Israel insists that it is still the underdog in the Middle East. Danny Ayalon, well known for his video series The Truth about Israel, is a familiar countenance on the pro-Israeli internet. He explains Underdogland with familiar maps and graphics, available at the click (such as the link above). The presentation has high production qualities, the music is rousing and the end-tone is dramatic. Favored mightily by those who like echo-chamber metaphors.
Something happened at Harvard and Microsoft recently: two prestigious shakers and movers (lifelong Zionists) endorsed a boycott of Israel, a ‘single state.’ It became the most read article on the Washington Post. This does not mean that they have joined the BDS Movement but it’s a step.
Consider diaspora: the Syrians these last five years, the Palestinians these last sixty-seven years? To be ousted from ancestral lands along the Mediterranean and shoved to the east. Then, in 1967 (Naksa) occupied by the same people who shoved you eastward in 1948: (Nakba).
But what about Lebensraum for the people of choice?
Unfortunately it was Paradise (Mahmoud Darwish)
Perhaps a current dweller thinks “The Mediterranean coast is beautiful, but we need more living space for more living rooms. May the houses all look like the ones in California where the climate is the same.”
Descendants of Abraham: Ishmael and Isaac. A great lesson learned from those who occupied all of Palestine, the British and their Empire. A semantic sleight of hand and, magically, the Palestinians no longer exist. But a magician’s trick does not stay a secret forever. It turns out Palestinians were there all along with a history, a culture, families, friends, acquaintances, businesses, interests, festivals, religions, works of literature, restaurants, theaters, tourist trade, traditions…and tragedies.
At present, a two-state solution (State of Israel/State of Palestine) remains challenged by Realpolitik.
Immigration, emigration, visiting exiled family in other climes. Travel back and forth between Gaza and the West Bank? It’s onerous. The two territories are not contiguous. It is also expensive, time-consuming and dangerous.
Did you know that most Israelis are not interested in visiting the occupied territories? To go through generations without once meeting the “other.” Believing only their own propaganda.
Palestinians are also de facto victims of extrajudicial executions. There are no Palestinian soldiers, there is no Palestinian military force. Israeli soldiers know they can simply attack fellow humans using their own judgment, without disciplinary action. Did you know that records detailing criminal acts are sometimes lost by the authorities entrusted with preserving them? I’ve hear that it happens.
![Israel vê a ONU como território hostil. Por isso manda embaixadores militantes da anexação, cuja resposta-padrão a qualquer crítica é a acusação de ‘antissemitismo’ – diz Vijay Prashad.O governo de Israel não aprecia a ONU. Cartaz frequente nas ocupações de colonos ilegais é “UNwelcome” [ONU não é bem-vinda].](https://billziegler1947.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/usa-ref-world-isr-pal.jpg?w=300&h=141)
Highways connecting settlements are modern and rimmed with security. Fences built to complement the security wall lengthen.
source: Embaixadores de Israel: mais uma farsa do moderno apartheid
Existing Palestinian homes are demolished daily, reason optional. Unemployment is so high in the occupied sectors that many Palestinians work as domestic help in the very homes they lost to “settlers”. Yes, this is humiliating, but those who humiliate know that a mean-spirited, tough, single-minded determination and persistence may bring blossoms of fear and submission. The New York Times and NPR do not remove bias from their reporting. Both news giants are either corporations or corporately funded.
What happens when Rupert Murdock purchases media? The Wall Street Journal was once a newspaper of integrity, now it’s a tabloid. National Geographic was an institution and cultural icon. Guess who owns NG now. Readers and listeners are left to wonder: just who are these tattered keffiyeh-sporting angry people in the street, those with weapons slightly more modern than those of the Ottoman Empire, with knives and stones: stones right at-hand, produced from rubble left by incendiary bombs equipped with the latest technology, dropped on civilians (collaterals) by the fourth largest military on our planet.
Counter-arguments are always welcomed.
Thanks for reading
billziegler1947 
When in the government of Israel there would be more believers in the Most High Divine Creator there would be not such a problem. when they would listen to the Hashem, Israel would not have to insists that it is still the underdog in the Middle East. When they would recognise the value of their holy places for the millions of goyim who also have found the Most High Elohim and when the Jewish fundamentalists the same as the fundamentalist Muslims would come to live and act according to the Word of Allah there would not have to be a problem at all, and than shall be it possible to live in peace with Jews, Christians, Muslims and even with those who do not believe in Allah.
For sure many do forget how the Hashem wants people to be treated. It is getting high time that those who say they love God come to act accordingly.
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Hallo Vragensteller, Thank you for the kind comment, I quite agree with your argument, learning languages should remove barriers, not create misleading names that twist and distort. There are those who wish only to use mistranslations and to repeat their falsities until they form wedges between us that prevent understanding and turn love into hate, objects of devotion into weapons. I listen to demagogs apprehensively to ward off deliberate propaganda. Here is a post I wrote about a fundamentalist broadcaster who uses such techniques to damn every aspect of Islam:
https://billziegler1947.com/2016/05/20/is-islamophobia-the-church-miltant/
A particular strain of macho religious expression suggests that the rosary should be used as an assault weapon, that the West should, as one such title suggests, return to The Glory of the Crusades.
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In Belgium there is also an Ave Maria Radio but luckily their messages are not of this tone and not of such a bringer of false messages like from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life showing that 19% of U.S. Muslims said that “suicide bombing or other forms of violence against civilians in the name of Islam” could be justified and telling that number in Egypt is 29% and 40% in the Palestinian territories.
I listened to some radio programs of avemariaradio.net but found them terribly noisy and with lots of shouting. Watching some texts I also found them often contradicting and the funniest thing also that there was noted: “Comments Off on Islam” so no lies could be mentioned or no reaction given.
Strange “The Glory of the Crusades” is mentioned because too many do not want to see that those men who went on the crusades where adventurers, child and women molesters, Christian fundamentalists, terrorists, in short of the same kind as AlQuada, Boko Haram, ISIS/ISIL and other terrorists who use the name of Islam in the wrong way.
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Goeiedag, Vragensteller, Thank you very kindly for the thoughtful reply, I genuinely appreciate my readers, independent voices from all over the globe are welcome 24/7. It’s good to hear from a Flemish speaker here, particularly one of an inquisitive nature. My German also makes that Flemish available too, I am quite a friend of language learning: it’s the best way to remove barriers and borders in my opinion.
Propaganda is accepted without question, so it gradually turns into the conventional wisdom — even if there is not a shred of truth in it. Having been raised in Roman Catholic schools, I listen to those broadcasters that are indeed “terribly noisy and with lots of shouting” because I write about it and need to know where they are coming from. The same broadcasters who extol that so-called “glory” also insist that their Inquisition was much exaggerated and was overwhelming secular in character.
Thanks again. I much look forward to participating in your blog as well.
Met vriendelijke groeten,
Bill
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