discipline posted:
angry a LOT, for good reason
hahaha this is really true
Superabound posted:
why should Christians in the Middle East be treated any better than Muslims in the West
operating under a false pretense that people are inherently 'Good'
Wulgus posted:
my last name used to be oren before my parents got married so i asked one of the hasidic campus recruiter dudes if it would be enough to let me go on birthright and he scowled at me
discipline posted:
this!!! epic thisserty!! ahahhahaha go on birthright, it's a lot of fun if you like to play twister with half-naked jewish girls and do jello shots off their bodies while less than twenty miles away a little child is twisted up in pain from their white phosphorus burns and crying because they can't get any water because their legs were blown off by taxpayer money, also because they have no access to clean water because all their wells have become salinated
i wrote a really long paper on the water situation in gaza + occupied territories a year or two ago. but that twister thing sounds fucking hot....
discipline posted:Wulgus posted:
my last name used to be oren before my parents got married so i asked one of the hasidic campus recruiter dudes if it would be enough to let me go on birthright and he scowled at methis!!! epic thisserty!! ahahhahaha go on birthright, it's a lot of fun if you like to play twister with half-naked jewish girls and do jello shots off their bodies while less than twenty miles away a little child is twisted up in pain from their white phosphorus burns and crying because they can't get any water because their legs were blown off by taxpayer money, also because they have no access to clean water because all their wells have become salinated
that is fucked up. i prefer to be way more than 20 miles away
discipline posted:
this!!! epic thisserty!! ahahhahaha go on birthright, it's a lot of fun if you like to play twister with half-naked jewish girls
stopped reading here, signed up.
animedad posted:
JAPs are horrendous looking tho
some are pretty
gyrofry posted:
that is fucked up. i prefer to be way more than 20 miles away
discipline posted:
during the nakba jewish terrorists literally got caught poisoning wells in gaza ahahah
more on this:
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/627/focus.htm
http://www.bsos.umd.edu/pgsd/people/staffpubs/Avner-CBWart.pdf
Edited by HenryKrinkle ()
tpaine posted:
i mean he's insane but it's partially not his fault because of what was done to him (magitek experiments/holocaust), he then justifies what he does for pretty much the same organization/ideology in the same way as those who victimized him (the empire/fascism) and he also annihilates the entire planet rather than let himself be killed (The Samson option/floating continent debacle). I just typed all these words out.
he was also gay
A controversial report aired by CBS News has pitted Israel’s top envoy to the United States against the network’s flagship news show and now has the Jewish community up in arms.
The report by senior “60 Minutes” correspondent Bob Simon, sought to explore the plight of Christian Palestinians, a dwindling population caught between the hardship of Israeli occupation and the pressure from rising Islamic extremism. But even as the story was in the process of being reported, the loaded issue became even more explosive. Israeli officials tried to fight what they viewed as an unbalanced report, and CBS’s reporter fought back against what he viewed as inappropriate intervention by the Israelis. The result on air was a lengthy discussion dedicated not to the issue of Palestinian Christians, but to the conduct of Michael Oren, Israel’s ambassador to Washington.
“When we decided to do the story last year, we did not realize it would become so controversial,” Bob Simon stated at the opening of his report. An account provided to the Forward by an Israeli official involved in the events confirmed that controversy ran throughout the entire year of preparation. Israelis first heard of Simon’s intent to produce a story on Palestinian Christians more than six months ago. For Israel, a damning story about its treatment of Christians in the Holy Land could dampen relations with Christians across the world and complicate Israeli public diplomacy efforts aimed at portraying the Jewish State as the only haven of religious freedom in the Middle East.
An official discussing the issue likened the danger of such a report to a “strategic terror attack” against Israeli diplomacy.
The story was scheduled to air on the weekend of Christmas, but the Israeli embassy in Washington stepped in toward the end of November and contacted “60 Minutes,” demanding to insert an Israeli reaction. After a back-and-forth involving the program’s executive producer, an interview was set with Oren. The 80-minute long exchange, taped in New York, was described by Israeli officials as tense. In one part that made it to the report’s final version, Simon asked Oren point blank for the reason he tried to go over his head and ask CBS top executives to intervene before the story aired. “It seemed to me outrageous,” Oren replied, explaining that at a time when Christians are persecuted in Arab countries, it would be odd to focus on Israel. “And it was a reason to call the president — chairman of CBS News?” Simon asked. “I’m the ambassador of the State of Israel, I do that very, very infrequently,” Oren said in response. When Simon stated he had never seen such conduct in all his years of working as a journalist, the Israeli diplomat paused for a second and then replied: “Well, there’s a first time for everything, Bob.”
In parts of the interview that were not broadcast, Simon, according to a recording of the interview held by the Israeli embassy, asked Oren if Palestinian Christians were involved in terror, a question to which Oren did not have an immediate answer. Simon explained that only one Christian Palestinian was among the terrorists released recently in the Shalit deal.
Israelis, however, are pleased with the bottom line. “It could have been much worse,” said an Israeli official who noted that Oren’s intervention succeeded in getting Israel’s point of view into the story and in postponing it from sensitive broadcast dates during Christmas and Easter.
The Israeli embassy is expected to issue a reaction taking on some of the points raised in the story. Jewish groups have also moved into action, with the Jewish Federations of North American issuing a call to its members before airing of the show to get ready for action. “We hope that CBS will be flooded with responses through their inboxes, facebook, twitter and mail after the program to express discontent if it is as biased as we anticipate,” the alert read.
B’nai B’rith International issued a statement on Monday calling the report “flawed at best” and focusing on the positive light in which a Christian pro-Palestinian document, known as “Kairos,” which was rejected by the Jewish community, was presented in the 60 Minutes piece.
Christians of the Holy Land
Despite claims by Israeli government officials, Christian Palestinians regularly face discrimination.
Last Modified: 26 Apr 2012 06:36
A recent report by CBS show 60 Minutes on "Christians of the Holy Land" has received a lot of attention, not least for the embarrassing contribution by Israeli Ambassador to the US Michael Oren.
It is interesting that Israel (and its advocates) have been so concerned about the impact of a short segment regarding the challenges faced by Christian Palestinians under Israeli military occupation. In fact, Ambassador Oren himself only recently tried to exploit Christians for propaganda purposes - only to find that they objected to his cynicism.
The Israeli government has long tried to suggest that the emigration of Christian Palestinians is the result of a "jihad" being waged by "terrorists" or "fundamentalists". There are obvious advantages to this strategy, particularly its dependence on pre-existing prejudices and stereotypes in the West. But it also seeks to neutralise a potentially damaging threat: that people around the world will see Christian Palestinians leaving their historic homeland due to Israeli colonisation and occupation.
In 1948, Christian Palestinians were not spared the devastation of the Nakba, when Israel destroyed hundreds of villages, and expelled up to 90 per cent of the Palestinians who would have been inside the new state. The hundreds of thousands prevented from returning home included35 per cent of all Christians in pre-1948 Mandate Palestine. Haifa's Christian population, for example, was reduced by 85 per cent. Some Christian Palestinians became citizens, but their land remains confiscated.
Since 1967, Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza have been subject to Israel's military occupation, and on both sides of the Green Line, Christian Palestinians face the same conditions of systematic racial discrimination as Muslims - on the basis that they're not Jews.
Israeli colonisation has fragmented and splintered the traditional Christian heartland of Bethlehem, Ramallah, and Jerusalem - home to around 80 per cent of the Occupied Territories' Christians - through land confiscation, illegal settlements, the Separation Wall, and the regime of travel "permits".
The isolation of Bethlehem has hit Palestinian Christians particularly hard, where unemployment and poverty levels remain high. The illegal Separation Wall takes in approximately 10 per cent of the Bethlehem region, or governorate, including some of the most fertile land. Overall, through a combination of Israeli policies (including 19 illegal Jewish settlements), the UN estimates that only 13 per cent of the Bethlehem region is available for Palestinian use.
Economics and occupation
Unsurprisingly, these are conditions that make young people despair about the future. In fact, a number of studies show clearly the reasons why Christian Palestinians emigrate. It's not what Michael Oren or Christians United For Israel would have you believe.
As far back as 1993, 88 per cent of Christian Palestinians surveyed about emigration specified the economic situation. In a 2006 survey, 78 per cent of Christian respondents to a Bethlehem-based poll said "Israeli aggression and occupation are the main cause of emigration", while only 3.1 per cent exclusively blamed the "rise of Islamic movements" (12.1 per cent said it was a combination of the two). More than half of those Christians surveyed had at least one relative whose land had been confiscated by Israel.
Another, more wide-ranging survey in 2006 found that roughly 7 out of 10 Christians cited either political conditions or employment as the reason for emigration. Only 8 per cent cited religious fanaticism. When asked to name the challenges confronting Christians in the Holy Land, just under half of respondents chose job opportunities and housing (11 per cent chose religious fanaticism).
Finally, in a 2008 survey on reasons for emigration, 1 in 3 cited "lack of freedom and security", 1 in 4 said "deterioration of economy" - and only 0.8 per cent chose "fleeing religious extremism".
That economics and occupation are at the heart of Christian emigration trends is no surprise. As the World Bank regularly points out, Israeli restrictions on the free movement of people and goods (for Palestinians) is a key reason for economic weakness in the Occupied Territories.
This is what pro-Israel advocacy groups try to hide, preferring decontextualised, cherry-picked anecdotes or wild, unsubstantiated claims. But the consistent message of these surveys is the same as that expressed by the recent EU Heads of Mission Report on East Jerusalem:"Church leaders cite as reasons for increased emigration: GoI imposed family-reunification restrictions, the limited ability of Christian communities in the Jerusalem area to expand due to confiscation of church properties and building restrictions, taxation problems and difficulties in obtaining residency permits for Christian clergy."This is not to deny the existence of sectarian tensions in Palestinian society, and the tiny size of the Palestinian minority only heightens the sense of vulnerability. Muslim-Christian relations, and particularly the sense of concern felt by some Christians, have been shaped by a variety of factors, many of which originate in the facts of Israeli colonisation.
So for example, when looking at the demographics of a small city like Bethlehem, change over the decades has been caused by the influx of refugees, as well as rural-urban migration (both mainly Muslim). Israeli policies are the root cause - whether through direct expulsions of Palestinians, or through land confiscations and other policies which have made village life so difficult.
A scarcity of land and resources coupled with the legal anarchy that comes from having no real government, means that in the Occupied Territories, weaker groups are vulnerable to exploitation by corrupt individuals. In addition, a recent lamentable development has been the increased strength of socio-political groups that promote an exclusionary and fanatical form of "Islam".
Naturally then, Christian Palestinians see their main problem as coming from ongoing colonialism and occupation, while also acknowledging the threat posed by a minority of religious extremists. Apparently, however, this position is a bit too complex for Israel advocates to grasp.
There is a key distinction between individual bigotry and the kind of coordinated, systematic racial discrimination - or apartheid - as practised by the Israeli state for decades, which affects Muslim and Christian Palestinians alike.
When Israel's Housing Minister calls it "a national duty to prevent the spread" of Palestinian citizens in the Galilee - he is not distinguishing between Christian and Muslim. Nor was Ehud Olmert, former-PM then mayor of Jerusalem, when he said it is "a matter of concern when the non-Jewish population rises a lot faster than the Jewish population".
What Human Rights Watch has described as Israel's "two-tier system" where Palestinians face "systematic discrimination merely because of their race, ethnicity and national origin" affects everyone, Christian and Muslim. Sadly, no wonder some choose to leave
Many, however, have chosen to stay, and they, like so many other civil society groups, are calling on people around the world - including churches - to stand up and be counted: to use time-honoured strategies of boycott and divestment to ensure that Palestine/Israel is a place where your rights - and even your ability to be there at all - are not determined by religion and ethnicity.
discipline posted:
my cousin has a t-shirt that's got a cross on it and like, the words "THIS IS ILLEGAL IN ___ COUNTRIES" or something and when I saw it I just sighed and laughed at the same time
"sighfter: the official expression of emotion of the rHizzonE (a playground for ideas)"
Groulxsmith posted:
"daddy, i'm a useful coloured" - Ayaan Hirsi Ali
it's easy to be glib but think she's entitled to be angry towards the culture that mutilated her genitals as a 5 year old. If you were an altar boy who got abused as a child you'd probably have a bit of "irrational" anti-Catholicism wouldn't you.