Peace agreement, Olmert's style (by Latuff)
Latuff | 05.12.2006 18:45 | Anti-militarism | Anti-racism | Repression | World
Copyleft artwork by Brazilian cartoonist Latuff, on behalf of the brave Palestinian people and their struggle against U.S. backed IsraHell's state terrorism.
Latuff
e-mail:
latuff@uninet.com.br
Homepage:
http://tales-of-iraq-war.blogspot.com
Comments
Hide the following 3 comments
Jews and Arabs can never live together, says Israel's vice PM
05.12.2006 22:01
Jews and Arabs can never live together, says Israel's vice PM
That Israelis haven't taken to the streets demanding this man be stripped of power is beyond me.
Jews and Arabs can never live together, says Israel's vice PM
By Harry de Quetteville in Jerusalem, The Sunday Telegraph
Last Updated: 12:13am GMT 05/11/2006
When Avigdor Lieberman, a populist Israeli politician frequently compared to Austria's Jörg Haider and France's Jean-Marie le Pen, proposed to bus thousands of Palestinians to the Dead Sea and drown them there, he was just a fringe member of government.
Avigdor Lieberman: 'Separation is the best solution'
That was three years ago. But last week the controversial nationalist joined the coalition government led by Ehud Olmert in a much more senior role, as vice prime minister with special responsibility for Israel's most pressing issue: the "threat" from Iran.
In his first interview since taking office – exclusively with The Sunday Telegraph – Mr Lieberman said that the best means of achieving peace in the Middle East would be for Jews and Arabs to live apart, including those Arabs who now live inside Israel.
Israel was on the "front line of a clash of civilisations between the free world and extremist Islam," he said.
On Iran, he said: "Every week, the president of Iran declares his intention to destroy us."
Mr Lieberman, 48, the leader of Yisrael Beitanu (Israel Our Home), who has previously urged Israel to bomb Teheran, said: "Iran is the base of an axis of evil which is a problem for all the world."
Mr Lieberman, whose addition to the coalition as "strategic threat" minister prompted the resignation of a cabinet colleague, also said that Israel's 1.25 million Arab minority was a "problem" which required "separation" from the Jewish state. "We established Israel as a Jewish country," he said. "I want to provide an Israel that is a Jewish, Zionist country. It's about what kind of country we want to see in the future. Either it will be an [ethnically mixed] country like any other, or it will continue as a Jewish country."
Ophir Pines-Paz, the former culture minister who resigned in protest, decried Mr Lieberman's politics as "racist", adding that the new vice prime-minister – a former bouncer who emigrated from the former Soviet republic of Moldova in 1978 – was himself "a strategic threat to Israel".
Beyond that, however, protest has been muted. There have been no mass demonstrations. Few voters or politicians seem scandalised as they were in 2003.
Analysts say the smooth appointment of a man recently considered an extremist -rabble-rouser is a sign of political radicalisation in Israel.
"After the summer war in Lebanon, many Israelis have moved to the Right," said Gideon Doron, professor of political science at Tel Aviv University. "They think security is bad and trust Palestinians and Arabs less. They don't believe in the possibility of peace through negotiations, so Lieberman has become the centre of a new consensus."
Mr Olmert has insisted that the addition of Israel Our Home to his coalition is tactical rather than political. It bolsters his majority in the Knesset to 78 out of 120 seats, allowing him a margin of security in a country known for its revolving-door governments.
But while Mr Olmert says Israel Our Home will not change government policy, it seems almost inconceivable that the prime minister's main election promise of withdrawing tens of thousands of Jewish settlers from the West Bank will be implemented with Mr Lieberman – himself a settler – in the cabinet.
Mr Lieberman, for one, has other ideas. He has no intention of withdrawing Jewish settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.
Instead, he wants to keep them while, "in return", redrawing Israel's border to eject thousands of Israeli Arabs from the country.
"Minorities are the biggest problem in the world," he said in his soft, Russian-accented English. Asked if Israeli citizens of Arab descent should be forced out through territorial redistribution, he said: "I think separation between two nations is the best solution. Cyprus is the best model. Before 1974, the Greeks and Turks lived together and there were frictions and bloodshed and terror.
"After 1974, they constituted all Turks on one part of the island, all Greeks on the other part of the island and there is stability and security."
When it was pointed out that in Cyprus thousands were forcibly driven from their homes, he replied: "Yes, but the final result was better."
Later, an aide to Mr Lieberman tried to flesh out his remarks. "Israeli Arabs don't have to go," he said. "But if they stay they have to take an oath of allegiance to Israel as a Jewish Zionist state."
Mr Lieberman does not explain how he plans to separate Jews and Arabs in Jerusalem, whose eastern half is home to several hundred thousand Palestinians but which Israel has annexed to form its "eternal and undivided capital". The aide said: "He will not compromise on Jerusalem."
Such hawkish, straightforward sentiments have made Mr Lieberman the most powerful new force in Israeli politics. Since he split with the Likud party and its leader, the former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to form his own party in 1999, he has in effect monopolised the votes of more than a million Russian immigrants. At elections earlier this year, Israel Our Home demolished Likud's traditional grip on the Right to win 11 seats.
Mr Lieberman insists that the world must unite against "an axis of evil led by Iran. Iran is the biggest threat. It's a problem for the whole world, but Israel really has a bad location. We are on the front line between the clash of civilisations between the free world and the extremist Islamic world."
His use of the phrase "clash of civilisations" is another example of what Mr Doron calls Mr Lieberman's "popular straight-talking". But there is one subject on which Mr Lieberman is uncharacteristically coy. When asked if he wants to lead the country one day, he smiled and said: "It's too early for that."
Jewish rabbi wants Palestinian males exterminated
Zionism, Irrelevant Within A Generation
You mention the jewish community in Iran ..
05.12.2006 23:48
'Jews in Iran are not allowed to communicate with Jewish groups outside of Iran unless the group is opposed to the existence of Israel, such as Neturei Karta.[citation needed] Rabbis from Neturei Karta frequently visit Iran.[15] [16][17] [18] [19]
Traveling to Israel is forbidden for all the citizens of Iran, mentioned very clearly on the last page of the passport, however according to Maurice Motamed in recent years, Iranian government has allowed the Jewish Iranians to visit their family members in Israel and that the government has also allowed those Iranians living in Israel to return to Iran for visit. [20]
Limited cultural contacts are also allowed, such as the March 2006 Jewish folk dance festival in Russia, in which a female team from Iran participated. [21][22]
At least 13 Jews have been executed in Iran since the Islamic revolution, most of them for either religious reasons or their connection to Israel. For example, in May 1998, Jewish businessman Ruhollah Kadkhodah-Zadeh was hanged in prison without a public charge or legal proceeding, apparently for assisting Jews to emigrate.'
Reading the last comment, it's not surprising they're the largest community - if they're not allowed to emigrate.
sceptic
Another account
06.12.2006 00:12
but also
Privately, there are grumbles about discrimination, much of it of a social or bureaucratic nature. Some complain it is impossible for Jews to get senior positions in Iran Air, the national airline, or in the national oil company. A woman teacher says she has been passed by for promotion several times because she is Jewish and now hopes to emigrate to Los Angeles. A car-parts dealer says Jews have to wait much longer for travel documents and exit visas.
Sceptic would probably argue that Palestinian muslims and christians are much luckier than Iranian Jews.
He'd be wrong.
Hedex Extra