"What is mine is mine, and what is yours is to be negotiated"

This is a mess of articles and quotes and people, but the hell with aesthetics.

"It is wrong to suggest that the Jewish people would support a government in Israel or anywhere else that institutionalizes ethnically based oppression, and Democrats reject that allegation vigorously." - Nancy Pelosi, Dean and Pelosi, Carter's wrong about Israel, The Jewish Daily Forward

If America's policies can be wrong and the American people (and Australian people) can support governments that don't know their justice from their Guantanamos, why is Israel super-humanly above that possibility? If South Africa can come out of ethnically based oppression and vote to keep a nation oppressed, why can't any nation that should know better and be a beacon of goodness and dispenser of sugar and spice act as a dictator's tout, or be above criticism?

As for that spreading of democracy, well . . .

"This is not what the administration had in mind," Indyk told TIME today. "They were expecting that Abu Mazen backed by Egypt and Saudi Arabia, would be moving into a process of excluding Hamas. They did not expect that Abu Mazen would compromise with Hamas. They didn't want him to compromise with Hamas, and they didn't think it was necessary." - Is Washington the big loser in the Mecca deal? Time, Feb 9, 2007

Prospects for peace

"Far more certain than the vague prospect of negotiations, territorial withdrawal, and peace is the relentless creation of settlement facts on the ground by Ben Gurion’s heirs that are catalogued in the Settlement Report. Their deeds speak louder than any words."
- Words alone will not end occupation, Settlement Report, Vol. 17 No. 1 | January - February 2007

"The news of the first tenders announced this year by the housing ministry, which invited bids for construction of 44 new units in the largest Israeli settlement of Maale Adumim, came as Dr Rice and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert were in the midst of a three-hour-long meeting at the Premier's Jerusalem residence."
- Israel announces settlement expansion, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, January 15, 2007

Recognition

"When Israelis give up this attitude of greed, this morally bankrupt notion that what is mine is mine and what is yours is to be negotiated, and this contempt for the Palestinians as a people, then and only then will there be peace."
- Nayyer Ali, Will Israel Ever Recognise Palestine?, altMuslim

"If Hamas is to recognize Israel, will Israel recognize Palestine? If Hamas is to honor previous signed agreements with the PA, will Israel? And if Hamas is to end the armed resistance, will Israel end the belligerent military occupation? Without any answers to these three questions the position of Hamas is clear and has been voiced already. There is nothing to talk about. Hamas is not against a political compromise. It is not against a state on the 1967 borders. Israel, it is often said, is a de facto reality. But so are Palestinian refugees. There are 4.1 million registered Palestinian refugees in the Middle East. These people cannot and should not be ignored. Hamas wants a solution to all of these problems. And it wants it in one package. The previous agreements and negotiations between the PA/PLO and Israel have not led us any closer to a solution on any of these issues. It should be obvious to even the most casual observer that rather than bring us closer to peace, the process based on stages has failed. Israel has not lived up to its commitments under Oslo or under the so-called roadmap plan for peace, and has thus cancelled both. It is time for a new approach to be tried. The world should, without pre-conditions, at least sit and talk with Hamas to hear what ideas the movement has for resolving the conflict." - Ghazi Hamad ( editor-in-chief of Al Resala newspaper in Gaza), Sit and Talk, Palestine Monitor, originally published in Bitter Lemons

It's fifteen minutes since the last Holocaust memorial service

Brave new world war: Holocaust politics in the service of Anglo-American hegemony - Gilad Atzmon, Peace Palestine

Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, Jimmy Carter in his own words - Democracy Now

Carter's critics warp the debate he hoped to create - James Zogby, The Huffington Post
Even before the book appeared, political leaders were pressed to distance themselves from the former president. Major pro-Israeli groups and leaders issued denunciations using extreme and shameful rhetoric in an effort to ridicule and demean Carter. He and his work were termed: "indecent", "outlandish", "mendacious", "an anti-Semitic canard..."shameless and irresponsible", "a crude polemic", and possessing "a warped sense of history... and a blatant abuse of our sensibilities." This, of course, was not intended as part of a debate, but rather as a heavy handed effort to silence discussion of the book and isolate Carter from the mainstream of political discourse.

"It would be almost politically suicidal for members of Congress to espouse a balanced position between Israel and Palestine, to suggest that Israel comply with international law or to speak in defense of justice or human rights for Palestinians. Very few would ever deign to visit the Palestinian cities of Ramallah, Nablus, Hebron, Gaza City or even Bethlehem and talk to the beleaguered residents. What is even more difficult to comprehend is why the editorial pages of the major newspapers and magazines in the United States exercise similar self-restraint, quite contrary to private assessments expressed quite forcefully by their correspondents in the Holy Land."- Jimmy Carter, Speaking frankly about Israel and Palestine: Jimmy Carter says his recent book is drawing knee-jerk accusations of anti-Israel bias, The Los Angeles Times

Denenberg: 'The Economist' Has Fallen Into Anti-Israel, Anti-Semitic Ways Of Europe And Its Media - Herb Denenberg, The Bulletin (Philadelphia)

"There is a misperception in various world locales of Washington's debate on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Namely, that substantive debate exists at all."- Michael, F. Brown, Debate? What Debate? Bitter Lemons

Carter is No More Critical of Israel Than Israelis Themselves - Yosi Beilin (a member of the Knesset, is chairman of the Meretz-Yahad Party), The Jewish Daily Forward

About "the only democracy in the Middle East"

"When a state affords democratic rights to only some of its citizens it is not democratic."

Women fight back against ultra-Orthodox Jews - John Russell, AFP, The Middle East Times

The human rights of Jewish women - Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs in Marriage, Divorce, and Family Law

" As has been well documented, Jewish women can be discriminated against in marriage and divorce under Jewish law. While ancient Jewish law was designed to protect and support Jewish women, today that same law is being used by some as a tool to deny women their rights to equality in marriage, divorce, and the founding of a family."

Israeli Democracy - Michel Warschawski, Znet
This essay has been adapted from chapter 8 of Michel Warschawski’s Toward an Open Tomb: The Crisis of Israeli Society (Monthly Review Press, 2004), which presents an important dissident Israeli perspective that is rarely given a hearing in the United States. Warschawski is cofounder and director of the Alternative Information Center (AIC) in Jerusalem and a well-known anti-Zionist activist. He is also the author of Israel-Palestine: le défi binational (Textuel, 2001) and an award-winning memoir, On the Border (forthcoming from South End Press).

A group just starting up

Enough! Enough! Enough!

and perhaps the most obscene aspect of all this is the fact that people still say Never Again.

Again

The United States Holocaust Memorial is doing something about holocausts. See projects of their Committee on Conscience

Still

See their students' essay projects:

THE 2005-2006 DARFUR OP-ED WRITING CONTEST

THE 2006-2007 DARFUR OP-ED WRITING CONTEST

For those who miss the current deadline for Darfur essays, there is always next year, unless the human resources have been used up.