This demolition is because the Israeli Parks Department is building a new visitors’ center on the Givati parking lot and will be called the Mercaz Kedem (Kedem Center). The building will be built on stilts and beneath it there will be an area where visitors can view recently discovered archeological findings. Before the plan was announced there was no so called 'children's playground' or 'cultural centre' both of which are temporary building thrown up by those seeking a confrontation with the Israeli authorities.

Of course the Jew hating moderators here will hide this comment as it contradicts their attempts to present only one side of the Israeli / Palestinian conflict.

How much longer will the world stand by and watch the Israelis destroy Palestinian society ? The sooner every Jew is driven out of Palestine and the land returned to the people who own it the better. The Zionists running the country are mostly Russian and Polish anyway - let them return home to Europe.

Is this what is known as "hasbarah"? (both this comment and the supposed follow-up by "Viva Palestine")

Which part of the post from 'Fact Giver' was incorrect ?

15 years of work fighting for Palestine and now I'm part of the hasbarah !!!!!

You're out of your mind and I stand by my comments. Palestine is the land of Palestinians, the only claim the Jews have to it are some vague disputed references in a bigoted religious book written thousands of years ago.

A common misperception is that the Jews were forced into the diaspora by the Romans after the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in the year 70 A.D. and then, 1,800 years later, suddenly returned to Palestine demanding their country back. In reality, the Jewish people have maintained ties to their historic homeland for more than 3,700 years. A national language and a distinct civilization have been maintained.

The Jewish people base their claim to the land of Israel on at least four premises: 1) God promised the land to the patriarch Abraham; 2) the Jewish people settled and developed the land; 3) the international community granted political sovereignty in Palestine to the Jewish people and 4) the territory was captured in defensive wars.

The term "Palestine" is believed to be derived from the Philistines, an Aegean people who, in the 12th Century B.C., settled along the Mediterranean coastal plain of what is now Israel and the Gaza Strip. In the second century A.D., after crushing the last Jewish revolt, the Romans first applied the name Palaestina to Judea (the southern portion of what is now called the West Bank) in an attempt to minimize Jewish identification with the land of Israel. The Arabic word "Filastin" is derived from this Latin name.

The Twelve Tribes of Israel formed the first constitutional monarchy in Palestine about 1000 B.C. The second king, David, first made Jerusalem the nation's capital. Although eventually Palestine was split into two separate kingdoms, Jewish independence there lasted for 212 years. This is almost as long as Americans have enjoyed independence in what has become known as the United States.

Even after the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem and the beginning of the exile, Jewish life in Palestine continued and often flourished. Large communities were reestablished in Jerusalem and Tiberias by the ninth century. In the 11th century, Jewish communities grew in Rafah, Gaza, Ashkelon, Jaffa and Caesarea.

Many Jews were massacred by the Crusaders during the 12th century, but the community rebounded in the next two centuries as large numbers of rabbis and Jewish pilgrims immigrated to Jerusalem and the Galilee. Prominent rabbis established communities in Safed, Jerusalem and elsewhere during the next 300 years. By the early 19th century-years before the birth of the modern Zionist movement-more than 10,000 Jews lived throughout what is today Israel.

When Jews began to immigrate to Palestine in large numbers in 1882, fewer than 250,000 Arabs lived there, and the majority of them had arrived in recent decades. Palestine was never an exclusively Arab country, although Arabic gradually became the language of most the population after the Muslim invasions of the seventh century. No independent Arab or Palestinian state ever existed in Palestine. When the distinguished Arab-American historian, Princeton University Prof. Philip Hitti, testified against partition before the Anglo-American Committee in 1946, he said: "There is no such thing as 'Palestine' in history, absolutely not." In fact, Palestine is never explicitly mentioned in the Koran, rather it is called "the holy land" (al-Arad al-Muqaddash).

Prior to partition, Palestinian Arabs did not view themselves as having a separate identity. When the First Congress of Muslim-Christian Associations met in Jerusalem in February 1919 to choose Palestinian representatives for the Paris Peace Conference, the following resolution was adopted:

""We consider Palestine as part of Arab Syria, as it has never been separated from it at any time. We are connected with it by national, religious, linguistic, natural, economic and geographical bonds.""

In 1937, a local Arab leader, Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi, told the Peel Commission, which ultimately suggested the partition of Palestine: "There is no such country [as Palestine]! 'Palestine' is a term the Zionists invented! There is no Palestine in the Bible. Our country was for centuries part of Syria."

The representative of the Arab Higher Committee to the United Nations submitted a statement to the General Assembly in May 1947 that said "Palestine was part of the Province of Syria" and that, "politically, the Arabs of Palestine were not independent in the sense of forming a separate political entity." A few years later, Ahmed Shuqeiri, later the chairman of the PLO, told the Security Council: "It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but southern Syria."

Palestinian Arab nationalism is largely a post-World War I phenomenon that did not become a significant political movement until after the 1967 Six-Day War and Israel's capture of the West Bank.

Israel's international "birth certificate" was validated by the promise of the Bible; uninterrupted Jewish settlement from the time of Joshua onward; the Balfour Declaration of 1917; the League of Nations Mandate, which incorporated the Balfour Declaration; the United Nations partition resolution of 1947; Israel's admission to the UN in 1949; the recognition of Israel by most other states; and, most of all, the society created by Israel's people in decades of thriving, dynamic national existence.

The Palestinians are a people, a race and a country. The sooner the Jews leave their country the better.

Very anti-jew comments on here

---"A common misperception is that the Jews were forced into the diaspora by the Romans after the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in the year 70 A.D. and then, 1,800 years later, suddenly returned to Palestine demanding their country back. In reality, the Jewish people have maintained ties to their historic homeland for more than 3,700 years. A national language and a distinct civilization have been maintained."---

No misconception here.

The majority of Jews in Israel now are of European descent and have no biological, ethnic or historical link to that region. They continually attempt to maintain that the land is their's because God says so! When challanged, they simply repeat what has become a national mantra, Get off my land. It was never their land to start with. The Israeli identity is false through and through. There are Arab jews certainly but they are in a very small minority. The European jews trade on their identity and regularly use that identity to associate their own nationalism with.

---"The Jewish people base their claim to the land of Israel on at least four premises: 1) God promised the land to the patriarch Abraham; 2) the Jewish people settled and developed the land; 3) the international community granted political sovereignty in Palestine to the Jewish people and 4) the territory was captured in defensive wars."---

Who's God? The current jewish horde of European's displaced after the second world war settled and developed the land by buying up old deeds and then simply 'occupying' the adjacent plots to make room for the large numbers of Diaspora Jews which had been encouraged to flood in which political Zionism was formulated to facilitate. That process has been ongoing for the last 60 years. What you have is simply a group of religious political nationalists attempting to displace a sitting ethnicity and creating all sorts of garbage to justify the policy. This is why so much of what comes out of Israel from a political point of view is so laboured and tinged with desperation. Its little more than nationalist rhetoric.

---"Israel's international "birth certificate" was validated by the promise of the Bible; uninterrupted Jewish settlement from the time of Joshua onward; the Balfour Declaration of 1917; the League of Nations Mandate, which incorporated the Balfour Declaration; the United Nations partition resolution of 1947; Israel's admission to the UN in 1949; the recognition of Israel by most other states; and, most of all, the society created by Israel's people in decades of thriving, dynamic national existence."---

Another world. The entire Palestine issue has been kicked around for decades by one political credo after another, on every occasion because other, larger, political games have been afoot. It is impossible to determine the facts of a situation in precise terms when those terms are determined by the wider geo-political game that defines and characterises those nations who take part. This is something the Zionist movement have concentrated on; the relationship between nations and how those relationships change over time. In every arena in which the Palestine issue has currency, some political organistion will come along and try to use it for effect, to motivate their own political position. And the Zionist lobby will be sitting in the background, plotting its next move.

Israel has expended large scale resources on trying to demonise the Palestinians and has done more than any nation on earth to associate the ethnic identity of Muslims with terrorism in an attempt to negotiate themselves into a situation in which they can further their nationalist agenda. There is no arena they will not attempt to exploit in service to that agenda. They do this because deep down, the European Jews know with every atom of their souls, that the Israeli state is illegitimate. And that 'illegitimacy' appears to the rest of the world as self doubt, a sense that they are 'trying too hard' and 'going too far'. Amongst the family of nations, conduct is determined by what you have, not what you would like to have. Without a legitimate claim, the Israeli's have no pole around which they can rotate policy.

Israel is a terrorist state built on the blood of the ethnicity of that which it is attempting to replace. It is a magpie nation with the slimmest slither of historical linkage to the region it is attempting to co-opt. Its senior and most trusted political leaders are, to a man, to a woman, formerly identified leaders of terrorist gangs. They have killed, indiscriminately, British service personel in the pursuit of their 'religious agenda'. Their stocking trade was terrorism and the pursuit of terrorism. Many will say it still is! At every opportunity, they will claim they have an ethnic link to that land, or a cultural link to it.

To be jewish is to follow a religion...it does not lend you an ethnicity.

Time and time again on Indymedia we see the demented rantings of the Zionist lobby trying to explain over and over again, why black is white, and white is black. Time and time again we see them fishing for an angle in order to build a posture against muslims, against HAMAS, against Hezbollah, against the left, against the right; against anyone or anything that will help push the Zionist cause along by yet another inch.

In this world of nation building, you get by by making enemies and you make your enemies in small pieces. And when you have made your enemies, you then 'postulate' against them in order to keep your own ranks intact for the next big push.

By such methods...are villainous regimes built.

"The sooner the Jews leave their country the better."

As a matter of interest, where do you think they should go?

I suspect viva palestina is a troll pretending to be pro palestinian
saying offensive things so as to gain sympathy for the zionist cause etc.
I have many friends in both Israel and Palestine territories, and there are people working to connect the communities, with plenty of success (you just don't hear much about it).
The real conflict is between rich and poor as usual, but you don't hear much about that either.
The only way out of the mess is for one state to be formed of Israel plus west bank and gaza, where everyone has equal rights (equal rights.... I know, I'm an optimist!).
Fact giver also is clearly some sort of troll who is keen to mislead.
I have jewish ancestry, gypsy too, and I have dabbled with various forms of left wing or even wingless politics. I have also at times been somewhat gay. But I don't go on about it, nor do I think it entitles me to a piece of desert, which incidentally wasn't a desert until recently, since biblical times the holy land has declined from lush forest to barren desert, and it is because of the endless conflict between different groups of people, jews, christians muslims who all worship yahweh (a local god of violence) and who is apparently a man, therefore must have a penis.
To those people I ask, why does your god need a penis?
I sincerely mean no offense by that, but I must insist that you ask yourselves.
ok so maybe it just isn't true.
That doesn't mean you cant use a faith to find some inner peace, harmony truth whatever you want to call it........ but please STOP TAKING RELIGION LITERALLY.
Fact giver was right to point out the continued presence of jews in the holy land, but these people were living in relative harmony with other faiths by the time the zionist movement came along. The temple of abraham in hebron was shared and communites lived side by side. There were numerous written pleas from jews in the holy land to the zionists to try to stop them from creating a jewish state. Serious jews (most israelis are not that religious, it is a secular society) do not believe that the holy land should be taken by force, they are exempt from national service. Giving the extraordinary situation of having the religious minority of a nation looking like the most reasonable people there!
That said I believe palestinian nationalism is no more of a good idea than any other kind of nationalism, and palestinian politics is dominated by a small number of wealthy and violent men (optional beards) the irony is that the jewish elite and the palestinian elite would probably get on quite well, and so would the israeli poor with the palestinian poor, at least they would have a better football team to cheer on!
Quite a lot of palestinians really dont give a monkeys about religion and the same can be said of israelis. Usually the young palestinians will keep up some sort of pretense to their elders that they are observant, but they actually are not, they just cant admit it to their families. Things are changing! Both israel and palestine have relatively young populations.
I AM AN OPTIMIST!
if everyone was an optimist then we'd pro'bly be alright
!

Back to Europe and the former Soviet countries of course. The majority of the Jews in Israel are of European stock with perhaps 30% from the former Soviet Union.

The idea that groups of Jews and Palestinians are somehow all friends under the surface is laughable. You clearly have never been to Palestine, the hatred is like a living thing in the country, from the sneers that the police give to any Palestinians they see to the taunts and insults that the Jewish extremist settlers shout toward their neighbors.

There will be conflict in Palestine up to the day the Jews leave, America has the money to fund the Israeli war and repression machine, it should use that money to cover the costs of relocating the Jews to their own countries and finally solve the conflict in the region once and for all.

That's a phrase familiar from somewhere. Can we do the same in Britain?

"The sooner every Jew is driven out of Palestine"

"The Zionists running the country are mostly Russian and Polish anyway - let them return home to Europe."

"the only claim the Jews have to it are some vague disputed references in a *bigoted* religious book written thousands of years ago."

Either you are very confused with no sense of irony, or as I suspect, you are a pro-Zionist hasbarah troll.

I would wipe my arse on both the Koran and the Torah (and the Bible too for that matter) but the sooner we get rid of religion and let people live where they want, the better.

So now I am a " pro-Zionist hasbarah troll. " Very funny.

Unlike some people who work for Palestinian liberation I am not afraid to call it like it is. The cause of the conflict in Palestine is the Jews and until Palestine is once again free of them that conflict will remain. The Jewish population in Palestine is almost entirely an immigrant one and their return to their countries of origin is quite simply the minimum required to ensure peace in the region.

The Americans have a moral responsibility to pay the costs of their resettlement because of the financial support they have provided since 1948 that has prolonged the conflict there.

'Viva Palestine" - Although I agree with you that the cause of the present war in Israel / Palestine is the Jewish occupation of land that isn't theirs to expect them all to leave is at best unrealistic. US presidents have their election support linked to Jewish groups that are 100% supportive of Israel, Zionist Israeli supporters control the Western banks and much of the media is Jewish run. Because of all of this the wider public simply does not know the truth about Israel and so will not support the change.

@ Fact Giver, are you sure? I think Fact Hater would suit you better

We had the same problem in Europe but we had a Final Solution to that. It seems to me you are keen on the same ideas and tactics.