gaza, israel...brief reminder

Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff

Re: Re; Power plant in Gaza hit

Postby havanagilla » Wed Jun 28, 2006 10:43 pm

sort of sums it up, yesterday editorial, haaretz. <br><br><br><!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/732053.html" target="top">Where were you during the war?</a><!--EZCODE LINK END--> <br>By Yossi Sarid <br> <!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr><br>The Holocaust Victims Welfare Fund in Israel is in dire straits, and even though the numbers of its clients is dwindling, it is unable to provide them with their basic needs. Last week, the Finance Ministry rejected a request to increase its allotment to the fund, which provides assistance to some 20,000 survivors. <br><br>A few days ago, another government, the German government, agreed to sign an agreement with the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany. According to the agreement, payments will be made to survivors from North Africa, most of whom live in Israel. The Germans also agreed to add 22 million euros for the care of those who are still alive, and whose conditions worsens with every passing day. The Holocaust Victims Fund in Israel welcomed the agreement and expressed hope that "the Israeli government would join in this assistance." <br><br>I have no objection, of course, to the Germans continuing to bear their historic responsibility until the end of time; all the treasures of Germany would never suffice to make up for what happened to the victims. But I do object strongly to this division of labor: our Israel merely increases the need for care, expecting someone else to take care of these needs in its stead; the government of the state of the Jews ignores the living victims among us and sometimes even abuses them, while the government of "the other Germany" bears the consequences of this irresponsibility. We cripple and they heal. <br><br><br> <br> <br> Advertisement <br> <br>Haaretz recently published hair-raising reports of experiments conducted on the elderly at two hospitals - Kaplan and Hartzfeld. I found it difficult to understand what was new in these horror stories. For years, experiments have been conducted here on the elderly whom the Holocaust did not manage to murder. They survived and made it to the Jewish people's national home, which was supposed to provide them with shelter and comfort. That was a mistake on their part: If they had gone to another country, a properly run country, their fate would have been better. No Western country has turned a shoulder as cold and apathetic as Israel's to the dead who insisted for some reason on living; and if the State of Israel exists, and the raison d'etre for its existence was in part to serve as a refuge for survivors, then that reason for its existence has been weakened and blurred and will soon be entirely erased. <br><br>There is no doubt that the experiments in question were particularly interesting medical and human experiments, which could best be performed here, since this is where most of the survivors ended up. For example, how long can someone last who spent a few years in a concentration camp as a slave laborer, his weight dropping to 35 kilograms, and now faces severe psychological and material distress; is that not an interesting subject from a medical-scientific point of view? Or another example: A Jewish child who spent a year or two in the Mengele bloc in Auschwitz-Birkenau, with that psychopathic doctor rooting around in his brain, his eyesight going bad and his teeth going rotten, and now he does not have money to fix either the eyes or the eyes. What will happen to such a person? <br><br>Are such unique experiments not as good as any of the research done at Kaplan and Hartzfeld? And all the experiments on survivors are open and legal, since the state itself is constantly conducting them ? under the Budget Law, for example. <br><br>Sixty-one years after the Holocaust, the findings of any research into the survivors ? a breed facing extinction ? will only enrich future generations, on condition, of course, that it is conducted with permission and with arbitrariness, with the state's authority and with the right amount of cruelty. <br><br>In his new book, On the Slopes of the Volcano, Amos Oz describes the gloominess and discomfort that accompanies him on his visits to Germany. He worries all the time that he is going to be invited together with someone who was among the criminals. "I avoid any contact with Germans over the age of 80 as much as possible," he writes. "Unless they were always Socialists," he adds. "But how can one tell from afar who has a 'Socialist face'?" <br><br>This syndrome is familiar to any Israeli who has ever visited Germany; every elderly person one meets seems to beg the question: Where were you during the war, and what did you do? But I am worried about meeting the elderly in Israel, and not in Germany. Every time I encounter a tormented and drained elderly person, I am afraid to ask if they also came from over there, and I am even more afraid to ask myself: Where were you, man, when this person fought alone for his stolen life and robbed dignity? And I still have not completely given up on identifying the "Socialist face" that might actually agree to take part in a war for the teeth, and the eyes, and the heart. <br><br>The denial of the Holocaust survivors is another form of Holocaust denial. <br><br>Sometimes, that is how it feels, as if one had to cry out, "Hear O Israel, Hear O Israel" ? and Israel does indeed hear something, and Israel hears nothing. <br> <br> <br> <br><hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--> <p></p><i></i>
havanagilla
 
Posts: 769
Joined: Wed Mar 01, 2006 6:02 am
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Re; Power plant in Gaza hit

Postby havanagilla » Wed Jun 28, 2006 11:08 pm

Another quote from a prominent blogger (also the editor of Haaretz literary section, Benny Ziefer), today about Gaza disaster -<br>Basically, he is saying that recently Israel has become so close to dictatorship he no longer takes for granted that newspaper information is even remotely true, thus hs is filtering and re filtering and basically advises not to listen to the news at all, and "tend to your garden" until all this is over. Then he says, "well, some may say that this is what the germans did during Nazism, just tended to their gardens while all the atrocities happened. but no, they did listen and were influenced too much by government propaganda.". So, he sums my (and many others') sentiments in view of the tragedy in Gaza - we can Do NOTHING to stop our government or influence our reality. The politicians/IDF are mad, and the people are helpless to do anything. <br>(2/3 of the backtalks are about the holocaust, mind you JC). people here are in despair and apathy, feeling they are at the mercy of a none responsive, self perpetuating government. He mentions something else I liked. That there is no point to get all excited about those who tell us how bad corruption and gov is, cause their aim is usually to usurp the present group of corrupt rulers and take THEIR share. that's pretty new here, the sense of having no power over the government whatsoever. <br> <p></p><i></i>
havanagilla
 
Posts: 769
Joined: Wed Mar 01, 2006 6:02 am
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Re; Power plant in Gaza hit

Postby Col Quisp » Thu Jun 29, 2006 12:00 am

Welcome to WWIII. This is frightening -- things are happening really fast now. I can't keep track of it all -- chemical warheads, murdered hostages, warplanes over Syrian president's home....it's chaos. Stay safe, Havanagila. My thoughts are with you. Try to get out of there if you can. <p></p><i></i>
User avatar
Col Quisp
 
Posts: 734
Joined: Fri May 27, 2005 2:52 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Re; Power plant in Gaza hit

Postby havanagilla » Thu Jun 29, 2006 12:40 am

thanks CQ, i believe i will get out of here on a strecher, if you know what i mean, up, up...i don't see a lateral way out. anyway, it is always overblown here, usually its more of a psych war. <br>--<br>The murdered hostage is NOT the soldier but the settler, which means there is less outrage over this murder, and some israeli lefties were 'commending' this action (not the murder but the kidnap) in op ed of big lefty blogs. (don't know if that's "politically correct" but this is what is written here...).<br>--<br>The syria provocation will lead to nothing, cause assad has no power except in supporting other orgs, which he does anyway.<br>This is INTENTIONAL pressure all out (coordinated with Egypt) to try and remove Hammas from power. it was expected. And so was the post disengagement seige. Israel has no "peace" plans, and that's a known fact, why is everyone surprised? <br>as long as Bush is in tact, the pressure will be harder,and frankly I suspect the palest or iran or what not, have no answer, except painful terror acts, which could also amount to disasters, but Israel wants to push the limits so as to get the "arsenal out" in the open before more withdrawal. I think the generals think that conflict is better staged now than later, and reach some clear resolution (military one) to set the tone for the next 5 years. <br>--<br>Get out of Israel ? <br>"the boat is full", this is the response I received from Canada, adding that I am a "war criminal" and/or terrorist (not only me but my 4 yrs old son, a known war criminal, compared to ..say...yaalon who is a guest of honor in canada, thousands of convicted nazis and tens of thousands of ex appartheid Africaners). this should get me citizenship in the USA, though, with an administration made up of war criminals and terrorists, hey ? :-) according to the <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>rigorous</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--> standards of this board, i am not AS equal or deserving of life as the morally superior here. somehow, this is the same response I get from MY governmet. strange isn't it? but this is the condition of millions of people here, and worldwide. <br><br><br><br> <p></p><i></i>
havanagilla
 
Posts: 769
Joined: Wed Mar 01, 2006 6:02 am
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Re; Power plant in Gaza hit

Postby Col Quisp » Thu Jun 29, 2006 12:44 am

so sorry to hear of your plight. I'm very sad. <p></p><i></i>
User avatar
Col Quisp
 
Posts: 734
Joined: Fri May 27, 2005 2:52 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Re; Power plant in Gaza hit

Postby havanagilla » Thu Jun 29, 2006 6:52 am

thanks CQ, not so bad as it appears here, I am a bit overdramatic at times. <br>we, israelis/palestinians (or arabs) seem to get attention only when the killing goes on and blood is streaming. its a gladiator show, in a way, with the audience passing jusdment and exchanging notes on who did what etc. <br><br>I am sure my being here has to do with not learning the lesson of forgiveness, and so I am not totally whining. but i was so close to getting a life, that I am pissed off at me and all the world at the same time.<br><br>A missed life, in a messed up location, with a child whose life is going nowhere, as well. <br>ahhh...anyway, i have two invitations this weekend for art exhibit gallas with free Beck beer, so at least this is going to be fun, I hope. (no nazi thoughts this weekend !). I still have a real war about the estate my family is trying to take away from me, so...i'd rather set out to do some real stuff, rather than bitch here and beat my head at the walls of indifference.<br><br>will write back if there is a bomb/ war so you can all enjoy some direct reports from the bloody bloody scene and say "oh the israelis" "oh the hammas" "oh the royal brittish house" and OH THE CIA>....<br>promise to bring you live reports from the BLOOD BATH. (free service for now, what are friends for).<br>have a good weekend. <br><br><br> <p></p><i></i>
havanagilla
 
Posts: 769
Joined: Wed Mar 01, 2006 6:02 am
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Re; Power plant in Gaza hit

Postby Sepka » Thu Jun 29, 2006 7:17 am

Have a good time! I find art exhibits ususally make more sense after a few beers <!--EZCODE EMOTICON START :) --><img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/smile.gif ALT=":)"><!--EZCODE EMOTICON END--> <br><br>-Sepka the Space Weasel <p></p><i></i>
User avatar
Sepka
 
Posts: 1983
Joined: Fri Jul 08, 2005 2:56 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Re; Power plant in Gaza hit

Postby Gouda » Thu Jun 29, 2006 7:30 am

Isn't Becks a German beer? (awkward joke)<br>ah, the enmeshment of everyday evil. <p></p><i></i>
User avatar
Gouda
 
Posts: 3009
Joined: Tue Sep 13, 2005 1:53 am
Location: a circular mould
Blog: View Blog (0)

re becks

Postby friend catcher » Thu Jun 29, 2006 7:43 am

For some years now Becks have sponsored many arts festivals and prizes. The largest prize is the Becks futures which in 2003 was won by a half Palestinian woman with a quintet of documentaries from the West Bank <!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.ica.org.uk/index.cfm?articleid=12144">www.ica.org.uk/index.cfm?articleid=12144</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br>I was surprised at the time that a German Brewer would go there, but I doubt the Israeli government failed to notice. <p></p><i></i>
friend catcher
 
Posts: 174
Joined: Mon Mar 06, 2006 8:22 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: re becks - I REST MY CASE

Postby havanagilla » Thu Jun 29, 2006 9:50 am

hey gouda, i said no nazis this weekend, hey ? but thanks for the info. In fact at least one of the prominent exhibitors is in deed connected with german art institutions and funding. <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>i rest my case/s</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END-->, in the above (how the germans are still sponsoring the jewish kleizmer band in present day auschwitz (the new and improved one with Beck to both sides of the conflict, we must be civilised, jah ? )<br>I am NOT going to let this annoy me, as I am not going to let the presence of the somewhat militant mayor of Tel Aviv in the first event (general of sorts, Ron HUldai, a name in to remember in the hall of infame).<br><br>Or should i just flow with the german culture and find a suitable duetch nipple to call my own. hell, we all live once, why not take part in it ? <br> <p></p><i></i>
havanagilla
 
Posts: 769
Joined: Wed Mar 01, 2006 6:02 am
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: re becks - I REST MY CASE

Postby jc » Thu Jun 29, 2006 10:09 am

hava,<br><br>ever tried scandinavia: sweden, norway, denmark?<br><br> <p></p><i></i>
jc
 
Posts: 145
Joined: Mon May 08, 2006 6:16 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: re becks - I REST MY CASE

Postby havanagilla » Thu Jun 29, 2006 4:08 pm

in fact guys, i am passing on the galla, a propos Beck. thanks for the info...it did manage to take the fun out of it :-)<br>well, had a good day at the beach, at least that's free, tonight is a "white night" in tel aviv, namely, sleepless night, all places open through the night. was nice, although we checked out early, the party is only beginning...<br>back without beck <p></p><i></i>
havanagilla
 
Posts: 769
Joined: Wed Mar 01, 2006 6:02 am
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: oh, and there's this…

Postby StarmanSkye » Fri Jun 30, 2006 10:50 am

Again, I'm amazed at the blatant double-standards and bias of the MSM, repeating the 'news' from an Israeli perspective while (once again) minimizing and ignoring a Palestinian POV --as it has been doing by referring to Palestinian 'escalation' of violence, despite Israel's almost non-stop provocation during the last 16 months of Hamas and Fatah cease-fire, with artillery barrages and air-attacks in the guise of targetted assassinations and arrest/cum-disappearances of suspected Palestinian terrorists, with dozens of citizens killed and injured.<br><br>The pop-media 'message' clearly is that Palestinian lives count for so much less than Israeli -- and Israel's assumptions are NEVER questioned. Esp. subtle violence and betrayals and shameless exploitation of its OWN citizens. And as you also point out, Hava -- Europe's complicity in backing Israel's racism and warcrimes as a kind of ongoing 'reparations' by Germany for Nazi depradations (and presumably the 'rest' of Europe for not having done more to prevent atrocities or avoid complicity in ant-Jewish violence -- the 'price' of conscience as a form of bribery?<br><br>I value your on-site comments and insights, Hava, even as I am anxious for your well-being and concerned for your safety. It must be excrutiating and seem almost unbearable at times, to be in such a place and time of great barbarous evil and witness to such heartbreaking inhumanities, idiocies and brutal horrors. My thoughts and hopes are with you and others there trying to spread some light and sanity on what is great stinking, reeking darkness.<br><br>The fractured strife and confusion, chaos and crime in Israel today foretells what both America and the EU are embracing and rapidly moving towards, consolidating alliances between and among corrupt special interests and butchers, to help hide their institutional crimes and awful secrets -- creating popular 'enemies' and themes by which to keep the mass public distracted, off-balance and bamboozled.<br><br><br>Damn the forces of confusion and hate and darkness, anyway!<br>Let your light SHINE!<br>Starman<br>******<br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/cook06262006.html">www.counterpunch.org/cook06262006.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--> <br><br>Another 'Escalation' from the Palestinians <br>Israeli "Retaliation" and Double Standards <br>By JONATHAN COOK <br><br><br>The killing by Palestinian militants of two Israeli soldiers and the capture of a third from an army post close to the Gaza Strip set the scene for Israeli "reprisals" and "retaliation", according to the reports of BBC correspondents in Israel and Gaza yesterday. <br><br><br>The attack by the Palestinians, who sneaked through tunnels under the electronic fence surrounding Gaza, marked a "major escalation in cross-border tension" (Alan Johnston) that threatened to overturn "a week of progress on two fronts" (John Lyon): namely, the recent talks between Israeli prime <br>minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas in Jordan, and between rival Palestinian groups Fatah and Hamas. <br><br><br>Thus, according to the BBC's analysis, this attack ends the immediate chances for "peace" negotiations and provides the context for the next round of the conflict between the Israeli army and the Palestinians of Gaza. We are left to infer that all the suffering the army inflicts in the coming days and weeks <br>should be attributed to this moment of "escalation" by the Palestinians. <br><br><br>We can ignore the weeks of shelling by the Israeli army of Gaza, the firing of hundreds of missiles into the crowded Strip that have destroyed Palestinian lives and property, while spreading terror among the civilian population and deepening the psychological trauma suffered by a generation of children. <br><br><br>We can ignore the deaths of more than 30 civilians, and dozens of horrific injuries, in the past few weeks at the hands of the Israeli military, including three children hit in a botched air strike last week, and a heavily pregnant woman and her doctor brother killed a day later as a missile slammed into the room where they were eating dinner. <br><br><br>We can ignore the blockade of Gaza's "borders" by the Israeli army for months on end, which has prevented Palestinians in the Strip from trading goods at crossing points with Israel and from receiving vital supplies of food and medicines. As a captive population besieged by Israeli soldiers, Gazans are <br>facing a humanitarian catastrophe sanctioned by Israeli government policy and implemented by the Israeli army. <br><br><br>We can ignore Israel's bullying of the international community to connive in the starving of the Hamas-led government of funds and diplomatic room for manoeuvre, thereby preventing the elected Palestinian leadership from running Gaza. So desperate is the situation there that Hamas officials are being <br>forced to smuggle in millions of dollars of cash stuffed in suitcases to pay salaries. <br><br><br>And finally we can ignore the violation of Palestinian territory by Israeli commandos who infiltrated Gaza a day before the Palestinian attack to kidnap two Palestinians Israel claims are terrorists. They have been "disappeared", doubtless to be be held in administrative detention, where they can denied <br>access to lawyers, the courts and, of course, justice. <br><br><br>None of this provides the context for the Palestinian attack on the army post -- any more than, in the BBC's worldview, do the previous four decades of occupation. None is apparently relevant to understanding the Palestinian attack, or for judging the legitimacy of Israel's imminent military <br>"reprisals". <br><br><br>In short, according to the BBC, we can ignore Israel's long-standing policy of unilateralism -- a refusal to negotiate meaningfully with the Palestinians, either the old guard of Fatah or the new one of Hamas -- with its resort to a strategy of collective punishment of Gaza's population to make it submit to the continuing occupation. <br><br><br>In the skewed moral and news priorities of the BBC, the killing of two Israeli soldiers by Palestinian militants -- the "escalation" -- provides a justification for "fierce retaliation" against Gaza, with the inevitable toll on Palestinian civilians and militants alike. The earlier killing of tens of <br>Palestinian civilians by the Israeli military, however, is not presented as justification for yesterday's Palestinian retaliation against the army. <br><br><br>In other words, on the scale of moral outrage the BBC ranks the deaths of Israeli soldiers enforcing an illegal occupation far above those of Palestinian civilians enduring the illegal occupation. <br><br><br>There is another notable asymmetry in the BBC's assessment of the "escalation". Participation by the military wing of Hamas in the attack is evidence, suggest the reporters, of the role of the Palestinian leadership in "escalating tension". But the killing by the Israeli army of a Palestinian family of seven on a Gaza beach on June 9, and many more civilians since, was <br>apparently not an "escalation", even though it provoked Hamas to renounce a ceasefire it had maintained for 16 months in the face of continuous Israeli military assaults. <br><br><br>So how is the ordinary viewer to make sense of these events -- the endless "cycle of violence" -- with the BBC as guide. (And the BBC is no worse, and possibly better, than most of other Western broadcasters. At least its reporter Alan Johnston is based in Gaza.) <br><br><br>Not only do its reporters exhibit the biases associated with its institutional racism -- as an organisation, the BBC chooses to identify with Israeli concerns before Palestinian ones -- but they then compound this distortion by repeating uncritically Israel's own misrepresentation of events. <br><br><br>The reporters, like so many of their colleagues, fall into the trap of presenting the conflict through the eyes of the Israeli government, the same government whose prime minister, Ehud Olmert, last week proudly displayed his ethnic chauvinism by setting the suffering of the Jewish residents of Sderot, who face a mostly non-lethal smattering of Palestinian home-made Qassam rockets, far above the rising death toll of Gaza's civilians from the army's constant aerial and artillery bombardment. "I am sorry with all my heart for <br>the residents of Gaza," Olmert said, "but the lives and well-being of Sderot's residents are more important than those of Gaza residents." In other words, a potential threat to a single Jew is more important than the deaths of dozens of Palestinian innocents. <br><br><br>Thus we learn without comment from the BBC that Olmert has denounced the killing of the two soldiers as "terrorism", even though the word cannot describe an attack by an occupied people on an occupying army. How is it possible for a few men with light arms to terrorise one of the most powerful armies in the world? What next: are we to listen sympathetically to claims by the US that its soldiers are being "terrorised" by Iraqi insurgents? <br><br><br>The defence that the BBC is simply reporting Israel's position does not stand up to scrutiny. Is it even conceivable that we might hear a BBC reporter neutrally repeat a Hamas statement that the Israeli army is terrorising Palestinians by reckless shelling civilians in Gaza, even though the word's usage in this case would better satisfy the dictionary definition? The shells <br>most certainly do spread terror among Gaza's civilian population. <br><br><br>We hear too without comment that Olmert is holding both Hamas and the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas responsible for the attack. The BBC dutily repeats Israeli claims that Abbas has the resources to fight "terror" even as <br>the money to pay Palestinian security forces is held by foreign banks unwilling, at Israeli and American behest, to hand it over, and as Hamas and Abbas are locked in battle for control of the Palestinians' shrinking government. <br><br><br>Does common sense not recoil from the suggestion that both Hamas and Abbas can be equally blamed for the attack when the two are bitter rivals for power? Or that either can be held accountable when Israel has refused to negotiate with them or treat them as the genuine representatives of the Palestinian people? <br><br><br>Again, would the BBC report with due solemnity claims by the Palestinians that they hold Olmert and Peretz personally guilty for the civilian deaths in Gaza over the past fortnight, even though in an enlightened world both should be standing trial for war crimes? <br><br><br>Instead, however implausible the Israeli version of reality, the BBC happily sows confusion on behalf of the Israeli army. Like other broadcasters, it credulously reports preposterous arguments seeking to exonerate the Israeli army of responsibility for the shelling of the beach in Gaza that killed a <br>Palestinian family of seven. It treats as equally credible the army's belated version in which Palestinian militants are said to have laid a single mine at a favourite seaside picnic spot in the futile hope of preventing the Israeli navy landing along the Strip's miles of coastline. (In consequence, the BBC <br>excludes the seven dead and dozens of Palestinian injured in that Israeli attack from its list of recent civilian casualties in Gaza). <br><br><br>And both BBC reporters note gravely Israel's concerns that this is the first time Palestinian militants have broken out of the fenced-off Strip since Israel withdrew from Gaza nearly a year ago. Somehow the fact that the Palestinians have briefly escaped from their cage appears to make the attack all the more shocking not only for Israel but for the two reporters. <br><br><br>This attack in Israel, they tell us, is the most serious to date, with the implication that it is therefore illegitimate and part of the same "escalation". Even ignoring the fact that this attack was against Israeli soldiers besieging, imprisoning and shelling the Palestinians of Gaza, does the BBC not to pause to consider the double standard it is applying? <br><br><br>Was the Israeli army's incursion into Gaza a day earlier to capture two alleged Palestinian militants not an equal escalation? Was it not an equal violation of Palestinian sovereignty? Of course not. The BBC knows, as do the rest of us, that the army never really left Gaza and the occupation never really ended. But you won't hear that from any of its reporters. <br><br>*<br>Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. He is the author of the forthcoming "Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State" published by Pluto Press, and available in the United States from the University of Michigan Press. His website is www.jkcook.net <br><br> <p></p><i></i>
StarmanSkye
 
Posts: 2670
Joined: Thu Nov 03, 2005 11:32 pm
Location: State of Jefferson
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: oh, and there's this…

Postby jc » Fri Jun 30, 2006 11:39 am

<!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Friday, June 30, 2006<br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>Looking for an excuse<br></strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END-->From Haaretz.com (Mazuz is the Israeli Attorney General; my emphasis in red):<!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>“The detention of Hamas parliamentarians in the early hours of Thursday morning had been planned several weeks ago and received approval from Mazuz on Wednesday. The same day, Shin Bet Director Yuval Diskin presented Prime Minister Ehud Olmert with the list of Hamas officials slated for deten<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END-->In other words, Israel used the Palestinian attack on the Israeli military post as an excuse to do what it was looking for an excuse to do, arrest a democratically elected government and destroy Palestinian access to electricity. And the world sits back and lets it happen.[/quote]<br><br><!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://xymphora.blogspot.com/2006/06/looking-for-excuse.html">xymphora</a><!--EZCODE LINK END--><br><br>* * * * *<br><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>11 April 2006<br><br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>One Not Unimportant Fact<br></strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br>Veteran Israeli leftist Haim Hanegbi wrote in August 2003:<br><br>I am not a psychologist, but I think that everyone who lives with the contradictions of Zionism condemns himself to protracted madness. It's impossible to live like this. It's impossible to live with such a tremendous wrong. It's impossible to live with such conflicting moral criteria. When I see not only the settlements and the occupation and the suppression, but now also the insane wall that the Israelis are trying to hide behind, I have to conclude that there is something very deep here in our attitude to the indigenous people of this land that drives us out of our minds.<br>There is something gigantic here that doesn't allow us truly to recognize the Palestinians, that doesn't allow us to make peace with them. And that something has to do with the fact that even before the return of the land and the houses and the money, the settlers' first act of expiation toward the natives of this land must be to restore to them their dignity, their memory, their justness.…<br><br>-- Cry, the beloved two-state solution; Ha’aretz, 10 Aug 2003.<br><br>I think I’ve found an example of the madness he is talking about. The following poem was published pseudonymously in Israel’s leading Russian language newspaper, ????? (Vesti), on 25 Aug 2005, in support of Avigdor Lieberman’s proposal to rid the Jewish state of its citizens of the “wrong” religion by transferring the Arab villages of the Galilee to the Palestinian Authority. (Translation, and all errors therein, by Lawrence of Cyberia):<br><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>… / The Lieberman Paradigm<br><br>…<br><br>Their progeny are a nightmare: How many Arabs in Israel?<br>Already more than a million there, and still growing, right off the scale.<br><br>…<br><br>Just look at them – they blacken your sight! I say this without reproaching the Jew:<br>The Arab is ploughing his furrow by night that his race might outnumber you.<br><br>…<br><br>A lunar eclipse? Does that explain it? Is it the mark of misfortune? Is it death’s kiss?<br>Even the cat, the locust and the rabbit are unfamiliar with lust like this!<br><br>…<br><br>There is no happy end in sight. They are paving the path to your tomb,<br>Night after night, night after night, in the Arab woman’s womb.<br><br>- "…" / "Gershon Ben <hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--> [the ellipses above mark russian script ezboard does nae countenance, - jc]<br><br>That’s nice isn’t it? The Arabs among us are breeding like vermin. It sounds like a scene from The Eternal Jew. It’s hard to credit that only two generations after that nauseating film was made, an Israeli newspaper would see fit to publish comments like that about a religious minority in its midst.<br><br>And Haim Hanegbi is right, it is madness. It really isn’t normal or healthy to be obsessing like this over how much sex your neighbours are getting. And if The Lieberman Paradigm is a symptom of the madness, I think its fundamental cause lies here, in the preface to the British Census of Palestine (1922), which summarizes its findings about the population thus:<br><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>[S]ome 590,890 (78 per cent) were Muslim; 73,024 (9.6 percent) were Christian, mostly Arab although some British and other European were included; less than 10,000 (1 per cent) were Other; and 83,974 (11 per cent) were Jewish. Of the latter, perhaps two-thirds were European immigrants and their offspring…<br>- cited by Edward Said, The Question of Palestine (Vintage Books Edition, April 1992; p.17)<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>The Palestinian people are the I/P conflict’s ultimate fact on the ground. And they are the one reality that a Zionism which equates a “Jewish homeland” in Palestine with gerrymandering a perpetual Jewish majority there cannot come to terms with. You can invent all sorts of justifications for ignoring the Palestinians and establishing by force Jewish sovereignty over a land that has a native, non-Jewish majority. You can claim that the majority population simply doesn’t exist (Zangwill, footnote 2), or that they not a people (Golda Meir [3]), or they’re not native (Joan Peters, also here), or that their rights matter less (Balfour [4]), or that their demands are so outlandish - i.e. they don't correspond to yours - that you are left with "no-one to talk to" (Barak, Sharon, and presumably Olmert)... etc. As long as a Jewish homeland in Palestine equates with Jewish sovereignty over non-Jewish Palestinians, those Palestinians will not aquiesce in your plans for them, and you will have to invent claims like these to justify forcibly imposing your rule over them. This is why so often pro-Zionist discourse revolves not around assertions about Zionism but these denials about Palestine.<br><br>Unfortunately, your need to believe one or other of these claims in order to justify your national mythology is not enough to make any of these claims actually true. Eventually, your political fantasy will collide with your demographic reality, as it apparently did when Gershon Ben Ya'akov woke up in the night and realized that the people whose literal or national nonexistence has been a consistent refrain in Zionism, are not only still there but - numerically at least - thriving.<br><br>And this, I think, is Hanegbi's "something gigantic" that prevents Israel from recognising and making peace with the Palestinians. If your national self understanding is built on denial of the Palestinian reality, it can be profoundly unsettling when that reality is staring you in the face every day. Can your national mythology still stand if you dispense with the lies that you have used to prop it up? Gush Shalom tackled this issue from a liberal Zionist perspective in its booklet, Truth Against Truth (PDF file), which was based on the premise that it is possible to tell the truth about ourselves without telling lies about each other. But most Israelis are not Gush Shalom. Most are apparently more comfortable with the view expressed by Menachem Begin, who explained to the residents of Kibbutz Ein Hahoresh that Zionism is essentially a zero sum game that absolutely requires the denial of Palestine and the Palestinians:<br><br>My friend, take care. When you recognize the concept of "Palestine", you demolish your right to live in Ein Hahoresh. If this is Palestine and not the land of Israel, then you are conquerors and not tillers of the land. You are invaders. If this is Palestine, then it belongs to a people who lived here before you came. [5]<br><br>In this worldview, it doesn't necessarily matter whether what you believe about the Palestinians is true or not: it matters only that you believe it, because that's what your ideology demands. That tortured logic is the path to Hanegbi's "protacted madness", and Gershon Ben Ya'akov's sleepless nights.<br><br>Jerusalem's former deputy mayor, Meron Benvenisti, came to a similar conclusion as Hanegbi about the impossibility of reconciling Jewish sovereignty in Palestine with the reality of the indigenous Palestinian majority, when he watched news footage of Israel’s Operation Rainbow in Rafah. Benvenisti realised that the newly-homeless Palestinian children he saw dragging their possessions behind them in suitcases as big as themselves as they fled the advancing IDF in 2004 were the grandchildren of the Palestinians he had once watched dragging their possessions behind them as they fled Israel’s expansion in 1948. He understood from this that a “Jewish homeland” based on Jewish sovereignty over Palestine was condemned to a Groundhog Day existence of endless war and periodic expulsion, because it was based on an original sin of ignoring the reality of the existing population:<br><br>Generation after generation, we cause them to abandon their homes, settling in them, and afterward, when the opportunity arises, take over their sanctuaries as well, and drive them away from there. Generation after generation, we feed the refugee consciousness, reconstruct the pain of displacement and expose another generation to the powerless rage of the displaced person. Afterward we face, frightened and threatened, the “return” – the life’s hope of every refuges and a stain on the settler’s conscience.<br>Something basic has gone awry here. If commanders, the sons of the fighters of 1948, send the grandchildren of the fighters for independence to “widen the route” – which means the expulsion of the grandchildren of the refugees of 1948 – on the pretext of existential threat, then there was something defective in the vision of the founding fathers. If after a half-century their enterprise still faces existential threat, this can only mean that they condemned it to eternal enmity, and there is no community that can for years on end survive a violent war for its existence.<br><br>-- An Old Refrain Stabs at the Heart By Meron Benvenisti, 20 May 2004<br><br>Benvenisti came to the conclusion that there cannot be a Jewish state, or any sectarian state in historic Palestine, but that Palestinians and Israelis have to find a formula under which they can live as equal citizens in a single country. I can understand the growing appeal of the one-state solution: I suspect that no Israeli government will accept a genuine two state solution until all the alternatives for maintaining control over the Palestinians have been tried and failed - by which time, settlement "facts on the ground" will have compromised terribly the possibility of a Palestinian state. And I strongly suspect that Fatah – the major voice of the two state solution on the Palestinian side - is much closer than its public pronouncements suggest to saying that as the Israelis cannot get out of the Occupied Territories let them stay, and instead of our own state we will have one-person-one-vote. But I still don't think that the undeniable difficulties of reaching a two state solution mean that we will default to a binational state. I think you could argue that the way the Middle East is spiralling right now makes genocide a more likely outcome to the I/P conflict than binationalism, should the two state solution fail. On a more positive note, it also seems to me that for all we hear about this being a holy war, and therefore inherently intractable, it really isn't. The dominant issue in the I/P conflict is not religion but nationalism, and the demands of nationalism can be satisfied at least for the foreseeable future by the establishment of two nation states. As for the settlements that currently make two states impossible, well they were not created by an act of God or a force of nature: they were established by political will, in order to frustrate Palestinian nationhood, and they will be evacuated when Israelis understand that successful Palestinian nationhood is the only way to safeguard Israeli nationhood, and develop the political will to undo the obstacles they have put in its way.<br><br>It does make me wonder, though, what possible future there is for a "Jewish state" when I read something like The Lieberman Paradigm, and realise that this is directed not at the Palestinians of the Occupied Territories but at the Arab minority within Israel, who are supposedly fully citizens of that state. Palestinian citizens make up only 20 per cent of the population in Israel, as the vast majority of the Arabs living in Israel's partition borders were expelled or fled in 1948 and are still refused the right to go home. (This is why "the only democracy in the Middle East" rings a little hollow to Palestinian ears: any sectarian regime can call itself a democracy if it is allowed to expel and exclude large numbers of voters who don't support the sect in power, but that's not exactly democracy as most of us understand the term). And now apparently even this 20 per cent is too many. For Gershon Ben Ya'akov, they are locusts; for Benjamin Netanyahu, they are a "demographic threat"; for Yitzhak Ravid they are a production line popping out a flood of primitive darky babies, and crying out for racially targetted birth control. And if Israel's Arabs refuse to accept that their failure to produce Jewish babies means they shouldn't reproduce at all, what are you going to do then, Dr Ravid? Sterilize them? Kill them? Haven't we all been down that road before?<br><br>If Jewish Israelis do not want to live alongside Palestinian Arabs, well, that's just tough luck: the time to think of that was before they decided to establish a Jewish state in Arab Palestine. Because the Palestinians are not going to go away, any more than Jewish Israelis are. Whatever the final borders of Israel, Israel is always going to contain both Jews and Arabs, and is going to have to find a way to be a state of all its citizens. That might not be how the Zionist pioneers expected their project for a Jewish homeland to end up, but I'm pretty sure they didn't intend the current alternative either: five million Jewish Israelis barricading themselves behind a wall, and lying awake at night panicking that the Arabs within might be having sex.<br><br><br>Footnotes:<br><br>[1] The title - One Not Unimportant Fact - is taken from a letter written from prison on 29 May 1933 by future Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, in which he says of the project to make a Jewish homeland in Palestine: [T]here was one little drawback; one not unimportant fact seems to have been overlooked. Palestine was not a wilderness. Or an empty uninhabited place. It was already somebody else's home.<br>[2] Israel Zangwill: a land without a people for a people without a land.<br><br>[3] There is no such thing as a Palestinian people... It is not as if we came and threw them out and took their country. They didn't exist. - Golda Meir: Statement to The Sunday Times, 15 June 1969.<br><br>[4] The contradiction between the letter of the Covenant [the Anglo French Declaration of 1918 promising the Arabs of the former Ottoman colonies that as a reward for supporting the Allies they could have their independence] is even more flagrant in the case of the independent nation of Palestine than in that of the independent nation of Syria. For in Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country, thought the American Commission has been going through the forms of asking what they are. The four powers are committed to Zionism and Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long tradition, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desire and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land. - Arthur James, First Earl of Balfour, Aug 1919, cited by Edward Said, "The Question of Palestine." (Vintage Books Edition, April 1992; p.16)<br><br>[5] Reported in Israel's leading daily newspaper, Yediot Aharonot, on 17 Oct 1969.[/quote]<br><br><!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://lawrenceofcyberia.blogs.com/news/2006/04/one_not_unimpor.html">lawrence of cyberia</a><!--EZCODE LINK END--> <p></p><i></i>
jc
 
Posts: 145
Joined: Mon May 08, 2006 6:16 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: gaza, israel...brief reminder

Postby jc » Fri Jun 30, 2006 11:57 am

<!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>Evangelical pilgrims cheer Israel on at Gaza border<br></strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Strumming guitars and banging bongos, Christian pilgrims journeyed to Israel's dusty border with the Gaza Strip on Thursday to offer support to Israeli troops participating in the military action.<br><hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br>Apparently, Palestinians do not pose the existential threat that Israelis want us to believe they do. Otherwise, these people wouldn't be flocking to the Gaza border from all over the world to sing kumbaya with their Israeli war brethren.<br><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>About 25 people, wearing white T-shirts that said "Your God is my God," waved Israeli flags and sang religious songs.<br><hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br>They must think that their God is different from the God Palestinians pray to. I thought these people called themselves monotheistic. I guess that's only in theory.<br><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Hundreds of troops milled about in the distance alongside tanks and armored vehicles, seemingly oblivious to the group.<br><br>The group had planned to visit Israel long before this week's invasion. But after the military operation was launched, the pilgrims decided to show their support. Members came from the U.S., Singapore, Australia, Switzerland, New Zealand, Sweden, France and Germany.<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>What? No Palestinian Christians?<br><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>"We are here to support Israel, and we are here to tell it we support you, we pray for you and we want to bless Israel," said Leena Eronen of Finland.<br><hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br>I was under the impression that blessing was God's job.<br><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Many evangelical groups support Israel, believing that Jewish sovereignty over the region is part of biblical prophecy.<br><hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br>And they are not willing to wait. They intend to bring it on.<br><br><!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://wakeupfromyourslumber.blogspot.com/2006/06/evangelical-pilgrims-cheer-israel-on_30.html">wakeupfromyourslumber.blogspot.com/2006/06/evangelical-pilgrims-cheer-israel-on_30.html</a><!--EZCODE LINK END--> <p></p><i></i>
jc
 
Posts: 145
Joined: Mon May 08, 2006 6:16 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

PreviousNext

Return to Middle East

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 4 guests