First of all, ^^, "basically" they don't know anything for certain. It's comments like that which make uninformed people believe theory as fact.

Second, this isn't new. Theories have been going around for years. It seems like this pops back up every year. If my memory serves, the polonium "finding" was summer 2012. They've had well over a year and still have not come up with any conclusive findings.

Third, the French doctors who took care of Arafat at the end stated that no poisoning was involved.

Fourth, IF he was poisoned you can't just assume Israel did it, he had plenty of enemies throughout the Arab world including opposition to his PLO (Hamas, Fatah, etc). His wife refused an autopsy...who's to say she didn't poison her own husband? The Palestinian Authority says Israel is the one and only suspect but that is absolutely ridiculous not to be looking closer to home.

Finally, if Israel was going to assassinate him, they had plenty of opportunities to do it sooner but didn't, so why would they do it when he was 75 and on his way out anyway? Doesn't make any sense.

I'm wouldn't put money down saying Israel didn't do it, but at this point it's just as likely poison was added to his body after he died so they could blame Israel later. There's just too much unknown.

11/8/2013 4:44:53 PM

Why are you such an apologist for Israel?

11/8/2013 5:43:00 PM

Even if there was proof that Israel (government) did it, not a single fuck will be given by the West, and a not a single person would be brought to court.

11/8/2013 5:47:31 PM

POLL

If you agree with the sentiments in the video below, post YES, otherwise, post NO

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Sp0_9XpGD5A

11/13/2013 4:24:21 PM

Because when a guy who made a career making sex jokes talks about the Middle East, people listen...

But I'll humor you for a second.

Those were multiple sound clips spliced together, the topic jumps all over the place. 90% of what was said was about the Arab world as a whole and Palestine was mentioned maybe twice.

The one thing that was said that I do think is true was this:

Quote :

"[quote]Arab countries don't take in the Palestinians, they don't want them"

[/quote]

11/13/2013 7:55:31 PM

^^It should be a felony to broadcast something like that over radio. 100x Worse than Mike Vick.

[Edited on November 14, 2013 at 11:05 AM. Reason : disgusting]

11/14/2013 11:05:27 AM

^ Imagine if someone broadcast those words on radio, except in place of Arab/Iran/Afghanistan/etc they said Israel, and in place of Muslim they said Jewish.

They would be prosecuted, they would lose their job, family, friends, society, everything. They would have to move to a faraway state just to be able to live again, if they survived. And who would do all that to them? AIPAC, ADL, and other similar groups (and the government of Israel) that basically 'make' the foreign policy of this country.

11/14/2013 10:52:37 PM

It's like your only argument is always "Oh there's so much anti-Palestinian media and no anti-Israel media!" How I wish the ADL could ignore anti-Israel media at such an expert level as yours so they would stop freaking out just because someone expressed an opinion.

That's all these are, the opinions of people who don't matter, who don't make policy, who barely anyone listens to or takes seriously. If people say they agree with it, it's because they already did. Howard Stern is not going to change anyone's mind about the Arab world and I can't believe you would give him that kind of credibility.

[Edited on November 14, 2013 at 10:58 PM. Reason : -]

11/14/2013 10:58:09 PM

Children are turning into murderers. It really breaks my heart regardless of "sides."

Quote :

"A Palestinian teenager fatally stabbed a 19-year-old Israeli soldier on a bus in northern Israel on Wednesday"

11/20/2013 3:12:51 AM

[Edited on November 20, 2013 at 5:21 PM. Reason : i'm assuming you are familiar with that picture]

11/20/2013 5:20:34 PM

Anyone else just plain embarrassed for bdmazur?

11/20/2013 7:05:07 PM

who

11/20/2013 10:31:40 PM

^^Oh I see how this works, I make a comment showing sympathy for the affect this has had on the children, how sorry I feel when I hear about a Palestinian kid who feels like he has to turn to violence, and you still feel like you need a reason to hate on me.

It's things like ^^^ and this one below that make me hate the leaders of both sides.

11/20/2013 11:59:21 PM

We "hate on you" because your defense of Israel is ridiculous.

11/21/2013 6:39:07 AM

If you go back and reread the entire thread, I think you'll notice that the way I feel about Israel has changed over time. I no longer trust the leadership to lead the 2 nations to peace. I also don't trust Netenyahu in general (nor have I for a long time, never wanted him elected) to ever do the things he says, as he is dishonest and plays politics with people's lives. But it doesn't mean I love the country any less. I've said from the beginning I want suffering on both sides to end, yet there seems to be a sentiment in this thread that murder and violence is ok as long as it's only Israelis dying, because they "deserved it." I know I've said some dumb things in the past and I disagree with much of what I've stated previously, but most of what I've said recently has contained legitimate argument but the only response I get is a critique of my character.

And I'm still waiting for someone to explain to me how Howard Stern is suddenly considered note worthy and credible. That's like me posting a soundclip of Mel Gibson saying to wipe out the Jews.

Once upon a time we talked about actually events and what we knew was happening, not the opinions of irrelevant celebrities and conspiracy theories. But ain't that America...

[Edited on November 21, 2013 at 12:53 PM. Reason : -]

11/21/2013 12:51:47 PM

People attack you because you reflexively feel the need to rationalize the actions of one side, yet you instinctively criticize the actions of the other. And to make matters worse, you try to intellectualize it and paint both sides as equally guilty in this conflict, even though the sheer volume of destruction comes disproportionality from one actor.


An entire nation of people are being crushed by a foreign army, and you literally are pointing at the children throwing stones as "evidence" of equality of blame.


It's embarrassing.

11/21/2013 1:32:45 PM

Quote :

"you literally are pointing at the children throwing stones as "evidence" of equality of blame."

I did no such thing. I'm pointing at children becoming murderers as evidence of how bad the situation has become, which is a sympathetic feeling for both sides. Throwing stones and walking up to someone sleeping on a bus and sticking a knife in their chest are two very different things.

You assume what I'm saying without reading my actual words. Because I say "there's not much evidence to your conspiracy theory, and here's logic to the contrary" you automatically accuse me of defending Israel for something we don't know they did or not. If it came out that they did, then I'd be really upset. But until then, I'd prefer to talk about the things we know for sure.

I'm sorry you feel so embarrassed about your inability to have a real conversation on the matter.

11/21/2013 2:21:04 PM

I've seriously exhausted my patience with you.

You are talking about stabbings between teenagers (do we even know the age of the attacker? You provided zero context).

You don't present logic. Or facts. Just empty platitudes and "but somebody think of the childrens!!!" arguments.


I mock you because your incredibly transparent. You think your not, though. You think you have your finger on the pulse of the entire situation even though you can't see the forest for the trees. Bringing up a minor detail about a stabbing doesn't make you balanced and nuanced, like you seem to think it does. It simply provides you with an opportunity to imply that the victims are as much to blame as the aggressors, which is something you have been doing in this thread FOR YEARS, now.

It's beyond sad, and anyone without an emotional tie to three situation can plainly see past your alligator tears for "the poor children holding guns in front of pictures of deceased relatives."

11/21/2013 4:51:50 PM

Everyone should be thinking about the children on both sides. They're the ones who have to inherit this, and clean up the messes of the previous generations. Poor children having guns and grenades thrust into their hands. Poor teenagers who have been raised to think their only purpose for the next 5 years is to shoot bullets at the other side. Poor adults who are so blinded by hatred and prejudice that they can't see past the doors of their own home. And poor elderly, who will soon die knowing they only made the situation worse in their lifetimes by not doing enough to help make it better.

You're right that I'm emotionally connected to the issue, but when you're tied to the people involved then you see how this affects the people as individuals and as a community, as opposed to just how it affects your talk radio shows and cable news programs.

There's people out there trying to make a real difference. Israeli doctors treating Palestinian patients. Parents of fallen soldiers and suicide bombers coming together in mourning and mutual support of their losses. The leaders of both sides are blood thirsty, and it's time the rest of the world showed more support for the people and less for politicians.

11/21/2013 9:00:53 PM

Most of us care about people on both sides, and recognize the scale of damage done in one direction vs the other. You, however, have an initial instinctive reaction to defend Israel and only mention equivalencies in the other direction when challenged. The problem is that it is not an equal situation, its not a situation where both Israel and Palestine are doing an approximately equal amount of shitty things. Its grossly weighted in one direction, with Israel doing far more damage.

11/22/2013 10:24:18 AM

Israel is planning to forcibly relocate 70,000 Arab Bedouin and its sparked protests world wide.

12/1/2013 2:52:03 PM

^ Why do you hate the only democratic country in the Middle East, you anti-Semite?

Don't you see that Israel is surrounded by countries that would annihilate it if they could? Remember the Holocaust? It wasn't that long ago, you know.

Ha, at least they are relocating them... they are not killing them like an Arab country would do its minority Jewish population.

12/1/2013 3:41:04 PM

And now Israeli police are ordering the media to turn over all photos of protests against the resettlement.

12/2/2013 9:46:15 AM

^^^While I don't agree with what they're doing (forcing people to move), it's important to clarify that they are moving them to existing Bedouin communities that are still in the same geographic area, not forcing them out of the country altogether. The bill (which was passed in 2011) calls for the economic development of the Negev in order to bridge the social gap between the Negev Bedouin and the rest of Israel. It sounds like a good mission, if they would just do that without moving people around.


In other news:

Quote :

"French investigators have concluded in a report that Yasser Arafat died of natural causes and ruled out the possibility that he was poisoned"

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/europe/2013/12/french-experts-rule-out-arafat-poisoning-2013123145211499109.html

12/4/2013 5:17:08 PM

The French report still agrees with the Polonium-210, they just don't agree that its what killed him

Quote :

"t's important to clarify that they are moving them to existing Bedouin communities that are still in the same geographic area, not forcing them out of the country altogether."

so it was cool when Hitler put the Jews in ghettos, he only crossed the line when he started shipping them to camps in other countries. got it.


[Edited on December 4, 2013 at 5:22 PM. Reason : autocorrect]

12/4/2013 5:20:10 PM

Quote :

" I don't agree with what they're doing"

Also huge difference between a ghetto and a Bedouin desert village.

[Edited on December 4, 2013 at 6:16 PM. Reason : -]

12/4/2013 6:15:54 PM

The ghettos started out as just neighborhoods

12/4/2013 6:28:10 PM

Also a difference between removing and segregating a group from the culture as opposed to trying to integrate them into the nation.

Regardless, forcibly removing a group of people is wrong and there's a better way to go about improving the economy and social equality of the desert.

12/4/2013 7:32:41 PM

So if you don't like what they are doing, why was your knee-jerk reaction to qualify it and say its a good mission?

12/5/2013 7:19:23 AM

A purpose can be good with awful implementation. But I in no way believe the ends justify the means in this situation.

Also, clarify =/= qualify.

12/5/2013 6:51:49 PM

No, I meant qualify

12/5/2013 7:45:34 PM

Netenyahu keeps making things bad for everyone, and now he's making himself look even worse in front of all the world's leaders. http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/a-special-place-in-hell/.premium-1.562552

He's speaking at a conference I'm attending this week but I'm considering skipping his segment because I don't want to be in the same room as him.

I really hope an election is forced soon. Otherwise we're stuck with him until 2017. Either way, there is no chance he gets elected again.

Edit: It was just announced he'll be shown live via satellite and will not physically be at the conference.

[Edited on December 10, 2013 at 7:37 PM. Reason : -]

12/10/2013 7:24:21 PM

related:

12/10/2013 8:13:07 PM

New York Times' Zionist bias uncovered

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/12/fun-with-chronology-misreporting-israeli-assault-gaza-201312276433126920.html

12/29/2013 11:04:33 AM

NY Times has plenty of Anti-Zionist articles and editorials written quite frequently, plus there's the whole controversy of having Alaa Al-Aswany on staff. And let's not pretend that AlJazeera is a neutral news source.

In other news, Lebanon has joined the party. Rockets fired at northern Israel, Israelis responded, but no casualties on either side. http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/12/29/22093394-rockets-fired-from-lebanon-into-northern-israel?lite

12/30/2013 1:50:19 PM

pointing out that annexing and settlements are bad is anti-zionist , so yeah

12/30/2013 2:01:32 PM

^^^I'm not fully understanding that article. Where were timelines changed?

An Israeli was killed on Tuesday while repairing the fence, Israel responded.
A Palestinian was killed the previous Friday for seemingly trying to sabotage the fence.

Unless the Israeli was killed in retaliation for the Palestinian death on Friday, I don't see how the two are directly related or how anyone was trying to change the timeline, as the dates were all correctly reported. Her other example also does not include any tampering of reported dates or cause-and-effect.


^Whenever anyone calls a newspaper Pro-Israel or Anti-Zionist, they usually are talking about editorials and opinion pieces. The pieces you choose to read determine what you think the paper's biases are. A paper isn't anti-zionist for reporting things Israel actually does. The problems lie in a picture of an Israeli soldier guarding an injured Palestinian woman and her 2 children while waiting for an ambulence after she was hit by Palestinian gun fire, but the caption of the picture says the soldier is the one who carelessly shot her. The Times embarrass themselves all the time with crap like that.

[Edited on December 30, 2013 at 2:28 PM. Reason : ^]

12/30/2013 2:28:30 PM

and the article addresses factual reporting, not opinion

[Edited on December 30, 2013 at 2:32 PM. Reason : .]

12/30/2013 2:32:22 PM

Do you mean the article OEP posted? Because yes, it reports facts. But she's trying to create an argument against the New York Times that they skew the timeline of those facts and I don't see how her examples prove that. It's still an opinion piece that while isn't directly Anti-Israel, is anti-Pro-Israel.

12/30/2013 2:52:18 PM

it's a piece about how fact-based reporting was biased by misreporting timelines

you responded by saying that other news organizations have an opposite bias in their opinion pages.

without even having to argue if this is true or not, you should be able to see why it's irrelevant to what he posted

12/30/2013 2:56:12 PM

I'm still waiting for someone to clarify how the timelines were misreported. I'm not saying she's wrong (because as I pointed out, NYT does a lot of things the wrong way), but her evidence doesn't prove her point.

I was responded to this piece of it:

Quote :

"New York Times' Zionist bias uncovered"

I've heard SO many people call it Zionist and SO many people call it anti-Zionist. Same with several news sources, including NBC News. People find the bias where they want to.

12/30/2013 3:34:40 PM

Quote :

"I'm still waiting for someone to clarify how the timelines were misreported."

Isabel Kershner, NY Times:

Israeli shot long border fence -> immediate Israeli airstrike response

then includes picture with the caption "A shell killed her as Israel, responding to the sniper attack, struck targets it associated with militant groups."

this all implies that Gaza started it because they bury the part where Israeli forces shot a Palestinian man 4 days prior. Accurate reporting would be:

Palestinian shot -> Israeli shot -> Israeli airstrike response

they then go on to list other examples of truncated timelines that justify Israeli reaction

one example the list is this:

NY Times:
Palestine rocket attacks Tel Aviv and Jerusalem -> Israel retaliates

accurate reporting would be:
Israel encircle Gaza strip and murders man and prevents Palestinian medics from reaching him causing him to die of treatable injuries, Israeli forces kill kid for playing soccer -> Hamas responds by firing rockets, no injuries -> Israel launches 5 airstrikes.

They even post an example of accurate reporting of this event: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/nov/05/israelandthepalestinians

then they continue with more of the same.

what are you having trouble following?

12/30/2013 3:57:37 PM

The part that's missing is any implication that one thing happened because of another. It also seems like the author wrote what was thought to be most interesting first, as is the case with most journalists on any topic (which is unfortunate).

The 2008 ceasefire break, here's how NY Times reported it:
Palestinians use tunnel for smuggling weapons and abducting soldiers -> Israelis went in to destroy it -> confrontation between Israeli soldiers and armed Hamas gunmen-> Hamas fires mortor shells -> Israel responds with air strike.

But the very first thing mentioned in the article? "Israel carried out an airstrike on Gaza on Tuesday" There's very little difference with the Guardian article. They both mention the most interesting part of the story first and then give preceding events. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/05/world/middleeast/05mideast.html?_r=0

I'm not trying to defend the paper, author, or perpetrators of these events. Just saying that the author of the article OEP posted didn't use convincing logic and that his accusation of the Times' bias is just a reflection of his own bias.

12/30/2013 6:10:10 PM

Quote :

"The part that's missing is any implication that one thing happened because of another."

in both of those articles it is absolutely relevant, particularly in the second one

[Edited on December 30, 2013 at 7:21 PM. Reason : the second one is a lot worse than the first]

12/30/2013 7:21:15 PM

May God's wrath fall on these people*

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/news/middle-east/9140-video-reveals-israeli-army-protecting-settlers-while-they-attack-a-palestinian-village

The details of that attack are so fucking disgusting, it really should make any good human's blood boil. Not only did they escort the settlers on their assault on the village and did nothing to protect the Palestinians during the attack, but when the Palestinian children defended themselves by throwing stones at the settlers, the soldiers fired tear has at the Palestinian children. What a great day it would be if such oppressors all over the world would just fall down like flies and vanish off the face of this earth, struck by God's wrath. Alas, that's never going to happen.

*these people = those who actively oppress others and those support the oppression in any way, shape, or form

1/9/2014 6:36:07 PM

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/10/us-palestinians-israel-settlements-idUSBREA090KW20140110?feedType=RSS&feedName=worldNews

Quote :

"(Reuters) - Israel on Friday announced plans to build 1,400 new homes in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, days after U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry visited the region to push peace talks in which settlements represent a major hurdle."

1/10/2014 12:15:57 PM

Former PM Ariel Sharon died, had been in a come for 8 years.

1/11/2014 1:39:20 PM

Praise The Lord, the genocidal maniac is dead.

1/11/2014 1:42:48 PM

not israel/palestine, but its israel related:
When Jon Stewart and Diane Feinstein Both Blast the Israel Lobby, You Know the Game Is Changing
http://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/2014/01/16/when-jon-stewart-diane-feinstein-both-blast-the-israel-lobby-you-know-the-game-is-changing/

fuck the AIPAC

1/17/2014 6:26:10 PM

Next

1/25/2014 6:04:06 PM