Anonymous wrote:

Muslima wrote:To be honest PP, that is currently the least of my concerns......

Well, you were the one who posted about it.

I was responding to the PP who mentioned Argentinas history with Nazis

Well, I will tell you one thing, Obama invited Muslims for Iftar( Ramadan meal after breaking your fast) at the White House during Ramadan and invited the Israeli ambassador to attend the dinner lol. Do you think he would have invited a Hamas representative at a Jewish celebration at the white house? Not only that, but this year's dinner was a "political instrumentalisation of (voluntarily) trapped Muslim leaders listening to President Obama justify the massacre of hundreds of Palestinians, declaring Israel has the right to defend itself. One wonders what is the relationship between the Iftar celebration and Israel? What is the U.S. administration’s implicit-explicit intention in putting the Muslim leaders in such an embarrassing situation? To test their loyalty or rather their capacity to compromise or betray? They obviously remained silent. The cherry on the cake was that Dermer the Israeli ambassador, was invited to celebrate Iftar with the Muslims and was the first to speak at the event, meanwhile his Government is destroying Gaza. And he tweeted how happy he was that Obama reiterated Israels right to defend itself at the Iftar dinner which outraged the Muslim community of course. But then, we wonder "why do they hate us?" So yea, Muslim Americans are not very happy about Obama and these things do not create a positive dialogue at all. People I spoke to who were at the Iftar said they felt humiliated and powerless and most of them regretted going.

To be honest PP, that is currently the least of my concerns......

The irony is they wonder why people don't leave after getting a warning that the area will be bombed. I have seen many videos of civilians who left their houses for shelters just to have the shelters bombed.   There is nowhere safe in Gaza, not schools, not houses, not cafes, not hospitals, not mosques. There is absolutely NO safety! Israel targets everyone and everything in its sight . By repeatedly bombing UN sites, Israel is giving a big F.U to the World , basically saying "we do not care".

Anonymous wrote:That makes me sad about the woman who said it was a sad day to be a Jew. I don't really understand it unless she feels her identity is inextricably linked with Israel. I don't. There's not much she can do but protest. It's not a reflection on her. It's the state of Israel, period.

I wish people viewed crimes committed by Muslims this way.....

Argentina’s President Christina Kirshner has declared that her country will revoke the Argentinian citizenship from every citizen with the possession of both Argentinian and Israeli passports. “This new law will make it impossible for any Argentinian to serve in the Israeli army which is assassinating innocent people and children” stated her spokesman.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What land, all of Israel? Even the land that was legally purchased? This is the problem with land for peace: Define the land.

Pre-67 borders....ok. Pre-47, ok let the british have it back. There never was a Palestine. Ideally, there would be one; there could have been one in 1948. Instead, they chose to fight.

We came very close to figuring out the land for peace solution, and then Israel ramped up its settlement construction.

Yes and I disagee with the expanded settlements (despite being an Israel supporter) but that only happened after Arafat turned down Israel's offer in the 2000 accords which basically offered him 90% of what he wanted.

"Barak offered Arafat a Palestinian state in 73 percent of the West Bank and all of the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian percentage of sovereignty would extend to 90 percent over a ten- to twenty-five-year period. Also included in the offer was the return of a small number of refugees and compensation for those not allowed to return. Palestinians would also have "custodianship" over the Temple Mount, sovereignty on all Islamic and Christian holy sites, and 3/4 of Jerusalem's Old Quarters. Arafat rejected Barak's offer and refused to make an immediate counter-offer."

Following this rejection was the Second Intifada with its many suicide bombings, thereby derailing the peace process yet again.

Com'on , don't make this sound like it was a generous offer. Let's analyze that offer and see why anyone in their right mind would accept it :
 
1. only proposed to relinquish control over between 77.5-81 percent of the West Bank excluding East Jerusalem, which most likely included Israel’s retaining of the Jordan Valley.

2. wanted sovereignty over one-third of occupied East Jerusalem and all of West Jerusalem.

3. wanted control of the third holiest site in Islam, al-Haram al-Sharif (which Israel refers to as the ‘Temple Mount’), where “Israel, incredibly, also demanded Palestinian agreement to the construction of a synagogue.”

The intended result is that an eventual Palestinian state would consist of four cantons on the West Bank: Jericho, the southern canton extending as far as Abu Dis (the new Arab “Jerusalem”), a northern canton including the Palestinian cities of Nablus, Jenin, and Tulkarm, and a central canton including Ramallah.

The cantons are completely surrounded by territory to be annexed to Israel. The areas of Palestinian population concentration are to be under Palestinian administration, an adaptation of the traditional colonial pattern that is the only sensible outcome as far as Israel and theUS are concerned.

The plans for the Gaza Strip, a fifth canton, are uncertain: Israel might relinquish it, or might maintain the southern coastal region and another salient virtually dividing the Strip below Gaza City. The Israelis portrayed it as the Palestinians receiving 96% of the West Bank. But the figure is misleading. The Israelis did not include parts of the West Bank they had already appropriated.

The Palestine that would have emerged from such a settlement would not have been viable. It would have been in about half-a-dozen chunks, with huge Jewish settlements in between - a Middle East Bantustan. The Israeli army would also have retained the proposed Palestinian state’s eastern border, the Jordan valley, for six to 10 years and, more significantly, another strip along the Dead Sea coast for an unspecified period: so much for being an independent state. A genuinely generous offer by Barak might have secured peace. That was the missed historic opportunity. If Israel had been more magnanimous at Camp David, it could have had the greater prize of long-term stability.

There is a huge danger attached to the Israeli view that Arafat spurned a great offer. Accepting this version perpetuates the Israeli myth that the Palestinians will not be happy until the Jews are pushed back into the sea and that the West Bank and Gaza are full of gunmen and bombers intent on making that happen.

There are such people - but most Palestinians are interested less in the destruction of Israel than in establishing a proper Palestinian state. Most are as exercised about the poor quality of the leadership round Arafat and about the endemic corruption and lack of democracy in their own society as they are about Israel. What they want is for the Israeli army to go home and to take the Jewish settlers with them. There will be no peace until that happens.

Anonymous wrote:

Muslima wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People, can we please get back to the original question? Was Mary the biological mother of Jesus or just a surrogate? I'd like to add the question: whose DNA diand d Jesus share?

Start a new thread about Islam and end times if you want to discuss that.

I apologize. To go back to your question, from an Islamic perspective, we were told that the likeness of Jesus is that of Adam , the first man and prophet:

"Verily, the likeness of Jesus before Allah regarding Allah's ability, since He created him without a father,is the likeness of Adam, for Allah created Adam without a father or a mother. Rather,
Allah said, He created him from dust, then (He) said to him: "Be!'' and he was.)"


From this, I gather that Mary was the biological mother because, God doesn't need a surrogate as in the creation of Adam, He didn't use one, nor did He use one for the creation of Eve, so He could've created Jesus the same way but chose to give him a mother. That's an interesting question though, I never thought about it. Would like to hear the christian perspective on this.

Adam and Eve were both created as adults and neither had parents. Jesus was born, not created and had parents. So it's not a similar comparison. Therefore the question of DNA is a legitimate question for Jesus but not for Adam and Eve.

Well, that was exactly my point . God created Adam & Eve from nothing, therefore God doesn't t need a surrogate to create anything. He could've very much created Jesus the same way, from nothing. The very fact that he was born is proof that he carries his mother's DNA.

The photo has to be online then you just add it as " [ IMG ] link [ / IMG ]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:http://wodumedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/After-the-Warsaw-Ghetto-Uprising-the-Ghetto-was-completely-destroyed.-Of-the-more-than-56000-Jews-captured-about-7000-were-shot-and-the-remainder-were-deported-to-killing-centers-or-concentration-camps.-This-is-a-view-of-the-650x457.jpg

This is the Warsaw ghetto after the liquidation.
Can Israel let us know what their ultimate plan is?

Hitler would be proud.

Jeff - here you go. Blatant anti-semitism. Commenters can argue all they want that this isn't about Jews, it's about Israelis. But the fact is when the rhetoric gets cranked up, really gets cranked up like it arguably has in this thread, these kinds of comments are inevitable. I'm all for open dialogue - I like to think that I've gotten to the point in my life where I'm not just going to boycott a website because I feel like the moderator has crossed the line - but it's a struggle for me, and one that I'm guessing others have lost. Either way, it's tainted things for me - not sure I'll ever appreciate this site the same way again.

I am going to try again with quoting properly, sorry about that. This is me below, not Jeff or anyone else.

Oh, please. Gently threatening Jeff's livelihood with a possible boycott because you no longer have a shred of decency left in your argument to stand on. Yuck. I cannot respect this. Good luck with your "struggle".

I'm with that PP. I am increasingly suspicious of Jeff's posts. The video of the man he posted who was supposedly shot by Israeli snipers shows no blood. If the man was hit in the hand with a sniper's bullet, there would be more than a smear. There are other inconsistencies as well. Something is not right with that video.

I am the one who posted that video. The man has been identified, his parents came forward, and Joe Catron, a human rights activist who witnessed the shooting, documented the incident in photographs posted on Flickr and it's all related in the New York Times : http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/23/world/middleeast/palestinian-family-finds-missing-son-in-youtube-video-of-his-shooting.html?_r=0 and another source: http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/war-crime-video-shows-sniper-killing-wounded-gaza-civilian The video was edited by the International Solidarity Movement Palestine’s West Bank media office, which posted the video on YouTube. The activists provided 15 minutes 46 seconds of raw footage to The New York Times for review. But no, even with a video, you don't believe it. Lord have mercy ~

Well, if the blockade will not be relieved, if the prison of Gaza would continue to be sealed and Israel would continue to determine even the level of calories the people are entitled to have there in order not to starve but not to live too well, if this kind of abuse, collective abuse of the Palestinians who are incarcerated in the Gaza Strip would continue, then Hamas will use any desperate means at its disposal to continue the struggle. And that could even lead to a third intifada; namely, the people in the West Bank, regardless of whether they are Hamas or not, will join in, and maybe even the Hezbollah . So a continued Israeli policy of siege has the potential for a much wider and bloodier conflict.

A removal of the siege, an ability of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, including the political factions of the Hamas, to be reunited with their brothers and sisters in the West Bank, to be reunited with the world, and the end of the kind of boycott that America and the E.U. imposed on Hamas will include them in a political process that can change the reality in Israel and Palestine for the better. But for that to happen, you have to change the basic attitude of Israel. Israel today is the political system that believes that it has the military power to dictate to the Palestinians how to live and where to live. Once this kind of an Israeli conviction would be weakened, hopefully by international pressure, then there is a chance for a very painful but a more hopeful dialog about a different legal regime, a different political regime all over what used to be historical Palestine.

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Muslima wrote:I wouldn't trust craigslist. I tried amazon but they only have camel milk powder. I guess I will just order from Desert Farms which is what I didn't want to do. I was hoping to find it locally~

You were hoping to find it from local camels. Really?

I don't recall seeing any mango trees in the DC area, but I can buy mangos locally.

Exactly

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The zoo.

The National Zoo does not have camels.

Baltimore's does.

OP, it was a joke--hence the smiley face. No offense intended.

i know, none taken

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Israel negotiates in good faith toward a two state solution with security guarantees for all.

Abbas and Fatah also generally seem to negotiate in good faith toward this mutually beneficial goal.

Hamas stays true to its charter goal of the destruction of Israel. Hamas lives up to its official designation as a terrorist organization. The current violence is entirely due to Hamas.

Good faith? What the fuck are you smoking? Israel has worked to derail the two state solution for the past 20 years. Ever notice all the settlements and siege of Gaza?

In the 1990s, in the era of Clinton and the Oslo accords, Israelis worked for peace and a vision of Israel and Palestine growing together. But a lot of people lost their faith in "peace process" when Hamas etc derailed the peace with bus bombings that killed and maimed many civilians in Israel. This changed the culture. Many Israelis saw that the Hamas terrorism only increased during the peace process. There is no peace with terrorists. They think they can achieve their aim of destroying Israel through violence. Hamas must be defeated.

This is simply not true.

I mean, it's a very narrow kind of context that doesn't widen the picture.
There are two kinds of contexts one should point to in order to understand the situation. One refers to a more immediate past and one to a more distant one.
The more immediate past that is relevant to what goes on should take us back to just a month or two months ago, when Israel decided to use the pretext of an abduction and killing of three settlers in order to implement a plan that it already had in mind many years ago, and that is a plan to try and destroy the Hamas as a political force in the West Bank, and if possible also the military force in the Gaza Strip.
The reason that Israel chose this particular timing for this initiative was the creation of a unity government and the fact that the Palestinian leadership in the West Bank decided to try a new strategy, with the help of the Hamas, to go to the international community, especially to the United Nations, and demand an engagement with the 46 year long Israeli occupation on the basis of a human rights and civil rights agenda, which Israel totally refuses.
So the Hamas was keeping its part of the deal, back from 2012, for a long ceasefire, but Israel broke it, violated the ceasefire, by arresting all the political leadership and activists in the West Bank, including those Israel was pledged to release under the prisoner exchange deal known as the Shalit exchange deal.
So that's the immediate background, but there's far more important, probably, and deeper historical background.
Since 2006, since the people of Gaza elected democratically the Hamas to try and take them out of the ghetto that Israel created to them long before the Hamas took over Gaza, already 1994--because of the special location, geopolitical location of the Gaza Strip, Israel doesn't really know what to do with it, so it ghettoized it already in 1994. The PA or the Fatah failed to salvage the people of Gaza from that situation. So the people of Gaza gave a chance to the Hamas. And the Israeli reaction was, even at first, a brutal military response to this election. And so the whole issue of how the Hamas responded, namely, through the launching of missiles, has to be seen in this context. It may be there is another way. I'm not sure there is, but definitely this is a response to a policy of strangulation, of siege, of starvation. It's not coming out of blue as one would have thought that one can understand from the way Bill Clinton and others in the United States describe the context of this crisis.

by Ilan Pappe, an Israeli historian and socialist activist.

Anonymous wrote:

Muslima wrote:I asked if you were since you were speaking for them.....

They have spoken for themselves. You seem to be the one speaking for them. You cannot say no, just as I cannot say yes. Unless we are Hamas, then neither of us should be saying these things as a definitive.

Did you read what their leader say? Where in what he said is there "we are going to kill the jews"?