israel/palestine
8 Jan 2009
The World Gives Israel The Green Light
Israel has attacked Gaza with unprecedented barbarity — largely because it has a virtual blank cheque from its powerful allies, writes Mustafa Qadri
The figures make for stark reading. In a little under a fortnight, Israel's powerful military, which is the fourth largest in the world and one of the most sophisticated, has killed more than 700 and injured more than 3100 in Gaza. The fatalities include at least 220 children, five of them from one family that happened to live next to a mosque affiliated with Hamas. In Israel, four civilians have been killed by the crude, homemade rockets fired from Gaza.Although the attack has been likened to a war, in truth the Israeli invasion of Gaza is a slaughter. As ever, the figures are emblematic of the egregious power imbalance in this most imbalanced of conflicts.
But there is more to the conflict than mere numbers. While hundreds of Israelis have been affected in some way by the rockets sent by Hamas and other groups in Gaza, in Gaza itself, the entire population of 1.5 million people has been targeted for collective punishment — a war crime under international law. The human experience of this trauma is difficult to convey.
For those of us living in safety abroad, however, it is important to consider how the world community has reacted to the invasion, particularly given the modern means of communication at our disposal.
To read, see or hear our media, or to listen to our leaders, you'd be forgiven for thinking that what's happening in Gaza is a skirmish or a battle between opposing armies. Within the standard prism which this conflict is understood, particularly in the West, Israel is merely reacting in self-defence to Hamas rockets that terrorise Israeli communities.
Israel always act in self-defence, never in revenge. Nor does it ever seem to have ulterior motives.
The mantra of self-defence has become so blind that it has begun to lose any semblance of credibility. Even the corporate media, which generally err on the side of a "balance" that is in reality a favourable stance towards Israel, has been forced to relay the vast disparity between Israeli and Palestinian violence.
Apologists for Israel are also increasingly forced to avoid close scrutiny of events. They instead repeat the time honoured myth that the Palestinians bear responsibility for any and all deaths caused by the Israeli Defence Force. Along the same line of reasoning, Hamas and other Palestinian groups always instigate any violence, with a clear intention to kill and maim. Israel only ever "retaliates".
Sadly, our major political parties have failed to read the writing on the wall and continue to parrot the shameful self-defence line.
There is a clear hypocrisy in this understanding. Apart from being inaccurate, it avoids acknowledging that the Palestinians have a right to defend themselves too. Indeed, it is enshrined in international law.
Although Israel's right to exist is always mentioned, and it is a feature of diplomatic statements on the conflict to premise any criticism of Israel with assertions supporting its right to exist, it is the Palestinians who, in terms of statehood and self-determination, are not permitted to exist by Israel.
This double standard could not be sustained without a pliant international community championed by Western nations which continue to boost, not reduce, their relationships with Israel.
Jews are speaking out against Israel's violence in increasing numbers. Although representative of a minority of the population, pro-peace grassroots organisations in Israel like Gush Shalom have held protests against the Gaza attack. In Australia, Independent Australian Jewish Voices have also issued a powerful statement condemning Israel's assault.
Perhaps the most difficult thing to reconcile in the West is that Hamas has largely restrained its violence since ending all suicide attacks in Israel in 2005.
We are already familiar with Hamas's reputation. Originally created with assistance from Israel as a religious movement aimed at undermining the secular Palestine Liberation Organisation, it is a socially conservative, grassroots movement which seeks the establishment of an Islamic state in all of historical Palestine.
What most do not appreciate is that they are also a political party democratically elected in June 2006 by the Palestinian people. Although the Hamas charter speaks of destroying Israel, its leadership has offered to recognise the Jewish state along the lines of the two state solution supported by the vast majority of international community.
Pressure needs to be placed on Israel to return to this path. A ceasefire alone is not a solution because it does nothing to punish Israel for the murder of hundreds. In contrast, every aspect of the Hamas Government, from the courts and universities to mosques and hospitals, have been attacked ostensibly as punishment for rocket attacks on Israel.
As Ismail Haniyeh, Prime Minister of the Hamas Government in Gaza, said: "end the aggression without conditions, end the siege and open the crossings, then after that we can speak positively, nationally ... and we can start all the dialogues."
The ceasefire negotiated last June, which ended in early December, largely failed because Israel refused to honour its spirit, instead deciding merely to reduce the scale of its attacks on Gaza. It also refused to significantly reduce its draconian blockade preventing the import of vital humanitarian supplies.
Last month the Israeli Ha'aretz newspaper revealed that Israeli leaders used the ceasefire as an opportunity to prepare for another invasion. It is safe to presume that these preparations were undertaken in the knowledge that any attack could be justified as self-defence.
The freedom to get away with this sleight of hand is the same freedom that enables Israel to avoid responsibility for its crimes. It is the biggest blank cheque in international politics.
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There is a high level of insanity to the concept that an occupied and colonised and powerless people are the aggressor while the occupier and coloniser and massively militarily armed other is the victim. Never before in History I suspect have the tables been turned in such an unjust and irrational way.
One can argue that Israeli and Jewish culture is so dysfunctional that the thinking of those involved in and supporting of this appaling injustice is insane and therefore incapable of anything rational, but why do governments fall into line and support what ranks as the most venal and vicious occupation and colonisation in modern history.
Event the Chinese and Russians give some hope of citizenship and ‘freedom’ to those they occupy and colonise. The Israelis give nothing but abuse, humiliation, subjugation, imprisonment, murder, torture and dispossession. And our government says nothing!
Can you imagine the outrage if anyone else did what Israel is doing?
Shame, shame, shame on the entire world. No-one would have called the French terrorists for fighting German occupation; no-one would have condemned the British for using violence if they had been occupied and yet any resistance at all, no matter how feeble, no matter how ineffectual, by the Palestinians is condemned.
The world is mad and it is a madness which will cost us all dearly and Israel most dearly of all.
Couldn’t agree more rosross. The hatred and ‘blowback’ that will be generated by Israel’s actions and the silence of Western governments will have an impact on everyone. Rudd’s refusal to condemn the attack while hypocritically calling for a diplomatic solution is truly shameful.
I lived in Gaza for nearly a year a couple of years ago whilst still in the development field, ever since I’m alwayys pissed off by claims Hamas (or whoever) "hide in civilian areas" there ARE no other areas in Gaza - it’s a tightly packed open air prison.
Perhaps if we equipped Hamas with a state and a well funded professional army complete with Apache’s they could start targetting the IDF and Knesset?
Probably not though, all the funds and training in the world have apparently not educated IDF members that when you shoot a missile at a child it’ll kill them - it’s all unintentional slaughter by the world’s noblest army
What I find so frustrating beyond the ignoring of international law, is this bizarre attitude which has people resisting occupation, colonisation and appalling repression, classified as ‘terrorists’ simply because the nation doing the brutalising says so. It’s like saying the Nazis were right to kill everyone in the Warsaw Ghetto because they resisted. By the Israeli criteria they were of course terrorists. Just as the French resistance were terrorists. It is an appalling double standard and one cannot help but perceive the racism inherent in it.
We supported the East Timorese against Indonesian occupation and colonisation and we did not call them terrorists for resisting with all means possible.
It is sheer hypocrisy of the worst kind. Sadly, it does the Israelis no favours. They have been allowed to become a rogue state of the worst kind and it can only ultimately lead to their own destruction.
Personally I think there is a deranged, certainly dysfunctional mindset at work in most Israelis, certainly the government, and their Jewish backers which makes them incapable of rational decisions. One can be a ‘victim’ in one’s head for so long it is impossible to see the truth because the need to be a ‘victim’ colours everything one thinks.
At the end of the day though it is the world at large who have failed the Israelis for allowing them to reach such a debased state. The Palestinians will survive, despite their suffering for they have right and time on their side.
But it did not have to be like this for Israel. If the Israelis had been forced to return all lands taken in 67 and to make their home in the only land they can possibly make a case for, UN mandated, then everything would have been different. I suspect that now we would have seen an interrelated Palestine and Israel, if not integrated, and greater peace and security for all concerned.
It is not too late. But it may soon be, for Israel at least. The trouble with a corrupted culture and debased society is that it rots from within. The Palestinians have to do no more than survive to finally get their freedom and justice. The Israelis have to remake themselves, address and redress the wrongs inherent in their foundation, return to original borders, return to reality instead of fantasy, and, most difficult of all, change how they see themselves and others.
So many people in the West regard the Israelis as our steadfast "allies" in the "war on terror", every dead Palestinian is by definition a terrorist.The accusation of "anti-semitism" seems to still the tongues of our spineless politicians, few are prepared to name Israel as the brutal predator that it really is. Why should Israel negotiate when force is so effective and it has the US to protect it?
This article and previous comments represent an extraordinary distortion of reality. It is unbelievable that thinking people - progressives, no less! - actually believe the asinine fiction of Hamas victimhood.
Those of you who mention Gaza’s small scale are quite correct. You might also note the poverty of Gaza, both financially and in terms of natural resources. It is an awful, miserable place, and the people there ought not to be subject to such conditions.
This is precisely why it beggars belief that you imagine Israel has any zeal to, unprompted, enter Gaza and kill Palestinians. What possible motivation could Israel have to invade Gaza? For its own health? Its own wealth? Clearly not. Gaza is a fallow, dead strip of land with no value besides that projected onto it by its poor occupants.
Hamas, on the other hand, has every reason to desire conflict.
Hamas is a jihadi organisation. You all criticise advocates of Israel for failing to be able to draw fine distinctions, but you appear to fall prey to just that failing: there is a stark difference between Hamas and Islamic Jihad on the one hand, and Fatah or even PFLP on the other. It is in criticising Israel’s current operation that you exhibit an inability to draw this distinction. Israel hasn’t gone to war with Fatah since the second intifada. Its last two significant long operations were the second Lebanon War - against jihadis - and the current Gaza op - against jihadis.
The matter would be quite different if we were talking about a secular nationalistic Palestinian group like Fatah or the PFLP. Particularly a secular nationalist organisation that had indicated its desire to negotiate a peaceful solution, as Fatah has. But we are not.
Instead we are talking about a radical Islamic jihadi organisation, virtually indistinguishable from Jemaa Islamiyah, Hizbullah, or Qaeda. Hamas is dedicated to the removal of any non-Islamic presence in what it regards as Palestine. It is committed to the killing of every non-Muslim in Tel Aviv, Haifa, Jerusalem, Tiberias, etc. It doesn’t simply kill Israeli civilians; it targets them. It aims rockets at civilian population centres with the express desire of killing as many innocents as possible. And this rocketing has gone unanswered for some years now - even before the Lebanon conflict in 2006, Israel did very little to respond to the jihadis.
The fictional narrative of jihadi victimhood that you buy into displays so many palpable flaws. Among them:
* You tear into Israel as if it is an "occupying power", when Israel hasn’t had a military or civilian presence in Gaza for almost 4 years. You all know quite well that Israel left Gaza in 2005.
* You fail, astoundingly so in my opinion, to ask yourselves why the West Bank isn’t being targeted by Israeli fire, when Israel has close to zero nationalistic or ideological or strategic interest in Gaza, but plenty such interest in the West Bank. Why then is useless little Gaza being shot at?
* That any of you manage to separate Hamas from, say, Jemaah Islamiyah, in your minds, is extraordinary. I put it to you that such a distinction represents a breathtaking feat of self-deception.
The Israelis are quite right to ask what the UK would do if Leeds were targeted by foreign rockets, or what Australia would do if Newcastle were targeted by same. The answer is manifest to anyone willing to give the question serious thought.
I will be called a shill for Israel. I will be flamed. What I won’t do is allow such stuff and nonsense as passes in this country for progressive discourse on the Middle East to sail, crow-like, through the ether without ever meeting thoughtful criticism from progressives who think differently on this issue.
Cheers G
Rosross you satisfy Godwin’s Law in three posts! (Your Second)
Welldone! Sublime
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/godwin’s_law
Well-done too to the IDF. They act fast, hard and resolutely. May their goals, God willing, be satisfied.
(BTW - If the IDF purposefully sought Palestinian collateral damage they would scheme along the lines of crashing six or seven fuel laden hijacked 747’s into the Kabaa at the height of the Hadjj’s rutting season.
Such is the mindset of the IDF’s foe¿)
Dear Gabes, thanks for your arrogant and patronising comment.
Try hubris. The UN school wasn’t bombed by Hamas, nor did Hamas attack a UN aid convoy.
It is more than reasonable to ask, "what Australia would do if Newcastle were targeted?" But unfortunately for you, the answer may not be: invade a separate state, break UN conventions, commit war crimes or decide the destruction of a democratically elected political party is an express aim.
the ability to see distinctions between organisations such as Hamas and Jemaah Islamiyah is extraordinary but some people are just more insightful, pragmatic and not living in denial.
Gabes, you miss the point completely. Gaza is a concentration camp. Israel is an occupying power. Israel is a coloniser. The West Bank is a series of concentration camps for the remainder of the Palestinians. Hamas is the elected government of the Palestinian people. It is the only organisation which has done anything to alleviate their misery. The reason Hamas attacks Israel is the same reason the French attacked the Nazis, the Chechens the Russians and the East Timorese the Indonesians … all are occupying powers and brutal occupying powers at that.
For more than half a century Israel has refused to admit to the wrongs inherent in its foundation; maintained the most murderous and venal occupation in modern history and continued to dispossess Palestinians and build settlements on their land.
In truth one can argue, both legally and morally, that when Hamas fires rockets it does so onto its own land. If those primitive rockets frighten the illegal settlers living there that is the fault of those who are living on land they have stolen from others.
Israel never left Gaza, it merely moved out the illegal settlers thre and then locked the door on the prison camp which is Gaza making life increasingly impossible for the people inside. Israel completely controls what goes in and what comes out and has prevented food, water and medicine from going to the people of Gaza.
The reason why rockets are not fired from the West Bank is because it is harder for the Palestinians living in those prisons to get weapons. Also, Fatah, the puppet government in the West Bank is an Israeli stooge.
It is clear you know absolutely nothing. There is no need for that. You don’t have to believe what is written here. If you want to know the truth and I doubt you do, then go onto Gush Shalom or B-Tselem the Israeli human rights groups and you will find all you need to know and all of the reasons why Israel is the war criminal in this instance and the Palestinians are the victims. And I might add, how the Palestinians have been subjected to decades of the most evil savagery imaginable. Try reading some of the accounts of IDF soldiers who could no longer live with themselves as murderous occupying soldiers and who left the army and now fight for justice and freedom for the Palestinians.
Most Israelis may be blind to the truth but not all. If you care about Israel then supporting it in its murderous savagery will only ensure its ultimate destruction. Israel’s true friends speak the truth because only the truth will set Israelis free and in the doing, give the Palestinians both justice and freedom.
Gabes,
I would add, if you are going to use analogies then get them right.
If the Aboriginal people who lived in Newcastle before the foreign colonists arrived had been pushed into a concentration camp on the edge of Newcastle and if they fired rockets into Newcastle in a bid to free themselves and to bring the world’s attention to their need for justice then who would be the aggressor? The colonists living in newcastle who had refused to give the Aborigines either their own State or full and free citizenship in Australia.
that is the analogy of the Palestinians.
More to the point, if Australia, Canada, the US or New Zealand treated its indigenous peoples the way Israel treats the Palestinians there would be international outrage.
How can anyone of conscience read the reports and still believe Israel is the victim?
Those brave Israeli Defence Forces or is that Israeli Death Forces have so far killed:
257 children (one presumes they were armed with specially made kiddie sized weapons)
56 women (no doubt also heavily armed)
which makes the Palestinian death toll so far nearly half women and children, mostly children.
In the past three years thousands of Palestinians have been killed by the IDf and some 12,000 of them are imprisoned without charge or trial, and subjected to torture, thousands of them children.
Israel, massively armed, nuclear armed, occupying, colonising Israel the victim! The world is mad. By this criteria the aborigines who died during the colonisation of Australia were terrorists and those awful genocides were no more than collateral damage. The American Indian genocide took place because the Indians used their people as ‘human shields.’ The victims in the second world war were the Nazis because the occupied people are the aggressors and the occupiers the victims. The British had absolutely no right to resist German attempts to invade and occupy them and when they used weapons to do so they were terrorists.
See, it all makes sense. Clear as mud. We just have to apply the criteria applied to the Palestinians, rewrite history and open wide the doors to terrorist states and murderous armies.
Oxford professor of international relations Avi Shlaim served in the Israeli army and has never questioned the state’s legitimacy. But its merciless assault on Gaza has led him to devastating conclusions
By Avi Shlaim
January 08, 2009 "The Guardian" — - The only way to make sense of Israel’s senseless war in Gaza is through understanding the historical context. Establishing the state of Israel in May 1948 involved a monumental injustice to the Palestinians. British officials bitterly resented American partisanship on behalf of the infant state. On 2 June 1948, Sir John Troutbeck wrote to the foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin, that the Americans were responsible for the creation of a gangster state headed by "an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders". I used to think that this judgment was too harsh but Israel’s vicious assault on the people of Gaza, and the Bush administration’s complicity in this assault, have reopened the question.
I write as someone who served loyally in the Israeli army in the mid-1960s and who has never questioned the legitimacy of the state of Israel within its pre-1967 borders. What I utterly reject is the Zionist colonial project beyond the Green Line. The Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the aftermath of the June 1967 war had very little to do with security and everything to do with territorial expansionism. The aim was to establish Greater Israel through permanent political, economic and military control over the Palestinian territories. And the result has been one of the most prolonged and brutal military occupations of modern times.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21681.htm
Rosross
I would add, too, if you are going to use analogies then get them right - as well.
Palestinian people do not do didgeridoos - yet they did do or do do rockets pointed into the homes of civilians.
A evil to do …
rosross
Chechens and the Russians. huh?
A great example!
In Beslan you mean …no doubt¿
And that involved —> the martyrs <— coupling 777 children to detonator chord and explosives.
The way to go…
<li>
An ethic and strategy replicated in Bali, no doubt? dunno4sure¿
denko,
The Palestinians most certainly fire rockets into occupied Palestine. One can argue that any use of violence is to be condemned but that still leaves Israel as the aggressor and the Palestinians as the victim. Otherwise you are arguing that the gestapo were the victims and the French Resistance the aggressor in that instance. And I doubt you would agree with that.
As to the Chechens I was referring to the Russian occupation of Chechnya and the slaughter of the people by the Russian army in the same way that Israel occupies Palestine and slaughters the Palestinians.
The violence used against Russian civilians is to be condemned as one condemns Palestinian suicide bombers, however, as an occupied and abused people there is at least a mitigating circumstance for violence which can be taken into account. Whereas there are never any mitigating circumstances to be taken into account when violence is used to maintain occupation and colonisation.
The maiming and murdering of children is no better when it comes at the end of a Russian or Israeli bomb. Two wrongs do not make a right. One could argue that State sanctioned terrorism as used by Israel is worse than that used by Russia because Israel is supposed to be a democratic State which abides by international norms of law, justice and human rights. Of course it doesn’t which is why it is murdering and maiming in Gaza as we speak.
If Australia had done what Israel did and if our indigenous people were locked into concentration camps and subjected to bombs, bullets, demolitions, destruction, humiliation, imprisonment, torture, abuse and hopelessness would you argue that they were the aggressors if they fought back and we were the victims. I doubt it.
The fact is if Australia did to the Aborigines what Israel does to the Palestinians we would be subjected to sanctions, boycotts and be a pariah in the world and rightly so.
All violence is wrong but, the violence used by a Nazi Germany or a fascist Israel is worse than the violence used by those who are fighting against them.
From The New Statesman:
"When the truth is replaced by silence," the Soviet dissident Yevgeny Yevtushenko said, "the silence is a lie." It may appear that the silence on Gaza is broken. The small cocoons of murdered children, wrapped in green, together with boxes containing their dismembered parents, and the cries of grief and rage of everyone in that death camp by the sea can be witnessed on al-Jazeera and YouTube, even glimpsed on the BBC. But Russia’s incorrigible poet was not referring to the ephemera we call news; he was asking why those who knew the why never spoke it, and so denied it. Among the Anglo-American intelligentsia, this is especially striking. It is they who hold the keys to the great storehouses of knowledge: the historiographies and archives that lead us to the why.
They know that the horror now raining on Gaza has little to do with Hamas or, absurdly, "Israel’s right to exist". They know the opposite to be true: that Palestine’s right to exist was cancelled 61 years ago and that the expulsion and, if necessary, extinction of the indigenous people was planned and executed by the founders of Israel. They know, for example, that the infamous "Plan D" of 1947-48 resulted in the murderous depopulation of 369 Palestinian towns and villages by the Haganah (Israeli army) and that massacre upon massacre of Palestinian civilians in such places as Deir Yassin, al-Dawayima, Eilaboun, Jish, Ramle and Lydda are referred to in official records as "ethnic cleansing". Arriving at a scene of this carnage, David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, was asked by a general, Yigal Allon: "What shall we do with the Arabs?" Ben-Gurion, reported the Israeli historian Benny Morris, "made a dismissive, energetic gesture with his hand and said, ‘Expel them’".
SHAME, SHAME, SHAME, TO ALL THOSE WHO SUPPORT THE GENOCIDE IN PALESTINE.
The Germans were not allowed to say:’we didn’t know,’ when in truth, many did not. But we do. We have no excuse, no defence and the blood of the Palestinians is on our hands as well because anyone who posts here or on any similar site can find the truth if they want to.
and:
Dr Dahlia Wasfi is an American writer on Iraq and Palestine. She has a Jewish mother and an Iraqi Muslim father. "Holocaust denial is anti-Semitic," she wrote on 31 December. "But I’m not talking about the World War II, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad [the president of Iran] or Ashkenazi Jews. What I’m referring to is the holocaust we are all witnessing and responsible for in Gaza today and in Palestine over the past 60 years … Since Arabs are Semites, US-Israeli policy doesn’t get more anti-Semitic than this." She quoted Rachel Corrie, the young American who went to Palestine to defend Palestinians and was crushed by an Israeli bulldozer. "I am in the midst of a genocide," wrote Corrie, "which I am also indirectly supporting, and for which my government is largely responsible."
Rosross, your shrieking and quoting of spurious Hamas-sourced statistics are answered already by my initial post. I produced a reasoned critique of your position and you responded with a dozen shrill posts filled with propaganda points and nothing of any real substance.
I will respond to one point. It is a nonsense to compare the Palestinians with the Aborigines. It is a superficial analogy to say the very least. There were never any European Australians in the more than 40,000 year history of Aboriginal Australia. On the other hand, there was a Jewish state for the better part of 1000 years before AD 71. If there’s an aboriginal people of the land of Israel, it is the Jewish people.
I am quite happy to debate history and ancient history, although a little reticent to do so with you rosross since you are so utterly misinformed. I will, however, leave you with with the following article. Described by one blog as "a leftwing but non-pacifist columnist for Haaretz" and "a frequent and sharp critic of the Israeli right", Bradley Burston wrote this insightful article at the very beginning of the current operation. It anticipates and answers all the silly things that are said about Israel in its conflict with the jihadis. I’ve quoted the first part below:
Gabes, that’s an absurd article to quote. In particular statements such as:
"Israel’s economic siege against Gaza is misguided, blah blah blah, rather because Hamas taxes collected on the influx of goods imported through tunnels from Egyptian territory have subsidized and cemented Hamas rule."
Yeah, Hamas, the democratically elected government, collecting taxes through tunnels (got blockade, huh?). Hardly cementing Hamas rule - they were elected to government.
Let’s look at the Israeli government for a moment. Olmert still in power but scheduled to leave soon (another corrupt Israeli politician), just in caretaker mode with full powers.
I sincerely believe it is impossible to have a rational debate about all this. The key problem being, any discourse leads to the plain fact that when it comes to Israel, laws and due process don’t count. Why? Because Israel is different.
Gabes,
Sorry, there was not an Israeli State for 1000 years. Even Israeli archeologists now admit that at most there were a few Hebrew tribes living alongside a heap of other non-Hebrew tribes.
But, if you want to take this position then okay. The real indigenous peoples are the Canaanites who were dispossessed in the first place and DNA testing would no doubt show the Palestinians are their descendants. Then again, if you are going to take this ridiculous position the Romans/Italians have a right to southern England (which they invaded and occupied for a bit like the Hebrew tribes) and London which they founded. But if you really want to get serious about it, the oldest known origin of Hebrew tribes was Egypt or probably Mesopotamia, modern day Iraq. So, Palestine was the wrong place to begin with.
In addition, DNA evidence, which we have now, shows that most Israelis and Jews have no connection with Palestine. This is because Judaism, like all religions, was a proselytising religion and took in converts in all the areas where people lived. In truth, any ancestors of those original Hebrews who stayed in the Middle East are now modern day Muslims …. probably Palestinians.
So, it’s all a bit silly really to go back that far.
To deal with the situation in the modern age, since we cannot go back through history and right every colonising wrong but merely apply modern values…. Israel is a historically recent colonising nation. The Palestinians are the indigenous people who were dispossessed. They are the Israeli equivalent of Aborigines, Maoris, Indians etc., and they deserve the same rights.
As to the other material which you posted, well, it is simple really. It’s the occupation, the occupation, the occupation, the occupation. It’s the colonisation, the colonisation, the colonisation.
If Israel had given the same rights to its indigenous people as Australia finally did there would be one secular state and there would be peace. Israel refused.
If Israel had ended the occupation and returned to its original borders there would be a Palestinian state and there would be peace. Israel refused.
To add insult to injury, Israel was not only an occupier it is a brutal, venal and murderous occupier. To add further insult Israel not only maintained the occupation it continued to dispossess and build illegal settlements on Palestinian land.
So here we have a state which has imprisoned its indigenous people, which brutalises and murders its indigenous people and which uses the full and massive weight of its military power against helpless civilians. And the more those civilians resist they more they are murdered.
Israel has committed human rights abuses and war crimes which should have every one of its politicians in the dock from the time Israel was founded.
12,000 Palestinians are imprisoned. If you don’t believe me have a look at Israeli human rights group figures. Some 3,000 of them are children and yes, even children get tortured.
These are not Hamas figures they come from Israeli activists B’Tselem and Gush Shalom. You can also read the accounts of the dissenting IDF soldiers, those brave young men who have tired of being murderous occupiers and who refuse to serve and who have written down their stories of what Israel does to Palestinians.
These stories come not from Hamas but from Israelis. Listen as well to the brave Israeli historians, academics and human rights activists who have detailed all that I say and more.
None of this comes from Hamas. You choose to live a lie in the same way that the Germans did under the Nazis. The result will be the same for Israel. A corrupt, base, debased, immoral and vicious society rots from within.
If you care about Israel surviving then find the truth and use it to set not just Palestinians free but Israelis free from the ghastly lie which they live. If you do not, it will be Israel which destroys itself. There is only so long that any state can survive as a pariah and rogue.
Gabes I would also like you to answer these simple questions. yes or no will suffice.
1. Were Aborigines, American Indians, Maoris and Canadian Indians the aggressors and the occupiers the victims?
2. Were the people who fought against German occupation the aggressors?
3. Was the French Resistance, fighting against occupation a terrorist group?
4. Were the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto terrorists because they fought against German occupation?
5. Is occupation a wrong?
6. Is colonisation a wrong?
7. Is imprisoning people without trial wrong?
8. Is torture wrong?
9. If Australia had been invaded and colonised by the Japanese would we have been in the wrong if we had used violence to fight for our freedom?
10.Were the aborigines who died in genocidal confrontations with the occupiers collateral damage and responsible for their own deaths because they were using women and children as human shields?
Gabes,
If you do not answer these questions you will make it clear that you cannot because to do so would make clear the true insanity of your position in regard to the Israeli-Palestinian issue.
There is no point in having principles if those principles do not apply to each and every one of us. This is why so many people care about what Israel is doing because, as a member of the developed world, and backed, by the strongest military power in the developed world, the US, a so-called defender of justice, rule of law, human rights and freedom, any betrayal of those principles puts all of us at risk.
It is bad enough when countries like China and Russia wage colonial wars of revenge and occupation but it is far, far, far worse when nations which purport to be democratic and developed, do the same thing. When the ‘free world’ condones murder, torture, occupation and colonisation and the use of terrible weaponry against innocent civilians we betray the future for ourselves and for those who will follow.
The silence of our leaders screams loud of our folly.
Gabes, perhaps Galloway explains it a little better:-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vV_jeGB1B3U
Hi Rosross,
I wouldn’t worry too much about the ‘extras’ contributing on this topic right now. Predictably, they come out of the woodwork whenever Israel is committing another atrocity, to defend Israel with ridiculous arguments which, though such weak reasoning may hold water in nationalist Israel and pro-Israel circles, don’t much anywhere else anymore. There is a limit to how barbaric a nation can be before even the dullest and least compassionate person sits up and says ‘something isn’t right here’.
At that point, the arguments peddled by these people show themselves up as being increasing ridiculous. But, I have to take issue with something you said (because I mostly respect your ideas):
"More to the point, if Australia, Canada, the US or New Zealand treated its indigenous peoples the way Israel treats the Palestinians there would be international outrage."
That is no more true than it has been in the past relating directly to Israel. Think of the nakba; was the world outraged? Or of the invasions of Lebanon, part I and II. Or of any/all the offenses committed by Israel against the people of Palestine since the second intifada. The reason that the world is beginning to lose patience (at least, the ordinary people) - and they are (think of all the argument one needed to wade through 10 years ago whilst criticising Israel - accusations of anti-semitism and so forth, rather than simple anger with a terrorist state’s terrorist action) - with israel is that the PR is cracking and the violence is exceeding what we in the west find an ‘acceptable’ amount of violence. That we should find any level of such terrorist violence acceptable is more a testimony to our own residual imperial conditioning than to the logic of such reasoning (think of the oft used quote in media ‘disproportionate violence’).
What’s more, Australia, Canada, the US and NZ *have* treated the indigenous people in the way Israel treats the Palestinians. Do you think that any of those lands would have a majority population of non-Indigenous people in them (by huge percentages) were it not for the original genocide? In that sense, you could almost argue the success of the western genocides of these lands was greater (and therefore, the level of suffering inflicted greater also) than that of Israel, since in greater Palestine, Israeli Jews are still the minority. And where was the international outrage? Where is it now?
And that is the key; in the west we don’t feel the need to commit further physical violence on the indigenous (in a military offensive - localised and police brutality is perfectly acceptable), because they no longer have the power that numbers can give. So instead, we continue the genocide [mostly] bloodlessly, via policy, funding restrictions/withdrawals, land theft and community/culture disintegration. The world *should* be outraged at these western countries, but our PR is better right now than Israel’s, and the genocide harder to detect. We respond to flagrant violence as unacceptable, but many of us still see human rights as something for the ‘deserving’ (ie, our friends).
So I wouldn’t use Australia, Canada or the US’ collective shining records comparative to Israel as a stick to beat Israel with, because its likely to rebound.
cheers, Derek
Rogerio,
I listened to Galloway there. Very funny, and as usual, very good. I particularly liked the picture tutorial for those of us that are a little slow :)
Incidentally, Galloway (in the last 2 weeks, I think) has been axed from his regular spot on talksport - so no more gems like this from that source any time soon, so I understand it.
cheers, Derek
My family and friends who live in Sderot, Yad Mordechai, Ashkelon and elsewhere in southern Israel aren’t interested in Derek’s highfalutin talk of "terrorist states" or rosross’s questions of who has a right to exist and who occupied whom in what year of what decade and which millenium their people first arrived in the region; they are interested in whether their government will protect them from being rocketed on the way to class on a Tuesday morning.
Existential and philosophical questions are the dalliance of quasi-informed armchair pacifists like Derek and rosross in the Australian suburbs.
For the record:
- Gaza’s "occupation" ended in 2005.
- Hamas’ rocket attacks began immediately after the occupation ended.
—> So how is the "occupation" responsible for the rocket attacks?
- Hamas only came to power in a putsch in mid-2007.
- The blockade of Gaza only began after the putsch.
- Which means the rockets began two years before the blockade.
—> So how is the blockade of Gaza responsible for the rocket attacks?
Questions that no armchair pro-Hamas activist can answer without resorting to doubletalk.
Rogerio - Galloway takes on an easy target. He also resorts to the sort of history lessons that progressives tend not to want to really get into.
There is no other people on the face of the earth that was expelled from its land 2000 years ago and is still around today. None. As such, there are no general rules on the rights of such ancient peoples.
Anybody who knows the history of the Jews after the expulsion from Israel (which was then renamed Palestina by the Roman conquerors) knows that diaspora Jewish history is a bloody, miserable history. Jews tried living in the diaspora and were hated outsiders wherever they went. Quite literally every country that Jews have resided in has, in the long run, ended up killing or expelling their Jewish populations. England, Germany, Spain, Russia, Poland, Egypt, Iraq, Yemen, et cetera, et cetera. Muslim, Christian, and other countries have mistreated the Jews.
And so anybody who knows their Jewish history knows that the Jews came to the inevitable conclusion: if Jews won’t be accepted anywhere - including in tolerant France (where the Dreyfus affair took place which kicked off the Zionist movement) then Jews ought at least to be able to live in their own, native country.
The stinking irony is that antisemites like Galloway (and a very few useful idiots who happen to be Jewish so as to legitimise criticism of Israel without appearing to be a bald-faced antisemite), having made the Jews quite unwelcome everywhere else on the face of the planet, have proceeded to eloquently explain why Jews aren’t welcome in their own land.
Never mind the fact that the few hundred thousand Arabs living in the swamp that was Palestine in circa 1900 regarded themselves variously as "southern Syrians", Muslims, Arabs or Ottoman subjects. Antisemites like Galloway are more than happy to take the Palestinians at their word: they are an ancient people! And the Jews are neo-colonial conquerors!
Excuse me if I don’t buy into this absurd, revisionist narrative.
Gabes, Galloway makes his point extremely well, only morons and psycopaths would have trouble comprehending it.
Newsflash, Gaza’s occupation has never ended. And gabes, despite your best efforts, neither Israel nor "the jews", as you put it, are victims nor have they been victims for quite a long time already, so you can stop sucking on that little sweetie.
Despite your rather unsuccessful attempts to sell the filthy propaganda of that disgraceful state, you fail to recognise that the rest of the world is rapidly building a growing consensus that Israel and it’s filthy zealots are not only a disgrace to Judaism, but that they are also a disgrace to humanity.
Even Chaves has booted the Israeli Ambassador out of his country, in disgust, and Europeans are experiencing alarming increases in the incidents of anti-semitism, riots, legal and illegal protests and so the outrage across the globe grows and grows.
Africa’s anti-apartheid heroes from yet another racist supremist regime, people such as Tutu and Mandela, have yet again expressed shocked disgust and outrage as they protest the disgraceful behavior of those filthy animals in Tel Aviv. Every continent of the planet has an increasing number of people coming out in support of the Palestinians.
Humanity can only hope that this time the world will react before the inevitable holocaust occurs and not afterwards.
We can only hope that Israel relents before the rest of humanity is again required to use force to put down yet another foaming mad psychopathic regime.
I wonder how many of you who agree with the content of Rockjaw’s comments actually approve of his "filthy" diatribe.
Derek, Yes, I see your point. I should have qualified. I meant that the other historically recent colonising nations have given full citizenship rights to their indigenous peoples and attempted to make redress and acknowledged the wrongs inherent in their foundation.
Israel is doing to the Palestinians what the others did to their indigenous peoples upon settlement. In truth, while no indigenous peoples have reached standards of living, in the main, which they deserve, this is because of other far more complex reasons than that they are simply denied them as is the case with Israel.
Israel is doing today what Australia, the Brits really, did two hundred years ago and in the US and Canada three hundred years ago. Israel’s approach is even more barbaric because it is a primitive approach in modern times.
The point I wished to make is that if the other recent colonisers were doing what Israel does there would be outrage. There is enough criticism because indigenous peoples are clearly disadvantaged and often dysfunctional even with being accorded full rights.
But the point remains, if other colonisers have had to admit to the wrongs inherent in their foundation then so must Israel. And make redress.
Gabes. You do not have the courage to answer my questions. Silence is also an answer. Your silence says you know that Israel’s actions make it a war criminal. Thankyou.
Gabes,
the Israeli and Jewish zealots are a disgrace to Judaism and a disgrace to humanity and Israel’s governments to date have been and are, mad psychopathic regimes. That’s the point. Sane people can see it, those who lie to themselves cannot.
I have friends in Israel and I want something better for them. That will come from truth not lies and that will come from sane leaders. I also have Jewish friends who are ashamed and disgusted with what Israel has become. Understandably. They are people of conscience and sanity. Israel as it stands is a blot on humanity’s copybook. Israelis deserve better, Judaism deserves better. This insanity must be stopped as much for the sake of Israelis as Palestinians. The society becomes increasingly debased and corrupted and that is a sad and unpleasant thing to watch.
Rockjaw, a passionate response but at core you are right. One of the most frustrating things about this issue is dealing with people who are not rational. That Gabes cannot see that removing illegal settlers from Gaza and then locking the gate and keeping the people imprisoned behind guns and electric fences is not ending an occupation means he or she is simply incapable of rational deduction. In addition, even if the gates of Gaza had been opened the Israeli occupation had not ended because the Palestinians everywhere are held behind guns, walls and gates and are prisoners of the Israelis. An occupation ends when the people are completely free to live and move and work. The Palestinians are not, ergo, the occupation has not ended. The people of Gaza and the people of the West Bank are all Palestinians. Until all of them are free the occupation remains in place. I would not have thought it was such a subtle distinction but clearly it is beyond Gabes’s comprehension. Unless Israel returns to pre: 67 borders and the Palestinians get a State, or Israel annexes all of Palestine and all people are full and free citizens, the occupation continues.
I am sure even Gabes knows that it is a human right to fight to be free of occupation.
Gabes - "I wonder how many of you who agree with the content of Rockjaw’s comments actually approve of his "filthy" diatribe."
Who cares what the rest thinks Gabes, hardcore zealots and Israeli apologists such as yourself and other Jewish racists and Zionist genocidaires simply want the freedom to continue to lobby and to manipulate on behalf of Israel without the opposition of those committed to human rights, anti-racism and democracy.
Israel is a barbarous state modelled on times when it existed (if at all it really did) during a time preceding even the dark ages by many centuries.
Like any criminal state Israel is a desperate state, an isolated state fearful of entering the modern world since compliance with the minimum requirements of a modern democracy would terminate it’s raison d’etre.
This is why the world is waking up to Israel’s behaviour, why the Palestinian Authority revealed that it was planning to seek the prosecution of Israel’s leaders for war crimes in the international courts with enthusiastic support from organisations and countries across the globe.
This is why Israel will use illegal chemical weapons against innocent children, infants and harmless helpless families and it is why a petition to the Israeli courts was announced on Wednesday by Taleb al-Sanaa, an Arab member of the Israeli parliament, over the shelling on Tuesday of a UN school in the Jabaliya refugee camp that killed at least 40 Palestinians sheltering there and soon there will be legal challenges to follow this wave of Israeli attacks on schools, universities, mosques, hospitals, and ambulances in the past few days.
Humanity abhors stories like the 4 children who were found dying of starvation next to the corpses of their mothers and grandparents. These are the crimes which will challenge Israel’s questionable right to exist in the same way that Nazi Germany or Apartheid South Africa’s right to exist needed to be challenged by humanity.
We need a war crimes tribunal and people calling for one, like the Red Cross, the various UN bodies, Amnesty International, Al Haq et al, deserve the support of all decent men and women from every corner of the globe and I, for one, support these efforts wholeheartedly reserving, as I have already done, a vintage bottle of whiskey for the day the whole stinking lot are locked up and brought to trial under the authority of an international tribunal such as the one held at Nurembourg.
Added to the growing list of filthy terrorists and psychopathic murderers spawned by Israel are the names of Ehud Olmert, Tzipi Livni, and the defense minister, Ehud Barak, as the responsible parties for this latest genocide and massacre of innocents.
Perhaps it is also time for us to reconsider the reactions of the pro Israeli lobby groups in our own country where tolerance and support for this form of genocide should be tagged a "hate crime" and those found openly in support of such crimes detained in the same manner as we detain those in support of Hamas or Hezbollah.
Rockjaw, spot on. If this were Muslim groups supporting the same actions pf which Israel is guilty, done by Islamic nations or groups there would be screams of outrage and calls for them all to be tried in The Hague. I say one law for all.
Rockjaw, never a truer word ranted ;) philannetta.blogspot.com
Hi Rosross,
Well, I think we mostly agree, though I think the statement below is fundamentally flawed.
"There is enough criticism because indigenous peoples are clearly disadvantaged and often dysfunctional even with being accorded full rights.
But the point remains, if other colonisers have had to admit to the wrongs inherent in their foundation then so must Israel."
I think the major difference (and this is where we agree) between Australia, Canada and the US on the indigenous people compared to Israel and Palestine, is that Israel is arrogant enough, with enough sympathy from the elites in these other states to do to the indigenous exactly what Australia, Canada and the US *wish* they could do to theirs. All wish the problem (based on evidence of selective policies, process and results over the last hundred years) would disappear, but not at the cost of giving the indigenous what they want/need (because that opens the door to other issues, like lost land for mining and profit, sovereignty issues, and ultimately, delegitization of non-Indigenous power. So they don’t cede an inch, and push to bring down the organisation, culture and activism so it can never build any meaningful momentum.
They *haven’t* been accorded ‘full rights’ as you say. They’ve simply been allowed to join in, if they can. We see what full rights actually mean when we compare the theoretical scenarios of Mulrunji vs the police and, say a white bloke vs the police. Or the incarceration of minors in the NT (Aboriginal minors) for ‘crimes’ that a stern word from the local constabulatory might warrant in a white child from a country town elsewhere. Or the outrage that would ensue if basic amenities and social welfare were to be withheld from a non-indigenous suburb in the cities. And so on. Full rights are much more than words in a document, as no doubt Israeli muslims are fully aware.
And none of these governments have admitted, apologised or attempted serious recompense for the wrongs of their past. Rudd’s ‘sorry’ was for one brief section of the oppression of Aboriginal people - not for the genocide, or the systemic oppression that followed, or the slavery, but for taking the children. Why? I would guess because that is the *only* part of Australia’s sorry history where one might look at it and say; they *thought* they were doing the right thing, (because many churches were involved in this process), and on the surface it may have looked like social services.
So to repeat, the difference - and I think this was your central point - is that Israel is allowed to follow its dreams of dominance via open violent genocide now - in the 21st century, whereas the other states have been reigned in by social acceptability to more long term, devious and perhaps second rate means of achieving a land free of indigenous interference.
cheers, Derek
Let’s see how an excerpt of Rockjaw’s comment sounds when it is inverted to apply to the Palestinians.
"Despite your rather unsuccessful attempts to sell the filthy propaganda of that disgraceful state, you fail to recognise that the rest of the world is rapidly building a growing consensus that Hamas and it’s filthy zealots are not only a disgrace to Islam, but that they are also a disgrace to humanity.
"Africa’s anti-apartheid heroes from yet another racist supremist regime, people such as Tutu and Mandela, have yet again expressed shocked disgust and outrage as they protest the disgraceful behavior of those filthy animals in Gaza. Every continent of the planet has an increasing number of people coming out in support of the Israelis.
"We can only hope that Hamas relents before the rest of humanity is again required to use force to put down yet another foaming mad psychopathic regime." Comments?
The venemous bile on this forum is unbelievable. That you even allow Rockjaw’s comments to pass unchallenged is disgraceful - much worse is the fact that you approve of them. Shame!
Hi Gabes,
Your post turn-around sounds much like world opinion was 10 years ago. I assume you were out in force them disseminating opinion against the people suggesting this as acceptable at the time?
Rockjaw says many things on which many on this board disagree, and in ways harsher than I would. And yet, on the issue of Israel, we are in general agreement. *Not* because of his fiery rhetoric on the *regime* of Israel (‘disgraceful behavior of those filthy animals in Tel Aviv’), but because his arguments are sound.
But I wouldn’t call the regime of Israel ‘filthy animals’. I would call them genocidal sociopaths, akin in all ways barring volume (so far) and style to that other ‘shoa’ creator in Europe (shoa being the word openly discussed in Israeli politics in the 6 months lead up to this offensive).
Israel’s deputy defense minister Matan Vilnai told Army Radio (in March 2008): "The more Qassam fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, they will bring upon themselves a bigger ‘shoah’ because we will use all our might to defend ourselves."
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSL2868601720080229?sp=true
and
"Matan Vilnai said Palestinians risked a "shoah", the Hebrew word for a big disaster - and for the Nazi Holocaust. " -BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7270650.stm
Do you think Hitler didn’t tell the German public that they had ‘brought it on themselves’ too?
Shame on them, to forget so quickly the horrors and perpetuate them on another defenseless people!
Gabes, try a little compassion for palestine and palestinians. You don’t need to hate Israelis to do it (I am in great support, for example, of the many brave young Israelis currently incarcerated in that great middle eastern democracy for the crime of refusing to serve in the military for the purpose of killing and oppressing Palestinians. There are no doubt many other great israelis.)
cheers, Derek
gabes, I too have family in Israel and, if my memory serves me accurately, Rockjaw spoke once of having served with the IDF - did you ever serve?
Sderot, where your friends live and where a few homemade harmless missiles have landed, was once an Arab village called Najd, whose 600 Arab inhabitants were expelled by Israelis in 1948. Jewish settlers built over the old town in 1951. I think NM readers already know under what terrible circumstances those poor people were "removed" from their village.
Identical incidents occurred throughout the region, as everyone is already aware, and, having been ethnically cleansed, the surviving Arabs moved to the Gaza Strip, along with some other 750,000 Palestinians who had been removed from their lands or after being murdered for resisting, like the villagers of Deir Yassin, before the first Arab-Israeli war had even begun.
That is why Gaza exists gabes, because the Palestinians who lived in Sderot and Ashkelon and the fields around it (Askalaan in Arabic) were dispossessed of their lands in 1948 when Israel was created and they ended up on the beaches of Gaza.
If there are Palestinian rockets, harmless or otherwise, they are falling on Palestinian lands and Palestinian properties and any person stupid enough, or arrogant enough, to live in those stolen lands knowing that the owners regularly bomb their own property really do need psychiatric help.
It’s also sad to say, but a resident of Ashkelon or Sderot (whether Russian, Ethiopian, Morrocan or Yemenite) is not the same as a full-blooded Ashkenazi (Katz, Kedoshim, Rozenberg) from the surrounding kibbutzim which is why Israel places these "second class Jewish citizens" in these areas. They are cannon fodder gabes, and everyone in Israel knows it.
Such is the supremist attitude of the Ashkenazi that anyone will confirm that even Sephardic Jews, like my own family, are not considered "jewish" enough for Eretz Yisrael and I won’t even begin to talk about the Falashas and how they are treated in "the Jewish homeland".
Gabes, you really do need to check your facts a little better and do try to avoid those terrible propaganda sites run by Mossad initiatives like "operation Megaphone" - the world is not so easily lied to anymore mate, we have moved on, it is time you lot did the same.
"Gabes, you really do need to check your facts a little better and do try to avoid those terrible propaganda sites run by Mossad initiatives like "operation Megaphone" - the world is not so easily lied to anymore mate, we have moved on, it is time you lot did the same."
"750,000 Palestinians who had been removed from their lands or after being murdered for resisting, like the villagers of Deir Yassin, before the first Arab-Israeli war had even begun."
Rogerio: I don’t read any "Israeli propaganda" sites, but I do find hypocrisy in your lecturing me over "propaganda" while in virtually the same breath you recite Arab propaganda as if it is holy gospel. Deir Yassin is the only documented village where any alleged "massacre" may have taken place in 1947-48, and even it is hotly contested. No "ethnic cleansing" took place. You’ve been reading too much Qadri and Loewesnstein. Presumably you will now begin to recite the tired lies of minority, ideologically-driven revisionist "historians" like Ilan Pappe. Yawn.
You say there was an Arab village where Sderot stands today and so it is ok for Hamas to lob rockets at it because it’s Palestinian land anyway. And yet you are the one who posted the Galloway clip. So here’s your own Galloway turned around on you. London was once a Roman settlement, so would the Italians be right to fire rockets at the civilian population on London? No, on so many levels. Firstly, because they have no valid claim on London. Secondly, because it violates all standards of morality, not to mention international humanitarian law, to shell a civilian population. And yet here you are defending Hamas firing rockets indiscriminately into civilian population centres. How do you live with this dissonance? Have you no self-respect? How can you seriously make such claims against Israel and have not a thing to say about Hamas’ crimes?
"Such is the supremist attitude of the Ashkenazi that anyone will confirm that even Sephardic Jews, like my own family, are not considered "jewish" enough for Eretz Yisrael and I won’t even begin to talk about the Falashas and how they are treated in "the Jewish homeland"."
Well this is more callow nonsense from you, Rogerio, and it shows the level of ignorance that prevails on this forum when it comes to Israel. You people bash Israel relentlessly but you don’t know the first thing about it. How many decades has it been since you were in Israel, if ever? I am also Sephardi (my father is, and my mother Ashkenazi, therefore I am considered Sephardi), and half my family is Sephardi, and half my relatives in Israel are Sephardi, and they are simply Israeli. Nobody thinks of them as Sephardi. I haven’t heard anybody talk about anti-Sephardi discrimination in 15 years. Frankly, discrimination against the Russians is far more of a problem than that against Sephardim. This is just more evidence that you fellas haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about when you verbally rape the Jewish state.
"Your post turn-around sounds much like world opinion was 10 years ago. I assume you were out in force them disseminating opinion against the people suggesting this as acceptable at the time?"
dereklane: Never once have I referred to an ethnic or national group as "filthy animals". I am pleased you read my inversion post. And now you have nothing to say about his "filthy animals in Tel Aviv"? Shall I pull out my copy of the RDA now? Bloody hell. Where’s the condemnation?
"But I wouldn’t call the regime of Israel ‘filthy animals’. I would call them genocidal sociopaths, akin in all ways barring volume (so far) and style to that other ‘shoa’ creator in Europe"
Once again, Godwin’s law. Nevertheless, I’ll respond to the substance of your comments even though I find it chutzpadik for you to bring up the Holocaust (when it’s half of my family that was turned into soap and lampshades). Genocide?! How do you possibly validate such an extraordinary claim? Surgical airstrikes against Hamas terrorists who are rocketing your population centres… I don’t even think the UN Human Rights Commission, headed by Syria or some other such human rights-loving regime, could possibly call this genocide.
You guys all rabbit on about how powerful Israel is. And you call Israelis "genocidal sociopaths". Well, let’s say I bought into your fictional worldview. If Israel is so powerful, and it is genocidal, why aren’t hundreds of thousands of Palestinians dead from this Gaza operation? Presumably the job could be done in days, if not weeks.
The world said nothing about Srebrenica, nothing about Rwanda, absolutely nothing about the Arab-perpetrated genocide in Darfur. Why do you people insist on focusing on this non-issue in Gaza and misnaming the defensive Israeli action there a "genocide" instead of railing against some actual genocides?
"Do you think Hitler didn’t tell the German public that they had ‘brought it on themselves’ too? Shame on them, to forget so quickly the horrors and perpetuate them on another defenseless people!"
Please, spare me. Where are the concentration camps? Where are the gas chambers? Where are the mass graves?
Apart from being poor form to bring up Nazis and the Holocaust, I find it offensive. Far more offensive than your more generally outrageous claims of genocide. I can’t imagine why anybody who really doesn’t hate Jews would make such a false and rancid claim.
The sickening thing is what a lot of hypocrites you are. No criticism of the jihadis and their stated desire to, I shit you not, take over the world. And yet you heap venom and bile on the only Jewish state on the planet.
As a progressive, I find it sickening, and as a Jew I have to tell you that the Right may be many things, but on this issue you people sound more disgusting than Rush Limbaugh.
Gabes: "I don’t read any "Israeli propaganda" sites"
Well that’s a relief Gabes, of course, you know they are the world’s biggest liars don’t you?
I assume you are educated enough to read Hebrew, so here is a little piece on how the Israelis murdered tens of thousands of Sephardis during the 1950’s eliminating almost an entire generation whilst they sold the ludicrous lie to the world that they were simply exposing those children to lethal doses of radiation as part of a "ringworm control" excercise:-
http://www.yitchakrabin.com/#
The current Gaza attack is just another chapter in a 60 year history of incomprehensible barbarity and violence which the rest of the world must yet compute the total human cost for. Like the holocaust I think the world will be absolutely flabbergasted at the extent of Israel’s barbarity when the evidence finally emerges during the trial of these monstrous criminals.
Derek,
I have a somewhat different perspective to you. Aborigines and American and Canadian Indians have been given full citizenship rights. Aborigines in fact get extra ‘rights’ because they are able to access benefits not available to non-aboriginals.They are full and free citizens.
The failure has been in how they have been ‘treated’ with positive discrimination, in other words, encouraged to remain apart instead of being assimilated. This has led, as it has led elsewhere, to them failing to become a part of the greater society and increased dysfunction.
But they have exactly the same rights, and some, as all other Australians. I have also been involved in the mining industry and let me tell you, Aboriginal people have in the main been given even greater rights than other Australians in terms of royalties and payments. But that is another issue.
Gabes,
since it is Jews who have established the Nazis as the template of evil it is hardly surprising they should be compared with it. If the shoe fits … and it does. It is the hypocrisy of Jews and Israelis which makes people apply the Nazi template even more. You can’t wave your flag of suffering and do the same thing to others without being called to account.
The only thing which is ‘poor form’ is Israel’s behaviour.
The Nazis were not the worst, sadly, many others have done equally evil things and continue to do so today, as we see with Israel. But, if that is the template then here we go:
1. Nazis locked civilians in concentration camps and murdered and abused them. Israelis do the same.
2. Nazis imprisoned people without charge or trial and tortured them, including children. Israel does the same.
3. Nazis demolished houses with people inside. Israelis do the same.
4. Nazis attacked refugee camps (Warsaw Ghetto) Israel does the same (Gaza).
5 Nazis shot children. Israel does the same.
6. Nazis murdered entire families to kill one person. Israel does the same.
7. Nazis discriminated against certain groups like Jews and Gypsies. Israelis do the same against Palestinians.
8. Nazis considered Jews and Gypsies to be inferior human beings. Israelis consider Palestinians and Arabs to be inferior human beings.
9. Nazis occupied and colonised using the full brutal force of a massive militaryl. Israel does the same.
10. Nazis sought to actively kill Jews, Gypsies and the mentally ill. Genocide. Israel does the same to the Palestinians. Genocide.
11. Nazis committed countless war crimes and used propaganda to lie to their own people. Israel does the same.
12. Nazis attacked their neighbours without provocation. Israel does the same.
13. Nazis believed they were superior to those they killed. Israelis and Jews believe the same. The death of one Jew is a tragedy, of 100 Arabs, collateral damage.
14. Nazis used collective punishment. Israel does the same.
15. Nazis used psychological warfare against women and children. Israel does the same. Sonic booms over Gaza which cause women to miscarry and which have left the majority of children living there partially deaf.
16. Nazis refused medical aid and international monitors. Israel does the same.
Shall I go on? I could, sadly. But you can see, quite clearly that there are countless reasons why Israeli and Nazi have become synonomous. There’s the tragedy for everyone. If the Jews learned nothing from their experiences and simply turned into what their persecutors were then there’s not much hope for anyone is there?
Rogerio, more conspiracy theories from you - thanks, but no thanks. The only monstrous criminality here is your treatment of the truth. Rather, your total aversion to it. PS the website you posted has nothing to do with ringworm or Sephardim, nor can its own URL correctly spell Rabin’s name.
rosross: "Shall I go on? I could, sadly. But you can see, quite clearly that there are countless reasons why Israeli and Nazi have become synonomous."
No, rosross, please don’t go on. You’ve made enough of an ass of yourself for one day.
There was a Jewish community gathering that ended an hour ago in Sydney. I was there along with a couple of thousand other people for a quiet, peaceful event, with lots of talk of peace, stories of Hamas rockets by residents of Sderot, and no screaming or rioting or flag-burning like you see at Palestinian rallies. The Jewish community voiced its total support for Israel’s operation in Gaza. Here is the official statement of Australia’s Jewish community:
Solidarity with Israel
Statement by the Executive Council of Australian Jewry and the Zionist Federation of Australia
THE Jewish community of Australia declares its solidarity with the People and Government of Israel in the present conflict with Hamas.
The persistent, intentional targeting of Israeli citizens by rockets fired from the Hamas-controlled Gaza strip is a war crime and an act of violence and terror no other country would tolerate for its own citizens.
Almost one million Israelis currently live within range of these rockets (which are financed by Iran, smuggled in from Egypt, and have warheads loaded with shrapnel to cause maximum injury to human beings).
And this in the context of Hamas’ openly-declared ultimate objective to destroy Israel and kill or drive out its Jewish population.
Like any other country facing such an onslaught, Israel has full right under the UN Charter to use force to defend and protect its citizens against this continuing aggression, as has been recognised by the leaders of all responsible nations.
Israel’s response is also proportional to the threat to its citizens. In international law, proportionality is not measured by comparing the number of casualties on each side or the extent of the force used by each side.
Israel is entitled to use such force as is necessary to repel the source of the aggression against its people and territory and to prevent the aggression from recurring.
Hamas must accept that their rocket attacks on Israel must end. It is refreshing to note the condemnation of Hamas by leaders in the Arab world and elsewhere.
The thousands of rockets that have been fired by Hamas would have caused even more deaths and injuries were it not for the fact that Israel, unlike Hamas, values the lives of its citizens and protects them by emergency warning systems and shelters.
Hamas, on the other hand, uses civilians in Gaza as human shields and locates weapons and military infrastructure in their midst, deliberately using private homes, mosques, business premises, universities and other buildings and facilities, even hospitals, as cover.
Hamas continues its illegal smuggling of weapons, munitions and fighters into Gaza through tunnels, in the cynical knowledge that Israel’s counter-measures will necessarily involve the imposition of restrictions into and out of Gaza, which Hamas uses to stoke the conflict.
Although Israel, unlike Hamas, selects only military targets, and gives warnings to civilians in conflict areas, it is inevitable given Hamas’s use of its own population as human shields that Israel’s attacks on military targets will cause civilian deaths and injuries.
The proportion of civilian as opposed to other casualties acknowledged by Hamas and the UN is less than one-third.
This demonstrates that civilians are not being deliberately targeted by Israel.
If Israel were attacking indiscriminately, as Hamas does, thousands of civilians would have been killed or injured.
Every civilian casualty is nonetheless a true tragedy. We feel as much sadness at the loss of an innocent Palestinian father, mother or child as we do for the loss of Israeli lives.
We also empathise with the legitimate desire of Palestinians for self-determination and we support, as do most Israelis, the establishment of an independent, viable and democratic Palestinian state, alongside a secure Israel with defensible borders.
We pray that the Palestinians will support leaders who are committed to achieving that outcome and for the day when Israelis and Palestinians can live side by side in dignity and peace.
Source: http://www.ajn.com.au/news/news.asp?pgID=6862
Rosross,
It’s a little disappointing that you’ve chosen to ignore the obviously down-sizing of basic human rights in the Aboriginal population of Australia (some I actually listed) in favour of the pervasive Australian propaganda of ‘extra rights’ on top of ‘full rights’.
My father also worked in the mining industry, and didn’t have the same perspective as you, so you can assure me, but unfortunately, you’re wrong. The point you’re missing is that land acquired by Aboriginal rights (that *is* their right, as it is for Palestinians to maintain a physical attachment to *their* land) is often compromised by subsequent governmental legislation, which seeks to take it back by more devious means. Land rights are not ‘extra’ rights, but basic rights. If I owned a farm and you took it off me, you would have denied my rights. Engaging the government to build a case against you, and then have it returned (this is simplistic, because our version of ownership is vastly different to that through land rights) is not more rights for me, on top of what you and I enjoy, but the same basic rights across the board, only properly applied.
But if you say, fine, you can have your land back, but don’t expect (with your taxes) to get any of the infrastructure I have over here, and *do* expect random visits from the police, *do* expect them to keep a close eye on you, and your kids, and throw them in prison for any slight indiscretion of the law (that any of us probably have through out our growing up time), and *do* expect to be implicated as a first port of call in any serious crime, etc, etc, then you’re not affording me my full rights, but calling one right an ‘extra’ and then taking away all the other rights that form the part of ‘full rights’. And then, all I’m left with is the right to be counted in the census, and the right to vote in elections, where my people’s interests will never be represented because we’re all ‘equal’ citizens, and therefore my 2% v your 98% will never be heard. Lucky!
Such is the nature of essentially racist policy. First it forms the goal, then the propaganda means to implement those goals. In this sense, Australians should be more understanding of the striking propaganda Israelis are faced with, not less so (whilst sitting on some imagined moral high ground).
Gales,
"dereklane: Never once have I referred to an ethnic or national group as "filthy animals". I am pleased you read my inversion post. And now you have nothing to say about his "filthy animals in Tel Aviv"? Shall I pull out my copy of the RDA now? Bloody hell. Where’s the condemnation?
"But I wouldn’t call the regime of Israel ‘filthy animals’. I would call them genocidal sociopaths, akin in all ways barring volume (so far) and style to that other ‘shoa’ creator in Europe"
Once again, Godwin’s law. Nevertheless, I’ll respond to the substance of your comments even though I find it chutzpadik for you to bring up the Holocaust (when it’s half of my family that was turned into soap and lampshades). Genocide?! How do you possibly validate such an extraordinary claim? Surgical airstrikes against Hamas terrorists who are rocketing your population centres… I don’t even think the UN Human Rights Commission, headed by Syria or some other such human rights-loving regime, could possibly call this genocide."
In this case, Godwin’s law applies in the positive, that is, the part that says that some cases, comparison to Nazis or to Hitler is valid. Only the fact that the term gets bandied about diminishes the value of that comparison. Godwins law doesn’t state that such a comparison should never be made, but that it should be carefully applied.
I validate ‘such an extraordinary claim’ by the use of the geneva convention on genocide. it’s very clear. I’ll post article II for you here:
"Article II. In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such: a) Killing members of the group; b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. "
Pay close attention to parts a), b) and c).
The UN itself has had plenty to say about the imposed conditions relating to c) in the last six months. Israel has conducted a closed border operation (land and sea), financial outlets around the world (like Lloyd’s TSB in the UK) have cancelled charities set up to provide vital funding to Palestine, and fuel, oil, food and water have become increasingly scarce in supply.
With no ability to bring these vitals in to the gaza strip, and no way to go out to get such supplies, Gaza has become an open air prison, or concentration camp, with many people dying in the lead up to the offensive (the old and the very young) directly because of Israel’s calculated mass starvation of the gaza strip. That counts as genocide, part c of article 2.
Parts a and b should be self-evident. As for whether the UN itself has condemned it yet as genocide, I doubt the UN would come out to call it such. The convention on genocide does it, but the UN is compromised strong by the five veto states. That makes what they *say* on the subject of genocide by Israel decidedly quieter than it might otherwise be, but nevertheless, from the UN pages:
"The humanitarian situation in Gaza had reached an unprecedented level, he said, with people living in darkness and much of the Strip flooded by sewage. All of that had happened because the occupying Power had decided to declare Gaza a “hostile entity”, which was unprecedented. The Council must show its responsibility and urgently adopt measures to protect the civilian population in Gaza from “genocide” by the occupying authorities. The siege of Gaza must be ended immediately. The occupying Power must respect international law, and that must begin by putting an end to policies of siege and closure. He hoped a draft presidential statement on the matter would be accepted."
http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2008/sc9232.doc.htm
(from SC meetings):
"JULIO ESCALONA ( Venezuela) condemned the genocide that Israel was carrying out in Gaza and expressed its unconditional solidarity with the Palestinian people. One of the darkest wars in the modern world was taking place through, among other things, the punishment of a whole population that resisted occupation. "
http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs//2009/sc9565.doc.htm
The word is definitely being thrown out there in the UN meetings now, even if its not the top officials saying it, and even if reporters are not covering it.
"Surgical airstrikes against Hamas terrorists who are rocketing your population centres"
As for your almost pleading use of the word surgical, take a look at the list of victims and see how many people are on that list, particularly women and children (which we should be able to isolate as non-combatants).
Now, with the rest, ask yourself: in Israel, would you count all men as combatants and therefore successful targets of any attack on Israel? If not, then to do so for Palestine is to exercise a racist dismissal of the lives of Palestinians. Israel’s attacks are not surgical, or schools, hospitals, ambulances and aid workers would not be bombed, with hundreds now dead.
If they maintain they are surgical attacks, we must assume they mean to kill obviously innocent people. Otherwise, we must assume the IDF is the most bumbling, useless military on the planet, and should be stopped to protect Israelis (if noone else). After all, they might start accidentally bombing tel aviv.
And *I* didn’t bring up that Jewish word for the holocaust; Israeli ministers did - to apply this time round to Palestinians. If there is shock to be displayed here, focus it on those sociopaths running Israel (a point you chose, it seems wilfully, to miss in Rockjaw’s labelling of those sociopaths as ‘filthy animals’. To reiterate, he was not referring to an ethnic people or religion, of which he is a part, but to the elites causing the destruction from the govt of tel aviv) - that so short a time after a tragic event in which 5 1/2 or so million Jews and about the same miscellaneous other were murdered by a state, that the people who proclaim they stand in honour of those dead (well, only the Jewish contingent, in fairness), should be practising a similiar kind of containment and annihilation of another oppressed people. That is truly shocking, whilst in their ‘own’ land they are, effectively, making second-class citizens of non-Jewish residents (complete, I recall, with cards to clearly display their status to officials) - not more a clear case of similiarity with the Nazi govt policies could there be. If it offends you to hear it labelled so, challenge that govt for these clear breaches of human rights (that’s what I do with regard to Australian policies, and British ones).
cheers, Derek
Derek,
This is not the place to discuss the aboriginal situation. The topic here is Israel and Palestine.
I can see and understand your position it is just that I take a different one. Every nation on earth exists through colonisation and assimilation and there really is no future for Aboriginal people unless they become a part of the greater community. I have known many Australians of Aboriginal descent but they are assimilated. I have also known many who decry the noble if misguided plan which kept so many in their primitive way of life when that way of life was dead and gone in the same way that it is dead and gone for all of our ancestors who were in the same place at one time, just longer ago.
Historically recent colonisers, and Israel is one, are called to account more than older colonisers but that is the way of a developing society.
The more enlightened we become the more rules there are if you like. And all to the good. Israel is being called to account because modern rules apply in a way they did not apply when Australia or America was settled. However, even in the modern age, recent colonising nations are called to make redress, amends, for the wrongs done to their indigenous peoples.
No-one is suggesting that the Italians/Romans should make redress for their wrongs, or the Hebrews, if they really did dispossess Canaanites… but we are dealing with historically recent colonising wrongs and the plight of the Palestinians is one of the most recent and one of the worst.
Gabes,
If you do nothing else. Look at the figures of those killed. More than a third are children.More than half are women and children. So much for surgical strikes. So much for those brave IDF soldiers fighting against an enemy. Children without feet, arms, heads, faces… this is the reality of Israel’s war and there is absolutely no need for it.
Hamas said over and over and over again they would stop the rockets if Israel ended the siege and opened the prison and allowed access to and from Gaza. Israel refused.
The rockets, home made, are the desperate efforts of a brutalised and occupied people.
You still have not answered any of my questions. you cannot. There is no point to this. Your silence says you know exactly what Israel is and you are defending the indefensible. For the sake of your soul you should stop.
Derek:
Firstly, that’s not a Geneva Convention, as you claimed. It is Article II of the CPCCG. Secondly, no, it’s not self-evident at all. In fact, what you have said is nonsense. The very idea that there has been a genocide of the Palestinians is preposterous. It’s like suggesting there has been a genocide of Afghans in the war against the Taliban. Ridiculous. How you can entertain such thoughts in what is obviously a very bright mind escapes me completely.
To say that there has been a "genocide" of Palestinians would empty all meaning from the term. I object to this casual use of a term that entered the international legal lexicon on the ashes of my own mother’s uncles, aunties and grandparents.
Quite happy to go through customary and conventional international humanitarian law with you, but I can assure you, you will face an informed opponent in me.
I won’t allow your offensive propaganda to go unanswered.
Your sarcasm is wasted, and I certainly do not plead for anything. These are surgical operations. Nobody believes the bogus Hamas statistics of inflated civilian casualties. I am reminded here of the Jenin operation during Operation Defensive Shield: the Palestinians claimed, at the time, that there had been a "massacre" of hundreds or thousands of civilians.
The United Nations came back with a report some months later. Turns out the number of dead was 52. The vast majority were jihadi combatants.
Surgical strikes does not = zero civilian casualties. Particularly when Hamas uses hospitals, schools, mosques, ambulances, UN buildings, etc as cover.
Please, spare me your false, misplaced moral outrage.
rosross:
Please. I have hardly been silent. And you can should perhaps think about taking care of your own soul; I am quite comfortable with the state of mine.
For the rest of it, your babbling pro-Hamas propaganda barely deserves the minimal response I am giving it. Your selective statistics, selective reading of history, loaded terminology, and obvious empathy for Arabs and dislike for non-ghettoized Jews is all breathtaking. That it gets not only a hearing but also approval by the other posters on this forum is truly disgraceful.
Wow, what crock of crap gabes. Perhaps I will get around to reading it along with my copy of "The Chosen Ones" later this week.
It is tragically amusing to think of a pig sty filled with fat overfed pompous racist supremists gathered together to create new ways of glossing over yet another one of history’s worst genocides and determined bombing of innocent civilians.
These arrogant schlamiels do not even realise how the Gazans have earned the world’s respect for doing it tough living in the biggest concentration camp the world has ever known. Like Nazi Germany Israel has long lost the respect and the sympathy of the civilised world.
Is it possible that these people are so stupid, or so downright sure of their superiority that they cannot recognise that the world already identifies with the Gazan community as the victims in this crime?
Will it take another Nurembourg trial to get that point across?
Even more tragic to imagine is how these supremist theocrats actually still believe they are insulting the intelligence of the average Australian, but then racists have never been famous for their intellect.
Australians are not rioting and clashing with police because they are prone to a more civil reaction gabes, not because they are stupid. It behooves many Australians to see these publications in rags like the AJN which obviously presupposes that the Australian public is too stupid to recognise propaganda when it sees it.
Like apartheid South Africa there will be only one final consequence for this sort of behaviour and that is inevitable conflict with the civilised community of humanity who cannot tolerate, indefinitely, the crazed behaviour of these racist zealots.
"Supremist"?
This is probably Rockjaw’s pathetic attempt to rile me with an obscure but offensive reference to the fact that the rally was held in a synagogue. Calling it a "pig sty filled with fat overfed pompous racists" is his way of what anybody would regard as an antisemitic statement but for the fact that Rockjaw claims to be Jewish. Disgraceful, dude.
Saying it doesn’t make it so. Hamas is hated around the world. And in terms of Gazan non-combatants: living on a shitty strip of land doesn’t entitle one to a greater level of respect. I think the world correctly sees Gazan civilians for what they are: human beings.
Again with the "supremist"? And who are you (falsely) alleging to be a theocrat? Not most Israelis, who are largely secular.
I was talking about the Palestinian demonstrations in Sydney and Melbourne, which resulted most recently in flag-burning in Melbourne, and has in the past few years resulted in plenty of clashes with the police.
The AJN isn’t exactly Pulitzer material, but my link to the AJN was simply a re-post of the Australian Jewish leadership’s statement. You can go see it on the ECAJ website, if you prefer. Doesn’t require you to hold the AJN in high regard.
Oh like what sort of consequence? Like the consequence of having more of Rockjaw’s misplaced moral bleating on a relatively internationally unknown website? I’m sure the Israelis are quivering with fear! "Oh please, Rockjaw," I can hear them saying, "Not another Nazi reference on newmatilda! Oh god, if he posts another apartheid analogy, we’ll have to stop… defending our cities! Make him stop!"
Gabes, you are obviously foaming at the mouth. Relax and try to be a little more coherent.
Your reference to places of worship, like the synagogue where AJN’s disgusting piece of weak propaganda was authored, receives far more respect from Australians than the various places of worship bombed by your favourite theocratic dictatorship.
Israel is secular? A Jewish state is secular? You’re experiencing difficulty making up your mind which one of the two it is aren’t you gabes? Nevermind gabes, pathological liars do experience these confusions at times, it is quite normal.
Anti-semitic? Really? Supporters of the massacre of the semitic peoples in Gaza are the anti-semites gabes, but that argument is clearly way over your head.
Hamas is hated across the world? Because a bunch of murdering criminals in Israel and a big bag of fat overweight assholes in Sydney says so? Denial gabes, that is what it really is, and denial really will be the death of your beloved zionist Israel you know.
Sydney and Melbourne experienced very peaceful demonstrations by Australians and there were no "Palestinian" demonstrations at all. This is not Israel gabes and Australians do not differentiate between their ethnic groups when it comes to recognition of citizenship rights gabes, so just for the record, they were Australian demonstrators, not Palestinian. It’s an Australian thing gabes, something Israel should really strongly consider emulating one day to end the misery in their pathetic sad little country.
gabes, you should do tchuva. Why don’t you get on a plane, like other Jewish Australians are doing and have done in the past, and make your way to Gaza to help bring relief to the thousands of wounded children and other innocent civilians being murdered so that one day the world will not accuse you of standing idly by while another 6 million victims were being murdered in concentration camps like Gaza?
Now that would not impress the ghetto masters you worship so much gabes, but normal civilised people the world over would be more impressed by you if you did, instead of posting your incoherent rants on a "relatively internationally unknown website".
Go on gabes, impress us all, show us how much you really care about those "poor civilians in Gaza" whom the "fat pigs" claim to care so much for in the AJN statement and go join the Australian jewish doctors who left for gaza today. Impress us gabes.
This from the man who gave us this little chestnut, which I shall quote in full:
Who’s foaming at the mouth, again?
You must admit though gabes, it was worth reproducing, and it really means a lot to me that you should find it valuable enough to reproduce and enhanced in Italics as well! wow! - thanks mate.
Rockjaw:
I told you that most Israelis are secular. Moreover, you obviously aren’t the most educated of Jews; "Jewish" is not merely religious nomenclature; it is an ethno-religious identifier.
Generally speaking, there aren’t Christian Buddhists. Or Muslim Buddhists. That’s because "Christian" and "Muslim" are primarily religious identifiers. You CAN have a "Jewish Buddhist", because being Jewish does not imply that you necessarily practise the national religion of the Jewish nation. That’s because being Jewish is less religious than it is national, ethnic, cultural, and so forth.
Israel is no more a theocracy than Germany, which provides automatic citizenship to anyone of Germanic descent. Chew on that one for a bit.
Ah, the "my comments aren’t antisemitic" argument from semantics. Can’t you peel off some new argument? Be serious. You know very well that "antisemitism" is commonly accepted as a term meaning the demonisation of Jews. I don’t think there are many Palestinians claiming that Israel is "antisemitic"; that would be quaint or anachronistic or weird, or something.
The rioting, angry, flag-burning demonstrators were pro-Palestinian. Stop nit-picking.
Yes.
Claiming that you’re a Jew doesn’t qualify you to make antisemitic comments, dude. Settle down.
Unlike you, I am not all that interested in whether or not "the world" is impressed by me. But it does sound like you’re trying pretty hard to be liked, kind of like Loewenstein. I am sure "the world" is impressed by your obscene views, but I most certainly am not. You should be ashamed of yourself.
I have no interest in impressing you. But by God I wish you would go to Gaza!
"You must admit though gabes, it was worth reproducing"
It was certainly douchey!
Not to mention totally thizz-faced!
Rosross,
By looking at parallels, we’ll see the bigger picture (hopefully). Its not a topic on Aboriginal Australia, but the system of oppression which assumes the right of the oppressor to take over land and to destroy the indigenous is the same.
By looking at just how effective the propaganda is in Australia with their own genocide, denial, terra nullius and land theft, slavery, removal of children etc, etc, perhaps Australians can learn just a little compassion (and humility) towards ordinary Israelis, subjected to the same massive and long-term campaign of disinformation and propaganda. That you in the last resort to the same argument as Gabes but in relation to Australia (we no longer owe them anything, because its too long ago), you illustrate the parallels perfectly.
"I have known many Australians of Aboriginal descent but they are assimilated. I have also known many who decry the noble if misguided plan which kept so many in their primitive way of life"
Primitive?! It seems we are quite different on this subject rosross. Aboriginal cultures that survive are not primitive, but complex, structured, and often far fairer. The social element of many of these cultures is in fact, far superior to our own (if you look at the anthropological values of complexity, rather than prejudiced perspective of good and bad). They are also evolving in similiar ways to our own. The mentality which classifies these people (who exist within their culture and wish to continue to do so - I also have Aboriginal friends unfamiliar with, and disinterested in their ancestry from a cultural perspective) as ‘primitive’ is exactly the one which should then understand exactly where many Israelis are coming from in their easy dismissal of palestinians as legitimate people, with legitimate rights and a legitimate culture. Its sad, and based in ultimate ignorance, but it does make me wonder about specks and logs in eyes ….
I guess we should leave that debate there. What is so clear in a mind enveloped in one set of prejudices looking out at unfamiliar prejudices elsewhere is the nature of humanity, I suppose. We’re all irretrievably subjective, and hypocritical.
Gabes,
"Quite happy to go through customary and conventional international humanitarian law with you, but I can assure you, you will face an informed opponent in me."
Let’s then. You’re right, of course, about the correct name for the convention, but that doesn’t alter the fact that the UN convention referenced has already classified the meaning of genocide. So tell me (without reference to the genocide you refer to as a reason for me not being qualified to use the term) why the classification of genocide might not hold for Gaza. Use international law. Show me the clauses. I would like to know.
And I wasn’t being sarcastic, I was asking you to take a look at the casualties and the rising death toll, and tell me exactly how such vast numbers of obviously innocent dead and injured coud be considered ‘surgical’. If you’re willing to accept that, you’re also willing to accept the hamas rockets which fly off target (nearly all) could also be considered ‘surgical’. The difference, of course, is clear. On the one side, high tech weaponry, technology which *allows* specific targetting, on the other, hand made firecrackers which have about as much accuracy in the best hands as a firecracker does in the hands of a child.
So logically, you *could* assume deaths caused as intentional, and on the other accidental. The benefit of the doubt lies with Hamas, not the IDF. Your job is to prove why we should ignore the facts and believe the Israeli propaganda. So far, you’re not doing a great job of it.
cheers, Derek
Gabes,
Another question: Could there be a Jew without Judaism the religion? Could there be a Catholic without Catholicism the religion.
Logic suggests No! Ergo, Judaism is a religion and being Jewish is a religious appellation. Same for Catholicism. One can have a lapsed Catholic and one can have a lapsed Jew.
Jewish is not a race, not a nation, not an ethno group …. DNA testing puts paid to the latter quite decisively. Just as members of all racial groups are Catholics so members of all racial groups are Jews. Judaism, like all religions, has been a proselytising religion in the past which is why many of the Jewish immigrants to Palestine have absolutely no Semitic DNA. They are not semitic people. Muslim Arabs are more semitic than Israeli Jews because they are not immigrants to the region in recent times.
Now, is an Islamic State like Saudi Arabia discriminatory toward non-Muslims because it is racist in concept? e.g. you have to be a Muslim to get full rights as a Saudi.
Well, Israel is a Jewish State which only gives full rights to those who are Jewish. If an Islamic State is racist and it is, then a Jewish state is racist, which it is, because it discriminates on the basis of religion.
This kind of discrimination is actually backward and there is no place for it in the modern world. To that degree Israel as a Jewish state is doomed and always was. Israel as a secular state may well endure.
Derek,
When I used the word primitive in regard to Aboriginal culture I did so in terms of a definition of less developed. Which it was. That is not to say that there were many valuable aspects of Aboriginal culture and spiritual belief and art, but the society at the time of settlement was backward in many other ways and in traditional societies it remains so.
The discrimination toward women for one thing was and remains backward. The tradition of leaving behind the sick and old when the tribe moved on was part and parcel of nomadic life …. but backward. We would be horrified at such a thing today and rightly so. Killing the second twin, or a deformed child, was also a part of the culture, as it was with other nomadic peoples for practical reasons, but backward, primitive.
The fact is, and having lived for many years in both Africa and India, the modern world, with all of its faults offers the best opportunity for a free and fulfilling life (particularly for women) and is more developed (far from perfect) than anything you find in the Third World or in more primitive tribal, nomadic cultures. There is no way on this earth I would want to be a woman in any other society. Most particularly not Indian or Aboriginal where I think women are abused more than most and that includes African.
One of the great disservices we have done to indigenous peoples is to romanticise their way of life. They want what we have. Keeping them pinned like moths on a page has done them no good. Our ancestors were forced to join the greater, more advanced society and so must they. Of course some things of value are lost but not all of them and there are some things which are so cruel, barbaric, primitive, ignorant and discriminatory which should be lost.
anyway, we can discuss it further another time.
derek: "So tell me (without reference to the genocide you refer to as a reason for me not being qualified to use the term) why the classification of genocide might not hold for Gaza."
Firstly, if you are absurdly accusing Israel of genocide, the burden of broof is on you. Unless you would also like me to prove that there are no purple monkeys orbiting earth - just an absurd a proposition, and just as not deserving of a meaningful defence from me.
Secondly and more specifically, your previous "proof" was a series of assertions that genocide was "self-evident". So if you are serious about making such a - self-evidently - ridiculous charge, then go to the international case law, and look at the weight of what is required for a genocide charge to be proven. Any reasonably informed person can see that claiming Israel has committed genocide is a manifestly laughable assertion.
I will remind you that genocide is the organized attempt to deliberately and systematically destroy, in whole or in part, an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group. There has been no attempt by Israel to do any such thing.
Show otherwise.
"And I wasn’t being sarcastic, I was asking you to take a look at the casualties and the rising death toll,"
I’m not entirely sure how you persist with this purist belief that "surgical strikes" means zero civilian casualties. I find it laughable that you compare Hamas rocket attacks aimed at civilian population centres with targeted Israeli missile fire aimed at known Hamas military targets. No matter how poorly aimed the Hamas rockets are, they are guaranteed to cause terror, injury and death. And no matter how well-aimed the Israeli missiles may be, Hamas has guaranteed civilian casualties - by using schools, hospitals, mosques, and other civilian buildings - as cover. Completely contrary to international humanitarian law as enshrined in the Geneva Conventions.
But then, you aren’t interested in applying the Geneva Conventions to a terrorist organisation, are you?
"hand made firecrackers which have about as much accuracy in the best hands as a firecracker does in the hands of a child"
I’d be interested to watch your reaction as a siren went off telling you there were 15 seconds until a Qassam "firecracker" was to hit your house. I’d be interested in whether your children, after 6000 such attack, had PTSD, like one-third of the children of the Israeli town of Sderot.
"So logically, you *could* assume deaths caused as intentional, and on the other accidental. The benefit of the doubt lies with Hamas, not the IDF. Your job is to prove why we should ignore the facts and believe the Israeli propaganda. So far, you’re not doing a great job of it."
I have explained this before, and I shall explain it again, for your sake. And pretty much only for your sake - nobody is reading this anymore, they’ve moved on to other threads.
If Israel wanted to slaughter civilians, it’s doing an awful, inefficient job of it. Israeli boys are now dead for having gone in on the ground. A total waste, if you ask me, if the purpose was to kill Palestinian civilians. Israel could just carpet bomb the whole strip. And if it was aiming for civilians, why are the majority of Palestinian dead Hamas combatants? A terribly inefficient effort on Israel’s part, if indeed it is aiming at civilians.
As I said before, you guys all rabbit on about how powerful Israel is. And you call Israelis "genocidal sociopaths". If Israel is so powerful, and it is genocidal, why aren’t hundreds of thousands of Palestinians dead from this Gaza operation? Presumably the job could be done in days, if not weeks.
You never responded to this before, and I don’t expect you to have an answer for me now.
Excellent article by Mustafa Qadri.
What is conveniently IGNORED by the Mainstream media reportage is that the Gaza Concentration Camp (Gaza Bantustan) is part of the OCCUPIED Palestinian Territory (violently and abusively occupied for over 40 years by Apartheid Israel) and guarded on 3 sides by Apartheid Israel and on the fourth by Egypt (terrified into unscrupulous "scrupulous non-involvement" by past and threatened atrocities by nuclear terrorist Apartheid Israel).
The World calmly looks on as one of the World’s "best" military - army, navy and airforce - pulverize a defenceless Gaza Concentration Camp defended by INMATE civilians or militia with small arms and demonstrably ineffective home-made missiles (28 Israelis deaths in over 8 years).
The ACTUAL number of Israelis killed by Gaza rockets and mortars since the start of the Second Intifada 8.25 years ago is TWENTY EIGHT (28), this corresponding to a 21st century “annual homicide rate” in units of persons killed per million per year of 0.5 (Israelis killed by Gaza missiles) – as compared to 0.5 (rapist husbands killed by raped wives), 1 (violent husbands killed by battered wives), 15 (Israelis by Israelis), 56 (Americans), 100 (Americans by guns), 164 (Palestinians killed violently by Israelis), 200 (African-Americans), 473 (citizens of Detroit, Michigan, USA), 902 (Palestinian non-violent deaths under Occupation) and 1,066 (Palestinian violent and non-violent deaths under Occupation).
Reductio ad absurdum - should the US Air Force use naval and tank shells, high explosive bombs and phosphorus bombs to pulverize and devastate Detroit , Michigan which has an "annual homicide rate" (473 deaths per million per year) that is about ONE THOUSAND (!,000) TIMES GREATER than that for Israelis from Gaza missiles (0.5)? (For details and documentation see: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/27795/42/ ).
The World - including decent non-racist Australians and decent, non-racist Jews - has to STOP the Gaza Massacre and STOP Apartheid Israel’s war criminal Palestinian Genocide.
Sanctions and Boycotts were ultimately successful in removing the US-, UK-. White Australia- and Apartheid Israel-backed Apartheid regime in South Africa and must be urgently applied against Apartheid Israel and its US, UK, EU and White Australia backers.
Decent Australians can do their bit by stopping ANY avoidable dealings with racist Zionists (RZs) and pro-Zionist Lib-Labs and pro-Zionist Mainstream media.
It is no longer ethically possible to vote for the climate criminal, pro-Coal Lib-Labs who are hell-bent on destroying the Great Barrier Reef and indeed the Biosphere. Zionism is racism in horrible word and horrible deed. The Israeli Gaza Massacre merely provides a further compelling reason why NOBODY should vote for the war criminal, climate criminal Lib-Labs, neither the Liberal-National Opposition nor the increasingly indistinguishable Labor Government.
This is what arguably the most famous Jewish American scholar in the World
today, Professor Jared Diamond, has to say in his best selling book "Collapse" (Prologue, p10, Penguin 2007 edition), QUOTE: "the “moral principle, namely that it is morally wrong for one people to dispossess, subjugate, or exterminate another people” . END QUOTE.
The fundamental messages form the Jewish Holocaust are "zero tolerance for racism", "never again to anyone" and "bear witness" - core injunctions that are grossly violated by the genocidal war criminal racist Zionists (RZs) and their Bush-ite, neo-Bush-ite and Australian Lib-Lab supporters.
Wake up Australia - save Australia, save Gaza, save the Indigenous Palestinian People and save the Planet by consigning the horrible philosophy of the racist Zionists (RZs) and their "politically correct racist" (PC racist) Lib-Lab supporters to the trash can of history.
Peace is the only way but Silence kills and Silence is complicity.
"Jewish is not a race, not a nation, not an ethno group …. DNA testing puts paid to the latter quite decisively. "
Incorrect. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A06E4D91439F937A25756C0A…
"Judaism, like all religions, has been a proselytising religion"
No it hasn’t.
"They are not semitic people."
Yes, they are.
"Well, Israel is a Jewish State which only gives full rights to those who are Jewish. "
Rubbish.
"then a Jewish state is racist, which it is, because it discriminates on the basis of religion."
No, it doesn’t.
"To that degree Israel as a Jewish state is doomed and always was. "
Israel is a Jewish state like Germany is a German state. Both countries have laws giving automatic citizenship to people of their respective ethnic backgrounds.
Israel as a Jewish state will survive. We will make quite certain of that.
Dear Raving Lunatic … I mean, Gideon Polya:
"Reductio ad absurdum - should the US Air Force use naval and tank shells, high explosive bombs and phosphorus bombs to pulverize and devastate Detroit , Michigan which has an "annual homicide rate" (473 deaths per million per year)"
You’re right - this is ABSURDUM. Those murders are criminal, not military. There are no rockets being fired on Detroit or Michigan. Hamas rockets have nothing to do with drug murders in Detroit.
A quick internet search finds that you have supported Islamist extremism and espoused antisemitic views for some years now.
Good luck with all that, dude.
- G
Rosross,
"Derek,
When I used the word primitive in regard to Aboriginal culture I did so in terms of a definition of less developed. Which it was. That is not to say that there were many valuable aspects of Aboriginal culture and spiritual belief and art, but the society at the time of settlement was backward in many other ways and in traditional societies it remains so."
You’ve replaced the word ‘primitive’ with the word ‘backward’. If possible, that’s even more insulting, and bigoted. ‘Developed’ society - I’m assuming you mean cathedrals and cities, is, compared to communal living in small villages, or nomadic institutions (it varied across the tens of nations across the vast expanse of the continent), is not more progressive vs more backward. Its simply a different dynamic. We look at some cities in the world, from now, and from history, and declare them ‘backward’; not on their building style, but on their culture and treatment of other humans.
You pick and choose your definitions to suit what is clearly a racist attitude. That is no more acceptable in Australia than it is in Palestine.
"The discrimination toward women for one thing was and remains backward. "
In most Aboriginal cultures, women are the law-makers, and the culture-‘defenders’. Throughout the course of western history, what prominent position did women hold there? Baby-making and house-keeping, mostly. The fact Aboriginal cultures accepted women as the custodians of these important roles shows that they were far less patriarchal than our own cultures. But we persist in the belief that they are backward, and we forward, because it please our bigoted beliefs in the western cultures as being at the forefront of ‘civilisation’.
Which brings me to your next statement:
"The tradition of leaving behind the sick and old when the tribe moved on was part and parcel of nomadic life …. but backward. We would be horrified at such a thing today and rightly so. Killing the second twin, or a deformed child, was also a part of the culture, as it was with other nomadic peoples for practical reasons, but backward, primitive."
It seems that when we need an example, we make one up. I’ve read anthropologic studies from the 19th century, impressing the point that Aboriginal people, compared to many superstitious western cultures, always made room for the sick and the old, *even* those in nomadic lifestyles. They would, in fact, *carry* them from camp to camp *rather* than leave them behind. Its interesting to see how your prejudices push your beliefs to the opposite extreme. Perhaps its worth actually engaging with some traditional custodians on the subject before projecting this nonsense.
And finally, we have the general closing statement of the usual bigot:
"The fact is, and having lived for many years in both Africa and India, the modern world, with all of its faults offers the best opportunity for a free and fulfilling life (particularly for women) and is more developed (far from perfect) than anything you find in the Third World or in more primitive tribal, nomadic cultures. There is no way on this earth I would want to be a woman in any other society. Most particularly not Indian or Aboriginal where I think women are abused more than most and that includes African."
ie, West is Best. If you spent more time trying to understand other cultures, rather than comparing them to your rose-tinted yard-stick of advanced western culture, you might find a few points where cultural beliefs of other groups far exceed (more progressive to western ‘backwardness’) our own.
"They want what we have. Keeping them pinned like moths on a page has done them no good."
No activist for Aboriginal rights is doing that. People are different. Some are content to exist within our culture, and no further. For them, we should allow it fully (meaning, they are not treated as inferior because of our racist notions of ABorigines). For others, we should learn to value their collective cultures (it is *not* a homogenous single culture across the continent, an ignorance which persists in Australia because nobody can be bothered to investigate), and accept our part in meaningful reparations, according to the indigenous conventions, where people have taken the time to understand the issues.
I won’t bother discussing this with you again - with ‘liberal’ minds like this what hope does Australia have?
Gabes,
Israel is conducting a ground offensive to resecure Gaza for Israel as a convenient path to the ports, as I understand it. You can’t do that without actually going in. And yes, they *could* just kill all 1.5 million Gazans for easy access, but already the cracks are showing in their curious international immunity, so I doubt that’s a sensible option. There are limits to what would be tolerated, even among the arab nations around it. No doubt, they recognise (right now, at least) such an option as being an effective suicide for the state of Israel.
BTW, another medical clinic - despite assurances and precision co-ordinates supplied to the Israeli army - has been bombed. Surgical?… I guess this must be what you mean. Again, the bombardment of hospitals (this, I believe is Israel’s 3rd in this attack) is against the Hague conventions (and the unsigned protocols of the geneva convention). But Israel, of course, is not interested in conventions which plague it’s progress.
cheers, Derek
Derek,
I am reminded of the thought: ‘divided by a common language.’
I really do not see why ‘backward’ is insulting. We are approaching the word from different places. I believe that some policies of the past, this applies to Australia, England, Europe, America were backward. For instance, performing lobotomies on sexually active women because it was considered a sign of mental instability; hiding down’s syndrome children away; forcing women who got pregnant out of wedlock to give up their babies.
These are just examples but in this more enlightened age I consider those policies backward. If I were to go further back I would use the word primitive. I consider the policy of child labour in England for instance one hundred years ago and beyond to be backward; I consider the policies of even further back, where women were considered to be mentally inferior and therefore not capable of education to be primitive.
Now, in the modern age it is hardly surprising that I consider these and other things, where they still exist to be backward and primitive.
Women treated as second class citizens as they are in aboriginal culture (whether they make some laws or not) and in many other less developed cultures I might add; where societies are divided into male and female as they are in aboriginal culture and as they are in fundamentalist religions, whether those religions be christianity, islam or judaism.
In an enlightened world men and women are equal. Where they are not those societies or religions are bakcward, i.e. less developed. You are an intelligent person. How can you question that?
And no, of course I don’t mean cathedrals and cities per se: I mean social norms and the quality of life which people live.
Is a house with running water and toilets more developed than a tent or a few pieces of bark thrown over a branch? Of course they are. Do they offer a better quality of life for people? Of course they do. Is it a sign of a more developed society where people have good quality housing and clean, running water? Of course it is. Do we in the developed world have a better quality of life in a material and developed sense than our grandparents? Of course we do.
My grandparents bathed once a week in the same water. The toilet was outside. My great-grandparents lived in a house with hessian walls and no heating other than a small fire. By the way, when I grew up in the 50’s we had no heating other than a small fire and it was damn cold. I grew up with lino on the floor and that was freezing and thin blankets with holes in them.
Do I think it is preferable for children to have warm homes and warm blankets and a healthy diet? Of course I do. That my friend is a sign of a developed world and the more developed the world is the more people have that.
"The discrimination toward women for one thing was and remains backward. "
As to aboriginal society being far less patriarchal, well, if you want to compare aboriginal society at the time of development with societies in Europe at an equal time of development, no, they were not worse. They were the same. They were at the same level of development. But, at the time Australia was colonised there was a more advanced level of development and that is a simple fact.
I have never said Aborigines or anyone else are inferior in any way. That is racist. But, it is denial to recognise that tribal and nomadic cultures are at a different level of development than others. There may well be valuable aspects those cultures retain which we have lost but on the whole, it is they who have to catch up and not we who have to go backward.
The developed world offers more people the chance to live a free and fulfilling life than any other.
You said:It seems that when we need an example, we make one up. I’ve read anthropologic studies from the 19th century, impressing the point that Aboriginal people, compared to many superstitious western cultures, always made room for the sick and the old, *even* those in nomadic lifestyles. They would, in fact, *carry* them from camp to camp *rather* than leave them behind.
Well, we have read very different things. There are accounts written by people who were there at the time and they have recorded these things. Fact is, in a nomadic society such actions were sensible. But, as a society develops and advances it finds way to avoid doing such things. Life becomes less desperate.
You said:"The fact is, and having lived for many years in both Africa and India, the modern world, with all of its faults offers the best opportunity for a free and fulfilling life (particularly for women) and is more developed (far from perfect) than anything you find in the Third World or in more primitive tribal, nomadic cultures. There is no way on this earth I would want to be a woman in any other society. Most particularly not Indian or Aboriginal where I think women are abused more than most and that includes African."
Sorry, why does that make me a bigot? Having spent nearly 15 years in those countries I know at firsthand the things of value which one finds in the developed world. I also know that those people want exactly what we have. I’ve seen enough children living on the streets and enough women abused to know that for all its faults the West is a far, far better place to live.
That is not to say there are not aspects of all of those cultures which are valuable, nor that there are aspects of ours which are to be rejected. It is merely to say that in terms of the basic quality of life for all, man, woman, child, old, young, able, disabled, ill, well, the West does do it best. The West is simply the modern world. Just as Rome offered a more advanced and developed quality of life than one could get in the forests of Germania at the same time, so does the Western world.
The other side of the coin is that those ‘supporting’ the status quo for Aborigines are patronising. I happen to think all human beings are equal and equally deserving of the greatest opportunity and the highest quality of life.