I think that the UN partition of Palestine and the subsequent establishment of the state of Israel in 1948n was the greatest turning point in the Arab-Israeli conflict to a large extent. One of the main reasons was because of the withdrawal of Britain.

The British mandate had been in effect for almost 30 years after it was passed in 1919 and the period saw very little development of Palestine. They had constantly placed restrictions on Jewish immigration but also upset the Arab community with a perceived pro-Zionist stance after allocating the Jews most of the Palestinian territory in the mandate’s recommendations. However this was a major turning point as both communities were now free from foreign rule which proved a catalyst for conflict between the two. The Arabs could pursue the independence that had been falsely promised to them in 1915 by the British just before the defeat of the Ottoman Empire meanwhile the Jews could pursue the independence they perceived was promised to them by the Belfour declaration of 1917. Numerous terrorist attacks had been carried out by the aggressive Irgun group like the bombing of the king David hotel in Jerusalem, killing 88 people. The fact that it was planned in their own Holy city and at the expense of 15 Jewish lives clearly demonstrated the extent of their unrest and their intentions of escalating conflict not just with the Arabs, whom they framed during the bombing, but also directly with the British, showing no fear in the face of a world superpower and their empire which started to crumble. It was therefore a great victory when Britain withdrew and contributed towards a growing sense of strength and unity.

This in itself is another reason for why the partition of Palestine was a major turning point because the civil war that ensued as a result demonstrated the new found power of the Jews, unity. The UN general assembly accepted the UN special committee on Palestine’s recommendations of dividing Palestine both Arab and Jewish state based areas that were either predominately Jewish or Arab. However this created ‘kissing points’ where both communities would neighbour their enemies whilst the holy city of Jerusalem would be governed internationally. Both of these are reasons why the partition would inevitably lead to further conflict as both sides wanted more territory and control of the capital. Irgun leader Begin announced ‘it will never be recognised’ and Israeli leader Ben-Gurion pointed out that Jerusalem was within Israel’s borders and was therefore unfair. The Arab high committee rejected the plan more firmly, not wanting to give up any more landing and believing the Jews should have a home elsewhere. It seemed that regardless of Britain’s involvement, conflict was always the outcome, and the partition would not change anything, suggesting that the formation of Israel wasn’t a significant turning point.

However, after the civil war, Israel surprisingly emerged as the victors which lead to a new age of peace in Palestine, showing that it was a major turning point. The Jews were underestimated by the Arabs and their allies. Egyptians invaded from the south with Syrians, Iraqis and Lebanese from the north. However the Jews were well organised and well lead by united leaders, something the Arabs lacked significantly.  They successfully defended the north and south territory and even took over west Jerusalem; only the Arab’s strong Arab legion of approximately 10,000 soldiers lead by King Abdullah halted them. During the first ceasefire in June 1948, the Israelis secured new supplies of arms from Eastern Europe and recruited more soldiers, amounting to 65000 by July. Many of their soldiers were also experienced World War 2 veterans, meaning they had the experience, the equipment, the numbers and the leadership to successfully defend themselves and win the war, The final ceasefire in January 1949 saw Israelis take 79% of territory compared to the 55% under the British mandate. It sent a clear message to the Arabs who were suffering the ‘Nakbah’ meaning ‘disaster’ after the fleeing of 700,000 Arabs from Palestine which emphasised Israel were a strong united force to be reckoned with. Under UN supervision, Israel and neighbouring Arab states signed an armistice leading to an era of elusive peace between the two up until the next major war in 1973.

It could be argued that the extent of the partition’s role as a turning point wasn’t as great as it seems due to the fact that no permanent peace treaty was signed and relations were still frosty between the two communities, meaning that conflict was still a possibility. Some Arab states refused to negotiate borders whilst the Arab league claimed Israel were to blame for the refugees and deserved compensation. Israel argued that it was Arab’s issue as they started the war and needed to accept the consequences themselves. Tensions also remained high despite the armistice as the Arab populations were immensely bitter and resentful following their loss whilst Israel were not keen on negotiating further to cement peace in the fear that they would lose land and take some responsibility for Arab refugees as a result. Therefore as this proves that peace in Palestine would only be temporary due to the underlying tensions that remained and the ignorance towards more negotiation, I can only agree to a large, rather than a full extent that it was the greatest turning point in the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Explain, discuss and evaluate a topic in bio-ethics including the teachings of the three world religions regarding it 

Bio-ethics is the ethical and philosophical implications of biological and medical procedures in which wider societal implications are considered. All three of the world’s major religions have distinct teachings on both abortion and euthanasia which are just two key controversial topics in modern day which are hotly argued about. Euthanasia is the process of suicide in which you are prescribed a life-ending drug by your doctor whereas abortion is the legal ending of a baby’s life decided by the mother. 

It could be argued that Euthanasia is a necessary evil in order to relieve somebody from immense pain and suffering and therefore in today’s society we should make effective use of the advancements in the contemporary medical field in order to do the right thing and help end somebody who suffers a poor quality of life. However others may argue that we should be using such advancements to save life rather than end it as it is the morally right thing to do. Although the Christian religion teaches us to be compassionate towards the sick and elderly, as Jesus often did in the bible, it is heavily advocated that life is a precious gift from God and we cannot decide when to end it, we must live our life as god planned it and leave him to judge when it must end, otherwise we may be disrupting the natural and spiritual process that Christians believe death to be. No one has the right to judge the quality of another life as all life is of equal quality and therefore any increase in euthanasia in modern day may reflect the devaluation of life, making death more commonly accepted. 

This is certainly the case in Holland where there is a slippery slope in regards the principle of the value of life as attitude towards euthanasia is very lenient and overall it is becoming more and more commonly accepted. Children as young as 12 are viable for euthanasia whilst 75-90% of cancer patients opt for it and 42 psychiatric patients were given it.. Laws are meant to be 'good' so euthanasia being legal 'numbs' the conscience but it is only making death easier and thereby slowly degrading the value of human life. There are many implications in society to be considered bio-ethically as well what with the negative impact on the patient's family and the idea that euthanasia only gets rid of the sufferer but not the suffering. 

Despite this there are still many advocators of euthanasia who may argue that patients were a burden on the people around them, for example those who require 24/7 care. It is then their own choice, the utilization of their own free will to make a decision on their own life if they want euthanasia and no one should be able to take that choice away from them otherwise it would be breaching their human rights. However an argument against this would be that an individual may feel pressured into euthanasia if they feel like a burden meanwhile you can never be too sure when the next medical break through will arrival which may well save that person's life. Judaism is another major religion heavily against euthanasia as they believe that there are no exceptions to their anti-euthanasia law even if the person concerned wants to die. 

This is because Jewish people believe the value of human life is infinite and one must struggle until his last breath. In Judges 9:53-54 King David had a soldier executed after he aided in euthanasia to show that it was no different from murder. 

Similar to Judaism and indeed Christianity is Islamic teachings which also regards human life as sacred, believing that we should not interfere with the workings of Allah who has gifted us life 'And no person can ever die except by Allah's leave and at an appointed term' (Qur'an 16:61). However the Islamic code of medical ethics states 'it is futile to diligently keep the patient in a vegetative state by heroic means... It is the process of life that doctors aim to maintain and not the process of dying'. Therefore, unlike Judaism, there are some exceptions when it comes to euthanasia and some form of leniency but in most cases, they were wholly disagree with the supposed pros of euthanasia. 

Abortion is another controversial topic for discussion even amongst the three major world religions. People who argue for abortion might say that women have the rights to their own body and should have the freedom to do what they want with it whilst they might also point out that the woman had been raped, which means that it was not conceived in the proper way religions teach it should be and therefor abortion is acceptable. However the Roman Catholic Church teaches that abortion is gravely immoral as it is not dissimilar from murder. This is because its believed that life begins during the early fertilization period of the pregnancy as this is the starting point for life to grow, a human being with potential rather than potential for a human being whereas others may argue that life only begins when the baby is actually born and so it would only be killing an embryo rather than a baby. 

However this is heavily defeated by the fact that 9.7% of babies in the UK are aborted whilst alive with a total of 1200 in America. Babies are subsequently left to die even after living for up to 12 hours or they're burned, which completely contradicts the role of a doctor which is to save life, not to destroy it. Meanwhile 1.6% of abortions take place after the 24 week period where the baby is pretty much fully formed. An example could be baby twins who were born at just 22 weeks but still survived and grew up healthily, showing that abortion, in many cases, is the clear murder of an infant child. Other arguments against abortion consist of the damaging psychological effect it can have on the mother and the amount of cases where women were glad they kept the baby. There has also been research which proves that babies can memories music, showing that its not ok to inflict pain because their brain is active.. 

On the other hand, abortion might be acceptable if the mother's life is at risk and there are numerous medical implications that might over ride societal implications. This is somewhat supported by the church of England which recognizes that there are conditions where abortion may be morally preferable to any other alternative.  

This is similar to the teachings of Islam. The Qu'Ran does not explicitly refer to abortion and so schools of Muslim law permit early abortion in certain cases but is otherwise wrong due to their belief in the 'sanctity of life', 'whosoever has spared the life of a soul, it is as though he has spared the life of all people', which shows that whether it is a baby's or an adult's life, all life is equal. 

evaluation

Evaluation from steve98bc

The first three links are faulty and do not work for an unknown reason, these are the links:
first link: 
http://stevesasmedia.blogspot.co.uk/search?updated-max=2014-09-21T21:37:00%2B01:00&max-results=7&start=56&by-date=false

second link: 
http://stevesasmedia.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/drafting-and-planning-codes-and.html

third link: 
http://stevesasmedia.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/drafting-and-planning_5.htmlfc

drafting and planning

This is the improved version of my contents page for my magazine.

I kept the same layout because i think it is unique but is just as coherent as other contents page's however i have extended the room for sub headings by minimising the size of the text describing the exclusive interviews. This is to contemplate for the amount of content a weekly magazine like mine should have. a long with the content that i have now filled in, i have also included simple black lines to separate each feature as well as individual page numbers, a common convention that directs the readers to exactly where they want to go to read about that particular feature.

The six sub-headings i used are the most common categories amongst magazines like NME and Q so i remained consistent with their style by including similar categories in distinct red sub-headings which separates each category of content into a neat coherent.

I also kept all of the fonts the same because they comply well with simple and coherent style of my contents page.

drafting and planning

This is my improved double page spread.

The first thing i changed was the size of the font, because like my front cover, it needs to be smaller if it is to be more realistic especially if its meant to be an article, which usually have small text.
I then added an introduction beneath the band name and above the article. This directly links the band's name with the questions being asked them and so it eases the readers into the article so they know exactly what they're reading about. I made it bold so that its distinctly and introduction which attracts the readers attention and then lures them in to reading the article as it gives an insight into what they can expect to find.
I also added another red box, much larger than the sub-headings, which is promoting my magazine's website www.ignite.com where readers can find a 'sneak peak' at my band's new album. This is a typical convention of music magazines, including NME who have their own website, because its common for magazines to advertise their website and the special digital content that they ahev that cannot come with a magazine.

drafting and planning

This is my improved front cover for my magazine and i am more pleased with this version than i am with the previous version because of the improvements that i made which makes it more realistic.

Firstly, i changed the font size of the anchorage text that accompanies the cover lines because these should be much smaller than the main cover line and overall helps create a more realistic scale to a music magazine. I also added another cover line to fill the negative space left by shrinking the font size.

secondly i changed the pug because its rare that a magazine like NME would advertise posters so i changed it to tickets for 'Glasto' an abbreviation of a festival that my target audience would understand and therefore be more interested in because they are mostly of a young demographic who use abbreviations frequently.

Thirdly i changed some of the featured bands like example because looking back, i don't think David Guetta was too realistic for an NME styled magazine but i think example fits well.

Finally i added an appropriate dateline and price in the top right hand corner above the masthead as this is a conventional location for a dateline, particularly in NME and i made it a realistic size so that it does not attract attention away from the masthead. I also altered the colour of the main cover line so that it matched better with the cover lines and masthead

target audience

I think i was able to target my audience effectively through my double page spread article through a number of ways. I was able to target my magazines young demographic by having the simple, easy to read sub-headings which provides clarity because they separate out the answers and makes it easier for them to identify what question and its corresponding answer that they are most interested in reading about. This is effective as teenagers and young people in general have short attention spans so using red sub-headings makes it easier for them to read and identify and so will become more attracted to this magazine.

I also targeted my magazines audience by including interesting questions that they would want to see asked to new and upcoming bands, as the questions reveal information about the band that they wouldn't have known before and they might be interested to know the life and story behind a new, hot band who they could relate to and potentially become a fan of.

I was able to target my band's target audience through the response of the band itself. Using words like f*****, mental and vodka, adds to the explicit nature of the band which is intriguing to indie rock fans as a lot of indie rock bands are open and explicit in their approach as its seen as rebellious and cool and so therefore indie rock fans would be more enticed to read about my band because they adopt the same cool, explicit approach. I further targeted my band's target audience by including vital information about my band. This would intrigue them as any indie rock fans who like the look of the band but don't know who they are would probably want to find out about their background, their opinions and their album so that they can get to know the band and maybe become and this would be particularly effective with any indie rock enthusiasts who are looking for cool, new indie rock bands to follow. My magazine gives them this opportunity as they feature the newest and hottest bands from all music genres and my band through their attitude, their opinions and their explicit nature help target their audience as well.