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CBS News, January 25, 2009
Bob Simon:
"Palestinians ... when they want to travel from one town to another, they have to submit to humiliating delays at checkpoints and roadblocks. There are more than 600 of them on the West Bank."
January 27, 2009 | Eli E. Hertz
Bob, you say Palestinian Arabs feel humiliated and harassed when Israeli authorities search them and their belongings; when they are prevented from traveling freely because of checkpoints, roadblocks, closures and curfews. You say they feel "corralled."
Bob, in Israel, every Israeli is searched numerous times during the course of a single day. Israelis are asked to open their bags and purses for inspection. In most cases, they are subjected to body searches with a metal detector every time they enter a bank or a post office, pick up a bottle of milk at the supermarket, enter a mall or train station, or visit a hospital or medical clinic. Young Israeli men and women are physically frisked in search of suicide belts before they enter crowded nightclubs.
As a matter of routine, Israelis' car trunks are searched every time they enter a well-trafficked parking lot. Daily, their cars pass through roadblocks that cause massive traffic jams when security forces are in hot pursuit of suicide bombers believed to have entered Israel.
Israelis are searched not only when they go out for a cup of coffee or a slice of pizza, but also when they go to the movies or a concert, where the term "dressed to kill" has an entirely different meaning.
These ordinary daily humiliations now extend to similar searches when Israelis go to weddings or Bar Mitzvahs. No one abroad talks about the humiliation Jews in Israel are subjected to, having to write at the bottom of wedding invitations and other life cycle events, "The site will be secured [by armed guards]" - to ensure relatives and friends will attend and share their joyous occasion.
One out of four Israeli children, ages 11 to 15, fear for their lives. One out of three report they fear for the lives of their family members, and more than a third report they have changed their patterns of travel and social lives due to security concerns.
Bob, these ubiquitous security checks do not exist in Arab cities and towns in Israel (or, for that matter, in Judea and Samaria) because those places are not and never have been targets of Palestinian terrorism. In fact, the average Israeli is "humiliated and harassed" by being searched far more times a day than the average Palestinian. Not one human rights group, nor you, has so much as noted this massive intrusion into the rights of privacy and person imposed on Israelis.
To date, no one protests the fact that, since the 1970s, Jewish schoolchildren in Israel are surrounded by perimeter fences, with armed guards at the schoolyard gates, as if their schools were the domiciles of Mafiosi.
Not one Arab village in Israel or the Territories has a perimeter fence around it. Guards are not required at Arabic shops, cafes, restaurants, movie theaters, wedding halls or schools - either in Israel or in the Territories. Palestinians also do not need armed guards to accompany every school trip, youth movement hike or campout. They are not targets of terrorism.
Countless Israelis in sensitive areas within the Green Line - not only in the Territories, but also in Jewish towns, villages and bedroom suburbs - are "ghettoized" behind high fences.
Many Israeli motorists avoid major arteries that pass through Arab areas of Israel, while Arab citizens and Palestinians from the Territories continue to enter Jewish cities and go about their business without peril. Israelis are told, in effect, to disguise themselves when traveling abroad - not to speak Hebrew in public and not to wear garments that reveal their Jewish-Israeli origins. Even Israel's national airline - El Al - has been forced to remove its logo from the tails of its aircraft at certain airports, out of concern for the safety of its passengers. This followed several attempts to down Israeli civilian aircraft with missiles. On the other hand, Arabs who frequent Jewish cities and towns in Israel wear their traditional Arab headgear without fear of being attacked or harassed.
Bob, all this begs the question: Who are the victims and who are the victimizers? Who are the ones being harassed and humiliated? Palestinian Arabs or Israelis?
This article can also be read at http://www.israpundit.com/2008/?p=8619
CBS 60 MINUTES JEWISH BLOOD LIBEL: THEY SHOULD BE INDICTED FOR INCITEMENT TO SECOND HOLOCAUST
Nazi propaganda took a sharp turn last night. CBS 60 Minutes set the stage for President Hussein and his Arab point man George Mitchell to put the screws to Israel.
Last night's story totally smeared Israel as warlike in regard to settlements and evil with regard to violating 'Palestinian" rights. BTW, they are not "settlers", they are Jews living in the Jewish homeland. Period. (hat tip Ken)
Drunk on jihad. Look at Simon's face -- you can see him manning the gates at Auschwitz Birkenau with his hat on straight.
BOB SIMON: Palestinians say they can't have a state with Israeli settlers all over it, which the settlers say is precisely the idea.
Notice how they say the Jews have to leave the land. The Jews have to be expelled from Judea and Samaria (Jewish land) but Muslims, Arabs etc live in Israel and have the freedom to conduct mass demonstrations against Israel policy! Bob Jew hater Simon says the Jews can't live there ............ why? Simon never mentions Islamic antisemitism and the vow to destroy Israel. Sion never mentions aoll the Jews expelled from Gaza and their gorgeous successful state Gaza turned out to be. Jew hater Simon never mentions the 950, 000 Jews expelled from Arab lands ...
"I think that settlements prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state in the land of Israel. This is the goal. And this is the reality," Weiss told 60 Minutes correspondent Bob Simon.
See photos at the botom of this post.
Bob Simon's 60 Minutes did a through hatchet job on the Gaza situation. Harcourt wrote me,
It would not be surprising that anyone without an in-depth understanding of the Gazan situation and Hamas/Hezbullah and Iran (i.e., most of the world) would come away from this with an extreme distaste of Israel and a love of Hamas.
Israel and the Jewish people should start suing these "media" organziatiosn for their anti-semitic propaganda and incitement to Jewish genocide.
A word of advice to the Jewish American diaspora - you better pull your heads out of asses fast and back Israel hard or you will have nowhere to go (see voyage of the damned.)
Time Running Out For A Two-State Solution?
60 Minutes: Growing Number Of Israelis, Palestinians Say Two-State Solution Is No Longer Possible
CBS (CBS) Getting a peace deal in the Middle East is such a priority to President Obama that his first foreign calls on his first day in office were to Arab and Israeli leaders. And on day two, the president made former Senator George Mitchell his special envoy for Middle East peace. Mr. Obama wants to shore up the ceasefire in Gaza, but a lasting peace really depends on the West Bank where Palestinians had hoped to create their state. The problem is, even before Israel invaded Gaza, a growing number of Israelis and Palestinians had concluded that peace between them was no longer possible, that history had passed it by. For peace to have a chance, Israel would have to withdraw from the West Bank, which would then become the Palestinian state.
It’s known as the "two-state" solution. But, while negotiations have been going on for 15 years, hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers have moved in to occupy the West Bank. Palestinians say they can't have a state with Israeli settlers all over it, which the settlers say is precisely the idea.
Daniella Weiss moved from Israel to the West Bank 33 years ago. She has been the mayor of a large settlement.
"I think that settlements prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state in the land of Israel. This is the goal. And this is the reality," Weiss told 60 Minutes correspondent Bob Simon.
Though settlers and Palestinians don't agree on anything, most do agree now that a peace deal has been overtaken by events.
"While my heart still wants to believe that the two-state solution is possible, my brain keeps telling me the opposite because of what I see in terms of the building of settlements. So, these settlers are destroying the potential peace for both people that would have been created if we had a two-state solution," Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, once a former candidate for Palestinian president, told Simon.
And he told 60 Minutes Israel's invasion of Gaza - all the death and destruction - convinces him that Israel does not want a two-state solution. "My heart is deeply broken, and I am very worried that what Israel has done has furthered us much further from the possibility of [a] two-state solution."
Palestinians had hoped to establish their state on the West Bank, an area the size of Delaware. But Israelis have split it up with scores of settlements, and hundreds of miles of new highways that only settlers can use. Palestinians have to drive - or ride - on the older roads.
When they want to travel from one town to another, they have to submit to humiliating delays at checkpoints and roadblocks. There are more than 600 of them on the West Bank.
Asked why there are so many checkpoints, Dr. Barghouti said, "I think the main goal is to fragment the West Bank. Maybe a little bit of them can be justified because they say it's for security. But I think the vast majority of them are basically to block the movement of people from one place to another."
Here's how they block Barghouti: he was born in Jerusalem, grew up in Jerusalem and worked in a hospital there for 14 years. Four years ago he moved to a town just 10 miles away, but now, because he no longer lives in Jerusalem, he can't get back in - ever.
He says he can't get a permit to go. "I asked for a permit to go to Jerusalem during the last year, the last years about 16 times. And 16 times they were rejected. Like most Palestinians, I don't have a permit to go to the city I was born in, to the city I used to work in, to the city where my sister lives."
What he's up against are scores of Israeli settlements dominating the lowlands like crusader fortresses. Many are little cities, and none of them existed 40 years ago. The Israelis always take the high ground, sometimes the hills, and sometimes the homes. And sometimes Arabs are occupied inside their own homes.
UPDATE: Call 60 minutes. Be very polite, but very 'concerned'.
Here's the contact info
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