Ride for Palestine 2009

mikedobson

Date to be announced but likely in Early March 2009

To raise awareness of the plight of Palestinians living under Israeli Occupation - tragically highlighted in recent weeks,

Itineray will be released end of this week with online booking, intention is to ride through Jordan into the West bank and then across Israel through Gaza to finish in Tel Aviv.

This is a great opportunity to show solidarity with those suffering from aggression and will give a greater insight to all participants into the reality of life on the ground in this troubled but beautiful part of the world.

Join in, make a difference and get some early Spring sunshine training as a bonus!

stjohnswell

nice ride, shame about the politics.

spen666

mikedobson wrote:

Date to be announced but likely in Early March 2009

To raise awareness of the plight of Palestinians living under Israeli Occupation - tragically highlighted in recent weeks,

...

no nned for the ride then?

Gotte

I'm keeping my head down for this one.

Tonymufc

No thanks!

redddraggon

mikedobson wrote:

This is a great opportunity to show solidarity with those suffering from aggression and will give a greater insight to all participants into the reality of life on the ground in this troubled but beautiful part of the world.

Perhaps if the Palestinians refrained from Firing rockets at the Israelis..........

Tonymufc

redddraggon wrote:

mikedobson wrote:

This is a great opportunity to show solidarity with those suffering from aggression and will give a greater insight to all participants into the reality of life on the ground in this troubled but beautiful part of the world.

Perhaps if the Palestinians refrained from Firing rockets at the Israelis..........

Well said that man!!!!

Gavin Gilbert

A pox on both their houses

Royal Dragoon

[/quote]
Perhaps if the Palestinians refrained from Firing rockets at the Israelis..........

Well said, that man

spursn17

Royal Dragoon wrote:

Perhaps if the Palestinians refrained from Firing rockets at the Israelis..........

Well said, that man

+1

Red Rock

Why would anyone want to ride their bike where they're likely to get kidnapped and killed by terrorists or shot by the trigger happy Israelis. I have no respect for either side, I just feel sorry for the innocent who are caught up in it all.

Red Rock

meagain

"Perhaps if the Palestinians refrained from Firing rockets at the Israelis.........."

And then again perhaps "if the Israelis stopped stealing yet MORE land from the Palestinians, who have already been made refugees in what international law and organisations say is their country."

redddraggon

meagain wrote:

international law and organisations say is their country.

I thought God gave Israel to the Jews, I would have thought God trumped international law etc.......

mikedobson

Any of you actually know what you're talking about?

Palestine has been under occupation by Israel since 1948. If your own country was in this situation, deprived of human rights, subject to military control by another nation, starved of resources, healthcare, schooling, freedom of movement, its citizens subjected to summary arrest, torture and murder by an occupying army, denied access to economic markets by the country that took all its productive land, water and irrigation, whose infant mortality rate was among the highest in the world, if the country occupying it was itself in breach of more UN resolutions than every other nation on earth combined, was the recipient of massive financial support from the world's most powerful nation, armed by them, funded by them and supported in every despicable act of abuse by them, if you suffered for one day the injustice suffered by the Palestinians for 60 years I'm guessing you might lob the odd missile or two. Has it never crossed your minds to ask why Israel is targetted in this way? Or do you think that a people should just accept whatever aggression is sent its way? Whatever obtains to Israel's "security" demands, obtains in equal measure to the Palestinians.

I was with 150,000 other people on Saturday, marching through the streets of West London. Families, Jews, Christians, Moslems, Communists and Capitalists, Trade Unionists, church leaders, serving members of the armed forces from this country, the US and even Israel. All I heard was compassion and pleading for peace and a just settlement to what has been the longest and most brutal occupation in modern history. From the responses to my posting earlier, I can safely assume that there were few forum members in attendance.

When you teach your children the difference between good and evil I hope you remember your cynicism to this idea.

If anyone actually cares, this video may give you a little more understanding.

Peace.

http://video.google.co.uk/videosearch?q ... mb=0&aq=f#

gkerr4

mikedobson wrote:

Any of you actually know what you're talking about?

Palestine has been under occupation by Israel since 1948. If your own country was in this situation, deprived of human rights, subject to military control by another nation, starved of resources, healthcare, schooling, freedom of movement, its citizens subjected to summary arrest, torture and murder by an occupying army, denied access to economic markets by the country that took all its productive land, water and irrigation, whose infant mortality rate was among the highest in the world, if the country occupying it was itself in breach of more UN resolutions than every other nation on earth combined, was the recipient of massive financial support from the world's most powerful nation, armed by them, funded by them and supported in every despicable act of abuse by them, if you suffered for one day the injustice suffered by the Palestinians for 60 years I'm guessing you might lob the odd missile or two. Has it never crossed your minds to ask why Israel is targetted in this way? Or do you think that a people should just accept whatever aggression is sent its way? Whatever obtains to Israel's "security" demands, obtains in equal measure to the Palestinians.

I was with 150,000 other people on Saturday, marching through the streets of West London. Families, Jews, Christians, Moslems, Communists and Capitalists, Trade Unionists, church leaders, serving members of the armed forces from this country, the US and even Israel. All I heard was compassion and pleading for peace and a just settlement to what has been the longest and most brutal occupation in modern history. From the responses to my posting earlier, I can safely assume that there were few forum members in attendance.

When you teach your children the difference between good and evil I hope you remember your cynicism to this idea.

If anyone actually cares, this video may give you a little more understanding.

Peace.

http://video.google.co.uk/videosearch?q ... mb=0&aq=f#

i don't really care - sorry.

i'm thinking of doing the walney to wear ride if anyone fancies that - perhaps around mid may.

no 'cause' - just a laugh and maybe a beer or two along the way.

finchy

redddraggon wrote:

meagain wrote:

international law and organisations say is their country.

I thought God gave Israel to the Jews, I would have thought God trumped international law etc.......

According to some of the Jews I know, God only granted Israel to the Jews after the coming of the Messiah and the time of peace. It is one of the Jewish duties mentioned in the Torah (sorry, I don't know where and I can't be bothered to find it - if you want to know look for yourself) to not live in the Holy Land until that time. This is their punishment for sins, and they must remain in exile. I have known Jews who oppose this view, but they couldn't back it up with their religion.

There are quite a few Jewish organisations that oppose the creation of the Jewish state for this reason.

Personally I think that given the history of often violent anti-semitism, Jews should have been given their own state to go to if need be, but Palestine was definitely the wrong place on two counts. First of all, the Palestinian Arabs weren't the ones putting Jews into concentration camps, so why should they be punished? The second one is that I think that ultimately Israeli Jews may be wiped out. Israel has only existed for 60 years. Looking through history, how many tiny but militarily powerful states survived in the long run? Even the seemingly invincible Spartans were crushed in the end. Israel's nuclear weapons are no guarantee of survival in the long run, although in the short run they are. Nukes have to be replaced at some point, and when that day comes, the cost may be beyond Israel's means, especially as the USA may not be so keen on continuing the massive amount of aid. Alternatively Muslim countries may develop their own WMDs.

So I would have created a Jewish state on confiscated German land after WW2. Find the region that had the most Nazi activity and hand it over to the Jews, with international protection.

But then, history can't be undone, I just hope that one day Israel and Palestine will live in peace and justice.

redddraggon

mikedobson wrote:

Has it never crossed your minds to ask why Israel is targetted in this way?

It's because they are surrounded by anti-semitic enemies, who'd do anything to protect their land (and it was their land before they were persecuted and expelled by the Romans), they are outnumbered, and I don't blame them for their aggressive defensive stance. Just look at Iran, their leader declaring that Israel and Jews should be wiped off the Earth.

The Jews have been persecuted for Millennia, so now they've got the ability to defend themselves I don't blame them for what they are doing.

There's two sides to every story, and the Palestinians are definitely not whiter than white.

st68

i thought britain gave palestine to the israelis in1948

GeorgeShaw

it was their land before they were persecuted and expelled by the Romans

I'm sure the North American Indians, amongst others, are listening to you and cheering. I don't hold out much hope for them, though.

finchy

GeorgeShaw wrote:

it was their land before they were persecuted and expelled by the Romans

I'm sure the North American Indians, amongst others, are listening to you and cheering. I don't hold out much hope for them, though.

I'm sure that the Celts who used to rule our fair island might think the same...

mikedobson

redragon

You might want to check a few of your claims. Jews were never persecuted in Palestine, prior to 1948 Palestine was THE safest place on earth for Jews. Since then they've occupied and brutalised their neighbours to such an extent that it is now the least safe place on the planet for them!

It was no more their land than it was any of the other pre Abrahamic tribe's who have lived in the area for the past 10,000 years. What we today call Israel was known in early Roman times as Judea Sumeria and extended as far north as Turkey, south into the Sinai desert and east as far as Iran. The Hebrew tribes were interspersed among other tribes and lived, like their many neighbours, a semi-nomadic life chiefly ordained by the need for water and pasture.

Even if we accept the disputed accounts of the Roman led diaspora (and many scholars - including Jewish ones - do not) we also have to accept that many tribes stayed on in the region and continued their existence under the nominal rule of an entirely Pagan Roman province, at that time called AElia Capitolonia. The Hebrews were not subject to genocide by the Romans, they left the area in order to pursue their religious beliefs elsewhere while others, among them Christians and Zoroastrians stayed on to take their chances with the Romans. Some Hebrew tribes did remain in the area and continued to live alongside their neighbours for nearly two thousand years, predominantly in peace!

Semitic, for your information, refers to any person descended from the aboriginal settlers in South Western Asia and includes Canaanites, Hebrews, Arabs and Ethiopians.

In any event, nobody disputes that there were Palestinians living in the area right up until 1948. At that time the nascent UN - formed in a large part to make amends for the attrocities suffered by the Jews during the Third Reich and therefore broadly sympathetic to the establishment of a Jewish homeland - adopted an amended version of the Sykes-Picot map that delivered to the new Jewish settlers approximately 58% of the land in the territory including sole access to the Red Sea and the best agricultural land in the West. The native Arabs, who vastly outnumbered the Jews, were given the remaining, often infertile and poorly irrigated land. During the early years of the Jewish state approximately 800,000 Palestinians were cleared from the areas to make way for the new arrivals from, chiefly, Europe. To this day none of these Palestinian refugees have been able to return.

So, how does your argument look now? 800,000 Palestinian refugees who descended from the tribes that stayed in the region in an unbroken line stretching back 10,000 years, forcibly displaced by descendents of a portion of the original Hebrew tribes who left the region 2000 years ago. Even assuming they were forcibly removed by the Romans, how does this justify the evacuations following the 1948 UN Partition plan?

Italy may have been a more appropriate place for the Zionists to seek a retribution, it was after all their Roman ancestors who the Hebrews originally fled!

Notwithstanding ANY of this, there is no excuse for the Israelis to continue to occupy and brutalise the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, as UN resolution after UN resolution has stated.

Hamas are resisting the occupation in the exact same way that the Free French resisted Nazi occupation during WWII. Nobody disputes that they were right to do so. Application of the same logic (in lieu of xenophobia) leads to the same conclusion; Palestinians have a legitimate right to resist in any way they can the brutality of the Israeli rule.

You would do the same.

finchy

johnfinch wrote:

There are quite a few Jewish organisations that oppose the creation of the Jewish state for this reason.

nkusa.org
jewsnotzionists.org
jewsagainstzionism.com

these sites typify Jewish opposition to the state of Israel.

Some of it I don't like - such as the bits about the Holocaust being divine retribution for Zionism, but I've had a look for opposing viewpoints, and all I've come across is insults for anti-Zionist Jews, so maybe they're right and Zionism is against their God.

Mark_K

religion politics war! sorry but i'm here for the bikes !

Bugly

ah religion wouldnt the world be a simpler safer place if there were not so many gods each demanding that the way to salvation is to kill the infidel?

Wonder what would happen if a pro zionist ride was planned for the same time and place?

mr_hippo

mikedobson wrote:

Any of you actually know what you're talking about?

Well, you certainly don't!

mikedobson

mr hippo

I'm talking about the slaughter of children. You?

mr_hippo

mikedobson wrote:

mr hippo

I'm talking about the slaughter of children. You?

Are you? Can't see any mention of it!
You state that "Palestine has been under occupation by Israel since 1948." Has it? When was the last time that Palestine was an independent soveriegn stste?

toontra

mr_hippo wrote:

mikedobson wrote:

mr hippo

I'm talking about the slaughter of children. You?

Are you? Can't see any mention of it!

The figures are pretty simple. In 3 weeks:

900 Palestinians killed - 300 of which children

13 Israelis killed - 10 of which soldiers (at least 3 of those "friendly fire")

I'm actually pretty amazed by the level of ignorance, apathy and outright racism (i.e. arab-hate) displayed on this thread. I hope you never find yourself in a position of oppression and need the help of others.

mikedobson

Aah, the "land with no people for a people with no land" argument.

Why did the original Balfour Declaration refer to the "indigenous people" of the region?

Ever heard of Mandatory Palestine? The land defined by the British as "Arab" territory following the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire? This was the territory split by the UN partition plan 58% - 42% and immediately thereafter appropriated by Greater Israel to form the annexed West Bank and Gaza Strip. Nobody denies that Israel is occcupying Palestine, not even Israel!

What would you call the mass expulsion of native Palestinians, confiscation of their land and property, forced annexation, transportation to refugee camps and violent suppression? State building? Democracy? Justice?

I can do no better than to quote the following:

"As so often in the tragic history of Palestine, the victims were blamed for their own misfortunes. Israel's propaganda machine persistently purveyed the notion that the Palestinians are terrorists, that they reject coexistence with the Jewish state, that their nationalism is little more than antisemitism, that Hamas is just a bunch of religious fanatics and that Islam is incompatible with democracy. But the simple truth is that the Palestinian people are a normal people with normal aspirations. They are no better but they are no worse than any other national group. What they aspire to, above all, is a piece of land to call their own on which to live in freedom and dignity.

The brutality of Israel's soldiers is fully matched by the mendacity of its spokesmen. Eight months before launching the current war on Gaza, Israel established a National Information Directorate. The core messages of this directorate to the media are that Hamas broke the ceasefire agreements; that Israel's objective is the defence of its population; and that Israel's forces are taking the utmost care not to hurt innocent civilians. Israel's spin doctors have been remarkably successful in getting this message across. But, in essence, their propaganda is a pack of lies.

A wide gap separates the reality of Israel's actions from the rhetoric of its spokesmen. It was not Hamas but the IDF that broke the ceasefire. It di d so by a raid into Gaza on 4 November that killed six Hamas men. Israel's objective is not just the defence of its population but the eventual overthrow of the Hamas government in Gaza by turning the people against their rulers. And far from taking care to spare civilians, Israel is guilty of indiscriminate bombing and of a three-year-old blockade that has brought the inhabitants of Gaza, now 1.5 million, to the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe.

The Biblical injunction of an eye for an eye is savage enough. But Israel's insane offensive against Gaza seems to follow the logic of an eye for an eyelash. After eight days of bombing, with a death toll of more than 900 Palestinians and 13 Israelis, the gung-ho cabinet ordered a land invasion of Gaza the consequences of which are incalculable.

No amount of military escalation can buy Israel immunity from rocket attacks from the military wing of Hamas. Despite all the death and destruction that Israel has inflicted on them, they kept up their resistance and they kept firing their rockets. This is a movement that glorifies victimhood and martyrdom. There is simply no military solution to the conflict between the two communities. The problem with Israel's concept of security is that it denies even the most elementary security to the other community. The only way for Israel to achieve security is not through shooting but through talks with Hamas, which has repeatedly declared its readiness to negotiate a long-term ceasefire with the Jewish state within its pre-1967 borders for 20, 30, or even 50 years. Israel has rejected this offer for the same reason it spurned the Arab League peace plan of 2002, which is still on the table: it involves concessions and compromises."

Written not by a fervent Arab nationalist or extreme Jihadist but by an ex Israeli Defence Force, Oxford University based, Israel passport-holding Jewish Professor of International Relations.

jam1e

IMHO the main difference between the 2 sides killing is intent. The Israelis intend to kill terrorists and kill innocents by mistake, Hamas etc pretty much just want to kill anyone Jewish, regardless of age, profession etc.

Maybe if they concentrated on military and governmental targets then much of the world wouldn't think that if they can't take the consequences they shouldn't lob rockets into Israel...

Just as an aside, there are increasing reports of jewish property, religous centres etc being firebombed and vandalised throughout Europe. Any excuse for a bit of anti-jewish activity can't be missed by some "peace loving" supporters of the Palestinians...

toontra

jam1e wrote:

IMHO the main difference between the 2 sides killing is intent. The Israelis intend to kill terrorists and kill innocents by mistake, Hamas etc pretty much just want to kill anyone Jewish, regardless of age, profession etc.

You really have swallowed the whole Israeli PR line whole haven't you. What they say and what they do are two entirely different things. Read the (undisputed) casualty figures I quoted above and what conclusion do you come to?

I'll reiterate if you can't be bothered to scroll:

3 Israeli civilians killed (none before the recent bombing started BTW)
900 Palestinians (300 of which children) and probably at least another 400 entirely innocent civilians