A new arsenal of drones and satellite-guided weapons is changing the nature of warfare. America and its NATO allies possess these high-tech weapons, but smaller countries want them, too. Here's an inside glimpse of how the process of technology transfer works:  More...

the real choice Turkey has to make when it comes to Israel

While all eyes are fixed on the faltering Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, Israel is involved in another diplomatic standoff whose consequences may be just as dire for the future of the Middle East. The impasse in question is between Turkey and Israel -- erstwhile allies whose deteriorating relations undermine the security of the entire region. This conflict -- more than Ankara's outreach to Iran or tensions with the EU -- calls starkly into question the role Turkey will play in regional politics and peacemaking.

The current standoff between Turkey and Israel was sparked by the now-infamous Gaza flotilla clash of May 31. Ankara saw Israel's forceful interdiction of the flotilla and killing of nine Turkish nationals as violations of international law, and has demanded an apology and reparations. Israel saw the flotilla as a provocation irresponsibly endorsed by Turkish authorities, and has refused Ankara's demands and insisted its navy's actions were lawful     Read More

Isn't Israel's treatment of the Arabs just as bad as South Africa's Apartheid?

Today, within Israel, Jews are a majority, but the Arab minority are full citizens with voting rights and representation in the government. Under apartheid black South Africans could not vote and were not citizens of the country in which they are the overwhelming majority of the population. 

The situation of Palestinians in the territories - won by Israel in a defensive war forced upon it by its neighbors - is different. The security requirements of the nation, and a violent insurrection in the territories, have forced Israel to impose restrictions on Arab residents of the West Bank and Gaza Strip that are not necessary inside Israel's pre-1967 borders. The Palestinians in the territories, typically, dispute Israel's right to exist whereas blacks did not seek the destruction of South Africa, only the apartheid regime.

If Israel were to give Palestinians full citizenship, it would mean the territories had been annexed. No Israeli government has been prepared to take that step.

Meanwhile, Palestinians from the territories are allowed to work in Israel and receive similar pay and benefits to their Jewish counterparts. They are allowed to attend schools and universities. Palestinians have been given opportunities to run many of their own affairs. None of this was true for South African blacks.

- from Israel Is Not An Apartheid State, JSource -

Yet Zionism itself, and not only the current policies of the Israeli government, is constantly accused of being equivalent to apartheid simply because it represents a national emancipation movement which differs from others in being Jewish.

- Jacques Givet, "The Anti-Zionist Complex" -

"There is no such country as Palestine. 'Palestine' is a term the Zionists invented. There is no Palestine in the Bible. Our country was for centuries part of Syria. 'Palestine' is alien to us. It is the Zionists who introduced it".

- Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi, Syrian Arab leader to British Peel Commission, 1937 -

Concerning the Holy Land, the chairman of the Syrian Delegation at the Paris Peace Conference in February 1919 stated:

"The only Arab domination since the Conquest in 635 c.e. hardly lasted, as such, 22 years".

"There is not a solitary village throughout its whole extent (valley of Jezreel, Galilea); not for thirty miles in either direction... One may ride ten miles hereabouts and not see ten human beings. For the sort of solitude to make one dreary, come to Galilee... Nazareth is forlorn... Jericho lies a mouldering ruin... Bethlehem and Bethany, in their poverty and humiliation... untenanted by any living creature... A desolate country whose soil is rich enough, but is given over wholly to weeds... a silent, mournful expanse... a desolation... We never saw a human being on the whole route... Hardly a tree or shrub anywhere. Even the olive tree and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil had almost deserted the country... Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes... desolate and unlovely...".

- Mark Twain, "The Innocents Abroad", 1867 -

"The Arabs themselves cannot be considered but temporary residents. They pitched their tents in its grazing fields or built their places of refuge in its ruined cities. They created nothing in it. Since they were strangers to the land, they never became its masters. The desert wind that brought them hither could one day carry them away without their leaving behind them any sign of their passage through it".

- Comments by Christians concerning the Arabs in Palestine in the 1800s -

"There are 1.5 million people living in Gaza and only one of them really needs humanitarian aid. Only one of them is locked in a tiny room and never sees the light of day, only one of them is not allowed visits and is in uncertain health – his name is Gilad Shalit, and this month four years will have passed since he was kidnapped.” ~Defense Minister Ehud Barak ~