News & Politics - Israel minister warns Palestinians of "shoah" (Holocaust)

Papri · 02-29-2008, 10:10 AM

Quote:

Israel minister warns Palestinians of "shoah"

By Adam Entous and Joseph Nasr Reuters - Friday, February 29 11:30 am

JERUSALEM (Reuters)

A senior Israeli defence official said on Friday that Palestinians firing rockets from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip would bring upon themselves what he termed a "shoah", the Hebrew word for holocaust or disaster.

The word is rarely used in Israel outside discussions of the Nazi Holocaust of Jews. Many Israelis are loath to countenance its use to describe other contemporary events.

Israeli air strikes have killed at least 33 Gazans, including five children, in the past two days, and Israeli leaders said cross-border rocket fire may leave the Jewish state with little choice but to launch a broader military offensive.
One Israeli was killed in a rocket attack on Wednesday in the southern border town of Sderot. Tensions increased further after longer-range rockets hit the city of Ashkelon, a major population centre about 10 km (6 miles) from Gaza.
"The more Qassam (rocket) fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, they (the Palestinians) will bring upon themselves a bigger 'shoah' because we will use all our might to defend ourselves," Vilnai told Army Radio.
Vilnai's spokesman said: "Mr. Vilnai was meaning 'disaster'. He did not mean to make any allusion to the genocide."

Israel's Foreign Ministry spokesman, Arye Mekel, added: "Deputy Defence Minister Matan Vilnai used the Hebrew phrase that included the term 'shoah' in Hebrew in the sense of a disaster or a catastrophe, and not in the sense of a holocaust."

Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said of Vilnai's comments: "We are facing new Nazis who want to kill and burn the Palestinian people."

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has so far been wary of launching a major ground offensive, which could incur heavy casualties and derail U.S.-backed peace talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. But domestic pressure is growing.

Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas's prime minister in the Gaza Strip, described the threat of a major Israeli offensive as "craziness and hysteria", saying: "Our people are facing a real war."

Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak sought to prepare the way for an offensive by sending confidential messages to world leaders, including U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who plans to visit the region next week.

Hamas is also demanding an end to the Israeli-led blockade that has cut supplies to the territory's 1.5 million people.
(Additional reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza; Writing by Adam Entous and Joseph Nasr; Editing by Ralph

For full story go here.

This guy is a senior member of the Israeli government. Surely he should be aware of the connotations of the choice of his words? It's frankly appalling, not only extremely threatening to the Palestinians (erm, genocide?) but also disgustingly offensive to Jews, Poles and other communities who were affected by the Holocaust. This behaviour is frankly unacceptable.

marina86 · 02-29-2008, 12:55 PM

Vilnai is an idiot. It's definitely not the first time he said something stupid. I really don't think he meant genocide.

Should be mentioned that the air strike killed a pretty large group of terrorists and that the rockets already reached a wider and more populated range.

jerkstore · 02-29-2008, 10:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by marina86 (View Post)

Vilnai is an idiot. It's definitely not the first time he said something stupid. I really don't think he meant genocide.

Should be mentioned that the air strike killed a pretty large group of terrorists and that the rockets already reached a wider and more populated range.

I think he meant exactly what he said. Israel has been engaged in ethnic cleansing for nearly 60 years.

Check out this map:

FunHostr - This explains a lot - Palestinian loss of land 1946 to 2000.

marina86 · 03-01-2008, 03:40 AM

First of all, that's not Palestinian land. In 1946 it belonged to the British Empire.

Second, for nearly 60 years the only thing Israel was doing is responding to being attacked. I'm not sure what "ethnic cleansing" has to do with all of this.

Vilnai made a lot foot in mouth comments before. The guy just isn't really good with expressing his intentions.

Papri · 03-01-2008, 04:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by marina86 (View Post)

Vilnai made a lot foot in mouth comments before. The guy just isn't really good with expressing his intentions.

Be that as it may, he's in a position of responsibility. He should damn well learn how to express himself properly or keep his mouth shut. How often can people make the excuse for him that he "didn't mean it"? He's not a kid, he's an adult in authority.

**TheAngel** · 03-01-2008, 09:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Papri (View Post)

Be that as it may, he's in a position of responsibility. He should damn well learn how to express himself properly or keep his mouth shut. How often can people make the excuse for him that he "didn't mean it"? He's not a kid, he's an adult in authority.

Have you met George Bush. People have been making that excuse for him for the past 7 years. I don't really know the situation, nor do I know the man, but Israel needs to be very careful if they don't want violence to increase. I think he should at least apologize for the comment publicly, if not be ousted from his position. While I support Israel in this, I don't support comments like that from anyone.

**sum1** · 03-01-2008, 09:23 AM

Vilnai should be fired immediately.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jerkstore (View Post)

I think he meant exactly what he said. Israel has been engaged in ethnic cleansing for nearly 60 years.

Check out this map:

Israel has beeen doing nothing of the sort. Why should anyone pay attention to a map that's just a piece of anti-Israel propaganda? It's quite simply inaccurate. Jewish land was a bigger area in 1946 than the map shows. And Palestinian land is a bigger area now than the map shows. And there's plenty Arabs of Palestinian descent living on lots of the land that map calls Jewish land. The land hasn't been taken away from them and they haven't been driven off. Plus in 1946 there were Jews living on land that was not counted as being on the overall Jewish land. Also, the large lump of territory at the bottom of Israel (the big upside down triangle) is the Negev desert, which was not significantly inhabited by Palestinians in 1946 (but there were Jews living there). It was not a Palestinian area. That's a barren area which the UN gave to Israel because nobody particularly wanted it. The area to the north of the western Negev (going up into central Israel) included more Jewish land in 1946 than your map shows. Also, if you look at the areas which are shown as Palestinian territory on the 1946 map and then change to Jewish land in the 1947 map, much of that area was very sparsely populated land that had to be given to the Jewish state to give the state a continuous territory. Much of that was bad land, not very useful to anybody. And part of the problem with that map is that it's counting a lot of land that wasn't inhabited primarily by Palestinians as being Palestinian land originally. Much of the land shown on the 1946 map as Palestinian land was in fact land owned by the British Mandate and before that by the Ottoman empire and way back by the ancient state of Israel before the Romans destroyed it and renamed the area "Palestine" to deny the Jewish connection to the area. "Palestine" is a name invented by the Romans to wipe away the Jewish connection to the area, after they'd destroyed the Jewish nation there and driven out many Jews. The word "Palestine" comes from the name of the Philistines, who were European invaders who took over certain coastal areas.

The UN Partition assigned to Israel areas of land that were more inhabited/owned by Jews than by Palestinians. Then when the Israeli state was founded Arab forces attacked it, and in that 1948 war Israel gained more land. Many Palestinians left and many others chose to stay and became Israeli Arabs. The Israeli Arabs still live in Israel.

Laira · 05-21-2008, 07:28 AM

What else has Bush lied about? - Paradise Post

What else has Bush lied about?
By David Paul Brown
Article Launched: 05/15/2008 10:27:00 PM PDT

U.S. Army Major General Kevin Bergner last week in Baghdad spoke at a press conference. One would surmise he'd parrot the Bush administration's linear thinking that much of our trouble in Iraq can be tied to Iran.
Though Iran appears to have a hand in frustrating U.S. efforts, a credible case hasn't been made to depict Iran as a primary surrogate of our enemies. In the cities of Basra and Karbala there were some 20,000 weapons, explosives and ammunition found. This was to be the big day that the U.S. unveiled the connection to Iran.

Though initially, Bergner was to make a connection to Iran, U.S. explosive experts checked the weapons cache and found there was no connection. Zero. This time the White House "spin" was stopped before it got off the ground. How many other untruths have been foisted on the American public to keep this tragic war going?

Laira · 06-16-2008, 07:35 AM

Israeli settlers caught on film beating elderly Palestinian woman :: www.uruknet.info :: informazione dall'Iraq occupato :: news from occupied Iraq :: - it

Israeli settlers caught on film beating elderly Palestinian woman

jerkstore · 07-19-2008, 10:51 AM

Jewish guerrillas told British: quit Palestine or die - Times Online

Quote:

Jewish guerrillas told British: quit Palestine or die
Fighters were led by future Israeli premierMarcus Leroux
A pamphlet warning Britons to leave the Middle East or face death has come to light in a stash of illicit propaganda.

The document does not hail from Basra or Baghdad, nor was it penned by the Islamists of al-Qaeda or the al-Mahdi Army. It was found in Haifa, about 60 years ago, and it was issued by the underground group led by Menachem Begin – the future Prime Minister of Israel and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.

The document, which surfaced at an auction house this week, is addressed to “the soldiers of the occupation army” and aimed at British soldiers serving in Palestine, then under the British Mandate, preceding the establishment of Israel in 1948. The print has faded and the paper has discoloured since it was unearthed from a grove of trees in Haifa in the summer of 1947. Yet the language and the concerns remain current.

Bombings and murders by underground groups, such as Begin’s Irgun, hastened the British withdrawal and the United Nations declaration that led to the founding of modern Israel.

Related Links
Samuel Katz
Irgun propaganda targeted the British Army’s wavering morale, already dented by the bomb attack on the Mandate’s headquarters – the King David Hotel in Jerusalem – which killed 91 people.

In the document, Irgun tells British troops: “It is unavoidable that many Jewish soldiers and many British soldiers should fall. And it is only fair that these people know at least why they may be killed.”

It adds: “Most of you have been in this country for quite a long time. You have learned what the word ‘terrorist’ means, some of you may even have come into direct contact with them (and heartily desire not to repeat the experience). But what do you know about them? Why does a young man go underground?”

It then draws a parallel with what would have happened if, seven years earlier, Britain had been overrun by Nazi Germany. “Remember 1940. Then it seemed quite possible that your island country would be conquered and subjugated by Hitler hordes . . . what would you have done? Would you have gone underground?” The pamphlet says that the occupation is “illegal and immoral” and “parallel to the mass assassination of a whole people”, in language that echoes that used on a note pinned to the booby-trapped bodies of two British intelligence officers executed by Irgun that same summer.

The pamphlet came from a stash confiscated and burnt by cyptographers from the Royal Signals regiment. Corporal Raymond Smith found them buried in a secluded grove marked by a white Star of David and was ordered to destroy them, but took one as a memento. A collector acquired the document from Corporal Smith, and brought it to Mullock’s auctioneers in Shropshire.

Richard Westwood-Brookes, Mullock’s historical documents specialist, said the pamphlet was a remarkable find, which “ amounted to a manifesto for terrorist action”. He added: “It also raises the question as to who are ‘terrorists’ and who are ‘freedom fighters’. It’s a debate which raged through the troubles of Northern Ireland and continues in the Middle East.”

Begin’s Irgun set aside its differences with Haganah, a rival underground Jewish group led by David Ben Gurion – the first Prime Minister of Israel, who once likened Begin to Adolf Hitler.

Begin forged a political career as a hardliner, but, after becoming Prime Minister, signed the Camp David agreement with Egypt in 1979.

The pamphlet, which is expected to fetch about £500, goes on sale at Mullock’s, in Shropshire, on August 6.

jerkstore · 12-07-2008, 12:39 PM

Pogrom against Palistinians:

Israeli PM: Settlers' actions tantamount to 'pogrom' - CNN.com

Quote:

By Shira Medding
CNN

JERUSALEM (CNN) -- Outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert opened his weekly Cabinet meeting on Sunday with sharp words for Jewish settlers who opened fire on Palestinians last week, saying their actions constituted a "pogrom."

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert spoke about the "pogrom" during his weekly Cabinet Meeting.

"We are the children of a people whose historic ethos is built on the memory of pogroms," Olmert said. "The sight of Jews firing at innocent Palestinians has no other name than pogrom. Even when Jews do this, it is a pogrom.

"As a Jew, I am ashamed that Jews could do such a thing."

He was addressing the riots last week in which Jewish settlers -- angry over the forced evacuation of a contested house in Hebron -- attacked Palestinians, setting fire to their houses.

In a statement released by his office, Olmert told the Cabinet that he chose the term "pogrom" -- a Yiddish word meaning an organized massacre, usually referring to such attacks against Jews -- "after much thought."

"I formulate these words with the greatest care that I can," the prime minister said.

Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said two settlers -- who were captured on video firing near a group of Palestinians -- have turned themselves in and will be remanded before a judge on Sunday.

Don't Miss
Mayor: Jewish settlers on 'terror' rampage
Two Palestinians moderately wounded in the shooting are still hospitalized, he said.

Bella Grint · 12-07-2008, 02:35 PM

This is not good. I thought we'd have to worry about Pakistani tension with India after the terrorist acts but Israel vs. Palestine with threats of genocide is never good...


Fan Forum > General Discussion > News & Politics > Israel minister warns Palestinians of "shoah" (Holocaust)