₦airaland Forum

Some here want us to evaluate the justice of the Palestinian cause based on excerpts from Hamas documents. We should do the same with the Israeli Likud party. This was their platform in 1999:

"The Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza are the realization of Zionist values. Settlement of the land is a clear expression of the unassailable right of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel and constitutes an important asset in the defense of the vital interests of the State of Israel. The Likud will continue to strengthen and develop these communities and will prevent their uprooting."

"The Government of Israel flatly rejects the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan river. The Palestinians can run their lives freely in the framework of self-rule, but not as an independent and sovereign state. Thus, for example, in matters of foreign affairs, security, immigration and ecology, their activity shall be limited in accordance with imperatives of Israel’s existence, security and national need."

Boiled down:
- We shall continue our illegal theft of Palestinian lands because we have a god-given right to.
- Palestinians will remain unequal forever.

Some may find Likud statements more palatable than Hamas' as they appeal to Jewish religious values rather than Islamic ones.

The Israeli government has always held the position that Palestinians have no rights in their homeland. Israel was founded by military conquest and terrorism. It is being sustained by military domination and terrorism. The Israelis can maintain their military dominance for the present, but they can't do it forever, and when the day comes when they can't maintain it the retribution will be dreadful. The only way Israel can survive in the long term is to acknowledge the legitimate grievances of the Palestinian people and make amends for their misdeeds. The American and European efforts to a "just peace" are just window dressing, because the Israelis are not now and have never been willing to treat the Palestinians with humanity and justice. For those who wish the Israelis well, the course they have followed since the beginnings of the conflict in the early 20th century is distressing because ultimately it will result in their destruction. That is the plain truth.

Missy89: Now CNN should have eggs on their faces

The AP is now carrying a report that US officials admit they don't know the things so confidently assumed by those demanding action.

"But the officials said they did not know who fired the missile or whether any Russian operatives were present at the missile launch. They were not certain that the missile crew was trained in Russia. . . . In terms of who fired the missile, "we don't know a name, we don't know a rank and we're not even 100 percent sure of a nationality," one official said, adding at another point, "There is not going to be a Perry Mason moment here."

"White House deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes said the U.S. was still working to determine whether the missile launch had a "direct link" to Russia"

Y'all should try the Sony MDR-10RNC headset it trumps the Beats by Dre and a host of other brands.
Beats by Dre is one of the worst headphones out there but the name practically sells the brand.

Standing firmly against Israel is political suicide for any US politician. It will never happen. Israel's tentacles are deeply and systematically entwined throughout their "democratic" government.
John Kerry let slip what is true feelings were towards the Israelis and I'm sure that's how many US officials feel but AIPAC will hound them into oblivion.

This all started when Queen Isabella forced Jews to become Christians or leave. Jews have been persona non Grata in Europe ever since culminating in the Holocaust. They needed a land of their own and not depend on acceptance in a host country. A desperate people are forced to perform desperate acts. They used a 3000 year old Biblical promise to take over a land that belonged to Palestinians.
No matter how you rationalize the displacement of Palestinians is totally unfair and will not be resolved until Palestine is restored.
The guilty party in all of this is the European Christians. Europe should be required to pay whatever price it takes to resolve this Israeli/Palestinian dillema.

Do some dumb posters have serious concerns though about confining human beings to a Gaza Zoo?

Have we learned nothing from observing confined lions, tigers and bears that suddenly turn on their keepers? Have we learned nothing about how confined animals react when constantly teased and harassed?
I think that best illustrates the pliight of the palestinians since 1948.

It's time for the UN to get involved. They caused this mess.

What you have in the Middle East is not a political or a diplomatic problem, it's a Legal problem. You cannot take peoples' property for no money.

If peace talks between the parties fail the United Nations, which started this whole mess in 1948 by giving Jews an independent state mostly at Palestinian expense to make recompense for what the Germans did, should be petitioned to IMPOSE a reasonable solution upon the parties WHETHER THE PARTIES LIKE IT OR NOT.

Establish a sensible border based upon where people actually live TODAY, not in 1948 or 1967, not 2,000 years ago. Immediately confer international recognition upon those borders. No enclaves for settlers. If settlers want to live in what will eventually be Palestine let them. They will be Jewish Palestinians who enjoy all of the rights and privileges accorded to all citizens of the State of Palestine. Israel has Arabs, Palestine can have Jews. It's the same thing.

Next, invoke a policy akin to the equitable Doctrine of Eminent Domain and award Just Compensation to everyone, Jews included, who suffered losses as a result of the UN's creation of Israel. People present claims to a UN Middle East Compensation Commission, they execute Releases of Claims, and they walk out with a check. That's fair. No so-called "right of return". You want your property back so badly, take your compensation money and buy it back if it's available for sale.

NairaMinted: Could it be?

What I want to believe is that this is a mistake on someone's part, and that someone will actually own up to responsibility, even if it's a matter of ducking for cover by saying "this is a war zone."

Lacking that, this is one of the most bizarre turns of events in the news this year. No wonder people are spinning conspiracies right and left. Just from the comments online, we see some of the following:

1.) Accidental shoot-down by Russian separatists (leading theory in western news)
2.) Ukraine meant to shoot down Putin's jet, which supposedly was in the airspace soon before the shooting (mostly from commentators)
3.) Same kind of airplane operated by same airline that disappeared mysteriously quite recently and was coincident with the annexation of Crimea.
4.) Relative timing of shoot-down with racheted-up sanctions.

Probably there are more - e.g. Ukraine did it to blame Moscow, someone else planted a bomb on it. and so forth.

Life (and sadly, death) outpaces fiction.

From Wikipedia
"Iran Air Flight 655 was an Iran Air civilian passenger flight from Tehran to Dubai that was shot down by the U.S. Navy guided missile cruiser USS Vincennes on 3 July 1988. The attack took place in Iranian airspace, on the flight's usual path. The Airbus A300 B2-203, was destroyed by SM-2MR surface-to-air missiles fired from the Vincennes.

All 290 on board, including 66 children and 16 crew, died. This attack is 10th among deadliest disasters in aviation history, the incident has highest death toll of any aviation incident in the Persian Gulf. According to the U.S. Government, the crew incorrectly identified the Iranian Airbus A300 as an attacking F-14 Tomcat fighter (a plane made in the U.S. and operated at that time by only two forces worldwide, the U.S. Navy and the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force). In 1996, the United States and Iran 'reached an agreement in full and final settlement of all disputes, differences, claims, counterclaims' relating to the incident at the International Court of Justice. As part of the settlement, the U.S. agreed to pay US$61.8 million, an average of $213,103 per passenger, in compensation to families of the Iranian victims. However, the U.S has never admitted responsibility, nor apologized to Iran"

In a way, this is reminiscent of when U.S. forces shot down Iran Air Flight 655, in the area of the Strait of Hormuz, back in July 1988 (all 290 onboard dead). What a tragedy, both incidents.

shymexx: I believe the separatists shot it down. They probably thought it was a Ukrainian military transport plane.

Well, they've been bombarding them from the air for weeks, and I doubt I can differentiate between a military plane and a civilian one. They just shot down two sukhoi-25s a few days ago, and you should know how lethal the Su-25s are. So, what was the plane doing there?

It seems Malaysians just love throwing their planes everywhere to be shot it down, to be honest.

Well I thought as much also,definitely it wasn't intentional they've shot down a couple of Ukrainian military transport planes recently,heard they aren't allowing accident investigators to the site and they've taken the black box.
As for the SU-25's shot down the Ukraine military are blaming the russians,saying it wasn't a SAM but most likely a russian fighter jet,the pilot actually ejected safely.

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shymexx: Sad!

However, what was the plane doing there since everyone who's conversant with what's going on in the world knows that there's an undeclared no-fly zone on those sides? And the pilot should've contacted the Russians, since the Ukrainians already know about it and the plane is in their airspace.

Sad to see innocent people die over crap they know nothing about. Then again, it might be a false flag to implicate the other side, who knows? Conspiracy theorists - over to you. Regardless, innocent people shouldn't be used as pawns on the grand-chessboard.

My condolences!

Conspiracy theories? Maybe not.
33,000 feet is way beyond the reach of some SAM's but not this which is in possession of the separatist rebels.

The first time Emmanuel Ifeajuna appeared before a crowd of thousands he did something no black African had ever done. He won a gold medal at an international sporting event. “Nigeria Creates World Sensation,” ran the headline in the West African Pilot after Ifeajuna’s record-breaking victory in the high jump at the 1954 Empire and Commonwealth Games in Vancouver. He was the pride not just of Nigeria but of a whole continent. An editorial asked: “Who among our people did not weep for sheer joy when Nigeria came uppermost, beating all whites and blacks together?”



In the words of a former schoolmate, Ifeajuna had leaped “to the very pinnacle of Nigerian sporting achievement”. His nine track and field team-mates won another six silver and bronze medals, prompting a special correspondent to write “Rejoice with me, oh ye sports lovers of Nigeria, for the remarkable achievements of our boys”.

Ifeajuna, feted wherever he went, would soon see his picture on the front of school exercise books. He was a great national hero who would remain Nigeria’s only gold medallist, in Commonwealth or Olympic sport, until 1966.

The next time Ifeajuna appeared before a crowd of thousands he was bare-chested and tied to a stake, facing execution before a seething mob. He had co-led a military coup in January 1966 in which, according to an official but disputed police report, he shot and killed Nigeria’s first prime minister. The coup failed but Ifeajuna escaped to safety in Ghana, dressed as a woman and was driven to freedom by a famous poet. Twenty months later, he was back, fighting for the persecuted Igbo people of eastern Nigeria in a brutal civil war that broke out as a consequence of the coup.



Ifeajuna and three fellow officers were accused by their own leader, General Emeka Ojukwu, of plotting against him and the breakaway Republic of Biafra. They denied charges of treason: they were trying to save lives and their country, they said, by negotiating an early ceasefire with the federal government and reuniting Nigeria. They failed, they died and, in the next two and a half years, so did more than a million Igbos.

The day of the execution was 25 September, 1967, and the time 1.30pm. There was a very short gap between trial and execution, not least because federal troops were closing in on Enugu, the Biafran capital, giving rise to fears that the “guilty four” might be rescued.

As the execution approached, the four men – Ifeajuna, Victor Banjo, Phillip Alale and Sam Agbam – were tied to stakes. Ifeajuna, with his head on his chest as though he was already dead, kept mumbling that his death would not stop what he had feared most, that federal troops would enter Enugu, and the only way to stop this was for those about to kill him to ask for a ceasefire.

A body of soldiers drew up with their automatic rifles at the ready. On the order of their officer, they levelled their guns at the bared chests of the four men. As a hysterical mass behind the firing squad shouted: “Shoot them! Shoot them!” a grim-looking officer gave the command: “Fire!” The deafening volley was followed by lolling heads. Ifeajuna slumped. Nigeria’s great sporting hero died a villain’s death. But he had been right. By 4pm two and a half hours after the executions, the gunners of the federal troops had started to hit their targets in Enugu with great accuracy. The Biafrans began to flee and the city fell a few days later.

Of all the many hundreds of gold medallists at the Empire and Commonwealth Games since 1930 none left such a mark on history, led such a remarkable life or suffered such a shocking death as Ifeajuna.

His co-plotter in the 1966 coup, Chukwuma Nzeogwu, was buried with full military honours and had a statue erected in his memory in his home town. But for Ifeajuna, the hateful verdict of that seething mob carried weight down the years. His name was reviled, his sporting glory all but written out of Nigeria’s history. His name is absent from the website of the Athletics Federation of Nigeria, appearing neither in the history of the Federation nor in any other section. There is no easy road to redemption for the gold medallist who inadvertently started a war and was shot for trying to stop it.

Nigeria’s first foray into overseas sport was in 1948, when they sent athletes to London to compete in the Amateur Athletic Association Championships, and to watch the Olympic Games before a planned first entry in the next Olympiad. In 1950 there was cause to celebrate when the high jumper, Josiah Majekodunmi, won a silver medal at the Auckland Commonwealth Games. He also fared best of Nigeria’s Olympic pathfinders, the nine-man team who competed at Helsinki in 1952. Majekodunmi was ninth, with two of his team-mates also in the top 20. Nigerians clearly excelled at the high jump.

With three men having competed in that 1952 Olympic final, the Nigeria selectors had plenty of names to consider for the Commonwealth Games high jump in Vancouver two years later. Ifeajuna, aged 20, was not a contender until he surprised everybody at the national championships in late April, less than two months before the team were due to depart. His jump of 6ft 5.5in, the best of the season, took him straight in alongside Nafiu Osagie, one of the 1952 Olympians, and he was selected.

The high jump was on day one of competition in Vancouver and Ifeajuna wore only one shoe, on his left foot. One correspondent wrote: “The Nigerian made his cat-like approach from the left-hand side. In his take-off stride his leading leg was flexed to an angle quite beyond anything ever seen but he retrieved position with a fantastic spring and soared upwards as if plucked by some external agency.”

Ifeajuna brushed the bar at 6ft 7in but it stayed on; he then cleared 6ft 8in to set a Games and British Empire record, and to become the first man ever to jump 13.5in more than his own height. This first gold for black Africa was a world-class performance. His 6ft 8in – just over 2.03m – would have been good enough for a silver medal at the Helsinki Olympics two years earlier.

The team arrived back home on 8 September. That afternoon they were driven on an open-backed lorry through the streets of Lagos, with the police band on board, to a civic reception at the racecourse. The flags and bunting were out in abundance, as were the crowds in the middle and, for those who could afford tickets, the grandstand. There was a celebration dance at 9pm. Ifeajuna told reporters he had been so tired, having spent nearly four hours in competition, that: “At the time I attempted the record jump I did not think I had enough strength to achieve the success which was mine. I was very happy when I went over the bar on my second attempt.”

After a couple of weeks at home Ifeajuna was off to university on the other side of the country at Ibadan. His sporting career was already over, apart from rare appearances in inter-varsity matches. He met his future wife, Rose, in 1955. They married in 1959 and had two sons. After graduating in zoology he taught for a while before joining the army in 1960 and was trained in England, at Aldershot. Ifeajuna had first shown an interest in the military in 1956 when, during a summer holiday in Abeokuta, he had visited the local barracks with a friend who later became one of the most important figures in the Commonwealth.

Chief Emeka Anyaoku joined the Commonwealth Secretariat in 1966, the year of Ifeajuna’s coup attempt. While his good friend escaped, returned, fought in the war and died in front of the firing squad, Anyaoku moved to London, where he rose to the highest office in the Commonwealth, secretary-general, in 1990. For four years at university he lived in a room next door to Ifeajuna, who became a close friend.

Why did the record-breaking champion stop competing? “From October, 1954, when he enrolled at Ibadan, he never trained,” said Anyaoku, nearly 60 years later. “He never had a coach – only his games master at grammar school – and there were no facilities at the university. He simply stopped. He seemed content with celebrating his gold medal. I don’t think the Olympics ever tempted him. I used to tease him that he was the most natural hero in sport. He did no special training. He was so gifted, he just did it all himself. Jumping barefoot, or with one shoe, was not unusual where we came from.”

Another hugely influential voice from Nigerian history pointed out that Ifeajuna, in his days as a student, had “a fairly good record of rebellion”. Olusegun Obasanjo served as head of a military regime and as an elected president. He recalled Ifeajuna’s role in a protest that led to the closure of his grammar school in Onitsha for a term in 1951, when he was 16. Three years after winning gold, while at university, Ifeajuna made a rousing speech before leading several hundred students in protest against poor food and conditions.

The former president also held a manuscript written by Ifeajuna in the aftermath of the coup but never published. It stated: “It was unity we wanted, not rebellion. We had watched our leaders rape our country. The country was so diseased that bold reforms were badly needed to settle social, moral, economic and political questions. We fully realised that to be caught planning, let alone acting, on our lines, was high treason. And the penalty for high treason is death.”

In 1964 the Lagos boxer Omo Oloja won a light-middleweight bronze in Tokyo, thereby becoming Nigeria’s first Olympic medallist. It was a rare moment of celebration in a grim year that featured a general strike and a rigged election. Another election the following year was, said the BBC and Reuters correspondent Frederick Forsyth, seriously rigged – “electoral officers disappeared, ballot papers vanished from police custody, candidates were detained, polling agents were murdered”. Two opposing sides both claimed victory, leading to a complete breakdown of law and order. “Rioting, murder, looting, arson and mayhem were rife,” said Forsyth. The prime minister, Tafawa Balewa, refused to declare a state of emergency. There was corruption in the army, too, with favouritism for northern recruits. A group of officers began to talk about a coup after they were told by their brigadier that they would be required to pledge allegiance to the prime minister, from the north, rather than the country’s first president, an Igbo. Ifeajuna’s group feared a jihad against the mainly Christian south, led by the north’s Muslim figurehead, the Sardauna of Sokoto.

The coup, codenamed Leopard, was planned in secret meetings. Major Ifeajuna led a small group in Lagos, whose main targets were the prime minister, the army’s commander-in-chief, and a brigadier, who was Ifeajuna’s first victim. According to the official police report, part of which has never been made public, Ifeajuna and a few of his men broke into the prime minister’s home, kicked down his bedroom door and led out Balewa in his white robe. They allowed him to say his prayers and drove him away in Ifeajuna’s car. On the road to Abeokuta they stopped, Ifeajuna ordered the prime minister out of the car, shot him, and left his body in the bush. Others say the Prime Minister was not shot, nor was the intention ever to kill him: Balewa died of an asthma attack or a heart attack brought on by fear. There has never been conclusive evidence either way.

Ifeajuna drove on to Enugu, where it became apparent that the coup had failed, mainly because one of the key officers in Ifeajuna’s Lagos operation had “turned traitor” and had failed to arrive as planned with armoured cars. Major-General Ironsi, the main military target, was still at large and he soon took control of the military government. Ifeajuna was now a wanted man. He hid in a chemist’s shop, disguised himself as a woman, and was driven over the border by his friend Christopher Okigbo, a poet of great renown. Then he travelled on to Ghana, where he was welcomed.

Ifeajuna eventually agreed to return to Lagos, where he was held pending trial. Ojukwu, by now a senior officer, ensured his safety by having him transferred, in April, to a jail in the east. Igbos who lived in the north of the country were attacked. In weeks of violent bloodshed tens of thousands died. As the death toll increased, the outcome was civil war. In May, 1967, Ojukwu, military governor of the south-east of Nigeria, declared that the region had now become the Republic of Biafra. By the time the fighting ended in early 1970, the number of deaths would be in the millions.

Arguably, if either of Ifeajuna’s plots had been a success, those lives would not have been lost. The verdicts on his role in Nigerian history are many and varied: his detractors have held sway. Chief among them was Bernard Odogwu, Biafra’s head of intelligence, who branded Ifeajuna a traitor and blamed him for “failure and atrocities” in the 1966 coup. Adewale Ademoyega, one of the 1966 plotters, held a different view of Ifeajuna. “He was a rather complicated character ... intensely political and revolutionary ... very influential among those close to him ... generous and willing to sacrifice anything for the revolution.”

The last time Anyaoku saw Ifeajuna was in 1963, in Lagos, before Anyaoku’s departure for a diplomatic role in New York. He later moved to London and was there in 1967. “I was devastated when I heard the news of the execution,” he said. As for Ifeajuna being all but written out of Nigeria’s sporting history, he noted that: “The history of the civil war still evokes a two-sided argument. He is a hero to many people, though they would more readily talk about his gold medal than his involvement in the war. There are people who think he was unjustifiably executed and others who believe the opposite.”

One commentator suggested recently that the new national stadium in Abuja, the Nigerian capital, should be named after Ifeajuna. It will surely never happen.

Culled from The Observer

Get the squatters out of Palestine. There is NO legal basis for creating settlements of foreigners on Palestinian land let alone continually degrading and restricting all of their civil liberties. The West Bank is not part of any of the false & fraudulent Zionist claim to Palestinian. eg. The Ashkenazi are descended from Europeans (the Khazars) who converted to Judaism c 750 -1000 AD & have little or no Near East DNA as recent studies have shown.

The UN view of the Palestinian Territories can be seen at the following URL:
http://unispal.un.org/pdfs/OCHA_IsrSettlementPolicies.pdf
* The West Bank and East Jerusalem is occupied Palestine (bilaterally recognised by 133 nations in the world including India, China, Russia, Brazil, Malaysia, Indonesia, Guatemala, Thailand and Iceland). This number has increased since 2013.
* Palestine is officially a non-member State recognised by 138 UN nations in November 2012 in its successful bid for statehood.The Sec. General of the UN & Vatican Church welcomed the re-birth of Palestine.
* However, Palestine (West Bank and East Jerusalem) is still illegally held and sadly Israel's Prime Minister Mr Netanyahu has ignored the ruling of the International Court of Justice (subsequently supported by the UN and EU) with respect to the "separation barrier".
* Please also see UNSC Resolution 478 concerning Jerusalem. The 4th Geneva Convention is applicable to all the Palestinian Territories.

As I get older, the less I believe what anyone says on any side in this conflict. All the major players are insane, liars or delusional, since none of their actions are logical based upon their stated goals.
For example, Hamas can not win militarily, yet they choose that route, and do everything in their power to keep the Israeli hawks in office, and impoverish their own people. Israel claims to want peace and democracy and a culturally Jewish state, which are contradictory. Israel likes to pretend they are in a military struggle for existence, when they are by far the strongest military power in the middle east, complete with nuclear bombs; a state of the art air force; and the backing of the US. The US claims to want to help mediate peace, yet the US government is on Israel's side. People talk of a two state solution, when the Palestinian state is not viable economically, politically, geographically, nor militarily. It goes on and on.

The Palestinians on the West Bank didn't attach Israel in 1967; Israel was attacked by the military forces of the Jordanian monarchy. The reason they should give it back is that the majority of the Palestinians on the West Bank want Israel to stop seizing their land one parcel at a time, and then they will live in peace. My point is that there is a vast difference between the Palestinians on the West Bank and those in Gaza.
Israel is playing an evil game on the West Bank. They provoke Palestinians to the point of violence and then say, "see, you can't trust these people". The Europeans have long since seen through this hypocrisy, and now Americans are starting to do so as well.

The Palestinians on the West Bank didn't attach Israel in 1967; Israel was attacked by the military forces of the Jordanian monarchy. The reason they should give it back is that the majority of the Palestinians on the West Bank want Israel to stop seizing their land one parcel at a time, and then they will live in peace. My point is that there is a vast difference between the Palestinians on the West Bank and those in Gaza.
Israel is playing an evil game on the Wet Bank. They provoke Palestinians to the point of violence and then say, "see, you can't trust these people". The Europeans have long since seen through this hypocrisy, and now Americans are starting to do so as well.

There are so, so many ways that the Palestinians could peacefully, and more effectively, protest against the way they are being treated by the Israelis, but it doesn't seem to be in their nature to do so. What Hamas is showing now is that the Israelis are right not to recognize them as a government or to negotiate with them. That does not excuse Israeli behavior on the West Bank but people have to be intelligent enough to recognize the difference between the Gazans and the West Bank Palestinian.
The Gazans are mostly refugees from the Jaffa area; people who came to work there during the British Palestinian mandate whose roots in Palestine do not go back very far. They should be re-settled elsewhere. By contrast, the West Bank Palestinians are descended from people who have lived in the land of Canaan for millennia. Indeed, they are most likely descended from the original Canaanite inhabitants, who became Hebrews, who became Hellenicized Jews, who became Christians, and who later converted to Islam. There is absolutely no reason for such people to be displaced by their homes, in order to make room for others who ancestors have been absent for millennia and who are at best only partially Canaanite in ancestry.