Anwaar, you have made a very accurate assessment of Iqram. He seems to takes his assumed names seriously. Instead of sticking to the subject, away he goes on his havai jahaz - circumnavigating the world and firing salvos merrily like a loose cannon!

You are absolutely right: you can't make sense to someone who is so hopelessly dense.

David Albuquereque,

Don't waste your time with this Iqram (who previously called himself Ramdas, Thomas, Abdullah etc), the resident hate merchant. Even if you explain something to him 15 times, he will still come back with the same dirt as if you had not said anything on the suject. His job is just to smear and slander. Just ignore his posts.

Iqram, rather than admit you have been cornered you go ramblingly off-course. When confronted with all my evidence challenging your ivory-towered belief that racism and apartheid do not characterise Israel and the Occupied Territories, you went globe-trotting away:to Syria, Iraq, Africa - in short anywhere away from the truth of life for a Palestinian in Israel and the West Bank. you obviously cannot refute my assertions about Israel's apartheid practices.

You have a problem with the truth and remaining focussed. Perhaps your mind is better suited to simpler challenges. Try reading comics. You are way out of depth in any discussion involving modern History or logical reasoning.

>> No Indian has a reason to get worked up about Israeli misdeeds while ignoring far worse ARAB and Muslim ones.

There is nothing wrong in condemning Israeli misdeeds as well as that of Arabs/Islamist nations etc. The both can go together. No need to get worked up if someone condemns Israeli misdeeds (unless you think that the condemnation is unjustified or on false grounds). If you believe that the misdeeds of Islamist nations needs your complete attention/focus etc, you are free to do so. There is no need to downplay Israeli misdeeds just by comparing with an allegedly larger misdeed of others etc. Let all legitimate issues be taken up by various people.

ALBUQUERQUE:

Since you have mentioned Desmond Tutu, it is not out of place to point out that the only countries today were SLAVERY against BLACK AFRICANS is being practised on a wide scale are Arab and Muslim lands, like the Sudan.

If Tutu is anxious to find examples of oppression, he can find them in Muslim lands, oppression of fellow Black Africans, incomparably worse than anything happening in Israel.

ALBUQUERQUE:

For a tiny country under siege - Israel is no more than 0.25 per cent of the vast Arab lands, and only 8 miles wide at one point - Israel is incredibly liberal and tolerant.

Even the vociferous propagandist against Israel caled Edward Said pointed out Israel is the ONLY country n the Middle Eastr where his books -p codemning Isral - are freely available.

I don't doubt there are some injustices Arabs suffer in Isarel. This is often due to the Israeli fear of Arab aggression and terrorism. Arabs suffer appalling, worse, injustices in ARAB countries. It is an ARAB regime, that of Syria, that massacred 20,000 brother Arabs at one go in the 1982 Hama incident. Arabs have slaughtered other Arabs pitilessly, in incomparably larger numbers, than Israel ever did. Saddam Hussein, an Arab, did away with Arabs in uncounted numbers, using the worst torture, Yet MUSLIMS regard his removal by the US as a crime.....!

Compared to Israel, Muslim regimes are far more apartheid-like, toward non-Muslims - only, MUCH WORSE. Tutu should have noted that in many of them, it is a CRIMINAL offence to engage in worship of any religion other than the AUTHORISED brand of Islam. That is WORSE, MUCH WORSE, than Aparheid South Africa.

For India, Israel is a good friend. No Indian has a reason to get worked up about Israeli misdeeds while ignoring far worse ARAB and Muslim ones.

Iqram, I am sorry I cannot oblige you by making a comment on Hinduism or Confucianism since it does not relate to Ghosh and the Dan David Prize.

However, on the question of Israel's apartheid regime, I'm afraid you obviously haven't caught up with facts or your reading. Roselle Tekiner in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs describes Israel's two-tiered citizenship law bars non-Jews from 93 percent of its lands thus:
“In Israel there are two separate and very different statuses for "citizenship" and "nationality". Citizenship (ezrahut) may be held by Arabs as well as Jews while nationality (le'um), which bestows significantly greater rights than citizenship, may be claimed by Jews alone.
Palestinians or others who are not Jews cannot be "nationals" of Israel. Only Jews can be "nationals." Their nationality rights are granted by the Law of Return. No Israeli nationality applies to all citizens, as does a US nationality in the United States or French nationality in France, for example. In Israel, there is only a Jewish nationality. That non-Jews cannot qualify for nationality rights in the state of Israel was affirmed by the Supreme Court in 1972 in a statement that there is no Israeli nation separate from the Jewish people.

The process by which the land becomes "national" land is through purchase or confiscation by the Jewish National Fund. The procedure is referred to as "redeeming the land," which then becomes the inalienable property of the “Jews of the world." "National" institutions, such as the Jewish National Fund, were established for Jews only.

The government, serving a "citizen" constituency, can at any time give the Jewish Agency authority to deliver services to its "national" constituency. In this way, services can be legally withheld from non-Jewish citizens.”

Israel’s road regime restricts Palestinian travel along most major roadways in the West Bank, making them “roads for Israelis only”. Under this regime, the rights of every person in the West Bank are based on his or her national origin. Another discriminatory practice used by Israel in the West Bank since 1979 is the declaration of land as “state-land” in order to take control of Palestinian lands and allocate them for the building of Israeli Jewish settlements. Israel allows the Palestinians access to only a fraction of the shared water resources, which lie mostly in the occupied West Bank, while the unlawful Israeli settlements there receive virtually unlimited supplies.

While Israeli citizens are granted the right to family reunification with their foreign spouse, this law denies this same right to Israeli citizens married to Palestinian residents in the OPT despite the calls to revoke the ban by several UN agencies.

The law affects the lives of thousands of couples, who are forced to live separately. Indeed, couples who are denied family reunification under this law, can neither live together in Israel, nor move together to the Palestinian Territories.”

No wonder Archbishop Desmond Tutu wrote in The Guardian after a trip to Palestine: “I've been very deeply distressed in my visit to the Holy Land; it reminded me so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa. I have seen the humiliation of the Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like us when young white police officers prevented us from moving about. I have experienced Palestinians pointing to what were their homes, now occupied by Jewish Israelis. I was walking with Canon Naim Ateek (the head of the Sabeel Ecumenical Centre) in Jerusalem. He pointed and said: "Our home was over there. We were driven out of our home; it is now occupied by Israeli Jews. My heart aches. I say why are our memories so short. Have our Jewish sisters and brothers forgotten their humiliation? Have they forgotten the collective punishment, the home demolitions, in their own history so soon?”

ALBUQUERQUE:

My cure for your delusions is simple - stop living in the Goebbels world.

Iqram, I'm afraid your wits have taken a trip high above the clouds on a havai jahaz. You urgently need to seek an appointment with a head psychiatrist - no novice shrinks for your level of lunacy.

What connection, pray, do the ethics of Amitav Ghosh's acceptance of the Dan David Prize from an Israeli university - which, in case you haven't quite figured, happens to be the subject of the current speech - have with Hindu grievances.

Without being a shrink, i can give you a quick remedy: go take a cold shower. You need to wake up from seeing Hindu grievances 24/7.

ALBUQUERQUE:

It is amusing to see how you boil over with indignation about some remote Arab or Muslim cause, real or imagined. Hindu grievances you sneer at.

Israel is not Verwoerd South Africa or Nazi Germany. Arabs are far more anti-Semitic than Israelis. Your line of calling Israel Nazi is an application of the Goebbels Big Lie doctrine.

Would Amitav Ghosh have no compunctions about accepting a prize from Verwoerd's apartheid South Africa or Adolf Hitler's Germany? Ghosh has given Israel the endorsement it wants to continue robbing, killing and bulldozing Palestinians. Their blood will be on his hands because Ghosh has said to Netanyihu and Avigdor Lieberman: "All hail the jackboot and the swastika!"

"all people exhorting amitava ghosh not to accept the award were crying freedom freedom when Shiv sena asked Dilip kumar not to accept award from Pakistan government."

Exactly. But it is consistent with a typical secular response. The selective outrage against encounters in Gujarat is another example.

all people exhorting amitava ghosh not to accept the award were crying freedom freedom when Shiv sena asked Dilip kumar not to accept award from Pakistan government. Many of these worthies would even today regale us with stories of their illustrious ancestors who got this knighthood and that order of british empire from Imperial government. To top it all the sole fighter against capitalism and big business Arundhati Roy graciously accepted Booker prize whose main sponsor is "Man" a hedge fund and hedge fund makes money from capital market only.
hypocrites will thrive in kaliyug!!

I am sorry folks for introducing the A word into this conversation.
But just as Arundhati Roy, high priestess against indignities against indigent people, did not turn Booke down though the same country helped form Israel, which her writings indicate is a dirty state, and instead rails against other injustices, Amitav Ghosh and Atwood are being pushed into a corner.
Who knows what original sin lies buried under everything?
And as others have said ,'aur bhi gam hain zamaane main'.
Let them be.

Murtuza Polen! Good to see you back dude!

--"The award is from an Israeli academy, so unless you have proof that the academy itself was formed with the blood of Palestinian victims"

I suggest you read the article in this magazine :
http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?265280

Here is an excerpt:
"Israeli universities are involved up to the neck in the dispossession of the Palestinians, and in the maintenance of the Occupation. Take Tel Aviv University, where the Dan David Prizes are based and where the ceremony will be held. The University is built on the land of the destroyed Palestinian village Sheikh Muwanis, whose residents were deported. Its University Review for Winter 2008-9 boasts of 55 joint technological projects with the Israeli army. The head of TAU’s Security Studies Program was a former head of the R&D Directorate of the Israel Ministry of Defense; he holds the rank of Major General in the Israel Defense Forces, and is a member of the Knesset. The university appointed as a Law lecturer the colonel who provided the legal justification for Israel’s unrestrained assault on Gaza in 2008/9 – who could be eligible for prosecution for war crimes according to the Goldstone Report. Autonomous?"

You are not the victim/s. And this was never about you. Ok so got your prize, you got your blood money. Now go away and be beneficial to your masters.....

AJT,this is very silly,andif Imay say so,stupid comment against an author. If you want to boycott everything Jewish, throw your laptop immediately as the chips there had a jewish hand.Do not mix up jewish people with Israeli government. By the way,they don't give a damn whatever you think about them. And since you live in USA, I need to remind you what an Isareli spokeswoman had said...
“You know very well, and the stupid Americans know equally well, that we control their government, irrespective of who sits in the White House. You see, I know it and you know it that no American president can be in a position to challenge us even if we do the unthinkable. What can they (Americans) do to us? We control congress, we control the media, we control show biz, and we control everything in America. In America you can criticize God, but you can’t criticize Israel…” Israeli spokeswoman, Tzipora Menache

Yes, India should steer clear of this anti-semitism disguised as a political position. Like many other bad ideas, it seems to have a British origin :

http://www.nytimes.c...tml?src=me&ref=books


... the English literary and academic establishment, which essentially opposes the right of the state of Israel to exist, while indulging in the humbuggery that its anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism. ... To protest the policies of the Israeli government actually can be regarded as true philo-Semitism, but to disallow the existence of the Jewish state is another matter. Of the nearly 200 recognized nation-states in the world today, something like at least half are more reprehensible than even the worst aspects of Israel’s policy toward the Palestinians. A curious blindness informs the shifting standards of current English anti-Zionism.

"k so got your prize, you got your blood money."

What are you talking about, what blood money. The award is from an Israeli academy, so unless you have proof that the academy itself was formed with the blood of Palestinian victims( for example), you are just getting irrational and hyper-emotional for no reason.

Well done Amitava, good to stand up against such bullying.

I am proud to collaborate with TelAviv University. Maybe I should boycott Pakitani Unis.

All this shows us something else entirely:
the degree of influence that the Muslim
sympathy factor has over so many writers,
leftist almost by definition politically.

Would they as easily kick up a storm if
they were to receive some literary award
from an Iranian group? Dare I say it, a
Qatari group -- a country where to paint
Muhammad nude (SAWS) would mean death, or
to criticize the royal family means jail?

But no. Following in the footsteps of the
one who wears no footwear, the good old
Indian secular double standard has fused
well with left-wing prejudice on Israel.

--"'The more we were told to turn our backs, the more we wanted to see -- and to speak -- for ourselves' "

You are not the victim/s. And this was never about you. Ok so got your prize, you got your blood money. Now go away and be beneficial to your masters.

--"'The more we were told to turn our backs, the more we wanted to see -- and to speak -- for ourselves' "

You are not the victim/s. And this was never about you. Ok so got your prize, you got your blood money. Now go away and be beneficial to your masters.

All this shows us something else entirely:
the degree of influence that the Muslim
sympathy factor has over so many writers,
leftist almost by definition politically.

Would they as easily kick up a storm if
they were to receive some literary award
from an Iranian group? Dare I say it, a
Qatari group -- a country where to paint
Muhammad nude (SAWS) would mean death, or
to criticize the royal family means jail?

But no. Following in the footsteps of the
one who wears no footwear, the good old
Indian secular double standard has fused
well with left-wing prejudice on Israel.

Well done Amitava, good to stand up against such bullying.

I am proud to collaborate with TelAviv University. Maybe I should boycott Pakitani Unis.

"k so got your prize, you got your blood money."

What are you talking about, what blood money. The award is from an Israeli academy, so unless you have proof that the academy itself was formed with the blood of Palestinian victims( for example), you are just getting irrational and hyper-emotional for no reason.

Yes, India should steer clear of this anti-semitism disguised as a political position. Like many other bad ideas, it seems to have a British origin :

http://www.nytimes.c...tml?src=me&ref=books


... the English literary and academic establishment, which essentially opposes the right of the state of Israel to exist, while indulging in the humbuggery that its anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism. ... To protest the policies of the Israeli government actually can be regarded as true philo-Semitism, but to disallow the existence of the Jewish state is another matter. Of the nearly 200 recognized nation-states in the world today, something like at least half are more reprehensible than even the worst aspects of Israel’s policy toward the Palestinians. A curious blindness informs the shifting standards of current English anti-Zionism.

You are not the victim/s. And this was never about you. Ok so got your prize, you got your blood money. Now go away and be beneficial to your masters.....

AJT,this is very silly,andif Imay say so,stupid comment against an author. If you want to boycott everything Jewish, throw your laptop immediately as the chips there had a jewish hand.Do not mix up jewish people with Israeli government. By the way,they don't give a damn whatever you think about them. And since you live in USA, I need to remind you what an Isareli spokeswoman had said...
“You know very well, and the stupid Americans know equally well, that we control their government, irrespective of who sits in the White House. You see, I know it and you know it that no American president can be in a position to challenge us even if we do the unthinkable. What can they (Americans) do to us? We control congress, we control the media, we control show biz, and we control everything in America. In America you can criticize God, but you can’t criticize Israel…” Israeli spokeswoman, Tzipora Menache

--"The award is from an Israeli academy, so unless you have proof that the academy itself was formed with the blood of Palestinian victims"

I suggest you read the article in this magazine :
http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?265280

Here is an excerpt:
"Israeli universities are involved up to the neck in the dispossession of the Palestinians, and in the maintenance of the Occupation. Take Tel Aviv University, where the Dan David Prizes are based and where the ceremony will be held. The University is built on the land of the destroyed Palestinian village Sheikh Muwanis, whose residents were deported. Its University Review for Winter 2008-9 boasts of 55 joint technological projects with the Israeli army. The head of TAU’s Security Studies Program was a former head of the R&D Directorate of the Israel Ministry of Defense; he holds the rank of Major General in the Israel Defense Forces, and is a member of the Knesset. The university appointed as a Law lecturer the colonel who provided the legal justification for Israel’s unrestrained assault on Gaza in 2008/9 – who could be eligible for prosecution for war crimes according to the Goldstone Report. Autonomous?"

Murtuza Polen! Good to see you back dude!

I am sorry folks for introducing the A word into this conversation.
But just as Arundhati Roy, high priestess against indignities against indigent people, did not turn Booke down though the same country helped form Israel, which her writings indicate is a dirty state, and instead rails against other injustices, Amitav Ghosh and Atwood are being pushed into a corner.
Who knows what original sin lies buried under everything?
And as others have said ,'aur bhi gam hain zamaane main'.
Let them be.

all people exhorting amitava ghosh not to accept the award were crying freedom freedom when Shiv sena asked Dilip kumar not to accept award from Pakistan government. Many of these worthies would even today regale us with stories of their illustrious ancestors who got this knighthood and that order of british empire from Imperial government. To top it all the sole fighter against capitalism and big business Arundhati Roy graciously accepted Booker prize whose main sponsor is "Man" a hedge fund and hedge fund makes money from capital market only.
hypocrites will thrive in kaliyug!!

"all people exhorting amitava ghosh not to accept the award were crying freedom freedom when Shiv sena asked Dilip kumar not to accept award from Pakistan government."

Exactly. But it is consistent with a typical secular response. The selective outrage against encounters in Gujarat is another example.

Would Amitav Ghosh have no compunctions about accepting a prize from Verwoerd's apartheid South Africa or Adolf Hitler's Germany? Ghosh has given Israel the endorsement it wants to continue robbing, killing and bulldozing Palestinians. Their blood will be on his hands because Ghosh has said to Netanyihu and Avigdor Lieberman: "All hail the jackboot and the swastika!"

ALBUQUERQUE:

It is amusing to see how you boil over with indignation about some remote Arab or Muslim cause, real or imagined. Hindu grievances you sneer at.

Israel is not Verwoerd South Africa or Nazi Germany. Arabs are far more anti-Semitic than Israelis. Your line of calling Israel Nazi is an application of the Goebbels Big Lie doctrine.

Iqram, I'm afraid your wits have taken a trip high above the clouds on a havai jahaz. You urgently need to seek an appointment with a head psychiatrist - no novice shrinks for your level of lunacy.

What connection, pray, do the ethics of Amitav Ghosh's acceptance of the Dan David Prize from an Israeli university - which, in case you haven't quite figured, happens to be the subject of the current speech - have with Hindu grievances.

Without being a shrink, i can give you a quick remedy: go take a cold shower. You need to wake up from seeing Hindu grievances 24/7.

ALBUQUERQUE:

My cure for your delusions is simple - stop living in the Goebbels world.

Iqram, I am sorry I cannot oblige you by making a comment on Hinduism or Confucianism since it does not relate to Ghosh and the Dan David Prize.

However, on the question of Israel's apartheid regime, I'm afraid you obviously haven't caught up with facts or your reading. Roselle Tekiner in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs describes Israel's two-tiered citizenship law bars non-Jews from 93 percent of its lands thus:
“In Israel there are two separate and very different statuses for "citizenship" and "nationality". Citizenship (ezrahut) may be held by Arabs as well as Jews while nationality (le'um), which bestows significantly greater rights than citizenship, may be claimed by Jews alone.
Palestinians or others who are not Jews cannot be "nationals" of Israel. Only Jews can be "nationals." Their nationality rights are granted by the Law of Return. No Israeli nationality applies to all citizens, as does a US nationality in the United States or French nationality in France, for example. In Israel, there is only a Jewish nationality. That non-Jews cannot qualify for nationality rights in the state of Israel was affirmed by the Supreme Court in 1972 in a statement that there is no Israeli nation separate from the Jewish people.

The process by which the land becomes "national" land is through purchase or confiscation by the Jewish National Fund. The procedure is referred to as "redeeming the land," which then becomes the inalienable property of the “Jews of the world." "National" institutions, such as the Jewish National Fund, were established for Jews only.

The government, serving a "citizen" constituency, can at any time give the Jewish Agency authority to deliver services to its "national" constituency. In this way, services can be legally withheld from non-Jewish citizens.”

Israel’s road regime restricts Palestinian travel along most major roadways in the West Bank, making them “roads for Israelis only”. Under this regime, the rights of every person in the West Bank are based on his or her national origin. Another discriminatory practice used by Israel in the West Bank since 1979 is the declaration of land as “state-land” in order to take control of Palestinian lands and allocate them for the building of Israeli Jewish settlements. Israel allows the Palestinians access to only a fraction of the shared water resources, which lie mostly in the occupied West Bank, while the unlawful Israeli settlements there receive virtually unlimited supplies.

While Israeli citizens are granted the right to family reunification with their foreign spouse, this law denies this same right to Israeli citizens married to Palestinian residents in the OPT despite the calls to revoke the ban by several UN agencies.

The law affects the lives of thousands of couples, who are forced to live separately. Indeed, couples who are denied family reunification under this law, can neither live together in Israel, nor move together to the Palestinian Territories.”

No wonder Archbishop Desmond Tutu wrote in The Guardian after a trip to Palestine: “I've been very deeply distressed in my visit to the Holy Land; it reminded me so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa. I have seen the humiliation of the Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like us when young white police officers prevented us from moving about. I have experienced Palestinians pointing to what were their homes, now occupied by Jewish Israelis. I was walking with Canon Naim Ateek (the head of the Sabeel Ecumenical Centre) in Jerusalem. He pointed and said: "Our home was over there. We were driven out of our home; it is now occupied by Israeli Jews. My heart aches. I say why are our memories so short. Have our Jewish sisters and brothers forgotten their humiliation? Have they forgotten the collective punishment, the home demolitions, in their own history so soon?”

ALBUQUERQUE:

For a tiny country under siege - Israel is no more than 0.25 per cent of the vast Arab lands, and only 8 miles wide at one point - Israel is incredibly liberal and tolerant.

Even the vociferous propagandist against Israel caled Edward Said pointed out Israel is the ONLY country n the Middle Eastr where his books -p codemning Isral - are freely available.

I don't doubt there are some injustices Arabs suffer in Isarel. This is often due to the Israeli fear of Arab aggression and terrorism. Arabs suffer appalling, worse, injustices in ARAB countries. It is an ARAB regime, that of Syria, that massacred 20,000 brother Arabs at one go in the 1982 Hama incident. Arabs have slaughtered other Arabs pitilessly, in incomparably larger numbers, than Israel ever did. Saddam Hussein, an Arab, did away with Arabs in uncounted numbers, using the worst torture, Yet MUSLIMS regard his removal by the US as a crime.....!

Compared to Israel, Muslim regimes are far more apartheid-like, toward non-Muslims - only, MUCH WORSE. Tutu should have noted that in many of them, it is a CRIMINAL offence to engage in worship of any religion other than the AUTHORISED brand of Islam. That is WORSE, MUCH WORSE, than Aparheid South Africa.

For India, Israel is a good friend. No Indian has a reason to get worked up about Israeli misdeeds while ignoring far worse ARAB and Muslim ones.

ALBUQUERQUE:

Since you have mentioned Desmond Tutu, it is not out of place to point out that the only countries today were SLAVERY against BLACK AFRICANS is being practised on a wide scale are Arab and Muslim lands, like the Sudan.

If Tutu is anxious to find examples of oppression, he can find them in Muslim lands, oppression of fellow Black Africans, incomparably worse than anything happening in Israel.

>> No Indian has a reason to get worked up about Israeli misdeeds while ignoring far worse ARAB and Muslim ones.

There is nothing wrong in condemning Israeli misdeeds as well as that of Arabs/Islamist nations etc. The both can go together. No need to get worked up if someone condemns Israeli misdeeds (unless you think that the condemnation is unjustified or on false grounds). If you believe that the misdeeds of Islamist nations needs your complete attention/focus etc, you are free to do so. There is no need to downplay Israeli misdeeds just by comparing with an allegedly larger misdeed of others etc. Let all legitimate issues be taken up by various people.

Iqram, rather than admit you have been cornered you go ramblingly off-course. When confronted with all my evidence challenging your ivory-towered belief that racism and apartheid do not characterise Israel and the Occupied Territories, you went globe-trotting away:to Syria, Iraq, Africa - in short anywhere away from the truth of life for a Palestinian in Israel and the West Bank. you obviously cannot refute my assertions about Israel's apartheid practices.

You have a problem with the truth and remaining focussed. Perhaps your mind is better suited to simpler challenges. Try reading comics. You are way out of depth in any discussion involving modern History or logical reasoning.

David Albuquereque,

Don't waste your time with this Iqram (who previously called himself Ramdas, Thomas, Abdullah etc), the resident hate merchant. Even if you explain something to him 15 times, he will still come back with the same dirt as if you had not said anything on the suject. His job is just to smear and slander. Just ignore his posts.

Anwaar, you have made a very accurate assessment of Iqram. He seems to takes his assumed names seriously. Instead of sticking to the subject, away he goes on his havai jahaz - circumnavigating the world and firing salvos merrily like a loose cannon!

You are absolutely right: you can't make sense to someone who is so hopelessly dense.