Once I moved past the opening Starbucks Connection page, I was directed to a Splash page sponsored by Starbucks. Featured on the portal page was a five panel Cartographic Regression of the Map of Palestine that portrayed the idea that in 1917 only Palestinians were living in Israel at that time, which is historically inaccurate since Jewish people have always been living in the land of Israel.
The chart of maps went on to demonstrate all the land the Israelis "stole" from the Palestinians.
The accompanying text reads, "The battle over Palestine has lasted for most of the 20th century and all of the 21st, causing the region's borders to change several times over the years. Here's a look at how Palestine has shrunk since 1917."
"The battle over Palestine" is a loaded statement since the Palestinians during the 1947 UN Partition plan were offered the Transjordan as a Palestinian state, a span of land three times the size of Israel. Not until the aftermath of the Six Dat War were Palestinians even concerned about a "Palestinian state." Who are they kidding?
No explanation is offered by Starbucks/Good Politics about the 1947 and 1967 maps that the shrinking "Palestine" was due to Arab inspired and initiated attacks on the Jewish people at which time the Israelis won the land from the Arab bloc due to superior military prowess.
Starbucks is being deceptive and presenting itself as anti-Israel by featuring this misleading chart in this morning's opening portal page. Shame on Starbucks. To be fair, perhaps tomorrow's splash page should
include an historical cartograph of the terrorist attacks by individuals, Palestinians terrorist organizations and Arab nations against the civilians of Israel since 1917.
13 comments:
What you are saying is so wrong that I don't even know where to start. All I can say is people in Palestine (no inverted comas... PALESTINE ) are being robbed frome their houses, separated methodically and killed. It is NOT a two sided conflict, there is an oppressor and a victim. The fact that this view is not shared by everyone is a consequence of pure propaganda and "blindfoldment" of the world population. (yes, when you invent a word you put inverted comas not when you talk about someone's country).
Chapeauelesmirriau, I'd like you to respond to the reality that Israel gave Gaza to the Palestinians and ever since Gaza has been used as a launching point for rockets lobbed into Israel. In fact, when Israeli settlers left their houses, the property was demolished and trashed by Palestinians to add to their junkyard territory. The Gaza- the land given back to the Palestinians - is merely a place where terrorist smugglers can sneak in their explosives to attack Israel. So what have the Palestinians done with the land they so cherished and wanted back? Why should Israel remove any military presence from the West Bank? So the Palestinians can use the abandoned West Bank settlements to attack Israel from a closer proximity? When Palestinian terrorism ceases and there is a clear recognition of the right for a Jewish state to exist, then there will be peace. Netanyahu has already said he would recognize a Palestinian state and the Palestinian Authority has not reciprocated with an equal recognition for Israel. This is not a two sided conflict. You're right, Chapeauelesmirriau. It's a one sided conflict in which Palestinians want to see the destruction of Israel as all preceding Arab nations and groups have called for.
Retreat to the pre 1967 border , and stop state sponsored killing and then I'll listen to you're views . I never debate with terrorist sympathisers especially when its a state that should know better that's doing the terrorising!
I have to refer you to my response to Chapeauelesmirriau. Israel already gave back nearly 90% of the land. The Negev. The Gaza. Large parts of northern Israel and the West Bank (with the necessary military presence of the IDF). Give me an instance when the IDF attacked Palestinians without being provoked or responding to a terrorist attack, abduction of a soldier or some other act of terrorism. And Hamas standing behind Palestinian terrorist is not state sponsored terrorism? If Israel goes back to the pre-1967 borders, then East Jerusalem and the West Bank will be given back to Jordan. In the 1970s Jordan expelled the Palestinians from the refugee camps in Jordan and sent them to Lebanon. The Israelis have been more tolerant and acceptable of Palestinians than the Jordanians. Read some history of the Middle East before you unload on Israel.
The starbucks website is run by att and the news page you were directed to was by yahoo not starbucks. Starbucks just pays att for wifi and they have a partnership with yahoo where yahoo actually runs it.
Urban Suburbanite: Are you excusing Starbucks from any responsibility for what content their allow on their splash pages? Do you think there is no Starbucks editorial review board that looks at everything that goes on their pastes? If not, they are irresponsible and in my eyes just as culpable.
Its yahoos news website. Starbucks is owned by Howard Schultz, an israeli-American and vivid zionist. Hes been given awards fron the israeli government for his work with zionist charities. The connection page you're speaking about is YAHOO. not starbucks. Starbucks doesnt work with news.... yahoo does. Starbucks also partners with the wall st. journal from time to time... anything in that paper does not reflect the company.
Urban Suburbanite: a few corrections are in order. Howard Schultz was born in Brooklyn, NY and he is not an Israeli American. Second, the stories about him giving money to Zionist causes was a hoax. Check it out: http://www.snopes.com/politics/israel/schultz.asp. You still will not accept the fact that regardless of the feed Starbucks uses to channel news onto their splash pages, they are responsible for allowing the content of that feed to appears on their own pages. Why aren't you getting that and making Starbucks out to be a passive observer. BTW: Many calls were made to Starbucks by Jewish leaders when these maps were printed and Starbucks refused to respond. They were given every chance to disavow themselves from the Yahoo news source, as you say they (Starbucks) are content of the not responsible for, You need to rethink your position on tis and stop handing a free pass to Starbucks.
i think you should sign up for a volunteer work in Gaza and see the facts for yourselves.
otherwise this is just superficial and you never see the real fact by your own bare eyes.
Najmi: thanks for writing. I've seen plenty of photos of Gaza. I have relatives who live in Israel. They tell me what they see. If Gaza is as bad as you say, then why doesn't Hamas take those money they get from the US in foreign start repairing the land instead of spending their money on rockets from Iran and Libya. Why? Because people are expendable in Gaza. Israelis must die first before Palestinians are allowed to live nomral lives. Egypt should help as well. If Hamas was booted out of power, I am sure Israel would extend aid and anything they can to help the people of Gaza. Hamas has other priorities such as destroying Israel as we are seeing now. The Palestinians voted in a terrorist group to rule them. what did they expect? Israel wants to work with the PA but not with Hamas. The people of the US would support such an effort of rebuilding Gaza as well. I have seen photos and videos of some pretty nice shopping centers in Gaza as well. Was I shown false photos. They were on an Arabic website. So I get two pictures. The squalor picture and the Westernized shopping centers. Which one is true? Are they both true?
Your history is wrong. THe UN did not give the palestinians Transjordan. They created a separate palestinian state. During the war of 1947 the Jordanian king after colluding with Ben Gurion annexed the territory east of the Jordan river. You can read the Arabs by Eugene Rogan for an account of this.
Furthermore your claims of superior military prowess are correct. Israel had a larger army than all of its Arab combatants combined and was better supplied in weapons, but they also used terrorist tactics. Lehi assassinated a Swedish diplomat sent to broker a truce and then there was the Deir Yassan massacre.
You are also wrong about the PA not recognizing the need for a two state solution. Hamas has not endorsed a two state solution.
As far as the maps go, you are right Jews have always lived in Palestine but in quite small numbers until the Zionist movement began in the 1880s. More interestingly, peer-reviewed genetics papers published by multiple international authors including many Israeli scientists have fairly conclusively proved that Palestinians and Israelis are not that different genetically. In fact Palestinians, are most likely the descendants of Jews and Christians who never left palestine and were assimilated and intermarried conquering Arabs. Israeli Jews are of similar descendants but have intermixed with Europeans.
Really the problem is that both groups have undeniable claims to the land. Even the most fervent Zionists recognize that for Israel to survive there must be some solution to the Arab question, by which they mean find some way to deal with the nation that existed before they established the most recent version of Israel.
The question is will the solution be a just one.
You are a great person, yet very unaware of about the reality. What if one day, a strong country supports the Native Americans to claim that America is theirs, and they want the land back. Would we say "sure lets just split it"? or would we start a war? Suppose we started a war, but the other countries support made them stronger than us, and we end up like Palestine. Imagine that we don't get proper media coverage, and instead people say stuff like this to us... how would you feel?
Viraltarget:
First, there is no comparison of Israel with America with the Israeli situation. The Jewish people claimed Israel as their homeland for over 4000 years. After the Babylonian Captivity in 586 B.C. the Jewish people were removed from the land and came back 70 years later. However, there as always a foreign presence to keep Israel from ruling their own land and electing a king. After the Babylonians, came the Persians, then the Syrians, then the Greeks, and then the Romans. They were all occupiers of a land that belonged to Israel. Soon the Byzantines governed the land; Soon the Mamlukes (Muslims) conquered Israel and overcame the Byzantines. In 1096 the Crusaders took what did not belong to them nor the Mamlukes but the Muslims regained the land from the Christian Crusaders. After that the Turks conquered Israel and ruled until the Brits knocked out the Turks. In the midst of all of this, there was always a Jewish presence, but small. The Palestinians have no claim to the land. They descended from foreign conquerors. In the late 1800s the Jewish people starts to migrate back to their homeland and bought a lot of the land from Arab landowners. Israeli settlers taught Palestinians agriculture and the Jews and Arabs in the land got a long quite well. It was outside Arab nations such as Egypt that stirred things up. Of course, Great Britain made promises to the Arabs and the Israelis that they did not keep. Israel finally ousted the Brits from the holy land and the UN got involved and messed things up even further. I see no proof that the land originally belongs to the Palestinians, yet I believe they are entitled to have an autonomous state. However, since they are terrorist friendly, they cannot have a state without some presence of the IDF whose job it is to keep the terrorists monsters away from Israeli and Arab citizens of Israel. Bottom line: the Palestinians bear no resemblance of the Native Americans as you used in your analogy. The Palestinians are descendants of Islamic conquerors. The land belongs to Israel but for religious reasons, Israel should allow Christians and Muslims access to their holy sites. So much more could be said, Thanks for writing.
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