COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Wednesday, April 22, 2015

How Yarmouk refugee camp became the worst place in Syria

BACKGROUND:

Israel bears direct responsibility in the plight of the refugees in Yarmouk. 

The refugees of Yarmouk are mostly the descendants of Palestinian refugees from historic Palestine, especially the northern towns, including Safad, which is now inside Israel. The camp was established in 1957, nearly a decade after the Nakba – the “Catastrophe” of 1948, which saw the expulsion of nearly a million refugees from Palestine. It was meant to be a temporary shelter, but it became a permanent home. Its residents never abandoned their right of return to Palestine, a right enshrined in UN resolution 194.
Israel knows that the memory of the refugees is its greatest enemy, so when the Palestinian leadership requested that Israel allow the Yarmouk refugees to move to the West Bank, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had a condition: that they renounce their right of return. Palestinians refused. History has shown that Palestinians would endure untold suffering and not abandon their rights in Palestine. The fact that Netanyahu would place such a condition is not just a testimony to Israel’s fear of Palestinian memory, but the political opportunism and sheer ruthlessness of the Israeli government.







On 18 January 2014, barely five miles from the centre of Damascus – with President Bashar al‑Assad’s office complex visible in the distance – a small crowd of desperate people emerged from a seemingly uninhabited wasteland of bomb-shattered buildings. News had spread throughout Yarmouk, a district of the capital that is home to Syria’s largest community of Palestinians, that the government and rebel groups had agreed to allow a delivery of food, briefly opening a crack in a year-long siege that had starved the area’s civilians and caused dozens of deaths.
Families had sent their strongest members to collect the newly arrived supplies, and the hungry throng filled the entire width of a street, throwing up dust in the morning light. The relief workers making the delivery recalled one woman, gaunt with malnutrition, who fell down and was too weak to rise. She died on the spot. The scenes were such that some of these experienced aid workers needed trauma counselling when they returned to headquarters in Damascus.
There was only enough food for a few hundred families. Thousands of disappointed people staggered home empty-handed. But officials from the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), established to aid Palestinian refugees throughout the Middle East, hoped that the delivery had set a precedent. They had not publicised it in advance – there was concern that excessive attention would anger the Syrian government – and were reluctant to invite journalists to observe a mission that might have been aborted for security reasons. Four days earlier, an attempted delivery had been abandoned after a mortar exploded very close to the convoy.
After the successful delivery on 18 January, UNRWA officials decided discretion was no longer the best policy. On 31 January, a convoy delivering food to Yarmouk was accompanied by a local photographer, who took a picture of the vast crowd surging through a street lined with the ruins of destroyed buildings. This image quickly became an emblem of the Syrian conflict. To draw attention to the plight of the besieged civilians UNRWA launched a social media campaign (#LetUsThrough) in which millions clicked on a petition to put the image on two of the world’s highest-profile billboards. In Times Square, New York and the Shibuya district of Tokyo people stood in front of giant screens taking selfies, which were then beamed back to Yarmouk as a show of solidarity.This was how Yarmouk entered the world’s consciousness: a refugee camp designed as a safe haven for the Palestinian diaspora that had become the worst place on earth. No electricity for months. No piped water. No access for food. Worse still, no chance for people to leave or return, except for a handful of emergency medical cases or the few who had the means to pay people-smugglers to get them through the multiple checkpoints. Some called it Syria’s Gaza, but its plight was even worse, because the siege was more comprehensive; Yarmouk was a prison from which there was no escape.
But notoriety can be short-lived. When Gaza came under Israeli bombardment in July 2014 and the world’s media rushed to report the carnage, Yarmouk slipped back into obscurity. The opening in the siege that UNRWA had negotiated in January 2014 applied only fitfully throughout the year: food deliveries were only possible on 131 days, and often less than half the amount required got through. Since 6 December, the siege has once again become impassable. UNRWA reports that it has not been able to deliver any food at all for the past 12 weeks. “We are getting new reports of people dying of malnutrition and of women dying in childbirth, but nothing can be confirmed,” said Chris Gunness, UNRWA’s spokesperson. Unlike in Gaza, where UNRWA has several offices, the organisation cannot enter Yarmouk at all.




When I first visited Yarmouk in March 2003, it was a hotbed of anger towards the American invasion of Iraq, which had just began. While other Arab countries muted criticism of US policy or quietly supported George W Bush and Tony Blair, the Syrian state media was full of denunciations. Scores of young Palestinian men from the camp had crossed into Iraq to fight the Americans, often disappearing without telling their own families.
I came across a wake in one narrow back street. It was the third day of mourning for a young man named Issam. He had telephoned home for the first time as he was about to cross into Iraq. In a bus from Damascus with other volunteers from half a dozen Arab countries, the young Palestinian told his father that he and two cousins were going off to war. Six days of silence followed, as his family watched TV footage from Iraq even more intently than before. Then one of the cousins phoned: Issam had never even reached Baghdad. Less than five hours after calling his parents,he died in a hail of fire from a US helicopter. Thirteen other unarmed men in the three buses were killed. The cousin escaped with minor wounds.
When Syrians began to rise up in protest against the government of Bashar al-Assad in March 2011, the situation threatened to unsettle the relatively stable position of Palestinians within the country. Palestinian groups were closely monitored by the Syrian security services and they were expected to remain uninvolved in the nation’s politics. According to Bitari, the trigger for Yarmouk’s entrapment in the intensifying conflict came from the Syrian government rather than the opposition. In May 2011, during the preparations for Nakba Day, which commemorates the expulsion of Palestinian refugees during the creation of Israel in 1948, representatives of the Assad regime began to promote the idea of a demonstration at the Israeli border on the Golan Heights.
Bitari and his friends were wary, suspecting that the regime wanted to divert attention from the internal uprising. He described their decision to form a “youth coalition of Palestinians” in Yarmouk to coordinate decisions pertaining to the camp, which included representatives from each of the Palestinian political factions inside. The group’s first meeting concerned the Nakba Day protests, and a majority opposed any participation. But on the morning of Nakba Day the government supplied buses, which hundreds of people got on. At the border, the Syrian army let the buses through the demarcation lines and several protesters climbed the fence that blocks access to Israeli-controlled territory. Israeli troops used tear gas and live rounds. Three people died.
A month later, on Naksa Day – the anniversary of the defeat of Arab armies by Israel in the 1967 six-day war – minivans sent by Syrian security took about 50 Yarmouk residents to the border, where they were joined by several hundred other young people. Syrian state TV cameras were on hand to film what happened. Again people tried to scale the fence, and this time 23 were shot dead by Israeli forces – 12 of them from Yarmouk, according to Bitari.
Though the Israelis fired the bullets, “the rage was almost as great against the factions for not doing anything to stop the bloodshed”, as Bitari said. The next day the funeral of the victims was attended by 30,000 people.
Angry mourners surrounded the headquarters of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC). A small faction led by Ahmed Jibril, which rejected the Oslo accords, the PFLP-GC was a firm supporter of the Syrian government and was seen by many residents as the regime’s enforcer in the camp. When a PFLP-GC security guard shot and killed a 14-year-old boy, the crowd stormed the building and set it on fire. Jibril had to be rescued by the Syrian army.
This event embarrassed Bashar al-Assad and encouraged Syrian opposition groups to see Yarmouk as a potential support base for the uprising against him. Yarmouk’s geographical position, wedge-shaped with its apex pointing at the heart of Damascus, gave it strategic value. The district was bordered by two poorer Syrian suburbs, al Hajjar al Aswad and Tadamon, which were already being infiltrated by opposition fighters. To the south was open countryside, which was easy for them to move through.
Bitari and his friends still hoped to keep Yarmouk neutral. They were alarmed when the Syrian government, shaken by the anti-PFLP-GC protest and the threat of rebel advances, gave Jibril’s men the right to parade with weapons. This escalation encouraged the Free Syrian Army – at that time the main opposition group, backed by western governments – to plan to move into the camp and seize it from Syrian government control. The Palestinian youth coalition’s efforts had failed. The group disbanded in despair. Civilians who wanted to avoid their district being militarised and dragged into conflict found themselves isolated. The same dynamic was affecting most of the rest of the country.

***

For the Free Syrian Army, Yarmouk was a particularly valued prize after Khaled Meshaal, the leader of Hamas in exile who had lived in Damascus for more than a decade, moved to Qatar in February 2012. Meshaal felt unable to accede to the Syrian government’s pleas that he condemn the anti-regime uprising. Instead, he accepted an invitation from Qatar, one of the armed opposition’s main financial backers. It was a severe blow to Assad’s credentials as leader of the axis of resistance.
In December 2012 the FSA and the al-Qaida affiliate, Jabhat al Nusra were ready for a concerted attack to capture Damascus and topple Assad. Yarmouk was the gateway to the capital, closer to the centre than any of the other suburbs where the regime was losing control. The crisis came to a head on 16 December, when a Syrian air force plane bombed Yarmouk in what the government later claimed was a mistake. Dozens of civilians were killed. Brigades from the FSA and Jabhat al Nusra seized the opportunity to enter the camp – and in response, the government launched a hail of artillery shells, turning most buildings on the edge of the district to rubble.


Within a few days most of the PFLP-GC, the main Palestinian faction supporting the Assad regime, had fled Yarmouk; some defected to the rebels who went on to gain full control. Hundreds of thousands of civilians left. The Syrians of Yarmouk mainly went to relatives and friends in central Damascus or other cities, or moved to Lebanon and Jordan. Palestinians fled to what they hoped would be safer areas inside Syria. Although rebel efforts to capture the rest of Damascus failed, Yarmouk remains in rebel hands today. Some 18,000 civilians still live there, including anywhere between 1,000 and 4,000 Syrians. Still, it is clear that Yarmouk has reverted to being a largely Palestinian enclave.
Assad’s government responded to its defeat in Yarmouk by putting the area under siege. For a few months food could still be brought in from the rural areas to the south, though profiteering was intense. In July 2013 the government tightened its grip and the siege became almost total. Inside Yarmouk fighting erupted between the FSA and Jabhat al Nusra, the latter of which had set up sharia courts. Spasmodic attempts were made to relieve the suffering of Yarmouk’s civilians. In the spring of 2013 Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, even proposed that all of Yarmouk’s 150,000 Palestinian residents move to the West Bank or Gaza. In November 2013, Abbas sent a team to Damascus to discuss humanitarian relief and a ceasefire between the rebels and the government. The idea was to open a safe corridor for the movement of supplies and displaced civilians, but no deal was ever reached.
In September 2014, I met Abu Akram, a member of the PFPL-GC leadership, in a flat on the edge of Yarmouk. A tall older man with one arm in a brace, who moved to Yarmouk from Lebanon in 1994, he had taken part in the abortive ceasefire negotiations with the Syrian opposition, whose breakdown he blamed on the Islamists. A tough, battle-hardened figure firmly allied to the Assad regime, he showed no embarrassment in defending the siege. It was a legitimate tactic, he claimed, in part because the food from UNRWA that was allowed into Yarmouk ended up in the hands of the rebel fighters, for their own use or for sale on the black market.
“We saw that the armed groups were taking food from civilians,” he said, then claimed that boxes of aid meant for Yarmouk could be seen for sale in a nearby district. He even criticised the decision to relax the pressure in early 2014. “It was a mistake to break the siege,” he said. “If we had continued by another week, hunger would have forced them to give up.”
The barbaric nature of sieges has remained unchanged for thousands of years. The aim is to starve the trapped civilians into submission, in the hope they will turn against whatever armed faction controls the territory and persuade them to surrender. The armed faction, in turn, wants to keep the civilians inside so as to make it less likely the besieging army will bring destruction upon the captives. Now, in the 21st century, the very same tactics are being deployed not only in Yarmouk but in several other parts of Syria.

***

Sieges fuel a war economy in which those who man the checkpoints can run a lucrative business selling permission to leave or return. They encourage smuggling of people and food, and keep prices in the camp’s few markets artificially high. When I visited Yarmouk’s northern entrance in September 2014, I found nothing but bleakness. Syrian government soldiers stood guard near a crossroads known as Batikha – “watermelon” – Square, so named for a green monument of a globe that stands amid a clump of palm trees in the middle of the street. The only route into the camp required a walk through a narrow alley between two five-storey buildings that had most of their windows blown out. The neighbouring alley was shielded by huge white padded sheets strung from the upper floors of buildings on either side – makeshift screens intended to stop rebel snipers from targeting anyone walking in the square.
A young woman in hijab was standing near the entrance, weeping as she and a male companion talked with the officer in charge of the checkpoint. After a few minutes of conversation that ended on what looked to be a frustrating note, the woman and her friend pulled back, then wandered up and down the street, apparently debating whether to try another tack to convince the officer or just give up and leave.




“I am trapped,” the woman, named Reem Buqaee, told me. She had been given permission to leave Yarmouk three months earlier with her three teenage daughters. The oldest one was pregnant. Owing to malnutrition, she was suffering from anaemia so severe that she was at risk of losing her baby. The other two girls also had medical problems. But leaving the camp had meant splitting the family. The husband of the pregnant woman could not leave the camp, nor could Reem’s husband, or her 16-year-old son. Rebel groups were eager to keep people in the camp, she said, particularly men and boys. Their departure was seen as defection from the opposition cause as well as potentially making it easier for government troops to enter the camp by force and regain control.
Buqaee’s daughter had safely given birth and the other girls had regained their strength, so she wanted to take them back into Yarmouk. “I had to choose between living in a prison under siege but alongside my husband and son, or stay outside Yarmouk separated but free,” she said. On this particular day, she had come to the camp entrance to see whether her request to return had been granted, but the officer told her he had not received orders to let her and her daughters and baby grand-daughter inside. “Our house is only 100 metres from here, just inside the camp. It’s so near but very far,” she said.
The next day, I visited Buqaee at an overcrowded flat in the Dummar suburb of Damascus, where a distant relative had given her and her daughters temporary shelter. A thick atmosphere of fear surrounds any discussion of Yarmouk. This affects everyone from UNRWA officials to Yarmouk residents. People worry that their families will suffer if they publicly attribute blame to the regime or the rebels for the siege, the collapse of ceasefire talks, and the impossibility of escaping. UNRWA officials are concerned about losing the minimal access they have to Yarmouk if they say anything that might be misinterpreted by one side or the other. When I spoke to residents who had left the camp for other parts of Damascus, but who talk regularly with siblings and parents still inside, they refused to be quoted, explaining that people are scared of reprisals from both the regime and the anti-Assad forces inside the camp.




Buqaee, however, described the horrors of the siege without hesitation: women dying in childbirth, infants killed by malnutrition. There was no anger or hysteria in her voice, just a calm recollection of facts. “You couldn’t buy bread. At the worst point a kilo of rice cost 12,000 Syrian pounds (£41), now it is 800 pounds (£2.75) compared to 100 Syrian pounds (34p) in central Damascus. It was 900 pounds (£3.10) for a kilo of tomatoes, compared to 100 here,” Reem recalled. “We had some stocks but when they gave out we used to eat wild plants. We picked and cooked them. In every family there was hepatitis because of a lack of sugar. The water was dirty. People had fevers. Your joints and bones felt stiff. My middle daughter had brucellosis and there was no medication,” she said. In October 2013, in a sign of how bad things had become, the imam of Yarmouk’s largest mosque issued a fatwa that permitted people to eat cats, dogs and donkeys.
The relaxation of the siege in January last year was limited and insecure, she said. UNRWA’s food deliveries were regularly cut short by mortar explosions and sniper fire. No one was sure who began firing or why. She remembered one incident vividly: “It was March 23. I had gone to collect a food parcel and was on the way back when a mortar went off. Twenty-nine people were killed. My daughter’s husband had come to help carry the boxes. He was hit by shrapnel and cannot walk now. It’ll take him another three or four months to get better.”
For most of 2014, both sides were willing to allow some humanitarian supplies to enter the camp on an ad hoc basis, UN officials told me, even if the amount was far below what was needed. Every day, UNRWA would check whether there had been exchanges of fire in Yarmouk. Sometimes the agency’s minivans never left the warehouse in central Damascus, on other occasions, delivery convoys were turned back. “We never say we’ve had access. All we say is that they’ve given us some opportunities to provide aid,” one UN official said.
UNRWA has not yet been able to enter the camp to conduct a needs assessment. Since the graphic scenes of starving masses early last year, the agency developed a more orderly process, with lists of people who are allowed to cross the no man’s land at the edge of the camp once each month to collect food parcels. Each parcel contains five kilograms of rice, five kilograms of sugar, five kilograms of lentils, five litres of oil, five kilograms of powdered milk, one kilogram of halva, one and a half kilograms of pasta and five 200g tins of luncheon meat. This is designed to feed a family of eight people for 10 days. In other parts of Syria where displaced Palestinians are living, UNRWA provides cash so that people can buy food for the rest of the month, but in Yarmouk that has not been not possible.
Providing medical supplies is sensitive, since the Syrian government fears they will go to wounded fighters. Initially it only gave permission for rehydration salts and basic painkillers. UNRWA eventually managed to operate a mobile health clinic at the food distribution point, which provided basic treatments for communicable diseases and other infections, as well as conditions such as diabetes and hypertension. Tests conducted in 2014 on a random sample of patients found that 40% had typhoid.
Education has been dramatically affected by the siege. According to residents inside the camp, all of Yarmouk’s 28 schools have been closed, and volunteer teachers hold informal classes in 10 “safe spaces”, including the basements of mosques. The lack of electricity means children have to do their homework by generators if their parents can afford the fuel for them, or by candlelight. The spotlight that the UNRWA has tried to keep on Yarmouk may have acted as some restraint on government forces – the area has not been bombed as heavily as other rebel-held districts of Damascus. But this is only a crumb of comfort. “Conditions are far worse than Gaza,” said one UN official. “Palestinians always had dignity, hope, resilience. Now after four years of war I see people giving up. They find it hard to accept there are no options”.

***

The latest attempt to reach a ceasefire and end the siege of Yarmouk was last June, when the armed groups inside the camp and some civilian representatives signed a pact with 13 representatives of the Assad government, which would have seen gunmen leave Yarmouk after the creation of a new security force to defend the camp. The deal was never implemented.
Nidal Bitari now lives in the United States, where he remains in daily contact with friends in Yarmouk by phone and Skype. He lobbied at UN headquarters in New York for western governments to support the June ceasefire agreement, and blames them, along with supporters of Jabhat al Nusra, for letting the deal collapse. “I suppose this initiative went against the wishes of France, UK and USA,” he said, “as their policy is based on supporting the interim government in exile, and they believe such truces give legitimacy to the regime.” Talal Alyan, a Palestinian-American writer and researcher who lives in the US, recently wrote that Jabhat al Nusra controls 60% of the camp, and suggested the group had attempted to ban singing and force women to wear the veil.
Since our conversation, Reem Buqaee has managed to go home to Yarmouk, even though it meant returning to siege conditions. When no response came from the Palestinian authorities who shared control of the camp’s northern entrance with regime forces, she decided to use an unofficial channel. A friend in the air force, one of the pillars of Assad’s regime, persuaded his commander to contact officers at government checkpoints in Beit Sahem, a village to the south of Yarmouk, to let them cross the frontline. Inside the camp, the water supply has still not returned, six months after pipes were damaged by fighting in September 2014. This has forced the residents to rely on untreated groundwater and a single well.
To add to the horror of the siege, the shadow of Isis has fallen across Yarmouk. When the group announced the establishment of a caliphate last year, Bitari said, some Jabhat al Nusra fighters in Yarmouk switched their allegiance and threatened to kill anyone who supported the ceasefire agreement. Isis is not yet in Yarmouk in full force, according to Bitari, but it was in nearby suburbs and had threatened to enter the camp at any time.
Nidal Bitari is gloomy in exile. When it became clear the US was about to strike targets in Syria in September, he coordinated an appeal from activists back home. They feared Obama would attack Isis positions in Yarmouk. “Here in Washington I’m surrounded by people from the Syrian National Coalition [the western-supported opposition] who tell me they want Obama to bomb Damascus. It would be a political more than a military action, aimed at warning Assad that the opposition has powerful friends. I told them it would cause a high number of casualties and there’s no way for Palestinians in Yarmouk to flee,” he said.
The appeal condemned the Syrian government for mounting a brutal siege but said any coalition air strike on Damascus would create an even greater humanitarian disaster. In his view the reimposition of a total siege since early December was a tactic by the Assad regime to drive Yarmouk’s people to despair and have them press the armed groups to accept a truce under the regime’s conditions. It would amount to a surrender like those the government achieved in the city of Homs and the Damascus suburb of Muadhamiya last year. The armed groups would have to give up their weapons and submit to interrogation, with the risk of torture or execution.
In spite of the siege, Bitari feels that in one way Syria’s Palestinians who have escaped abroad may be worse off than those left behind. “We heard much about the Nakba from our parents and grandparents, about their suffering when forced to leave their country, at having lost everything,” he wrote. “They worked hard to build their lives in Syria, and what they built is destroyed. And now we, the third generation, are experiencing this also, of starting from zero in other countries.”
  • This article was amended on 11 March 2015. It mistakenly described Talal Alyan as a former Yarmouk resident. He is a Palestinian-American writer and researcher who lives in the US. This has been corrected.
Follow the Long Read on Twitter: @gdnlongread


70 comments:

  1. Well !

    Who would have guessed ?

    First sentence out of the box.............all the fault of Israel.

    Everything that happens everywhere.........all the fault of Israel.

    Israel even controls the US Congress.


    I'm tired of reading this shit.

    It is IDIOTIC.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Meanwhile -

    April 22, 2015
    Iran's nuclear installations are not open for inspection says Iran
    By Ethel C. Fenig

    The Washington Institute for Near East Policy has helpfully published a map (see below) of Iran's nuclear installations. Perhaps President Barack Obama (D) should study it to make sure the UN nuclear inspectors know where they are and have access to inspect all of them just to make sure Iran isn't cheating. Not that there is anything wrong with cheating of course. Because the inspectors might not be able to inspect them, no matter what the US says, if the head of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps has anything to say about it. And he does, according to a report in Bloomberg.

    “We expect to have anywhere, anytime access,” (U.S. Energy Secretary) Moniz, a nuclear physicist who negotiated the technical details of a framework nuclear accord, said Monday in a meeting with editors and reporters at Bloomberg’s Washington office. (snip)

    On Sunday, Brigadier General Hossein Salami, deputy head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, said “they will not even be permitted to inspect the most normal military site in their dreams,” according to the state-run Press TV.

    (Foreign Policy had a fuller quote.)

    “We will respond with hot lead to those who speak of it,” Salami said. “Iran will not become a paradise for spies. We will not roll out the red carpet for the enemy.… They will not even be permitted to inspect the most normal military site in their dreams.”

    Oh. The Bloomberg report continues.

    Access for UN inspectors is one of the biggest hurdles to a final deal designed to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has said inspectors would be barred from certain military facilities. In response to Moniz’s comments, the deputy head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Agency, Behrouz Kamalvandi, said Iran hasn’t agreed to “anywhere, anytime” inspections, saying “negotiations are continuing,” the Iranian Students’ News Agency reported.

    Oh well, certainly the Iranians can be trusted so no need for the U.S. to seek a detailed agreement with strong guarantees and enforcement mechanisms; sanctions against Iran should be lifted immediately. And if the Iranians violate the agreement, no biggie. They certainly intend no harm. Whatever.

    hat tip:Daily Alert


    http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2015/04/irans_nuclear_installations_are_not_open_for_inspection_says_iran.html

    ReplyDelete
  3. Well thanks Deuce, even if you cannot stop blaming Israel, you are now growing up...

    The fault of the Palestinians refugee problem is the fault of the arab world's refusal to give palestinians full rights as citizens.

    If you want to "blame" Israel?

    We go ahead, the refugee situation can be resolved in a nanosecond.

    2 states for 2 peoples.

    If you want to resettle in "palestine"? Go for it, but when you are settled in your new nation you do give up any rights to israel.

    JUST as the jews that were refugees and driven from their homes and INTO Israel have given up any claims to previous rights to "go home" in the arab conquered areas of the middle east.

    The crimes against the PEOPLE of the Yarmouk settlement? Directly lays at the feet of the President of Syria.

    Period.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. One people, Semites all, one state

      Religious beliefs do not differentiate a people.

      Unless, of course, the Zionists are not really Semites.

      {;-)

      Delete
    2. The Syrians are not responsible for the ISraeli refusal to allow the Palestinians to return to their homes, in accordance with the Laws of War.

      The responsibility for the plight of the Palestinian refugees, firmly entrenched with the illegal policies embodied by the Zionists.

      Delete
    3. "O"rdure is attempting to, by analogy, blame Poland for the NAZI death camp at Auschwitz.

      Bad form, "O"rdure, bad form1

      Delete
    4. 2 states for two peoples, Jack "Dead Beat Dad" Hawkins...

      Now you should go back to your stolen lands in AZ that you occupy.... Just don't let the indians KNOW where you are, I hear that your scald now has a bounty on it...

      And as for your lack of English skills once again?

      Might I suggest it's time for you to go home to the arab world and REJOIN Isis?

      Delete
    5. The Syrians are responsible for the actions they do...

      Starving and murdering the people of Syria by the hundreds of thousands...

      Yep, you are blaming the rape victim for wearing a skirt.....

      The Rapist, Syria, is responsible for it's own ACTIONS....

      They starve, they murdered and they torture their brother arabs...

      What? No AID trucks allowed in?

      heck even Israel does that DURING A WAR...

      LOL

      Delete
    6. It is not about aid trucks, "O"rdure, it is about theft of land.
      It is about the Zionist government in occupied Palestine violating the Geneva Accords.

      It is not the 'little things', like aid trucks ...
      It is the 'big things' like violating treaties that the ISraeli government is signatory to.

      Delete
    7. Yes theft of lands...

      The arabs stole the lands of the Jews in Medina. The arabs stole the lands of the Jews in Damascus and all through out the middle east INCLUDING Jerusalem.

      How else do you account for that UGLY ass dome sitting on the JEWISH Temple mount...

      Again, the JEWISH Temple Mount... The arabs STOLE the land...

      Delete
  4. Now for some more fun facts about Syria.

    Syria, an Iranian vassal state, has supported the bombing of Israel via their direct support for funding, supplying, training and giving safe haven to terrorists intent on completing Hitler's Final Solution.

    Here's how it gets crazy....

    Now the JOINT population of Syria had no issues in occupying Lebanon for decades, torturing them, murdering them, even murdering their top politicians have now turned their nazi supporting (baathists) knives their own...

    At last report the dead number over 300 - 400 THOUSAND, the true refugee number? is about 10.5 MILLION. A few hundred thousand permanently disabled.

    All due to Assad and Iran, with Russia's support in controlling the population.

    None of this is Israel's fault in anyway, shape or form.

    Now watching Assad USE Hezbollah (another division of Iran's proxy army of the Revolutionary Guard) as storm troopers in Syria (and previously Iran using them in Iran to put down the Green movement) has helped CREATE the Sunni Baathists formation of ISIS/ISIL...

    Now as the world turns, Iran is now spreading it's love in Yemen, Sudan, UAE and some reports that even Arabia has stopped Iranian funded and supported attacks, (I know forget the Khobar Towers, after all it's not the Liberty LOL so it doesn't count)

    Assad is STILL using barrel bombs, and it now reported that Assad has TEAMED UP with ISIS to sell their oil and use them to punish the palestinians of the Yarmouk camp...

    Yep getting stranger by the day...

    Meanwhile let's focus on the shortage of Viagra in the Gaza Strip...

    ReplyDelete
  5. Israel bears direct responsibility in the plight of the refugees in Yarmouk.

    By that logic?

    Abraham bears direct responsibility for the creation of Islam for not aborting Ishmael when he had the chance.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Right you are, "O"rdure.
      But then Abraham followed the edicts of his god, while the ISraeli ignore the same.

      Whose fault is that?

      Delete
    2. The Israelis, do just fine, Never heard of the ISraeli.....

      So Jack "Dead Beat Dad" Hawkins, are you still occupying stolen Mexican/Indian lands?

      Delete
    3. Hey Jack "Dead Beat Dad" Hawkins, a question...

      What would the world look like if your people, the Mohammedians, had not embraced the Moongod and child rape?

      Delete
    4. If you never heard of ISrael, obviously you were not listening to their Ambassador to the United States.

      Israel prefers Daesh (al-Qeada) in Syria, over the Alawites, Christians and their Kurdish allies

      Israel’s Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren told the Jerusalem Post that Israel so wanted Assad out and his Iranian backers weakened, that Israel would accept al-Qaeda operatives taking power in Syria.

      “We always wanted Bashar Assad to go, we always preferred the bad guys who weren’t backed by Iran to the bad guys who were backed by Iran.”
      Even if the other “bad guys” were affiliated with al-Qaeda.


      http://www.jpost.com/Syria-Crisis/Oren-Jerusalem-has-wanted-Assad-ousted-since-the-outbreak-of-the-Syrian-civil-war-326328.

      Delete
    5. And some how missed ISrael flying those close air support missions for the Islamic State, in Syria.
      http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-30873402

      Delete
    6. Once again, Jack "dead beat dad" Hawkins….

      Never heard of a nation called "ISrael"

      Now I know and love a place called "Israel"

      Might I suggest you learn to type?

      Delete
  6. Australia is leading the way forward in the Middle East ...
    Proxies are often useful to US.

    Australia warming up to Tehran

    Bishop (Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop) says the emergence of Islamic State, known in the region by its Arabic acronym, Da’ish, has changed the geostrategic and political landscape in the Middle East in a way no one could have envisaged.

    “And now the conversation we are having about how to co-operate to defeat this common enemy is not a conversation I thought I would be having,” she says.

    Bishop says the Iranians have a very sophisticated understanding of who’s who in the various conflicts around them.

    Despite some of the near-hysterical reaction to the possibility of Australia sharing intelligence with a pariah state with a bad human rights record, the reality is that no one is suggesting Australia is going to start feeding Iran off the top shelf with highly classified information from the Five Eye network it shares with the US, Britain, Canada and New Zealand.

    Iran is in a similar position to Israel in that it is a non-Arab nation surrounded by suspicious Arab neighbours in a very dangerous region, so it puts a great deal of effort into intelligence-gathering. Along the way it collects information that may be of little interest to Tehran but that could be of considerable value to Australia.

    Iran has a large number of its own troops in Iraq, and its eyes and ears there include members of its own special forces and the tens of thousands of Shia militiamen they are training and fighting with.
    ...
    Bishop says ensuring a flow of information about possible threats such as Monis is an example of how intelligence sharing can serve Australia’s national interests: “We discussed the opportunities to share intelligence, information on who is in Iraq; clearly we want information on Australians, and they agreed that they would be prepared to share intelligence.”

    Bishop says there will be practical moves to share information in the months ahead. “Intelligence agencies will have the opportunity to work much more closely,” she says, adding that the agencies are open to this co-operation and there had previously been “unofficial overtures”. Bishop says she will keep the Americans fully apprised of what is happening and Australia’s intelligence agencies will keep very tight control over what changes hands. It is likely the Americans will look favourably on additional sources of information which they, like Australia, can weigh and accept or reject.

    He told Bishop he was shocked by the violence of Islamic State, as demonstrated when it burned the young Jordanian pilot to death. Bishop says she and the President had a “very detailed and fascinating” discussion about the rise of Islamic State as such a brutal organisation, the threat it poses and why it is attracting so many supporters.

    “He was talking about it in such depth that I told him we would very much value further dialogue to consider their insights,” Bishop says. “He offered to discuss their insights about Islamic State, its ideology, its ambitions and what they believe needs to be done to counter it.

    “Rouhani responded that ‘You have to understand what they are being offered. You have to understand the type of people they are preying upon.’

    “He spoke of the misguided romantic notion of going off to fight for a cause and getting into the deep psychology of it all and what one can do to prevent it. It’s a very complex, multi-layered issue, but I thought that it was a useful conversation that we should continue to have with Iran,” she says.

    ReplyDelete
  7. In Europe, the Israeli Lobby helped establish laws against those that publicly denied the Holocaust. They called them Holocaust deniers. The Holocaust happened prior to and during the Second World War. It was a human tragedy and atrocity.

    After the Second World War, a new atrocity and tragedy occurred in Palestine. It was not on the scale of the macro-disaster in Europe but to the individual Palestinians whose lands were confiscated by the European intruders, it was a humanitarian disaster.

    We often hear of the denials and obfuscations as well as the situational ethic and immoral equivalencies from the Israeli apologists here on this blog,

    The facts are the Israelis caused the diaspora and the Palestinian refugee camps. It created the ghettos in Lebanon, Syria and Gaza.

    It was criminal in Europe and it is criminal in Palestine.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. There were Jews in Israel before and during WW2, these Jews established Israel.

      Others who came later? It was and is the RIGHT of the Jewish State to allow immigration to it's lands…

      Your denial of the historic presence of Jews in current lands of Israel is amazing.

      DO you also concede the 850,000 jews driven from the homes in the arab occupied middle east in 1948 into Israel?

      What is CRIMINAL is the behavior of the arab world towards the Jews.

      That's why Israel has 1.2 MILLION arab citizens and the arab world has no jews left...

      Delete

  8. WallStreet.org -
    SodaStream International (NASDAQ:SODA) thinks that a high tech mixer for cocktail can help it save its failing brand.


    Carbonated cocktails ... comical.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Glad to see you're still obsessed with Israel. The Israel stock market, in total, is up 6% this year alone…

      Delete

  9. Rand Paul tells US that Lindsey Graham, John McCain are 'lapdogs' for President Obama’s foreign policy


    “This comes from a group of people wrong about every policy issue over the last two decades,” the Kentucky Republican said in an interview with Fox News, touting his credentials as the “one standing up to President Obama.”

    “And these people are essentially the lapdogs for President Obama and I think they’re sensitive about that,” he said.
    ...
    “They supported Hillary Clinton’s war in Libya; they supported President Obama’s bombing of Assad; they also support President Obama’s foreign aid to countries that hate us. So if there is anyone who is most opposed to President Obama’s foreign policy, it’s me. People who call loudest to criticize me are great proponents of President Obama’s foreign policy — they just want to do it ten times over,” he said.

    On Monday, Graham said Paul is “more wrong than right” when it comes to foreign policy and that the current president is stronger in dealing with overseas threats. McCain asserted that Paul “just doesn’t understand” and has carried a naïveté in the Senate.


    Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/04/rand-paul-slams-lindsey-graham-john-mccain-foreign-policy-117190.html#ixzz3Y3INLNiP





    ReplyDelete
  10. Of course, we killed the only man that was able to keep the lid on in Libya

    Two horrible tragedies in or at least near Libya: Up to 800 migrants trying to reach Europe from Africa die after their boat sinks off the coast, and 30 migrants are murdered by the so-called Islamic State on the shore in the troubled country.

    Libya's chaos has once more made it a major way station for Africans seeking a better life, as the European Union grapples with the morality of cutting back on patrols to rescue migrants. The argument for doing less is that increasing the risk of crossing the Mediterranean would save lives. Word that there was no safety net would filter back to people, many of them fleeing persecution, and they'd stop coming.

    "We do not support planned search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean,” British Foreign Office Minister Joyce Anelay said last year. Rescues have “an unintended ‘pull factor,' encouraging more migrants to attempt the dangerous sea crossing and thereby leading to more tragic and unnecessary deaths,” she argued.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. All part of your guy's Arab Spring, Deuce, announced in Cairo, in a spell binding speech.

      From Libya the warm winds of spring blew on into Syria, circled around Egypt a bit, on into Iraq.......

      Jack "Dead Beat Dad" Hawkins thinks the Jews are behind it all.

      I'm more prosaic. I think Obama doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground.

      British Foreign Office Minister Joyce Anelay has a point there. Why is it always the job of the EU to care for these people, whose second generation refuses to assimilate, and starts setting off bombs ?

      Delete
    2. Here ya go -



      Politics UK Nigel Farage: Europe should only take in Christian refugees from Muslim countries

      http://www.politics.co.uk/news/2015/04/22/refugee-crisis-only-take-in-christians-insists-nigel-farage

      >>>

      Europe should accept a small number of refugees fleeing across the Mediterranean in boats, but only if they're Christian, Nigel Farage insisted today.

      The Ukip leader said it was "fine" to accept a few thousand Christians, but no more.

      "[If] we have to give some Christians refugee status given that with Iraq and Libya there's almost nowhere for them to go then fine but Europe can't send the message that everyone who comes will be accepted," he told BBC Breakfast.

      "If it does then the numbers we are talking about here could literally be millions."<<<

      Arizona might be a fine place for them. Desert there, just like home.

      Delete
    3. And what happen in Egypt, Robert?

      The alumni of the US Army War College is in power, the M! Abrams tanks, 1,400 of them, are in the field and our primary proxy in the country is in charge. The Muslim Brotherhood, well, that got decapitated.

      The US never acted against the Egyptian Army for staging that 'coup', did it?

      All part of the "Plan", what did ISrael have to do with that, I do not know.
      But General Dynamics, I am pretty sure that it was deep in the mix, as they are the primary contractor for those 1,400 M! Abrams tanks that the Egyptian Army has.

      Delete
    4. It's interesting to watch Jack say the same bullshit over and over again…

      Sorta like reading from a script

      Delete
    5. If the US Congress wants to allow refugees into the US, hat would be something to applaud.
      Lots of Christians in Central America need a safe place to go.

      Idaho would suit them fine, too.
      It would raise the level of education in Idaho, if the Guatemalans migrated there.

      Delete
    6. Yep, "O"rdure, it is scripted.

      The facts on the ground don't change.
      The policies of the Zionists don't change.
      History does not change.

      Why should the responses to the same old agitprop you spew change?

      Delete
    7. You are correct the real facts don't change,

      Jews have been in the land for 3400 years.

      You live on stolen lands from the natives with no claim, other than force to live there.

      Israel is recognized as the Historic Jewish Homeland by a majority of nations, from Both the League of Nations to the United Nations.

      There never was a historic nation called "palestine" nor a separate and distinct people any different than the other arabs of the area called palestinians.

      There is NO P in arabic, still….

      Arabs cannot say the P sound instead use an F sound….

      The policies of the Israelis, who are Zionists have not changed, they have offed and had accepted citizenship to the arabs that did not leave, now numbering 20% of the Jewish state's population.

      Israel's policy to be a pluralistic, tolerant democracy still stands.

      As for you inability to have rational and recent dialogue? Well that's just your learning disability in action.

      Delete
  11. Deuce, in 1948, the UN decided, finally to establish the Jewish Homeland as Israel, the Arabs were offered an additional nation as well called Palestine.

    2 states, for 2 peoples.

    The Jews accepted, the Arabs did not and went to war to destroy the newly created state of Israel.

    That's a fact, it was not created by WW2, it was created by the Jews that had forged a national identity over the preceding decades. JUST as many nations had been forged after the occupying Turks, then British left.

    Jews have and had as MUCH right to self determination as any other peoples in the world.

    More Jews (with more businesses and property) were driven from the homes than arabs.

    The refugee Jews were SETTLED by the newly created State. The Refugee arabs? Were put into camps to become political hostages by the Arab world.

    The arabs have been offered a state in palestine numerous times and they have been refused. Now the arabs in limited parts of Palestine declare themselves to be a STATE, going to the UN seeking membership, the ICJ and other world bodies for STATES.

    Israel did not "steal" it's land. It exercised it's right to self determination.

    Just as numerous other ARAB nations have done….

    But you can keep to your narrative for the next 30 years and it will not change the truth, Israel is the Nation State of the Jewish people.

    Not a colony, not an implant, but the liberated lands of the Jewish people

    Cant steal what is yours…

    Meanwhile, still living on stolen INJUN lands?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The facts of the matter as cited by WiO are correct.

      Delete
    2. By the way, I formed my basic opinions on these things from reading good books on the subject, long before I ever heard of a fellow named WiO, even before the computer age, long long before the coming of the Internet.

      Unlike others, I am very unlikely to radically change the views of my noon tide years, our age of competence, in my now later life.

      If I do, please let me know, and I will try to get my wife to take me to treatment.

      Delete
  12. The whole "sapiosexual" movement has been traced back to its beginnings just outside of Detroit, Michigan, where some fellow only known as "Q" began writing about it in his local newspaper. He was later arrested for fraud and false advertising for trying to sell some sugar pill he claimed raised one's brain and sexual powers at the same time. He was bailed out by an unknown 'friend' and has disappeared. Some have claimed he has sought refuge with the Pesh Merga in Kurdistan.

    ‘Sapiosexual’ Deemed New ‘Uber-Trendy Sexual Orientation’


    by Katherine Timpf April 21, 2015 3:04 PM

    Do we really need to create whole separate identity classes to describe which personality traits we like? The women’s blog Bustle is offering advice for anyone who may want to date a “sapiosexual” — which it describes as an “uber-trendy ‘sexual orientation’” in which people are more attracted to intelligence than other characteristics. “Identity politics reign supreme, so it’s fitting that we constantly conceive new categories to label and define our niche sensibilities and predilections, however ridiculous or annoying or unnecessary they may seem,” writes self-described “recovering sapiosexual” Kristen Sollee, taking the words “ridiculous” and “annoying” right out of my mouth. See — I had thought that simply saying you find intelligence attractive was a good enough way to convey that you find intelligence attractive, and that the phrase “sexual orientation” was reserved for describing something a little more integral to your identity than what you could flippantly mention as “recovering” from. But apparently not. RELATED: University Warns Professors That Their Students’ Genders May Change Over Time After all, this term was not invented by the blogger who wrote about it. If you search it on Google, it produces nearly 2 million results. And although Sollee treats it in a pretty lighthearted way — such as putting “sexual orientation” in quotes when she refers to sapiosexuality as being an example of one — many other people take their “sapiosexual orientation” very, very seriously: Talking dramatically about how they “discovered [they were] sapiosexual” and finally felt whole. Complaining about how totally unfair it is that there’s no sapiosexual pride flag. “Sapiosexual” is even one of the eleven orientation options you can “identify” as on the mainstream dating website OKCupid, alongside more traditional ones such as “gay” and lesbian” as well as lesser-known ones like “demisexual,” which is defined as having “no sexual attraction toward any person unless they become deeply emotionally or romantically connected to someone,” and taken so seriously as an orientation that it does have a flag.............

    Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/417246/sapiosexual-deemed-new-uber-trendy-sexual-orientation-katherine-timpf

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Be sure to check out the uber trendy sapiosexual reading a red book, gals !

      You will faint dead away. Have someone nearby with smelling salts.

      Delete
    2. Could the fellow reading the red book actually BE the "mysterious Q" ?

      He has been described in some Latin quarters as being "dashingly handsome".

      Delete
    3. Nah, that ain't Q. That's the picture of some male model he used in his ads in the Detroit papers here when he was trying to peddle his brain and libido boosting sugar pills. Q's your typical looking Post Office wanted notices old white guy. I've seen the posters.

      Delete
    4. Some guy from the Detroit Police Department emailed me and wanted me to post this -

      >>>If anyone knows where q is let me know at the Detroit Police Department.

      If he's out of the country that's one thing. If he's in the USA I'm finding that scoundrel if it's the last thing I do.

      Officer "Night Stick" O'Malley<<<

      Delete

  13. Opinion

    Waging JV war

    By Michael Fumento

    April 21, 2015 | 8:14pm

    Waging JV war
    Iraqi anti-terrorism forces patrol in central Ramadi, Iraq. Photo: AP

    As Iraqis fight to repel ISIS forces in Ramadi, the Obama administration is deeming this vital city expendable.

    In so doing, the White House shows it understands nothing about the value of Ramadi or even its own capacity to defend it. There’s no better example of US incompetence in dealing with these mad jihadis.

    Why isn’t this key western Iraqi city, the capital of Anbar Province, high on our priority list?

    According to Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Martin Dempsey, it’s because President Obama would rather place the emphasis on defending an Anbar refinery, to protect the oil supplies.

    As if we couldn’t do both — and then some.

    For the past eight months, the administration has settled for little more than jabs when it could have landed flurries of punishing roundhouse blows. According to the latest 24-hour Defense Department report, US forces launched just 36 airstrikes against ISIS in both Iraq and Syria.

    That’s actually much more than normal. But it nevertheless is the equivalent of fighter-bombers from the offshore US carrier making just one sortie a day, though each of these planes can fly several daily.

    And that doesn’t count the vast numbers of ground-based F-16s, F-15s, F-22s, A-10s, B-1 heavy bombers, helicopters and Reaper and Predator drones we have in the area, or the aircraft of 11 other coalition nations. The day before, there were only 13 airstrikes, fewer than a single Reaper can launch on one mission.

    Cruise missiles are also in theater. Plus, B-52 and B-2 bombers can strike from anywhere in the world.

    Yet with this massive armada and assets on the ground to help identify targets, the administration seems unable to strike more than a handful of targets daily. A machine gun here, a truck there.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. There’s been little effort to translate success in pinpoint assassination efforts — such as that which last month may have temporarily knocked ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi out of the fight — into a war-fighting effort.

      Which brings us back to Ramadi, a city that’s no big deal, says Dempsey. “It has no symbolic meaning.”

      That’s an incredible statement: The city’s meaning is both symbolic and strategic.

      During the second Iraq war, al Qaeda in Iraq chose the city as its headquarters, and it became the most fiercely contested area in the country. That’s why I spent two of my three Iraq embeds there.

      It’s why SEAL Team Three of “American Sniper” fame was stationed there during my embeds and yet again later. That includes the first SEAL killed in Iraq, Michael Monsoor, who won the Medal of Honor for diving on a grenade.

      Many experts consider the Battle of Ramadi and the “Anbar Awakening,” engineered by Capt. Travis Patriquin, the actual turning point of the war. Patriquin — who was killed in Ramadi along with my Marine public-affairs “handler” — got the Sunni chieftains to join the Americans and Iraqi security forces to defeat al Qaeda.

      Now those same chieftains and their brave men are being left to their own devices. Dempsey says that, when we get around to it, we’ll just take Ramadi back. Sure, like Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit was retaken — one bloody meter at a time, as each trash bag, dirt mound, and corner hid an IED. And after untold numbers of the defenders were horribly murdered.

      In Ramadi, anybody who fought alongside us is slated for torture and death. Humanity aside, what kind of a signal are we sending potential allies?

      Not that airstrikes are the only means of support short of ground troops. US allies in Iraq and Syria, including those in Ramadi now, complain they’re not being supplied with the most rudimentary of weapons and ammunition. A single mortar tube with ammunition can be far more effective than a jet flying hundreds of miles each way to drop a few bombs. Others will do the fighting; they just need the means to do it.

      It’s now been a year and five months since Obama proclaimed ISIS a bunch of junior-varsity amateurs. There’s no evidence he’s changed his mind or in any case sees ISIS as the threat everyone else seems to.

      That’s why only about a third of Americans support his actions regarding ISIS, the lowest figure yet, and 65 percent think the war against ISIS is “going badly.”

      With monsters whose tactics would have made the German SS blanch, who have aroused the ire of the pope and even other terrorist groups, Obama is keeping America’s arms tied behind its back. We’re no sleeping giant — we’re downright comatose.

      Michael Fumento, a veteran paratrooper, was embedded twice in Ramadi, once in Fallujah and once in Afghanistan.
      fumento@gmail.com

      http://nypost.com/2015/04/21/waging-jv-war/

      Delete
    2. Just about a month until Memorial Day now.

      Delete
    3. The Congress will not provide the President with a Islamic State specific AUMF, so that may be why the people feel the way they do, the Republicans will not act.

      Delete
  14. Does anyone disagree that the Dome of the Rock SITS on the Jewish Temple Mount?

    Who stole whose land?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Fact the truth, the arabs are SQUATTERS on Jewish Lands....

      It's time to bulldoze the Dome of the Rock off the Temple Mount once and for all...

      Delete
    2. And was stolen fair and square, is that your position, "O"rdure.

      Delete
    3. My position is clear, the Arabs stole the land from the Jews.

      Period.

      Delete
    4. After all you contend that the Jews stole the land from the Arabs.

      I contend that the Arabs stole the land from the Jews.

      Stick with the SIMPLE POINT Jack…

      The Arabs are squatting on Jewish Temple Land.

      Delete
  15. But, but, what about the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites (Deuteronomy 7:1) ?

    What about the 'Q People' ? (Book of Q 10:57)

    Don't they have a say anymore ?

    Give it up, rat, you sound like a fool.

    ReplyDelete
  16. Go AHEAD Jack, admit you are wrong, the ARABS's dome of the rock sits atop of the Jewish Temple Mount..

    We are waiting, don't change the argument

    Facts are stubborn things…

    the ARAB stole the Jewish Temple Mount..

    Say it after me…

    Arabs STOLE Jewish land….

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Facts don't change Jack…

      Answer the simple query….

      Who and what is the Temple Mount, Whose land was it??????

      And what right do the arabs have to BUILD on Judaism's MOST SCARED SITE????

      It's clear as a bell, Deuce and Rat and Rufus…

      Even a blind whore could see……

      The Arabs, stole the Jew's LAND…

      So how does it make it Arab owned?

      Delete
  17. Jack HawkinsWed Apr 22, 12:53:00 PM EDT
    Yep, "O"rdure, it is scripted.

    The facts on the ground don't change.
    The policies of the Zionists don't change.
    History does not change.

    Why should the responses to the same old agitprop you spew change?




    Who's Temple MOUNT is it Jack?

    Who built it?

    Can you say HISTORY doesn't change Jack?

    The Jewish TEMPLE MOUNT……

    Go ahead, choke on it asshole...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You can label that hill in Canaan whatever you wish, "O"rdure, but it remains in Canaan.

      Or, if you were to read The Invention of the Jewish People
      which is a book written by Shlomo Sand, an Israeli professor of history at the University of Tel Aviv, you would learn what is common knowledge amongst the learned, that ....

      ... Jewish history tells us that the Romans did not expel the original Jews from Palestine when they crushed the Simon bar Kokhba revolt in 136 AD but instead barred them only from city of Jerusalem – and even then they were allowed to visit it during Tisha B’Av, the annual fasting day on the ninth day of the month of Av in the Hebrew calendar.

      That under Christianity and during the Roman Empire a large number of native Jews converted to Christianity and, with the advent of Islam, most adopted the new religion and assimilated under the new power.

      In addition to the descendants of the Canaanites, the original denizens before patriarch Abraham’s arrival from Mesopotamia, Sand concludes that today’s Muslim and Christian Palestinians are actually the true progenies of the original Jews.

      Delete
    2. We'll repeat the 'money line' for you one more time, "O"rdure ...

      Sand concludes that today’s Muslim and Christian Palestinians are actually the true progenies of the original Jews.

      Delete

    3. Seems that if Shlomo Sand, that professor of history at the University of Tel Aviv is correct ...
      ... then the Ashkenazi are the most vehemently anti-Semitic people in all the world

      Delete
    4. This comment has been removed by the author.

      Delete
    5. And it would mean that the "Temple Mount" is rightfully claimed by the progeny of the original Jews ...

      ... those people now called Palestinians.

      Who, as their religious proclivity changed, they built a new temple on that mount.
      Then they labeled it the 'Dome of the Rock'.

      Delete
    6. So, in answer to your question, "O"rdure, the 'Temple Mount' was built by people whose progeny, today, are called...

      The Palestinians

      Delete
  18. Jack aka d rat has shown once again, if we need repeating, what a professional asshole he truly is...

    Jack lives in the basement of his mom's house.

    He blogs from there.

    She lets him out once in a "blue moon" to go bowling.

    If you believe his bullshit about having a super secret project going on off the Coast of Panama you are a dimmer wit than even I.

    He has no cattle. Never did. No portfolio, not even a cowboy hat.

    He is the internet definition of:

    turd

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Once in a while old jack off gets serious:

      "I am a professional asshole"

      Yup, our turd has got that one right.

      Delete
    2. allen, an intelligent man, once compared d. rat's mentality to that of a monkey, throwing turds in his cage and smearing same on the wall.

      GOOD image !!

      Delete
  19. Meanwhile my Niece has published another article in a scientific Journal.

    She doesn't seem to care much about politics.

    She is into information transfers in the human brain.

    She is my Hindu Niece forever.......

    She is wonderful in all ways.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. >>>She doesn't seem to care much about politics.<<<

      True Hindus don't.

      Thinking it a snare an another delusion.

      Delete
    2. Roethke was like this....

      In the long journey out of the self.....

      We come to something without knowing why....

      Which I is I?

      A fallen man...

      I grow out of my fear....

      The Rose, the Rose exceeds us all....

      We are all beginners....

      My Wonderful Niece is something like this....

      She is giving back to the nature of things......

      Delete
    3. None of these deeper thoughts have anything whatsoever to do with politics.

      Get a grip.

      Delete
    4. No politics in Roethke, except a reference or two to the Polish poor.

      And, this was likely a metaphor for spiritual misunderstanding.

      The Polish being much influenced by Catholic Non Sense.

      And our American Poet was far, way far, beyond this...

      Delete