The Heart of the Problem With Israel (labor tie in)

[TBF]

(Note: The thing I find most interesting about this story is the hatred of the Labor Party - that alone tells us what we're dealing with here imo):

The Heart of the Problem With Israel: The Mass Expulsion of the Palestinian People
by: Donna Nevel on July 21st, 2014

(Originally published on Alternet)

As Israeli government violence against the Palestinians in Gaza intensifies (the latest news being an aggressive ground invasion), I saw a discussion on-line about whether Israel has become more brutal or the brutality has simply become more visible to the public.

I remembered listening to Benjamin Netanyahu when he was at MIT in the 1970s. He called himself Bibi Nitai and said he was in self-exile until the Labor Party, which he despised, was out of power. He spoke contemptuously about Arabs, and predicted he would be the leader of Israel someday and would protect the Jewish state in the way it deserved. The immediate response many of us had was: “Heaven help us all if he ever gets into power in Israel.”

I also remember the many Israeli leaders I met in the 1970?s from Labor and Mapam and from smaller parties on the “Zionist left” who seemed kind and caring and markedly different from Benjamin Netanyahu – and in many ways they were, not just in their political rhetoric (they all said they were socialists) but as human beings, or so it seemed. But when I finally dug a little deeper and read my history, I learned how they, too, were participants – in fact, often leaders – in the plan to drive the Palestinians out of their homes and off their land. Nothing very kind or caring about that, to say the least.

The bottom line: Israel was created based on the expulsion of over 700,000 Palestinians from their land and from their homes (what Palestinians call the Nakba, the catastrophe). This is the heart of the problem ...

Much more here: http://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/2014/07/21/the-heart-of-the-problem-with-israel-the-mass-expulsion-of-the-palestinian-people/

[Warpy]

1. Another problem was that they gave all Jews, everywhere, dual citizenship

That opened them wide open to wholesale immigration from every country with a Jewish population, whether or not those Jews could cite any history of persecution. They found themselves with a tiny country and an exploding population.

So they had to expand. That meant the West Bank first, and now likely Gaza.

[4now]

2. Far out right wing lunatics are running that country

and we are paying the tab.
You cannot trust any right wing government to do anything but create war.

[TBF]

3. Sadly that seems to be the case :( nt