Rubo

Question to Ali and others Dear Ali, it is becoming too obvious that Turkey does not support a war on Iraq-Kurdish and economical factors. How do you think Israeli strong beyond the scenes lobbing in support of war on Iraq reflect Turkey’s new found love relationship with Israel. Are the Turks simply becoming minarets to US and Israeli whishes or it has an identity on its own and willing to think independently. I genuinely like to know your take on this. Alla sorry for overriding your thread

] but the consequences of chaos - of letting these very disruptive and nasty tyrants to have their way - is just unacceptable. [/bDear Thoth was it acceptable to US when the very same nasty tyrant was gassing his own people to death and we did nothing! The answer is Sadam was on CIA payroll then fighting the Iranians. Granted the US (and other western nations) should be doing much more (understatement) to explore and transition to alternative energies (alternative to oil) - and this is a severe shortcomming of policy/insight - IMO. But in the meanwhile - our Western economies (and the world economy) would essentially collapse if the supply was seriously disrupted (its like the Spice in Dune). And I would guesss that there would be untold human misery resulting form this - but who knows - maybe it would do us all some good....but are you willing to sacrifice...and for your children and theirs to also not live with the comforts etc that we are used to today...somehow I think not. You are detracted on this one. World oil supplies are in firm secure Uncle Sam hands. The threat was eliminated during the gulf war. But back to this idea of considering the human element. Though it may not seem - from the rhetoric - I assure you that the human suffering is factored (perhaps not as much as it ideally should be - but much more than you might imagine)...I mean look even at the recent campaign in Afghanistan - Most likely, the United States would eventually be victorious in a war against Iraq, but it would come at an enormous cost. It would be a mistake, for example, to think that defeating Iraq would result in as few Americans casualties as occurred in driving the Taliban militia from Kabul. Though Iraq’s offensive capabilities have been severely weakened by the bombings, its defensive military capabilities are still strong. Nor would a military victory today be as easy as during the Gulf War. Prior to the launching of Operation Desert Storm, when the Iraqis figured out the extent of the forces being deployed against them, they decided not to put up a fight for Kuwait and relied mostly on young conscripts from minority communities. Only two of the eight divisions of the elite Republican Guard were ever in Kuwait, and they pulled back before the war began in mid-January. The vast majority of Iraq’s strongest forces were withdrawn to areas around Baghdad to fight for the survival of the regime itself, and they remain there to this day. In the event of war, defections from these units are not likely. There are close to one million members of the Iraqi elite who have a vested interest in the regime’s survival. These include the Baath Party leadership and its supporters, security and intelligence personnel, and core elements of the armed forces and their extended families. Furthermore, Iraq—a largely urban society—has a far more sophisticated infrastructure than does the largely rural and tribal Afghanistan that could be mobilized in the event of a foreign invasion. Nor is there an equivalent to Afghanistan’s Northern Alliance, which did the bulk of the ground fighting against the Taliban. The Kurds, after being abandoned twice in recent history by the United States, are unlikely to fight beyond securing autonomy for Kurdish areas. The armed Shiite opposition has largely been eliminated, and it too would be unlikely to fight beyond liberating the majority Shiite sections of southern Iraq. The U.S. would be reluctant to support either, given that their successes could potentially fragment the country and would encourage both rebellious Kurds in southeastern Turkey and restive Shiites in northeastern Saudi Arabia. U.S. forces would have to march on Baghdad, a city of over five million people, virtually alone. Unlike the Gulf War, which involved conventional and open combat where U.S. forces could excel and take full advantage of their firepower and technological superiority, U.S. soldiers would have to fight their way through heavily populated agricultural and urban lands. Invading forces would be faced with bitter, house-to-house fighting in a country larger than South Vietnam. Iraqis, who may have had little stomach to fight to maintain their country’s conquest of Kuwait, would be far more willing to sacrifice themselves to resist a foreign, Western invader. To minimize American casualties in the face of such stiff resistance, which would largely come from within crowded urban areas, the United States would likely engage in heavy bombing of Iraqi residential neighborhoods, resulting in very high civilian casualties. Regards

To Thoth and others Human worth and American paradigms American attitudes towards human worth are equitable of what profession you choose to pursue and how much material advantage you are accumulating. I will bring a personal example to illustrate my point. My father had a severe accident at work many years ego working as a machinist and he almost lost his arm. His work compensation was pittance few thousand dollars and had my father been a lawyer, a doctor, an engineer, a banker his compensation would have been in hundred thousands. My father often repaired or worked on airplane parts and his quality of work was responsible for thousands of lives saved due to defect free airplane. My father was no less of a human being but the occupation paradigms that society placed on him determined his worth. I am an artist therefore in American society I am often referred as “liberal” worthless entity. This is the heart of the arrogance Americans display to the world. We say Panamanians, Guatemalans, Mexicans, Chinese, Indians, Turks, Armenians, Iraqis, Palestinians in short all third world countries are like my father worthless and do deserve to be exploited and when needed to kill as a collateral damage. It is imperative to understand the reality as organic whole instead of subdivided elitists club.

Dear Thoth and Azat Jest of what I am saying can be summarized as this. Human lives should not be looked upon as a disposable commodity and human rights should and must not mean only selectively applied by developed nations to advance their cause. I am yet to read an argument in American papers about “collateral damage” innocent lives lost in possible Iraqi invasion. Ironically what is disturbing that instead of being introspective, analyzing the cause of American hatred and rectifying or lessening the hatred the American public it seems are craving for more blood. Basic empathy is the concept of putting one’s self in the place of the other. I know you have kids and suppose you were born as an Iraqi working in Baghdad as a civilian and your family was wiped out due to “collateral damage”. Think about this don’t rush to answer. How would you feel about imperialism, reckless disregard to human lives? Does the end justify the means? Regards

I respect that fact that the decisions to bomb these cities were made with deliberate calculation in order - in part - to save lives and end a war that had gone on well long enough. Thoth the “deliberate calculations” were made but to what end and porpose you will never know therfore it is a unwarranted assumption. The fallacies of presumption also fail to provide adequate reason for believing the truth of their conclusions. In this instance, however, your erroneous reasoning results from an implicit supposition of some further proposition whose truth is uncertain or implausible. Regards

I respect that fact that the decisions to bomb these cities were made with deliberate calculation in order - in part - to save lives and end a war that had gone on well long enough. Aren’t you suckered to believe high school textbook propaganda? Americans were more interested scaring the crap out of the Russians. Cold war had already begun. There was no military merit in dropping the bombs moreover fire bombing the city of Dresden had also no military value. Your statement that bombs were dropped to save lives is preposterous. How is killing thousands of innocent civilians with most torturous barbaric way constitute saving lives. I get it you mean few American soldiers lives? You mean Japanese civilians were paper cut outs.

Dear Thuth Your example of comparing Scotland to America is ridicules, really, is there any country on this planet that can be compared to US? Tigrannes was simply trying to say the obvious that 9/11 is a recoiled effect from American policies. Most Americans 80% of the consumer dead beats are total morons when it comes to understanding that our very wealth, our very vain habits such as driving SUV tanks on the streets have price!! It is called the Marshal plan, globalization! New Markets! Spread of democracy! All selectively applied to benefit American stock investments! HELLO whom are we kidding? Are these morons don’t understand that oil has a human price as well! Thousands of Iraqi children dead! Palestinians reduced to begging level? Supporting Turkey wiping out the Kurdish villages with American made weapons, Overlooking Israeli gross human rights violations not mention AG denial policy, Overlooking International LAND mine treaties, refusing to oblige environmental laws! Consuming 25% of the earth resources and pretending nothing is happening to the planet? Yes Americans do piss off lot of people for precisely for their ignorance.

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Jews in my formative years knew I was Armenia and treated me very well. No Jew was EVER vicious to me as were my fellow Armenians in my young adulthood. Armenians EVEN came up to me and stated that I looked rich and Jewish, neither of which was the case. My own Aunt, an Armenian (Vanetzi), claimed that I was trying to be a Mark Spitz look-alike and stuffed fresh mint down my shirt. When I dated the daughter of a famous Armenian I was hated by my own people. Never did a Jew ever treat me poorly until I moved to Los Angeles. I apologize to forum members. One last time: I am sure just about every Armenian in this forum had a nasty or bad experience with fellow Armenians including my brother and myself (growing up in “charbagh” was not easy) but here one must pause to be objective. Generalizing an entire people based on personal experience is the very biases I am referring. Jews were nice to you because they knew you were not one of them but among themselves they are very vicious. Death threats, personal harassing calls to Jews who do support the Palestinians or at least are objective, by fellow Jews is very common. Excerpt from Robert Fisk A Strange Kind of Freedom Inside the First Congregational Church of Berkeley, the Californian audience had been struck silent. Dennis Bernstein, the Jewish host of KPFA Radio's Flashpoint current affairs program, was reading some recent e-mails that he had received from Israel's supporters in America. Each one left the people in the church – Muslims, Jews, Christians – in a state of shock. "You mother-****ing-*******-self-hating Jewish piece of shit. Hitler killed the wrong Jews. He should have killed your parents, so a piece of Jewish shit like you would not have been born. God willing, Arab terrorists will cut you to pieces Daniel Pearl-style, AMEN!!!" Bernstein's sin was to have covered the story of Israel's invasion of Jenin in April and to have interviewed journalists who investigated the killings that took place there – including Phil Reeves and Justin Huggler of The Independent – for his Flashpoint program Bernstein's grandfather was a revered Orthodox Rabbi of international prominence but neither his family history nor his origins spared him. "Read this and weep, you mother-****er self-hating Jew boy!!!" another e-mail told Bernstein. "God willing a Palestinian will murder you, rape your wife and slash your kids' throats." Yet another: "I hope that you, Barbara Lubin and all other Jewish Marxist Communist traitors anti-American cop haters will die a violent and cruel death just like the victims of suicide bombers in Israel." Lubin is also Jewish, the executive director of the Middle East Children's Alliance, a one-time committed Zionist but now one of Israel's fiercest critics. Her e-mails are even worse. (How you think Hagarag Mr. Bernstein and Lubin feel about their kin?) Every race to some extend is harsh on their own people for obvious reasons. I spank my own children but never others. My point is that you must allow healthy distance from your personal experiences in order to develop impartiality. In short Armenians are no different then anybody else and to cling to “victimizations” is to miss the bigger picture.

The obvious fact is that you are soft logically. You let your family sentimental ties to Jews cloud your reasoning. Every Armenian has a connection to genocide and you are no exception.

HagaragAs a historian Wow Hagarag! Perhaps you should take logic courses on biases and inductive, deductive, objective, non objective differentiations and then may be when you do look in the mirror you don’t see a Jewish reflection but Armenian. “Historian” with twisted sense of logic is nothing more than a prostitute out to get self-satisfaction! To tell you the truth Armenians are better then any Jewish whatever. You got that right, I am proud to my bones to be Armenian and under no circumstance would I place the Jew before an Armenian. Cheers! and you got no credibility talking about the genocide!!! Take it as a gut expression no harm intended.

Let us raise ourselves to higher ground where the air is purer and the vision is larger. From this vintage point of view Ali’s views or ours are totally irrelevant. What is really relevant is the wall street and its powerful bulldog jaw crashing politics in the name of “new world order” or better yet “globalization”. Who really cares about our little feuds, but us, thinking somehow the world revolves around us. Lades and gentleman we are nothing more then “new markets” to be exploited soon or later and the best Turks and Armenians can do is how best to play the game so as not to become slave to bankers. If the Turks had any intelligence (does not apply all) then they would solve the cypress problem, open borders with Armenia and become a EU member as soon as possible but wait “you guys” actually believe you can bully Greece, Armenia crap on international law and be accepted as a civilized European member country? This does not seem probable every time I see Turkish politicians punching each other in parliament. Strangely as an Armenian, Turkish politicians punching each other reminds me of the genocide. Go figure!

Sip jan,on a different note don’t you find most Japanese electronic manuals to be moronic? Japanese are great at many things but understanding English is not one of them. You are better off not reading the manual. They should stick with pictures! I bought a Casio 4pix digi camera and read the manual at least fifty times and still don’t understand it. I heard that Japanese subcontract their products to cheaper countries such as china or Philippines. I won’t be surprised if some Chinese answers the phone… Yea, yeo, me do camera mannualls. Me are very good in English ,Chin younooong stop looking at the diKshinary,put that playboy away will ya chin ,or you will get spanking with chopsticks.

quote:Originally posted by Arpa:, Dear Ali Arpa jan, am waiting for the dramatic punch line!What a build up!

Azat I hope you are not a Bush fan Why doesn't Osama bin Laden have sex with his five wives? Because every time he spreads their legs he sees Bush. What do Armenians call a Stupid President? Abush I guess I am releasing some tension since I am totally OD on 9/11. Please guys don’t turn the tube on, it will bite you!

I guess this one is for the horny ones...Azat?Sip?Harut? Her u tgha anapatov sovats tsarav gnum en, her@ asuma "tgas dematsners inch ga pete utenk". Mekel dematsits motenuma me hat bikini ov geghetsik agchik. tgen asuma "huh pap utenk" che tges eran ktanenk mamain kutenk. Mamanerin nereghutiun

Your knowledge of Arabic websites and your easy understanding of Arabic shows that your perceptipns are more that of an Arab than an Armenian. My being raised among Jews gives me more of a Jewish perspective. BUT, we are both Armenians. I was married to a Lebanese Armenian. I KNOW exactly how you Araba-Hyes think. Dear Hagarag, How about just human perspective! Does understanding any conflict require biases on either side? Unfortunately your views are heavily biased against Armenians. You don’t like or loath republican Armenians but you fail to see the organic whole but you rather generalize from the margins as though you talk about the whole. It is peculiar that for whatever reasons your loyalty at least intellectually is more Jewish then Armenian. If in doubt please reread your statements. I showing great civility toward you since I do not believe alienating people is productive but Hagarag you are alienating yourself from being an Armenian.

Hovsep jan,which one do you recommend or which one is most objective

Dr. Nancy Snow spent two years working within the ranks of America’s official propaganda organ, the United States Information Agency, and then surgically exposed the inner workings of the organization in her acclaimed publication, Propaganda Inc. Fascinating article if interested the full version http://www.guerrillanews.com/counter_intel..._inc/index.html When you hear terms like ‘democracy’, ‘peaceful co-existence’, and ‘diversity’ — these are coded terms for, really, promoting commercial interests and a consumer-driven culture. That should concern us a bit because the more that we are appealed to as consumers, the less we are appealed to as citizens… the less sense of knowledge and understanding we have as citizen agitators. And it’s important, really, to be agitators within a free and open society. If that’s what we are. But when we hear about promoting the American way of life, you need to understand that in a political-economic context. It’s really more about promoting the notion that official sources have of power… and promoting what the official sources of that economic power say. Because economic power is private power. Economic power is also the State, the government, working in concert, in a healthy marriage, with private power. So the government really acts as a shadow to private power. Now, what is private power? Private power would be the very, very top levels of the multi-national corporations that are really promoting, now, a commercial culture of people, not working truly independently, but for conglomerates. That is, a way of life that is really getting away from ownership at the grass-roots level and giving up ownership, giving up power to incredibly concentrated avenues of power that are really more totalitarian than they are democratic. The conundrum for us in the United States is that we are socialized to believe that we are truly free, that we are truly democratic. And all I would say is: ‘Well, let’s look at how we actually get elected officials into office. There is an incredible amount of money that goes into that system where you really, practically, either have to be a millionaire or have to have a whole list of millionaires to even think about running for so-called public office. So we have a very, very concentrated private source for our public officials. Which means that it’s basically a farce. We don’t have a true democracy, we don’t really have a truly representative form of government. We have elites who showcase themselves as really representing the people but these are very, very well-connected business people, for the most part, lawyers… the elites whom the U.S government would target, in a propaganda sense, in other countries. And they are always public officials when they are running for office. But once they are in and they are doing their fund-raising, it’s very clear that they are operating in a network that is very limited and, really, is closed off to the rest of us out here. And I’m referring to the 80% or so of the masses, the 3/4 of us — if not more, maybe 90% - who are really not involved in the decision-making process of our political economy, of our legislation and government. Who are really, sort of, left to join a few very limited public interest groups that have limited power, that are under-funded and whose message is diluted and is not really disseminated, like a good propaganda campaign, to the rest of country to really and truly empower people at the grass roots. Let me ask you this then: do you think that people in other countries are aware of the farce — as you call it — of American democracy? Of the reality… of the system and the way that it operates? More so than the majority of the people here? And, secondly, do you think that there is a cynicism developing outside of our borders… one that has become so dispassionate that some foreign nationals may even feel a sense of vindication for what happened on September 11? Because they have seen how our total sense of political apathy has led to harm being inflicted on their own people, as a result of U.S. foreign policy? Well, I think that 9-11, as a point of reference, was, to many Americans — I heard it often said - it was a loss of our innocence. And I really thought, when I woke up to the news that day, that it was chickens coming home to roost. It was a wake up call. And that wake up call is that we need, again, to know how the world understands us, views us. And I do believe that growing up in countries that are on the receiving end of American business interests, of American military interests, of American commercial interests… even led by multi-nationals, which are nevertheless, perhaps, U.S.-based — there is no question that when you are on the receiving end of that kind of influence, that you are probably going to have a better understanding of the incredible power that is concentrated in that country. And you’re probably going to question, ‘how did that come about?’ And you may, because of your geography, be surrounded by countries and citizens of those countries who are questioning that, just as you are. It is a position, again, for many countries in the world who just don’t have the kind of concentrated power that the United States has, that really forces people to begin to question that. It’s amazing to me, when you think about the United States… if indeed we are as we say we are, this superpower, then why is our international coverage so limited and why are so many of our U.S.-based media nothing but cheerleaders for the institutions of power — both government and private power — of the United States? Why are they not — as our ‘perception managers’, which, really, reporters are — why are they not questioning and critiquing and really holding the government/private power marriage accountable for its consequences in the world? Well, they’re not doing that because the U.S. media work in concert, they are the offspring of this government/private power marriage. And so they act, really, more as official spokespeople for the ‘official’ sources of their information. Most of the talking heads on television, the bulk of those people are really representing the interests of the political establishment in Washington and the financial establishment in New York. They are not representing, really, the concerns and considerations of the majority of the American people. And there is nothing conspiratorial about that. That’s the natural way of doing business. That’s the way that it has always been for the United States. And when you make the point about hypocrisy… you know, on the one hand, we think of ourselves as a good country, as a good people. But then on the other hand, many people in the world are also saying, ‘Yes, but you also do a lot of harm.’ So what do you guys think about democracy and propaganda?

sorry guys for the mess up.You can tell I am no programer

] Injustices? I wonder if those poor bastard Boznians felt the same way when the Christians Serbs marched into their villages and systematically started irradicating them 100 by 100. [/bSip jan, excuse me of taking a slight turn but this article shows some of the biases we hear on the news during yogo crises and Milosevic indictment. One of my closest friends is a Serb musician and he gave me a raw footage to watch about Croatians butchering the Krajina Serbs but sadly in the west this was not “news” since the Serbs were the “aggressors” Some background on the break up of Yugoslavia would help. Serbs did not start the war but Croatia’s declaration of separation ignited the Yugoslavian war with much encouragement from German government. Croatians Ustas fascists killed six million Serbs during ww2. My point is, if you only listen or read Washington press releases and major networks you will have an extremely limited perspective. The Milosevic Indictment By Stephen R. Shalom Following World War II, a war crimes tribunal was held in Tokyo to try Japanese political and military leaders. There is no doubt that the defendants were responsible for appalling atrocities, but, as the Indian judge on the tribunal wrote in his dissenting opinion, the victorious allies had themselves committed grave crimes, and the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the most horrific war crimes of the Pacific War. But only the atrocities committed by the Japanese were punished. In short, the war crimes trial represented "victors' justice." In recent years there has been an effort to establish an International Criminal Court, a body that could prosecute serious crimes against humanity no matter who committed them. In multilateral talks, the United States did its best to weaken the authority of such a Court, and then in 1998 was one of only seven countries -- along with Libya, Iraq, and Israel -- to vote against its establishment, while 120 nations voted yes. Washington was determined to make sure that it would never be subject to the rule of law. Earlier the UN Security Council set up two specialized war crimes tribunals, one dealing with Yugoslavia (set up in 1993) and one with Rwanda (set up in 1994). These received Security Council backing because they were framed in such a way as to make powerful states blameless. The enabling resolution for the Rwanda tribunal, for example, was worded so that French citizens who shipped arms to the killers in Rwanda and the French government could not be prosecuted. Over the past six years, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia has indicted some 84 individuals for war crimes. But because the Tribunal is dependent on others to provide it with evidence, not all those who have committed serious atrocities have been indicted. In particular, the Croatian military leaders responsible for Operation Storm, in which two hundred thousand Serbs in the Krajina region of Croatia were ethnically cleansed -- driven out, with many attendant killings -- have not been indicted, in large part because the United States, which aided the operation, has refused to provide the necessary evidence. The Tribunal has now indicted Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and four other Yugoslav officials. There is no doubt that Milosevic is guilty of gross violations of humanitarian law. (I don't know enough about the inner workings of the Yugoslav government to comment on the culpability of the other four, but their positions suggest that they are guilty as well.) But two questions still remain. First, is this still "victors' justice"? And, second, what is the significance of the timing of the indictments? The Tribunal was set up by the Security Council, and the judges were chosen by the General Assembly from a list prepared by the Security Council. So far, only one judge of the 14 on the Tribunal has passed any judgment, the one who approved the prosecutor's indictment. The prosecutor is chosen by the Security Council on the nomination of the Secretary-General. That the Security Council has any role here -- rather than the General Assembly alone -- is undemocratic (because the Council represents and gives the right of veto to the powerful), but it's fair to say that the Tribunal is not simply a pawn of the United States. Nevertheless, there are two respects in which the Tribunal does not represent objective justice. · First, by being restricted to violations of humanitarian law in the former Yugoslavia, some of the worst atrocities in the world are ignored. Thus, U.S.-led sanctions against Iraq that have taken such a tremendous human toll are immune from criticism, as are massacres in Turkey , East Timor, and elsewhere. · Second, even focusing on current events in Yugoslavia, Milosevic's are not the only atrocities that warrant condemnation. NATO is now openly targeting the civilian infrastructure of Serbia, a war crime. In early April, Human Rights Watch warned NATO to take care to minimize civilian casualties, but the only change in NATO policy has been to further remove bombing restrictions. And the United States is using cluster bombs which, as Human Rights Watch has noted, are especially hazardous to civilians and refugees, spreading deadly bomblets that are lethal for years to come (children are particularly drawn to the volatile live remnants). It is rather odd to indict Milosevic and company for four hundred odd killings and to remain silent about the several thousand civilian deaths from NATO bombing -- most not intentional, to be sure, but showing reckless disregard for non-combatant casualties.

Dear Nairi, Americans are in virgin territory when it becomes to personal loss of lives. Every high school kid knows about Boston massacre, but did you know only four people died? Massacre? Same with 9/11 For us Armenians after the genocide, every disaster pales in comparison and we have our grief meter in max, we can’t take any more grief. I know that I have a hard time listening duduk music. It is just too much for me. Americans just tasted what Armenians have experienced for centuries.

I am sure some of you already think that I am an anti-semantic. This is totally false since I have to hatred to any groups of people in particular. It goes against my moral convictions. Having said this I would like to point the obvious. US with the help of intense beyond the scenes lobbing by Jewish special interest groups are trying to get US involve yet another war against Iraq. We already had all the press leaks about aluminum pipes “discovery” suppose Iraqi nuclear program. The main question is how many innocent Iraqi children and civilians have to die to justify toppling Sadam and replacing him with a pro US puppet? Do Jewish groups have a morality issue concerning the cost of possible innocent lives lost due to “collateral damage”? Since when small minority can dictate a whole nation to go to war to protect a foreign country’s interests even though no possible Iraqi nukes can reach US shores? Has anybody thought seriously about Israeli nuclear arsenal? Are we saying Iraqis are so stupid not to realize that attacking a country, which has the capabilities to wipe out Iraq within minutes from face of this earth? I just don’t buy Bushes sing and song about the threat of Iraq. We should perhaps examine Why 9/11 happened in the first place. If you think this is trivial think again. US war on Iraq will totally devastate US economy and they will pay that war with my and millions of unsuspected taxpayers money. I rather not support a country on a mission to kill civilians for some dubious cause.

Israel "offered extraordinary concessions" (Michael Kelly, Washington Post, 3/13/02), "far-reaching concessions" (Boston Globe, 12/30/01), "unprecedented concessions" (E.J. Dionne, Washington Post, 12/4/01). Israel’s "generous peace terms" (L.A. Times editorial, 3/15/02) constituted "the most far-reaching offer ever" (Chicago Tribune editorial, 6/6/01) to create a Palestinian state. In short, Camp David was "an unprecedented concession" to the Palestinians (Time, 12/25/00). But due to "Arafat's recalcitrance" (L.A. Times editorial, 4/9/02) and "Palestinian rejectionism" (Mortimer Zuckerman, U.S. News & World Report, 3/22/02), "Arafat walked away from generous Israeli peacemaking proposals without even making a counteroffer" (Salon.com 3/8/01). Yes, Arafat "walked away without making a counteroffer" (Samuel G. Freedman, USA Today, 6/18/01). Israel "offered peace terms more generous than ever before and Arafat did not even make a counteroffer" (Chicago Sun-Times editorial, 11/10/00). In case the point isn‘t clear: "At Camp David, Ehud Barak offered the Palestinians an astonishingly generous peace with dignity and statehood. Arafat not only turned it down, he refused to make a counteroffer!" (Charles Krauthammer, Seattle Times, 10/16/00). This is how public opinion is shaped. Distortions after Distortions peculiarly let’s look at the last names of propaganda producers E.J. Dionne, Mortimer Zuckerman, Samuel G. Freedman, Charles Krauthammer and many other Jewish editors. I will leave it at this. You make your own assessment about news reporting in this country.

Dear Hovsep I was born in Tehran but spend over a decade in Yerevan but I don’t feel my views are affected by where I was born but my conscious is. Some on this forum feel that I spent too much time on Israel but its relevance to Armenia is significant since in case of renewed conflict with Azerbaijan we may have to stop Israeli arms transfer to Turkey to Azerbaijan. Israel politics and middle east is very much a relevant subject considering our biggest trading partner is Iran and other Muslim countries as well such as Lebanon, Syria, Saudi Arabia. Dear Hagarag and others, this site I selected was actually recommended by a Zionist from a Jewish forum. The myth of Barak generous offer at Camp David was just that a myth which was repeatedly used by media. Please read the actual conditions of Barak offer, which was not reported in the media. To empathize one must first understand any conflict as objectively as possible. Extra!, July/August 2002 The Myth of the Generous Offer Distorting the Camp David negotiations By Seth Ackerman (Jewish) The seemingly endless volleys of attack and retaliation in the Middle East leave many people wondering why the two sides can't reach an agreement. The answer is simple, according to numerous commentators: At the Camp David meeting in July 2000, Israel "offered extraordinary concessions" (Michael Kelly, Washington Post, 3/13/02), "far-reaching concessions" (Boston Globe, 12/30/01), "unprecedented concessions" (E.J. Dionne, Washington Post, 12/4/01). Israel’s "generous peace terms" (L.A. Times editorial, 3/15/02) constituted "the most far-reaching offer ever" (Chicago Tribune editorial, 6/6/01) to create a Palestinian state. In short, Camp David was "an unprecedented concession" to the Palestinians (Time, 12/25/00). But due to "Arafat's recalcitrance" (L.A. Times editorial, 4/9/02) and "Palestinian rejectionism" (Mortimer Zuckerman, U.S. News & World Report, 3/22/02), "Arafat walked away from generous Israeli peacemaking proposals without even making a counteroffer" (Salon.com 3/8/01). Yes, Arafat "walked away without making a counteroffer" (Samuel G. Freedman, USA Today, 6/18/01). Israel "offered peace terms more generous than ever before and Arafat did not even make a counteroffer" (Chicago Sun-Times editorial, 11/10/00). In case the point isn‘t clear: "At Camp David, Ehud Barak offered the Palestinians an astonishingly generous peace with dignity and statehood. Arafat not only turned it down, he refused to make a counteroffer!" (Charles Krauthammer, Seattle Times, 10/16/00). This account is one of the most tenacious myths of the conflict. Its implications are obvious: There is nothing Israel can do to make peace with its Palestinian neighbors. The Israeli army’s increasingly deadly attacks, in this version, can be seen purely as self-defense against Palestinian aggression that is motivated by little more than blind hatred. Locking in occupation To understand what actually happened at Camp David, it's necessary to know that for many years the PLO has officially called for a two-state solution in which Israel would keep the 78 percent of the Palestine Mandate (as Britain's protectorate was called) that it has controlled since 1948, and a Palestinian state would be formed on the remaining 22 percent that Israel has occupied since the 1967 war (the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem). Israel would withdraw completely from those lands, return to the pre-1967 borders and a resolution to the problem of the Palestinian refugees who were forced to flee their homes in 1948 would be negotiated between the two sides. Then, in exchange, the Palestinians would agree to recognize Israel (PLO Declaration, 12/7/88; PLO Negotiations Department). Although some people describe Israel's Camp David proposal as practically a return to the 1967 borders, it was far from that. Under the plan, Israel would have withdrawn completely from the small Gaza Strip. But it would annex strategically important and highly valuable sections of the West Bank--while retaining "security control" over other parts--that would have made it impossible for the Palestinians to travel or trade freely within their own state without the permission of the Israeli government (Political Science Quarterly, 6/22/01; New York Times, 7/26/01; Report on Israeli Settlement in the Occupied Territories, 9-10/00; Robert Malley, New York Review of Books, 8/9/01). The annexations and security arrangements would divide the West Bank into three disconnected cantons. In exchange for taking fertile West Bank lands that happen to contain most of the region’s scarce water aquifers, Israel offered to give up a piece of its own territory in the Negev Desert--about one-tenth the size of the land it would annex--including a former toxic waste dump. Because of the geographic placement of Israel’s proposed West Bank annexations, Palestinians living in their new “independent state” would be forced to cross Israeli territory every time they traveled or shipped goods from one section of the West Bank to another, and Israel could close those routes at will. Israel would also retain a network of so-called “bypass roads” that would crisscross the Palestinian state while remaining sovereign Israeli territory, further dividing the West Bank. Israel was also to have kept "security control" for an indefinite period of time over the Jordan Valley, the strip of territory that forms the border between the West Bank and neighboring Jordan. Palestine would not have free access to its own international borders with Jordan and Egypt--putting Palestinian trade, and therefore its economy, at the mercy of the Israeli military. Had Arafat agreed to these arrangements, the Palestinians would have permanently locked in place many of the worst aspects of the very occupation they were trying to bring to an end.(!!!!) For at Camp David, Israel also demanded that Arafat sign an "end-of-conflict" agreement stating that the decades-old war between Israel and the Palestinians was over and waiving all further claims against Israel. Violence or negotiation? The Camp David meeting ended without agreement on July 25, 2000. At this point, according to conventional wisdom, the Palestinian leader's "response to the Camp David proposals was not a counteroffer but an assault" (Oregonian editorial, 8/15/01). "Arafat figured he could push one more time to get one more batch of concessions. The talks collapsed. Violence erupted again" (E.J. Dionne, Washington Post, 12/4/01). He "used the uprising to obtain through violence...what he couldn't get at the Camp David bargaining table" (Chicago Sun-Times, 12/21/00). But the Intifada actually did not start for another two months. In the meantime, there was relative calm in the occupied territories. During this period of quiet, the two sides continued negotiating behind closed doors. Meanwhile, life for the Palestinian population under Israeli occupation went on as usual. On July 28, Prime Minister Barak announced that Israel had no plans to withdraw from the town of Abu Dis, as it had pledged to do in the 1995 Oslo II agreement (Israel Wire, 7/28/00). In August and early September, Israel announced new construction on Jewish-only settlements in Efrat and Har Adar, while the Israeli statistics bureau reported that settlement building had increased 81 percent in the first quarter of 2000. Two Palestinian houses were demolished in East Jerusalem, and Arab residents of Sur Bahir and Suwahara received expropriation notices; their houses lay in the path of a planned Jewish-only highway (Report on Israeli Settlement in the Occupied Territories, 11-12/00). The Intifada began on September 29, 2000, when Israeli troops opened fire on unarmed Palestinian rock-throwers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, killing four and wounding over 200 (State Department human rights report for Israel, 2/01). Demonstrations spread throughout the territories. Barak and Arafat, having both staked their domestic reputations on their ability to win a negotiated peace from the other side, now felt politically threatened by the violence. In January 2001, they resumed formal negotiations at Taba, Egypt. The Taba talks are one of the most significant and least remembered events of the "peace process." While so far in 2002 (1/1/02-5/31/02), Camp David has been mentioned in conjunction with Israel 35 times on broadcast network news shows, Taba has come up only four times--never on any of the nightly newscasts. In February 2002, Israel's leading newspaper, Ha'aretz (2/14/02), published for the first time the text of the European Union's official notes of the Taba talks, which were confirmed in their essential points by negotiators from both sides. "Anyone who reads the European Union account of the Taba talks," Ha'aretz noted in its introduction, "will find it hard to believe that only 13 months ago, Israel and the Palestinians were so close to a peace agreement." At Taba, Israel dropped its demand to control Palestine's borders and the Jordan Valley. The Palestinians, for the first time, made detailed counterproposals--in other words, counteroffers--showing which changes to the 1967 borders they would be willing to accept. The Israeli map that has emerged from the talks shows a fully contiguous West Bank, though with a very narrow middle and a strange gerrymandered western border to accommodate annexed settlements. In the end, however, all this proved too much for Israel's Labor prime minister. On January 28, Barak unilaterally broke off the negotiations. "The pressure of Israeli public opinion against the talks could not be resisted," Ben-Ami said (New York Times, 7/26/01).