israel/palestine
14 Jan 2009
The End Of Palestinian Resistance?
With a ceasefire yet to materialise in Gaza, the future looks uncertain for Hamas, writes Mustafa Qadri
As Israel's invasion of the Gaza Strip enters its third week, prospects for a ceasefire look as remote as ever. The UN Security Council passed a resolution calling on all parties to cease hostilities immediately and for Israel to end its blockade, but the resolution has had no immediate effect on the violence.
This is largely due to the lack of political will to restrain Israel in concrete terms, such as through an economic embargo or a refusal by Security Council members to export weapons to the Jewish state.
Indeed, in the case of the US, there is strong evidence that it is sending extra shipments of ammunition to help Israel's war effort. Last Saturday Reuters reported that the US had hired a private merchant ship to send a large cache of ammunition to Israel. The US claims the shipment is not related to Israel's invasion of Gaza. But it seems improbable that the "325 standard 20-foot containers" of ammunition will not wind up wreaking death and destruction on Gaza's terrorised population. Press TV, the international news agency of the Iranian Government, reported that the US had already shipped 2.6 million kilograms of weapons to Israel in early December.
These reports are far from surprising. During Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 2006, the United States also hurried weapons shipments to Israel whose supplies had been depleted, so thoroughly had it bombed its northern neighbour.
Hamas and other Palestinian resistance groups continue to fire rockets and mortars into Israel, although at a far reduced rate than before the invasion. In contrast, Israel has escalated its attacks. Its land forces continue to penetrate deep into the densely populated coastal territory as the air force and navy maintain their relentless bombardment.
The Israel Defense Forces have effectively cut Gaza in two, sowing chaos and inducing pandemonium among the population. According to the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions, Israel's invasion of Gaza "has violently forced an estimated 80,000-90,000 people from their homes."
"I don't know how I've survived the last few days," Anees Mansour (who I wrote about for newmatilda.com two years ago) told me by phone from Gaza. His family of 13 has been forced to leave their house which is right on the border between Gaza and Egypt. The region is littered with smuggling tunnels which Israel is now trying to destroy. The Mansour family fear they would face certain death were they to remain at home.
The Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire also called for an end to the smuggling of weapons into Gaza, effectively disarming Hamas and other Palestinian groups at a time when the Israel's state-of-the-art military is being replenished by the US.
Israeli forces have now killed nearly 1000 people and injured over 4000 more. Mortars and rockets from Gaza have killed four Israelis since the hostilities commenced just over two weeks ago, although as at 13 January no Israelis have been killed since 29 December.
Gaza's overworked and undersupplied hospitals are now a scene of grisly, tortured humanity. "Many come in with multiple stomach and head wounds," said Red Cross nurse Alice Nielsen. "In many cases, we are forced to amputate limbs."
Israel has now agreed to halt hostilities for three hours every day, but precious little is getting in. Even those supplies that do enter cannot be properly distributed as large parts of Gaza have been cordoned off and much civilian infrastructure, such as schools, roads and hospitals, have been totally destroyed.
The International Committee of the Red Cross took the rare step of publicly condemning Israeli forces for preventing ambulances from reaching a site with several dead or dying children for four days. It was a rare step because the Red Cross has a general policy of making its complaints in private to governments, thereby ensuring greater cooperation. It only goes public in the most severe cases.
It is difficult to see what lies ahead for Hamas from here. They argue that Mahmoud Abbas is no longer the lawful President of the Palestinian Authority. His term officially ended on 9 January. The organisation believes there should be a caretaker President until elections are held for a new President. The most senior possible candidate, Ahmed Bahar, is a member of Hamas. Abbas has stubbornly refused to leave the President's office, although his stewardship has continued to prove largely incapable of challenging Israeli power. That, perhaps, is something out of his hands.
Abbas argues the Basic Law of the Palestinian Authority allows him to stay on for at least another year. His Government, based in the West Bank, has vocally blamed Hamas for the current carnage, a move that may please Washington and Jerusalem. But with elections inevitable sometime in the near future, his words are likely to backfire among most Palestinians.
Hamas may not have endeared itself to much of the world community by targeting Israeli civilians. But behind the bluster the rockets are the last, pathetic expression of armed Palestinian resistance. They are an admission that Hamas and other Palestinian resistance movements do not have the capacity to damage Israel's military or its infrastructure.
Ironically, because Israel has invaded Gaza on the ostensible grounds of seeking to stop the rocket attacks, Hamas and other resistance groups are compelled to continue firing them. The rockets serve as a potent symbol of Israel's failure to meet its one key military objective. Hezbollah claimed victory against Israel in 2006 along the same reasoning because it continued to fire rockets into Israel, even though it was Lebanon, and not Israel, that was devastated by the war.
Since it won free and fair elections in 2006, Hamas has transformed itself into a genuine political player. Foreign governments have increasingly opened communication channels with the movement, although only a few governments, like Syria and Iran, have publicly recognised it. Only last week the Guardian ran a story claiming that the Obama administration will open informal lines of communication with Hamas. If true, this would represent a minor shift in US policy on the conflict. However, future secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, has ruled out negotiations with Hamas "until it renounces violence, recognises Israel and agrees to abide by past agreements".
Hamas, along with Hezbollah, is the only popular Arab political movement to openly challenge Israel and the West's status quo in the Middle East. Coinciding as it has with an increasing weariness of Israel's experiment in government in the Gaza Strip, the invasion has undoubtedly increased Hamas' political stocks among Palestinians.
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It’s rather irrelevant if Hamas survives or not. Hamas has become an ideal, a principle, a focus for the abused Palestinian people. It has drawn them together and given them hope. Even if Israel killed every member of Hamas it would simply be replaced by another group, another name maybe, different people, but exactly the same purpose and goal …. freedom.
Hamas has won. Even if it is now destroyed it has won. It has held out against the occupiers. Ideas are far more powerful than realities. The idea does not need to belong to a person or a group… it exists in its own right.
All that Israel has shown the Palestinians is that it is prepared to be utterly barbaric and murderous. But the Palestinians knew that anyway.
It’s the multi-headed hydra which tyrants create. When you act as Israel does you can only cut off heads as they appear but another head will follow and another and another.
The Palestinians will survive, they will endure and this carnage has only made them stronger. It takes a seriously dysfunctional society and nation not to see that.
Israel is a seriously dysfunctional nation rosros and zionists are a seriously dysfunctional people, zealots, dangerous psychopaths and war criminals who have been given nation status in the worst mistake ever committed by modern man.
People in every corner of the world are uniting in solidarity with the victims of this genocide and the Palestinian population has grown exponentially as even more people stand up in anger and loudly declare "we are all Palestinians now".
Our Australian offices this morning woke up to communications from our Asian and Russian clients advising that they would be cancelling all existing contracts and terminating all commercial ties with Australia with the advice that our firm should consider using our African offices for any future business. Australian support for the genocide in Gaza was given as the primary reason for these cancellation.
Our Canadian offices report receiving similar communications.
International pressure is starting to spill over to other areas.
Rockjaw,
Yes, and the silence from our government is deafening. So much for principles of justice and common decency which we hoped would come from Kev and Julia.
The usual suspects who like to faff on and on about Israel being "the only democracy in the middle east" never seem to see the irony in their constant pronouncements they will not deal with Hamas.
The lesson is patently clear across the middle east, if by some slim chance the US stops supporting your local dictator, you’ll only get to vote for his successor if you vote for someone we approve of.
It is why we wont be seeing genuinely free and fair elections in Iraq anytime soon.
Then there’s the Knesset’s deep commitment to democracy:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7825032.stm
How it can constantly be claimed that Arabs have full rights in Israel when their representatives are barred is beyond me.
One wonders why Mossad doesn’t fund and train a Hamas replacement - worked out so well for them when they try to sideline Arafat by assisting in the creation of a hardline Islamist opposition.
Rockjaw, you are dreaming of a boycott of Israel that will not happen. And the rest of you are mourning what seems to be the death gasps of a war criminal jihadi organisation - Hamas. You ought to be celebrating!
But I suppose you only reserve such positive emotions for suicide bombings in Jerusalem.
Shame!
alphacrucis,
Hamas is the product of Israeli oppression, a new Hamas will appear from the ashes of this one, then another, until the Palestinians disappear from history. The West can’t afford an "ally" such as Israel, boycott Israel and remove it from the company of civilised nations until it returns to its 1967 borders.
alphacrucis the only celebration of death here is yours.
The Gaza Prison Camp
Nonie Darwish
"Gaza conditions at ‘40-year low’" the BBC headlined last week. Rarely a week goes by without a politician or organization deploring the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip. But I do not hear anyone describe its root cause: 60 years of Arab policy aimed at maintaining Palestinians as stateless refugees in order to pressure Israel.
I lived in Gaza as a child in the 1950s when Egypt conducted guerrilla-style operations against Israel from Gaza, then under Egyptian control. My father commanded these operations, carried out by "fedayeen," (which means, "self sacrifice"). This became the frontline of Arab Jihad against Israel. My father was killed by Israel in a targeted assassination in 1956.
Today the Gaza Strip, now under the control of Hamas, has become the Gaza prison camp for 1.5 million Palestinians and continues to serve as the launching pad for attacks against Israeli citizens.
This is the legacy of the Arab world’s Palestinian refugee policy, started 60 years ago, when the Arab League implemented special laws regarding Palestinians that all Arab countries had to abide by. Arab countries could not absorb Palestinians. Even if a Palestinian married a citizen of an Arab country, that Palestinian could not become a citizen of his or her spouse’s country. A Palestinian can be born, live and die in an Arab country, but never gain its citizenship. Even now I receive e-mails from Palestinians telling me they cannot have a Syrian passport, for example, and must remain Palestinian even though they have never set foot in the West Bank or Gaza. Forcing the Palestinian identity on them is designed to perpetuate the Palestinian refugee status. Palestinians have been used and abused by Arab nations, and by Palestinian terrorists, for the purpose of destroying Israel.
The 22 Arab states certainly do not have a shortage of land. Many surrounding Arab areas, such as the Sinai Peninsula, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, are very sparsely populated. But absorbing Palestinians would end their refugee status and their desire to harm Israel.
Arab wealth, which is increasing dramatically because of skyrocketing oil prices, is not used to improve the lives, infrastructure and economy of the people of the West Bank and Gaza. Instead, it supports terror groups who reject Israel’s existence and oppose peace with Israel. The average Gaza man has a better employment opportunity if he joins Hamas.
Gazans’ breach of their checkpoint with Egypt in January, orchestrated by Hamas, is a result of the Palestinian refugee policy. The checkpoints on the Arab side of Gaza could not keep the inmates inside. The Arab plan to overpopulate Gaza exploded in the wrong direction. After this explosion, Suleiman Awwad, an Egyptian administration spokesman, said, "Egypt is a respected state, its border cannot be breached and its soldiers should not be lobbed with stones." In other words, Egypt is not like Israel, which is a disrespected state. Gazans should not direct the violence at Egypt, only at Israel. This is Arab conventional wisdom.
Last month Hamas threatened to bring 40,000 Palestinians, primarily children and women, to the Gaza border with Israel to protest Israel’s restrictions on Gaza. Some Hamas leaders hinted they would send these protestors to breach the border, once again demonstrating that the Palestinian terrorists have no qualms about endangering the lives of innocent people — Israelis or Palestinians. Fortunately, only 5,000 showed up.
But Hamas did succeed two days later in killing an Israeli: a 47 year-old father of four during a rocket attack from Gaza while he was sitting in his car next to Sapir College near Sderot. Two weeks earlier, two Israeli brothers, Osher and Rami Twito, ages 8 and 19, were seriously injured by a rocket from Gaza while buying their father a birthday present. Osher’s left leg had to be amputated.
Israel completely left Gaza in August 2005. In May and June 2007, Hamas waged war against its Palestinian brothers in Fatah to gain control of Gaza. Hamas intensified its rockets attacks on Israeli towns, compelling Israel to take economic and military measures against Gaza. Hamas has become a danger not only to Israel, but to Palestinians and to neighboring Arab countries, as well. Nevertheless, the Arab world still refuses to see its role in creating this monster. It is difficult to find a similar situation in human history: the intentional creation of a refugee status for a million and a half people, sustained for 60 years. The Arab world has cut its nose to spite its face.
The world needs to understand that this dangerous mess started when 22 Arab countries agreed to create a human prison called the Gaza Strip. Arabs claim they love the Palestinian people, but they seem more interested in sacrificing them. It is time for the Arab world to open their side of the borders and absorb the Arabs of the West Bank and Gaza who wish to be absorbed. It is time for the Arab world to truly help the Palestinians, not use them.
Nonie Darwish, who grew up in Cairo and Gaza City, is the author of, "Now They Call me Infidel."
(from www.huffingtonpost.com)
Nonie Darwish also believes that God will save her after a war in the middle east causes the end of days.
She’ll be REALLY happy when all but a few Jews are slaughtered and the good Christians like her get to go to heaven.
Darwish claims that;
US imperialism had no role in the power of middle east dictators
US Muslims (all of them apparently) wish to enshrine sharia law in the USA
When asked about torture at Abu Ghraib said she supports "really scaring them" because "what about Daniel Pearl"
If and when this slightly better spoken Pauline Hanson EVER backs up her claims with anything approaching verifiable fact she might be viewed as credible by someone other than Daniel Pipes and David Horowitz
alphacrucis, so the problem will be solved if all the Palestinians are absorbed into Arab countries. That’s been the wet dream of militant Israeli leaders for years.
I know the pro-Hamas activists on this board find it difficult now that they are being challengd, but it really is about time that progressives who support Israel are heard.
I look forward to articles that begin to show alternative viewpoints to the same old traditional Palestinian propaganda points. If people want to read electronicintifada, they should go there.
alphacrucis I suggest you should go to FrontPageMag or the website of the vile Kahanists - you’d like it better
Pro Hamas?
Yeah, I’m a unmarried, whisky loving, socialist atheist - we’re well known for our love of theocratic rule
Good work Mustafa, but the Qassams are the talking point - actually, they’re the entire list of talking points - and the occupation is supposed to go unmentioned.
Uri Avnery sums it up excellently in a new Gulf Times article:
‘Nearly 70 years ago, in the course of the Second World War, a heinous crime was committed in the city of Leningrad. For more than a thousand days, a gang of extremists called "the Red Army" held the millions of the town’s inhabitants hostage and provoked retaliation from the German Wehrmacht from inside the population centres.
The Germans had no alternative but to bomb and shell the population and to impose a total blockade, which caused the death of hundreds of thousands.
Some time before that, a similar crime was committed in England. The Churchill gang hid among the population of London, misusing the millions of citizens as a human shield. The Germans were compelled to send their Luftwaffe and reluctantly reduce the city to ruins. They called it the Blitz.
This is the description that would now appear in the history books - if the Germans had won the war.’
Resistance is part and parcel of occupation. The world is finally waking up to Israel’s rabid militarism, but there is unfortunately no impetus in high places to end the occupation, as no powerful nation perceives its interests as being tied to ending it.
philannetta.blogspot.com
alphacrucis: fascinating. Tell me more about where colonial occupation fits in progressive thought.
philannetta.blogspot.com
alphacrucis, the "pro-Hamas" activists on this board are yet another figment of your imagination.
What is abundantly obvious to most who are witnessing this massive humanitarian crisis is how you lot worship the pathological liars who form the fundamental core of the genocidal culture of your barbaric and racist state.
Unless, of course, by "pro-Hamas" you are referring to those who are speaking out in favour of enforcing those civilised modern norms as expressed in the international law of the community of the world’s civilised nations through the various resolutions of that international community through such internationally recognised bodies as the UN, all of which have to date been criminally rejected by your favourite genocidaires in Tel Aviv.
And so far as the boycott of Israel is concerned, I have news for you, every Israeli product previously marketed by companies associated with our firm have been made unavailable to all our clients for some time already - the boycott is very real, and growing.
One would laugh if it were not so tragic. Dore Gold in the Wall Street Journal exclaiming: The Gaza tunnels must be closed!!!
Duh Dore. Of course, when Israel ends the siege! What farce it all is. What a sick, sick joke. How many people watched the movie about the German prisoners of war tunnelling out and cheered? In this day and age we are offended because prisoners in the Gaza concentration camp dig tunnels to bring in food and medicine because their jailers are starving them. Of course they bring in weapons. The prisoners of war in German concentration camps made weapons from anything they could get. But that was okay wasn’t it? Those prisoners were white guys (all men I might add, no women and children even) while the Palestinians should no better than to challenge their gaolers.
What madness is it that a State can lock up 1.5million people on a tiny strip of land and deny them food, water, medicine and access to the outside world and there are those who would have us believe it is the prisoners who are in the wrong.
RosRos - "What madness is it that a State can lock up 1.5million people on a tiny strip of land and deny them food, water, medicine and access to the outside world and there are those who would have us believe it is the prisoners who are in the wrong." - which is the very core of the argument, and argument the zionists cannot confront without a deluge of cheap lies.
These people are truly sick.
Bomb A Ghetto - Raise A Cheer
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21746.htm
By Paul Craig Roberts.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21755.htm
Responding to mounting reports from the Red Cross and human rights organizations of Israel’s massive war crimes in Gaza, the United Nations Human Rights Council voted 33-1 on January 12 to condemn Israel for grave offenses against human rights.
On January 13, the London Times reported that Israelis have gathered on a hillside overlooking Gaza to enjoy the slaughter of Palestinians in what the Times calls “the ultimate spectator sport.”
It is American supplied F-16 fighter jets, helicopter gunships, missiles, and bombs that are destroying the civilian infrastructure of Gaza and murdering the Palestinians who have been packed into the tiny strip of land. What is happening to the Palestinians herded into the Gaza Ghetto is happening because of American money and weapons. It is just as much an attack by the United States as an attack by Israel. The US government is complicit in the war crimes.
Yet in his farewell press conference on January 12, Bush said that the world respects America for its compassion.
The compassion of bombing a UN school for girls?
The compassion of herding 100 Palestinians into one house and then shelling it?
The compassion of bombing hospitals and mosques?
The compassion of depriving 1.5 million Palestinians of food, medicine, and energy?
The compassion of violently overthrowing the democratically elected Hamas government?
The compassion of blowing up the infrastructure of one of the poorest and most deprived people on earth?
The compassion of abstaining from a Security Council vote condemning these actions?
And this is a repeat of what the Israelis and Americans did to Lebanon in 2006, what the Americans did to Iraqis for six years and are continuing to do to Afghans after seven years. And still hope to do to the Iranians and Syrians.
Support Gaza. Send this link around. The faces of innocent death speak more than a thousand words.
http://www.gazatoday.blogspot.com/
RosRos, take a look at that clip again and ask yourself whether this behaviour might not go some way toward explaining why the world took so long to come to the aid of the last victims of a systematic slaughter in concentration camps controlled by a militarily superior regime.
History will again judge us by the way in which we stood by and waited too long before coming to the aid of these victims.
Ignorance and fear at core. The Germans were in the main ignorant of what the Nazis were doing. Some, probably most, were ignorant because they really did not know and others were ignorant because they chose to be. Israelis and their supporters are the same. American Jews carry a double load because they are both American and Jewish. They suffer from American insularity, ignorance, arrogance and often aggression (sourced in fear of the other) and the Jewish insularity, ignorance, arrogance and belief in one’s superiority and rightness.
Many of these people are simply incapable of thinking rationally, particularly about this issue.
The woman who screamed kill them all, or something to that effect and the one who said there really was no limit on how many were killed (so it would have been okay to kill 12million Jews since that is the same as sixhmmmmm) was speaking from a place of ignorance, fear and aggression.
None of these things are particular to Jews or to Americans but they seem to have been raised to an art form in American society and the Jewish religion. Well, to be honest, at core the Jewish religion is not like that. It, like all other religions is sourced in a deep compassion and spirituality, but it, like all other religions has been poisoned by later beliefs. But I digress.
Americans are largely ignorant and uncaring of others. Jews pretty much stick with Jews and so don’t know much about non-Jews. Again, not particular, lots of religions and races do that … it is only a problem when the people involved have excessive power at their disposal. The combination of ignorance, arrogance and massive military power is deadly. It took the Germans along an evil path and is doing the same with the Israelis and Americans.
It is a fascinating if deadly psychological study …. how can intelligent, reasonably educated people be so primitive and barbaric?
Ignorance, arrogance and fear are the ingredients.
unfortunately "we" never came to the aid of the victims of the Nazi’s. Had Hitler just exterminated Jews/Commies/Gays/Romany etc within a defined area and not threatened the borders of European states "we" would have happily allowed him to continue.
Nation states do not and never have acted in a moral interest. They act in their own financial and strategic interests.
The rescue of those dying in Nazi camps was a happy by product of the allied desire to stop Germany stealing all the good colonies.
For the foreseeable future their is no reason for the west to come to the aid of Palestine because there is nothing in it for them.
Perhaps if certain western democracies really start to get scared of peak oil and the burgeoning popular movements against their handpicked middle east dictators then maybe Israel will feel some heat from fellow nation states but I doubt it.
Apartheid in South Africa was brought down by pressure from civilians who personally boycotted South Africa and eventually forced their governments to do the same. That’s how I see a solution, individuals in the west becoming more informed and taking action which is why countering the bullshit propaganda that passes for news in most media outlets (the worst being in the US) is so important.
philannetta: "alphacrucis: fascinating. Tell me more about where colonial occupation fits in progressive thought."
The Jews are indigenous to Israel, so I hardly think "colonial" is a term that could possibly apply to their presence in the state of Israel.
Progressives in the US are almost universally supportive of Israel. Read the Huffington Post sometime.
It’s pretty interesting watching the rabid Israel-haters blathering on in post after post.
Most NM readers must be perplexed by why on this particular issue, Israel is bashed in the most vile terms, in terms that would never be acceptable for any other country, even countries that actually commit atrocities (Sudan, Syria, Iran, Rwanda, Zimbabwe).
Singling Israel out for special and ferocious criticism could only be because it is a Jewish state. I can think of no other reason.
alphacrucis.
The Jews are not indigenous to Israel. Being Jewish is not a race it is a religion.
Just because a few Hebrew tribes lived for a time in the area, along with a lot of other tribes I might add, it doesn’t give them rights. The Romans lived in southern England for a long time, after moving in as colonists as the Hebrews did in Canaan, but no-one suggests they have rights.
Most Israelis are not even semitic. Judaism, like all religions, actively took converts…. and Jews lapsed, thankfully as my ancestors did. The really good thing is that all of them gave up all religions for which I am grateful.
In addition, a lot of Jews actively opposed the founding of Israel. They considered it a wrong, which it was, and a disaster for the future, which it is. They recognised that Judaism was a religion, not a race or a country and Jews had no particular rights to Palestine.
alphacrucis, Palestinians are indigenous to Israel. The illegal occupation of Palestinian lands and the sytematic encroachment into those lands by people who were born in Russia, USA, Lithuania, Poland, Australia, South Africa etc is where progressives have the anti-colonial misgivings.
Face it, you are a mob of right wing fascist racists and if you want to convince anyone of the contrary I would recommend you select people who are entirely misinformed and easily fooled.
alphacrucis,
Israel is criticised because the behaviour of Israel is the topic here. That may be difficult for you to grasp but it is the reality.
Let’s take a look though at why Israel is different to others you cite:
1. Sudan (a very nasty war between opposing sides in a non-democratic and undeveloped nation.)
2. Syria. (No war from what I can see. Syrians are not occupying or colonising anyone. Syria works reasonably well but of course it is not a democracy and is guilty of many human rights abuses.
3. Iran. No war there. The Iranians are not occupying or colonising anyone. They are not a democracy and the people are limited in their freedoms and subjected to human rights abuses.
4. Rwanda. At peace now. It had a shocking genocidal war between opposing tribes. It is not democratic but peace and a reasonable quality of life is being created.
5.Zimbabwe. No war, just an insane and tyrannical leader who was, Imight add, democratically elected in the first place but who now rigs the system to stay there. Zimbabwe is not occupying or colonising anyone but is guilty of serious human rights abuses. This was a semi-developed nation.
6. Israel. Like Zim it is a democracy but like Zim it has a democratically elected government which has turned into a tyrant. The difference is that the Israeli leaders don’t persecute Israelis who belong to the Jewish religion but they do persecute the others. Israel is therefore a democratic developed nation which, out of all those you cite, is the only occupier and coloniser. More to the point, Israel, unlike the others, has attacked its neighbours. Israel is guilty of war crimes and appalling human rights abuses. It is the only one of these nations which is both democratic and tyrannical toward other nations and its own indigenous peoples.
Now, if the topic here were about any of the other nations you cite that is what we would discuss. But it is a good opportunity to clarify the reality of Israel as the only developed democratic nation in the world at the present time which is a tyrannical regime guilty of State sanctioned terrorism, war crimes and human rights abuses.
p.s. no-one here hates Israelis or Jews they just hate what they do.
alphacrusis please stop attributing vile racist agendas to people simply because you are too small minded or bigoted to see there’s legitimate reasons to criticise Israel over above nations that (a) do not claim to be democratic (b) are not currently occupying another land (c) are not supported by our own government (e) in contravention of countless international laws and (d) at war with anyone else at the present time
as for your "indigenous" claim, why is it that Jews who left the middle east and went to Europe over a THOUSAND years ago are considered indigenous but Palestinians terrorised from their homes by Irgun and Stern scum 60 years ago have to accept that they can NEVER return?
How come Israelis get to "return" even if no-one in their family has been near the mid east in GENERATIONS but a man born in what is now Tel Aviv is told nope no return and no compensation?
I don’t suppose you’ll answer the question much like you’ve not answered any that have been put to you in response to your easily debunked posts (any answer yet on Darwish’s lies about her father? no?) just move on to the next meme from the cheat sheet you’re no doubt following
The president of the UN General Assembly has condemned Israel’s killings of Palestinians in its Gaza offensive as "genocide".
Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann also told Al Jazeera he had never believed that the UN Security Council would be able to stop the violence in Gaza and that Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, had practically told the UN to "mind their own business" by continuing the offensive.
"The number of victims in Gaza is increasing by the day… The situation is untenable. It’s genocide," d’Escoto said at the UN in New York.
I’ve been adding some research into the crikey ezine strings and there are some points beyond rhetoric for the Friends of Israel as I call them.
Only 1% of rockets and mortars were fired during the first 4 months of the truce.
Israel was in constructive breach by continuing the crippling blockade. Hamas in breach from November for a tunnel into Israel. Israel in breach for an air strike killing 5 Hamas members. From November the ceasefire fell apart.
Legal Professor Falk UN rapporteur of Princeton says 1/4 of the 1.5 million in Gaza are anaemic children (leading to preventable deaths). Keim QC says Falk was banned from Gaza in December and detained at the airport so he couldn’t report to the UN Human Rights Council.
Yigal Amir, who shot PM Rabin in late 1995 wants Greater Israel and transfer of the Arabs. He is supported says Haaretz by 30% of the population who say he should be pardoned. In 2004 he was allowed from his life sentence in gaol to get married. Contact visit by wife. He now has a son. Compare Mordechai Vanunu gaol for 20 years for revealing nukes at Dimona.
Extrapolating to compulsory service in the IDF 30% and probably more support Yigal Amir, Greater Israel, shooting of Rabin, shooting of UN facilities and staff, shooting of Arab civilians, who get in the way of their agenda. This extremist element are in Gaza NOW with their finger on the trigger.
They are the Blackwater of Israel’s military industrial complex. Oh and just to wrap up, Israel has no written constitution so it has no objectively accountable land law. It just gets made up as they go along in a biased way. Racism? Aparthied? Yep.
This powerful minority wouldn’t matter but the politicians Livni, Barak, Netanyahu all need to form a majority coalition with the extremist Right in Feb 09. That’s why there is a slaughter in Palestine in my judgement. It’s as crude and ugly as that.
Oh and this report shows Gaza has $4B in offshore gas reserves that Israel wants, about 10% of their energy budget apparently:
"BG Group at centre of $4bn deal to supply Gaza gas to Israel"
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/natural_…
What Israeli business/political snouts are into this project I wonder?
rosross: "alphacrucis.
The Jews are not indigenous to Israel. Being Jewish is not a race it is a religion."
The Jews are indigenous to Israel. It is a matter of historical and archaeological record. They are indigenous to Israel like Australian Aborigines are to this country, unless you say that Australian Aborigines aren’t truly indigenous because they came here by boat 40,000 years ago - in which case, the word "indigenous" is cleansed of all meaning.
Your comment about being Jewish being a religion is misguided. Look up "Judaism" and then look up "Jew" and "Jewish". These are fundamentally different terms. You are right - Jews are not a race. But nor are they a religion. Jews are an ethnoreligious group. And they are indigenous to Israel.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to clarify that issue.
misnomar, you don’t need a cheat sheet if you think for yourself. However, I simply can’t respond to every ridiculous comment you make. There are too many of them.
"The president of the UN General Assembly has condemned Israel’s killings of Palestinians in its Gaza offensive as "genocide"."
Yes, he’s a certified, Ahmedinejad-hugging, antisemite.
Tom McLaughlin: "Oh and just to wrap up, Israel has no written constitution so it has no objectively accountable land law."
Tom, your whole post is a series of unsupported, absurd claims, of which this last one is the most egregious.
Britain also has no single constitutional document. Does it also have "no objectively accountable land law"?
Absurd, primary school logic.
Some good arguments put for the case for Israel from the faithful.
The others against are by self- proclaimed antisemites and history revisionists and dare I say "sickos".
The cease fire would impact on Hamas’ victory over Israel, at their finest hour. (according to the current spokesman, another of the "departed".
Let them fight the "occupiers", their "prison wardens"
The IDF will no doubt surrender shortly to Hamas, and run leaving their boots.
How can the world even contemplate robbing the Palestinians of such a victory? ha ha ha
Oli
Make your point alphacrucis, and then go find some unsuspecting person’s piece of land to squat on.
revilo, are you also one of those raging mad zealots who claim you are favoured by some divine being which gifted the land of Palestine to you all?
You are not divine revilo, you are a preternatural group of things devoid of all values and principles which humanity recognises and describes as "human".
For proof and evidence of the above please consult current news events under "Gaza".
For anybody who wants to see the epitome of antisemitism, see Rockjaw’s above comment to revilo, who is Jewish:
"You are not divine revilo, you are a preternatural group of things devoid of all values and principles which humanity recognises and describes as "human"."
Translation: "Jews are inhuman".
This is what we have to contend with.
Before I am drawn into a response alphacrucis, remind us all again, is "Jewish" a religion? an ethnicity? a race? a philosophy? a political ideology? a rock group? a movie? a criminal organisation?
I like Wikipedia’s definition
Jew
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For the Jewish religion, see Judaism.
A Jew (Hebrew: יְהוּדִי, Yehudi (sl.); יְהוּדִים, Yehudim (pl.); Ladino: ג׳ודיו, Djudio (sl.); ג׳ודיוס, Djudios (pl.); Yiddish: ייִד, Yid (sl.); ייִדן, Yidn (pl.))[10] is a member of the Jewish people, an ethnoreligious group originating from the Israelites or Hebrews of the ancient Middle East.
If today’s anti-Israel journalists were in charge in 1943: http://farm1.static.flickr.com/77/213535398_6057b8beef.jpg?v=0
Great definition alphacrucis. "Ethnoreligious" - now that is fascinating.
One question confuses me though, is Judaism the only ethnicity a person can convert to or is it possible to convert to any ethnicity of your choice in Israel? And for those who feel victimised and threatened by 6 month old Gazan terrorists, is the process of ethnic conversion reversible?
Even more confusing, when converting from say, an Alaskan Eskimo to a full blooded Jewish Israeli, is it science or divine intervention which is most commonly used?
I’m not sure why you are being flip about what the Jewish people is. There isn’t a serious anthropologist in the world who would argue that the Jews constitute more than a mere religious group. Most scholars and laypeople refer to the "Jewish people" because of this.
I suspect your confusion stems from the fact that the Jews are the oldest surviving ethnic group in history. You try to compare the Jewish return to Israel to something and are unable to because the Jews’ return to their homeland was unprecedented in human history.
I understand that you regard the return of the Jews to their land as a "crime" but that is not really my problem. I am not particularly interested in debating history with you; Israel is a reality and you are going to have to deal with it.
As for your diminution of the threat of Palestinian terrorists (apparently you believe that Gaza is a land mass populated by maternity wards and creches full of babies) - one minute, you claim that the Palestinians have every right to "resist" the non-existent "occupation", the next minute you are claiming that Israel is fighting six-month-old babies.
Which is it?
And why don’t you go to Gaza to volunteer for Hamas? They need you right now. I hear they’ve temporarily run out of people who want to strap explosives to themselves.
alphacrucis, why don’t you go back to the goons who send you that crap to distribute and tell them what a mob of schlamiels we all think they are.
Boy, you guys have been watching Mr Smith from the Matrix movies a little too much.
"I’m not sure why you are being flip about what the Jewish people is." - are you serious? It’s a dead giveaway you dumb mashuga. The mass produced propaganda style is in every sentence you wrote, in every nuance of it’s language and in every idea which it conveys.
Mass produced industrialised propaganda from a dirty murderer in Tel Aviv.
Can’t you at least disguise the propaganda a little by asking an Australian to rewrite it in language which might come across a little more authentic mate?
You people are not impressing anybody and if you really did have a case, that case is being seriously damaged by these amateurish propaganda operations all over the internet these days.
Go hoodwink the "Ameeericans" if you like, but you are going to find most Australians are a little less easily bullshitted mate.
alphacrucis - please point out just ONE "ridiculous comment" I have made - point to just ONE non verifiable FACT
Then once again please explain HOW Noni Darwish’s father was a free officer and a jihadist
If you can not please admit that you either do not know enough about Darwish to be quoting her or are deliberate obfuscating
alphacrucis are you really trying to claim Judaism as an ethnicity? it may well be a CULTURAL group but how on earth can you argue that an Ethiopian Jew and a German Jew are of the same ethnicity?
Why is it that you think there is an ethnic kinship between the Ashkenazi and the Sephardi that is so important but the ethnic kinship between the Semitic peoples is unimportant to you?
The "indigenous" Jews of Palestine share FAR FAR more ethnic kinship with their Palestinian cousins than they do with the Ashkenazi elite
Dear unhoodwinked *wink-wink* Rockjaw
"Ethno-religious" is a compound word.
Your Venn is misaligned - “Ethno-religious” is not (only) the little area of double shading between the greater encircling - the ethno AND the religious.
[Points to the little bit of darker grey in the pretty circles.]
Its anyone within any of the greater definitions - ethno OR religious…
The word’s foundation is disjunctive¿
Geddit¿
"… we can repeat all this, slowly, if you would want to¿"
[Wipes a frenetic yet disenthralled brow…]
"Oh dear … the non-goons, the un-schlameils, the smart-mashugas, and the Australian-languaged-authentics, all the youses , plus the extra-‘you-people’ (and all other extra-peoples OR extra-terrestrials), and well not to forget the fully professional propagandists, and the easy/hard-to-bullshit-mates do so rather have such a dastardly mindset issue getting concepts about their stone cold concrete encrusted craniums?”
———————————————————————————————
Point is … even without divine intervention its perfectly acceptable for the Alaskan Eskimo to be a full blooded Jewish Israeli. Possibly - god willing - as likely as a Greenland Eskimo mounting a camel to become a pedigreed Muslim Gazan
hmmm … or would that only be the progeny¿
(The camel – not the Eskimo¿)
dunno4sure¿
oops
its s/b it’s
dunno4sure¿
The oldest surviving ethnic, cultural and ‘religious’(spiritual0 group is the Australian Aborigine. The oldest surviving culture is Egyptian. The oldest religion is Jainism, at least they believe so, or Wicca, the modern version of the great Goddess religion.
Jews are a religious group, not ethnic, which is why one can be, and was, a Jewish convert. Ethiopian Jews, German Jews, even Indian Jews … very different racial groups. And the reason that Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jewish groups in Israel do not get on particularly well is because they are ethnically and culturally different. Their common ground is Judaism, the religion.
Judaism is no different to Catholicism which also draws upon all races and cultures and where one is born a Catholic just as one is born a Jew (only through the mother though) and where one may lapse, known in the Jewish religion as a secular Jew and known in Catholicism as a lapsed Catholic. One maintains the religious connection even when one does not practice.
As others have said, the people most likely to have connections with the tribes which inhabited Canaan thousands of years ago, including Hebrew tribes, are Arabs, including Palestinians, because they remained in the area and did not marry into other ethnic groups as the Jews did. Most Israelis are not semitic peoples, too much interbreeding for that. Most Arabs are semitic peoples.
p.s. Wikipedia is the McDonalds of research. It is no more than a collection of people’s opinions and should be seen as such. It can be useful but it is not respected.
Hope at last. The times are changing.
Published on Wednesday, January 14, 2009 by The Guardian/UK
Israel’s Free Ride Ends
As Israel pulverises Gaza, questions and doubts about Israeli policy are becoming more prominent in the American media
by Michelle Goldberg
It’s a common, almost clichéd observation that the American media is less critical of Israeli policy than the Israeli media. In mainstream American depictions of the ceaseless misery of the Middle East, Israeli righteousness and Arab violence are routinely emphasised. The reality of Israeli settlements and Palestinian suffering have been, at best, a footnote.
Conservatives often complain that the news isn’t even more biased toward the Jewish state - or the most hawkish elements within it - but such carping both obscures and reinforces the real distortion in American Middle East coverage, serving as a pre-emptive warning to any outlet that might show too much sympathy for the Palestinians. (The crudeness of Israel’s most vociferous detractors on the far left doesn’t help, since it further marginalises criticism of Israel as the preserve of cranks who can’t see a difference between Dachau and Jenin.)
Slowly, though, something is changing. As Israel pulverises Gaza, questions and doubts about Israeli policy are becoming more prominent in the American media. The failure of the war in Iraq and the attendant discrediting of neoconservatism has opened up new space in the American conversation. With the American right dejected and weakened, there’s less pressure on the press to display the kind of boorish one-sidedness that self-congratulatory conservatives like to call "moral clarity". Israel’s disproportionate retaliation in Gaza is increasingly recognised as both brutal and, in all likelihood, ultimately futile. In destroying Gaza, Israel is also destroying the American taboo that has ensured the country such unstintingly favourable media coverag
More truth. Keep it coming. ISRAEL BROKE THE CEASEFIRE NOT HAMAS.
Published on Wednesday, January 14, 2009 by CommonDreams.org
Chronology: Which Side Violated the Israel-Gaza Ceasefire?
The Bush Administration and The New York Times v. Amnesty International
by Howard Friel
Introduction
June 18, 2008
Israel has approved a ceasefire to end months of bitter clashes with the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas in Gaza, Israeli officials have confirmed. Under the terms of the truce, which is set to begin Thursday (June 19), Israel will ease its blockade on the Gaza Strip. At the same time, talks to release an Israeli soldier [Gilad Shalit] held by Hamas would intensify, an Israeli official said. Hamas, which controls Gaza, says it is confident that all militants will abide by the truce [by not firing rockets into southern Israel]. The agreement is supposed to last six months. (Emphasis added) ("Israel Agrees to Gaza Ceasefire," BBC, June 18, 2008)
Killing Children With Impunity
By HENRY A. GIROUX
The unsettling and deeply disturbing images of children in Gaza mutilated, bleeding, and dead evoke similar images from our collective memory.
……
Why are the shocking images of Emmet Till or the bloated bodies of Katrina victims any more moving or a cause for outrage and collective action among Americans than the image of a two year-old child hit by an Israeli shell while running for safety? One such image was described by an aid worker in the following terms: "It was like charcoal. … Also without any limbs, because some of the animals ate some of his limbs." Is it conceivable that Palestinians are now viewed as a population so disposable and without any redeeming value that even images of Palestinian children being blown apart by rockets and gunfire no longer elicit a need for moral outrage and rigorous political criticism?
http://www.counterpunch.org/giroux01142009.html
Israel’s War Of Deceit,
Lies And Propaganda
By Uri Avnery
14 January, 2009
Gulf Times
Nearly 70 years ago, in the course of the Second World War, a heinous crime was committed in the city of Leningrad. For more than a thousand days, a gang of extremists called "the Red Army" held the millions of the town’s inhabitants hostage and provoked retaliation from the German Wehrmacht from inside the population centres.
The Germans had no alternative but to bomb and shell the population and to impose a total blockade, which caused the death of hundreds of thousands.
Some time before that, a similar crime was committed in England. The Churchill gang hid among the population of London, misusing the millions of citizens as a human shield. The Germans were compelled to send their Luftwaffe and reluctantly reduce the city to ruins. They called it the Blitz.
This is the description that would now appear in the history books - if the Germans had won the war.
Absurd? No more than the daily descriptions in Israeli media, which are being repeated ad nauseam: the Hamas "terrorists" use the inhabitants of Gaza as "hostages" and exploit the women and children as "human shields", they leave Israel no alternative but to carry out massive bombardments, in which, to Israel’s deep sorrow, thousands of women, children and unarmed men are killed and injured.
In this war, as in any modern war, propaganda plays a major role. Almost all the Western media initially repeated the official Israeli propaganda line.
http://www.countercurrents.org/avnery140109.htm
Israel’s lies are being revealed.
OPINION: WAR ON GAZA
Who will save Israel from itself?
By Mark LeVine
The Israeli government’s justifications for the war are being scrutinised [GALLO/GETTY]
One by one the justifications given by Israel for its latest war in Gaza are unravelling.
The argument that this is a purely defensive war, launched only after Hamas broke a six-month ceasefire has been challenged, not just by observers in the know such as Jimmy Carter, the former US president who helped facilitate the truce, but by centre-right Israeli intelligence think tanks.
The Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, whose December 31 report titled "Six Months of the Lull Arrangement Intelligence Report," confirmed that the June 19 truce was only "sporadically violated, and then not by Hamas but instead by … "rogue terrorist organisations".
Instead, "the escalation and erosion of the lull arrangement" occurred after Israel killed six Hamas members on November 4 without provocation and then placed the entire Strip under an even more intensive siege the next day.
IN DEPTH
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According to a joint Tel Aviv University-European University study, this fits a larger pattern in which Israeli violence has been responsible for ending 79 per cent of all lulls in violence since the outbreak of the second intifada, compared with only 8 per cent for Hamas and other Palestinian factions.
Indeed, the Israeli foreign ministry seems to realise that this argument is losing credibility.
During a conference call with half a dozen pro-Israel professors on Thursday, Asaf Shariv, the Consul General of Israel in New York, focused more on the importance of destroying the intricate tunnel system connecting Gaza to the Sinai.
He claimed that such tunnels were "as big as the Holland and Lincoln tunnels," and offered as proof the "fact" that lions and monkeys had been smuggled through them to a zoo in Gaza. In reality, the lions were two small cubs that were drugged, thrown in sacks, and dragged through a tunnel on their way to a private zoo.
Israel’s self-image
The claim that Hamas will never accept the existence of Israel has proved equally misinformed, as Hamas leaders explicitly announce their intention to do just that in the pages of the Los Angeles Times or to any international leader or journalist who will meet with them.
With each new family, 10, 20 and 30 strong, buried under the rubble of a building in Gaza, the claim that the Israeli forces have gone out of their way to diminish civilian casualties - long a centre-piece of Israel’s image as an enlightened and moral democracy - is falling apart.
Anyone with an internet connection can Google "Gaza humanitarian catastrophe" and find the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the Occupied Territories and read the thousands of pages of evidence documenting the reality of the current fighting, and the long term siege on Gaza that preceded it.
The Red Cross, normally scrupulous in its unwillingness to single out parties to a conflict for criticism, sharply criticised Israel for preventing medical personnel from reaching wounded Palestinians, some of whom remained trapped for days, slowly starving and dying in the Gazan rubble amidst their dead relatives.
and………….
Israeli commentators and scholars, self-described "loyal" Zionists who served proudly in the army in wars past, are now publicly describing their country, in the words of Oxford University professor Avi Shlaim, as a "rogue" and gangster" state led by "completely unscrupulous leaders".
Gazans inspect the damage after an air strike hit a mosque [GALLO/GETTY]
Neve Gordon, a politics professor at Ben Gurion University, has declared that Israel’s actions in Gaza are like "raising animals for slaughter on a farm" and represent a "bizarre new moral element" in warfare.
"The moral voice of restraint has been left behind … Everything is permitted" against Palestinians, writes a disgusted Haaretz columnist, Gideon Levy.
Fellow Haaretz columnist and daughter of Holocaust survivors, Amira Haas writes of her late parents disgust at how Israeli leaders justified Israel’s wars with a "language laundromat" aimed at redefining reality and Israel’s moral compass. "Lucky my parents aren’t alive to see this," she exclaimed.
Around the world people are beginning to compare Israel’s attack on Gaza, which after the 2005 withdrawal of Israeli forces and settlers was turned literally into the world’s largest prison, to the Jewish uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto.
From Who Will Save Israel From Itself by Mark Levine.
http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/war_on_gaza/2009/01/20091101127232607…
Hamas is anti-Zionist and therefore a direct threat to the survival of Israel and it will be dismantled just like Hizbullah, even if it takes months or years.
Don’t be fooled! These Muslim extremists are not Palestinian nationalists, but Muslim fundamentalists hell-bent on destroying Israel through defamation (war crimes and blockades) as a consequence of their defiance of Geneva Conventions, by using their own people!! Gazans as human shields in war.
Israel has no choice now but to destroy their comprehensive tunnel infrastructure and Hamas knows that, which is exactly why they did what they did - build these illegal smuggling tunnels, with entrances in their homes - the Mansour family are probably guilty of this, hence their fear of ‘certain death’ if they stay in their home. And I wouldn’t be surprised if they make some ‘dirty money’ from having this concealed tunnel entrance/exit in their homes too.
And isn’t it a bit strange how they manage to smuggle in so many arms and munitions and yet the basic needs of their population are not met?
Denise, did you get a legal opinion before you started torturing logic?
philannetta.blogspot.com
Denise, Hezbollah has not been dismantled. It won the war Israel waged against Lebanon. It is stronger than ever. Ironically, it, like Hamas was originally encouraged and supported by Israel as a foil. Be careful what you wish for!
You know, with a third of the dead children and nearly half of the dead women and children, I am sure those Palestinians in Gaza would be surprised to know they are fundamentalists hellbent on destroying Israel. By the way, given that they live under occupation and in prison and have very basic weaponry compared to Israel’s arsenal, just how do you think they could destroy Israel? That’s like saying the Tibetans are a threat to China! Ludicrous.
And they did smuggle in food and medicine which is the only way the Gazans have managed to stay alive during Israel’s siege. I suppose you think the jews in the Warsaw Ghetto were terrorists and using their women and children as human shields because they also smuggled in weapons as well as food to fight their occupier. Ooops, I forgot, by your criteria the Gestapo were the victims and the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto the dangerous aggressors.
philannetta - she didn’t need legal advice she wasn’t "torturing" logic just using creative interrogation techniques on it ; )
Denise clearly has a stronger stomach than most to ignore the photos of murdered and maimed Palestinian children. Luckily she is the exception, not the rule.
Dear Rosross
You have certainly accumulated a vast ‘cut & paste’ compendium of the poor defenseless Hamas/Palestinian cause…over this and any of the too many prevoius threads.
Anything/one that vaguely invokes a thought ‘Palestinian’ is captured and ignominiously pasted and plonked into this unwitting and annexed outcry-smorgasbord/zoo¿
A virtual —> Wikipalestiniapedia <— on good grief¿
You’d think after awhile, despite the tedium, that some sort of collective argument would emerge.
… then perhaps not? Somehow the argument does tend to subvert itself into a drone of sonorous incessancy – a wail that rather diminishes what ought be said?
Evidence, perhaps, of the meager Mediterranean ‘pain-threshold’ syndrome.
"Methinks they scream too much?"
——————————————————————-
PS "The oldest surviving ethnic, cultural and ‘religious’(spiritual) group is the Australian Aborigine"
…oh yes¿¿
Huh? What a crock?
(Only ‘Whiteman’ Dobson qualifies - as the oldest surviving Ozzie Aboriginal Relic for that – as his predominantly Irish bloodline - claims obscure welfare “sorry” grants.)
dunno4sure¿
Denko, I am merely taking the opportunity to spread information far and wide thanks to the open-mindedness and conscience shown by New Matilda. I’m glad you are reading along. Who knows, at some point the truth may be enough for you to comprehend as well.
I wonder how many infanticides will be committed today? Does anybody know of a good reliable source of information which has not been sanitised by the goons in Tel Aviv??
rockjaw "Mass produced industrialised propaganda from a dirty murderer in Tel Aviv. Can’t you at least disguise the propaganda a little by asking an Australian to rewrite it in language which might come across a little more authentic mate?"
I may be a "dirty Zionist" (aka Jew) but I’m in Australia and I am an Australian citizen. Feel free to post your street address and I’ll pop around to your place for some high tea to prove it to you if you like. Mate.
I’ve taken to skimming through the mountains of propaganda trotted out by the Palestinian apologists that troll this forum.
Their sources are highly suspect and yet they have the audacity to pull me up on mentioning that I am in favour (note the U in favour, Rockjaw) of the definition of Jew in wikipedia. As if that makes me in favour of replacing all good searches of journal databases with wikipedia. I mean, come on.
I am happy to respond to matters of substance, but when the discourse has sunk to "I wonder how many infanticides will be committed today?" then I think it may be time for the pro-Hamasniks to quit while they’re behind.
Hey alpha, even the US media is starting to perceive and tell the truth. That is truly astonishing and wonderful for all those who believe in principles of justice.
Think about this, those with our perspective have on their side all international human rights groups including Israeli, Red Cross, Red Crescent, United Nations, Geneva Convention, peace activists, IDF dissenters, now most of the world’s media to varying degrees and anyone of conscience.
Israel on the other hand has supporters like yourself, many Israelis, some Jews and well, supporters like yourself.
It rather says it all doesn’t it? World opinion is now resonating with truth.