"Unsettling" by Rebecca Sinderbrand
"Unsettling" by Rebecca Sinderbrand
This is an article in Washington Monthly that my mother showed me regarding Israel. It is a rather disturbing article regarding Israels tactics for getting and keeping land. The name of the article is Unsettling.
Here are some quotes from the article that are unsettling:
"but by the time the dust cleared on June 4, 1967, Israel controlled roughly four times as much land as it had just a week earlier. The new land had an intoxicating effect on the Israeli public. "
"Even many who felt uneasy with their nation's new occupying role still felt an emotional tug that bound them to the soil, almost against their will, through some special alchemy, the Six Day War transformed even die-hard agnostics into believers." In a previous post I stated essentially that it was unbelievable that this group of individuals were acting so what I percieved as out of character, however this quote confirms that whatever is, and has happened in Israel is character changing.
"In 1969, an official from the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv took an exhausting afternoon trek out to the fledgling desert community of Kalyah, in the West Bank territory Israel had taken from Jordan in the Six Day War just two years earlier. A Time magazine report had painted a worrying portrait of a rising Jewish settlement presence that hinted at permanence, and the Americans had decided to investigate. At the time, there were just a handful of Israelis living there, in one of only two official settlements out on the far eastern edge of the West Bank. "
"He reported back to his superiors that those alarming tales of settlement growth were standard-issue media exaggeration, a "somewhat distorted picture of reality."
"To the United States, it was simply incomprehensible that these makeshift communities were anything more than some sort of temporary security measure, albeit a diplomatically inconvenient one."
"If that embassy rep made the same desert drive today, he'd encounter some 4,000 residents living in at least two dozen communities on the Israeli-controlled side of the Jordan River. In all, there are at least 261,000 Jews still living in lands conquered by Israel during the Six Day War. They live in orderly government-planned suburbs north and east of Jerusalem; in more isolated, far-flung towns surrounded by barbed wire and heavily-guarded highways; in small, fortified enclaves in and near the ancient biblical cities of the West Bank. These settlements are filled with the second and even third generations of those early post-war pioneers, who would have told that U.S. official, if he had only asked, that in their view there was nothing temporary about their new home. "
"That oversight was partly due to the schizophrenic nature of the debate, and partly because the illegality of settlement-building was never much in question: By the time the heady summer of '67 gave way to autumn, the Israeli government's top legal minds had concluded that the entire enterprise violated international law."
" (Arab leaders, for their part, proved unable or unwilling to use the diplomatic tools that might have short-circuited the settlement process until both the concept and the reality were too established for Israeli politicians to dislodge, even had they wanted to.)"
"the permanence of the Jewish presence resulted in a sea change in how the Palestinians viewed their situation. No longer did they believe that their Arab brethren would ride to their rescue and deliver the house keys to the old family home in Haifa. Their destiny was now in their own hands, and their only armed options against a conventionally superior foe would be terrorism and guerilla warfare. In the soil of the accidental empire, the seeds of the intifada were sown"
The following are articles in this blog that have referenced Israeli occupation of Lebanon:
BBC NEWS Middle East UN warns on Mid-East 'war crimes'
Chron.com Hezbollah enmeshed Lebanon's social fabric
Arabs' anger at America is hurting moderates - Africa & Middle East - International Herald Tribune
End This Tragedy Now
U.N. Security Council resolution key elements
In South Lebanon, a Fierce Fight for Every Yard
Letter to Senators Feinstein and Boxer on the Crisis in the Middle East
Widening war complicates US policy goals
This is an article in Washington Monthly that my mother showed me regarding Israel. It is a rather disturbing article regarding Israels tactics for getting and keeping land. The name of the article is Unsettling.
Here are some quotes from the article that are unsettling:
"but by the time the dust cleared on June 4, 1967, Israel controlled roughly four times as much land as it had just a week earlier. The new land had an intoxicating effect on the Israeli public. "
"Even many who felt uneasy with their nation's new occupying role still felt an emotional tug that bound them to the soil, almost against their will, through some special alchemy, the Six Day War transformed even die-hard agnostics into believers." In a previous post I stated essentially that it was unbelievable that this group of individuals were acting so what I percieved as out of character, however this quote confirms that whatever is, and has happened in Israel is character changing.
"In 1969, an official from the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv took an exhausting afternoon trek out to the fledgling desert community of Kalyah, in the West Bank territory Israel had taken from Jordan in the Six Day War just two years earlier. A Time magazine report had painted a worrying portrait of a rising Jewish settlement presence that hinted at permanence, and the Americans had decided to investigate. At the time, there were just a handful of Israelis living there, in one of only two official settlements out on the far eastern edge of the West Bank. "
"He reported back to his superiors that those alarming tales of settlement growth were standard-issue media exaggeration, a "somewhat distorted picture of reality."
"To the United States, it was simply incomprehensible that these makeshift communities were anything more than some sort of temporary security measure, albeit a diplomatically inconvenient one."
"If that embassy rep made the same desert drive today, he'd encounter some 4,000 residents living in at least two dozen communities on the Israeli-controlled side of the Jordan River. In all, there are at least 261,000 Jews still living in lands conquered by Israel during the Six Day War. They live in orderly government-planned suburbs north and east of Jerusalem; in more isolated, far-flung towns surrounded by barbed wire and heavily-guarded highways; in small, fortified enclaves in and near the ancient biblical cities of the West Bank. These settlements are filled with the second and even third generations of those early post-war pioneers, who would have told that U.S. official, if he had only asked, that in their view there was nothing temporary about their new home. "
"That oversight was partly due to the schizophrenic nature of the debate, and partly because the illegality of settlement-building was never much in question: By the time the heady summer of '67 gave way to autumn, the Israeli government's top legal minds had concluded that the entire enterprise violated international law."
" (Arab leaders, for their part, proved unable or unwilling to use the diplomatic tools that might have short-circuited the settlement process until both the concept and the reality were too established for Israeli politicians to dislodge, even had they wanted to.)"
"the permanence of the Jewish presence resulted in a sea change in how the Palestinians viewed their situation. No longer did they believe that their Arab brethren would ride to their rescue and deliver the house keys to the old family home in Haifa. Their destiny was now in their own hands, and their only armed options against a conventionally superior foe would be terrorism and guerilla warfare. In the soil of the accidental empire, the seeds of the intifada were sown"
The following are articles in this blog that have referenced Israeli occupation of Lebanon:
BBC NEWS Middle East UN warns on Mid-East 'war crimes'
Chron.com Hezbollah enmeshed Lebanon's social fabric
Arabs' anger at America is hurting moderates - Africa & Middle East - International Herald Tribune
End This Tragedy Now
U.N. Security Council resolution key elements
In South Lebanon, a Fierce Fight for Every Yard
Letter to Senators Feinstein and Boxer on the Crisis in the Middle East
Widening war complicates US policy goals
posted by blackhippychick @ 9:15 AM
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