I'm visting Tikun Olam on a regular basis without issues. Whenever the news of some gag order is spreading in Israel, the site becomes unreachable (from Israel). Any thoughts?

There is no travel ban on Israeli Arabs who are allowed to travel anywhere & everywhere in Israel. Unlike the travel ban on Israelis who are not allowed to travel Gaza. Travelling to parts of the West Bank is just too dangerousfor Jews.

For a courteous, reasoned answer to another poster's questions. Not enough civility in the Talkbacks (for example, #11 Sarah B's response to the same questions.)

She took his question seriously, Elmer. I, on the other hand, knew better.

Peres was it who said Israel can't kill them off and they aren't going anywhere. In the meantime Israel is running out of time.

dont you know your troops come here for advanced training.

to the State of Israel and Arabs think that it is their Mohammad given right to betray Israel.

then all the Palestinians should want to be in the Palestinian state. But they are aiming at a one state solution, all under their flag and no Israel. On the other hand under Olmert, when they thought the PA might actually get East Jerusalem, the Arabs rushed for Israeli citizenship. Embarrassing.

When the Palestine Authority was created, Arafat (may his name be cursed throughout eternity) issued a rather grandiose statement inviting all Palestinians living anywhere in the world (which would include Israel, presumably) to come help build a Palestinian state. No one took him up on the offer. Contrasts rather mightily with all the Jews who flocked to Israel in 1948 to help build a Jewish state, including Jews from some of the wealthiest Jewish communities in the world, such as South Africa, Canada, Brazil and the United States. Look at what Israel achieved in the first twenty years of its existence, and look at what the Palestine Authority has achieved in twenty years. What a stark contrast! Keep in mind, too, that Israel in that time frame had to absorb nearly one million penniless Jewish refugees who were booted from their homes in Arab and Moslem lands with little more than the clothes on their backs. Their homes, businesses and bank accounts were confiscated. Please keep in mind as well that Israel also absorbed homeless Jewish refugees from Europe, and did all this while being forced to fight wars for its very survival. Google the word "tzena," and you will discover just how difficult life was. Moreover, permit me to point out that the Palestine Authority has been the beneficiary of billions of dollars and billions of euros in cash aid. The money was intended to maintain infrastructure, build schools and hospitals and attract foreign investment capital. There is nothing to show for it, except that the PA's corrupt leadership have very luxurious second, and even third, homes in Europe and some extremely lavish offshore bank accounts. Finally, your comment about "ancestral homes" is absurd on its face. Read Mark Twain's "Innocents Abroad." The Palestine that he saw was virtually unpopulated, barren, lifeless and bereft of any culture. It was the Jews who restored the land, built cities, paved roads, pushed back the desert and drained the swamps. Not until the Jews of the First and Second Aliyah achieved all that -- despite having to battle bands of marauding Bedouins -- did Arabs flock to Palestine. Just so you know, Palestine's Arabs came from the Hejaz in Western Arabia. Every self-respecting Arab family in all of Israel can produce a rusty key, but not one can produce a deed. They have told the same lies for so long, they have come to believe them to be true. The fact of the matter is that what little arable portions of present-day Israel had Arabs during Ottoman rule were tenant-farmed for absentee Ottoman landlords. When the Jews came, they purchased the land from the Ottoman owners, whose land it was to sell. The fact that Arabs have been allowed to squat on land to which they have no claim and no right or title is rich testimony to the generosity of the Jews and of the State of Israel. Please keep that in mind …. and contrast it with the fate of the Jews in Arab and Moslem lands.

Where ever did you get the idea that Palestinian Arabs have lived there for "generations?" They are now, and have always been, squatters in non-sovereign territory. I very strongly suggest that you brush up on your “facts.” The following is an excerpt from Mark Twain's "Innocents Abroad," which puts paid once and for all to the Palestinian myth of lush olive groves and orchards. Hard to believe that the fertile and forested Israel of today is the bleak, desolate and abandoned Palestine that Mark Twain visited. "Of all the lands there are for dismal scenery, I think Palestine must be the prince. The hills are barren, they are dull of color, they are unpicturesque in shape. The valleys are unsightly deserts fringed with a feeble vegetation that has an expression about it of being sorrowful and despondent. The Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee sleep in the midst of a vast stretch of hill and plain wherein the eye rests upon no pleasant tint, no striking object, no soft picture dreaming in a purple haze or mottled with the shadows of the clouds. Every outline is harsh, every feature is distinct, there is no perspective -- distance works no enchantment here. It is a hopeless, dreary, heart-broken land. " "Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes. Over it broods the spell of a curse that has withered its fields and fettered its energies. Where Sodom and Gomorrah reared their domes and towers, that solemn sea now floods the plain, in whose bitter waters no living thing exists -- over whose waveless surface the blistering air hangs motionless and dead -- about whose borders nothing grows but weeds, and scattering tufts of cane, and that treacherous fruit that promises refreshment to parching lips, but turns to ashes at the touch. Nazareth is forlorn; about that ford of Jordan where the hosts of Israel entered the Promised Land with songs of rejoicing, one finds only a squalid camp of fantastic Bedouins of the desert; Jericho the accursed, lies a moldering ruin, to-day, even as Joshua's miracle left it more than three thousand years ago; Bethlehem and Bethany, in their poverty and their humiliation, have nothing about them now to remind one that they once knew the high honor of the Saviour's presence; the hallowed spot where the shepherds watched their flocks by night, and where the angels sang Peace on earth, good will to men, is untenanted by any living creature, and unblessed by any feature that is pleasant to the eye. Renowned Jerusalem itself, the stateliest name in history, has lost all its ancient grandeur, and is become a pauper village; the riches of Solomon are no longer there to compel the admiration of visiting Oriental queens; the wonderful temple which was the pride and the glory of Israel, is gone, and the Ottoman crescent is lifted above the spot where, on that most memorable day in the annals of the world, they reared the Holy Cross. The noted Sea of Galilee, where Roman fleets once rode at anchor and the disciples of the Saviour sailed in their ships, was long ago deserted by the devotees of war and commerce, and its borders are a silent wilderness; Capernaum is a shapeless ruin; Magdala is the home of beggared Arabs; Bethsaida and Chorazin have vanished from the earth, and the "desert places" round about them where thousands of men once listened to the Saviour's voice and ate the miraculous bread, sleep in the hush of a solitude that is inhabited only by birds of prey and skulking foxes."

Your sailors were humiliated by the Mullah Monkey Navy Squad of Teheran and you have the gaul to open your pie hole? I suggest you join hands with your French brothers in capitulation and hide under your beds while the Americans and Israelis do the heavy lifting as usual......but please refrain from trying to sound tough when we know you Brits lack the will for the fight and are nothing more than a power of years past....just nostalgic at this point.

No NGO is against dictatorship or the lack of democracy in Arab or Islamic countries. they never talk agaisnt it. the only way for Arabs and NGOs to stop being against Israel, is for Israel to behave the way Arabs like it and to stop being a domocracy and kick all Arabs out of country, the same thing that Arab and Islamic countries have done to their Jewish and other religious minorities. Israel must officially stop being a domocracy in regards to its Arab population and behave like all thoes good beloved Arab governments in middle East.

They were loyal citizens and trusted in humanity, making them vulnerable to the ultimate racist end - the Final Solution. Jews never attacked Germany, never placed themselves supreme over other citizens, and never sided with enemies of Germany. There is no parallelism in this situation and the 1930s, as you claim.

I read the entire article twice and all I read were amorphous accusations with no proof behind it. Claims of racism, secret police, etc. but no specific instances mentioned. One thing I found of interest was how organized the "claims" were dispensed across the globe to key Leftist politicians via NGOs. Like the 2000 Intifada, this seems very planned way in advance. On their claim that a "gag order" proves racism and a govt cover-up, I say - it's common policy for security agencies all over the world, including democracies, to use in order to no destroy any investigations or operations. And let's face it -Arabs in Israel have made it a point to show exactly which side they are on and are not shy about it. Infact - didn't the Arabs just cite a gag order on the Anat Kam affair...but they didn't seem irritated enough to call the Eurotrash NGOs that day.

which still doesn't have 100% unfettered news coverage yet.

As an israeli arab, I'm very impressed with you depth of understanuation of the situation of Israeli Arabs. Just two notes: 1-There is a israeli-arab chrestian community in Israel that has been there b 4 the country was established 2-We don't have "strong" connection" to the arab world. We know many don't even like us. We do appreciate the culture as in music/arts/movies/etc (specially lebanese and egyption).

Israel wouldn't kill them -- we are not, after all, Australia dealing with the aborigines -- and Israel is not running out of time. On the other hand, the Arabs in Israel are. No country tolerates a fifth column. They may not want to go to the Palestine Authority, but there is absolutely nothing to keep Israel from sending seditionists and traitors there. Hey -- deportation beats hanging and prison, don't you think? Or, you can read about your illustrious history here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_of_Indigenous_Australians Hate to think about the number of innocent aborigines that went to the gallows in Australia, a country initially populated by criminals. You, least of all, Lydia, have a right to criticize Israel. Your own country's history is soaked in blood. And the aborigines never declared war on the whites. You can feel really proud.

I was her before you, my grandparents were hear before your grandparents. We will be her untel the end of life. So be assure that we will never leave, and by the way you will leave. your parents will leave, like grandparents left.

#35..LYDIA IS AMONGST THE CHIEF OCCUPIERS OF ABORIGINAL AUSTRALIA AND YET HAS THE NERVE TO PREACH TO ISRAEL. I AM SURE THE ABORIGINIES OF AUSTRALIA WOULD LOVE TO GET ALL THEIR HUMAN RIGHTS AND THEIR LANDS BACK. THEY WOULD LOVE LYDIA AND HER ILK TO BEAT IT, SCRAM, VAMOOSE, GET OUT OF THEIR NATIVE COUNTRY. OCCUPIERS LIKE LYDIA TURN A BLIND EYE AND PURPOSELY IGNORE THE SITUATION OF ABORIGINIS AND CONVENIENTLY TURN A BLIND EYE TO THE FACT THAT SHE IS AN OCCUPIER EXTRA-ORDINAIRE. ONLY LYDIA HAS THE RIGHT TO " OCCUPY THE LAND OF OTHERS ", NAMELY THE NATIVE ABORIGNIES. ISRAEL "OCCUPIES " IT'S OWN ISRAELI LAND, THAT'S IT.

Thanks for the "link".such a matter should be freely published .I dont see anything wrong in employing non violent means to achieve political goals."Somebody" is losing their senses here.

the Muslims took over nazarath a city that supose to be chritian only, I was even more shocked to find out that on friday just inspite they pray infront of the main holy church, they even build mosque there with no religous justification, they do everything to make the chritians in nazarath miserable, realy sad.

so, some of us sane people in our little country here are worried that stuff like this comes out, then we read about it in the news as if we had no idea what's going on in our own country. this is very worrying, as I've never experienced such a news blackout imposed on me. I thought i came to this country as a safe place but it's run by backwards fascists, which also think the truth won't come out! hey, at least some better PR would be in order. this makes us look like a joke AND EVERYBODY IS READING.

Sarah is a citizen of the USA, didn't you know that? The only tie she has with israel is the usual story, land of the jews, ancestors bla bla bla. My grandparents, like yours were born there and have title deeds, contrary to her false claim that palestinians don't have any deeds. While i am not fond of having arab rule in israel, or anywhere in this specific regard, being the secular that i am, i just thought i would set this straight and remind Sarah that the arabs that she wishes to throw out of israel were born there, unlike her!

you know only 2 generation back cause your family isn't lokal.

more palis than you think considering Anzak troops were kinda hostile, that cause arabs used to colaborate with the turks and they even sniferd the anzak troops, there is huge monument in Israel for the memory of the brave Aussis who died to protect jews in Israel, only Lydia isn't smart enough and taint the memory of her own country men. http://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%A7%D7%95%D7%91%D7%A5:The_Anzac_Memorial(WW--)_in_Israel.jpg Israel built on her expence the monuments.

your grandfather lived before the Brits came meaning the document isn't real. the turks gave onlt visas. but no deeds. and they forced some jews to convert to islam.

so what r you blabing about.

Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were there long before you. Stop being stupid. You are supposedly the descendants of the illegitimate son of a whore who was cast into exile. How does that qualify you to claim a rightful presence in land that has been Jewish for over five thousand years? We were forced into exile and now we have returned. You will have to make your way somewhere else. You will NEVER dislodge us.

your talkbacks continue to be silly and lack structure at best...I never claimed to have been born there, nor do i claim to having owned anything in Israel. I just stated simple, straight forward facts, truth hurts sometimes, but still it's out there...i am not going to discuss this further with you as you are not someone to debate an issue with. Wish you all the best you and your fellow israelis.

Richard Silverstein is a fool and a disgrace to his people. He spends all of his time trying to help those trying to hurt the rest of us here in Israel. www.tamingkorach.com