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ono (m)
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Re: Some Memorable Quotes Of George Bush
« #44 on: Today at 02:57:14 AM »

I will like to see some memorable quotes from OBJ, Afam, if you've got the time to spare to look for them. Methink we should zero in on our ''leaders' in naija first before looking elsewhere.

Who cares what you think? Responding to threads you don't fancy is not by force.

Unless they have cut off your hands in N'Djamena you should be able to source for information you want, this is simple and only a fool will not understand this.

@people trying desperately to divert attention,

Human beings suppose get shame no matter how small.

This thread is not about US vs Nigeria, not about Bush vs Yar'adua, it is about "some memorable quotes of Bush".

Advice: Start a thread on what you like and stop this stupid attempt at diverting attention to other issues anytime you come across information that does not expressly praise the US.

my2cents:
Let's not let the "This is Nigeria" bug bite and infect us. Again, there are many things which people said couldn't be done in Nigeria but which are thriving now. Let's think positively please.

The ability to implement what you are saying is not in doubt and it is not the wahala. The problem is that on this particular project the sponsoring bank and NECO/WAEC are only interested in the scratch cards because they are in this to make money otherwise the service could as well be free.

Until we get to a stage where website owners understand better what works and what doesn't work on the web it will be a long ride.

Have you ever come across the word SPELLING before?

From english to even Igbo you cannot spell words correctly. Do you really know the meaning of words you post here or do you just reproduce words you see elsewhere and choose to make them yours?

I no blame you na the people wey waste their money say them wan train you, maybe them been think say dem fit turn you from mumu to human being but for where?

In fact, I hereby confer on you the Chief Illiterate of NL.

@my2cents,

We are talking Naija here my friend.

The person in charge of the project may not even understand what you are talking about let alone the person trying to convince NECO.

Na the money for the scratch card NECO and the sponsoring bank dem they after.

my2cents:
shamass,

I just visited your site. I must confess, "the site" is quite "impressive". I found "the piece" on your cgi-bin directory to be the best feature. Now tell me, which newspaper appears to be in, "serious crisis"? Which newspaper appears to engage in "moonlighting"?

My2cents, take your time ooo. Why did you make me go to the site? I thought you saw something that was really impressive.

davidylan:
If this is the way you interprete my logic then i am not surprised that you are a confused mind.
My logic is simple - the lands the "palestinians" are allegedly fighting for has NEVER been theres.
1. Those lands were part of Isreal in 1948.
2. Those lands were illegally annexed by Jordan and Egypt for 19 years.
3. If the "palestinians" now claim that Isreal is an illegal occupier then it stands to reason that they shld have accused Egypt and Jordan of being illegal occupiers prior to 1967. Their failure to do so implies that their present cries of "occupation" now is nothing but a ruse!

I bow for this logic. In fact your sins are forgiven you. It is obvious that there is a fundamental problem with the thought process here and there is nothing anyone on a public forum can do to help this guy.

RichyBlack, Tornadoz, Denex (e be like say you don give up since yesterday) over to una. Try to talk sense into Davidylan at una own risk.

Na bye bye I dey so for the guy matter, I been no know say e bad reach like this.

This is a money making venture for NECO so any idea of getting free access to the database is a waste of time.

Here is what the school could do. Buy scratch cards and retrieve the results of the students in the school and feed same to the schools database, that way the students may not need to buy scratch cards to access their results on NECO website.

The information needed has a price tag and once the price is paid every other thing becomes easy.

Things are a whole lot easier than they seem.

I am against anyone that takes the life of an innocent person. I have never deviated from this position from day 1.

Unfortunately, to some of you here, pointing out any wrong doing by Israel or US amounts to support for Islam or Arab, how unfortunate.

Please don't lump me with your group that hate people based on race or religion.

I hate no one. I hate and abhor evil, wickedness, lies and killing of innocent people.

Keep trying with your lies, twisting of information and making false claims. Your type usually end up becoming complete disasters because you have no respect for truth.

And don't go about worrying about what people post unless you have been given a part time job on Nairaland, if that is the case, be decent enough to inform the forum.

chidichris:
please why are we still talking here if afam could say he is not the author because someone told him the mumu that wrote the article is no longer in the university of haifa so in all afam is not responsible for this thread.
please let us wait till someone is ready to take charge and please mr afam, post a thread of your own as i am really hungry to know how you reason.
just hold on with your copy and paste and go out there to post your own work.
you are matured enough to be a man of your own as you cannot leave the rest of your life as a dependant.

Hmm, so the Prof that wrote the article is now a mumu simply because your brain cannot process information in the article or is it because the Prof is not attacking OBJ or PDP. Your level of olodoness no get part 2.

Ask a good friend to help explain the content to you or you can try the Davidylan style - twist every single sentence, create issues that don't exist, make bogus claims and increase the number of false statements so that energy and time will be expended on irrelevancies. That strategy stopped working some couple of months ago.

Anyone that supports evil or wicked acts will certainly be consumed by it sooner or later, this is a fact of life and as much as we will want to live in denial deep down we know what's up.

From a private forum, enjoy.

Find below some of his memorable quotes ,

"I fully understand those who say you can't win this thing
militarily. That's exactly what the United States military says, that
you can't win this military." , Oct 17, 2007.

"My job is a decision-making job, and as a result, I make a lot of
decisions." , Oct 3, 2007.

"I got a lot of Ph.D.-types and smart people around me who come into
the Oval Office and say, 'Mr. President, here's what's on my mind.'
And I listen carefully to their advice. But having gathered the
device, I decide, you know, I say, 'This is what we're going to
do.'" , Oct 3, 2007.

"You know, when you give a man more money in his pocket, in this
case, a woman more money in her pocket to expand a business, it, they
build new buildings. And when somebody builds a new building somebody
has got to come and build the building. And when the building
expanded it prevented additional opportunities for people to
work." , Oct 3, 2007.

"As yesterday's positive report card shows, childrens do learn when
standards are high and results are measured." , Sept 26, 2007.

"We're also talking to different finance ministers about how we can
send a message to the Iranian government that the free world is not
going to tolerate the development of know-how in how to build a
weapon, or at least gain the ability to make a weapon." , Sept 20,
2007.

"My relationship with this good man is where I've been focused, and
that's where my concentration is. And I don't regret any other aspect
of it. And so I, we filled a lot of space together." , May 17, 2007.

"What I'm telling you is there's too many junk lawsuits suing too
many doctors." , May 10, 2007.

"Information is moving, you know, nightly news is one way, of course,
but it's also moving through the blogosphere and through the
Internets." , May 2, 2007.

"Forms of government matter, in my opinion. It matters how the nature
of the government in which people live." , April 19, 2007.

"And there is distrust in Washington. I am surprised, frankly, at the
amount of distrust that exists in this town. And I'm sorry it's the
case, and I'll work hard to try to elevate it." , Jan 29, 2007

And in your wisdom a call for issues would mean that someone can indeed leave the issue and focus on personalities and at the same time such a person must not be responded to in kind. Your level of stupidity is alarming. Your tactics don't work here, just get that into your brain.

Why should Israel perish? I do not support the killing of anyone by anyone regardless of who is involved. That has been my stand from day one but shameless women like you cannot use your brain to think.

Why don't you worry about your husband (if any) or boy friend (if any) and stop imagining what will get into my inbox next week, disgusting woman.

@texazzpete,

Can you finish a statement without bringing in other peoples names into it? It seems that your level of stupidity is getting way too high.

You feel you have a right to hold on to an opinion and others don't have rights to hold on to theirs? It is this type of intolerance that is slowly but steadily plunging the world into chaos.

Believe me dogs like you have no place in the world today silly pig.

texazzpete:
@Afam
This has to be the most un-scholarly work from any 'scholar' in the world.
As soon as he mentioned (and started avidly promoting) his book, as soon as i realised that this academic had taken his work to the the streets to gain book sales, i knew he was not to be taken seriously.
After all, if he's just an Israeli that desires peace, why did he say he supported Hamas and their struggle against the israelis?

Professor Ilan Pappe is no longer in the University of Haifa. Correct that in your article.

The content in bold refers, I did not write the article and I am sure it is crystal clear, after all you summarized the whole article by the Prof as an attempt to sell his books.

And am I supposed to take the statement as a fact simply because you stated that he is no longer in the University of Haifa?

Generally speaking, it seems that the only thing that makes sense to you is what you expressly approve of. Not a good style and certainly a dangerous path in life as these days we pay back in full as regards our actions whether by omission or commission.

Did you miss the second sentence in my post? In case you missed it I am reproducing it for you

Issues please, no cursing, no diversion, no name calling.

If you cannot discuss the issues then keep your confused understanding to yourself.

Or, better still ask the person that tried to explain the post to you to do a better job because on your life trying to understand a long post like that will remain an effort in futility.

Dem dey call dis type American Wonder.

And the mumu Nigerians go dey blindly support them like sheep wey no get legal adviser,

Tufiakwa for brainless people.

Tornadoz:
@RichyBlacK
You ain't seen nothing yet if you expect davidylan to answer your question in a straight forward manner. He has shamelessly avoided the core of your argument to repeat his pre-rehearsed farrago of claims.

The guy is even a danger to himself. Something tells me he even hates himself.

I-man:
What has multiple id got to do with the topic?

To a fraudster there is nothing wrong with using multiple IDs to deceive and probably scam people but to honest individuals out there a bold armed robber who robs in broad daylight is far better than pigs that dupe, cheat and lie while using multiple IDs and fake names.

Maybe it's in your blood, I don't know but I have zero tolerance for criminals.

Enjoy!

Danmasani:
Seriously, there is something fishy with this website. I posted on different topic started by FSU which talked about the Nigerian War Museum. Dont know how my post ended here!
Forgive me, bigotry is not something I do,
https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-89063.0.html
Seun abeg do something with your website!

My apologies. Was certain that the comments had nothing to do with the issue at hand and thank God you are not one of the religious bigots here.

@Mariory,

Hiding your gender won't do you any good unless your husband has neglected you so much that you are now beginning to feel like a man, but in all seriousness who wouldn't neglect a human being like you with your level of intellect?

From my inbox.

Issues please, no cursing, no diversion, no name calling.


++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
-----------------------------------------------------------

Editor's Note:

I really think this issue is intriguing as we have a
special selection from the Israeli historian, Illan
Pappe. If you like it, please forward to friends and
family.

-----------------------------------------------------------

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-----------------------------------------------------------

The History of Israel Reconsidered, by Illan Pappe

I was born in Israel and I had a very conventional, typical
Israeli education, and life, until I finished my B.A.
studies at Hebrew University, which was many years ago in
the mid-1970s. Like all Israeli Jews, I knew very little
on the Palestinian side, and met very few Palestinians.
And although I was a very keen student of history, already
in high-school -- I knew I would be a historian -- I was
very loyal to the narrative that I was taught in school.
I had very little doubt that what my teachers taught me
in school was the only truth about the past.

My life was changed, in a way -- definitely my professional
life, but after that also my private and public life --
when I decided to leave Israel and do my doctoral
dissertation outside the country. Because when you go out,
you see things that you would find very difficult to see
from within. And I chose as a subject for my doctoral
thesis the year of 1948, because even without knowing much
the past, I understood that this is a formative year. I
knew enough to understand that this is a departure point
for history, because for one side, the Israelis, 1948 is
a miracle, the best year in Jewish history.

After two thousand years of exile the Jews finally
establish a state, and get independence. And for the
Palestinians it was exactly the opposite, the worst year
in their history, as they call it the Catastrophe, the
Nakba, almost the Holocaust, the worst kind of year that
a nation can wish to have. And that intrigued me, the
fact that the same year, the same events, are seen so
differently, on both sides.

Being outside the country enabled me to have more respect
and understanding, I think, to the fact that maybe there
is another way of looking at history than what I lived?
Not only my own world, my own people's way, my own nation's
way. But this was not enough, of course. This was not
enough to revisit history, this attitude, this fact that
one day you wake up and you say: wait a minute, there's
someone else here, maybe they see history differently --
and if you are a genuine intellectual, you should strive
to have respect for someone else's point-of-view, not
only yours.

I was lucky that the year I decided to study the other side
was the year when, according to the Israeli law of classifi-
cation of documents -- every 30 years the Israeli archives
declassify secret material, 30 years for political matters,
and 50 years for military matters. When I started in
Oxford, in England, in the early 1980s, quite a lot of new
material about 1948 was opened. And I started looking at
the archives in Israel, in the United Kingdom, in France,
in the United States, and also the United Nations opened
its archives when I started working on this. They had
interesting archives in Geneva, and in New York.

And suddenly I began to see a picture of 1948 that I was
not familiar with. It takes historians quite a while to
take material and turn it into an article or a book, or
a doctoral thesis, in this case. And after two years, I,
at least, found that I had a clear picture of what happened
in 1948, and that picture challenged, very dramatically,
the picture I grew up with.

And I was not the only one who went through this
experience. Two or three, maybe four, historians -- partly
historians, partly journalists, in Israel -- saw the same
material and also arrived at similar conclusions: that the
way we understood Israel of 1948 was not right, and that
the documents showed us a different reality than what we
knew. We were called -- the group of people who saw things
differently -- we were called the New Historians. And
whether it's a good term or not we can discuss later, but
it's a fact that they called us the New Historians, this
is not to be denied. Now what did we challenge about 1948?
I think that's very important to understand, the old
picture, and the new picture, and then we can move on.

The old picture was that, in 1948, after 30 years of
British rule in Palestine, the Jewish Nation of the Zionist
Movement was ready to accept an international offer of
peace with the local people of Palestine. And therefore
when the United Nations offered to divide Palestine into
two states, the Zionist movement said yes, the Arab world
and the Palestinians said no; as a result the Arab world
went to war in order to destroy the state of Israel, called
upon the Palestinian people to leave, to make way for the
invading Arab armies; the Jewish leaders asked the
Palestinians not to leave, but they left; and as a result
the Palestinian refugee problem was created. Israel
miraculously won the war, and became a fact. And ever
since then the Arab world, and the Palestinians, have not
ceased to want to destroy the Jewish state.

This is more or less the version we grew up with. Another
mythology was that a major invasion took place in '48, a
very strong Arab contingent went into Palestine and a very
small Jewish army fought against it. It was a kind of David
and Goliath mythology, the Jews being the David, the Arab
armies being the Goliath, and again it must be a miracle
if David wins against the Goliath.

So this is the picture. What we found challenged most of
this mythology. First of all, we found out that the Zionist
leadership, the Israeli leadership, regardless of the peace
plans of the United Nations, contemplated long before 1948
the dispossession of the Palestinians, the expulsion of the
Palestinians. So it was not that as a result of the war
that the Palestinians lost their homes. It was as a result
of a Jewish, Zionist, Israeli -- call it what you want --
plan that Palestine was ethnically cleansed in 1948 of its
original indigenous population.

I must say that not all those who are included in the group
of new historians agree with this description. Some would
say only half of the Palestinians were expelled, and half
ran away. Some would say that it was a result of the war.
I have a clear picture in my mind. Of course I don't oblige
anyone to accept it, but I am quite confident, as I wrote
in my latest book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, that
actually already in the 1930s the Israeli -- then it was
not Israeli, it was a pre-state leadership -- had
contemplated and systematically planned the expulsion of
the Palestinians in 1948.

To summarize this point, the old historical Israeli
position was: Israel has no responsibility for the
Palestinians becoming refugees, the Palestinians are
responsible for this because they did not accept the peace
plan, and they accepted the Arab call to leave the country.
That was the old position. My position, and with this a lot
of the New Historians agree, was that Israel is exclusively
responsible for the refugee problem, because it planned the
expulsion of the Palestinians from their homeland. There-
fore it definitely bears the responsibility.

Another point that we discovered is that we checked the
military balance on the ground, and we found that this
description of an Arab Goliath and a Jewish David also
does not stand with the facts. The Arab world talked a
lot, still does today, but doesn't do much when it comes
to the Palestine question. And therefore they sent a very
limited number of soldiers into Israel, and basically for
most of the time, the Jewish army had the upper hand in
terms of the numbers of soldiers, the level of equipment,
and the training experience.

Finally, one of the common Israeli mythologies about 1948
-- and not only about 1948 -- is, that Israel all the time
stretches its hand for peace, always offers peace to the
Arab world in general, and the Palestinians in particular,
and it is the Arab world and the Palestinians who are
inflexible and refuse any peace proposal. I think we showed
in our work that, at least in 1948, that there was a
genuine offer for peace from the world -- or an idea of
peace -- after the war ended, and actually the Palestinians
and the Arab neighbouring states were willing at least to
give a chance for peace, and it was the Israeli government
that rejected it.

Later, one of the New Historians, Avi Shlaim from Oxford,
would write a book that is called the Iron Wall. In this
book, he shows that not only in 1948, but since 1948 until
today, there were quite a lot of junctures in history where
there was a chance for peace, and it failed not because
the Arab world refused to exploit the chance, but rather
because the Israelis rejected the peace offer.

So revisiting history, for me, starts with 1948. And I
will come back again in the end of my talk to 1948 to talk
more about my latest book. But I want to explain that in
the path from looking back at 1948 and questioning the
common historical version and narrative, a group of Israeli
scholars, academics, journalists, and so on, were not only
content with looking at 1948 but also looked at other
periods. We had a very strange time in Israeli academia,
which is over now, in the 1990s. In the 1990s, Israeli
academics went back to Israeli history, as I said not
only to 1948, and looked at very important chapters in
Israel's history, critically, and wrote an alternative
history to the one that they were taught in schools, or
even in universities.

I say that it is a very interesting time because it ended
in 2000 with the second Palestinian uprising. You won't
find many traces of this critical energy today in Israel.
Today in Israel these academics either neglect Israel, or
left the views and came back to the national narrative.
Israel is a very consensual society nowadays. But in the
1990s it was a very interesting time, I'm very happy that
I was part of it. I don't regret it, I'm only sorry that
it does not continue, and time will tell whether it is
the beginning of something new or whether it was an extra-
ordinary chapter and is not going to be repeated.

Now what did these scholars do? They went from the begin-
ning of the Zionist experience to the present time and
looked at all kinds of stations. They began with the early
Zionist years. The Zionist movement appeared in Europe in
he late 19th century. The first Jewish settler in
Palestine arrived in 1882. Now the common view in Israel
is that these people came to more or less an empty land,
and were only part of a national project, that they
created a national homeland for the Jews, and for some
unexplained reasons, the Arabs didn't like it, and kept
attacking the small Jewish community, and this seems to
be the fate of Israel, to live in an area of people who
cannot accept them. They don't accept them because the
attackers of Israel are either Muslims, or Arabs, which
should explain a certain political culture that cannot
live at peace with neighbours, or whatever the explanations
Israelis give for why Arabs and Palestinians keep attacking
the Jewish state.

Now the new scholarship decided to look at the movement of
Jews from Europe to the Arab world as a colonialist move-
ment. It was not the only place in the world where
Europeans, for whatever reasons -- even for good reasons --
moved out from Europe and settled in a non-European world.
And they said that Zionism in this respect was not
different. The fact that the Jews of course were persecuted
in Europe explains why they were looking for a safe haven,
this is known and accepted. But the fact that they decided
that the only safe haven is a place where already someone
else lived turned them into a colonialist project as well.
So they introduced the colonialist perspective to the study
of early Zionism.

They also looked differently at a very touchy subject, and
this is the relationship between the Holocaust and the
state of Israel. Very brave scholars showed what we know
now is a fact how the Jewish leadership in Palestine was
not doing all it could to save Jews in the Holocaust because
it was more interested in the fate of the Jews in Palestine
itself. And how the Holocaust memory was manipulated in
Israel to justify certain attitudes and policies toward the
Palestinians.

They also note the treatment of Jews who came from Arab
countries in the 1950s, they found this Israeli urge to
be a part of Europe very damaging in the way they treated
Jewish communities who came from Arab countries. And of
course it would have helped Israel to integrate in the
Middle-East, because they were Arabs as well, but they de-
Arabized them, they told them: "You are not Arabs, you are
something else." And they accepted it because it was the
only ticket to be integrated into Israeli society.

All this revisiting, if you want, of Israeli history goes
from 1882 to at least the 1950s. Around 100 to 120 scholars
were involved in this in the 1990s. The Israeli public, at
first, of course, did not accept these new findings, and
was very angry with these scholars, but I think it was the
beginning of a good chance of starting to influence Israeli
public opinion to the point of even changing some of the
textbooks in the educational system.

Then came the second Intifada, and a lot of people felt
that Israel is again at war, and when you are at war, you
cannot criticize your own side. This is where we are now,
and so many of these critical scholars lowered down their
criticism, and in fact people like myself -- I can only
testify from my own experience -- in one night, changed
from heroes to enemies.

It is not an easy experience. In the 1990s, my university
was very proud that I was a part of it. So the Ministry
of Foreign Affairs sent a lot of people to show how
pluralistic is this university, they have this guy who
is a New Historian, and he can show you how critical he
is and that Israel is an open society, the only democracy
in the Middle East.

After 2000, I became the enemy of the university. Not only
did the foreign office stop sending people to see me, the
university was looking for ways of sending me abroad, not
bringing people to visit me, and almost succeeded in 2002.
There was about to be a big trial -- the trial didn't take
place, thank God -- where I was to be accused of all kinds
of things that you would think that a democracy doesn't
have, accusing lecturers of treason and being not loyal to
their country, and so on. I was saying the same things in
the 1990s as I was in 2002 -- I didn't change my views,
what changed was the political atmosphere in Israel.

I want to go, now, in the last part of my talk, to my new
book. After working on this new scholarship I wrote quite
a lot of articles and edited a lot of books that summarized
this new scholarship that I was talking about, trying to
assess its impact. I was also very impressed -- in one of
my books I wrote extensively about this -- how it
influenced Palestinian scholarship to be more open and
critical. It really created something which I call the
"Bridging Narrative," a concept that I developed, and I
am still developing.

It is a historical concept that in fact to create peace
you need a bridging narrative. You need both national
sides, each has their own historical narrative, but if
they want to contribute to peace they have to build a
bridge narrative. I founded, together with a Palestinian
friend, a group in Ramallah, called the Bridging Narrative
Historians. We started to work in 1997, still work now,
and it's a very good project of building a joint narrative.
We looked jointly at history because we believe the future
is there if you agree on the past.

After doing that, I felt still very haunted by '48, I
felt that the story was not complete. I wrote two books
on 1948, and I felt it was not enough. And then came the
new archives. In 1998, the Israelis opened the military
archives. As I said, they opened political archives after
30 years, but military archives after 1990. And then I felt
I had even a more complete picture, not only of '48, but
unfortunately, of how '48 lives inside Israel today.

And the new documents, I think, show very clearly --
although I knew it before, but the new documents show even
more clearly, if you needed more evidence -- that the
Zionist movement, from the very beginning, it realized that
in the land of Palestine someone else lives. That the only
solution would be to get rid of these people.

I'm not saying that they knew exactly how to do it, I'm
not sure that they always knew how to do it, but they
definitely were convinced that the main objective of the
Zionist project -- which was to find a safe place for the
Jews on the one hand, and to redefine Judaism as a national
movement, not just as a religion -- can not be implemented
as long as the land of Palestine was not Jewish.

Now some of them thought that a small number of
Palestinians can stay, but definitely they cannot be a
majority, they cannot even be a very considerable minority.
I think this is why '48 provides such a good opportunity
for the Zionist leadership to try to change the demographic
reality on the ground. And as I tried to show in my book,
ever since 1937, under the leadership of the founding
father of Zionism, David Ben-Gurion, the plan for ethnic
cleansing of Palestine was carefully prepared.

This has a lot of moral implications, not just political
ones. Because if I am right ? and I may be wrong, but if
I am right in applying the term ethnic cleansing to what
Israel did in 1948, I am accusing the state of Israel of
a crime. In fact in the international legal parlance,
ethnic cleansing is a crime against humanity. And if you
look at the website of the American State Department, you
will see that the American State Department Legal Section
says that any group in history, or in the future, that
lives in a mixed ethnic group, and plans to get rid of
one of the ethnic groups, is committing a crime against
humanity. And it doesn't matter -- very interesting -- it
doesn't matter whether it does it by peaceful means, or
military means. The very idea that you can get rid of
people just because they are ethnically different from
you, today, definitely, in international law, is considered
to be a crime.

It's also interesting that the State Department says that
the only solution for victims of an ethnic cleansing crime,
who are usually refugees because you expel them, is the
return of everyone their homes. Of course, in the State
Department list of cases of ethnic crime, Israel does not
appear. Everyone else appears, from Biblical times until
today, but the one case that does not appear as an ethnic
cleansing case is the case of Palestine because this would
have committed the State Department to believe in the
Palestinian right of return, which they don't want.

There is another implication. I am not a judge, and I don't
want to bring people to justice, although in this book, for
the first time in my life, I decided not to write a book
that says "Israel ethnically cleansed Palestine." I name
names, I give names of people. I give the names of the
people that decided that 1.3 million Palestinians do not
have the right to continue to live where they lived for
more than one thousand years. I decided to give the names.
I also found the place where the decision was taken.

I think far more important for me is not what happened in
1948. Far more important for me is the fact that the world
knew what happened and decided not to do anything, and sent
a very wrong message to the state of Israel, that it's okay
to get rid of the Palestinians. And I think this is why the
ethnic cleansing of Palestine continues today as we speak.

Because the message from the international community was
that if you want to create a Jewish state by expelling so
many Palestinians and destroying so many Palestinian
villages and towns, that's okay. This is aright. It's a
different lecture, why -- and I'm not going to give it --
why did the world allow Israel in 1948 to do something it
would not have allowed anyone else to do. But, as I say,
it's a different lecture, I don't want to go into it.

The fact is that the world knew, and absolved Israel. As a
result, the Israeli state, the new state of Israel that was
founded in 1948, accepted as an ideological infrastructure
the idea that to think about an ethnic purity of a state
is a just objective. I will explain this. The educational
system in Israel, the media in Israel, the political system
in Israel, sends us Jews in Israel a very clear message
from our very early days until we die. The message is very
clear, and you can see that message in the platforms of all
the political parties in Israel. Everybody agrees with it,
whether they are on the left, or on the right. The message
is the following. And to my mind -- I will say the message
in a minute -- but I will say that, to my mind, this is a
very dangerous message, a very racist message, against
which I fight (unsuccessfully).

The message is that personal life -- not collective life,
not even political life -- personal life of the Jew in
Israel would have been much better had there not been Arabs
around. Now that doesn't mean that everybody believes that
because of that you go out and start shooting Arabs or
even expelling them. You will see the paradox.

Today I gave an interview to a journalist here in Japan,
and he told me of someone -- I won't mention the name --
but a very well-known Israeli politician of the left, who
said to him: "My dream is to wake up one morning and to
see that there are no Arabs in Israel." And he is one of
the leading liberal Zionists, he is on the left, very much
in the peace camp. This is the result of 1948, the idea
that this is legitimate, to educate people that the
solution for their problems is the disappearing of some-
one just because he is an Arab, or a Muslim, and of
course the disappearing of someone who is an indigenous
population, who is the native of that land, not an
immigrant. I mean, you can understand -- maybe not accept
but you can understand -- how a society treats immigrants.
Sometimes they find that these immigrants come to take my
job, you know these politics of racism that are the result
of immigration. But we are not even talking about
immigrants, we are talking about a country that someone
else immigrated into, and turned the local people into
immigrants, and said that they have no rights there.

If someone who is from the Israeli peace camp, and very
much on the left, has a dream that all the Arabs would
disappear from the land of Israel, you can understand what
happens if you are not from the left. You don't dream, you
start working on this. And you don't have to be on the
extreme right for that, you can be in the mainstream. We
have to remember that the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in
1948 was committed by the Labor Party, not by the Likud,
by the mainstream ideology.

In other words, what we have here is a society that was
convinced that its need to have ethnic exclusivity, or at
least total majority, in whatever part of Palestine it
would consider to be the future Jewish state, that this
value, this objective is above everything else in Israel.
It's more important than democracy. It's more important
than human rights. It's more important than civil rights.
Because, for most Jews in Israel, if you don't have a
demographic majority, you are going to lose, it's a
suicide. And if this is the position, then no wonder people
would say that if the Palestinians in Israel would be more
than 20%, we will have suicide. You will hear people that
will tell you that they are intellectuals, liberals,
democrats, humanists, say this.

And if Israel wants to annex -- and it wants to annex --
half of the West Bank, as you know, and half of the West
Bank has a lot of Palestinians in it, there is not one
person in Israel that thinks that it's wrong to move by
force the people that live in one half of the West Bank
to the second half of the West Bank. Because otherwise the
demographic balance in Israel will change. And it's no
wonder that Israelis feel no problem with what they did
to the Gaza Strip. Take one million and a half people and
lock them in an impossible prison with two gates and one
key, that the Israelis have, and think that people can
live like this without reaction. In order to delegitimize
the right of someone to be in their own homeland, you have
to dehumanize them. If they're human beings you won't
think about them like this.

I think that as long as this is the ideology of the state
of Israel, and it is the ideology of the state of Israel,
a lot of the good things in Israel -- and there are many
many good things in Israel, it's an impressive project
that the Zionist movement did, the way it saved Jews, the
way it created a modern society almost out of nothing --
all these amazing achievements will be lost. First of all
the Palestinians would lose, that's true. This is true.
First of all the Palestinians are going to lose because the
Israelis are not going to change -- it doesn't look like
they're going to change their policy, and it doesn't look
like anyone in the world is going to force them to change
their policy. But in the long run, Israel is not alone,
and it is a small country in the Arab world and in the
Muslim world, and America will not always be there to
save it.

In the end of the day if the Israelis -- like South Africa,
you cannot be in a neighbourhood and be alien to the
neighbours, and say "I don't like you," or "I don't want
you to be here" -- eventually they would react. It could
take one hundred years, two hundred years, I don't know.
But the Israelis are miscalculating, I think, history.
Only historians understand that sixty years is nothing in
history. Look at the Soviet Union. The fact that you are
successful for sixty years with the wrong policy does not
mean that the next sixty years are going to be the same.
They're making a terrible mistake, as the Jewish
communities around the world are making a terrible mistake
in supporting this policy.

The new book is trying to convince that the most important
story about the ethnic cleansing is not only what happened
in 1948 but the way that the world reacted to what happened
in 1948, sending the wrong message to Israel, that this is
fine, you can be part, not only of the world, but you can
be part of the Western world. You can be a part of what is
called "the group of civilized nations."

So don't be surprised, if you go to the occupied
territories and you see first-hand how people are being
treated there, that the vast majority of the Israelis,
firstly don't know what goes on there, secondly when they
know what goes on there, don't seem to bother much. Because
the same message they got from the world in 1948 is the
message they get from the world in 2007. You can take a
whole city -- imagine Tokyo -- surround it by an electric
gate, and one person would have the key for the only gate
to the city. Any other place in the world, if you would
hear of a city that is at the mercy of a warden, like a
prison, you would be shocked.

You would not allow it to continue for one day without
protests. In Israel the world accepts it. And this is
despite the fact that there are more international
journalists per square mile in Israel and Palestine than
there are anywhere else in the world. That's a fact. And
despite this international media presence, the Israelis
have not changed one aspect of their policy of occupation
in Palestine.

As I say, unfortunately I don't have time for this, but I
think it's a very interesting question: why does the world
allow Israel to do what it does? But it's really a different
question, so I think I will stop here and open up for
questions and remarks. Thank you.

-----------------------------------------------------------
Professor Ilan Pappe is an Israeli historian and senior
lecturer of Political Science at Haifa University. He is
the author of numerous books, including A History of Modern
Palestine, The Modern Middle East, The Israel/Palestine
Question and, most recently, The Ethnic Cleansing of
Palestine, published in 2006.
-----------------------------------------------------------

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Square pegs in round holes.

People talk about generating more energy when we should be talking about energy conservation.

People spend money without thinking and turn around to complain.

A policy that will force Nigerians to use energy efficient bulbs 10W or 15W will go a long way in reducing the current energy demand, common sense but as they say common sense is not really common.

What of alternative energy especially inverter backup solutions?

For over 3 years now I do not have a generator in my office and I have only run out of power twice, the first time transformer problem around Allen Avenue (2 weeks) and the second time (over 300V being fed from the pole - 1 week). And yet I cannot work without power. Inverter based backup works when done properly.

Australia is phasing out the regular energy wasting bulbs and by 2009 it will be illegal for one to use it.

Ghana is taking the bull by the horn and even buying energy saving bulbs and retrieving the regular bulbs from homes and offices since it is cheaper to reduce the energy consumption than to generate more.

Bottomline, our energy problem is over rated. Options do exist but the I too know attitude of the average Nigerian won't allow many get out of the power problem.

RichyBlacK:
Some may say this has little to do with Nigeria, however, in a world of global interconnectivity, one fool's action can cause serious harm to millions far away.

GBAM!!!

A country that protected, aided and shielded its athletes from being banned for doping while carting away gold medals in sprint at Olympics is capable of forging and faking anything.

After all na dem lie, forge document, fake some, claim say Iraq get WMDs and even talk how long e go take for Saddam to launch am before dem enter Iraq just to help Harlibuton make money.

@TayoD,

From your last response I take it to mean that you believe that there was (and still is) a place called Palestine which still covers the present day Israel created in 1948.

Now, if this is your position you may please try to educate your fellow Zionist Davidylan who keeps maintaining that nothing like Palestine existed until the 60's when the PLO was formed.

Maybe, when basic facts like these are understood by even blood thirty people here the discussion will have a semblance of reality.

@RichyBlack,

If you are just enjoying yourself while educating Davidylan, fine.

If you believe you can make this ignorant student reason like a normal human being then I dare say that you are joking. The guy is beyond any form of redemption whatsoever.

The Peel Commission report of 1937 envisioned a partition of the British Mandate of Palestine area into three sections: Arab, Jewish, and a small continued Mandate area (effectively under international control), containing Jerusalem. The Arab leadership rejected the plan, while the Jewish leadership, while not accepting it, wished to use it as a basis for further negotiation. [2]

The next major proposal to suggest a partition was the 1947 UN Partition plan for the division of Palestine. It also proposed a three-way division, again with Jerusalem held separately, under international control. It too was rejected by the leadership of Arab nations and the Palestinian leadership at the time, although this plan was accepted by the Jewish inhabitants.

Security Council resolutions dating back to 1976 supporting the two state solution based on the pre-1967 lines were vetoed by the USA. The idea has had overwhelming support in the UN General Assembly since the mid 1970's.

Some Palestinians, as well as some Arab states have stated that they would accept a 2-state solution based on pre-1967 lines. Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran, however, continue to call for the "liberation" of all of "historic" Palestine from the "Zionist Entity." While Hamas has recently offered a 10-year "hudna", or truce, contingent on Israel returning to the 1967 lines, they have stated publicly they would leave the ultimate solution to the conflict open to "future generations", thus leaving open the possibility that a solution based on the 1967 lines would not suffice, and they have steadfastly refused to alter their Charter, which explicitly calls for the destruction of the Jewish State and its replacement with an Islamic Theocracy.

Tayo-D provided the content quoted above. He accuses others of lowering the quality of debate and yet someone that provided the information above still talks about Israel's claim to the land it was given without the approval of the original inhabitants.

Twice it was reported that the plan to create a Jewish state was based on dividing the land of Palestine. Palestine not Israel was being debated and planned to be divided.

He went further and asked people to show him where the biblical land of Israel was situated? The question simply goes to show how myopic, stupid and silly just one person can be at the same time and yet still believes he is making sense.

It is this idea of religious supremacy by some champions of various religions that is causing the mayhem in the world today.

Tolerance and common sense is needed in resolving these issues. When Mr A believes that the bible recorded a promise of the land of Palestine to Israel and uses same to justify the annexation and killings of innocent people all in the bid to hold on to seized lands.

Then Mr B quotes a portion of the koran and uses same to justify the killing of non islams anytime there is a problem between the muslims and non muslims.

The problems lie with these set of people, confused, religious bigots and highly intolerant and stupid people.

For those that cannot answer simple questions posed but will have all the energy in the world to divert attention all I can state is that there is nothing surprising about the style because as they say a referee can only officiate a match based on his/her level of understanding.

So, those that have been turning everything into religious issues are now looking for ways to religion out of politics? Hypocrisy at its highest form here.

Una get shame so? I wonder what manner of fathers and mothers these brand of dangerous and confused blood thirty people will be.

Seems like someone is trying to give moral support to a partner in crime considering the fact that he was also caught some time ago trying to deceive people with another user ID.

Una no get shame?

@Tornadoz,

You worry yourself way too much.

Allow these bloody and shameless liars to continue twisting every single statement they come across.

The only way you can make sense is for you to stoop to their level and play dirty.

Some of them boast of having 6 years experience in debating christianity with people, can you imagine?

Those that hate a people based on race or religion are worse off when compared to dogs so do not worry yourself because it has been destined that people like these will walk on the surface of the earth.

I-man:
Only the most warped of mindsets could justify this claim.In between the 150,000 dead in Darfur,3.7 million dead in the DRC Congo,wars in Chad,Congo Brazzaville,Casamance,Northern Uganda,Chechnya,Kashmir,Sri Lanka,Southern Sudan,e.t.c. . . .only someone who thinks that what dominates CNN news headlines constitute the only events of significance on the planet would make such a stupid comment.

I don't consider the opinions of scammers at all in the scheme of things. Using multiple user IDs on a public forum in a bid to deceive can only be done by a criminally minded person.

So, naturally opinions of such people belong to the trash can.

WebMonk:
I actually panicked, and i apologize for the title.But Now he wants me head (literally) and has threatened my family (he sent mails). And i couldn't access my client area. what was i to do? I didn't dupe anybody.Picture yourself in my shoes

You should have the phone number of your web hosting company handy just in case you can't send emails or login to your client area.