I don’t know why it took so long for this story to come to light, but better late than never, and although I’m not a fan of Alice Walker I admire her integrity for identifying with the struggle of people who are as oppressed as some of the people of Walker’s novels. Now there are two African American women who have put their lives on the line by defying Israeli authority and going to Gaza to see first hand what it’s like there; the other being Cynthia McKinney. Where are African-American males on this issue or any other American male for that matter? You can read what Walker had to say here, at DesertPeace. Hat tip to them. Check out an interview with Walker while in Gaza below.
Tag: Gaza
Americans Punked by the Israeli War Machine
It’s sad to see how helpless Americans feel when they try to help Palestinians and have to deal with the Israeli government instead. Placing themselves at great danger when confronted with Israelis, Americans have come to learn they cannot depend on Washington to help them in such confrontations. Witness the hopelessness in the Shapiro post here. It’s interesting to note that Shapiro’s cargo that was interdicted by the Israelis included toys, medicines, toolkits, olive tree saplings, and one 50-kilo bag of cement. This is the same relief effort that got Cynthia McKinney arrested, who said the cargo was mostly crayons for kids to draw; the point being there was nothing that could be even remotely considered threatening to the existence of Israel. A simple check of the ship’s cargo by all the people assembled to block this one boat could have ascertained this more quickly and at less expense to US taxpayers than all the showboating and bluster put on by F16 overflights and the incarceration of those aboard. Existential threats to Israel ceased long ago and what Israel seeks to do with it’s blockade of Gaza, an act of war, is to get Palestinians to leave Gaza, or at the very least accept serfdom under the authority of the Israeli government.
By accepting this 2nd class international relationship, the US is giving up its claim to being a superpower and has become instead a super bitch to the Israeli war machine. Even now the US Secretary of Defense is headed to Israel to hold talks with officials there about Iran. There is no mutual give and take in the American-Israeli alliance there is only take on the part of the Israelis who leave even people of good will feeling utterly hopeless, and which makes Washington look increasingly more impotent.
Memory Hole Material
I’m posting this because of the source, Israeli, of an accusation that hasn’t been admitted by them before, i.e. the issue of using human shields during the Gaza invasion. Check out the spin that has already begun.
Breaking the Silence activist group presents report of testimonies from Gaza offensive in which soldiers say destruction, civilian casualties were direct result of IDF policy. Army: Testimonies are general, anonymous, and unreliable
A number of IDF soldiers who took part in Israel’s recent Gaza offensive say they were urged by commanders to shoot first and worry later about sorting out civilians from combatants. Accordingly, they say, the force went into Gaza with guns blazing.
In print and video testimony published on Wednesday by the activist group Breaking the Silence, the 30 soldiers say the army’s imperative was to minimize its own casualties to ensure Israeli public support for the operation.
“Better hit an innocent than hesitate to target an enemy,” is a typical description by one unidentified soldier of his understanding of instructions repeated at pre-invasion briefings and during the 22-day operation, from Dec. 27 to Jan. 18.
“If you’re not sure, kill. Fire power was insane. We went in and the booms were just mad,” says another. “The minute we got to our starting line, we simply began to fire at suspect places. In urban warfare, anyone is your enemy. No innocents.”
The 112-page report by Breaking the Silence includes testimonies of 30 soldiers “who served in all sectors of the operation”.
“The majority … are still serving in their regular military units and turned to us in deep distress at the moral deterioration of the IDF,” it says. Their narratives “are enough to bring into question the credibility of the official IDF versions”.
Except for a sergeant named Amir, the soldiers are anonymous and their faces digitally blurred. The group said it had funding from Israeli human rights groups and the governments of Britain, the Netherlands and Spain, and from the European Union.
“We believe that the existence of a moral society clearly requires a profound, honest discussion, of which the voice of soldiers on the ground is an inseparable part,” the group says.
Soldiers describe a “Neighbor Procedure” in which civilians were forced to enter suspect buildings ahead of troops. They cite cases of civilians advancing in front of a soldier resting his rifle on their shoulder.
The report repeats charges denied by Israel that white phosphorus was fired indiscriminately into Gaza streets. It cites “massive destruction was unrelated to any direct threat to Israeli forces” and “permissive” rules of engagement.
“We did not get instructions to shoot at anything that moved,” says one soldier. “But we were generally instructed: if you feel threatened, shoot. They kept repeating to us that this is war and in war opening fire is not restricted.”
The report also mentions armored bulldozers razing whole areas including gardens, and olive and orange groves. “We didn’t see a single house that was intact … that was not hit. The entire infrastructure, tracks, fields, roads, was in total ruin. The D-9 (bulldozer) had gone over everything,” the report quotes a soldier as saying.
“There was a clear feeling, and this was repeated whenever others spoke to us, that no humanitarian consideration played any role in the army at present. The goal was to carry out an operation with the least possible casualties for the army.”
IDF: Soldiers should come forth
The testimonies challenge assertions by Israeli officials and pro-Israel groups in the United States that “Israel did all it could to avoid civilian casualties”, as Kenneth Jacobson of the Anti-Defamation League wrote last week to the New York Times.
The League denounced Amnesty International for labeling Israel’s actions as “wanton” destruction and said it was “outrageously accusing the Israeli military of war crimes”.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak asserted after the war that Israel had the most moral army in the world. These critics say Israelis should not be asked simply to accept that their army’s conduct was “faultless and public accountability uncalled for”.
The IDF, Breaking the Silence said in the preamble to its evidence, went to great lengths to prove that if there were any excesses they were by the “delinquent soldier”.
The testimony suggests that “the massive and unprecedented blow to the infrastructure and civilians of the Gaza Strip was a direct result of IDF policy”.
The IDF Spokesperson’s Office stated in response that the army “regrets the fact that a human rights organization is presenting to Israel and the world, once again, a report containing general and anonymous testimonies without ascertaining their details or reliability and without allowing the IDF, with minimal fairness, a chance to probe the affairs and respond prior to their publication”.
The statement adds that the IDF “believes Breaking the Silence should encourage testifiers to break their silence and present specific claims in order for it to be possible to deal with the claims properly and investigate them, and not to hide behind anonymous testimonies”.
The army also stated that the Gaza offensive was a “no other choice operation” and that five different probes had already been authorized regarding the IDF’s conduct in Gaza. “The IDF is committed to investigating any complaint”, the statement says.
A Palestinian rights group has stated that 1,417 people were killed, 926 of them civilians, during Operation Cast Lead. But the army has put the death toll at 1,166 and estimated 295 dead were civilians. Ten IDF soldiers and three Israeli civilians were also killed.
Cynthia McKinney’s letter from an Israeli prison
This is not the last word on McKinney’s attempts at trying to help the people of Gaza, she has already said she will join George Galloway’s attempt to enter Gaza from the Rafah crossing on the Egyptian border, but her letter is worth a mention and her sacrifice at great peril to her own personal safety should be noted.
This is Cynthia McKinney and I’m speaking from an Israeli prison cellblock in Ramle. [I am one of] the Free Gaza 21, human rights activists currently imprisoned for trying to take medical supplies to Gaza, building supplies – and even crayons for children, I had a suitcase full of crayons for children. While we were on our way to Gaza the Israelis threatened to fire on our boat, but we did not turn around. The Israelis high-jacked and arrested us because we wanted to give crayons to the children in Gaza. We have been detained, and we want the people of the world to see how we have been treated just because we wanted to deliver humanitarian assistance to the people of Gaza.
At the outbreak of Israel’s Operation ‘Cast Lead’ [in December 2008], I boarded a Free Gaza boat with one day’s notice and tried, as the US representative in a multi-national delegation, to deliver 3 tons of medical supplies to an already besieged and ravaged Gaza.
During Operation Cast Lead, U.S.-supplied F-16’s rained hellfire on a trapped people. Ethnic cleansing became full scale outright genocide. U.S.-supplied white phosphorus, depleted uranium, robotic technology, DIME weapons, and cluster bombs – new weapons creating injuries never treated before by Jordanian and Norwegian doctors. I was later told by doctors who were there in Gaza during Israel’s onslaught that Gaza had become Israel’s veritable weapons testing laboratory, people used to test and improve the kill ratio of their weapons.
The world saw Israel’s despicable violence thanks to al-Jazeera Arabic and Press TV that broadcast in English. I saw those broadcasts live and around the clock, not from the USA but from Lebanon, where my first attempt to get into Gaza had ended because the Israeli military rammed the boat I was on in international water … It’s a miracle that I’m even here to write about my second encounter with the Israeli military, again a humanitarian mission aborted by the Israeli military.
The Israeli authorities have tried to get us to confess that we committed a crime … I am now known as Israeli prisoner number 88794. How can I be in prison for collecting crayons to kids?
Zionism has surely run out of its last legitimacy if this is what it does to people who believe so deeply in human rights for all that they put their own lives on the line for someone else’s children. Israel is the fullest expression of Zionism, but if Israel fears for its security because Gaza’s children have crayons then not only has Israel lost its last shred of legitimacy, but Israel must be declared a failed state.
I am facing deportation from the state that brought me here at gunpoint after commandeering our boat. I was brought to Israel against my will. I am being held in this prison because I had a dream that Gaza’s children could color & paint, that Gaza’s wounded could be healed, and that Gaza’s bombed-out houses could be rebuilt.
But I’ve learned an interesting thing by being inside this prison. First of all, it’s incredibly black: populated mostly by Ethiopians who also had a dream … like my cellmates, one who is pregnant. They are all are in their twenties. They thought they were coming to the Holy Land. They had a dream that their lives would be better … The once proud, never colonized Ethiopia [has been thrown into] the back pocket of the United States, and become a place of torture, rendition, and occupation. Ethiopians must free their country because superpower politics [have] become more important than human rights and self-determination.
My cellmates came to the Holy Land so they could be free from the exigencies of superpower politics. They committed no crime except to have a dream. They came to Israel because they thought that Israel held promise for them. Their journey to Israel through Sudan and Egypt was arduous. I can only imagine what it must have been like for them. And it wasn’t cheap. Many of them represent their family’s best collective efforts for self-fulfilment. They made their way to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. They got their yellow paper of identification. They got their certificate for police protection. They are refugees from tragedy, and they made it to Israel only after they arrived Israel told them “there is no UN in Israel.”
The police here have license to pick them up & suck them into the black hole of a farce for a justice system. These beautiful, industrious and proud women represent the hopes of entire families. The idea of Israel tricked them and the rest of us. In a widely propagandized slick marketing campaign, Israel represented itself as a place of refuge and safety for the world’s first Jews and Christian. I too believed that marketing and failed to look deeper.
The truth is that Israel lied to the world. Israel lied to the families of these young women. Israel lied to the women themselves who are now trapped in Ramle’s detention facility. And what are we to do? One of my cellmates cried today. She has been here for 6 months. As an American, crying with them is not enough. The policy of the United States must be better, and while we watch President Obama give 12.8 trillion dollars to the financial elite of the United States it ought now be clear that hope, change, and ‘yes we can’ were powerfully presented images of dignity and self-fulfilment, individually and nationally, that besieged people everywhere truly believed in.
It was a slick marketing campaign as slickly put to the world and to the voters of America as was Israel’s marketing to the world. It tricked all of us but, more tragically, these young women.
We must cast an informed vote about better candidates seeking to represent us. I have read and re-read Dr. Martin Luther King Junior’s letter from a Birmingham jail. Never in my wildest dreams would I have ever imagined that I too would one day have to do so. It is clear that taxpayers in Europe and the U.S. have a lot to atone for, for what they’ve done to others around the world.
What an irony! My son begins his law school program without me because I am in prison, in my own way trying to do my best, again, for other people’s children. Forgive me, my son. I guess I’m experiencing the harsh reality which is why people need dreams. [But] I’m lucky. I will leave this place. Has Israel become the place where dreams die?
Ask the people of Palestine. Ask the stream of black and Asian men whom I see being processed at Ramle. Ask the women on my cellblock. [Ask yourself:] what are you willing to do?
Let’s change the world together & reclaim what we all need as human beings: Dignity. I appeal to the United Nations to get these women of Ramle, who have done nothing wrong other than to believe in Israel as the guardian of the Holy Land, resettled in safe homes. I appeal to the United State’s Department of State to include the plight of detained UNHCR-certified refugees in the Israel country report in its annual human rights report. I appeal once again to President Obama to go to Gaza: send your special envoy, George Mitchell there, and to engage Hamas as the elected choice of the Palestinian people.
I dedicate this message to those who struggle to achieve a free Palestine, and to the women I’ve met at Ramle. This is Cynthia McKinney, July 2nd 2009, also known as Ramle prisoner number 88794.
We are committed to censorship and racism
Well at least that’s what we’re saying when we support the current government of Israel whose foreign minister has said he wants to ban Arab Israelis from marking the anniversary of the dispossession of hundreds of thousands of Arab Palestinians in 1948. How does that go over in a country, the US, which allows Jews to mark and commemorate the Holocaust?
Israel Warns EU to tone down
Warnings usually accompany threats, as in ‘if you don’t stop doing this I’m going to do something in response’, so what is Israel’s warning of consequence?
Israel warned the European Union on Thursday to tone down its criticism of the new Israeli government or risk forfeiting the bloc’s role as broker in Mideast peace efforts.
So my question is what is it Israel can threaten the European Union with? Israeli military threats against Europe have been made before and with rabid Israeli politicians now in power, the implication of Israel’s warning is probably not lost on Europeans. Also, Israel has never accepted the EU’s role as a peace broker, the latest Gaza offensive, is proof of that when the Israelis bombed, strafed and blocked aid supplies to Palestinians in Gaza which came from Europe. What is really at stake here is Israeli access to European markets. The Israelis want to ply their trade of espionage, industrial, political and military and they can’t do that now as easily as they can in the US. Evidently old habits die hard in the relations between Europeans and Jews.
Jihad- Jewish style
The religion of peace is like an epitaph Islamophobes almost spit out to denigrate Islam while making a commentary on the latest news surrounding Islam and Muslims. We hear a heckuva whole lot about jihad and Islam but not many people reveal the jihad of other religions and groups of people equally bent on destroying peoples, societies and civilizations.
The Islamic Workplace has a series of articles that outline the jihad undertaken by the Israelis against the Palestinians earlier this year, and if you didn’t know any better you’d think you were listening to what the media says is the refrain most often repeated by Muslims!!
Soldiers interviewed by the Military Institute and Breaking the Silence also allege the army’s chief rabbi used an inflammatory religious and nationalist rhetoric to encourage soldiers to see the Gaza attack as a sacred fight to expel non-Jews from Jewish land.The rabbi’s office passed out booklets during the war that among other things urged soldiers not to show mercy to the enemy. The army’s chief rabbi, Brigadier General Avichai Ronsky, is from Itamar, a West Banks settlement with a history of right-wing activism. Former soldier Yehuda Shaul says the picture that emerges is of a chief military rabbi promoting the fight in Gaza as a holy war.“[There is] a biblical ban on surrendering a single millimeter of it [the Land of Israel] to gentiles, though all sorts of impure distortions and foolishness of autonomy, enclaves and other national weaknesses. We will not abandon it to the hands of another nation, not a finger, not a nail of it.”
Such rhetoric is usually applied to Muslims’ justification for fighting infidels in and on the Arabian peninsula and as such is met with stern disapproval from a frightened and galvanized west. Would that the same call to action against Israeli/Jewish extremism be sounded in the halls of US government and on the pages of prominent American publications. It’s not difficult to see however why that is not the case!
An expected move
The Israeli government has decided not to investigate the actions of its military in Gaza, despite its earlier claims that it would. So what else is new you ask? Well Human Rights Watch has initiated an investigation of its own and it does confirm what was apparent to all who have eyes to see that Israel did use white phospherous against civilians during the Gaza campaign. You can watch what HRW had to say in the video below.
Meanwhile the US continues its obsequious, servile behavior towards the Israeli government which boasts of having one of the strongest armies in the world. Evidently that is not enough to get the US to say to Israelis they’re on their own when it comes to Israeli military aggression, so Obama continues to pledge to defend Israel against its enemies. Mind you Israel’s enemies are the ones it creates; most of its neighbors want peace with the Jewish state in exchange for recognition of their territorial sovereignty. Even the Palestinians want peace, but as usual, that won’t suit the Israelis.
Avigdor Lieberman said Israel’s new government will suspend negotiations with the Palestinian Authority on so-called “final-status” issues – the borders of a Palestinian state, the fate of Jewish settlements, Palestinian refugees and the city of Jerusalem – until the Palestinians take verifiable steps to end attacks against Israelis.
With the statement, the new Israeli government headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reversed the policy of its predecessor, led by Ehud Olmert, which had been quietly attempting to negotiate a final settlement of the conflict with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for the past 14 months.
It’s easy to see where this is going. The expansionist policy of military aggression of the Israeli government is headed towards the West Bank and it won’t be long, months perhaps, before the Israeli government calls for war against all of what is left of Palestine. Of course all of this will be done with the claim that Israel is under constant threat of extinction from its potent (not!) neighbors.
UPDATE:
The National Lawyers Guild has weighed in on what happened in Gaza, saying
Israel violated international law by targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure, misusing weapons, deliberately denying medical care to the wounded and attacking medical personnel, the National Lawyers Guild Delegation to Gaza said today upon releasing a 37 page report containing new evidence on the facts surrounding Israel’s 22 day military offensive in Gaza. The full report can be viewed at www.nlg.org.
“Our findings join a growing chorus of voices—which include Israeli soldiers themselves—asserting that Israeli forces deliberately targeted civilians during the Gaza offensive,” said Radhika Sainath, one of the attorneys who initiated the seven-day fact-finding delegation to Gaza. “On a number of occasions, Israeli soldiers shot and killed young children as well as unarmed civilians holding white flags—both violations of the laws of war.”The Delegation also uncovered evidence of Israeli soldiers using Palestinians as human shields, acts that constitute war crimes, as well as evidence that the Israeli military targeted civilian infrastructure and grossly misused weapons. Further, Israel denied the wounded access to medical care and routinely fired on emergency medical teams attempting to reach those in need of help. Paramedics and doctors reported to the Delegation that many civilians could have been saved if the Israeli army allowed Palestinian medical services access to the wounded. “On one occasion, when Israeli forces did allow Palestinian medical services to enter an area after four days, soldiers prohibited their ambulances from approaching and paramedics were forced to pile the injured on donkey carts,” reported Reem Salahi, a California-based civil rights attorney. “Medical workers were then forced to pull the carts to their ambulances two kilometers away.”
Is it any wonder that Israel has stopped its own investigation; it would incontrovertibly point to IDF culpability in criminal acts. I don’t know why that bothers Israeli officials; for the moment no matter what they do, or what evidence points to they are able to continue to demand and receive US aid which allows them to perpetuate these acts of violence and aggression. With willing accomplices in the US media any investigation, including the ones mentioned in this post, would be ignored and/or not reported. In fact conducting an investigation even if it points to Israeli guilt would be a feather in their cap….it would point to some sort of transparency. However, the frame of mind of the Israeli government is they are not accountable to any authority, and thus no need for such an investigation on their part. It is the height of hubris. Let’s hope it is the pride that precedes Israel’s fall.
Israel attacks Sudan and blames Hamas?
Israel makes it clear they think they can go anywhere and attack anyone they think has a terrorist infrastructure. Of course only Israel can single-handedly define what constitutes a “terrorist infrastructure” whether in a contiguous neighbor or one far removed, like Sudan, Cyprus, or even western Europe and or North America.
Israel launched an attack on Sudanese territory to supposedly interdict an arms convoy supplied by Iran headed to Gaza….and if you believe that I have a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn. No doubt an attack took place, or that’s according to US authorities and it was launched by Israel, but the reasons for the attack hardly have anything to do with weapons. Hamas makes a good point when they say
“Should it turn out that there were raids and a high number of people killed, this would mean Israel is seeking to use the opportunity to blame Hamas and hit Sudan,” he said.
The fact that the Gaza Strip is not a neighbour of Sudan, with Egypt in between, “shows these are false claims,” he added.
Israel has pounded Gaza and Egypt in attempts to destroy the tunnel system they say exists to smuggle things into Gaza; however, now they think it’s justified to bomb a regional neighbor that has never hosted, fomented, incited or carried out any attacks against Israel. Sudan is a political foe of Israel; it is a predominantly Muslim country which has repudiated Israel’s expansionist policies in the West Bank and Gaza. I would hope that the predominantly Christian country of America would repudiate Israeli policy in Palestine… UN resolutions demand at least that. Should the US expect an attack of the magnitude of the Sudanese intrusion? Have we already had such an attack? Israel makes it clear they think they can go anywhere and attack anyone they think has a terrorist infrastructure. Of course only Israel can single-handedly define what constitutes a “terrorist infrastructure” whether in a contiguous neighbor or one far removed, like Sudan, Cyprus, or even western Europe and or North America. What’s even more unfortunate about all this is the US would rather be impotent in its response to Israeli aggression than to take a stand against it. In doing so, America has signed on to Israeli aggression against all its “foes” and the possibility of a world war the likes of the previous two. It seems humanity gets this once a century itch to literally fight itself to the death, when it’s not necessary nor prudent; but it’s become our destiny and America has become the prime enabler in movement towards that end. Instability of the region that allows for Israeli hegemony has always been the goal of Israeli policy, that and the usurpation of its neighbors natural resources. In order to accomplish this they cannot have opposition; acquiescence is essential and the slightest objection vocal or otherwise is considered an existential threat to those goals. That said, one should only expect more death and destruction.
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It just keeps getting worse
News from Israel that genocide was the intent of the Gazan intrusion and nothing less grows stronger everyday with the release of soldier testimony to that effect. A word on the cartoon posted below; it clearly shows a dementia that has nothing at all to do with terrorism, the use of deadly force or American interests, nor Israeli interests for that matter. With the exception of one drawing, no one who appears in the cartoons is even remotely connected to the “terrorism” the Israelis claim they are fighting. One of the cartoon’s panels shows a blatant act of homosexuality as an act of war which speaks to the mindset of today’s modern armies. What it does show is a hatred for Arabs and a willingness to kill women and infants, something we’ve seen in the latest “war” in Gaza and something which is underscored with this latest news
“Rules of Engagement: Open fire also upon rescue,” was handwritten in Hebrew on a sheet of paper found in one of the Palestinian homes the Israel Defense Forces took over during Operation Cast Lead. A reservist officer who did not take part in the Gaza offensive believes that the note is part of orders a low-level commander wrote before giving his soldiers their daily briefing.
One of the main themes in news reports during the Gaza operation, and which appears in many testimonies, is that IDF soldiers shot at Palestinian and Red Cross rescuers, making it impossible to evacuate the wounde.d and dead. As a result, an unknown number of Palestinians bled to death as others cowered in their homes for days without medical treatment, waiting to be rescued.
The bodies of the dead lay outside the homes or on roadsides for days, sometimes as long as two weeks. Haaretz has reported a number of such cases, some of them as they happened. The document found in the house provides written proof that IDF commanders ordered their troops to shoot at rescuers.
It is significant to remember that those who lay bleeding to death easily within reach of rescue personnel who perhaps could have been saved were the likes of women and children.
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Simple pleasures are the best
There’s nothing simple or pleasurable about giving birth. Under the best of circumstances it’s arduous and stressful for all concerned, but especially for the mother. In free societies all attempt is made to allow the expecting mother to have as safe and carefree delivery as possible. That is not possible for Palestinian mothers who are regularly forced by Israeli policy to give birth at Israeli checkpoints. The Israelis are ratching up their genocide of Palestinians by making it almost insanely possible for Palestinian mothers to carry their babies to term. Stories abound where pregnant women denied access to healthcare facilities beyond Israeli checkpoints had to give birth in cars and then tragically watch their babies die. In 2002, more than half the babies born at checkpoints died and the year before just a little over half died under similar circumstances. These statistics are normal and have piled up while the world has turned a blind eye toward the health hazards being carried out daily in the occupied territories. The Israeli policy is no doubt fostered by their mistaken belief that this type of abortion, or murder of the unborn is one way to influence the demographics of the region, reduce the numbers of their foes.
During the time Israel was feeling victorious and happy counting 1,300 massacred Palestinians in cold blood, Palestinian women retaliated by giving birth to 3,570 babies. The Palestinian woman is considered a demographic bomb, a highly fertile creature as fertile as the soil of Palestine. The more Israel sends Palestinian on a one way trip to the womb of the land, the more Palestinian women’s wombs show generosity, giving birth to more heroes.
At a time the average fertility in Israel is 2.6 babies per woman, Gaza is considered one of the most fertile in the whole wide world with an average of 6 babies per woman. Israel suffers a high percentage of senior citizens while Gaza has an abundance of youngsters and according to UNICEF’s report on the 3rd of March 2009 the total number of children in Gaza is approximately 793,520, or 56 per cent of the population (PCBS). This was one of the main reasons that forced Israel to stop its military incursions, for there are 4,170 humans per every square Kilometre in Gaza, to imagine how densely populated Gaza is, one should know that Lebanon is 29 times the area of Gaza.
This brings us back to Israel’s devious methods of trying to kill women who are considered as factories of men, without being blamed directly for that by its policies of blockades, and checkpoints where sick women or women about to give birth suffer for not being able to reach hospitals, by denying them the right to travel or import foods and medicines, by bombing their infrastructure leaving them with no water to drink or use for hygiene, by depriving them of fuel leading to total arrest of the sewage system refineries, by spraying them with chemicals from above and burning them with white phosphorus, and by killing them indirectly out of sorrow and deep grief after losing their family members especially their young ones, but as Yasser Arafat once said we Palestinians are an undefeatable nation we are ‘Shaab Aljabbare.
Whatever the motivation or reason behind such barbarity, the idea that women in labor should be denied access to medical care is one more feather in the cap of Israeli genocide directed towards its Palestinian citizens as well as neighbors. It should be roundly condemned by its major sponsor and ally the U.S. Nothing short of that is acceptable.
Zionism is the problem
Opposing Zionism is neither anti-Semitic nor particularly radical. It requires only that we take our own values seriously and no longer, as the book of Amos has it, “turn justice into wormwood and hurl righteousness to the ground.”
The political movement which asserts the supremacy of Israeli Jews over all others will lead the world into another world war, so it is that the editorial below which appeared in the Los Angeles Times is a particularly good one beckoning the world to take heed of this problem and solve it. Several bloggers have mentioned the editorial below but it wasn’t until I read it in its entirety that I felt it was worth mentioning here at Miscellany101. It is rather long, so I’ll excerpt it but strongly encourage everyone who reads this post to go to the link and read it.
Israeli policies have rendered the once apparently inevitable two-state solution less and less feasible. Years of Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem have methodically diminished the viability of a Palestinian state. Israel’s new prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has even refused to endorse the idea of an independent Palestinian state, which suggests an immediate future of more of the same: more settlements, more punitive assaults.
All of this has led to a revival of the Brit Shalom idea of a single, secular binational state in which Jews and Arabs have equal political rights. The obstacles are, of course, enormous. They include not just a powerful Israeli attachment to the idea of an exclusively Jewish state, but its Palestinian analogue: Hamas’ ideal of Islamic rule. Both sides would have to find assurance that their security was guaranteed. What precise shape such a state would take — a strict, vote-by-vote democracy or a more complex federalist system — would involve years of painful negotiation, wiser leaders than now exist and an uncompromising commitment from the rest of the world, particularly from the United States.
Meanwhile, the characterization of anti-Zionism as an “epidemic” more dangerous than anti-Semitism reveals only the unsustainability of the position into which Israel’s apologists have been forced. Faced with international condemnation, they seek to limit the discourse, to erect walls that delineate what can and can’t be said.
It’s not working. Opposing Zionism is neither anti-Semitic nor particularly radical. It requires only that we take our own values seriously and no longer, as the book of Amos has it, “turn justice into wormwood and hurl righteousness to the ground.”
Establishing a secular, pluralist, democratic government in Israel and Palestine would of course mean the abandonment of the Zionist dream. It might also mean the only salvation for the Jewish ideals of justice that date back to Jeremiah.
Toilet paper as a political weapon
I never knew just how incendiary toilet paper could be. First it was given a heightened status for the military personnel at Guantanamo Bay who were told how the maniacally trained terrorists could fashion knives from toilet paper and kill all the guards there and then swim to mainland USA and continue their killing rampage with other improvised weapons equally deadly. Of course it’s hilarious, but there were some misguided souls who believed it. Now comes word toilet paper is too dangerous to allow the citizens of Gaza to have and so all aide shipments that include toilet paper cannot be allowed. In the light of that explanation, I can understand why hummus is not allowed in either, seeing as how hummus creates the condition that calls for the use of toilet paper. Next we’ll be told how feminine products such as pads and tampons aren’t allowed for adult women.
Two seperate realities, or a difference between night and day
The first video below is what the Israeli government wants you to see, and the second one is what they don’t want you to see. When I looked at them I thought it should be the opposite. In other words the government of Israel should NOT want you to see how carefree and safe the people of Israel are because the myth perpetuated is that they live under constant fear of death and extermination. The entire world is asked to sacrifice everything they can to prevent the elimination of the Israeli people at the hands of the Palestinian hordes. On the other hand the spinmeisters want you, a casual observer, to associate death and destruction with everything about Palestinian life, the implication being the Palestinians are the cause of that fate and not anything the Israelis have done to them. But with most things surrounding the conflict on the soil of the Holy Land, reality is far different.
Israel sees no harm in showing a picture of its society which encourages tourism, because Israelis and those who visit it are indeed safe, and the death and destruction visited upon Palestinians is rampant, random, discriminatory (i.e.targeted towards civilians) intimidating and if the Israeli government had anything to do with it, out of sight of the everyday international citizen. For us, American citizens, we are responsible for both images, both videos, and there’s no way of getting around our complicity especially in the visions of the latter.
FUN AND HAPPINESS IN ISRAEL
DEATH AND DESTRUCTION IN GAZA
Score several for the Lobby
They got over big time, just when I thought integrity mattered and would win out, it appears sleaze is still the driving force in American politics!
“Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair announced today that Ambassador Charles W. Freeman Jr. has requested that his selection to be Chairman of the National Intelligence Council not proceed,” read a statement from Blair’s office. “Director Blair accepted Ambassador Freeman’s decision with regret.”
“Critics have seized on retired ambassador Charles ‘Chas’ Freeman’s ties to Saudi Arabia and views on human rights in China to argue against his appointment as chairman of the National Intelligence Council (NIC), but Freeman’s defenders charge that their real aim is to impose an ideological litmus test on top government officials and ensure a continued policy of reflexive US support for Israel,”
And while it may seem to be a GOP inspired campaign to get Freeman’s nomination withdrawn it was anything but!
Steven Rosen, a former director of the American Israel Political Affairs Committee due to stand trial this April for espionage for Israel, is the leader of the campaign against Freeman’s appointment. In his wake, a host of critics from the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg to the New Republic’s Marty Peretz have emerged to assail Freeman’s comments on Israeli policies and demand that Obama rescind the diplomat’s appointment. The campaign against Freeman spread to Congress, where a handful of representatives including the top recipient of AIPAC donations, Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), called for an investigation of Freeman’s business ties to China and Saudi Arabia.
Freeman’s would have been an ideal position to influence intelligence data on a wide variety of subjects, including whether certain states had nuclear capability, i.e. Iran and or Syria. With some one more easily malleable, the Lobby could get intelligence to reflect its position vis-a-vis these countries and resulting American policy decisions but Freeman did not fit the bill and so had to be removed. I’m curious what it was that got Freeman to withdraw his name from consideration. I am looking forward to the day when American officials are willing to stand up and be counted when it comes to facing a Lobby that does not reflect American interests. It seems Freeman was not that kind of man, so perhaps it’s good he not take the position. Next?!
On another front it seems Hillary isn’t quite the man, or woman, I thought she was. In an earlier post I congratulated her for what I thought was taking a position about Israeli actions that were against American interests. Well it turns out she didn’t quite take the stand I thought she had. Instead, Clinton is speaking political correctness, the kind of language that’s good for double speak and confusion, just the kind of predicament people like to take advantage of when oppressing others while making themselves look like victims.
When Mrs. Clinton was asked in Ramallah how she felt about Jewish settlements in the West Bank, a cause of strife with Palestinians, she said the United States would raise “the issue” with the next Israeli government. Asked about it again in Brussels, she recited the official American position that settlements were “unhelpful.”
In Israel, Mrs. Clinton did not publicly broach settlements at all. And she only gingerly raised the issue of border crossings to Gaza, which Israel has mostly kept closed, drawing criticismfrom European leaders and human rights groups.
So, it appears the juggernaut of Lobby interests continues in the face of frighten American politicians who cannot muster the courage to take stands that are consistent with the interests of their own country. If nothing else, such blatant displays of cowardice should be good fodder for political advertisements of their opponents in future political campaigns. It’s time to show such people the door. Next!?
UPDATE:
At least Charles Freeman goes out with a bang.
I have concluded that the barrage of libelous distortions of my record would not cease upon my entry into office. The effort to smear me and to destroy my credibility would instead continue. I do not believe the National Intelligence Council could function effectively while its chair was under constant attack by unscrupulous people with a passionate attachment to the views of a political faction in a foreign country. I agreed to chair the NIC to strengthen it and protect it against politicization, not to introduce it to efforts by a special interest group to assert control over it through a protracted political campaign.
It is apparent that we Americans cannot any longer conduct a serious public discussion or exercise independent judgment about matters of great importance to our country as well as to our allies and friends.
The libels on me and their easily traceable email trails show conclusively that there is a powerful lobby determined to prevent any view other than its own from being aired, still less to factor in American understanding of trends and events in the Middle East. The tactics of the Israel Lobby plumb the depths of dishonor and indecency and include character assassination, selective misquotation, the willful distortion of the record, the fabrication of falsehoods, and an utter disregard for the truth. The aim of this Lobby is control of the policy process through the exercise of a veto over the appointment of people who dispute the wisdom of its views, the substitution of political correctness for analysis, and the exclusion of any and all options for decision by Americans and our government other than those that it favors.
So it appears what is needed in American policy is young, fresh pugnacious blood. I respect Freeman who is at an age where he might not want to summon the rigors necessary for the job he was nominated for, so I would urge Obama to find someone equally as blunt and frank who is up to the task of making America independent of Israel and it’s interests and lobby.
No comment: Life under occupation
Clinton’s run in with the Lobby
I’m not much of a Clinton fan and whether she’s able to win me over depends a lot on how she deals with Jewish leaders in and outside America.
I was really blown away by the headline, Jewish Leaders Blast Clinton over Israel Criticism and see it as one more descent into the abyss of extremist Zionism taking over American politics. What is it Clinton criticized Israel for?
“Israel is not making enough effort to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza,” senior U.S. officials told Israeli counterparts last week, and reiterated Washington’s view by saying that “the U.S. expects Israel to meet its commitments on this matter.”
Sources at the defense establishment confirmed last night that pressure is increasing on Israel to reopen the crossings to larger volumes of aid for the Gaza Strip. Defense sources said that Israel will find it increasingly difficult to counter the pressure, and may agree to more extensive use of the crossings for aid. Currently, fewer than 200 trucks carrying aid are allowed through daily. The U.S., the EU and the UN are demanding that at least 500 trucks carrying aid be allowed into the Strip daily.
When Senator John Kerry visited the Strip, he learned that many trucks loaded with pasta were not permitted in. When the chairman of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee inquired as to the reason for the delay, he was told by United Nations aid officials that “Israel does not define pasta as part of humanitarian aid – only rice shipments.”
American Jewish leaders are upset that a US secretary of State insists the Israeli government allow in pasta, and because she, Clinton, has demanded the Israeli government allow that aid into Gaza, America’s Jews are angry? Why, would be the logical question, are they angry? Clinton was elected to the US Senate as a senator from New York, one of the most heavily populated Jewish states and has given Israel everything it has asked for in the form of American largess yet a simple declarative sentence that Israel must allow aid to the Palestinians has leaders turning on their heads.
Methinks what has happened is the old slight of hand trick, where the media pundits have used words to categorize Clinton’s remarks on the issue to inflame public reaction. In fact, the only direct quote from Clinton I could find was this statement from the above link:’ “We are working across the government to see what our approach will be,” Clinton said’, otherwise Kramer, the CBS reporter goes on to characterize Clinton’s remarks as “hammering”, a “change of position”, “a swift about face” and “angry messages”, all terms designed to signify a change in Clinton’s positionvis-a-vis Israel.
However, even if the essence of Clinton’s remarks was that Israel must allow aid into Gaza is that such a bad thing? The Gazan people’s ability to maintain themselves has been decimated; their agricultural subsistence is threatened daily by Israeli snipers who shoot at people working in the farm fields of Gaza or Israeli navy ships which intimidate fisherman as they fish in Gaza’s territorial waters. In effect the Israelis “own” Gaza and the people living there are wholly dependent on what aid the Israelis allow in. A territory with over 1 million people living there deserves more than 200 truck loads of aid a day. That’s a nobrainer! So American Jewish leaders don’t have anything to cry about. Israel always had carte blanche with the Bush administration, which meant they got away with doing whatever they wanted, no questions asked, not a peep was made, and therefore Clinton’s protestations are markedly different in style than Bush’s way of handling things. In order to get things back to “normal” as it were, this article was able to drum up the necessary sentiment that Clinton, and by extension the entireObama administration, should keep quiet.
It will be interesting to see what Clinton’s reaction will be. If she buckles and gives in to the white noise about her remarks it means she probably has future political aspirations. If she ignores them and continues on the same way she began it means she realizes she has reached the end of her political career and she should finally ‘do the right thing’. Clinton is 62 years old and if Obama is a two term president and she tows the line, she will be gainfully employed until she reaches 70 and the party nomination for president will most likely be only a twinkle in her eye. I wish I could say she’ll do the right thing, but American politics and the closed door wheeling and dealing that goes on with it don’t make that possibility a sure thing. Most likely what will happen is she will moderate her comments and send all that need assurance the sign that hers will not be a wayward State department as the Powell department of State was during the first Bush term. Remember that one, where we heard talk from the religious right about how it should nuked? I’m not much of a Clinton fan and whether she’s able to win me over depends a lot on how she deals with Jewish leaders in and outside America.
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