[...] Wonderful story, reckoned we could combine a few unrelated data, nevertheless really worth taking a look, whoa did one learn about Mid East has got more problerms as well [...]……

To fully understand the reaction to those t-shirts, you needed to have been a resident of NYC for at least the past half century, at best, and borne witness to the changes wrought therein.

Beyond that, you have no hope of fully internalizing the response.

If it has ‘come to mean’ something different to you or your peers, that’s fine, but that doesn’t justify imposing that definition on others and declaring the wearing of the t-shirt to be offensive.

I have lived in a number of countries and most people in the world (including the Western world) who are reasonably well educated about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (and who don’t have an ideological axe to grind) understand the actual meaning of the term. You may be right that there are many people who are not reasonably well educated about the conflict who do not understand the meaning of the term, but is it wise to leave it to the ignorant to set the terms of debate?

To assuage the concerns about wearing the t-shirt in the city where 9/11 took place, I would like to say that 9/11 was carried out by Osama Bin-Laden’s al-Qa’idah network. It had nothing to do with the Palestinians or the Intifada. Bin Laden has referred to the attack as part of a global ‘jihad’, but I’ve never heard anyone associate 9/11 with any sort of Intifada. An Intifada involves a movement (peaceful or otherwise) that rises against the authorities (e.g. a government or occupying force). An international attack like 9/11 cannot be considered an Intifada by any stretch of the imagination.

What I keep ramming home in my arguements is that there is a historical thread throughout this region . An ebb and flow through armed conquest, subjugation, supplantation of religious and cultural dogma. From very first naming of the region by the Romans as Palestina, to the westward movement of Islam by invasion, to the imposition of Christianity as a state religion and horrors like the Spanish Inquisition, to the Crusades and forward, there has always been ‘intifada’ of one kind or another on the part of one group or another not withstanding name or cause. The Second World War can be interpreted as ‘intifada’ against the German and Japanese aggressors. However,

Examine the historical record of the entity called Jerusalem. From a historical perspective, the ‘Palestinians’ cannot argue that they have always been there. The Hebrews can, and do. Judaism as a monotheistic social and relgious entity predates Islam by at least two thousand years. It was the basis for a nation-state. Jerusalem was its center, where two temples once stood, both destroyed by invading and occupying nations. First, Babylon, then Rome.

There is an historical record of the kingdoms of Israel and Judea as distinct and autonomous nation states embroiled in the politics of the times. Christianity had its nasence there long before Mohammed walked the earth. The region was the bane of the Roman Empire. It was a persistent hotbed of unrest and revolt, nearly impossible to control, which is why they sent Pontius Pilate there. Which is why they named it “Palestina”,(Philisitia..for the Philistine Greeks.an enemy of the Jews.)In all of history which evolved up to the present day, there has not yet existed a Palestinian state having had equal standing with that aforementioned entity even to this day.

Though Islam embraces key figures in Judaism and Christianity as prophets it swept westward and imposed upon the nations which it’s proselytizers occupied. When they occupied Jerusalem, they threw down the sympbols of other faiths and build their own on the ruins. It can also be argued that, coming out of Egypt, the Hebrews entered and took possession of territories in Canaan by force. This is taken as ‘fact’ from Biblical records. The whole tide of history in that region reflects waves of invasion and conquest, victory and defeat. The sinned against become the sinners, and so, on and so, on and so on.

The circumstances you outline in your presentation are but another episode in the cycle I have just outlined. The difference is that I recognize it, and you, and many others of your ilk, appear not to.

The fact that you do not is cause for my not having sympathy for your dilemma.

When violence is implemented as a means of change, the strongest will prevail. As the Philistines subjugated Israel, so the Macabeen Revolt was ‘intifada’ of its own kind. Babylon was conquered, Rome decayed from within and evolved into something new. The Islamic empires of the past have become dust. The colonial period in world history is nearly gone. The Middle East is still suffering under the dregs of it, as are parts of the Indian sub-continent.

Something else is stirring. The question is whether or not we as a planet will survive it.

Lines of division began to be drawn a good 60 years before. British and French mandates were established which spoke to the self-interests of those colonial powers in the region. Partition was established based upon the geographic location of Jewish and Arab settlements. The military actions beginning in 1948 and the subsequent conflagrations in the ’50′s and ’60′s lead to further displacement and polarization, a consequence of where the warring parties found themselves positioned when the hostilities ceased. At one point, the Israelis sat at the doorstep to Cairo. They held the Sinai as a negotiating chip in the geopolitical power politic of the region and, it could be argued, that if the military action against them which eventually put them in control of Jerusalem had never been intiated, it is possible that they would not be sitting there at the present time.

Intifada became necessary to the Palestinian cause because history had taught them that they were the only ones who were going to act in their own best interests. There certainly was no concerted effort by the Arab states to better the Palestinian position. In fact, the tactic of maintaining them as underdogs was better policy, and played more into goals of the Arab League, than any economic or social efforts on their behalf, to raise them up by their boot straps.
A peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was definitely not in the best interests of their collective long range goals. On a global scale, it certainly would not have been to the advantage of the former Soviet Union, with respect to their hoped for gains in that theatre.

One wonders what today’s world would be like if it had been accepted as fact that the Nazi machine had failed, and the Jews were just not going to disappear from this planet. There has been such a cost in the continued attempt to obliterate their presence in the region. Every time they were pushed, they pushed back only to gain a further advantage. In response to these successes over their adversaries, the ensuing event has been labeled “the occupation”.

When the Germans were defeated, the Russians drew back behind a line of defense which included all the countries west of them on which they bordered, and Churchill coined the words “Iron Curtain”. Those nations became known as “The Iron Curtain Countries”, and were referred to as such for decades.

Stalin had a place for those who dared to oppose him. It was called the Gulag Archipelago. Need I remind you of Hungary in 1956?? That is serious occupation and repression and it took an international effort, combined with a unique set of economic circumstances to bring that entire structure down.

How this on going conflict will ultimately be resolved is anyone’s guess. We now have a Palestinan splt, each region under a different control. Each with a different agenda. This is a new game, with a new set of rules.

We wait.

“Intifada” is an Arabic word derived from the root nafada, meaning “to shake”.

As a verb intifada means “to be shaken, to wake up”. As a noun it means “shudder, awakening, uprising”, with the implication of “a shaking off” — referring to the process of shaking off sleep or shaking off the dust from one’s feet.

In the context of 37 years of Israeli military occupation (as of 2004), Intifada represents a ‘shaking off’ of the chains of occupation.

The word was first coined in 1987, to describe the first Palestinian uprising against Israeli military rule.

Indeed, the first Intifada was largely characterised by Palestinian disentanglement from the systems that administered the military occupation — a very important “shaking off” — and by community self-organisation.

The largely symbolic stone-throwing protests against occupying Israeli soldiers and the involvement of children in these protests resulted in the situation of Palestinians under Israeli occupation being brought before the eyes of the world via the international media.

In 2000, the word Intifada was again applied to the uprising following Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Al-Haram Ash-Sharif in Jerusalem.

Sharon’s visit to the third holiest site in Islam, guarded by — according to the most conservative reports — 1,000 armed Israeli soldiers, was overtly designed to demonstrate Israel’s “sovereignty” over Jerusalem, especially over the Al-Haram Ash-Sharif (which most Israelis call “the Temple Mount”) and provoke an angry response.

However, at a deeper level, the Palestinian protests reflected years of mounting Palestinian frustration, rage and despair over the failure of the “peace process” to address their basic human and national rights.

Police Minister Ben-Ami publicly approved of the Israeli army’s shooting of Palestinian demonstrators following Sharon’s visit, an excessive reaction that guaranteed the snowballing of massive demonstrations. Speaking at a press conference for foreign journalists on 1 October 2000 in Tel Aviv, Ben Ami commented:

“As I said before, we cannot give in to violence [...] We are not going to be intimidated by stones thrown at our civilians and at our security forces.”

Later, making clear that Israel’s sovereignty was being asserted by Sharon’s visit, he stated:

“We are a sovereign government, and Jerusalem is our sovereign capital. This is something we need to make clear.”

In the continuing strife since then, what has become abundantly clear is that the Palestinians do not agree and, despite heavy repression by Israel resulting in massive Palestinian deaths and injuries, the Second Palestinian Intifada has continued to the present day.

I raise these issues and all I get in response is rhetoric. It seems to be characteristic of these pages. There is a lot emotion demonstrated, but little hard knowledge of past events.

Perhaps that is why you fail.