this is not free speech; every single article written by PEJ on the subject has the same bias. every one holds israel to an appalling double standard. israel gets blamed for last summer in lebanon, but today those same authors are silent about what lebanon itself is doing to palestinian refugee camps. those camps existing, by the way, because lebanon refuses to allow those people the right to travel and hold jobs and live in the country.

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I quoted this because it shows you don’t understand the concept of refugees…
The Palestinians in Lebanon are refugees in self sufficient camps, they already have their jobs (while in their camps) and walk about Lebanon. They are armed and barricaded, harbor known terrorists and leech off the Lebanese people. Here’s an example, when employees from Lebanon’s government owned electricity company go to collect the unpaid bills (stealing electric lines is VERY common!) they get beat up, shot and in some cases… killed! I did not know that this came with the “refugee” status… or …. oh I see, you want to give them citizenship…
but of course! They were paid for so it’s only a matter of time before they get brand spanking new Lebanese passports and tip the religious faction scale… most likely rocket lebanon in an another “orchestrated” civil war…
In what country in the world has there been a refugee flux in which the refugees actually STAYED!
Let me put it this way, would you, in Canada, accept that (for the sake of the example) Americans were allowed to live in camps here. And you would because Canada thinks highly of this and for the better part of the last 40 yrs I’d say, Canada has been the cuddly care bear, welcoming, friendly, pacifist, caring … . Now as their (Americans – still the example) stay excruciatingly stretches, they become more aggressive, more demanding, more threatening, sucking us dry from within. To top things off, they attack civilian personal and commercial property (theft, looting etc) and you have to call in the army… who suffers casualties… remember, you took the Americans as refugees, because the conditions were bad… the conditions are still bad but now u got one of your own.
Is the solution to make them Canadian? Let’s say, yes. OK, and what if, the combination of American refugees and some sectarian group now form majority? the “bad” majority, the “We have only one God” (Money) majority, I need not spell it, it’s plastered all over this page… You know you’re in even worse shape… you got an internal conflict, an external one and you don’t know what to do.
It’s too bad this example won’t come through to most people because they can’t see how it can happen. Simple, Lebanon is 10450km2, give or take a couple, some 90 times smaller than Ontario (just to show a country size Vs a state size). It’s got ~4 million inhabitants (God knows who’s included in there), 13 million live abroad, all over the world and you don’t need a PhD to understand why but that’s irrelevant here. And there are half a million Palestinians on “refugee” status, of which about 30k are armed and trained.

I don’t know where you get your information… don’t anymore, it’s clearly BS.

As I said above all of that changed with the internet and to a lesser extent affordable home printing, as such it makes sense that certain things found on the internet should be nipped in the bud before they have time to proliferate.

Freedom of speech means you can say what you want – it does not mean that anyone has to agree with you or that somebody will not try to bring you to court etc etc.

The U.S constitution guarantees a freedom of speech that shall not be abdriged. — Note it does not say that you cannot be punished for certain speech (Which obviously you can be “Fire” in a theater etc.)

And if your Canadian you technically do not have a Freedom of speech you have ‘Freedom of expression’ – which in legal speak is much more restrictive and has become more permissive in recent times.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/saskatchewan/story/2008/01/24/tremaine-charged.html

If Israel were the problem, then “Palestinians” would be living in peace with their neighbors. Are they?

After the first Gulf War, Kuwiat kicked out its “Palestinians”.
King Hussein of Jordan drove out the PLO and Arafat due to their attempt to hijack Jordan.

Hindu India almost had a nuclear war with Muslim Pakistan, over land. Sound familar?

Ethnic Chinese in Indonesia were victims in Islamo supremecist riots because the Chinese were see as too successful.

We read of the almost daily bloodbaths were Muslims are murdering fellow Muslims in Iraq.

Sadly the “left” is cutting off its nose to spite its face. Siding with Islamofascists against “Joooz”. Reminds one of the 1939 hitler / Stalin non-aggression pact.

I have a remark though. You state, “Yet, neo-liberals, who manage to dominate the governments in many western countries through lesser-evilism politics, have abetted and acquiesced to a consolidation of the monopoly media”.

That maybe so, but only to a certain extent, and only as far as it concerns the prevalent definition of neo-liberal, which, at any case, is void of any tangible semantic validity except that it gives an impression of politicians who are not right-wingers in the guise of Berlusconi and Azanr. In addition, attributing to those neo-liberals the power to select “lesser-evilism politics” as a general praxis cannot be true, simply because, such praxis does not figure, in my opinion, as an imperative method of governance or contribution to the same.

I can argue, that so-called forces of neo-liberalism have become a pivotal force in the much larger and dominate force, which is, Neocon imperialism. Neo-liberalism is, therefore, is now a regressive force in western societies whose only function is to mitigate the sense of historical defeat at the hands of right-wingers and Zionists. The” neo” prefix would not alter that fact that in the past as in the present the liberal left never represented or projected itself externally unless through association with the imperialist policies of the United States. An example of this is current Italian foreign minister, Massim D’alema, who metamorphed from a communist, to a leftist liberal, and finally to a stolid pro-American imperialist, all while he continues to retain his Euro-centric “progressive” designation as a member of the Left.

In the end, when you state that those neo-liberals “have abetted and acquiesced to a consolidation of the monopoly media”, I believe it is not a matter of acquiescence and consolidation; rather, because the lure and benefits of cohabitation and option, neo-liberals are not abetting: They are the direct co-actors in consolidation of the monopoly media.

1. as pointed out in the article, what purpose does it serve to call truth-telling a bias when the options are to be untruthful or straddle the middle?
2. Lebanon is doing nothing to its refugee camps. As is noted by many analysts, the present Sinoria-led [sic] government is a tool of US imperialists and Israeli Zionists
3. you are condemning the Palestinians refugees for their victimhood — strange and telling
4. as for expulsion of Jews from Arab countries, this is deplorable, but a number of the expulsions were Zionist orchestrated to boost the Jewish population of Palestine.
5. One sided right of return? Sounds like nonsense to me. I do not know of any Palestinian Jews who are refugees; at any rate Jews as an entirety are accorded the right to Israeli citizenship while indigenous Palestinians are refused the right of return. This is clear racism and must be condemned by all people of conscience
6. That Jordanian despots posing as monarchs granted Jordanian citizenship to West Bank inhabitants was merely a bid for a greater Jordan … West Bank Palestinians were innocent of such geo-political scheming and cannot be blamed
7. The facts I cite come from Jewish Israeli historian Ilan Pappe. You are obviously engaging in more Zionist historical revisionism
8. You make my point about the partition of Palestine for me. A plebiscite was refused on the matter.
9. Arab Israelis have full civil rights!? Surely you jest. You mean like the right to have a Palestinian spouse from the West Bank reside with reside as a citizen in Israel?
10. A Zionist Jew is a Jew who believes that his/her group has a right to the territory of the indigenous Palestinian people. Many Jews denounce such racist nonsense and are not Zionists. Some Zionists are Christians. It is important not to tar an entire group for the malevolence of a few.
11. What I want for the people of Palestine-Israel is the wrong question. I have no right to impose a solution. What I can, and must, do is speak out against injustices perpetrated against any segment of humanity. This is what is clear in the case of Palestine-Israel.
12. It is not a case of Israel being perfect, it is a case of the state observing basic human rights, like respect for the lives of indigenous Palestinians, respecting the right of return, and returning all land stolen through ethnic cleansing … to talk of perfection in the face of such crimes against humanity is, with all due respect, absurd.

“We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation, and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population.”

That is exactly what Hitler said when speaking about the Jewish Folks!

At the same time that we were being bombarded with images of Jewish folks leaving the German concentration camps, this kind of thinking was at the very heart of the Israeli government. This plan was being discussed within the Israeli cabinet while the holocaust victims were being paraded across our media waves.

At the same time that the Jewish folks we’re giving the world a “Guilt-Trip” about the holocaust, they, themselves were contemplating and planning a holocaust against the Palestinian Peoples.

B’nai Brith is the same group who protested the word “Christian” at Christmas while at the same time financing and supporting the forumulation of a Jewish State. This is the same group of folks who insist on a secular society here in Canada, but support and encourage a Jewish-Only state of Israel.

Enough is enough!

If Taiwan put our relationship with billions of Chinese in jeporady, we would soon step in and calm the seas of dissent and plainly tell Taiwan to back off. Yet, we continue to allow 8 million Israeli citizens (or 20 million Jewish folks worldwide) to put our relationship with the billions of Arabs at risk.

Israel stole every nuclear secret that the West had and now they hold the world hostage with 200 nuclear warheads and threaten nuclear war against any country which they see as a threat.

In the big picture, Israeli’s are a bunch of nobodies! They deserve no better treatment within this universe then the rest of us.

Here we are 60 years after the Hitler-Trip and Jewish Folks are still entering courthouses across this universe and insisting on justice and the “Right-Of-Return” of stolen artifacts, property and jewels confiscated by Hitler and The Clowns. I think that the Palestinian people deserve the same “Right-Of-Return” and the same sense of justice that the Jewish Folks insisted upon in every courthouse in the land. Never once did I hear any Jewish Person suggest that the “Facts Had Changed On The Ground” and thus the Jews we’re not entitled to compensation for losses incurred under Hitler … but this is the claim that the Jewish Folks make with the Palestinian People and their RightOf-Return”.

I’m so tired of watching re-runs of Hogan’s Hero’s, Shindler’s List, Anne Frank and The Boys on the History Channel. I’m so tired of this “Guilt-Trip” that the Jewish folks heap upon us all …. day after day!

Calm

now let’s look at some of your so-called facts:
and i quote:
• Palestinians were the overwhelming indigenous population of Palestine pre-1920 and constituted two-thirds of the population at the time of the UN partition plan.

pre-1920, the region of palestine included present day israel, the west bank and gaza, and jordan. when you include jordan today, the same numbers are still true. so what? and whoever is the majority, does that mean the minority have no rights?
in israel both jews and arabs have full civil and political rights. in arab controlled regions, they do not.
so let’s define our terms. is “palestine” gaza and the west bank? do you want all of israel? are you going back to post-ottoman palestine and include jordan? i’d like to know.

• Palestine was partitioned by the United Nations irrespective of the views of the majority population residing there.

i’d love to see a reference for that. did someone do a poll? was there an election? how can you possibly know? and i repeat, the majority does not have the right to trample the minority. if the majority arabs wanted to ethnically cleanse all jews should they be allowed to? oh, yes, they do, and they have, everywhere but in israel. did israel do that? no, almost a million arabs live in the country of israel, and they vote and publish newspapers and serve in the israeli army. minority rights are cool.

• Following the UN-mandated partition, Zionist Jews wiped over 500 Palestinian villages off the map and expelled 800,000 Palestinians from their country.9

some were expelled, some fled, some left because they thought the arab armies would destroy israel and they expected to be back soon. many stayed, and now many arab israelis live with full civil rights.
it is also a fact that the same number of jews were expelled from the surrounding arab countries during the same period. their villages were also destroyed. the difference is that those jews were welcomed into israel, and the arabs were forced into refugee camps by their arab brothers.

• Zionist Jews have continued to undermine Palestinians’ national aspirations.

first of all, what is a zionist jew? that phrase makes my skin crawl. you mean a jewish israeli? whatever.
because israel is a diverse country with free speech and press, there is always a healthy debate. some israeli certainly on the far right. obviously there are also palestinians that have continued to undermine israel’s national aspirations by refusing to recognize the country and attacking it. in the last weeks, hundred of rockets have been launched from gaza into israel. synagogues have been destroyed and people have been killed. israel left gaza last summer and this is the consequence. and you want israel to leave the west bank??

i’m not saying israel is perfect, …

We must fight vigourously any attempts to curtail our individual and collective right to freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and, yes, freedom of thought because when courageous, honest, and caring voices are silenced, evil will flourish. It is Peace Earth and Justice News today. Who will it be tomorrow?