UNMIA

Why can’t we all just get along? Why not peace instead of war? For Israel these two songs give the main reason. Here is a popular Israeli song, with a common theme. Other songs are about life and love, like most other people’s songs. You won’t find Israeli songs about murder and suicide and the joy of killing Arabs. Listen to the Palestinian song. It’s very typical, you can find many samples like this among popular Arab songs, and many are more violent than this one.

Do you want peace? First, define peace. There are many kinds of peace…the peace of the grave, the peace of complete victory, the peace of having nothing left to lose, the peace of living together in unity. Unless both sides in a conflict want the same kind of peace, peace will only come with victory. For that to change, the Palestinians will have to change their goal. Listen and consider.

A video of Ofra Haza singing “Yerushalayim Shel Zahav” (Jerusalem of Gold)

Article from Ami Isseroff

Jews dancing in the streets on November 29, 1947 to celebrate the Palestine Partition Decision

This letter by Zipporah Porath, from her book, “Letters from Jerusalem 1947-1948,” was written the morning after the United Nations voted to approve the Partition of Palestine into two states, paving the way for the establishment of the State of Israel.

The decision of the United Nations to partition Palestine embodied in UN General Assembly Resolution 181 was greeted by Jewish Palestinians with both joy and foreboding. The joy was expressed in the spontaneous celebrations that broke out on the evening of November 29, 1947 throughout Mandatory Palestine. The foreboding was expressed by Jewish leaders, who understood that the partition decision would almost inevitably lead to war. Chaim Weizmann remarked in December that the state would not be handed to the Jewish people on a silver platter. Soon after, the poet Natan Alterman wrote the poem, The Silver Platter, about the heroism of the young people who would be called upon to defend their new country. About 6,000 Israelis were killed in the 1948 Israel War of Independence. (First Arab-Israeli war). But these thoughts were far from the …

During the long discussion about the outrageous “Three Jerusalem Women” presentation sponsored in part by MEPJA (Middle East Peace and Justice Alliance), and in part by the UNM Humanities department, we not only published the articles and video on the UNMIA website, but the UNM Daily Lobo printed comments about the event.

The first article it published was a protest by Dotan Kennedy, and Israeli student who was present at the event. Then the rabid anti-Israel Lobo regular, Brian Fejer posted his standard anti-Israel statement, something stupid about the “Zionist Regime”. Kennedy made a brief answer to that. In the meantime UNMIA members posted two publishable comments, neither of which was posted on the Daily Lobo. Next it published four glowing accounts of the events, mainly by MEPJA members, and rejected two more comments critical of the event.

The “independent” Daily Lobo’s effort was evidently to make the Israeli student look like a lone and unreasonable dissenter in a flood of loving and approving comments about the publicly sponsored anti-Israel propaganda. At least two other people wrote to voice their protest of this event, but their comments didn’t appear in the Lobo. All but perhaps one of the people who found …