Comments for Is Dershowitz qualified to do book reviews? at http://www.pacificfreepress.com , comment 1 to 1 out of 1 comments http://www.pacificfreepress.com Tue, 02 Dec 2008 15:21:00 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://www.pacificfreepress.com/news/1/807-is-dershowitz-qualified-to-do-book-reviews.html#comment-986 Actually, today we need to ask the question "what occupation"? The "Palestinians" are not "occupied" by Israel at all. The Israelis expelled there own people from Gaza 2years ago and since then Gaza has been run by rival gangs of Fatah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad thugs who have brought there own people into a state of dispair. On the West Bank, the "Palestinians" live an autonomous existence. The only time there are problem is when the Palestinians attempt to infiltrate into Israel and mount terrorism attacks. The much maligned security barrier which is 90% fence serves one purpose to separate Palestinian killers from their intended Israeli civilian targets. It is true that the barriers, road blocks and checkpoints which Palestinian terrorism has forced upon Israelis do create hardships and frustration for many Palestinians but this is an unfortunate consequence of Palestinian official policies. Afterall, the Palestinians voted in Hamas in their most recent elections and Hamas platform is an unambiguous program to wipe Israel off the map. The Palestinians have actually been pretty cunning in their manipulation of Western Guilt and in their duping of Western Media. Firstly they attack Israeli civilians with ever more sinister modes of terrorism culminating in the ultimate "smart bomb" the indoctrinated suicide bomber, forcing Israelis to adopt pregressivley more thorough physical means of preventing Palestinian access to Israeli civilians. Next the Palestinians cry "apartheid" to the Western media and claim that old Grandfathers can't get access to their Orchard Groves (a familiar Arabian myth if ever there was one!) There was indeed an Occupation of the Palestinian population in the two decade period between 1967 and the early 1990s. This situation arose because, Israel conquered territory in the West Bank after the 1967 Six Day war was forced upon them by Arab aggression. In the aftermath of the War, Israel unexpectantly came into control of large Palestinian population centres on the West Bank. However, this period of "evil Israeli" control actually represented the best period of Palestinian harmony and advancement that they have ever known. As Professor Efraim Karsh states in his seminal article "What Occupation" which can easily be found online. [i] " At the inception of the occupation, conditions in the territories were quite dire. Life expectancy was low; malnutrition, infectious diseases, and child mortality were rife; and the level of education was very poor. Prior to the 1967 war, fewer than 60 percent of all male adults had been employed, with unemployment among refugees running as high as 83 percent. Within a brief period after the war, Israeli occupation had led to dramatic improvements in general well-being, placing the population of the territories ahead of most of their Arab neighbors. In the economic sphere, most of this progress was the result of access to the far larger and more advanced Israeli economy: the number of Palestinians working in Israel rose from zero in 1967 to 66,000 in 1975 and 109,000 by 1986, accounting for 35 percent of the employed population of the West Bank and 45 percent in Gaza. Close to 2,000 industrial plants, employing almost half of the work force, were established in the territories under Israeli rule. During the 1970's, the West Bank and Gaza constituted the fourth fastest-growing economy in the world. During the 1970's, the West Bank and Gaza constituted the fourth fastest-growing economy in the world -- ahead of such "wonders" as Singapore, Hong Kong, and Korea, and substantially ahead of Israel itself. Although GNP per capita grew somewhat more slowly, the rate was still high by international standards, with per-capita GNP expanding tenfold between 1968 and 1991 from $165 to $1,715 (compared with Jordan's $1,050, Egypt's $600, Turkey's $1,630, and Tunisia's $1,440). By 1999, Palestinian per-capita income was nearly double Syria's, more than four times Yemen's, and 10 percent higher than Jordan's (one of the better off Arab states). Only the oil-rich Gulf states and Lebanon were more affluent. Under Israeli rule, the Palestinians also made vast progress in social welfare. Perhaps most significantly, mortality rates in the West Bank and Gaza fell by more than two-thirds between 1970 and 1990, while life expectancy rose from 48 years in 1967 to 72 in 2000 (compared with an average of 68 years for all the countries of the Middle East and North Africa). Israeli medical programs reduced the infant-mortality rate of 60 per 1,000 live births in 1968 to 15 per 1,000 in 2000 (in Iraq the rate is 64, in Egypt 40, in Jordan 23, in Syria 22). And under a systematic program of inoculation, childhood diseases like polio, whooping cough, tetanus, and measles were eradicated. No less remarkable were advances in the Palestinians' standard of living. By 1986, 92.8 percent of the population in the West Bank and Gaza had electricity around the clock, as compared to 20.5 percent in 1967; 85 percent had running water in dwellings, as compared to 16 percent in 1967; 83.5 percent had electric or gas ranges for cooking, as compared to 4 percent in 1967; and so on for refrigerators, televisions, and cars. Finally, and perhaps most strikingly, during the two decades preceding the intifada of the late 1980's, the number of schoolchildren in the territories grew by 102 percent, and the number of classes by 99 percent, though the population itself had grown by only 28 percent. Even more dramatic was the progress in higher education. At the time of the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, not a single university existed in these territories. By the early 1990's, there were seven such institutions, boasting some 16,500 students. Illiteracy rates dropped to 14 percent of adults over age 15, compared with 69 percent in Morocco, 61 percent in Egypt, 45 percent in Tunisia, and 44 percent in Syria. " [/i] In fact, the situation was so good in the "territories" that the external leadership of the Palestinian "Resistance" ie the PLO headed by Yasser Arafat in Tunis waas disturbed that the Palestinian population wasn't suitably inclined to change the status quo. That's why Arafat ordered the first Intifada in 1987...notice the date..that's exactly 2 decades after the 1967 Six Day War which indicates that the first Intifada was premeditaded not a "spontaneous" eruption of Palestinian discontent as Palestinian propagandists would have us believe. Similarly, Arafat later orchestrated the Second Intifada in October 2000 as a means of not accepting the very generous Clinto and Barak offers of Palestinian Statehood. In short, the only reason there is an ongoing conflict is because Palestinian leadership likes it that way..they prefer to continue the "struggle" to commit genocide on Israelis and wipe Israel off the map even if they have to martyr every last palestinian to achieve it!! Stuart Sontag - a guest Sat, 27 Jan 2007 20:06:01 +0100