Poland from a Persian Tourist's Perspective

How about Totally Worldwide Addicted Thread Starters?

...no... wait a minute...

In Middle East or Far East or South East or South or North or whichever part of ASIA ... you all have the biggest problem - you lack a consensus of putting 'ASIANS' first ...

Try and do that ... I know its more difficult for you guyz as you are not with as many similarities as we enjoy in Europe (and even then usually most of us are often found busying ourselves with our differences) ... BUT STILL ASIANS should be able to get into some kind of terms among themselves.

You have...different religion, culture, language, ethnicity, sometimes even history. Its just SO VAST ... this continent ... that its diversity is magnamous!

However, this vastness could very well have been used as a strength ... instead you all messed it up and from time and again became vassals of some Western oppressor (namely UK ... or Russia ... or USA).

Try and wake up.

Regarding Ahmedinejad in your previous post: I myself do not condone that man. I know about the atrocities he unloads upon the BAHAI minority people, and sunnis and other minorities ... but the fact remains that HE IS IN POWER. And people dont just come into power without any kind of support at all!

He does have a huge number of followers ... and he does have his supporters. Maybe you are not one of them (you are not a muslim) ... but Iranians have their Islamists. You cannot deny that.

Its better if Iran could be more involved with positive regional cooperation. Although geographically Iran is more linked with Arabs (also religiously) ... its still a part of Central Asia in my eyes. You have more history with India in the east (ancient) than with the Arabs. Arabs and you guyz got involved this densely through the Arab invasions...

Why not look beyond Arabs and get yourself somehow more involved with the Eastern neighbours like Pakistan (land border) or India (sea border...not too far away from land) ... or China (comes just after Afghanistan) ... and in the North with other Central Asian countries...

The point is that WHY ONLY ARABS?... move away from Arabs for a change ...I am sure that inspite of all the downsides of your other side (eastern side of Iran)...you will still benefit.

you know as someone who is Greek and respects Persia a lot such simply isn't true. Wikipedia isn't a good history source and Greek and Persian historians put it best. The vast majority of Ancient Greek discoveries and technologies were before the Hellenic empire which was actually led and run by Macedonians and even before Persia became involved in anyway with Greece. To claim that a nation fully plagarized your things just because of a few similarities is very ethnocentric and uneducated sorry to say. Moreover could I not say the same with ancient Persia and ancient china in technology?

You should note that there are many Persians whom live in Greece today and that tensions are none. All great civilizations have had great contributions, ethnocentris

simply leads to all that discrimination your complaining about.

This is ludicrous! I accept that Israelis are not perfect and that it's legitimate to criticize us for things we did that you don't agree with. But you are backing the Persian traveller for an accusation that has no basis at all. None of you can bring a case of an Israeli soldier raping a palestinian girl and yet you think I'm unrealistic because it's obvious to you that soldiers rape. Maybe in your countries they do, but not in mine. Listen to your argument:

Soldiers rape. Israelis are soldiers. Therefore they rape palestinian girls.
Even if this ridiculous logic made sense you wouldn't be saying anything more than "Israelis are no worse than anyone else." But the logic is faulty. Because the first part is false. Not all soldiers rape. Israelis don't.

So you are saying that Israeli's are the HUGE exception to a very widely-established rule? That is what doesn't make any sense.

Well, I googled...but besides an Arab posing as IDF soldier during his rape and some male soldiers raping a female IDF soldier there is nothing out on it...and somehow I believe the media would be on that kind of stuff like a hawk!

It even seems IDF soldiers are even accused of racism because of their lack of "soldierly raping" of arab women....

Things like being in the top bracket of human trafficking, drugtrade and the abuse and torture of european women?

"The industry has proved very lucrative for the human traffickers, with each woman sold in Israel bringing in anywhere between $50,000 to $100,000.

But the state also earns a tidy profit from the white slave trade, according to Hotline.

Service providers, such as taxi drivers transporting prostitutes, lawyers who represent the clients, landlords who rent out their premises as brothels, all pay income tax, and this ultimately arrives in the state's coffers. Not to mention the cases of corrupt police officers who have also lined their pockets through bribery".

atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JI05Ak01.html

How about this;

"The Amnesty report said that each year hundreds of women were kidnapped or lured into Israel's sex industry, where they were bought and sold, auctioned, held in debt bondage, raped and tortured".

news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/754011.stm

And this as one last one (Hope you haven't had your lunch yet);

"There are an estimated 20,000 female sex slaves forced into prostitution in Tel-Aviv each year. According to a report released in 2005 by the Knesset Subcommittee on Trafficking in Women, between 10,000 and 15,000 women had been smuggled into Israel over the previous four years to work as prostitutes. According to the report, the women, who were mostly from the former Soviet Union, were sold at public auction for as much as $10,000 and forced to work up to 18 hours a day".

antiisgood.wordpress.com/2009/06/12/sex-slavery-the-growing-trade-in-israel/

Who needs Israeli soldiers to rape Arab women, when Israel the state itself does it so much better to EASTERN EUROPEAN women?? Seems like Israel has some cleaning up to do...

I'm sick and tired of Jewish leftists who preach about women rights, human rights abuse and who spout equal rights in American and European colleges and universities, they go on book tours and get on TV, telling us how bad we white countries are treating our women, our gays and our immigrants. But while vacationing back in Tel Aviv after their bashing of OUR culture, they don't seem to bothered to attack their own people and country, for doing just the same.

Don't make me go looking for the links on some of the other things that the Israelis have carved themselves out a piece of the market with, like snuff movies, child pûrnography, slave labour and extacy production for the Europeans.

THIS is why I'm sick and tired to hear about the holocaust day in and day out, in our newspapers. If they stopped talking about that, and actually looked at what's going on TODAY, then we could make a change for the millions of people who have to suffer from all the above mentioned. But no...a historical event that took place over 60 years ago is getting more attention than the fact that tens of thousands of young, innocent European girls are kidnapped, raped, tortured and forced to prostitute themselves to the "chosen people" every year. A fact that is kept hidden in the backpages of our newspapers, and seldom or never get's any publicity and is not recognised by the average man and woman on the street. But ask anyone if they know about the holocaust, and they can tell you about the dozens movies they saw, or the books they read, or about Anne Frank or about Simon Wiesenthal. About the evil Nazis and all the horror they did. But ask them about the Israeli drug industry, the pûrn industry, the human trafficking industry or why 5 Israelis jumped up and down, gave each other high fives and lit their lighters when the twin towers fell...and they will look at you with blank eyes. How come nobody in Hollywood goes to Israel and makes a movie about that?? Oh yeah, you don't poop in your own backyard.

Dariusz

Word.... God forbid anyone from denying the holocaust but it's perfectly fine for Israel to run Gaza like a concentration camp without anyone batting an eye.


Well at least you're admitting that you're not perfect now? Big step forward. We're not saying that all Israeli soldiers rape but some soldiers inevitably do and some soldiers do much worse things than just rape. time served in the IDF is a rite of passage for all young Israelis, and is accepted as a normal part of growing up right? Israeli society does not always see the human side of Palestinians. Israelis meet them for the first time during military service, and this perspective is from that of an occupier and an enemy, leaving you with an untrue impression of them. As for as I know Israelis aren't allow to go into the occupied territories except soldiers.

Now don't get me wrong but this highly militarized society along with a heavily subhuman view of everyday Palestinians is a huge breeding ground for crimes. DariuszTelka already pointed out the huge problem Israel has with human trafficking and the people involved, Israel is a small country with a small population so those numbers are staggering.

It's inevitable that an x amount of soldiers are involved in this industry and that they're profiting greatly from it either directly or by being on a payroll. I don't see why it's such an unthinkable thought that Israeli soldiers could rape a Palestinian girl and then let her go or maybe sell her into the sextrade industry. It's already happening in the thousands to Eastern European girls so why should Palestinians be an exception? I mean Israeli soldiers don't exactly have a reputation for treating the Palestinian civilians with dignity and respect. The Eastern European girls don't just come from nowhere. They come into the country from the border so is it THAT unthinkable that Israeli soldiers would want to "test-drive" the girls before they let the human traffickers slip through their fingers?

Things like these happen all over the world even in well established countries who aren't in war. Whether it's rape or just a boob-grace doesn't matter, sexual abuse is sexual abuse. You can't possibly claim that you know all Israeli soldiers sexual preferences and you can't deny that there might be an Israeli soldier somewhere who's keeping a Palestinian or eastern European sex-slave in the basement just for fun. It doesn't mean that it's not a crime just because the crime doesn't happen in the field.

Anyways I'm not saying this to accuse Israeli soldiers of anything but just think about it rationally for a minute. Israeli soldiers or not. They're still human and they make mistakes, therefore they can't be the exception.


You're right, maybe I overexaggerated a bit. Everyone plagiarized technological breakthroughs from each-other in one way or another. I wrote it the way I did because sometimes I get pretty frustrated when ALL the credit goes to the Greek empire while the Persian empires is just swept under the rug as if it never existed. This probably has something to do with the European superiority taught in western school but that's another story.

When I was talking about discrimination and tension it was more concentrated to Northern and Western Europe. I know that Persian and Arab immigrants do much better socially in the south than in the west mainly because of our similarities. I used to attend an all native private Swedish school for a couple of years when I was a child and I was the ONLY person of color among 500 blond haired, blue eyed youngsters. Needless to say everyday was my only personal version of the movie Fight Club. I dealt with it but after a few years It got pretty pointless. I have no doubt that these kinda tensions would be much much less or even none existent in the south than what I experienced in the far north. When I'm in Italy or Spain I don't run unto any kind of discrimination which is noticeable because I completely blend it, even as a tourist people would presume I spoke Italian or Spanish.


Lol, I keep telling myself not to come back and read the replies.

Yes,you're quite right about your feelings of this forum.
Some Poles are nice ,while some are not.Genernally the guys I met still fine.
But I developed such kind of complete different views with yours to the rural area.I'm a asian and have been in Poland for almost two years,I felt the people I met in small cities are much better than the ones I met in Warsaw.

DariusTraveller

Yea as someone who studies world history tons, Italian, Greek, and French histories are almost always the most exaggerated in European history, it's also why those countries have more or less the most nationalists in Europe. Also I know what you mean about the Mediterranean looks. I too have been to Greece and Italy and there is the olive skin, dark eyes and hair almost on everyone you run into. But personally I never have seen it to surmount to racial trouble; or at least since the other Europeans might know they're Greco-Italian. But from what I've seen many ladies like it ;-). With me I am half Polish and half Greek so I never fully "fit in" in either country. I have the pale skin of a slav, and the dark hair, eyes, and facial features of a Mediterranean.

I also agree with the asian guy above me (are you Japanese? If so Konichiwa ^_^) that I liked the rural cities more than the main capital. While you are right Darius that the people in Warsaw are more educated and open to various people, citizens in the rural areas seemed more helpful and attentive...plus I like the Polish nature with renaissance style buildings more than I do the industrial areas. However! Note that when I say rural I mean the minor cities such as Wroclaw, Krakow, Zielawola, Gdansk, or Lublin. Not some middle in the no-where with hillbillies that will most likely from the stories I've heard discriminate against everyone that steps foot there. :-/

I've never heard about Zielawola - are you sure it's in Poland? As for Wrocław, Kraków
and Gdańsk - these are major cities. How can you describe them as rural is beyond me :-)


I haven't discriminated against a foreigner in a long time. It's so boring here in the middle
of nowhere. Why can't we have more tourists so we could discriminate against them? *rolls eyes*

Not true at all. We meet arabs everywhere in stores, workplaces, restaurants, hospitals and other areas of everyday life. I could go out in the street right now and count at least 10 arabs within a few minutes. As far as Palestinians from the territories, we see less of them on an everyday basis since the Intifada, but every israeli still has some contact with them, particularly in Jerusalem.

You say that Israelis aren't allow to go into the occupied territories except soldiers. This is also not true. The areas that are still under Israeli control are accessible to Israelis and palestinians. The places under palestinian control are closed to Jews (talk about apartheid!) More than 90% of palestinians live in those areas but they move in and out of Israeli controlled areas so there is daily contact. For example Israelis who live in settlements shop in the same stores and buy petrol in the same stations as the palestinians.

I want to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that your intentions are good. So I'll just say that nearly everything you say about israel is based on lack of knowledge and assumptions that have no connection with reality. You can oppose Israel all you want, but at least you should know the truth about what Israel really is before you form your opinion. Not everything you learn growing up in Iran is true.

Yeah but isn't it the case that you live under constant police patrol, yehudi? That's no way to live if so. Teenagers with karabins walking around ready to fire, that's what my wife saw in Jerusalem and its environs.

No it's not true. In most places here you don't see more of a police presence than any city in Europe or the US. Even less. Your wife was touring so she likely went to the Old City in Jerusalem. There you would find soldiers or police patrolling on foot.


What your wife also probably saw were soldiers on leave who normally carry their weapon on the way home or to their base. So it's very normal here to sit next to a soldier on a bus who has an M16 between his knees. They are not ready to fire, and if your wife knows anything about guns she would probably have noticed that the magazine is not inserted and the Safety is on. In my army years I would often ride on a bus with an M16, but in a crowded place you hold it with the butt down and the barrel facing up to avoid accidents.


You don't really notice it unless there's some security situation going on.

First point, thanks for the info. It's important to break preconceptions.

Yeah, it's just in case. As I thought. They have to make tourists feel safe also.

What is the most volatile city in the Israel/Palestine controlled territories? Ramallah?

Your input is very welcome, yehudi.

I'm not talking about Israeli Arabs but Palestinian Arabs, like the ones living in Gaza and the West Bank. Anyways I might be wrong about the territory travel ban as this is something I was told by Israeli teenagers who have refused military service and been jailed for it. My point is that Israel seems like a totalitarian military state and either you're with them or against them. It's still undeniable that Palestinians have been either killed or driven from their land while forced to live in refugee camps in neighboring countries in the millions. As I said I'm not against Jews but I am against Zionism.

Palestinians are treated inferior to Israelis everyday and it's visible everywhere. Whether you want to admit it or not is not significant but building a 400+ mile apartheid says it all without words. I still think what Israel has done is fundamentally wrong. The amount of Palestinian killed is ridiculous compared to Israeli casualties. I'm not saying more Israeli deaths would even things out or solve anything but the way you guys are handling this is wrong. building a wall around the problem so that you don't have to look at it won't solve anything. This is not just me saying this but the international community is also saying it. From the outside it seems like Israelis don't give a flying freck about Palestinian blood which is most likely the truth. I don't know how anyone can justify Israeli snipers shooting kids throwing rocks, This has happened many times before in every possible scenario and yet the same soldier is still on the job. All I'm trying to say is that Israel is one of the most powerful states in the middle east and you guys have a responsibility. But instead it just seem like you divide and exterminate people

I think it's fundamentally wrong to systematically kill and drive people off land that is theirs as much as it's yours. I think it's fundamentally wrong to put an M16 in the hands of a nationalist Israeli teenager and then expect him to be objective before he fires his gun at civilians. And last but not least I think it's wrong of you guys not to build a joint state with the Palestinians. I want to believe that someday you people can live as neighbors in a state that is as much theirs as it's yours but the way Israel is running things now just shows the true intent of the people in power. I'm not saying all Israelis are like this but whoever is running this circus won't stop until the very last few hundred Palestinians die in a reign of fire in an attempt to make their last stand for an independent state.

I don't know how much you agree to this but you can't be that blinded as to say that it isn't what it looks like and that something entirely different is going on.

And btw, I don't live in Iran right now but if I did I would still say these things, Iran isn't some backwards desert nation without decent living conditions. I can watch pretty much any western channel I want back home and I can access the Internet without issues so people aren't as uninformed as you might think. I form my opinions solely on what I read and see, some of the things you've said is slightly different from what I've personally heard from Israeli's that I've met. Anyways they seemed pretty informed and some of them had served the forces more than once so I believe the bleak stories they told me. I can't see why they would lie about their own country?

Darius, we all know that that cannot be a reality. Israel cannot agree to a 2-state solution due to how its offer around Camp David was treated. The Oslo Accords were broken by Arafat all too often. Clinton, Mitchell, Biden and Obama all talk about it to keep the ball rolling but it won't become a reality to the satisfaction of many for a VERY long time, if at all. Netanyahu won't stand for it.

I agree. We don't justify it and we don't do that.


I agree. We don't systematically kill palestinians. There is no policy to do that. We do however fight armed groups that fight us, as any country would.

Again, you have assumptions that are either completely baseless or highly exaggerated, and you're basing you opinions on that.


There's an easy answer for that. The arabs would outnumber the Jews at some point simply by encouraging immigration from the arab world that surrounds us (25 countries with a combined population of 358 million people). If that would happen, Jews would not be allowed in anymore. This scenario would lead to a civil war far bloodier than what's happening now.


That's called Leftist defeatism. It happens in the best of countries.

By the way, there are many Persian Jews prominent in Israel, such as Shaul Mofaz, former chief of staff, Rita Yahan-Farouz a very popular singer. You can listen to her here:

...

Some do, yehudi. I've seen films of it.

So if OCL wasn't an example of systematic killing, what was it? 1300 dead is staggering. Over 4000 injured. Where is your response to the Goldstone Report?

So you fear sth similar to Kosovo, yehudi, where Albanians marched in in their droves and made Serbs the minority in their self-proclaimed Holy Land? What do you say to that?

Isn't it more the case of entitlement rather than practicalities?

You're right but As I said, I'm against Zionism and the policy for establishing a national homeland for Jews. They've been there, done that and look how it went. We all know what the Nazi's did to them but the people running this illegal circus state should not be allowed to have a get-out-of-jail-free-card for persecuting another people just because it happened to them. The only right thing to do is to establish one state with a new name, one parliament where Israeli and Palestinian officials sit side by side, tear down the apartheid wall and abolish all borders, give equal rights to all citizens of this new state. This new state should of course have controlled immigration or a complete immigration ban for a very long time until things settle..... Is that so impossible? I think not.

They need to learn how to live together as equals. Many of the problems today exist because people have a mindset where Arab Muslim blood is considered the cheapest blood spilled. Winston Churchill used to refer to Arabs as "dogs" which pretty much explains why the British didn't object to the establishment of Israel or even attempt to dismantle the state by force which they could have easily done. It all just seems to convenient.

Both sides claim they have the right to be there but both sides want to exclude each other from certain areas. The only solution is to unite them under one single state or just wait for one side to exterminate the other.... We all know who's winning the silent extermination right now.

A very well-written post, Darius. They are in denial. Yehudi can be level-headed at times and ignorant at others. There are plenty online videos showing IDF atrocities and he cannot just sweep them under the carpet.

I'm not against Jews at all. In fact, I like the richness of their culture, much like I appreciate the depth of culture in our respective countries, Scotland and Iran. Zionism is evil and I want him to acknowledge it. So many Arabs would flock in. Now he must know how Palestinians felt when the Zionist plan was implemented and many Jews flocked back.

Balfour was the arse of a Brit (a Scot I think) that sold the Palestinians off down the river.

I have to disagree.. There's no official policy for the U.S being in Iraq for Oil either but we all know that it's the unofficial policy right now. Systematically driving people off their land while giving them less rights, inferior living conditions and inferior healthcare compared to Israeli's, while controlling them with brute force is systematic killing in some form.


This isn't a likely scenario, This new state should be for Palestinian Arabs and Jews only, A total immigration ban from anywhere would divert this scenario. It's not as hard as people make it out to be.


They seemed pretty patriotic to me, anyways I can't see how a soldier can be leftist in any from, it's against everything a leftist believes in .


Didn't know that, I'll check it out later.

Bravo, Darius. Very true. They come up with pathetic attempts like the Annapolis Agreement which achieved nothing. Any fair person can see the solution staring at them in the face but politicians blur it.

youtube.com/watch?v=0bdbA2Ka3Bo, not nice

youtube.com/watch?v=l0aEo59c7zU&feature=fvw, Gaza being given to the Palestinians? This suggests otherwise.

There are many, many more.

Exactly. Controlling a group of people with force solves nothing. Gaza is probably the worst place to be in Israel or even the entire Middle East right now. 1.6 Million people cramped up in a very small space with people living in poor conditions with no identity papers and no hope for the future. Of course the people of Gaza will join these "armed groups" as they're the only hope on the table. There's a reason that Gaza is living and breathing Hamas right now. Israel certainly hasn't helped the people of Gaza one bit. Imprisoning them like the Nazi's imprisoned Jews in Auschwitz won't solve anything.

There's a lot of people in Gaza and they will only become more ignorant, grow angrier and more hostile as the years go by. I don't know how long Israel is going to keep this up but imprisoning these people is not the way to do anything right.

They do it almost everywhere. Rafah is like a concentration camp. You can't move around for fear of being shot. It is hardliners that will only exacerbate the predicament there. Tzipi Livni, that Kadima rat, is a liar and a disgrace to the human race.

This is a politician from my home country. He hits hard and gets his word around. He has a passport given to him from Hamas and spoke out against OCL back in Jan 2009.

He is right to say that "gesture politics" are not sensible. Concrete action is needed on the ground.

I'm just going to watch this now for the first time. George Galloway again. He is well received in the Arab world. Wow, watch how the speaker changes SOOO fluently from Arabic to English. I'm impressed. 50 mins worth of interview.

Ahh George Galloway :D I've met him once in the U.K. I watch his show on PressTV every week. Love the way he speaks the truth as he sees it and the way he schools the ignorant callers with a firm comeback every single time :D If more politicians were like him we wouldn't be in the mess we're in right now.

I've posted a video above, Darius. It's 50 mins long but may be worth listening to in its entirety. He is not anti-Semitic, he is just pro human rights.

Yeah I know, He makes that pretty clear whenever someone accused him of being anti-semitic. He has said several times that he's against the "illegal settler state of Israel" and against "murderous Zionists". I agree with pretty much everything he says except his views on Iran. He seems to avoid answering specific questions on Iranian politics too often, but that obviously has something to do with him hosting his show from PressTV headquarters which is an Iranian state TV-channel... I'm definitely going to watch the video also, haven't seen it before.

What do you specifically disagree with him on with regards to Iranian politics?

Well he says he doesn't believe that there's no such thing as free press in Iran which is a lie. He solely base this opinion on the fact that they let him answer anti Iranian questions on the show. Obviously Mullahs are just using him to boost a positive image of Iran in the West. Sadly enough he doesn't seem aware that it's pretty difficult to get access to PressTV within Iran. Whenever he's asked about journalist being locked up and questioned as political prisoners he just says "I'm not aware of that" or "I personally don't believe that". But of course he knows that it's happening. PressTV is giving him free coverage and they're paying him, so obviously he's not going to poop where he eats which is fair enough.

He doesn't believe Britain should join a war against regime change either which I disagree with. He claims that if the US/UK start to bomb the 80 nuclear sites all over Iran that they'll strike back with a possible full on attack in London. It's a possible scenario but I doubt it. My opinion is of course bias because of the U.K backed coup d'état back in 1953 where I believe the U.K still has a responsibility this day today to correct their mistake. And his opinion is bias because he's completely anti war which is fair enough.