were critical of Palestinians.
"Many many younger Palestinians have been indoctrinated to think Israel is horror while Hamas practices terror everyday," declared Anna Teresa Arnold.
Some bloggers, who have more space to expand on their thoughts than Twitter users, explained why they felt the U.S. needed to maintain a strong alliance.
"There are many who believe that prosperity in the United States since the end of World War II is undeniably tied to our love for Israel," wrote Bill Steensland. "We have been a consistent blessing for the Jews who returned to their land and became a nation once again in 1948. If that is true, and if we walk away from our love of Israel, our prosperity will decline as does our love for Israel."
But most of all those in favor of Israel's position criticized Obama's declaration of land swaps and a return to earlier borders. Many contended the president was betraying Israel.
"Obama promised 2 stand w/ Muslims when the political winds turn ugly so are we really surprised when he knifes Israel in the back?" tweeted Glen Spicer.
"Israel's Prime Minister gives Obama a straight up no on moving their borders! Why should Israel have to make sacrifices for peace in the middle east when they are not the problem?" asked Alex Andronicos on Facebook.
"dear israel: obama does NOT speak for most americans with regard to your country's safety and future," tweeted Brooks Bayne.
"I watched in horror Obama's speech yesterday where he literally threw Israel to the Middle Eastern wolves encircling her," wrote Terresa Monroe-Hamilton on the blog New Zeal. "Our President has betrayed our largest, closest and last real ally - Israel... Israel's enemies would literally be able to drive her into the sea as they have threatened for so long. Obama sided with the Palestinians, but Americans don't and they don't side with their President. We are sickened by his weakness and by his treachery."
Even on Twitter, a platform on which users often pass along new information by linking to breaking news stories, many of the links were to stories with opinionated headlines rather than neutral statements of fact.
Many highlighted an Associated Press story by retweeting the message: "Romney: Obama ‘threw Israel under the bus' \n (AP)\n: AP."
Others linked to a Reuters newsflash: "Israel cannot return to "the indefensible 1967 line" - Netanyahu."
Pro-Palestinian Posts
Most of those who supported the Palestinian viewpoint did not so much defend Obama's speech as criticize Israel's past actions and the role the U.S. played.
"Bibi [Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu] also forgot to mention how many Gazan civilians the Israeli army killed after the 2005 withdrawal," tweeted Lisa Goldman after Netanyahu spoke to a joint meeting of Congress.
"US & Israeli Shared values: torture, extra-judicial killings, occupation, war, nuclear proliferation, settler-colonialism, etc." added Ali Abunimah.
"The US provided Israel with 670 MILLION weapons between 2000-2009 in order to maintain occupation & colonization," charged Brian, aka The Brinos.
"For decades the Israelis have played for time to create irreversible facts on the ground that would help make the occupation permanent," argued Stuart Littlewood on Redress Information & Analysis. "It seems he's pushing for another dragged-out peace process to buy Israel even more time to complete its Greater Israel expansion programme."
Like many of the supporters of Israel, some of those that backed the Palestinians criticized Obama, but for very different reasons.
"America's short- and long-term interests in the region have always been control of oil resources, securing US profits, and defending Israel," wrote Columbia University Professor Joseph Massad on the Al Jazeera web site. "Until ‘winds of change' blow on these interests, the position of the United States as the most powerful anti-democratic force in the Arab World will remain the same, Emperor Obama's speeches notwithstanding."
And a few tried to rebut criticism of Obama from conservatives by comparing his policies to those of Republican presidents.
"With all the hysteria, blather, and ahistorical idiocy in the political rightnutosphere over Barack Obama supposedly ‘throwing Israel under the bus' for, essentially, reiterating what U.S. policy towards the Israeli-Palestinian situation has been for decades, you'd think that Republicans were pristine when it comes to being ‘pro-Israel'," explained lowkell at Blue Virginia before describing conflicts between the U.S. and Israel over the past 30 years. "I also wanted to remind people of the good ol' days when Republican Presidents like Reagan, Bush and Bush, were busy ‘throwing Israel under the bus.'"
About This Report
This special edition of the NMI adds software technology from Crimson Hexagon to PEJ's ongoing tracking of most linked-to news stories in social media. Using this software, the Project can examine a much larger mix of social media conversation.
To see the results of PEJ's normal NMI methodology for the week of May 16-20, click here.
According to Crimson Hexagon: "Our technology analyzes the entire social internet (blog posts, forum messages, Tweets, etc.) by identifying statistical patterns in the words used to express opinions on different topics." Information on the tool itself can be found at http://www.crimsonhexagon.com/ and the in depth methodologies can be found here http://www.crimsonhexagon.com/products/whitepapers/.
The time frame for the analysis is May 19-25, 2011, which is different than the normal NMI week, Monday through Friday.
For the analysis of blogs, Twitter and Facebook, PEJ used the following list of keywords in a Boolean search to narrow the universe to relevant posts:
Israel OR Israeli OR Palestine OR Palestinian
*For the sake of authenticity, PEJ has a policy of not correcting misspellings or grammatical errors that appear in direct quotes from blog postings.
Friday, April 1, 2011
Progressives Should Support Israel by Steve Sheffey
The progressive movement has been tarred by a vocal minority that seeks to criticize Israel at every opportunity. It's time for the progressive community to stand up and show its support for Israel.
Israel is a progressive's dream: "Universal education, universal health care, equal rights, minority rights protections, strong activist courts, and gays and lesbians openly serving in the military." As progressives, we should be outraged by the way the Arabs, including the Palestinians, treat women, gays and other minorities. We should be outraged that the Palestinians demand that no Jews should be allowed to live in the West Bank, even as over one million Palestinians live within pre-1967 Israel. We should be outraged by the beheadings and honor killings. Israel is not perfect, but Israel holds itself to its own standards, to progressive standards.
Israel is accused by some of apartheid. Yet Arab Israelis "can be found on the Supreme Court, in the Knesset (parliament), in ambassadorial positions, as senior officers in the police and army, as mayors, as deputy-speakers of the Knesset and even as government ministers and deputy ministers. Prominent Arab Israelis can be found in almost every sphere of Israeli life, including in the medical fields, media and playing on Israel's national soccer team." Whatever an apartheid state is, it's not Israel.
That's all well and good, but what about the "occupation"? What about ending the conflict between Israel and its neighbors? Progressives are on the side of peace. So is Israel. There would be no "occupation" if Jordan had not attacked Israel in 1967, and there would be no "occupation" if Palestinian leadership had accepted either of Israel's offers in the last decade to withdraw from nearly all of Judea and Samaria (the West Bank).
If Palestinian leadership is so upset about the "occupation," if Palestinian leadership is sincere about its concern for its people, why did it twice in the past decade reject the opportunity to establish a state on the West Bank?
Israel's entire history is an unending willingness to trade land for the hope of peace despite Arab intransigence and Arab unwillingness to partner with Israel for peace.
When the United Nations recognized Israel's independence, all of the West Bank and Jerusalem were outside Israel's borders. Despite the historic, legal, and moral claims of the Jewish people to Jerusalem and to Judea and Samaria, Israel was willing to forgo the land in exchange for independence and peace.
But the Arab world could not countenance a Jewish state in its midst. Several Arab armies attacked Israel. When the fighting stopped in 1949, Israel controlled half of Jerusalem (the half without the holy places) and none of the West Bank. Jordan proceeded to raze dozens of synagogues in the half of Jerusalem it controlled, with no international protests.
In 1964, the Palestine Liberation Organization was formed -- three years before Israel controlled any of the West Bank. It's not hard to imagine what the "Palestine" was that the "organization" wanted to "liberate." There were no settlements and there was no "occupation" in 1964.
In 1967, Israel launched preemptive strikes against Egypt and Syria after they committed acts of war against Israel (Syria attacked kibbutzim from the Golan Heights while Egypt closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping, ordered UN peacekeepers to leave the Sinai, and massed troops on Israel's border, threatening to "drive the Jews into the sea"). But Israel did not attack Jordan. Israel controls Jerusalem and the West Bank today only because Jordan attacked Israel during the Six Day War.
Despite achieving the 2,000-year-old dream of Jewish sovereignty over its historic homeland, albeit in response to Arab aggression, Israel immediately indicated its willingness to trade land for peace, only to be rebuffed by the three no's of Khartoum: no peace with Israel, no negotiations with Israel, no recognition of Israel.
So it went until 1973, when on the holiest day of the Jewish year, Yom Kippur, Egypt and Syria attacked Israel. Yet when Egyptian President Sadat indicated a genuine desire to make peace with Israel, Israel traded the entire Sinai peninsula to Egypt in exchange for a promise of peace from a man who, if not a Nazi, was at least a Nazi sympathizer during World War II, and from a country that had waged unceasing war against Israel since its rebirth.
Relinquishing the Sinai meant forcibly uprooting settlements (so much for the myth that settlements are the obstacle to peace) and giving up its energy independence, but Israel was willing to make those tangible sacrifices for the intangible promise of peace.
In 2000, Israel offered Palestinian leadership 94-98% of the West Bank in exchange for peace, but Yasir Arafat -- who could have gone down in history as another Sadat -- rejected the offer. Had he accepted, there would today be an Arab Palestinian state.
In 2000, Israel unilaterally withdrew from all of Lebanon in exchange for nothing, and that's exactly what it got: nothing. Nothing except terrorism and rockets from Lebanon, ultimately resulting in the Lebanon War of 2006 and the evacuation of nearly one million Israelis from the north.
In 2005, Israel unilaterally withdrew from all of Gaza in exchange for nothing, and that's exactly what it got: nothing. Nothing except terrorism and rockets from Gaza. There is no "occupation" of Gaza; the only Israeli in Gaza is Gilad Shalit, the soldier held captive in violation of international law. Yet just last week, dozens of rockets were fired from Gaza into Israel.
Israel withdrew from Lebanon and Gaza and was rewarded not with peace, but with violence. Israel learned from those experiences that ending the "occupation" is not enough. It's not enough to unilaterally withdraw. Israel needs a partner for peace.
But Israel did not give up hope. In 2008, Israel offered Palestinian President Abbas a state consisting of nearly all of the West Bank. But the Arabs said no, just as they said no to a state of their own in the West Bank in 2000. How is Israel supposed to end the "occupation" if the Palestinians won't accept Israel's offers to withdraw? How can Israel address Palestinian concerns about a final peace agreement if Abbas refuses to re-enter peace talks?
If Palestinian leadership was serious about peace, they would accept Israel's offer to talk peace with no preconditions. But more than that, they would start preparing their people for a two-state solution, which means stopping the incitement and publicly recognizing Israel's permanent right to exist as a Jewish state. And they would recognize the moral and historic right of the Jewish people to live in Judea and Samaria -- the key point is that by agreeing to cede the West Bank to a Palestinian state, Israel is making a major concession by relinquishing territory it not only won in a defensive war, but by relinquishing territory that represents the fulfillment of a 2,000 year-old dream.
The concept of an Arab "Palestinian" people did not even exist 100 years ago. Israel's security and moral concerns require a two-state solution, and one would think that if Palestinian leadership's goal was a state of their own rather than the destruction of the Jewish state, Palestinian leadership and those sympathetic to the Palestinians' demands would do all they could to create an atmosphere conducive to peace.
The concept of an Arab "Palestinian" people did not even exist 100 years ago. Israel's security and moral concerns require a two-state solution, and one would think that if Palestinian leadership's goal was a state of their own rather than the destruction of the Jewish state, Palestinian leadership and those sympathetic to the Palestinians' demands would do all they could to create an atmosphere conducive to peace.
Instead, as Rep. Steve Rothman (D-NJ) and Rep. Steve Austria (R-OH) note in their recent letter to President Obama, "Television programs run by the Palestinian Authority and textbooks in government schools continue to praise martyrdom and terrorists and call for armed struggle against the Israelis."
Most Israelis believe that Israel cannot indefinitely remain Jewish and democratic while retaining the West Bank. Israel again and again has chosen peace over land, even land it has dreamt of regaining for centuries. Israel's dream of peace in exchange for land will become reality as soon as the Arab world gives up its dream of destroying the world's only Jewish state.
Israel continues to strive for peace not because the Arab Palestinians have a better legal, historic, or moral claim to the land -- after all, there has never been an Arab nation of Palestine and the concept of a unique Arab Palestinian people was unknown before the 20th century -- but because trading land for peace is in Israel's best interests, and Israel knows it.
Peace can be achieved tomorrow if the Arab world accepts the permanent reality of a Jewish state of Israel today. The Palestinians could have had a state comprising nearly all of the West Bank if their leadership had accepted Israel's offers in 2000 or 2008. Israel accepted several partitions of its national homeland before achieving independence in 1948, and Israel remains willing to cede parts of its national homeland because it values peace over land and an independent state over a state perpetually at war. It is time for Palestinian leadership to accept the same paradigm. It is time for Palestinian leadership to work toward a state for their children instead of working to deprive Israel's children of their future.
Peace is still within our grasp. All it takes is for Arab Palestinian leadership to place a higher priority on achieving a state of their own than on destroying Israel. Or as Golda Meir said, "we will have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us."
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