At a time when we are finally opening a dialog with Iran and when Progressive Israelis are debating what it means to be a Jewish Democracy, is this really helpful:
House to consider Jerusalem, Ahmadinejad resolutions
The committee's chairman, Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Calif.), sponsored the resolution on Jerusalem, which "commends Israel for its administration of the undivided city of Jerusalem for the past 40 years, during which Israel has respected the rights of all religious groups" and calls on President Bush to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem. A similar resolution is under consideration in the Senate.
The resolution on Mahmoud Ahmadienejad urges the U.N. Security Council to prosecute him under its genocide convention for his calls to wipe out Israel.
http://www.jta.org/...
Is Lantos taking into consideration the cost of the 1967 War on the Palestinian people? The colonization of their land? The uprooting of their livelihoods?
The House's Foreign Affairs Committee referred the two non-binding resolutions to the full House on Wednesday. snip
A similar resolution is under consideration in the Senate.
http://www.jta.org/...
Found at his website:
H. Con. Res. 21, Calling on the United Nations Security Council to charge Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with violating the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and the United Nations Charter because of his calls for the destruction of the State of Israel
snip
H. Con. Res. 152, Relating to the 40th anniversary of the Six Day War and the reunification of the City of Jerusalem
http://internationalrelations.house....
Maybe instead of passing a questionable resolution, it would behoove us to revisit some past U.N. Resolutions:
Resolution 242 called for "just and lasting peace" between Arabs and Jews; Israel endorsed it immediately. It took Egypt another decade to internalize 242 and to sign a peace agreement with Israel in exchange for return of the Sinai.
The maturation process took Jordan an additional 20 years. Syria announced its willingness to sign a full normalization agreement with Israel in January 2000. Here is therefore, a basic fact: Due to Israel's military victory in June 1967, Israel was accepted by the Arab world as a legitimate "Jewish State" entitled to exist within peaceful borders, land that until then was deemed Zionist occupation.
snip The editorial focuses on Israeli-Palestinian relations. Israel, wrote The Economist, "embarked on its hubristic folly of annexing the Arab half of Jerusalem and - in defiance of law, demography and common sense - planting Jewish settlements in all the occupied territories to secure a Greater Israel." And "When, decades later, Egypt and Jordan did make peace with Israel, the Palestinians did not recover Gaza and the West Bank."
http://www.ynetnews.com/...
There are many Israeli that are open to considering the true cost of the occupation. The Palestinian narrative is coming out, not all are terrorists, most are just victims. There can't be peace till Palestinians have self-determination:
Guidebook encourages talk of occupation
Brit Tzedek v'Shalom, the Jewish Alliance for Justice and Peace, distributed a guide encouraging rabbis to talk about Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories.
Brit Tzedek wants the "Rabbinic Guide to 40 Years of Occupation," published on the 40th anniversary of the Six Day War, to stimulate conversation about "the unintended political consequences of Israel's occupation, the persistence of which threatens Israel's democratic underpinnings, its economy and its prospects for long term peace and security" that "has caused decades of Palestinian suffering," the organization said in a release Friday.
http://www.jta.org/...
And what will define the Palestinian State? Well, the truth must come out on how the Israeli land was acquired. The whole story must be told to find an equitable solution. I can assure you the Palestinians have not forgotten.
The heads of the JNF knew that 1950's purchased land was illegal but they took the land for Jewish settlements anyway:
With all due respect for the 'blue box'
Of the more than 2.5 million dunams owned by the JNF, two million dunams were not purchased with the small coins put into the blue boxes, but were rather lands abandoned by Arabs that David Ben-Gurion, in a typical maneuver, "sold" to the JNF in 1949-1950. The first deal was clinched on January 27, 1949. It included the sale of a million dunams of abandoned land in various areas in return for about 18 million Israeli pounds.
This was an improper and also an illegal decision. The Israeli government sold the JNF lands that it did not own, but which had rather been captured in the war (and even the laws that it had enacted by then did not grant the state ownership of these lands). Ben-Gurion thereby achieved three aims. First of all, he transferred responsibility for the abandoned lands, on which new settlements were planned, from the Mapam party, which held the agriculture portfolio, to the JNF, which was under the influence of his own party, Mapai. Secondly, he could claim to have clean hands with respect to the continued confiscation of lands. And thirdly, he established a political fact that barred the way to the refugees' return.
A week before the decision on the sale of the million dunams, the United Nations General Assembly had passed Resolution 194, under which the refugees were to be permitted to return to their homes, and if they chose not to return, they would receive compensation. Ben-Gurion did not want Israel's sovereignty to be sullied by matters that stank of illegality, deviation from international norms and immorality.
http://www.haaretz.com/...