I have acquired and am posting to a new website, www.ChristianConnections.ca . There I can host the Christian Connections Calendar for SW Ontario, links to The Shepherd's Guides across Canada, and start the links pages I have been envisioning. Thanks to Gary Herrfort, the previous owner, for the seamless transition. I hope that this new site will be a useful tool and help "Making Christian Connections".
Any suggestions and comments are welcome, and thanks in advance. Leave your comments here, or visit the site to click on the email in www.ChristianConnections.ca .
Monday, June 18, 2007
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
Think of what the Palestinians could have accomplished by now...
Kudos to Mindelle Jacobs for her succinct portrayal of the abuse of the Palestinians. With the manpower and innovation evident in both the Palestinians and Israelis, the Palestine region could have been an economic powerhouse long ago--if they could only get along. Sigh.
Tue, June 5, 2007
Leaders have failed Palestinians
By MINDELLE JACOBS
http://www.edmontonsun.com/News/Columnists/Jacobs_Mindelle/2007/06/05/4235398-sun.html
For almost 60 years, Arab countries and factions have pretended to help the Palestinians while using them as pawns to demonize Israel or as a pretext for tribal and religious infighting.
The clash between the Lebanese army and two shadowy radical Islamic groups is the latest calamity to befall the long-suffering Palestinians.
Little is clear about what goes on in the Middle East, but one thing is certain. The militants holed up in two of Lebanon's Palestinian refugee camps don't have the Palestinians' interests at heart.
REFUGEE CAMPS
The greater tragedy is the Arab world has left the Palestinians to fester in refugee camps, in the hope that Israel would be vanquished. A two-state solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict is the only route to peace.
Repeatedly, the Palestinians have had a chance for their own state, ever since the UN proposed dividing a small piece of what was formerly the Ottoman Empire into Jewish and Arab countries. The Jews agreed. The Arabs chose war. Think of what the Palestinians could have accomplished by now if they'd chosen state-building instead of war-mongering.
Their leaders failed them -- and continue to do so today -- and the Arab world has, by and large, left them to wallow in misery because of its undying hatred of a dynamic, successful democracy -- Israel.
Lebanon, for instance, confines its Palestinians to 12 refugee camps that have, effectively, become mini-states within a state. The Palestinians aren't allowed to own property or work in professions such as medicine, law, engineering and journalism.
Last year, the Lebanese government eased the restrictions slightly, allowing Palestinians to work in previously prohibited clerical and manual jobs, according to the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI).
But the permit process is so burdensome and expensive that only two or three refugees had applied by late last year.
"The consensus view in Lebanon is that whatever happens to these people, we don't want them to stay here," says Tamara Cofman Wittes, a research fellow at the Brookings Institution.
The Palestinian refugees stuck in camps in Lebanon are worse off than their counterparts anywhere else, she says. The Lebanese resent the Palestinians because Yasser Arafat stirred up so much trouble when he was based in Lebanon in the 1970s, she adds.
SYRIA
In Syria, Palestinian refugees are a little better off. They're allowed to work and live where they like, although they don't have citizenship. Still, more than one-quarter of them -- about 115,000 people -- live in 13 camps, USCRI says.
The Arabs have always supported a political solution rather than a practical solution to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, says Cofman Wittes.
"A practical solution would have been to resettle them where they were a long time ago," she says. "But the refugees have been a powerful symbol of Palestinian suffering that the Arab states have wielded in the conflict with Israel. As a result, they've been a political football."
Tens of millions of refugees displaced after the Second World War rebuilt their lives in new places. Why not the Palestinians?
It hasn't been a question of what's best for the Palestinians as a community or as individuals, says Cofman Wittes. Instead, the emphasis has been on the most effective political use that could be made of the Palestinians.
The Palestinians will have their own state when their leaders yearn for it more than they want to annihilate Israel.
Later: My friend Ron Gray commented: This last sentence reminds me of Golda Meier's comment: "There will be peace in the Middle East when the Arabs love their children more than they hate us."
Tue, June 5, 2007
Leaders have failed Palestinians
By MINDELLE JACOBS
http://www.edmontonsun.com/News/Columnists/Jacobs_Mindelle/2007/06/05/4235398-sun.html
For almost 60 years, Arab countries and factions have pretended to help the Palestinians while using them as pawns to demonize Israel or as a pretext for tribal and religious infighting.
The clash between the Lebanese army and two shadowy radical Islamic groups is the latest calamity to befall the long-suffering Palestinians.
Little is clear about what goes on in the Middle East, but one thing is certain. The militants holed up in two of Lebanon's Palestinian refugee camps don't have the Palestinians' interests at heart.
REFUGEE CAMPS
The greater tragedy is the Arab world has left the Palestinians to fester in refugee camps, in the hope that Israel would be vanquished. A two-state solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict is the only route to peace.
Repeatedly, the Palestinians have had a chance for their own state, ever since the UN proposed dividing a small piece of what was formerly the Ottoman Empire into Jewish and Arab countries. The Jews agreed. The Arabs chose war. Think of what the Palestinians could have accomplished by now if they'd chosen state-building instead of war-mongering.
Their leaders failed them -- and continue to do so today -- and the Arab world has, by and large, left them to wallow in misery because of its undying hatred of a dynamic, successful democracy -- Israel.
Lebanon, for instance, confines its Palestinians to 12 refugee camps that have, effectively, become mini-states within a state. The Palestinians aren't allowed to own property or work in professions such as medicine, law, engineering and journalism.
Last year, the Lebanese government eased the restrictions slightly, allowing Palestinians to work in previously prohibited clerical and manual jobs, according to the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI).
But the permit process is so burdensome and expensive that only two or three refugees had applied by late last year.
"The consensus view in Lebanon is that whatever happens to these people, we don't want them to stay here," says Tamara Cofman Wittes, a research fellow at the Brookings Institution.
The Palestinian refugees stuck in camps in Lebanon are worse off than their counterparts anywhere else, she says. The Lebanese resent the Palestinians because Yasser Arafat stirred up so much trouble when he was based in Lebanon in the 1970s, she adds.
SYRIA
In Syria, Palestinian refugees are a little better off. They're allowed to work and live where they like, although they don't have citizenship. Still, more than one-quarter of them -- about 115,000 people -- live in 13 camps, USCRI says.
The Arabs have always supported a political solution rather than a practical solution to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, says Cofman Wittes.
"A practical solution would have been to resettle them where they were a long time ago," she says. "But the refugees have been a powerful symbol of Palestinian suffering that the Arab states have wielded in the conflict with Israel. As a result, they've been a political football."
Tens of millions of refugees displaced after the Second World War rebuilt their lives in new places. Why not the Palestinians?
It hasn't been a question of what's best for the Palestinians as a community or as individuals, says Cofman Wittes. Instead, the emphasis has been on the most effective political use that could be made of the Palestinians.
The Palestinians will have their own state when their leaders yearn for it more than they want to annihilate Israel.
Later: My friend Ron Gray commented: This last sentence reminds me of Golda Meier's comment: "There will be peace in the Middle East when the Arabs love their children more than they hate us."
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