TV News,
San Diego Radio,
Politics and News,
Sewing--The Sewing Herald Tribune....we need contributors, Travel....
Agree or Disagree....Please feel free to comment.....all comments appreciated and thank you for your time.....
and
food,dogs and cats......
let's sit down at this cafe, have a cup of coffee and talk about politics.
Showing posts with label Palestinian people. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Palestinian people. Show all posts
Not just Biking, but what about food and photography........
"We wholeheartedly recommend Bike Palestine as a wonderful way to see the beautiful countryside and meet with Palestinian people. We managed it at 60+ and were so glad that we were part of such a supportive and friendly group" - Ann & Mike Eggboro, UK
J Street is the political home for pro-Israel, pro-peace Americans who want Israel to be secure, democratic and the national home of the Jewish people. Working in American politics and the Jewish community, we advocate policies that advance shared US and Israeli interests as well as Jewish and democratic values, leading to a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
What We Believe
We support the people and state of Israel, their right to defend themselves and to live in peace and enduring security.
We seek a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish people living in peace and security alongside the state of Palestine as the national homeland of the Palestinian people.
Ending the occupation and achieving two states is essential to Israeli and American national interests and security as well as to Jewish and democratic values.
Being pro-Israel means speaking out for policies that promote Israel’s interests and align with our values and against those that don’t, irrespective of the present government’s policies. As supporters of Israel, we have not only the right but the obligation to speak out when we think the policies or actions of the American or Israeli governments damage those interests or run counter to our values.
What We Do
As Americans, we advocate in Washington and in national politics for American policy that advances diplomatic resolution of Israel’s conflicts with its neighbors.
American policy plays an important role in the Middle East, and the voices of Jewish and other pro-Israel Americans are critical in shaping that policy. Through its advocacy and political work, J Street mobilizes support for American policy that helps resolve Israel’s conflicts diplomatically and re-shapes political perceptions of what it means to be pro-Israel.
Within the American Jewish community, we advocate that our institutions and leaders ground our relationship with Israel in the same values they apply to other issues, including freedom, justice and peace – the very principles set forth in Israel’s Declaration of Independence.
We urge Jewish communal officials and institutions to demonstrate leadership by speaking out in support of policies that align with our interests and values and against those that don’t. We also promote vibrant and respectful discourse about Israel within the Jewish community, expanding American connections to and support for Israel.
Couldn't help but notice Mr Ben-Ami on The Smerconish Show yesterday afternoon on CNN.
Always listening to Geraldo Rivera talking about J Street and how he admired and belonged to their organization. I had to find out more about it.
It seemed like Mr Ben-Ami speaking for the organization was very against trump for President.
Trump is a very scary figure to me, also. The fellow opposing Mr. Ben-Ami in the conversation was definitely against his ideas but he spoke in such a confusing tone his reasons for his disagreement were a little hard to understand.
Okay....what do you think?
Would love to hear your comments--agree or disagree.
Ronnie from Pitbulls for Peace and The Ronnie Republic Radio Round-Up always watches Smerconish, likes J Street and Geraldo
Thanks, Fred, your statement is beautiful...thank you for bringing the world together with history and information. I really want to go on your tours and meet the people you describe.
27th October - 7th November 2014
Olive Picking Program and Tour • 12 days / 11 nights
Rub shoulders with farmers and villagers from the northern West Bank. Experience this iconic activity connecting today's Palestinians with their ancestors.
Several days of olive picking are blended with tours and activities that will make this a trip of a lifetime
Mission Statement of Green Olive Tours Green Olive Tours is a social enterprise tour agency providing tours that are informative and analytical, covering the history, culture, and political geography of Palestine (West Bank) and Israel. The tours provide benefit to the indigenous population through the hiring and training of tour guides, overnight stays with families & small guest houses, and encouraging visitors to purchase local crafts directly from producers and Fair Trade outlets.
The wide range of itineraries include interaction with Palestinians and Israelis, and visit areas that embody the history and current status of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank and Jerusalem, and between Israel's Jewish, Palestinian-Arab, and Bedouin citizens. The complex mosaic of religions, nationalities, and political viewpoints in the Holy Land are explored in depth.
Many of the tours also visit sites of historical, cultural and religious interest, placing them within the context of the ongoing analysis provided by the guide.
Green Olive Tours aims to provide our guests with:
A cultural, historical and political understanding of Palestine & Israel.
Visits to cultural, historical and religious sites.
An experience of the political facts on the ground.
Jerusalem & the West Bank The tours in the Occupied Territories visit the Separation Barrier, and travel the roads and tunnels that connect to Jewish settlements. Some tours arrange visits with residents of the territories, both Israeli and Palestinian, that help develop an understanding of the complexities of the relationships. A wide range of information about social, cultural and historical issues is provided that help to link together the sites visited and your previous knowledge about the region into a coherent perspective on the situation. The tours provide a unique opportunity to learn about Palestinian culture, gain first-hand, in-depth knowledge of the situation on the ground, and hear critical analysis from knowledgeable Palestinian and Israeli guides. copied from the website of Green Olive Tours.......
For the third time in five years, the world’s fourth largest military power has launched a full-scale armed onslaught on one of its most deprived and overcrowded territories. Since Israel’s bombardment of the Gaza Strip began, just over a week ago, more than 200 Palestinians have been killed. Nearly 80% of the dead are civilians, over 20% of them children.
Around 1,400 have been wounded and 1,255 Palestinian homes destroyed. So far, Palestinian fire has killed one Israeli on the other side of the barrier that makes blockaded Gaza the world’s largest open-air prison.
But instead of demanding a halt to Israel’s campaign of collective punishment against what is still illegally occupied territory, the western powers have blamed the victims for fighting back. If it weren’t for Hamas’s rockets fired out of Gaza’s giant holding pen, they insist, all of this bloodletting would end.
“No country on earth would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens from outside its borders,” Barack Obama declared, echoed by a mostly pliant media. Perhaps it’s scarcely surprising that states which have themselves invaded and occupied a string of Arab and Muslim countries in the past decade should take the side of another occupier they fund and arm to the hilt.
But the idea that Israel is responding to a hail of rockets out of a clear blue sky takes “narrative framing” beyond the realm of fantasy. In fact, after the deal that ended Israel’s last assault on Gaza in 2012, rocketing from Gaza fell to its lowest level for 12 years.
The latest violence is supposed to have been triggered by the kidnapping and killing of three Israeli teenagers in the occupied West Bank in June, for which Hamas denied responsibility. But its origin clearly lies in the collapse of US-sponsored negotiations for a final settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the spring.
That was followed by the formation of a “national reconciliation” government by the Fatah and Hamas movements, whose division has been a mainstay of Israeli and US policy. Israeli incursions and killings were then stepped up, including attacks on Palestinian civilians by armed West Bank settlers. In May, two Palestinian teenagers were shot dead by the Israeli army with barely a flicker of interest outside the country.
It’s now clear the Israeli government knew from the start that its own kidnapped teenagers had been killed within hours. But the news was suppressed while a #BringBackOurBoys campaign was drummed up and a sweeping crackdown launched against Hamas throughout the West Bank.
Over 500 activists were arrested and more than half a dozen killed – along with a Palestinian teenager burned to death by settlers. Binyamin Netanyahu’s aim was evidently to signal that whatever deal Hamas had signed with Mahmoud Abbas would never be accepted by Israel.
Gaza had nothing to do with the kidnapping, but Israeli attacks were also launched on the strip and Hamas activists killed. It was those killings and the West Bank campaign that led to Hamas resuming its rocket attacks – and in turn to Israel’s devastating bombardment.
Hamas is now blamed for refusing to accept a ceasefire plan cooked up by Netanyahu and his ally, the Egyptian President Sisi, who overthrew Hamas’s sister organisation the Muslim Brotherhood last year and has since tightened the eight-year siege of Gaza.
But having already suffered so much, many Gazans believe no further truce should be agreed without the lifting of the illegal blockade which has reduced the strip to hunger and beggary and effectively imprisoned its population.
As the independent Palestinian MP Mustafa Barghouti puts it, the Egyptian proposal was a “game” Israel will now use to escalate the war. Some sense of what can now be expected was given by the Israeli reserve major general Oren Shachor, who explained: “If we kill their families, that will frighten them.”
The idea that Israel is defending itself against unprovoked attacks from outside its borders is an absurdity. Despite Israel’s withdrawal of settlements and bases in 2005, Gaza remains occupied both in reality and international law, its border, coastal waters, resources, airspace and power supply controlled by Israel.
So the Palestinians of Gaza are an occupied people, like those in the West Bank, who have the right to resist, by force if they choose – though not deliberately to target civilians. But Israel does not have a right of self-defence over territories it illegally occupies – it has an obligation to withdraw. That occupation, underpinned by the US and its allies, is now entering its 48th year. Most of the 1.8 million Palestinians enduring continuous bombardment in Gaza are themselves refugees or their descendants, who were driven out or fled from cities such as Jaffa 66 years ago when Israel was established.
It can’t seriously be argued that Israel’s refusal to withdraw from the rump of the territory on which the United Nations voted to establish a Palestinian state in 1947 is because of rocket fire. It was after all during the period of quiescence over the past year that the Israeli government rejected the US plan for even a figleaf of a two-state solution – and stepped up illegal colonisation. As Netanyahu made clear this week, there cannot be “any agreement in which we relinquish security control” of the West Bank.
So we’re left with a one-state solution, operated on ethnically segregated apartheid-style lines, in which a large section of the population has no say in who rules over them, indefinitely. But it’s folly to imagine that this shameful injustice will continue without an escalating cost for those who enforce it.
Palestinian resistance is often criticised as futile given the grotesque power imbalance between the two sides. But Hamas, which attracts support more for its defiance than its Islamism, has been strengthened by the events of the past week, as it has shown it can hit back across Israel – while Abbas, dependent on an imploded “peace process”, has been weakened still further.
The conflict’s eruptions are certainly coming thicker and faster. Despite heroic Israeli efforts to fix the narrative, global opinion has never been more sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. But the brutal reality is that there will be no end to Israel’s occupation until Palestinians and their supporters are able to raise its price to the occupier, in one way or another – and change the balance of power on the ground.
Alia tells us how to cook dinner fast and with a Moroccan flair.
Thanks, Alia, for sharing your tips on cooking.
Alia is easy to follow in her cooking vids........seriously, she has taught me how to cook quite a few dishes.
www.cookingwithalia.com
Well done from the ronnie republic--bringing the world together with food and fabric......we all have so much in common around the world when we are tired and just trying to get dinner on the table.