What was the impact of the Zionists on Palestine?

[JStone]

Alexis de Toqueville...
I studied the Koran a great deal. I came away from that study with the conviction there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as that of Muhammad. So far as I can see, it is the principal cause of the decadence so visible today in the Muslim world and, though less absurd than the polytheism of old, its social and political tendencies are in my opinion to be feared, and I therefore regard it as a form of decadence rather than a form of progress in relation to paganism itself.

 

[P F Tinmore]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQyIKyd2gqA&feature=related]Israel Soldier _Palestine Girl - YouTube[/ame]

 

[docmauser1]

Israeli Military Shoot Gaza Farmer - YouTube

Ah! Pallywood!

 

[JStone]

Allah, oh our Lord
Vanquish your enemies, enemies of the religion [Islam]
in all places
Allah, strike the Jews and their sympathizers,
the Christians and their supporters
the Communists and their adherents
Allah, count them and kill them to the last one,
and don't even leave even one.
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrI8-qb9M9A]Hamas: Kill Christians and Jews "to the last one" - YouTube[/ame]

 

[JStone]

Israel, 7 million population: 5 Nobel Prize Winners for groundbreaking achievements in science, mathematics and economics.

30 Arab Muslim countries, 350 million population: Zero Nobel Prize winners

 

[P F Tinmore]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bdbA2Ka3Bo&feature=related]Palestinian Children Beaten by Israeli Soldier - YouTube[/ame]

 

[JStone]

John F. Kennedy...

When the first Zionist conference met in 1897, Palestine was a neglected wasteland

I first saw Palestine in 1939. There the neglect and ruin left by centuries of Ottoman [Muslim] misrule were slowly being transformed by miracles of [Jewish] labor and sacrifice. But Palestine was still a land of promise in 1939, rather than a land of fulfillment. I returned in 1951 to see the grandeur of Israel. In 3 years this new state had opened its doors to 600,000 immigrants and refugees. Even while fighting for its own survival, Israel had given new hope to the persecuted and new dignity to the pattern of Jewish life. I left with the conviction that the United Nations may have conferred on Israel the credentials of nationhood; but its own idealism and courage, its own sacrifice and generosity, had earned the credentials of immortality.

The technical skills and genius of Israel have already brought their blessings to Burma and to Ethiopia. Still other nations in Asia and in Africa are eager to benefit from the special skills available in that bustling land

For Israel was not created in order to disappear - Israel will endure and flourish. It is the child of hope and the home of the brave. It can neither be broken by adversity nor demoralized by success. It carries the shield of democracy and it honors the sword of freedom; and no area of the world has ever had an overabundance of democracy and freedom.

It is worth remembering, too, that Israel is a cause that stands beyond the ordinary changes and chances of American public life. In our pluralistic society, it has not been a Jewish cause - any more than Irish independence was solely the concern of Americans of Irish descent. The ideals of Zionism have, in the last half century, been repeatedly endorsed by Presidents and Members of Congress from both parties. Friendship for Israel is not a partisan matter. It is a national commitment.
John F. Kennedy: Speech by Senator John F. Kennedy, Zionists of America Convention, Statler Hilton Hotel, New York, NY

 

[P F Tinmore]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8ST5m9pREQ&feature=related]Israeli 'shooting video' causes outrage - 20 July 2008 - YouTube[/ame]

 

[JStone]

John F. Kennedy...

Israel, we salute you. We honor your progress and your determination and your spirit. But in the midst of our rejoicing we do not forget your peril. We know that no other nation in this world lives out its days in an atmosphere of such constant tension and fear. We know that no other nation in this world is surrounded on every side by such violent hate and prejudice
Remarks by Senator John F. Kennedy at Yankee Stadium on April 29, 1956 | Finding Camelot

 

[P F Tinmore]

Israeli 'shooting video' causes outrage - 20 July 2008 - YouTube

Join Salam, the 18 year old girl from Ni'lin who had filmed an Israeli military commander shoot a detainee at close range and her 16 year old brother Arafat who was arrested in revenge for making Salam's footage public .

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDNd_qgy5NI]19 Sleepless Gaza Jerusalem.mpg - YouTube[/ame]

 

[JStone]

"Oh, Allah, Kill All Jews And Americans"

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7rls9eRKyo]Islam: Oh Allah - Kill all Jews and Americans! - YouTube[/ame]

 

[P F Tinmore]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQEZ2ad8z20&feature=related]Six-month-old baby killed by Israel attacks - 28 Feb 08 - YouTube[/ame]

 

[JStone]

"We Desire Death Like You Desire Life"
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWIDZ7Jpdqg]Hamas - "We desire death like you desire life" - YouTube[/ame]

 

[P F Tinmore]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=But9m3O4umI&feature=relmfu]Israel shoots dead nine-year-old boy - 30 Jul 08 - YouTube[/ame]

 

[JStone]

Historian Paul Johnson...
The lack of symmetry between the risks taken by Arabs and by Israelis is one result of a different view of the sanctity of human life. The Jewish faith was the first religion to preach this sanctity and to magnify the value of each individual human being in the eyes of his Creator — hence, equally, in other human beings. This is the main reason that Mosaic law differs so markedly in humanity and reason from all the other fiercely retributive codes of the ancient Near East. The value placed on human life by Jews has steadily increased over the centuries, as a response to persecution and, above all, to the Nazi attempt at extermination of the entire people. Israel itself was created as a refuge and fortress in which Jewish lives would be safe from annihilation. It is thus the physical embodiment of the principle that individual life is sacred.

By contrast, the Islamic-Arab concept of "the war of the martyrs" places no value on human life except as a sacrifice in the holy war. A warrior gains infinitely more by losing his life than by preserving it, for then he gains eternal life, and his status as a martyr is enhanced by the number of dead Israelis — "sons and daughters of Satan" — whom he takes with him.

 

[P F Tinmore]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nYgioaKRu4&feature=relmfu]Gaza Teenager Killings - 3 June 2007 - YouTube[/ame]

 

[JStone]

Israel Faces a Culture of Hatred and Violence...

The grisly trail of broken toys and bloodied bedclothes and carpets inside the family home led to the bodies. They lay in their own blood, all knifed to death: Ruth Fogel, the 35-year-old mother; Udi, 36, the father; their 11-year-old son, Yoav; their 4-year-old son, Elad; and Hadas, their baby.

Hadas was just three months old. Her throat had been cut by the terrorist butchers who this month broke into the Fogel home in Itamar on a remote hilltop settlement in the West Bank. Yoav was killed as he read in bed.

Their every name should be remembered. They died because they were Jews. They were victims not just of the butchers, whose foul crimes Hamas celebrated in Gaza by giving out candy to children. They were also victims of the incitements to kill a Jew that the people of Israel have to live with every day, so many of them with memories of mothers and fathers and grandmothers and grandfathers who perished in Nazi death camps.

Professor Fouad Ajami, one of the great scholars of the Middle East, put it as follows after an earlier massacre: "The suicide bomber of the Passover massacre did not descend from the sky; he walked straight out of the culture of incitement let loose on the land, a menace hovering over Israel, a great Palestinian and Arab refusal to let that country be, to cede it a place among the nations. He partook of the culture all around him—the glee [that] greets those brutal deeds of terror, the cult that rises around the martyrs and their families."

This is a culture where sermons legitimize violence in the name of Islam and have shaped generations of Arabs with what writer Eli Hertz calls "a steady diet of poison-filled propaganda." Hertz writes: "For non-Arabic speakers, it is hard to grasp just how pervasive the propaganda is in areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority and throughout the Arab world. It is omnipresent: in state-controlled media outlets, in schools and mosques, at rallies, in speeches and articles." Professor Bernard Lewis, the great academic authority on Islam, has said that if the West knew what was being said in Arabic, people would be horrified

Israel Faces a Culture of Hatred and Violence - US News and World Report

 

[P F Tinmore]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKgph9PV3SA&feature=related]Israeli army 'using white phosphorus' - 12 Jan 08 - YouTube[/ame]

 

[JStone]

"We Desire Death Like You Desire Life"
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWIDZ7Jpdqg]Hamas - "We desire death like you desire life" - YouTube[/ame]

 

[P F Tinmore]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wY-lePRwBxc&feature=relmfu]Scenes in Gaza after more Israeli raids - 11 Jan 09 - YouTube[/ame]