HHDomains said:
You can read a thousand different opinions and never read the truth.
Far too many people are taking blogs and opinion sites as gospel these days just because they want to rebel against mainstream media.
Amen...
The only way to get the whole story is to immerse oneself. The Internet is ok (but it's got more trash than truth), televised media is a great visual medium (so long as you realize you are only seeing the stuff the camera is pointing at), but a combination of:
books, and personal fact-checking are key.
Lets take the most recent conflict as a prime example:
Most facts are very easy to verify. For example, in this most recent conflict, you have Hezbollah claiming that they are fighting an occupation of Lebanon, citing the Shebba Farms. But anyone who has looked at a map or atlas going back decades or centuries will note that Shebba has NEVER EVER NEVER been part of Lebanon.
Look at the claim, verify the claim using MULTIPLE SOURCES (in this case you will find the same on both Western Maps and Arabic Supporting/Inspired Maps).
Furthermore, Israel fully withdrew from Lebanon over 6 years ago. This too is easily verifiable - you have the UN (who is constantly passing anti-Israel resolutions) recognition & also out of Hezbollah's mouth, who called it a 'full retreat' (they saw it as a victory in battle...)
Also, one needn't 'dig deep' to seek a groups true aims. You hear alot of banter in the news about Hezbollah as some type of legitimate activist (chief among the perpertrators of this vicious lie are the insidious BBC). But again, Nassrallah and Hezbollah have never made any secret of their aim. Like Arafat and his band of merry fibbers, the English speaking spokesperson is spewing something in contrast to the Arabic message:
Nasrallah, In a January speech: โWhen we speak about Jerusalem we donโt want anyone to misunderstand. We do not mean East Jerusalem. We do not mean the Holy Jerusalem...We do not mean Jerusalem, the city. When we say Jerusalem, we speak of it as a symbol of all Palestine and
the entire nation that is under assault by the scheme of global arrogance and Zionism that throughout the past 50 years has been implemented on our land. ... Israel is a cancerous, usurping entity without legitimacy or legal character.โ
(as for verification, Israel's 'legal character' (as a Jewish State) is also very easily verified via Resolutions (was created NOT by Jews but by a world body!), biblical passages, historical maps, THE VERY EXISTENCE OF THE WORLDS 3 MAIN MONOTHEISTIC RELIGIONS (Judaism, Christianity, Islam)
On June 2nd in a speech broadcast via telephone to a Palestinian rally in Gaza, Nasrallah called on the Palestinians to โfight the Zionists with stones, daggers, knives and bombs, expel them from the land, and make them return to whence they came...โ He urged Palestinians to undertake suicide bombings such as the one perpetrated at Beit Lid in Israel where 22 young Israelis were murdered. In this particularly savage attack, bombs exploded at timed intervals in order to kill those who rushed to help the first victims.
http://world.std.com/~camera/docs/oncamera/ochezb.html
Various other written sources
Be varied, check facts, dig deep, this conflict didn't start in 1948.
singx said:
Here is a report that explains some reasons why you see things on FOX news quite opposite to whats happening on ground...
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7828123714384920696
SingX, If you are going to post videos, you might as well be able to justify what you see as 'truth', Like I said above - why not do some verification (and/or answer to my clarifications in this and 'the other' thread)
There is no 'illegal occupation'
242 doesn't call for a return to 1967 lines, it calls for return to an agreed area WHEN A JUST AND LASTING PEACE IS ESTABLISHED. And as explained before, Israel CANNOT WITHDRAW as Egypt refuses to take back Gaza, Jordan refuses to take back Judea and Samaria (West Bank). There are some things open to interpretation but this is out of the Horses mouth. Jordan and Egypt have peace with Israel today. If one wants to talk about international precedents then they should begin with that (land gained in a defensive war... Then the nation gives up that land and makes peace... Does the land then not legally belong to the victor? And if not, how do you rectify almost every single nation, border in the world?!)
You have these ignorants, and tellers of half-truths who claim the conflict somehow started in 1948 without looking at the fact that the Arabs took 65-70% of historic Palestine in 1918. Furthermore, it makes this HILARIOUS NOTION that a Palestinian is an ethnicity. There is no record of a 'Palestinian' in the area, do not mistake Palestinian with Phillistine who were a non-Sematic sea-faring people originating from the Aegean Sea! There were Arab-Palestinians and Jewish-Palestinians, it simply refers to people living in an area that was part of the fallen Ottoman Empire. Again, this point is hard to argue against (if you can, go for it, I'm always open to being challenged) for doing so basically spits in the face of the worlds 3 main religions (Old Testament is clear about Judaism hold on area; New Testament: Jesus was a Jew, who led Jews in Israel; Quran: Mohammed fought/double-crossed Jews, in Kiber (sp?) among other areas)
In the video you have this reporter from Village Voice (why oh why is the Village Voice voicing on this issue at all?!) who says that there are checkpoints everywhere, that Olive Groves are bulldozed, the Palestinians live in poverty. It is all somewhat true, but lets get the complete picture (just live with REs. 242 who Pro-Pals love to cite even though they like to leave out the parts about PEACE Being a requisite):
Checkpoints: are necessary, and increased with every suicide bombing. As terror increases in USA and worldwide you will see checks and balances instituted there as well. Israel is threatened by this population, hence a few bad apples ruin it for everyone.
Say what you will, CHECKPOINTS WORK, and suicide bombings are thwarted ALL THE TIME. Suicide Bombing attempt have not stopped but its the checkpoints and Security Wall that are working... People like to say that Israel is punishing an entire population but its a great majority of the population that does nothing to rid their society of terror and cult of death. Its their society that elected Hamas, whose state goal it is to kill ALL JEWS and drive Israel into the Sea (see the Hamas Charter, no secret about it!)
As for Olive Groves - anyone who has walked the area knows which groves are bulldozed...AND WHY! These are thick barked trees that are used by terrorists to shoot at Israel. Should Israel keep letting its civilians and soldiers die because landowners let terrorists use their trees for cover?! It is very sad but the responsibility lies with the landowner, the terrorist and the impotent Palestinian Security Forces (who are made up of Fatah, an insidious terror group).
What would the USA do if Mexicans were using thick groves to take pot shots at border gaurds? please answer
As for poverty - this is an issue that has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH ISRAEL. The fact of the matter is that Palestinians, like much of the Arab/Persian World eschew a cult of Death. Those Palestinians that didn't leave Israel during the wars (most who left did so because the Arab Leaders of Jordan, Egypt, Syria told them to leave to make it easier to annex the Jewish population) were given full ISRAELI RIGHTS, they carry Israeli Passports, have ISraeli jobs, they have FULL VOTING RIGHTS, and because they make up
1 MILLION OF ISRAELS APPROX. 4 MILLION PEOPLE, they get Arabs, some of them Anti-Israel, voted into Israeli parliament! What other nation in the world allows this?!
Problem of poverty is because of their culture of death. Mothers ENCOURAGE THEIR SONS to strap on bombs and kill civilians. They then hand out sweets to the neighbours in celebration of the martyrdom operation (
again, this is no secret, one need only visit Jenin or Nablus after a bombing... Or look at the footage after 9/11 where they danced in the streets... These aren't an innocent population that wants to live in peace You have kids trading SUICIDE BOMBER TRADING CARDS, and pictures of HOMICIDE BOMBERS hanging in every corner and sometimes even in classrooms. As for their television & media, check the sources of Itamar Marcus, who was a minder of media under the Wye Accords (was to make sure neither Arabs nor Jews were spewing hate via Media, what he found is quite apparent, it is a site absolutely chock filled with incredibly scary stuff)
singx said:
This is only one issue, how dare they say "We report, You Decide" when the anchorpersons already add uneducated spices along with the news....
All news people, all people have some sort of bias. It's a fact of this species, we stereotype and generalize as shortcuts. There are psychological/physiological concepts related to this (I don't recall the name, I think sublimation, classification)
The test of fact, or test of intelligence is to debate your viewpoint. If you cannot then maybe its time to dig deeper, consider another viewpoint.
singx said:
Freelance journalists are often my cup of tea, from what it seems there are few daring people left there in the news media industry, they are good when new, but then get inclined to a certain point of view.
You call them daring but just because they are saying something different doesn't mean you should flock to them. Most of them are impotent when it comes to answering the tough questions (Partition of 1918; Balfour Declaration; the fact that every time Israel withdraws from an area, it gets MORE VIOLENCE)
To be anti-establishment is just another viewpoint, it doesn't imply truth.
People like Chomsky revel in a world that is ignorant to the facts (this is the Jew who made pro-Nazi remarks in the past). Again, unless one can debate the facts against the opposing viewpoints then it could be time to dig deeper, change viewpoints (this coming from a one time Marxist/Leninist - the more I learned, the more the arguments eventually became apparently weak... What was once fresh and new, became a rabble or rheotric, devoid of historical evidence or success)
