^^^^^^^^
That is so very cool, Luther Blisset.
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by NeonLX » Wed Nov 21, 2012 10:46 am
by Luther Blissett » Wed Nov 21, 2012 10:46 am
Gaza Youth’s Manifesto for Change
“Fuck Hamas. Fuck Israel. Fuck Fatah. Fuck UN. Fuck UNWRA. Fuck USA! We, the youth in Gaza, are so fed up with Israel, Hamas, the occupation, the violations of human rights and the indifference of the international community!
“We want to scream and break this wall of silence, injustice and indifference like the Israeli F16s breaking the wall of sound; scream with all the power in our souls in order to release this immense frustration that consumes us because of this fucking situation we live in…
“We are sick of being caught in this political struggle; sick of coal-dark nights with airplanes circling above our homes; sick of innocent farmers getting shot in the buffer zone because they are taking care of their lands; sick of bearded guys walking around with their guns abusing their power, beating up or incarcerating young people demonstrating for what they believe in; sick of the wall of shame that separates us from the rest of our country and keeps us imprisoned in a stamp-sized piece of land; sick of being portrayed as terrorists, home-made fanatics with explosives in our pockets and evil in our eyes; sick of the indifference we meet from the international community, the so-called experts in expressing concerns and drafting resolutions but cowards in enforcing anything they agree on; we are sick and tired of living a shitty life, being kept in jail by Israel, beaten up by Hamas and completely ignored by the rest of the world.
“There is a revolution growing inside of us, an immense dissatisfaction and frustration that will destroy us unless we find a way of canalising this energy into something that can challenge the status quo and give us some kind of hope.
“We barely survived the Operation Cast Lead, where Israel very effectively bombed the shit out of us, destroying thousands of homes and even more lives and dreams. During the war we got the unmistakable feeling that Israel wanted to erase us from the face of the Earth. During the last years, Hamas has been doing all they can to control our thoughts, behaviour and aspirations. Here in Gaza we are scared of being incarcerated, interrogated, hit, tortured, bombed, killed. We cannot move as we want, say what we want, do what we want.
“ENOUGH! Enough pain, enough tears, enough suffering, enough control, limitations, unjust justifications, terror, torture, excuses, bombings, sleepless nights, dead civilians, black memories, bleak future, heart-aching present, disturbed politics, fanatic politicians, religious bullshit, enough incarceration! WE SAY STOP! This is not the future we want! We want to be free. We want to be able to live a normal life. We want peace. Is that too much to ask?”
by DrVolin » Wed Nov 21, 2012 5:40 pm
by Ben D » Wed Nov 21, 2012 8:24 pm
Hamas declares 'victory' after cease-fire
jpost - by KHALED ABU TOAMEH,11/21/2012 22:20
Hamas reacted to the Egyptian-brokered cease-fire agreement that was announced Wednesday by declaring "victory" over Israel.
Palestinians in the Gaza Strip reacted to the cease-fire announcement by taking to the streets to celebrate Hamas's "victory."
Similar celebrations were also reported in some West Bank cities late Wednesday.
Drivers honked their cars and women ululated to express their joy over the cease-fire agreement. Others handed out candies to express their joy over the cease-fire agreement.
Palestinian gunmen fired shots into the air in Gaza City while others kissed the ground in a sign of jubilation.
Palestinians also chanted slogans in support of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other Palestinian groups in the Gaza Strip.
Sources in the Gaza Strip said that the Hamas leadership instructed its members to abide by the cease-fire and to stop firing at Israel.
"History will mention that Gaza once hit Tel Aviv and Jerusalem with rockets," boasted a Hamas activist in Gaza City. "Today we triumphed. This is a victory from Allah."
Ahmed Bahr, a senior Hamas official, welcomed the cease-fire agreement. "The resistance groups have achieved an historic victory and paved the way for the battle of liberating palestine."
Bahr praised the Egyptians, Qataris and Turks for their role in achieving the cease-fire agreement.
The Popular Resistance Committees also declared victory and claimed that Israel had succumbed to its conditions for a cease-fire.
"The occupation and its army were forced to accept our conditions for a cease-fire," said Abu Ataya, spokesman for the PRC. "This is a great victory."
Abu Ataya said that the Palestinian armed groups have taught Israel "a lesson that it would not forget for a long time."
He also warned that the Palestinian groups would respond to an [Israeli] violations of the cease-fire agreement.
by hava007 » Thu Nov 22, 2012 10:00 pm
by hava007 » Fri Nov 23, 2012 5:45 am
by Nordic » Sat Nov 24, 2012 5:46 am
Ominous Forewarning from Prof. Norman Finkelstein: “I do think there is a plot, a conspiracy afoot… all the western powers are now acting in concert for a decisive moment.”
In November 2010, Professor Norman Finkelstein and Hamza Andreas Tzortzis spoke at a likeMEDIA.tv hosted event to address the question: “What Will Bring Peace to the Middle East?”
This was an excellent discussion where Prof. Finkelstein provided a secular perspective focusing on international law, while Mr. Tzortzis shared his perspective as an international public speaker on Islam.
What I found especially of interest, however, were the following opening remarks by Prof. Finkelstein:
“I was asked to speak on a very specific topic this evening namely ‘How to resolve the conflict’, if I had my choice in the matter I would’ve preferred to speak about what’s happening now in Gaza and more importantly, what seems to be unfolding in Lebanon, which is quite serious and quite ominous. I think we’re headed towards a crossroads in the Israeli-Palestine conflict in Lebanon in the near future, probably in the next several months…“In my opinion, there is a very sinister plot, and I don’t usually use the word plot, and there is a very sinister conspiracy, and I don’t usually use the word conspiracy, but I do think there is a plot, a conspiracy afoot, not just by the usual suspects the US and Israel, but also France, Italy, Canada, all the western powers are now acting in concert for a decisive moment.
“We should be very sensitive to that fact and just as they’re laying the groundwork for their evil, we should now be preparing ourselves and not being left at the last moment trying to mitigate a war but to prepare for it because it’s going to be a decisive moment. It will either be 1967 where a significant defeat was delivered to the Arab world or it’ll be 1956 where the British and the French and the imperial powers at the time suffered a major setback. But it is serious and in my opinion it’s really, if I could use the word, it’s quite filthy.”
by justdrew » Sun Nov 25, 2012 9:51 pm
by KUAN » Sun Nov 25, 2012 11:31 pm
by DrEvil » Mon Nov 26, 2012 10:31 pm
by Ben D » Fri Nov 30, 2012 4:30 am
Not black-and-white: The chess game behind the recent Gaza-Israel war (Op-Ed)
RT Published: 30 November, 2012, 11:47
Palestinian children walk on the rubble of a building destroyed during earlier Israeli bombardment adjacent to their United Nations run school, in Gaza City, on November 24, 2012 (AFP Photo / Mohammed Abed)
The recent hostilities between the Gaza Strip and Israel have to be viewed in context of a broader geopolitical chessboard. The events in Gaza are tied to Syria and the US’s regional maneuvers against Iran and its regional alliance system.
Syria has been compromised as a conduit for weapons to Gaza, because of its domestic instability. Israel has capitalized on this politically and militarily. Benjamin Netanyahu has not only tried to secure his own election victory in the Knesset through an attack on Gaza, but has used the US-sponsored instability in Syria as an opportunity to try and target the arms stockpiles of the Palestinians.
Netanyahu calculated that Gaza will not be able to rearm itself while Syria and its allies are distracted. The bombing of the Yarmouk arms factory in Sudan, which Israel says was owned by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, was probably part of this plan and a prelude to Israel’s attack on Gaza.
In this chess game, sit the so-called “Moderates”— a misleading label jointly utilized by Messrs George W. Bush Jr. and Tony Blair to whitewash their regional cabal of tyrants and backward regimes — alongside the Obama Administration and NATO. These so-called Moderates include the desert dictators of the feudal Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), Jordan, Mahmoud Abbas, and Turkey. In 2011, the ranks of the Moderates were augmented by the NATO-installed government of Libya and the GCC/NATO-supported anti-government militias that were unleashed in Syria.
On the other side of the chessboard defiantly sits the Resistance Bloc composed of Iran, Syria, Hezbollah (and Hezbollah’s partners in Lebanon, like Amal and the Free Patriotic Movement), the so-called Palestinian Rejectionists, and increasingly Iraq. The Muslim Brotherhood, which has emerged as a new regional force, is being increasingly prodded into the Moderate camp by the US and the GCC in an attempt to ultimately play the sectarian card against the Resistance Bloc.
Stark contrasts between Gaza and Syria
Israel’s attack on Gaza was a litmus test. All those voices continuously pushing for America’s McJihad against the Syrian government in the name of freedom vanished from their podiums or suddenly went silent when Israel attacked Gaza. Al Jazeera’s tele-preacher Yusuf Al-Qaradawi and Saudi Arabia’s dictator-selected Grand Mufti Abdul Aziz went silent. Adnan Al-Arour — the Saudi-based exiled kooky Syrian cleric who, as one of the spiritual heads of the Syrian anti-government forces, has threatened to punish anyone that says that Al-Qaeda is among their ranks — even berated Hamas and the Palestinians for fighting Israel.
The fighting in Gaza really placed them in a fix. Here we see the contradictions in their “Arab Spring.” We now see who really pays lip service to Palestinian liberation and who does not. Moreover, the foreign supporters of the Syrian National Coalition, a rehash of the Syrian National Council, are ironically all supporters of Israel.
This is why mentioning the support that Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah have provided for Gaza has become a taboo among the supporters of the anti-government forces in Syria. All they can say is that any acknowledgment of the support that Tehran, Damascus, and Hezbollah have provided to Gaza is an attempt to sanitize “Bashar Al-Assad and his supporters.”
Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah helped the Palestinians in Gaza
The Iranian Fijr-5 symbolically ingrains Tehran’s support for Palestine. Despite the fact that Israel and Gaza are by far not equal, it was predominately Iranian arms and technology that changed the balance of power. Tehran has been the main ally and supporter of the Palestinian resistance. The US, Israel, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Iran itself have all acknowledged this in different ways.
The Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which is unapologetically pro-Iranian, has openly stated that everything Gaza used in the fight against Israel, from its bullets to missiles, has been generously provided by Tehran. It was even reported during the fighting that Hezbollah, using a special unit dedicated to arming the Palestinians, resupplied the Gaza Strip with some of its own long-range missiles.
This has all taken place while the cads in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey have instead armed the Syrian anti-government militias. Egypt and Jordan continue to be major partners in preventing Iranian arms from reaching the Palestinians.
Palestinian fighters have also been trained in Lebanon, Syria, and Iran. Ironically, the anti-government forces in Syria are also targeting members of the Palestinian Liberation Army in Syria.
The support that the Resistance Bloc has given the Palestinians puts those actors, like Turkey and Qatar, opposed to the Syrian government in a real predicament. These so-called Sunni states where embarrassed; not only did they fail to help a predominately Sunni population, but their insincerity was exposed. This is why there is an active effort to deny the support that Iran and its allies have provided for Gaza.
De-linking Hamas from Resistance Bloc to start a Muslim Civil War
As a back story to all this, the Israeli attack on Gaza and the Moderate’s wooing of Hamas is more than just about neutralizing Gaza. Hamas leaders are being tempted to choose between the Moderate and Resistance camps and increasingly between governing or active resistance to the Israeli occupation. Through this, some form of accommodation to the US and Israel is being sought from Hamas. The aims are to de-link the Palestinians, particularly Hamas, from the Resistance Bloc in order to portray Iran and its allies as a Shiite alliance bent on dominating the Sunnis.
If you are foolish enough to fall prey to it, welcome to the unfolding “American fitna” (schism) that aims to ignite a regional Muslim civil war between the Shiites and Sunnis. The Obama administration is trying to construct and line up a Sunni axis against the region’s Shiite Muslims.
It is a classic strategy of divide and conquer that envisions America and Israel dominating the region as the Muslims are incapacitated by their bloodletting. The Shia are systematically being vilified courtesy of the new media war: Iran, Hezbollah, Bashar Al-Assad (an Alawi who is increasingly labeled a Shiite for the benefit of this project), and Nouri Maliki’s administration in Iraq are being portrayed as the new oppressors of the Sunnis. In their place Turkey, with its virtually stillborn neo-Ottomanism foreign policy, and Egypt under the Muslim Brotherhood are being presented as the champions of the Sunnis. Never mind that Egypt’s Mohamed Morsi has continued the blockade of Gaza for Israel or that Turkey’s Erdogan lost his voice for a while when Israel began bombing Gaza.
The US is trying to use Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood to control Hamas, because it was Cairo that established a ceasefire between Israel and Gaza. While Iran offers military technology, logistical support, and finance the Egyptians are being presented as Gaza’s ticket to establishing some form of normality and the GCC as alternative funding. This is why Qatar’s Emir Al-Thani visited Gaza to tempt Hamas with his declining supply of petro-dollars.
Shiite and Sunni divisions are political constructs
Inside Hamas there are internal differences over this. While Damascus, Tehran, and Hezbollah desired some form of public acknowledgment about their vital assistance to Hamas and the Palestinians, Hamas officials were careful about their statements. When Khaled Meshaal thanked Egypt, Qatar, and Tunisia during an important press conference, he narrowly mentioned Iran.
Meshaal’s politicking was not lost on Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, who responded hours later by rhetorically asking who supplied and painstakingly transferred the Fajr-5 missiles into Gaza? Nasrallah asked people to look past Gaza’s fair-weather friends, like the Qataris and Saudis who think they can buy their ways into the grace of the Palestinians, but to look at Gaza’s tested friends who allowed Gaza to stand on its own two feet. Then the Lebanese leader reaffirmed the ongoing support of the Resistance Bloc for the Palestinian people.
Despite its politburo’s position on Syria, Hamas is still a part of the Resistance Bloc. There is a new format now. If Greece and Turkey were at odds with one another as two NATO allies, then Hamas can have its differences with Syria and still be allied with the Resistance Bloc against Israel.
The divide in the Middle East is not a sectarian one between Shiites and Sunnis, but fundamentally political. The alliance of the predominately Sunni Muslim Palestinian resistance movements and the Free Patriotic Movement, Lebanon’s largest Christian political party, with predominately Shiite Muslim Iran and Hezbollah should defuse such a perception that the US and its allies are trying to cultivate.
by Bruce Dazzling » Mon Dec 03, 2012 11:12 am
by Laodicean » Mon Dec 03, 2012 12:02 pm
by The Consul » Mon Dec 03, 2012 9:47 pm
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