Fred Lapides sent me the following e-mail in response to my posts on Israel/Palestine below.

You may not like what Israel is doing etc--that is your right--but Rumsfeld in using the term "so-called occupied territories" is correct. That land, taken in war from Egypt and Jordan is more correctly called "contested land" when diplomats at the UN refer to it....it is occupied when there is a state and a different state takes it over, as is the case say with Syria's occupation of Lebanon.

This isn't the only response I have received informing me that they are "contested" territories. Why is it then that the articles in my post, from Israeli sources, refer to "occupied" territories? Maybe Fred and his friends should let the Israeli's in on his Orwellian hair splitting. Or maybe they might actually read the articles. To repeat Ran HaCohen: If Rumsfeld’s conception is true and the occupied territories are not occupied, then Israel is one of the worst racist dictatorships in modern times, where millions of inhabitants are held without nationality and without any political rights for generations. ... Strange as it may sound, the concept of occupation is essential for Israel’s democratic image. This is why even settlers try to justify the occupation rather than reject the term.

Which is it? An occupation or one of the worst racist dictatorships in modern times?

ISRAEL'S APPROVED ETHNIC CLEANSING
PART 1, MAKING "FACTS ON THE GROUND"

Israel's treatment of the Palestinians has always presented a moral problem to the West, as that treatment has violated every law and moral standard on the books. Some 750,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes in 1948-1949, and since then scores of thousands more have been pushed out by force, their houses demolished or taken over by Israeli Jews (not Israeli Arabs). Under the supposed "peace process" following the signing of the Oslo Agreement in September 1993, a UN Special Report of November 13, 2000, says that "In the past seven years...Israel's confiscation of Palestinian land and construction of settlements and bypass roads for Jewish settlers has accelerated dramatically in breach of Security Council Resolution 242 and of provisions of the Oslo agreements requiring both parties to respect 'the territorial integrity and unity of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.' Since 1993 the settler population in the West Bank and Gaza has doubled to 200,000 and increased to 170,000 in East Jerusalem." The report also describes and condemns the demolitions of Palestinian houses, the diversion of water to Israeli cities and settlements, the policy of closures that has damaged Palestinian social and economic life, and the "widespread violation of their [Palestinian] economic, social and cultural rights" both within Israel and in the occupied territories. It also assails Israel's use of excessive force against Palestinians and hundreds of Intifada killings, "most of them unarmed demonstrators." (...)

Racist State, Brutal Occupation, and Large-Scale Ethnic Cleansing

The racist discrimination in pushing out Palestinians in favor of Jews is cruel, scandalous, and reminiscent of the behavior of the Nazis (a comparison made often in the Israeli press, but not in the U.S. mainstream media). It was Nazi practice in occupied territories to dispossess the locals from homes to provide "lebensraum" for the "ubermenschen," and Amnesty International (AI) notes in discussing Israel's policy on demolitions that "The Palestinians are targeted for no other reason than because they are Palestinians" in a system where "the family may only have 15 minutes to take out what belongings they have before the furniture is thrown into the street and their home bulldozed" (AI, Israel: Home Demolitions, Dec. 8, 1999). Israeli author Israel Shamir, writing in the Russian Israeli publication RI in December 2000, says that Israelis "are taught they belong to the Chosen People, who are Uber Alles. They have been indoctrinated in belief that the Gentiles are not fully human, and therefore can be killed and expropriated at will." And the U.S. Jewish observer Eduardo Cohen says that "traveling through Israel I encountered a deep, widespread and racist contempt for Arabs," based on the belief that Arabs "didn't share the same faculties of thought and reason that 'civilized human beings' possess" (OR, Oct. 18, 2000). [read more]

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Israeli Arabs first

But it is fitting for the Jewish majority to make a personal accounting. Are its hands clean? Was it ever ready to accept the Arab minority as an equal among equals? To give some indication of the mood among Israeli Arabs, here are reports of some recent conversations with four of them.

M. is 25 years old. Three years ago he graduated from the College of Technology under the auspices of the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs and received a degree in electrical engineering. He is married, has two daughters and lives in Jaljulya. Like many other young men in his village, M. is unemployed. I asked him why. "I applied to dozens of companies," he replied, "filled out dozens of questionnaires, but every time they notice that I am an Arab, they say, `We'll phone you,' and that's all. They never call. I am willing to work as an entry level electrician with a low salary, but no one is willing to hire an Arab. Even the big companies like Bezeq and the Israel Electric Corp. don't hire Arabs. How do they want me to make a living?" [read more]