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From fear to fortune: Tel Aviv's attitude

May 20, 2012 4:00 PM

Israel's largest city is bordered on all sides by danger, but its residents now seem more focused on its beaches, bars, and booming high-tech industry. Bob Simon reports.

From fear to fortune: Tel Aviv's new attitude
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by jbltlv July 10, 2012 9:31 AM EDT
Mr. Simon forgets or is unaware of the several million Israeli Arabs, some of whom live, work, study and party in Tel Aviv. It's just possible that Israelis - Arabs and Jews - who just want to live life, will outnumber, in the end, those who want to fight. Little by little, Tel Aviv will conquer! And then everyone will be happily numb.
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by HigherStandard June 13, 2012 2:33 PM EDT
You speak of the Islamic extremists. What about the Jewish extremists, the ones who think that it is their duty by God to occupy Palestinian land, that God has sanctioned them to commit all necessary actions, be it violence, to do so?
CNN's God's Jewish Warriors surprisingly sheds some light on these extremists.
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by okanaganorchardist June 11, 2012 12:58 AM EDT
The truth is, over the last hundred years, certain Jewish leaders have made comments that have called for the elimination of Palestine. This is a reality. Both sides have attempted to instigate clandestine operations in each other's country. It is also true, that Palestinians have fired home-made rockets, with questionable accuracy, into former Palestine villages now occupied by Israelites. These actions were the pretext for the Israeli action, "Operation Case Lead" which killed 1,300 Palestinians, with the very latest weapons supplied by the USA, while only 8 Israelis died. To suggest that Israel has never made the first move is clearly false. Any cursory "investigation" of even Israeli sources will reveal the truth - try B'Tselem. People say that "Israel does not want land." For nearly a thousand years, the territory known then as Palestine was largely populated by agrarian Muslims. Even as late as 1847, 97% of the people were non-Jewish (426,908 vs 13,942). By 1946, as Jews began to move into Palestine after WWII, their population was still only less than half that of the Palistininans (1,339,763 vs 602,586 Jews). In 1947, at the urging of British and American Zionists, the UN partitioned Palestine, giving 55% of the land to the Jews and 45% to the Palestinians, who had more than double the Jewish population. The indigenous Palestinians rejected the division of the land on which they had lived and farmed for centuries, but to no avail. After a 2-year "Founding War of Independence," from 1947 to 1949, Israel occupied 78% of Palestine. Continued confrontation has resulted in 726,000 Palestinian refugees and the conversion of 400 of their villages to Jewish control. There are now over a million Palestinian refugees living in Turkey, Syria and elsewhere. Meanwhile, Israel now occupies over 85% of the area that was once Palestine. I would ask readers to put themselves into the place of the Palestinians. Would you stand idly by, watch your villages and farms destroyed, your access to homes blockaded, family members imprisoned, without reacting?
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by tzemachb June 3, 2012 2:08 AM EDT
Bob Simon starts off with the lie of so many people that Judea and Samaria are "occupied territories".
He knows more that Judge Stephen Schwebel, past President of the international court in the Haguem Ambassador Arthur Golberg and Prof Eugene Rostow, all of whom say that these territories legally belong to Israel.
Thus the old adage, tell a lie often enough and people will begin to believe that it is trua.
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by NobblyStick June 3, 2012 1:37 AM EDT
Nobbly Stick

After seeing Paul Simon's disgraceful hatchet job on Israel in connection with Arab Christians in Israel and the West Bank, I really don't feel that anything presented by this presenter could possibly be taken at face value. In fact, I have tried to go back though my memories to try to determine if anything that Paul Simon had said or presented has affected my opinion of 'this or that' and attempted a 'reset'.
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by AJFan101 May 30, 2012 3:34 AM EDT
What is the "Jewish model" that Simon was cracking up about? Most people will think it's stealing...
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by AJFan101 May 30, 2012 3:25 AM EDT
Now 60 minutes should do a piece on Gaza. Interested to see the night life there.
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by jimmyrb May 28, 2012 8:47 PM EDT
I was in Tel Aviv 7 days NOV 26 to DEC 1. Garden of Eden it was. I asked my friend, Tamar, " Aren't you worried about being attacked, You are so isolated here." She had asked me, "Do you want to make aliya?... Then she confided in me, ..." No one talks about it. So let's not spoil our time together."
James
..
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by jimmyrb May 28, 2012 8:31 PM EDT
I was in Tel Aviv 7 days NOV 26 to DEC 1. Garden of Eden it was. I asked my friend, Tamar, " Aren't you worried about being attacked, You are so isolated here." She had asked me, "Do you want to make aliya?... Then she confided in me, ..." No one talks about it. So let's not spoil our time together."
James
..
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by brianbgold847 May 26, 2012 10:14 AM EDT
Back when I immigrated to Israel from Chicago in 2006 to join the I.D.F. and live here, I though like all other Americans Israel is the place to be. I rented an apartment in Eilat and moved arround based on my military stationing for the two years of my service living on &800 a month (+/-). Not untill I really started livind here did I realize what I got myself into.

Now only 5 years later the property prices have gone up %70 in the last 3 years, there is no police presence (yes military of course), rediculous prices & taxes, no money to be made outside "Kombina" (look it up), people are fed up just plain rude. The government is more crooked than a perverst ****** and %90 of the country lives in the same income bracket (poor). Unless you work in high tech or have a million dollars to invest in a star-up don't wast your time trying to make a living. Half of the country lives on welfare and suffers from it due to the religious community not having to work. The Government and country demmand so much but give nothing in return. The equivilant of a Marine here in the I.D.F. get's paid $150 a month and the government uses the military to justify all its fals spending and crooked politicians.

The whole country lives financially in the minus. You need %60 down payment to buy a house at a minimum of a million dollars starting price for a studio apartment. The city is soo UGLY, smells like A*S and the people have no class or manners. Dress attire to a wedding is jeans and a button down (if that) and the people are powerless to do anything about it. The only thing right in this video is that the people here are numb.
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