Israelis live in an alternate universe paid for by the U.S.

“Peace Now, the advocacy group that opposes Jewish settlement in areas beyond the 1967 boundaries, said in a new report that more than 2,000 housing units were awaiting immediate construction after the moratorium, which is due to expire on Sept. 26, and that plans for at least another 11,000 housing units had already received full government approval.

Plans for some 25,000 additional housing units need further government approval to be realized, the report said.”

Once again, the U.S. is impotent.

The Arab–Israeli conflict in 500 words or less

The century old political tension and hostilities between the Arab people of the Middle East and the Jewish community of present-day Israel. The Land of Israel was, according to the Torah, promised by God to the Children of Israel.

The beginning of the modern conflict was the large-scale Jewish immigration to Palestine in the late 19th century, after the establishment of the Zionist movement, and intensified with the creation of the modern State of Israel in 1948.

Before World War I, Palestine had been under the control of the Ottoman Empire for nearly 500 years. After the war, the area came under British rule as the “British Mandate of Palestine” included what is today Israel, Jordan, the West Bank and Gaza. Under the Mandate, Jewish immigration to Palestine increased. By 1931, 18 percent of the population of Palestine was Jews. Jewish immigration increased soon after the Nazis came to power in Germany, causing the Jewish population to double.

In response to Arab pressure, the British authorities greatly reduced the number of Jewish immigrants to Palestine, causing Jewish terrorism against the British. However; these restrictions remained in place until the end of the mandate, a period which coincided with the Nazi Holocaust and the flight of Jewish refugees from Europe. As a consequence, most Jewish entrants to Palestine were illegal, causing further tensions in the region. Following several failed attempts to solve the problem diplomatically, the British asked the newly formed United Nations for help. The result was the “two-state solution” of Israel and Palestine in 1947.

On May 14, 1948, Israel declared its independence and sovereignty. The next day, the Arab League reiterated their opposition to the UN. That day, the armies of Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Iraq invaded the territory partitioned for Palestine, thus starting the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. The Israeli Defense Force repulsed the Arab nations, thus extending its borders beyond the original UN partition. By December 1948, Israel controlled most of the portion of Mandate Palestine west of the Jordan River. The remainder of the Mandate consisted of Jordan, the area that came to be called the West Bank (controlled by Jordan), and the Gaza Strip (controlled by Egypt). The War culminated with the signing of the 1949 Armistice Agreements between Israel and each of its Arab neighbors. This armistice line is the internationally recognized border of the state of Israel.

While David Ben Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister, had accepted a “two state solution”, he openly expressed a “partial” Jewish State was just a beginning. He planned “the organization of a powerful army and the use of Jewish coercion and force to absorb all the country’s extension”. Ben Gurion immediately went to work raising money and arms from American and European Jews. These efforts sustained Israel and initiated the deep anti-western emotions harbored by Arabs.

Mass media forms our image of the world

Mass media forms our image of the world and then attempts to tell us what to think about that image. Virtually everything we know, or,think we know about events outside our own neighborhood or circle of acquaintances comes to us via our daily newspaper, our weekly news magazine, our radio, our television or the internet access that retransmits that information to our personal computers.

It is not just the suppression of certain news from our news media or the distortion of history by movies, books, articles, cable and TV. It is not the slanted editorials or the political leanings of one media source or the other that characterizes the opinion-manipulating techniques of our media. They exercise both subtlety and thoroughness in their management of the news and the entertainment that is presented to us.

Control of the media is nearly monolithic. All of the controlled media; television, radio, newspapers, magazines, books, motion pictures; they speak with a single voice, each reinforcing the other. Despite the appearance of variety, there is no real dissent, no alternative source of facts or ideas accessible to the great mass of people that might allow them to form opinions at odds with those the media presents.

Whenever you watch television, whenever you watch a local broadcasting station (via cable or a satellite dish); whenever you see a feature film in a theater or at home; whenever you listen to the radio or to recorded music; whenever you read a newspaper, book, or magazine;it is very likely that the information or entertainment you receive was produced and/or distributed by one of these mega-media companies and their management:

NBC Universal – Jeff Zucker
Walt Disney – Robert Igor
News Corp – Rupert Murdoch
Time Warner – Jeffery Bukes
Viacom – Sumner Redstone
CBS – Leslie Moonves
Vivendi – Jean-Bernard Levy
Comcast – Brian Levy Roberts
Sony Pictures – Howard Stringer
Google – Sergey Brinn
New York Times – Arthur Ochs Suolzberger
Tribune Company – Sam Zell
Gannet – Craig Bubrow
Microsoft – Steve Ballmer
Washington Post Company – Donald Mayer Graham
Daily News – Mortimer Zucker
The CW – Dawn Tarnofsky-Ostroff
ion – R. Brandon Burgess
Charter Communications – Mike Loviett
Advance.net – S.I. Newhouse
Hearst Corporation – Frank A. Bennack
Cablevision – Charles Dolan
Media News Group – Gary Wright
Associated Press – W.D. Singleton

Hence, every bit of cable news we watch, is sourced from one of the above people. And, they all meet regularly to develop standards, acceptable sourcing, Associated Press channeling, broadcast methods, etc.

There is no difference from FOX, CNN. MSNBC, NBC, CBS or ABC. The same information (news) is just reported with a slightly different slant. We are made to think we get different information from different sources. We do not.