israel/palestine
7 Apr 2008
We Must Engage Hamas
Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal.
Shunning Palestine's leading political party isn't helping anyone, writes Antony Loewenstein
The international isolation of Hamas has failed. This is not merely the opinion of those who believe that the democratically elected Palestinian Government should be engaged, but includes a number of prominent Israelis, including Yossi Alpher, the former adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak.Life in Gaza, suffering under an economic and military blockade, remains tough. Security has largely been restored due to Hamas security services, although some Gazans complain of a loss of individual rights, press freedom and women's mobility. Hamas-controlled media continues to broadcast incitement against Jews.
Despite these challenges, Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal reiterated last week his group's commitment to a two-state solution and the need for the establishment of a sovereign state within the 1967 borders. His call was ignored throughout the world. Even the New York Times recently intimated that forever shunning Hamas was counter-productive.
The Western media has essentially followed a narrative about the conflict from a White House that dismisses Hamas and embraces the weak Fatah President Mahmoud Abbas. Even hard evidence that proved a US-planned coup against Hamas, finally given extensive coverage in a recent Vanity Fair article, was largely ignored. Attempting to oust an Islamist party is seemingly acceptable to Western policymakers and the elite commentariat.
The profound delusions of this position should be clear to anybody who understands the realities of the Middle East today. Islamism is a fact of life for many citizens across the region. It cannot be easily dismissed or ignored. It is generally not represented by al-Qaeda and can be engaged, if not endorsed. Daniel Levy, an adviser to former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, wrote an essay recently in Prospect that outlined the challenges facing the next US President. He argues that governments, journalists or activists who "lump all Islamists together [are] politically and intellectually lazy and dishonest [and help] al-Qaeda to portray America as anti-Muslim."
Levy advocates for a fundamental re-writing of the "war on terror" paradigm:
"Contrary to popular misperception, Hamas and al-Qaeda are adversaries, not allies. Hamas is about ending the occupation and reforming Palestinian society; al-Qaeda, about opposing the West per se and spreading chaos in the Muslim world and beyond. One is reformist, the other revolutionary; one nationalist, the other post-nationalist; one grievance-based, the other fundamentalist. Hamas has signalled that it will accept a Palestinian state alongside Israel. It can be worked with, albeit indirectly for political reasons. Under a new administration, US policy toward Hamas should enter a period of deniable ambiguity, as third parties (principally Arab and European) explore a series of propositions with the Hamas leadership."
Tragically, the Israeli leadership shows no signs of moderating its stance, not helped by a global Zionist community that only urges the Jewish state to pursue hardline positions. Israeli officials announced last week the building of 1400 more settlements in occupied territory and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is reportedly likely to give the green light for hundreds more homes in the West Bank.
Peace Now announced last week that Israel's supposed settlement freeze since the November Annapolis conference was "dead", revealing 101 examples of settlement construction since December. As journalist Jonathan Cook argues in his new book, Israel and the Clash of Civilisations, Israel's leadership has never wanted peace with its neighbours, merely control over its land and resources. The future, according to a former commander of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade in Jenin, is a civil war between Hamas and Fatah for control of the West Bank.
Leading US Jewish newspaper Forward - which bravely published an article last week by the political bureau chief of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood - editorialised that the ever growing settlement expansion is threatening Israel's future existence:
"At this moment in history... new construction in the settlements, whatever its moral valence, is foolish and self-destructive. Israel's political and defence leaders see their country's survival as dependent on separating from the Palestinians by withdrawing from the West Bank. If that doesn't happen soon, Israel is, as Olmert said recently, 'finished'."
A recent BBC World Service global poll found Israel only marginally more popular than Iran. There has even been an increase of negative views in the US. Intriguingly, however, Israel is not a top priority for the majority of Jewish American voters in the forthcoming election.
While most of the Western media pontificates on the likely presidential nominees and the bowling skills of Barack Obama, subtle but important shifts are occurring within the Zionist establishment. Virtually ignored is Hillary Clinton's plan to maintain an "undivided" Jerusalem, making any two-state solution impossible before negotiations have even begun.
More interesting are fears that Obama is secretly pro-Palestinian, paranoia assisted by photo evidence that he attended a keynote address in 1998 with now deceased Palestinian intellectual Edward Said. It is a source of concern within the Zionist community that a person of potential even-handedness towards Israel/Palestine could even aspire to the presidency. However, Noam Chomsky has rightly said that he sees no evidence that Obama would be more "responsive to public pressure" on matters of national importance than previous leaders.
The level of Western delusion towards the conflict is revealed on a daily basis. A leading Israeli Rabbi said recently, in response to the massacre at a Jerusalem rabbinical seminary in March, that, "even when we seek revenge, it is important to make one thing clear - the life of one yeshiva boy is worth more than the lives of 1,000 Arabs". His vicious racism is rampant throughout the settler movement, making the reality of a two-state solution impossible. But the world never condemns such comments, reserving its bile for Muslim clerics who denounce Western-led violence.
With Israel's 60th anniversary rapidly approaching, now is the time for the international community not to follow the lead of our "passionately pro-Israel" Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who recently callously praised the 1948 birth of the Jewish nation. Many Israeli Arabs rightly plan to boycott any celebrations becasue they don't want to celebrate a racially exclusionary state (something which is now even acknowledged by the world's leading Jewish news agency, JTA).
Many Jews share their disgust and now openly engage in debate about Israel's possible, future demise.
Former Knesset speaker Avraham Burg, a long-time critic of the Jewish state, last week told an American audience that Israel is obsessed with the Holocaust, needs to separate church and state and must find a new purpose beyond Zionism, since aliyah - Jewish immigration to Israel - has effectively ended.
When was the last time such discussions were held in the "respectable" mainstream?
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Hamas has been totally marginalized by two State Terrorist countries, the USA and Israel. Hamas gains a great deal of it grass roots support by giving socialist style support to the average citizen by establishing hospitals, education systems, libraries and social services.
For a while Hamas and Fatah maintained a unilateral moratorium on suicide bombers which started to give their position some respectability. This was something that Israel could not contemplate and they killed some of the Hamas leader in a precision rocket attack on the car they were in. An action hailed Western Press as a victory against terrorism but in actual fact was merely a provocation for Hamas to resume suicide bombing, which they did. The resultant suicide bombing were then used a reasons for supporting the security wall that is isolating pockets of Palestinians from contact from the outside world.
It should be remembered that a terrorist bomber is merely a bomber without an air force.
The actions of Israel against Palestinians can be reasonably compared with the actions by the Nazis against the Jews. The Palestinians have lost their humanitarian right and are now losing their homes, land and livelihoods. Their terror against Israel is their only defense for they have no army or air force to defend them.
There can be no peace until the USA withdraws it more or less unconditional support for Israel and the Western power engage with Hamas.
Israel has a right to exist, of that there can be no argument, but an independent Palestine for Palestinians must be allowed to replace the slow genocide by Israel of the Palestinian people.
In this two-state solution, with Israel and Palestine lying down with each other like the lion and the lamb, would Palestinians have the right to enter Israel ? Or would they have to have passes like in South Africa ? And would Palestinians have an automatic right of return to their places of birth ? Would they have the right to pursue their rights to property in Israeli courts ? Would Israelis be required to give up the property that has been distributed to them ?
If Palestinians had these rights, what would be the need for two states ? Why not one secular, democratic state ? Perhaps supervised for the next hundred years by international troops, yes, but do you honestly think that a two-state ‘solution’ would be any more feasible or durable ?
Joe
Yes Joe, in a perfect world I think it would be great. Unfortunately Islamic fundamentalism is being nurtured in Palestine by Israeli oppression and a growing confidence amongst Islamic peoples after years of Western colonial domination. Israeli expectations of biblical borders based on archaic out dated traditions and an often inflammatory religious perspective eg. We are God’s chosen people fulfilling God’s promise therefore we are in the right by divine providence. And this supported by strong apocalyptic Christian sentiment in the USA would make this perfect one state solution difficult in the long term and impossible in the short term, at least in my opinion.
But at present the Palestinian people have been disenfranchised in their own land, they are predominately Islamic in a predominately Islamic region and the only friends in that area are the ones that the USA has purchased for them in one way or another. When the USA eventually wanes as a dominating world power, Israel’s survival is probably not particularly good. Now is the time to mend the fences and sort things out in a reasonably equitable manner. Just giving the Palestinians some measure of ownership and stability in their own land would be a good start.
Maybe if they start now by recognizing the elected Palestinian Government then maybe our grand children may see a single Judeo-Palestinian State or Federation, at least I hope so.
Yes it’s a bit of a dilemma. Of course, for the Palestinians, ‘their own land’ is currently occupied, illegally they would suggest. So, yes, it might all take some time, in an imperfect world. But it will come about, sooner or later.
Great piece Anthony, only you are wrong about Avraham Burg because Israel never bound "church" (a misnomer?) and state beyond it’s usefulness as a source for propaganda and socialist authoritarian control.
Modern Israel is not a religious state, it is a criminally segregated socialist state which relies heavily on the same deceit and lies used to justify all past colonial occupations. See, as one of hundereds of examples, Prof. Turkkaya Ataov’s book "Siyonizm ve Irkcilik", especially his reference to how Zionists used such operations as "Ali Baba" against Jewish communities in foreign countries to create anti-semitism and fear in order to frighten jews to immigrate to Israel.
These actions can hardly be justified on theological grounds.
Numerous Jewish and gentile authors recognise that Israel’s birth was initiated and funded by Edmond de Rothschild just prior to 1900 through 19 small Jewish settlements in Palestine and this same banking group controls the Rothschild descendent Wall Street finance houses in concert with it’s descendent media, mining and oil cartels managed by New York’s East End communist Zionists have since engineered the Balfour declaration and the eventual creation and continued funding of Israel’s economic and political survival to this day.
The result is that now Israel exists at the massive expense of our Western world’s financial, political, cultural, economic and social structures through the financially inbred Rothschild cartel of corporations which wields such a huge influence in every English speaking nation of the world today, including Australia.
Like Fabianists and Utopianists and other "useful idiots" who stupidly plot their own demise in the Western World, there is nothing religious about the irrational Zionist aspirations of Rabbis like Rabbi Eliyahu at all, but, more importantly, and contrary to Avraham Burg’s view, these religious figures do not influence Israeli policy at all, they simply provide convenient propaganda to those who do dictate policy.
For the world’s Zionists it is political economic business as usual while the "usefully idiotic" religious zealots provide us all with enough side shows for the powerful political and financial players to pursue their dominant geo-political power roles concealed behind the more visible antics of the religiously engaged.
Come on Anthony, we’re talking about a racist, bigotted community of hardcore socialists who, like any other socialists, have no respect whatsoever for religion or human rights. When last have you walked the streets of Haifa or Eilat or Tel Aviv and met more than a mere handful of Israeli jews who are not despondent or who are in fact serious about religion beyond it’s usefulness as a justification for their bigotry?
How many Falashas have you seen living in places like Kfar Shmaryahu?
George Vickers
George, you have totally lost me! What in Hells’ name is ‘Socialist’ about the present day Zionist israel??? Once upon a time, perhaps, with the ‘kibbutzen’ but not now. And you would have a hard job convincing anyone that those Rabbis and their madly fundamentalist religious followers who insist on building on Palestinian lands more and more, and who actually control the israeli Knesset through their influence with Olmert, and threats to bring his Govt. down if he deviates from THEIR causes, are NOT Religious!!
I agree wholeheartedly with Andrew’s article, and Atannar. Joe, I agree that a one-state, very definitely Non-religious, open society would be ideal, but it is probably dreaming. There has been too much hatred fanned over the years, so many would have to die off, and not be replaced with more fanaticism, before it could possibly happen. Those fanatically fundamentalist religious ‘settlers’ are a real problem, and I see no answer to them at the moment. They have too much political power, if nothing else.
I hate and detest organized religions! Their evil far outdoes any good they may do.
Dazza.
Sorry, I have done it again. Antony, NOT Andrew!
Dazza.
Hi Dazza,
Yes, it will take a hell of a long time, no denying that - but a secular, democratic, even socialist state, must happen sooner or later. But a two-state ‘solution’ will be no solution. That’s also the reality. Life sometimes is a bastard.
Cheers,
Joe
Good to see George still believes in the international Jewish Bolshevik conspiracy. Next time he might as well quote directly from Mein Kampf.
Philip
Joe, I still think that a single state or even a federal state is so far away it does not bear thinking about. Strife in Northern Irland was finally settled so there is hope here as well.
If there was peace between Palestine and Israel, after a while when the feelings of hatred and of revenge on both sides have time to mellow, then, may be, a better solution can imerge.
Roger
I respect your writing Antony and I absolutely agree it is irrational to exclude Hamas but I wish the supporters of both sides would stop encouraging the protaganists with typically polemic statements such as this:
"His vicious racism is rampant throughout the settler movement, making the reality of a two-state solution impossible. But the world never condemns such comments, reserving its bile for Muslim clerics who denounce Western-led violence".
Can someone provide some analysis on this issue that acknowledges both sides are to blame for what has occured in Israel / Palestine for the last 50+ years, both sides have committed appalling atrocities, both sides have been led at different times by unscrupulous war mongers at best, both sides have their progressives and fundamentalists and both sides believe they are treated unfairly by the international community.
Meanwhile the international community bickers over the same issues. Just as countries such as US and whoever the hell provides arms to Hamas propel this feud so do to commentators who provide each side with justification for continuing the fight by enunciating simplistic polemics.
I’m sorry Antony, I don’t mean to take this out on you as I say I respect your work but please refrain from sentences that I illustrated above. I really believe that both the Palestinians and Israeli’s would be better off if we all (that is the international community) just stayed out of their affairs and let them sort of their differences once and for all
Roger,
Yeah, that’s sort of what I meant. A ‘two-state solution’ will be a fraud without the Palestinians’ right of return, and the right to have their property returned. That won’t happen ? Then there will not be a stable ‘two-state solution’, ever. After a war of attrition, when all parties are totally exhausted, long after my lifetime, then there might be contemplation of a secular, democratic, one-state solution. But not tomorrow, not next year, not this generation, because everybody seems to think they can win with their one-state, one-religion model and as long as all sides hold these illusions - that the ‘other side’ will conveniently vanish - then they will keep dying.
Joe
Dylan, if you ever get to travel as frequently as I am obliged to do you will find that this is what is painted on almost every public wall in every major Russian city from Moscow to Vlodivostok these days - "бей жыдов спасай россию".
This same phrase is found printed on greeting cards and at the bottom of e-mails to and from millions of Russians every day - still think it’s a conspiracy theory?
Of course you do, after all, it’s not on TV now is it?
Tell that to modern day Russians and to the public relations division of our company’s Luxembourg bankers, "Banque Privee Edmond de Rothschild" who proudly included a detailed report of the facts I have presented in this thread in their September copy of their monthly circular to their clients after the death of Edmond (Elie) de Rothschild only eight months ago during August of 2007. I still have that specific edition on my desk but you should email the above Rothschild bank and ask for a copy and read their well detailed report of the "Rothschild and London connection" and Edmond Rothschild Snr’s link to the birth of modern day Israel.
So if my claims are a "conspiracy theory" you may want to advise the current generation of Rothschilds that their proud family history is just a "conspiracy theory" and you may also want to warn the current generation of Russians that the terrible prejudice which is growing from their own Russian history is all based on nothing more than a "conspiracy theory".
Now that WILL give both the Russians and the Rothschilds a really good laugh.
Of course, it is politically correct to pretend none of these inconvenient facts is true so the source of your PC mindset might be a better place to search for conspiracy theories to debunk.
GV
George: no doubt you would also recommend the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as a reliable document. What racist crap.
Philip
Whoooo! Not politically correct enough for you hey Philip?
Maybe the Tooth Faerie really is for real, the kids are right and the adults are all wrong, right?
Maybe there really are axe murderers and rapists and nasty people who commit naughty crimes hey Philip - no??
Let’s consult our book of politically correct thought.
Repeat after me - "TV TV on the wall, who is the most PC of us all!"
Nope, sorry Philip, it’s all false, Israel, Zionism, Palestinian genocide, it only exists in the Muslim world Philip, you were right all along!
After all, who needs to read, or to study or to travel when you have TV - right Philip?
Hi George,
Please enlighten us: what does "бей жыдов спасай россию" mean ? ‘Bei zhydov spasai rossiyu’ - it’s got me baffled.
Alzheimer’s must be kicking in - what were your main points ?
Cheers,
Joe
Alzheimers hey Joe? That will explain your lack of general knowledge and common sense in the rest of your comments.
Hi George,
Thanks for your gentle criticism. I’ll store it away. So what does "бей жыдов спасай россию" mean ?
pgwatson, On a daily reading of web pages in the English world, I have to say that getting any sort of balance into the criticisms of Palestinians as against israelis would be wonderful, but almost ALL Western media is totally biased AGAINST the Palestinians, and very much pro-israeli. As the majority of the Western media is owned by Jewish interests, or those who are beholden to pollies such as George W.Bush, indeed Big Business with vested interests in retaining Jewish support, it would be very surprising to be otherwise. If such as AlJazeera were to comment strongly pro-Palestinian or anti-israel, their offices would be bombed (by ‘accident’) by the Yanks, their personnel targeted ‘accidently’ but often fatally, and great pressure applied by such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt and Jordan, who are fellow travelers of Bush and Co., to the owner to shut them down.
Lets get real, hey!
Either Palestine/israel is to become one State, totally non-sectarian, with all Semites (and most Palestinians are also Semite) living in relative peace together, or israel be totally disbanded as an illegal State, and those who can not live together be assisted to find another place to live, preferably somewhere they can not bring their Religions into play in a political manner. Better they be spread like dust, totally dissipated.
Dazza.
It is pleasing to see that Dazza has joined George in supporting conspiracy theories about international Jewish wealth and power. Do others wonder why overt neo-Nazis are involved in a supposedly left-wing discussion group?
Philip
Anthony, this may not be entirely on topic, forgive me, but given the ego spat from the usual suspects above I thought I might share a link about Rabbi Nathaniel Ezray’s views about us Ashkenazim posted on a Jewish news site from California and which was sent to me by a patient recently:-
http://www.jewishsf.com/content/2-0-/module/displaystory/story_id/19117/…
Could these views, if correct, help us to better understand the Israeli/Zionist/Palestinian issue presented to us in your article from an Israeli perspective?
To Joe and others let me urge you to read the English translation of Michael Stanislawski in "Tsar Nicholas I and the Jews, The Transformation of Jewish Society in Russia" and find the phrase RockJaw refers us to which is an anti-semitic phrase with a direct bearing on the anti-semitic psyche of "white" Russians which cannot be confused with general anti-semitism as we understand and experience it here in the West.
In the modern context it refers specifically to the observation that "Völkisch" racism is a key ideological principle which only German Nazism and Zionism share exclusively, a bizarre observation from a Russian perspective.
Read "Yiddish Civilization, The Rise and Fall of a Forgotten Nation" by Paul Kriwaczek as an introduction to ethnic Ashkenazi origins, culture, history and politics" to understand some of the background which most Europeans ignore in their quest to understand the Russian mindset as well as a really good introduction to ethnic Ashkenazi origins, culture, history and politics.
For Joe’s further benefit some of the important issues are that Yiddish Jews in the Russian Empire constituted an elite that lost its status after the collapse of Commonwealth Poland, for Russian Germans essentially already filled the economic niche to which Polish Jews were accustomed. As the severely troubled Russian Empire tried to reform itself, a subset of Russian Jews tried to bring reform to the whole Russian Jewish population while at the same time the Russian government attempted to impose its own form of reform on its Jewish population generally on the basis of some severe misconceptions.. the rest you can find out for yourself by reading the works presented here.
Many Russian Jews supported the overthrow of Czarism, but the Soviet Revolution turned on its supporters, and Russian Jews once again became a persecuted population until the German Nazis almost obliterated the entire Jewish population of Europe. Only the Zionists truly understood the danger that European Jewry faced. Zionism made it possible for the surviving remnant of the Jewish people to come together and build a country where Jews could be safe and free after so many centuries of unrelenting suffering. In this narrative the German Nazis act as the "Great Satan", but Palestinians serve as the "Little Satan" for resisting the flight of European Jews to Palestine.
And that, once again, brings us back to something remotely close to the original topic of this discussion, which is the consequence of the Israeli attitudes and how Palestinians are viewed by a Western world influenced largely by our supposedly "Ashkenazi" jewish population.
That might not help your Alzheimers Joe, but it may give you some basic understanding of the background which Rockjaw attempted to introduce to the debate by adding to the debate the Russian phrase and which my keyboard is unable to retype.
Thanks SD, I hope I have not dragged the discussion too far off topic.
The phrase, Joe, requires a little understanding of the Russian and Yiddish histories and culture. The wording, in Russian, is ambiguous and may mean a number of things but the common interpretation is "stop the jews and save Russia".
Without some understanding of the culture there is simply too much to explain in this short space, but it can also be interpreted to mean "Jews are not Russia’s salvation" or "Save Russia, destroy the Jews" and the ambiguity continues.
The point is that there is a rise in anti-semitism in Putin’s Russia and a large portion of the anti-semitism is the result of the perceived battle between Russia’s oligarchs (perceived to be part of "international Zionism") and Putin’s "unipolar world" which he referred to in his very unpopular and controversial speech early in 2007 and which prompted certain pro Israeli congressmen in the USA to accuse Putin of starting a new "cold war".
Putin’s "unipolar" world is interpreted by anti-semites in Russia as being the attempts of those same Zionist influences to draw Russia into a large global economic and financial structure which Russians believe already exists and which they believe brought about the economic collapse of the USSR more than a decade ago.
This "unipolar world", so goes contemporary Russian belief, has already captured the Western World and is currently responsible for the build up of NATO mmissiles and troops beyond the agreed boundaries of the former USSR. Russians believe the "unipolar" West is attempting to aggravate the Russians by ignoring it’s treaties to prompt Russia and it’s new Iranian ally (through the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation) into a war to end the dominance of Russian and middle east control of 80% of the world’s energy reserves which threaten the continued existence of the West.
That may be what GW Bush went to Russia to discuss with Putin this week, who knows?
Russian national pride is on the rise again and these perceptions are a growing threat to Western interests, whether they are real or justified or not.
See this recent video to see how Russians feel about NOT being part of this "unipolar" world http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x4md1h_hymne-russe_politics
Israel, naturally, serves as a pivot point for this "battle" since Israel is the Western world’s foothold in the Middle East and it serves as our "backdoor" into the oil rich region controlled by Russia and it’s allies.
I hope Dylan6 is right and that all of this is just a great big terrible conspiracy theory and that President Putin is no more real than the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy and that the "unipolar" speech of Putin was all just a sick joke by a media with a very sick sense of humour.
Somehow, I don’t think so, those troops on Red Square looked pretty real to me!
Dylan6, you won’t find any of this on TV, see, it’s not politically correct to let Putin have his say, so you now have yet another "conspiracy theory" to debunk.
Good luck!
Yeah, I got ‘God’ and ‘bacon’ and ‘Russia’ from that phrase but ‘zhydov’ has me beat. And I’m trying brahmi tea for the Alzheimer’s.
Actually Kriwaczek’s book is a beautiful work, and i should read it ASAP. Thanks, Shockdoc.
Guys guys and goyim,
Thank you for an almost intelligent debate here. The bloody Rushkies have a lot to answer for.
Firstly for their perversion of Marxist socialist philosophy. But let’s not get even further off Loewensteins’ assertion that Hamas must be engaged.
Well they don’t want Israel back to the green line (pre 1967).
They want Israel back in the Red sea, preferably under it,"’til human voices disturb us" Maybe TS Eliot was onto something. (Lovesong of J Alfred Prufrock)
Well I digress.
"Conspiracy of horses arses" (Cabaret)
Ali Baba (and the forty thieves) Antisemitism?
Zionism=Nazism (Goebels would be proud, if you are going to tell lies, don’t muck around,you may as well tell real porkers.
It’s not about religious whackos,from either side, nor about oil (at 110$US a barrell)
What you equivocators forget is, by playing devil’s advocate you allow the principle that maybe Israel is no better nor worse than any other country locked in a do or die life and death struggle to survive.
The streets of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem may not resound with the joy they did after the Jews reclaimed the old city of Jerusalem in 1967,and eradicated the Jordanian military installations from which Jews praying at the Wailing wall would be sniped at by Jordanian soldiers regularly.
The night life may not be as vibrant as would befit a modern Western city for fear of gathering and becoming a target for crazed Palestinian gunmen, knife wielders and suicide bombers.
No Israel is not what it could be, but it is not racist or apartheid either.
If the Israelis could engage the men who hijacked and blew up planes and a ship, hurling a wheel chair bound man overboard, and massacring their children in their school, would’nt you trhink they can engage those hamas amateurs too?
The Rabbi was correct mathematically,at least, If one Jew is murdered, then 1000 Arabs need to join him.
When Israel is obliged to have prisoner exchanges that is the usual ratio they are expected to hand over in return.
So please don’t intellectualize this harsh reality.
Israel will do what it has to to survive.
Unfortunately, the longer this goes the greater likelihood for political and military errors to occur.
Shalom Achchav (not the political movement)
Peace NOW!
Shalom Revilo
You can’t accuse "Russian" rather than "jewish" influence for the "perversion of Communism". It was Lenin and Trotsky who created the infamous secret service "Cheka", the source of the infamous "Red terror", designed to steal capital wealth and property and to crush civilian resistance to the genocidal Russian revolution, just like their fellow zios have done to the Palestinians in Israel. Remember, the overwhelming majority of those involved with the communist suppression were Russian jews, and, in many cases, the groups were exclusively jewish.
So no, the Communist Revolution went exactly according to plan. The destruction of Palestine and the genocidal methodology used in Israel is identical. You really should read more of our Jewish writers Oliver, people like Steve Plocker (see http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3342999,00.html).
As Plocker notes, the Cheka was led and staffed mainly by Jews, empowered by Lenin and Trotsky, financed by non-Russian Jewish bankers who were responsible for murdering over 20 million "goyim" as you so quaintly call the victims. The reference material and authority provided by Plocker amounts to large volumes of the most fascinating work from that period.
Plocker also makes the interesting point that all modern jews graduate from school and University today without even hearing about the greatest murderers of our time, fellow tribesmen like Genrikh Yagoda, who would make your nazi Goebels look like Mother Theresa. I wonder why our youth is taught nothing of these facts Oliver?
You also mention TS Elliot but you omit to mention Elliot was a protege of Ezra Pound, as was James Joyce and Ernest Hemingway. I wonder why you don’t quote Pound? Is it because the zios have excommunicated him? Read a little Ezra Pound Oliver, it won’t defile you.
Just for the benefit of clarity Revilo, Israel is absolutely the most racist apartheid state in the world today which is why it is, as you put it, "locked in a do or die struggle to survive". It is as though Israel has an irrational deathwish. All it needs to do is surrender it’s racism and bigotry and voila! We have peace! Will it happen? Not so long as we have the zios running about convincing the world that it’s okay to wipe the Palestinians and remove Palestine from the face of the earth.
Then you mention the 1967 war as if Israel was it’s victim, but Revilo, Israel started the 1967 war! They also started all the bombings, the terror attacks, letter bombings, the hijackings, the murders, like that of the British soldiers whose throats were slit in the Orange groves, and the list goes on and on. This Israeli sequel to the Russian revolution is being botched up by the zios who overestimate their "superiority" and their "right" to murder 1000 "shoggies" for 1 Israeli.
Which brings us to your point about Hamas. Philip Geraldi, another fellow tribesman, (see http://www.antiwar.com/orig/giraldi.php?articleid=12647 ) writes how Barrack Hussein Obama and his military policy adviser, Air Force Gen. Merrill McPeak, have openly declared their intention to engage Hamas if elected POTUSA.
Now it is interesting to note how the zio lobby groups have reacted with such hysteria to this declaration from Obama and McPeak. They have actually attempted to force McPeak to swear allegiance to Israel before his duty to his own country, or face the wrath of the zio lobby groups financial and media muscle. But it looks as though Obama might survive these zio threats and Hamas may very well receive their pound of flesh after all. The zios won’t like it, but they might as well get used to it Oliver because the world is putting up with ever decreasing dosages of their B/S and, what is more, the "goyim" don’t buy into the scam that we are the "master race" anymore or that economic and political suppression of their communities is a good thing.
Gone are the days of the "Kahal" and "Khazaka" Revilo, this modern new world is based on equality.
Fearmongering the growth of anti-semitism amongst jewish communities is not so effective anymore either. What will the zios try next? Nuclear genocide? Suicide? We need to put a stop to it before the shtf.
I think we are a little out of touch here in Australia Oliver, and we really ought to keep up with the new young and vibrant avant-garde jewish communities living in the industrialised world. People like Joachim Martilo and Philip Giraldi ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Giraldi ).
You seem to have become caught up in the zio’s "operation megaphone" or similar b/s ops. These zionist projects just cause ever increasing damage amongst better informed and better educated communities in our world today. Again, nobody buys into these scams anymore Revilo because hey, the Russian revolution? We’ve been there and done that, it’s old news and it’s time to move on already.
Go Hezbollah! and let’s engage Hamas, but first let’s get the hate mongers out of the Knesset and remove the IDF from the occupied territories.
Shalom
GV
The fundamental messages from the Jewish Holocaust (6 million victims, 1/6 of deaths through deprivation) and the WW2 Holocaust in general (30 million Slav, Jewish and Roma victims) are "zero tolerance for racism" and "never again to anyone".
All decent people are obliged to adhere to those injunctions.
The Racist Zionists (RZs) , the Bush-ites, the neo-Bush-ites and the anti-Arab anti-Semitic Australian Lib Labs certainly DON"T.
Those who violate these fundamental moral imperatives are profoundly disrespecting the 6 million martyrs, the 30 million martyrs and helping to ensure that history ignored will yield history repeated.
There is no way decent people can countenance racist invasion, occupation, colonizing, disempowerment, dispossession, mass imprisonment, mass killing, civilian targetting, constraint on religious observance, violation of holy sites, egregious violence, perversion of democratic rights, race-based Apartheid Laws, mass passive paedocide and mass ethnic cleansing.
Anti-racism and humanitarian principles aside, the moral position is compelling for ME because the German Nazis and their collaborators wiped my family from the face of Europe and our lands and homes are STILL confiscated (now with the approval of Germany and the EU to enable Hungarian entry into the EU).
There is no way I - or indeed any anti-racist humanitarian - can countenance the Palestinian Genocide - genocide as defined by the UN Genocide Convention - that is now associated with the following: 0.3 million post-1967 Occupied Palestinian excess deaths; 0.2 million post-invasion under -5 Occupied Palestinian under-5 infant deaths; 85% of West Bank Christians have fled; massive illegal expropriation of property; millions of Occupied Palestinians held in what Professor Chomsky calls an increasingly abusive Prison (now for over 40 years); 2,400 under-5 year old Occupied Palestinian infants murdered passively by Racist Zionist-run Apartheid Israel EACH year; horrible, offensive , peace-based Apartheid Laws for the "lucky" Arab Israelis (Nazi-style race-based ID, marriage laws, property ownership restrictions , participation restrictions); 7 million Palestinian refugees (see "We are all Palestinian": http://mwcnews.net/content/view/19915/42/ ).
Simple test: if the Palestinians were Jews then the Racist Zionists running Apartheid Israel would be the worst anti-Jewish anti-Semites since the Nazi era.
Indeed this is exactly the view of outstanding Jewish American scholar Professor Bertell Ollman of NY University (see: http://www.nyu.edu/projects/ollman/docs/resignation.php): "Zionism is indeed a particularly virulent form of nationalism and, increasingly, of racism and if Israel is acting toward its captive minority in ways that resemble more and more how the Nazis treated their Jews, then we must also say so. For obvious reasons, the Zionists are very sensitive about being compared to the Nazis (not so sensitive that it has restrained them in their actions but enough to bellow "unfair" and to charge "anti-Semitism" when it happens). Yet, the facts on the ground, when not obscured by one or another Zionist rationalization, show that the Zionists are the worst anti-Semites in the world today, oppressing a Semitic people as no nation has done since the Nazis."
There are 2 kinds of anti-Semitism (maltreatment of Semites for being Semites) - anti - Jewish anti-Semitism (e.g. of the Nazis, Anglo Establishment, KKK, neo-Nazis etc) and anti-Arab anti-Semitism, including Islamophobia directed at culturally Arab Semitic Muslims (e..g of the Racist Zionists, Bush-ites, neo-Bush-ites, Aussie Lib-Labs, Nazis, neo-Nazis, Mainstream media) - they are equally evil and repugnant.
The Racist Zionists (RZs) and their racist Bush-ite confreres have not just devastated the Middle East (post-invasion excess deaths in the Occupied Palestinian , Iraqi and Afghan Territories now total 0.3 million, 2 million and 3-6 million, respectively; refugees total 7 million, 4.5 million and 4 million, respectively (see: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/20850/42/ ).
The RZs through human rights violating terror laws, terror hysteria (see "The Big Lie": http://mwcnews.net/content/view/20850/42/) , entrenched anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, trashed our national reputation through Australia’s active participation in the Palestinian Genocide, Iraqi Genocide, and Afghan Genocide (see my complaint to the ICC: http://climateemergency.blogspot.com/ ).
In Australia anyone who supports the political party that won overwhelming support in Palestinian elections held under Israeli guns goes to gaol for years as a "terrorist" - any Australian Muslim who by way of zakkat (alms giving requirement of Islam) gives money to war criminally-deprived Hamas-run hospital in Gaza faces life imprisonment in Australian c/- the racist Zionists and their proto-Nazi, anti-Semitic Lib-Lab pals.
However in their false identification of these horrible, genocidal, racist crimes with the Jewish People AS A WHOLE the Racist Zionists (RZs) and their Bush-ite, neo-Bush-ite, neo-con and Lib-Lab confreres are guilty of the most egregious anti-Jewish anti-Semitism as well as their equally evil and repugnant anti-Arab anti-Semitism.
NOT IN MY NAME - my great great grandfather had exactly the same name as the greatest Jewish rabbi of the 19th century, Samson Rafael Hirsch who opposed the blasphemy and heresy of the colonialist agenda of political Zionism that also violated Jewish theology and the beautiful orthodox Jewish idea of the "kingdom of the Mind".
Peace is the only way and of course peace with equity, justice and reconciliation is possible with non-racism (e.g. see: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/533/26/) as advocated by decent, anti-racist , humanitarian Jews such as our own Antony Loewenstein, the Independent Australian Jewish Voices, the UK Independent Jewish Voices, Not in My Name, Neturei Karta, Gush Shalom, outstanding Professors Chomsky, Finkelstein, Reinhart, Rose, Pappe, Ollman, Singer etc.
But unfortunately commitment to evil racism and Nazi-style, Apartheid-style, colonialism-style lebensraum is the sticking point for the Racist Zionists running Apartheid Israel and their anti-Semitic Bush-ite, neo-Bush-ite and Lib-Lab supporters.
Like the Good Samaritan (Palestinian) I have not "walked by on the other side" - I have made a formal complaint about the variously anti-Semitic, racist Australian involvement in Aboriginal, Iraqi, Afghan and Climate Genocides: http://climateemergency.blogspot.com/ .
Peace is the only way but Silence kills and Silence is complicity.
Dr Gideon Polya’s post is like a soothing miracle balm rubbed onto a painful old festering wound.
It is indeed ironic that we Australians have permitted our government to criminalise the act of supporting a democratically elected political party certain financial participation in the faith of our muslim Australians because by doing so we Australians have all become Palestinians now!
Thank you Anthony and Rockjaw and a special thanks to you, Dr Polya, for this wonderfully informative article and for your comments.
Rogerio
Dr Gideon Polya, what a courageous person you must be.
You might add to your already long list of complaints the fact that we Australians have the highest extinction rate of mammals on our planet, a world record which even our most backward third world countries could not match.
I am humbled by your courageous enterprise.
I wish you every success, and I do so in the desperate hope that your efforts will succeed.
George Vickers
Strangely enough Anthony you’re the only Jew I’ve ever read who so adamantly believes that the predoninantly Jewish State of Israel is headed for oblivion.
All the other Jews I’ve had the pleasure of speaking to or reading, either believe its demographics will be constantly changing, (as the world does) or believe it will become even more religiously Jewish, making it morally and ethically an even stronger and more dynamic player in the region, both politically and culturally.
Because contrary to what you may believe, the facist, nationalist and/or Muslim people’s front, known as Hamas, is no closer to accepting the existence of a Jewish State, than I am to flying to the moon.