I am now going to break the silence about what are very probably egregious human rights violations in Palestine.

But first, you must excuse these personal and intimate questions: Are you seeking dialog and solidarity with the oppressed Palestinians? Are you European or American, female, between the ages of 17 and 40?

Uh, er, are you a virgin? (I did warn you that this is going to get personal and intimate).

If you are looking for an adventure of a new and different kind, then you should probably head for the Palestinian territories, where you can do a real service to the oppressed Palestinians and at the same time get first hand experience of solidarity and intimate dialog with Palestinian Arabs, who, it seems, rape American and European female activists.

Gazans are furious over the "Humanitarian Aid" which has been arriving on flotilla ships and from donor counties -- and they are specifically mad at the "aid" that has arrived from Arab countries.

...

Most of the medications are being buried in landfills since they have expired or are of no use.

Wrap Up:

- Broken Medical Equipment
- Non-functioning dialysis machines
- Expired Medication
- Medication for issues not in Gaza.
- Burial shrouds for kids

Bottom Line:

- 70% of the total aid is unusable.

Israel of course is the US's most threatened ally. And Obama's treatment of Israel has been uniquely shabby--and dangerous. Guided by his ideological worldview which argues that US support for Israel is the root of the Arab and Islamic world's animus towards the US, Obama has advanced a policy of punishing Israel and wooing its worst enemies that has radically changed the Islamic power calculus. By seeking to appease Iran and Syria for their aggressive behavior and by courting an ever more radical Turkish regime, Obama has humiliated Egypt and Jordan that signed peace treaties with Israel. In so doing, he has convinced the Arabs that the only way to retain and expand their power is by attacking Israel.

THIS BRINGS US to Israel's current quandary about how to respond to the international campaign against it. Israel of course can do nothing to change the potency of Jew hatred in the Islamic world. It can also do nothing to change American behavior. For as long as Obama is president, US foreign policy can be expected to remain on its current trajectory. That is, for at least the next two and a half years, the US will continue to play a destabilizing and hostile role in the region.

What this means is that Israel should adopt a strategy that minimizes the international lynch mob's ability to get close to it and maximizes Israel's ability to knock the mob off balance.

...

And as to that campaign, it is time for Israel to launch a counter-offensive. Its representatives at the UN should demand an investigation into Turkey's illegal sponsorship of the pro-Hamas flotilla. They should raise such protests at every UN forum and continue to protest until they are thrown out of the meetings and then return, the next day to relaunch their protests.

Of course, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict inflames the Muslim world in a way the Chechen one does not. But why is that, when so many more Muslims are being victimized by Russia?

Then too, why does the wider world participate in the Muslim world's moral priorities?...Why does every Israeli prime minister invariably become a global pariah, when not one person in a thousand knows the name of Chechen "President" Ramzan Kadyrov, a man who, by many accounts, keeps a dungeon near his house in order to personally torture his political opponents?

I have a hypothesis. Maybe the world attends to Palestinian grievances but not Chechen ones for the sole reason that Palestinians are, uniquely, the perceived victims of the Jewish state. That is, when they are not being victimized by other Palestinians. Or being expelled en masse from Kuwait. Or being excluded from the labor force in Lebanon. Things you probably didn't know about, either. As for the Chechens, too bad for their cause that no Jew will ever likely become president of Russia.

Far too many Westerners make the mistake of projecting their own views onto Palestinians without really understanding the Palestinian narrative. The "occupation" doesn't refer to the West Bank and Gaza, and it never has. The "occupation" refers to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. A kibbutz in the center of Israel is "occupied Palestine" according to most. "It makes no sense to a Palestinian to think about a Palestinian state alongside Israel," Martin Kramer from the Shalem Center in Jerusalem said to me a few days ago. "From the Palestinian perspective, Israel will always exist inside Palestine."

Our neighbor lives in the house in which our grandfather used to live. He claims he bought the first part of the house from a Turki, and later the second part from a British bank, but that doesn't make the sale any less illegal: my family lived in that house for hundreds of years and we don't accept the documents of sale. Now he's living there. He is the son of monkeys and pigs.

The problem is that he's not just brazen, he's also strong, although he is a tiny guy.

The whole neighborhood hates him. He's a thief and possessed by the devil. But he seems to be able to beat everyone. We tried to force him out of the house together, but it didn't work. He has bulletproof windows, and the roof is made of inflammable material.

All we think about is him. Our own home is in ruins because all our efforts, all our money and ideas and energy are devoted solely to destroying our neighbor's house. We're utterly convinced that we will be perfectly happy just as soon as we've killed him and his house is a heap of smoking rubble. We live for one thing only: our neighbor's demise. It's a noble ambition for which we're all willing to die.

Hizbullah and Hamas must be destroyed and the regimes in Damascus and Tehran must be changed for all Arabs and Farsi people to survive and prosper in an ever evolving world timed in nanoseconds and propagating through quantum physics. Their poisonous rhetoric of violence feeding a frenzied mass of ignorant Arabs leaning on their extreme religion to honor their incapacity to compete with the West is destroying future generations of hopeful saviors of our culture and traditions.

We Arabs must be the ones to stop Hamas and Hizbullah, rather than support their demonic and twisted logic of resisting development, enlightenment, and progress of the region. Even when development and enlightenment stare them in the face, their instinct is to destroy them pretending to safeguard their honor, the mechanics of which supersede all else including a happy life of fulfillment and accomplishments.

So while we abhor violence of all kind, Israel's campaign against Hamas must continue to the bitter end not only for the sake of peace but also to help Arabs realize they have a choice: Destroy like Gaza or develop like Dubai. Will this happen soon? Maybe not, but if a wake-up call and a nudge, once in a while, to pierce through the fog of deceit perpetrated by Syria and Iran is what it takes to see the light, then we stand by the West and Israel in the only hope that an Arab Renaissance in the Levant may actually have a chance of resurrection.

The author is Farid Ghadry, President of the Reform Party of Syria

Free speech is a rare quantity and many Americans are all too unaware of how rare it really is. Israel, like Europe or Canada, does not have actual free speech, instead it has free speech subject to government discretion and the politically correct sensitivity of "oppressed minorities".

While mockery, contempt and even outright hatred for Judaism and Jews can be found on TV shows, political commercials, editorial cartoons and throughout the Israeli left wing media, when directed at Arabs quickly becomes a criminal offense. And that is no joking matter. Tatiana Soskin, a young Jewish immigrant who drew a cartoon of Mohammed as a pig and pinned it to a door, served time in jail for it.

Today however in Israel it is a poet going on trial.

A few months ago, the Israeli government, with the cooperation of the Supreme Arab Monitoring Committee, quietly set about encouraging its Arab citizens to participate in a national service program...Since Israel's Arab citizens are exempt from military service, it was hoped that performing some sort of alternate national service might make this sector of Israel's population feel more involved in bettering their communities and the country at large. Such service, which would closely mirror the national service opportunities now available to Israeli women who claim exemption from military service on religious grounds, would include volunteering in hospitals, schools, community centers, drug rehabilitation facilities, medical clinics, etc.

My assumption was that, aside from obviously improving services to the Arab community at large through the creation of a motivated volunteer workforce, the goal of this new initiative was also meant to help alleviate the sense of 'otherness' that hangs over Israel's Arab population like a dark cloud.

But almost as soon as the initiative was announced, An Arab Member of Knesset made an incredible statement to the media :

"Balad MK Jamal Zahalka called for banishing Arab youths who volunteer for a national service program created by the Supreme Arab Monitoring Committee. Zahalka said that although he believes in community service, he refuses to condone the performance of community service for the benefit of the state."

"We can't just 'all get along' because frankly, why should we? Why should we, Israelis, products of an ancient tradition of learning as well as a post-Renaissance and humanist society, get along with a bunch of medieval fanatics who at their most liberal concede that some Jews might be allowed to survive the coming Arab-led genocide and live here as second-class citizens under Palestinian law?"

"These are people who deny the Holocaust ever happened, insist that Jewish antiquities are all fakes planted by the Israeli government, and claim that despite the Koran, the Bible and the Tanakh, the Jews have no historical affiliation with this land whatsoever."

"These are people who believe that women are second-class citizens, and that its okay for fathers to totally control their daughters' lives. This is a society that condones honor killings because a girl talked to a boy without a male relative being present and without having prior approval of the family patriarch. This is a society that agitates for the imposition of "Moslem law," meaning Sharia--a Code which calls for execution by impaling of homosexual men and the stoning of women who engage in "immoral behavior," which is defined by, of course, the men. This is a Code which gives full credit to the testimony of a Moslem male but denies such weight to the testimony of non-Moslems and Moslem females---so even if a woman denies a charge of 'immoral behavior' the testimony of her male accuser outweighs her denial."

Way back in the very beginning of the most recent intifada in Israel, a boy name Muhammad al-Dura was killed during a battle between IDF forces and terrorists. A reporter from French Channel 2 who was not even at the scene gave a voice over on a short clip saying that the shots that had struck the boy had come from the Israeli position. However, after-the fact, it is not at all clear that Israel was the shooter. According to some, the whole thing was a setup by the Arabs there in order to get world sympathy for their cause and condemnation of Israel (this worked extremely well - Al Dura, along with Tuvia Grossman became the poster child's for the Palestinian cause, and are used heavily in propaganda to this day.

A French blogger named Philippe Karsenty called out Channel 2 on the story, saying that their original broadcast was fraudulent, and intentionally misleading. Channel 2 sued Karsenty for libel and won a symbolic verdict (1 Euro in damages). After appeal, two weeks ago Channel 2 was finally ordered to turn over the raw footage - 27 minutes worth, versus the few seconds that were edited out to show to the world - to the judge for viewing (in an amazing display of French justice, the first judge to rule on the libel case without ever viewing the material that was the subject of the libel). It is yet to be seen whether or not they will comply with this order and what the full raw footage would show.

Philippe Karsenty just gave a press conference in New York to discuss his case and the evidence he had to back up his statements. Out of the whole press corps, one French journalist and one American journalist showed up. Pamela Geller, of the Atlas Shrugged website was the American journalist. Here is what she had to say:

What if you exposed a great lie, a lie so big that it set off a war - and you held a press conference to expose that lie and no one came? The worst blood libel of this young century.

Welcome to the 21st century.

The incitement for the violent second intifada and The justification of the cold blooded beheading of Daniel Pearl, the explosive allegations and detailed evidence blows the Pali ruse right out of the water.

The left wing jihad loving media covered the lie, perpetrated the charade - incited the jihad but scurry like rats when called to account.

See her site for a full video of the press conference (where she asks all the questions). More commentary from Carl in Jerusalem.

If roles were reversed, and Jewish-owned media in Israel was caught in a dubious position, was accused of setting up the Palestinians to look like they were firing at an Israeli youngster when they really had not, and was not able to defend itself, and the whole thing was brought to light by some Palestinian blogger who did their own research, do you think in that case that no one from the media would show up.

(I guess that is a bad example, since the world media doesn't really care if the Palestinian terrorists try to deliberately kill Israeli children, or their own...but you get my drift).

One of the lies the 'Palestinians' like to tell about the 1948 war is about a 'massacre' at a village called Dir Yassin.

...

But what really happened at Dir Yassin? This video ought to give you a better idea. The end will surprise you.

In his small grocery store just off Sultan Suleiman Street, which runs past the Old City's Damascus Gate and through the Arab side of downtown Jerusalem, a Palestinian merchant grumbles about the hardships and indignities under Israeli rule. His complaints are long-standing among Palestinians here, yet the reality for him and others is shifting in response to the violence and economic hopelessness of Palestinian Authority rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. "There is no safety there," he says.

As a result, the merchant has given up on what has long been the dream and demand of Jerusalem's Palestinians: to see the city redivided, with the Arab side—which Israel seized from Jordan in the 1967 Six-Day War—becoming the capital of a Palestinian state. "Gaza should be for Palestine, the West Bank should be for Palestine," he says, "but Jerusalem should stay like it is." On this, he is not alone.

Local Palestinians, by deed if not by declaration, are increasingly opting for the status quo, for life under Israeli sovereignty. Jerusalem is by no means happily unified, but it is becoming grudgingly unified. "It's not that the Palestinians here have become Zionists; it's not that they've fallen in love with the State of Israel. They haven't," says an Arab attorney in Jerusalem who, like the merchant, requests anonymity because of the political sensitivity of the issue. "They just want to live normal lives, with security, with a little money in their wallets. They want their kids to be able to go to school. They want what everybody wants."

Trying to minimize the defeat, Arabs have long called the Six Day War the "naksa," or "setback," but its impact remains a deep wound.

Egyptian columnist Wael Abdel Fattah wrote in the independent weekly Al-Fagr newspaper that Arabs blame the defeat for "everything" — from "price hikes, dictatorship, religious extremism, sectarian strife, even sexual impotence."

Well, I've heard a lot of different things blamed on the Jews, but this is definitely a first for me...

It is my humble opinion that at the root of the MSM's obsession with pointing out the technological mismatch in the region is their essential loyalty to Israel's enemies. What I had failed to realize before was that the MSM (and their core audience) view the Arabs as Indiana Jones, and are therefore understandably outraged at the prospect of their hero facing off against the bad guy armed only with a whip... regardless of who started the fight.
[snip]

Simply put; Israel's problems with the world audience don't stem from bad PR. They are rooted in the fact that the MSM and the world audience view Israel as that sword-wielding assassin, a small plot complication that must be resolved as quickly as possible for the regional story to reach a satisfactory dénouement.

IMHO it is the height of silliness for Israel to place too much hope in positive 'Hasbara' (PR/propaganda). No amount of positive PR would have made an Indiana Jones fan care a wit about the fate of the assassin with the sword.

[snip]

Israel would do well to forget about trying to reclaim the hero status it enjoyed in the early days of its existence.

Those days are gone.

What remains is the challenge of simply meeting each threat with the only thing we have going for us; superior weaponry. They pull a whip we pull a sword. They pull a sword, we pull a gun. They pull a gun, we pull a cruise missile.

This isn't a movie set... and Israel needn't apologize for surviving. It may be that the rest of the world is rooting for our enemies to prevail and ride happily into the sunset, but that doesn't mean that we have to lay down and act like some pesky plot complication.

Palestinians attend a demonstration against violence in Gaza April 23, 2007.

The text above is a caption to a picture taken by a Reuters photographer, Ibreheem Abu Mustafa. One might find it commendable that the Palestinians are demonstrating against violence...at least until one looks at the accompanying pictures. (LGF, Israellycool). Here's another demonstrator against violence.

(hehe)

In two recent articles in the Kuwaiti daily Al-Siyassa, Saudi columnist Yousef Nasser Al-Sweidan argued that the Palestinian refugees' right of return is an idea that cannot be implemented, and that the only solution is for the refugees to be naturalized in the countries where they currently reside.

"It is patently obvious that uprooting the descendents of the refugees from their current homes in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and other countries, and returning them to Israel, to the West Bank, and to Gaza is a utopian ideal and [a recipe for] anarchy. More than that - it is an idea that cannot be implemented, not only because it will upset the demographic [balance] in a dangerous and destructive manner, and will have [far-reaching] political, economic and social ramifications in such a small and constrained geographical area, but [mainly] because the return [of the refugees] stands in blatant contradiction to Israel's right as a sovereign [state], while the Palestinian Authority lacks the infrastructure to absorb such a large number of immigrants as long as the peace process... is not at its peak..."

The fact that these words appear in a Kuwaiti paper by an Arab columnist gives them even greater significance than if they would have appeared in some other news source. (Does anyone know how this newspaper is regarded in Kuwait and the Arab world?) Slowly, it appears as if at least some people outside of the general Pro-Israel community are starting to acknowledge reality.

Nobel Prize Laureate Prof. Israel Robert J. Aumann, an observant Jew as well as a world-famous game theorist, addressed the Herzliya Conference in Israel last week, and identified the abandonment of Zionism and the ensuing loss of energy and abandonment of hope in Israel that could lead to surrender and suicidal "peace" treaties as a greater threat to Israel's continued existence than any nuclear weapon.

The Nobel Prize Laureate, who was an outspoken opponent of the Disengagement, then addressed the prime minister: "About half a year ago in Petra, Jordan, the prime minister said that we are tired. He was right. He was elected by the nation, and he expresses the sentiments of the nation. We are like a mountain-climber that gets caught in a snowstorm; the night falls, he is cold and tired, and he wants to sleep. If he falls asleep, he will freeze to death. We are in terminal danger because we are tired. I will allow myself to say a few unpopular, unfashionable words: our panicked lunging for peace is working against us. It brings us farther away from peace, and endangers our very existence. I think it was Churchill who said, 'If you want peace, prepare for war.' The preparation includes material preparation, a fantastic army, effective tools of war, but above all, we are talking about spiritual preparation, about spiritual readiness to go to war.

"Roadmaps, capitulation, gestures, disengagements, convergences, deportations, and so forth do not bring peace. On the contrary, they bring war, just as we saw last summer. These things send a clear signal to our 'cousins' [the Arabs -ed.] that we are tired, that we no longer have spiritual strength, that we have no time, that we are calling for a time-out. They only whet their appetites. It only encourages them to pressure us more, to demand more, and not to give up on anything. These things stem from simple theoretical considerations and also from straight thinking. But it's not just theory: it has been proven and re-proven in the field over thousands of years. I returned today from a trip to India, where we heard about historical stories that illustrate the same. Capitulations bring about war; determination and readiness bring about peace.

"Ladies and gentlemen, we must tell our 'cousins' that we are staying here. We are not moving. We have time; we have patience; we have stamina. Understand this and internalize it. And we must not simply say it to our cousins but feel it within ourselves. This and only this will bring peace. We can really live in peace and unity and cooperation with our cousins. But only after they understand and internalize that the Zionist state will be here forever. Thank you very much."

In an interview with Chinese news agency Xinhua, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said that unilateral withdrawal has proven to be a failed policy.

In other news, several pigs were spotted flying over New York City yesterday...

I like Jimmy Carter. I have known him since he began his run for president in early 1976. I worked hard for his election, and I have admired the work of the Carter Center throughout the world. That's why it troubles me so much that this decent man has written such an indecent book about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

His bias against Israel shows by his selection of the book's title: "Palestine: Peace not Apartheid." The suggestion that without peace Israel is an apartheid state analogous to South Africa is simply wrong. The basic evil of South African apartheid, against which I and so many other Jews fought, was the absolute control over a majority of blacks by a small minority of whites. It was the opposite of democracy. In Israel majority rules; it is a vibrant secular democracy, which just today recognized gay marriages performed abroad. Arabs serve in the Knesset, on the Supreme Court and get to vote for their representatives, many of whom strongly oppose Israeli policies. Israel has repeatedly offered to end its occupation of areas it captured in a defensive war in exchange for peace and full recognition. The reality is that other Arab and Muslim nations do in fact practice apartheid. In Jordan, no Jew can be a citizen or own land. The same is true in Saudi Arabia, which has separate roads for Muslims and non-Muslims. Even in the Palestinian authority, the increasing influence of Hamas threatens to create Islamic hegemony over non-Muslims. Arab Christians are leaving in droves.

Why then would Jimmy Carter invoke the concept of apartheid in his attack on Israel? Even he acknowledges--though he buries this toward the end of his book--that what is going on in Israel today "is unlike that in South Africa--not racism, but the acquisition of land." But Israel's motive for holding on to this land is the prevention of terrorism. It has repeatedly offered to exchange land for peace and did so in Gaza and southern Lebanon only to have the returned land used for terrorism, kidnappings and rocket launchings.

I recently posted a seed (Palestinians form human shield to protect home from Israeli air strike) which detailed the following events:

1. Israel located Mohammedweil Baroud, a commander in the Popular Resistance Committees in charge of firing Kassam rockets at Israel (a number of these hare fired every day, and have been over the past year+, aimed at cities, with the intention of killing, injuring, maiming and disrupting the lives of Israeli civilians).
2. The IDF gave warning that in half an hour they would destroy this terrorist's house. As the house was a suspected weapons storage facility, the warning was given to allow civilians to leave before the weapons were destroyed. The intention was to avoid unnecessary casualties (something that is not reciprocal in this case).
3. A call was put out in the surrounding neighborhood, and a crowd of "civilians" gathered around the house, chanting things like "Yes to martyrdom. No to surrender".
4. Israel called off the air strike. The crowd claimed victory and the weapons stored in the house survived another day.

In the referenced seed, I wrote that Anyone who is there is accessory to acts of terrorism, is freely and willingly helping those who would like to massacre Jews, and is therefore as much of a threat to Israel as those who are pulling the triggers. If they want to be martyrs, who are we to get in their way?. Almost all of the comments in response to this were either in support of the Palestinians, angry at my comments, or against the Palestinian actions but appreciative of Israel's restraint.

I would like to illustrate a scenario that I believe to be very realistic given the new Palestinian strategy of civilians willingly acting as human shields to protect the terrorists who shoot missiles at Israeli civilians. Imagine that Hamas and their associates enact the following policy:

• Any commander or fighter affiliated with their organization will always be located among no less than 5 women, who will be at his side at all times.
• They will be in close enough proximity that if Israel tried to get at him, at least some of them would die.
• All of the women would be there willingly, believing that their actions in protecting the Hamas people is there way of fighting against Israel
• Israel has very good intelligence as to the whereabouts of these terrorists, and is able to strike them with precision. If they do so, some or all of the women "bodyguards" will die

What should Israel do?

If Israel does nothing, then 5-10 missiles will be shot at Israeli cities every day. They will hit kindergartens, day care facilities, hospitals, shopping malls and busy intersections. Israeli civilians will die or be maimed for life (as happened a few days ago, when a woman was killed and a man lost both legs from a kassam missile that hit Sederot. They were walking on the street at the time). Hamas, etc, will not hold back from firing these missiles. The opposite will happen. The fact that Israel holds back from responding to these attacks will only encourage them that their course of actions is the right strategy to weaken Israeli resolve (and kill more Jews). The UN may condemn them, they may not get their funding, the Quarter may praise Israel for their restraint, but Israeli civilians will die with increasing frequency, and Israel will have failed in her role of defending Israeli citizens.

If Israel shoots back at the kassam missile squads, their commanders, their weapons silos and factories, their moneymen and their associates, for every terrorist killed, 3-5 women "bodyguards" will be killed as well. After a week of constantly targeting these terrorists, the main organizers will move underground (since they can no longer count on their women bodyguards to protect them from Israeli fire), kassam rocket production will slow down, and an opening will be given to those in power to try to reverse the violent trend and put an end to the missiles. (For as long as they are firing these missiles at Israel every day, they are viewed as heroes, and although it is extremely detrimental to the chances at reaching any kind of theoretical peaceful resolution, any moderate political elements in Gaza are powerless to stop them).

I am personally of the opinion that if a civilian actively and willingly goes to defend a terrorist (who I am defining in this case as someone who actively takes part in planning or executing violent operations aimed at killing Israeli civilians), they lose the status of "civilian" and are to be considered as much of a legitimate target as the people that they are defending. Although Israel should still try to avoid injuring or killing these people, their presence should in no way prevent Israel from trying to kill the people who are directly responsible for targeting Israeli cities and civilians. They made the choice to step onto the "field of battle". They must accept the consequences, if it comes to that. Otherwise, Israeli civilians will pay with their own lives.

(Disagree? Then please explain why these people can still claim protection as "civilians" when they are designating themselves as soldiers. Also, for those who say that Israel has no right to shoot at terrorists when these so-called "civilians" are present, imagine that your own city was being targeted by these "home-made rockets" and this scenario had nothing to do with Israelis and Arabs. Would you still have the same opinion?)

Although this scenario may be restricted to Israel right now, if it proves successful against the IDF, then there is no reason to think that it, as suicide bombing and airplane hijacking have already done, will not spread to other areas of the world where terrorism is prevalent today (or will be tomorrow). The ethics of the situation are complex, but it behooves us to define exactly where the line between civilian ends, and combatant begins. In this case though, I think that the answer is fairly obvious.

From a speech given by Brigitte Gabriel at Duke University in October, 2004:

I'm proud and honored to stand here today as a Lebanese speaking for Israel -- the only democracy in the Middle East. As someone who was raised in an Arabic country, I want to give you a glimpse into the heart of the Arabic world.

I was raised in Lebanon where I was taught that the Jews were evil, Israel was the devil, and the only time we will have peace in the Middle East is when we kill all the Jews and drive them into the sea.

When the Muslims and Palestinians declared Jihad on the Christians in 1975, they started massacring the Christians city after city. I ended up living in a bomb shelter underground from age 10 to 17 without electricity eating grass to live and crawling under sniper bullets to a spring to get water.

It was Israel that came to help the Christians in Lebanon. My mother was wounded by a Muslim's shell and was taken into an Israeli hospital for treatment. When we entered the emergency room I was shocked at what I saw. There were hundreds of people wounded, Muslims, Palestinians, Christian Lebanese and Israeli soldiers lying on the floor. The doctors treated everyone according to their injury. They treated my mother before they treated the Israeli soldier lying next to her. They didn't see religion. They didn't see political affiliation. They saw people in need and they helped.

For the first time in my life, I experienced a human quality that I know my culture would never have shown to its enemy. I experienced the values of the Israelis -- who were able to love their enemy in their most trying moments. I spent 22 days at that hospital. Those days changed my life and the way I listen to the media. I realized that I had been sold a fabricated lie by my government about the Jews and Israel that was so far from reality. I knew for a fact that if I was a Jew standing in an Arab hospital, I would be lynched and thrown over to the grounds as shouts of joy of "Allahu Akbar" (God is Great) would echo through the hospital and the surrounding streets.

I know that this may upset some of you very much. But then again, what's new (watch the video to see what I mean).

In a recent editorial published on Arutz Sheva (with an expanded version with footnotes available here), Robert Barnes outlined a position that, though it was once viewed as right-wing extremist, is becoming more and more popular among the general Israeli population: providing economic and material aid to all any resident that wishes to emigrate from the country (the expected beneficiary being Arab that live in the West Bank).

Some background:

The Israeli public understands that there is not, and will likely never be, a partner for peace among Palestinian Arabs. Thus, the question arises what to do about the West Bank and east Jerusalem Arab populations. Reconquering and annexing the West Bank has been ruled out for demographic reasons. Various plans to transfer the Arab population have been rejected: no other country is willing to negotiate a population transfer treaty with Israel; and the Israeli Jewish population flatly rejects the notion of forced transfer. The primary solution proposed is one apparently opposed by a significant majority of Israelis -- another unilateral withdrawal.

However, there is a practical alternative, which would neither force anyone from their homes nor violate the civil rights of any Jew or Arab.

The author goes on to discuss how Arab emigration from the West Bank, encourage and aided by Israel may be available as a different type of solution.

Some of the factors in the equation:

• 40% of Arabs in the West Bank have considered emigrating to a different country
• 70% have identified some form of material or financial aid as a something that could induce them to emigrate
• No groups of people will be forcibly transferred. Individual who would like aid emigrating will be considered.
• Would not cost Israel (or other countries) any more than a complete expulsion of Jews from the same territory

I know that this document is written from a pro-Israel perspective, and that the basis of this proposition is that Israel should work to find ways to avoid withdrawing from territory, and should not allow a Palestinian state in the West Bank. I also know that because of this, many will have basic problem with the ideas here. However, the reality of the situation right now is not one that will lead to any solution that will meet 100% of what each side would independently want. Therefore, it behooves us to consider all solutions to carefully the problem that could reasonably be implemented and could result in a situation with decreased hostilities and higher standards of living for all involved.

I agree that one of the main factors for many of these people in desiring to leave the West Bank may be the detriments to their day-to-day lives that are a by product of the current war between Israel and Hamas/PLO. If you want to call it Israeli oppression and occupation, you are entitled. I will respond that it is Israel defending themselves. These positions have been presented an rehashed many times, on this forum as well as on many others.

However, whatever the cause, it does not change the fact that many members of the Arab populace just want out. If they independently choose to start their lives in a different country, with financial assistance, in the long run they will probably be experiencing a much better quality of life (especially compared to their lives in a new country called Palestine that some would like to create). This solution might help them to achieve that.

What would then happen in the West Bank after such a plan is implemented and 100,000 arabs voluntarily emigrate to different countries with Israeli assistance? The main Israeli objection to annexing all of the West Bank has been that because of demographic estimates, this will take away the Jewish majority in the country that is supposed to be the country of the Jews. As the article points out, many of the assumptions behind this demographic scare are simply not true. Combine this with a large scale voluntary emigration from the West Bank and we are left with a situation where Israel would have no more demographic reason to fear annexing the entire West Bank, and could go ahead and do so, transforming all remaining residents into Israeli citizens. As Israeli citizens, they will be entitled to all of the social benefits and religious freedoms (which are not present in most of the Arab countries in the region) that come along with it, and presuming an end to hostilities between the different parts of the population, a much higher quality of life as Israeli restrictions on movement (currently based on security concerns) are removed. One hundred thousand (and more) Jews will not have to be forcibly expelled, and money otherwise spent on destruction of communities can instead be spent on helping people rebuild their lives.

Think about it.

Interesting piece on Israeli Arabs - who they are, what are (some of them) like, discrimination, what are they looking for in the "peace process", do they want a Palestinian state? He even talks about how ridiculous it is to call Israel an apartheid state.

As long as you aren't dealing with Hezbollah psychopaths, Semtex-strapped "martyrs," or Al Qaeda head-choppers, Arabs really are the most pleasant people you can find anywhere. There's nothing quite like going to a place where you can regularly and reliably pull up a chair (or a space on a carpet) with total strangers and share coffee, tea, cigarettes, and conversation while basking in the glow of instant warm friendship. Arab hospitality alone is reason enough to visit the Middle East instead of Europe on your next holiday.

I sort of understand why Israelis fear Arabs. Yasser Arafat, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, etcetera ad nauseum, are murderous maniacs. And they get all the attention. At the same time I'm completely baffled. You are not going to run into those types while hanging out with regular folks in the Jerusalem market.

Note: I remember in that in the beginning of the current "intifada" many people in Israel were sure that Israel-Arabs were loyal citizens who would have nothing to do with anti-Israel terrorism. Until some Israeli-Arabs decided to take very active roles in terrorist attacks (i.e.: blowing themselves up, driving the killers to their targets, etc). The portrayal of Israeli Arabs in this article implies that the actions that I described apply to a very very small minority. I personally have no way of knowing what to believe with any degree of certainty, nor do I have any way of knowing how many Israeli Arabs want to see Israel gone. I do know that a majority of Arabs in Jerusalem voted for Hamas in the last elections, and that there are still terrorist incidents that include the active participation of Israeli Arabs. While that is the case, friendly or not, I am staying as far away as possible. Sorry.

The author describes an event involving Jews, Arabs, land, uprooted trees and a tractor, somewhere in the area known as the West Bank, teaching an important lesson along the way about our prejudices and the complexity of even minor events happening in Israel today.

I have to admit, the ending surprised me and changed my opinion somewhat (though not as much as you might have thought). Please let me know if it changed yours as well. And as the author writes, "it will be (troubling) if people leave comments based on their prejudices rather than their intellect."