Choose Peace, Dignity, Independence.

Congratulations to the Palestinian people, led by President Mahmoud Abbas, who today successfully negotiated the peaceful recognition by the United Nations of the State of Palestine.

If it was good enough for Israel's birth...

These people seek a better way of life for themselves and their families at home. They live essentially in a prison -- with overseers monitoring what comes and goes except for what can be smuggled in. Surely many families mourn their dead -- innocents and fighters -- in this horribly lop-sided and overreaching quest for justice.

It's too bad America has taken the backseat to Israel in these past decades. The answer, I still maintain, is that the American approach to justice is superb. Here, we don't bulldoze the family homes of criminals, or kill their mothers and brothers in revenge. We try murderers, give them an honest trial, and bring the perpetrators to justice.

We don't take revenge on innocent family members. We don't confiscate properties without the semblance of just takings. We don't treat our ethnics differently in terms of citizenship rights, or which streets and highways they are permitted to use.

Oh, I know, I know...
Poor little Israel was forced into these overbearing acts of collective punishment for survival purposes. They must show a false strength, bloodying innocents because they need to slam home the message: violence will not be tolerated...


It's too bad that the growing community of atheists is still too cowardly, it seems, to confront the whole false premise of an independent Jewish state because of something promised by G-d, some Biblical heritage, some set-aside "safe place" for the victims of the Holocaust. Look, if there is no God and Christians must be continually challenged on their personal beliefs, why not the religious Jews? Wouldn't free thinkers be more consistent in even-handedly promoting their non-beliefs, even to the point it conflicts with a potentially punishable backlash, in terms of employment or scholastic opportunities?

As more and more ethnic cleansing atrocities make headlines since World War II, the excuse that Israel has to take deadly pre-emptive action against innocents -- again and again and again -- lest their people be wiped off the map like their European ancestors in the 30s and 40s, rings more and more false.

Pretending Israel, or the Jewish people, are still history's victims in this day and age is laughable. Suck it up, and move on already. Much waste has been left in the trashbin of human history. Don't pull out America's slavery or tribal genocide to justify the killings in Palestine today. Don't try to justify the murders as necessary in pursuing justice.

Most of all, don't continue to finance this coming fight...

Today, U.N. ambassador Rice voted the way she was told, by the lobbyists, people with the money who increasingly pull the strings. She, and we, lost.

Today, make no mistake, the Palestinian people won. By pursuing a diplomatic means, by leading his people to fight back in ways other than simply firing crude rockets or blowing themselves up (or more commonly, committing suicide slowly inside), Mr. Abbas served up something hearty and promising...

He is weakened, certainly. Politically, a vanquished people often turns to the fighters, for protection perhaps, but out of frustration certainly. There's nothing inherently evil in the Palestinians that celebrates the flowing of Jewish blood. Just the very human desire to avenge what has been taken unjustly from one's own.

Like our own Constitutional forefathers who understood the justice and political system must be shaped so as to encourage people to adopt different procedures -- ones that respect individual rights at the forefront, the Palestinian people today are beginning their very long journey toward independence, self-reliance and the pursuit of happiness.

For those about to rock, we salute you!

RAMALLAH, West Bank — Palestinians have erupted in wild cheers, hugging each other and honking car horns after the United Nations voted to grant them, at least formally, what they have long yearned for – a state of their own.

In the central celebration in the West Bank city of Ramallah, hundreds crowding into the main square waved Palestinian flags and chanted "God is great" after the U.N. General Assembly vote.

It accepted "Palestine" as a non-member observer state with a vote of 138 in favor, nine against and 41 abstentions.

The decision won't immediately change lives here, since much of what the world body is defining as the territory of that state – the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem – remains under Israeli control. Yet many Palestinians savored the global recognition.
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ADDED: The war of words played out, as well:

"We have not heard one word from any Israeli official expressing any sincere concern to save the peace process,” Mr. Abbas said.

“On the contrary, our people have witnessed, and continue to witness, an unprecedented intensification of military assaults, the blockade, settlement activities and ethnic cleansing, particularly in occupied East Jerusalem, and mass arrests, attacks by settlers and other practices by which this Israeli occupation is becoming synonymous with an apartheid system of colonial occupation, which institutionalizes the plague of racism and entrenches hatred and incitement.”

“The moment has arrived for the world to say clearly: enough of aggression, settlements and occupation,” he said.  

...

In an indication of the bitterness of the blow to the Israelis, the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released a statement calling Mr. Abbas’s speech “defamatory and venomous” that was “full of mendacious propaganda against the IDF and the citizens of Israel.”

“Someone who wants peace does not talk in such a manner," the statement continued.
...
Susan Rice: “Today’s grand pronouncements will soon fade,” she said. “And the Palestinian people will wake up tomorrow and find that little about their lives has changed, save that the prospects of a durable peace have only receded.”

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