Er valt niet te praten.
Met mijn mooie denkende vriendin.
In het land van mijn hart.
Als ik haar eindelijk te spreken krijg.
Ze is in oorlog.
Ze schreeuwt overstuur.
Radio en televisie mogen Gaza niet in.
Ook Al Jazeera heeft niets.
Ze weten niets, ze horen niets, niemand kan er bij.
Wat weten wij?
Ook niets, vertel ik, er mogen ook geen buitenlanders bij.
Ah ja. Ze heeft het druk.
Om de dag is ze bij de demonstraties.
Die groot maar niet heel groot zijn.
Vijfduizend mensen zaterdagavond.
Ja sorry, ze heeft niet gebeld.
De oorlog heeft haar opgeslokt.
Niemand houdt ze tegen, gilt ze.
In Europa willen ze ons niet stoppen.
Niet waar zeg ik, in Nederland is de stemming heel negatief.
Een SP-kamerlid heeft opgeroepen tot intifada.
Oh, zegt ze, het interesseert haar maar matig.
Tweehonderd slachtoffers, roept iemand op de achtergrond.
Ze moet ophangen.
Vergeten de nierstenen, de onderzoeken en de uitslagen.
Hey, zeg ik, hoe gaat het met je.
Ja nieuwe onderzoeken.
Sorry, de oorlog heeft haar te pakken.
Bye.
Jezzebel,
Tussen water en water
Art: Sigalit Landau, Salted Harmonica
Net als Geert Mak: op microniveau is de verschrikking nog meer voelbaar.
Misschien is dit wat met EAJG wordt bedoeld. Hier op het vk-blog zul je wel ongeveer hetzelfde hebben gelezen als tijdens de Lebanonoorlog.
Maar net als bij alles, zitten ook hier twee kanten aan.
Zou jij rustig kunnen telefoneren als je daar zou zijn? Dat is toch anders. En ze blijft maar demonstreren.
==Niet waar zeg ik, in Nederland is de stemming heel negatief.==
Balkenende zei toch dat ie van de genocide geniet?
@Zusenzo, dank, dat is een groot compliment.
@christinA, ja zoals bij de Libanonoorlog, toen begon ik dit blog, 5 augustus 2006.
Soms verandert er niets.
De ongenuanceerde opmerkingen, soms word ik persoonlijk verantwoordelijk gehouden, ‘niet klagen, Israël is nóg erger,’ riep iemand hier.
Dat raakt me.
@K, ik maak me zorgen over haar.
@Mihai, citeer eens letterlijk.
http://www.nos.nl/nosjournaal/artikelen/2009/1/4/040109_vn_vs_gaza.html
De sleutel voor een staakt-het-vuren in het Midden-Oosten ligt volgens premier Balkenende vooral bij Hamas. Zolang Hamas doorgaat met raketbeschietingen, zal Israël geen bestand accepteren, zei de premier in het tv-programma Buitenhof.
Balkenende benadrukte dat hij hiervoor begrip heeft. Het geweld van Israël veroordelen is volgens Balkenende daarom zinloos. Israël mag niet in een sfeer van bedreiging zitten, zei de premier.
@Mihai, dank.
ik vind het vreselijk. Voor iedereen. Al dat geweld… brrr.
Buiten is het koud en er is altijd oorlog.
Binnen maak ik het warm en bak pannenkoeken.
gr Z
Jouw vriendin heeft onze steun nodig!
National Security Archive Update, January 5, 2009
"Riveting" account of U.S. Presidents and the Middle East Details inconsistent policies and influence of foreign leaders
New Patrick Tyler book narrates "A World of Trouble"; Documentary highlights posted on Archive Web site
For more information contact:
Patrick Tyler/National Security Archive – 202/994-7000
http://www.nsarchive.org
Washington, DC, January 5, 2009 – American Presidents from Eisenhower to George W. Bush have sought to distinguish themselves from their predecessors with sudden shifts in Middle East policy and questionable strategies that have contributed to undermining American credibility in the region, according to a new book, "A World of Trouble," by veteran correspondent Patrick Tyler, a fellow of the National Security Archive at George Washington University.
Tyler’s account begins with a raucous night of recriminations over George W. Bush’s Middle East diplomacy by former CIA Director George Tenet, and then rewinds to the grand deception of Dwight Eisenhower by Britain, France and Israel, in the Suez Crisis. In bringing the narrative forward to the Iraq war and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict of today, Tyler gives the reader an intimate portrait of presidential decisions and the out-sized influence of White House aides and foreign leaders and their emissaries.
Hailed by Publisher’s Weekly as a "riveting" history of American presidents and the Middle East and described by The Economist as a book that "reads almost like a thriller," Tyler’s book (published by Farrar Straus & Giroux of New York) draws on two decades of reporting on the Middle East, dozens of interviews, oral histories and thousands of pages of recently declassified documents, including the National Security Archive’s new release of the Henry Kissinger telephone conversations and the mandatory review release of Nixon administration files in late 2007. Highlights from the documents cited by Tyler are featured on the Archive’s web site, http://www.nsarchive.org, including:
* The private pleadings of Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, who in June 1973 sought to convince President Nixon that war was coming in the Middle East and that the only way to avert it was by a robust diplomatic intervention by the superpowers. Nixon and Kissinger, fearing domestic blowback in the midst of the Watergate scandal, refused to be drawn in and war broke out four months later.
* The Reagan Diary entry that sheds light on how the White House and the Saudi royal family circumvented the law on presenting lavish gifts to the President, in this case, a pair of Arabian horses.
* The top-secret channel opened by the Nixon White House with the Shah of Iran to discuss "contingency" planning by the Iranian leader to seize Saudi Arabia and its oil resources in the event of a coup or an external assault on the Saudi kingdom.
* The confidential debate within the Nixon National Security Council on how to invent a claim of "Russian treachery" in order to justify the U.S. tilt toward Israel, and a massive resupply of its forces, during the 1973 October War.
* The CIA’s confidential description of the internal pressures within the Israeli leadership that tipped the Jewish state toward a preemptive attack on the Egyptian army in Sinai after the closure of Israeli shipping lanes in the run-up to the the Six Day War.
Hopelijk is het heel gauw voorbij!
de gazastrook is een hel op dit moment voor iedereen die zich daar bevindt, je vriendin geeft de moed niet op en dat is vreselijk dapper
Ja,ik zag de demonstratie,as jij dat met die gleufhoed?
Kan niemand die Israelische honger naar vernietiging stoppen?
Mijn idee:
Haal alle Palestijnen daar weg en breng ze onder in andere landen. Vergeet Palestina.
Laat het CIDI onze geschiedenisboeken herdrukken en we gaan allemaal rustig slapen want ik word hier dood en doodziek van.
Mijn vrouw huilt.
Beter halen we de Friezen weg en brengen we hen onder in andere landen. En in Friesland maken we de nieuwe Palestijnse staat.
"Gelukkig Nieuwjaar"is hoog gegrepen, niet waar?
Gutes neues Jahr.
en heb je Fokke en Sukke gezien vandaag http://www.foksuk.nl/ ? Heel wrang en erg goed.
Reactie is geredigeerd
@Mihai, yallah!
Mensen beschikbaar voor interviews over Gaza:
PM Monday, January 5, 2009
Gaza: Crucial Perspectives
EDWARD L. PECK, peckfsi@verizon.net
Available for a limited number of interviews, Ambassador Peck spent November with a delegation to the Mideast organized by the Council for the National Interest. He was chief of mission in Iraq and Mauritania and deputy director of the White House Task Force on Terrorism in the Reagan administration. He said today: "There are a number of forces at play. One prevents reasonable, balanced information on the situation in Gaza and the West Bank getting to the U.S. public, which is not well informed — or very interested — in part for that precise reason. The internationally-organized Free Gaza ship (trying to break the decades-long sea blockade) being rammed by Israel last week, for example, did not receive a word of coverage in the Washington Post. Not many people know that Israel has imprisoned dozens of democratically elected Hamas parliamentarians. They’re part of what some people call a ‘terrorist group,’ so anything goes. And that may be the deepest level of bias. The U.S. has a legal definition of international terrorism:
Title 18, U.S. Code, Section 2331. The list includes intimidating and coercing a civilian population, kidnapping and assassination, an accurate description of what Israel has done and is doing." See:
http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/uscode18/usc_sec_18_00002331—-000-.html
LAILA AL-ARIAN, laila_alarian@yahoo.com
Al-Arian just wrote the piece "To Live and Die in Gaza," which uses the life of her grandfather, who was born in and after many decades returned to Gaza, as a microcosm of the conflict.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/01/03-3
She is co-author of the book (with Chris Hedges) "Collateral Damage:
America’s War Against Iraqi Civilians."
JAMES ABOUREZK, georgepatton45@gmail.com
A former U.S. senator from South Dakota, Abourezk said today about the situation in Gaza: "The people have no place to hide, no place to run to escape the indiscriminate bombing and killing of the civilians there. What the Israelis are doing is in complete violation of the Geneva Conventions with respect to collective punishment. The Palestinians are involuntarily paying the price for the Israeli elections coming up in February, where the candidates are trying to show that each is more brutal than the other. …
"Hamas held itself to the truce, which was broken when the Israeli military raided in Gaza and killed six Hamas people. Hamas responded by firing homemade rockets into southern Israel, which is exactly what Barak and Livni wanted them to do.
"What is happening is that the Palestinian rockets are landing on homes and land that they themselves were terrorized and chased out of when Israel wanted to create a state."
Het wordt hoog tijd voor vrede in die regio. Er gaan te veel mensen dood.
Groeten, Henk.
Wat een verschrikkelijk mooi blog over iets waarover bijna niet te schrijven is. Het is je wel gelukt en dat is niet alleen het persoonlijk element. Het is ook het onderkoelde venijn.
Zo horen we tenminste toch ook de tegengeluiden uit het land van je dromen.
Hm, als Israel maar wint.
Die fuckin’assholes moeten eens ophouden met raketten afschieten.
Niet goedschiks, dan maar kwaadschiks, remember Ze’evi.
Werd vermoord, toen ie al lang landbouwminister af was.
Wilde per-sé geen bodyguard meer.
Hij dacht dat het wel kon, niet dus.
Palestijnen? smerig rotvolk.
Goedemorgen,
@Zoë, verschrikkelijk is dat niemand weet wat er precies gebeurt.
@Blew, ze hoopt altijd dat Europa ingrijpt, dat Europa boycot, dat er gedemonstreerd wordt, dat de mensen met miljoenen de straat op gaan…
@Mihai, dank voor alle tekst, de opening en het tegenwicht.
@K, het is voorlopig nog niet voorbij.
@Gala, mijn vriendin is heel erg dapper, en overstuur.
@Dunya, erger, ik ben hier. Ik kan slechts bellen.
@Maria, dank, ik heb de link bekeken, ook daarvoor dank.
@Henk, oh man.
@Martin, erg veel dank.
@Ina, je bedoelt het land van mijn hart.
@Gus, je opmerking vind ik verschrikkelijk.
Er gaan honderden mensen per dag dood.
@Gus Bolden,
Volledig mee eens,met de nuancering dat het vooral de moslimmietische extremisten en hun jarenlange haatdoctrine’s jegens alles wat joods en westers is die voor de vele haatmachines in "Palestina" zorgen. Hen is er alles aan gelegen om van de Israeli’s de ergste boemannen te maken. Daarom saboteren zij ook elke vorm van toenadering en alle vredesinitiatieven…
@Jezzebel,
Nog even en er gaan volgens jou duizenden mensen per dag dood…overdrijven is ook een vak zullen we maar zeggen. Dat elke dode er één teveel is,is duidelijk.
Sta er verder even bij stil dat in 2007 meer doden in "Palestina" zijn gevallen door onderlinge strijd en straatexecuties dan tot nu toe in deze nieuwe oorlog tussen Israel en de zgn. palestijnen…
@DS, in dit conflict zijn meer dan 500 mensen in tien dagen om het leven gekomen. Precieze aantallen weet niemand.
Ik vind het vreselijk dat Israël deze misdaad begaat. Hoeveel doden er ook in de straten van Gaza vallen door ‘onderlinge strijd’, neemt niets af van het feit dat er elke dag onschuldige mensen vermoord worden door Israël.
try- gazatoday.blogspot.com
Waarom heeft men dan over 3.000 doden van 11 september gezeikt? Want in het jaar daarvoor zijn meer dan 16.000 Amerikanen in hun straatgevechten en doodstraf doodgegaan.
P.S. Met zo’n blog komen alle psychopathische moordenaars hun chutzpah hier oefenen.
……test.
Hamas Hamas
De Joden geven Gas
Dat komt hen goed uit
In hun slachtofferrol
Maken zij het te dol!
Israël vertegenwoordigt in het Midden-Oosten de Duivel Amerika.
Wij hier geilen mee op de glibberige OLIE!!
Ticu, het is niet "gezeikt" maar gezeken!
Jezzie. Israël is een gestolen land en gestolen goed gedijt niet. Dat weet je toch? Groet, An.
Gutteguttegut,het is wel weer duidelijk wie hier het morele gelijk denken te hebben zeg…
Voordat je ‘t weet word je uitgemaakt voor "psychopatische moordenaar". Hoezo achterlijk bloggedrag?
Het feit dat er in deze strijd dagelijks onschuldige slachtoffers vallen is helaas onlosmakelijk verbonden met het begrip oorlog.
Dat de Israeli’s hun best doen het aantal burgerslachtoffers zo laag mogelijk te houden en de hamas ondertussen hun wapenopslag plaatsen in ziekenhuizen,woonwijken en moskee’s onderbrengen,maakt het simpelweg onmogelijk om geen slachtoffers onder de burgerbevolking te maken.
Dat de israeli’s er alles aan gelegen is om zo min mogelijk burgerslachtoffers te maken,is gelijk de grootste tegenstelling tussen de strijdende partijen,daar de "palestijnen" elk gemaakte "zionisten"slachtoffer toejuichen…
@Frap, dank voor de link ik heb er gekeken. Verdrietig.
@Mihai, daar had jij mij toch óók om uitgekozen?
@An, wat kan ik je zeggen.
Ik mis de gesprekken met mijn mooie denkende vriendin als ze tijd heeft en rustig is.
Ik mis het land van mijn hart.
Ik heb de antwoorden niet.
@DS, dat brengt het aantal doden aan de kant van de Palestijnen niet naar beneden.
Elk mensenleven telt, maar in Gaza zijn meer dan vijfhonderd families iemand kwijt.
@AvdB,
Zeg,kom ‘ns met wat originelere stellingen i.p.v. deze onzin! Anders ga je maar lekker naar Indymedia ofzo…
Israel is NIET gestolen,eerder in de loop der jaren stiekem van ze afgenomen.
Daarbij gedijt Israel uitstekend,bloeiende economie,land goed bewerkt tot vruchtbare bodem,uitgebreide kennisindustrie…
Misschien een ideetje hoor,maar als die zgn. palestijnen nu eens niet vanaf day one haat hadden gepredikt jegens alles wat joden is en de vele miljarden "ontwikkelingshulp" in hun eigen ontwikkeling hadden gestopt,dan had dit volk er nu hoogstwaarschijnlijk ook warmpjes bij gezeten…
Maar ja,samenwerken met joden,da mag nie van allah hè,dus beter eeuwig ruzie zoeken,aanslagen plegen en fijn in achterlijke armoede leven…
Wat een relativerende gelul over ethiek. Een dergelijke tegenargument kan je voor alles gebruiken. Zeikt iemand over de Shoah, zeg je gewoon "het is wel weer duidelijk wie hier het morele gelijk denken te hebben zeg" en dat "onschuldige slachtoffers vallen is helaas onlosmakelijk verbonden met het begrip oorlog." Klaar is kees.
@Jezzebel,
Ik leef met je mee v.w.b. het gemis van je vriendin en de zorgen om een geliefde in een oorlogsgebied…
@mihai nogwat,
Tuurlijk kerel! Net zoals die zwarte heks van een Gretta Duisenberg of die "volksvertegenwoorsdiger" "El Harry" van Bommel vergelijken we dit geheel maar fftjes met de holocaust waarbij een geschatte 6.000.000 mensen als ongedierte verdelgd zijn…
Ik zie idd dat relativeren niet je sterkste kant is. Geen nood,wel de mijne,dus als je het niet erg vind blijf ik de werkelijke agressors in deze verdomde oorlog op hun haatgedrag afkeuren,goed?
Het is daar nu oorlog en daar vallen onschuldige slachtoffers bij. Doh! Dat de hamas garen spinnen bij elk zgn. burgerslachtoffer en dus dit getal ongeremd blijft opschroeven om maar zoveel mogelijk de grote zieligerts uit te kunnen hangen,schijnt vele hollandse antisemitisten(waaronder onze staatsmedia)niet te interesseren.
De hamas hebben keihard zelf om deze oorlog gevraagd en zullen er nog blij mee zijn ook,wedden? Dan kunnen ze tenminste weer lekker hard krijsen dat Israel en de VS de grote duivels van de wereld zijn en zullen de ontwikkelingshulpkranen weer rijkelijk hun euro’s laten vloeien…
Erg triest dat hier zoveel mensen in verzeild raken die net als jij en ik gewoon in vrede willen leven.
==als je het niet erg vind blijf ik de werkelijke agressors in deze verdomde oorlog op hun haatgedrag afkeuren,goed?==
Het is wel weer duidelijk wie hier het morele gelijk denken te hebben zeg.
==Dat de hamas garen spinnen bij elk zgn. burgerslachtoffer en dus dit getal ongeremd blijft opschroeven om maar zoveel mogelijk de grote zieligerts uit te kunnen hangen,schijnt vele hollandse antisemitisten(waaronder onze staatsmedia)niet te interesseren.==
Het is wel weer duidelijk wie hier het morele gelijk denken te hebben zeg.
==6.000.000 mensen als ongedierte verdelgd zijn==
Het was daar oorlog en daar vallen onschuldige slachtoffers bij. Doh!
Reactie is geredigeerd
Geloven jullie nu echt dat er in Israël geen honderde doden zijn gevallen? Hoe kan dat nou: 60 tot 80 raketten per dag van Hamas en geen doden?? Ze, de Joden, liegen dat zij barsten!!
Dit is een psychologische oorlog. Waarom mogen er geen journalisten in GAZA??? Omdat dan de leugens van Israël uitkomen!
Jezzie, aan jou ligt het niet; als jij eens veel macht had???? :):):):) An.
Reactie is geredigeerd
@DS, zeg, wil jij hier niet bepalen waar iemand wel of niet heen moet gaan.
Je mag blij wezen dat je zelf niet weggestuurd wordt, je bent hier gast.
Waar dit hele ‘gelul’ over gaat, zoals Mihai toch wel erg treffend zegt, is dat er onschuldige mensen sterven, elke dag, met bosjes tegelijk.
Dat doet de Hamas niet, dat doet Israël, en het is een misdaad!
@An Gadver, dat redigeren is kut van je.
@Jezzebel,
Ja ja,nog even en de hamas zijn lievertjes met een hoog knuffelgehalte die helemaal niets verkeerds hebben gedaan…
Wie waren het die elke vredesonderhandeling geweldadig saboteerden?
Wie waren het die eenzijdig ook weer deze afgelopen tijd van "wapenstilstand" dagelijks met hun opzettelijk burgerdodende raketten op Israel bleven schieten?
Wie waren het die,toen er bezette gebieden met uitsekende bedrijfspanden en kassen werden teruggegeven,de boel meteen als hysterische holbewoners kort en klein trapten onder het schreeuwen van "dood aan die zionistisische honden"?
Wie ZIJN het die claimen niet eerder te rusten voordat de staat Israel vernietigd is?
Overigens laat je jezelf wel erg kennen door het op te nemen voor de fijnbesnaarde An van de Burg. Ik maakte overigens wel een fout. Ik had haar naar het blog van het jeugdjournaal van de hamas moeten verwijzen,die kunnen haar antwoorden geven op àààl haar vragen…
Ik zal jullie hier maar met jullie haat voor "die zionisten" alleen laten. Net als met de altijd gelijk hebbende islammieten valt hier helaas niet objectief te praten.
Gegroet.
@DS, ja…
En wie lapt elke VN-resolutie aan zijn laars?
Wie bouwt de muur?
Wie neemt de mensen hun land af?
Wie bepaalt de tijden dat ze hun eigen olijfbomen mogen telen?
Wie is nog steeds bezig de nederzettingen uit te breiden?
Doe verder wat je niet laten kunt.
Groeten terug.
Ik zou daar niet te lichtvaardig over denken,An!
Macht is een gevaarlijk goedje.
Dat wijst de geschiedenis wel uit.
Balky redt het echt niet alleen,heeft ook goede adviseurs nodig,geen machtswellustingen pur sang.
URI AVNERY, [in Israel] avnery@actcom.net.il, http://zope.gush-shalom.org/index_en.html
Avnery is founder of Gush-Shalom, the Israeli "Peace Bloc." He recently wrote the piece "How Israel is Multiplying Hamas by a Thousand: Molten Lead in Gaza," which states: "The ceasefire did not collapse, because there was no real cease-fire to start with. The main requirement for any cease-fire in the Gaza Strip must be the opening of the border crossings. There can be no life in Gaza without a steady flow of supplies. But the crossings were not opened, except for a few hours now and again. The blockade on land, on sea and in the air against a million and a half human beings is an act of war, as much as any dropping of bombs or launching of rockets. It paralyzes life in the Gaza Strip: eliminating most sources of employment, pushing hundreds of thousands to the brink of starvation, stopping most hospitals from functioning, disrupting the supply of electricity and water. …
"It was the Israeli government which set up Hamas to start with.
When I once asked a former Shin-Bet chief, Yaakov Peri, about it, he answered enigmatically: ‘We did not create it, but we did not hinder its creation.’ …
"Abbas was not allowed the slightest political achievement. The negotiations, under American auspices, became a joke. The most authentic Fatah leader, Marwan Barghouti, was sent to prison for life."
Reactie is geredigeerd
Israel Violates International Humanitarian Law
By Prof. Richard Falk
United Nations Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories
January 02, 2008 "United Nations Human Rights Council" – The Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip represent severe and massive violations of international humanitarian law as defined in the Geneva Conventions, both in regard to the obligations of an Occupying Power and in the requirements of the laws of war.
Those violations include:
Collective punishment – the entire 1.5 million people who live in the crowded Gaza Strip are being punished for the actions of a few militants.
Targeting civilians – the airstrikes were aimed at civilian areas in one of the most crowded stretches of land in the world, certainly the most densely populated area of the Middle East.
Disproportionate military response – the airstrikes have not only destroyed every police and security office of Gaza’s elected government, but have killed and injured hundreds of civilians; at least one strike reportedly hit groups of students attempting to find transportation home from the university.
Earlier Israeli actions, specifically the complete sealing off of entry and exit to and from the Gaza Strip, have led to severe shortages of medicine and fuel (as well as food), resulting in the inability of ambulances to respond to the injured, the inability of hospitals to adequately provide medicine or necessary equipment for the injured, and the inability of Gaza’s besieged doctors and other medical workers to sufficiently treat the victims.
Certainly the rocket attacks against civilian targets in Israel are unlawful. But that illegality does not give rise to any Israeli right, neither as the Occupying Power nor as a sovereign state, to violate international humanitarian law and commit war crimes or crimes against humanity in its response. I note that Israel’s escalating military assaults have not made Israeli civilians safer; to the contrary, the one Israeli killed today after the upsurge of Israeli violence is the first in over a year.
Israel has also ignored recent Hamas’ diplomatic initiatives to reestablish the truce or ceasefire since its expiration on 26 December.
The Israeli airstrikes today, and the catastrophic human toll that they caused, challenge those countries that have been and remain complicit, either directly or indirectly, in Israel’s violations of international law. That complicity includes those countries knowingly providing the military equipment including warplanes and missiles used in these illegal attacks, as well as those countries who have supported and participated in the siege of Gaza that itself has caused a humanitarian catastrophe.
I remind all member states of the United Nations that the UN continues to be bound to an independent obligation to protect any civilian population facing massive violations of international humanitarian law – regardless of what country may be responsible for those violations. I call on all Member States, as well as officials and every relevant organ of the United Nations system, to move on an emergency basis not only to condemn Israel’s serious violations, but to develop new approaches to providing real protection for the Palestinian people.
Richard A. Falk is an American professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University, a prolific writer, speaker and activist on world affairs, the author or co-author of more than 20 books[1] and an appointee to two United Nations positions on the Palestinian territories.
Waar denk ik nu weer te lichtvaardig over, Dunya????
Wat is er nu weer kut aan m`n redigeerwerk, Jezzie????:):) An.
@Mihai, dank.
@Dunya, dank.
@An, man, dat laatste zinnetje was kut, dat stond er eerst niet.
Ik wil je macht niet en ik vind het niet fijn als je zo tegen me praat.
Doe ff normaal, dan vind ik je veel leuker.
Jort Kelder zei overigens gisteren in Paul & Witteman dat er zo weinig Israëlische slachtoffers zijn gevallen omdat er schuilkelders zijn in elk gebouw.
Dat is waar, als je de sirenes hoort, is het rennen.
In Gaza hebben ze geen safe room waaar de mensen naar toe kunnen.
Waarom denk je dat Israël, indien waar, zou verbergen hoeveel slachtoffers er in werkelijkheid zijn gevallen in Israël?
Jezzebel, waar denk jij waar de Hamas terroristen uithangen en waarom komen ze eigenlijk niet uit hun holen tevoorschijn en zeggen ze "Hier zijn we, laat hen (de burgers) met rust, het is ons die jullie willen".
Israel laat vanavond op TV beelden zien van de school, waaruit ook qassams zouden worden afgevuurd. Hoe zie jij dat?
Waarom moet het altijd over getallen gaan? Begrijp me goed, ik vind het vreselijk, maar mij gaat het daarnaast toch ook om principes. Als Hamas geavanceerde wapens had, dan had zij die zeker op onschuldige burgers afgevuurd, doelbewust, terwijl Israel helaas wel burgers doodt, maar deze niet als primair doel heeft.
Ik zie daar een principieel verschil in, een verschil wat ook het uiteindelijke doel is van Hamas, niet een 2-statenoplossing, maar de vernietiging van de staat Israel. Dat wordt overal in deze discussies nogal over het hoofd gezien. Ik heb Handvest van Hamas maar weer eens uit de kast gepakt, het liegt er niet om.
@Betty, principes, geen enkele principes,zijn mensenlevens waard. Je woorden zijn echt kwetsend. Weet je nog, elk mensenleven telt.
Betty, waarheid is dat niet Hamas, maar Israël het meeste bloed aan haar handen heeft.
Betty, dit kan niet hoor, wat hier gebeurt.
Man, er worden onschuldige mensen vermoord!
Hoe ga je dat je kleinkinderen uitleggen?
Ik zal ze zeggen dat het heel erg is en dat Israel zeker op sommige punten schuld treft en al veel eerder met Abbas tot een gelijk had moeten komen, maar ik zal ze ook zeggen dat de Palestijnen door zelfmoordaanslagen babies aan het plafond van Sbarro Pizzeria hebben laten hangen, dat zij er bewust voor hebben gekozen een restaurant binnen te lopen en gezinnen te treffen ipv soldaten die verderop in de Jaffastraat op de bus stonden te wachten. Dat is een zeer principieel besluit van hen geweest.
Reactie is geredigeerd
@Betty, vergeet de VN-school niet die vandaag geraakt is, minstens 30 doden. Vandaag Betty, Sbarro was 9 augustus 2001… (15 doden).
Je kleinkinderen hebben recht op het hele verhaal. Ze kunnen niet op een leugen bouwen.
Jezzebel, het gaat niet om getallen, het gaat om principes. Deze bomaanslag is "maar" in Sbarro gepleegd bij gebrek aan beter, aan nog meer doden. De dader kwam immers Binyan Clal niet binnen, dan waren er veel meer doden gevallen.
Het hele verhaal is wat mij betreft dat Israel kansen heeft laten lopen om eerder tot een oplossing te komen, dat Israel (tot nog toe) de kolonisten niet of niet hard genoeg heeft aangepakt, maar daarnaast zal ik niet mogen vergeten te vertellen dat er een substantiele groep moslims is die op basis van hun overtuiging geloven en dit ook uitdragen in boeken, pamfletten en andere media, dat "heel Palestina aan Allah toebehoort" en dat er dus voor de Joden geen plaats is in een soevereine staat die Israel heet. Dat was op 14 mei 1948 zo, op 9 augustus 2001, op 11 september 2001 en op 16 oktober 2165 zal dat nog zo zijn.
Reactie is geredigeerd
Betty, HET GAAT OM MENSENLEVENS!!!
Je weet wel, één voor één, elke naam telt, yad vashem, weet je nog!
Of geldt dat niet voor een Palestijn?
Jezzebel, jouw gedachtengang is nobel, maar zal zonder verdediging van Israel leiden tot haar vernietiging. Is dat wat je wilt? Wil jij die namen hun leven, hun plek ontzeggen?
Reactie is geredigeerd
Misschien kan Eliyahu in het nederlands reageren.
Rabbi Eliyahu: Life of one yeshiva boy worth more than 1,000 Arabs
Mass Jerusalem service marks one-month anniversary of deadly attack on Mercaz Harav rabbinical seminary. ‘We do not seek vengeance, we seek retaliation,’ says yeshiva head says Kobi Nahshoni
Some 1,000 people attended a memorial service at the Mercaz Harav rabbinical seminary Thursday, marking the one-month anniversary of the murderous attack which claimed the lives of eight young men.
Also attending the service were many prominent rabbis of the Religious Zionist Movement, who were not shy about expressing their rage against the government’s policy.
Rabbi Yaakov Shapira, head of the Mercaz Harav yeshiva, chose to explain the attack by saying that "the Torah and the land of Israel are acquired only through agony."
Former Sephardi chief Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu called on the government to decree that for every life lost in the attack another yeshiva and township will be formed.
Remembering the fallen. The memorial (Photo: Gil Yohanan)
"Even when we seek revenge, it is important to make one thing clear the life of one yeshiva boy is worth more than the lives of 1,000 Arabs.
"The Talmud states that if gentiles rob Israel of silver they will pay it back in gold, and all that is taken will be paid back in folds, but in cases like these there is nothing to pay back, since as I said the life of one yeshiva boy is worth more than the lives of 1,000 Arabs," added Rabbi Eliyahu.
Ramat Gan’s chief rabbi, Yaacov Ariel, chose to deliver a more moderate message: "We do not seek vengeance, we seek retaliation. The terrorist’s house should have been demolished immediately, regardless of the law. It should have been done because it was a matter of life and death the deterrence could help save future lives."
"We are against killing innocent people or harming children," he added, "but once terrorists hide behind children, we have to strike back. The blood of those living in Sderot is worth just as much as the blood of those the terrorists hide behind."
Mercaz Harav will be holding a vigil in memory of those killed in the attack all through Thursday night.
http://www.ynetnews.com/Ext/Comp/ArticleLayout/CdaArticlePrintPreview/1,2506,L-3527410,00.html
Reactie is geredigeerd
Mihai, dit slaat nergens op. Religieuze gekken heb je overal, je moet niet roomser dan de paus doen, want als we zo gaan praten kan ik je 1000 x in de rondte om je oren slaan met islamistische teksten die precies hetzelfde zeggen, maar dan over de eigen moslims. Het heeft dus geen zin om dit hier naar voren te brengen. Dat weet je best.
Poll: Israeli Jews shun Arabs
Center for Combating Racism reveals polls showing majority of respondents did not want Arab neighbors, calls made to ‘end racism and prejudice’
Sharon Roffe-Ofir
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3231048,00.html
Are Israelis racist? Figures presented by the Center for Combating Racism paint a grim picture when it comes to Jewish Israelis’ attitudes to their fellow Arab citizens.
A poll by the group showed most Israelis would not be willing to accept an Arab neighbor, half of the public would not be willing to receive an Arab visitor in their home, and 40 percent believe that the State should encourage Arabs to emigrate from the country.
The figures come from the poll comprising 500 people, selected from the adult population by the Geocartographia Institute.
"The time has arrived for the Jewish population, who experienced what racism is on its flesh, to wake up and change its way," said group Director Bakher ouda.
The Center for Combating Racism was founded in 2003 by a group of Arab academics who declared their intention to end the problem of racism and discrimination.
However, at a press conference in Nazareth Wednesday, the group said that the disturbing poll shows that Israelis have not learned a thing:
"According to the polls that undertaken in previous years by the Haifa University and other academic bodies, it has become clear that there is a rise in racist incidents," the organization charged.
The poll presented Wednesday showed that 68 percent of respondents said they do not wish to live next to an Arab neighbor, compared with 26 percent who said they would agree.
Third of respondents: Arab culture inferior
Responding to a question about Arab friends, 46 percent said they would not be willing to have Arab friends who would visit them at their home.
Some 63 percent of the Jewish public sees Arab civilians as a security and demographic threat, and 34 percent of the Jewish public sees Arab culture as inferior compared to Israeli culture. Half of the population, according to the poll, is anxious and uncomfortable when hearing Arabic on the street.
On another front, 18 percent of respondents said they feel intense hatred for Arab citizens of the country.
"It is time to warn and change, the picture that emerges from the poll is a grim one, and we recommend that the Education Ministry prepare educational programs on the topic of racism, and that the attorney general changes his apologetic policy on everything connected with racism," Ouda said in response to the poll.
"I hope that Israeli society and those who lead it realize that the time has come to make changes," he concluded.
Reactie is geredigeerd
Israeli Textbooks and Childrens Literature Promote Racism and Hatred Toward Palestinians and Arabs
By Maureen Meehan
Israeli school textbooks as well as childrens storybooks, according to recent academic studies and surveys, portray Palestinians and Arabs as murderers, rioters, suspicious, and generally backward and unproductive. Direct delegitimization and negative stereotyping of Palestinians and Arabs are the rule rather than the exception in Israeli schoolbooks.
Professor Daniel Bar-Tal of Tel Aviv University studied 124 elementary, middle- and high school textbooks on grammar and Hebrew literature, history, geography and citizenship. Bar-Tal concluded that Israeli textbooks present the view that Jews are involved in a justified, even humanitarian, war against an Arab enemy that refuses to accept and acknowledge the existence and rights of Jews in Israel.
The early textbooks tended to describe acts of Arabs as hostile, deviant, cruel, immoral, unfair, with the intention to hurt Jews and to annihilate the State of Israel. Within this frame of reference, Arabs were delegitimized by the use of such labels as robbers, bloodthirsty, and killers, said Professor Bar-Tal, adding that there has been little positive revision in the curriculum over the years.
Bar-Tal pointed out that Israeli textbooks continue to present Jews as industrious, brave and determined to cope with the difficulties of improving the country in ways they believe the Arabs are incapable of.
Hebrew-language geography books from the 1950s through 1970s focused on the glory of Israels ancient past and how the land was neglected and destroyed by the Arabs until the Jews returned from their forced exile and revived it with the help of the Zionist movement.
This attitude served to justify the return of the Jews, implying that they care enough about the country to turn the swamps and deserts into blossoming farmland; this effectively delegitimizes the Arab claim to the same land, Bar-Tal told the Washington Report. The message was that the Palestinians were primitive and neglected the country and did not cultivate the land.
This message, continued Bar-Tal, was further emphasized in textbooks by the use of blatant negative stereotyping which featured Arabs as: unenlightened, inferior, fatalistic, unproductive and apathetic. Further, according to the textbooks, the Arabs were tribal, vengeful, exotic, poor, sick, dirty, noisy, colored and they burn, murder, destroy, and are easily inflamed.
Textbooks currently being used in the Israeli school system, says Bar-Tal, contain less direct denigration of Arabs but continue to stereotype them negatively when referring to them. He pointed out that Hebrew- as well as Arabic-language textbooks used in elementary and junior high schools contain very few references either to Arabs or to Arab-Jewish relations. The coordinator of a Palestinian NGO in Israel said that major historical events hardly get a mention either.
When I was in high school 12 years ago, the date 1948 barely appeared in any textbooks except for a mention that there was a conflict, Palestinians refused to accept a U.N. solution and ran away instead, said Jamal Atamneh, coordinator of the Arab Education Committee in Support of Local Councils, a Haifa-based NGO. Today the idea communicated to schoolchildren is basically the same: there are winners and losers in every conflict. When they teach about peace and co-existence, it is to teach us how to get along with Jews.
Atamneh explained that textbooks used by the nearly one million Arab Israelis (one-fifth of Israels population) are in Arabic but are written by and issued from the Israeli Ministry of Education, where Palestinians have no influence or input.
Fewer than 1 percent of the jobs in the Education Ministry, not counting teachers, are held by Palestinians, Atamneh said. For the past 15 years, not one new Palestinian academic has been placed in a high position in the ministry. There are no Palestinians involved in preparing the Arabic-language curriculum [and] obviously, there is no such thing as affirmative action in Israel.
In addition, there are no Arabic-language universities in Israel. Haifa University, Atamneh points out, has had a steady 20 percent Arab student population for the past 20 years. How can that figure have remained the same after all these years when the population in the north [of Israel] has grown to over 50 percent Arab?
Answering his own question, Atamneh rattles off statistics that reflect excellent high school scores among Arab students which he contrasts to their subsequent lower-than-average performance in Hebrew-language college entrance exams given by the state.
No major scholarships have ever been awarded to an Arab; there are no dorms for Arabs and no college-related jobs or financial aid programs. They justify this legal discrimination by the fact that we do not serve in the army. There are numerous blatant and official methods used to keep Palestinian Arabs out of the universities.
Absence of Palestinian Identity in Schoolbooks
Dr. Eli Podeh, lecturer in the Department of Islamic Studies and Middle East History at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, says that while certain changes in Israeli textbooks are slowly being implemented, the discussion of Palestinian national and civil identity is never touched upon.
Passages from experts about the existence of a Palestinian identity were introduced, but in general it appeared that the textbook authors were not eager to adopt it, said Dr. Podeh, adding that the connection between Palestinians in Israel and Arabs in Arab countries is not discussed. Especially evident is the lack of a discussion on the orientation of Palestinians to the [occupied] territories.
While new textbooks attempt to correct some of the earlier distortions, these books as well contain overt and covert fabrications, said Dr. Podeh. The establishment has preferredor felt itself forcedto encourage the cover-up and condemn the perplexity.
One Israeli public high school student told the Washington Report that the contents of the schoolbooks and the viewpoints expressed by some teachers indeed have a lasting negative effect on youngsters attitudes toward Palestinians.
Our books basically tell us that everything the Jews do is fine and legitimate and Arabs are wrong and violent and are trying to exterminate us, said Daniel Banvolegyi, a 17-year-old high school student in Jerusalem.
We are accustomed to hearing the same thing, only one side of the story. They teach us that Israel became a state in 1948 and that the Arabs started a war. They dont mention what happened to the Arabsthey never mention anything about refugees or Arabs having to leave their towns and homes, said Banvolegyi.
Banvolegyi, who will be a high school senior this fall, and then will be drafted into the Israeli army next summer, said he argues with his friends about what he regards as racism in the textbooks and on the part of the teachers. He pointed out a worrisome example of how damaging the textbooks and prevailing attitudes can be.
One kid told me he was angry because of something he read or discussed in school and that he felt like punching the first Arab he saw, said Banvolegyi. Instead of teaching tolerance and reconciliation, the books and some teachers attitudes are increasing hatred for Arabs.
Banvolegyi spoke about his schoolmates who, he says, are dying to go into combat and kill Arabs. I try to talk to them but they say I dont care about this country. But I do care and thats why I tell them peace and justice are the only ways to work things out.
Racist Israeli Upbringing
Considering what the schools have to offer, both Banvolegyi and Atamneh agree that the oral tradition is one of the few ways to get the story straight.
Unfortunately Israeli childrens books are not an option for promoting equality in this society, said Atamneh, citing a book written by Israeli writer/researcher Adir Cohen called An Ugly Face in the Mirror.
Cohens book is a study of the nature of childrens upbringing in Israel, concentrating on how the historical establishment sees and portrays Arab Palestinians as well as how Jewish Israeli children perceive Palestinians. One section of the book was based on the results of a survey taken of a group of 4th to 6th grade Jewish students at a school in Haifa. The pupils were asked five questions about their attitude toward Arabs, how they recognize them and how they relate to them. The results were as shocking as they were disturbing:
Seventy five percent of the children described the Arab as a murderer, one who kidnaps children, a criminal and a terrorist. Eighty percent said they saw the Arab as someone dirty with a terrifying face. Ninety percent of the students stated they believe that Palestinians have no rights whatsoever to the land in Israel or Palestine
Cohen also researched 1,700 Israeli childrens books published after 1967. He found that 520 of the books contained humiliating, negative descriptions of Palestinians. He also took pains to break down the descriptions:
Sixty six percent of the 520 books refer to Arabs as violent; 52 percent as evil; 37 percent as liars; 31 percent as greedy; 28 percent as two-faced; 27 percent as traitors, etc.
Cohen points out that the authors of these childrens books effectively instill hatred toward Arabs by means of stripping them of their human nature and classifying them in another category. In a sampling of 86 books, Cohen counted the following descriptions used to dehumanize Arabs: Murderer was used 21 times; snake, 6 times; dirty, 9 times; vicious animal, 17 times; bloodthirsty, 21 times; warmonger, 17 times; killer, 13 times; believer in myths, 9 times; and a camels hump, 2 times.
Cohens study concludes that such descriptions of Arabs are part and parcel of convictions and a culture rampant in Hebrew literature and history books. He writes that Israeli authors and writers confess to deliberately portraying the Arab character in this way, particularly to their younger audience, in order to influence their outlook early on so as to prepare them to deal with Arabs.
So you can see that if you grew up reading or studying from these books, youd never know anything else, said Atamneh.
But in the case of Palestinians, we grow up 500 meters away from what used to be a town or village and is now a Jewish settlement. Our parents and grandparents tell us all about it; endlessly they talk about it. Its the only way.
Maureen Meehan is a free-lance journalist who covers the West Bank and Jerusalem.
Reactie is geredigeerd
Zelfde laken een pak, Mihai. Stel een van de Halal-meiden, zoals Arie Boomsma deed, wie zij liever had : President Aboutaleb of Koning Willem-Alexander en wat zei ze (overigens heel eerlijk van haar, maar wel veelzeggend): dan kies ik een moslim.
Je statement is dus overbodig en eenzijdig.
@Betty, elke naam telt!
Ook van die Palestijnen die stierven vandaag, gisteren, eergisteren.
De werkelijkheid is Betty, dat je voor alles bang kunt zijn, maar Israël bestaat en op een dag als vandaag moordt zij minstens 30 mensen uit!
Dat keur ik ook af, Jezzebel, laat daar geen misverstand over bestaan. Maar Israel bestaat wellicht niet meer over 50 jaar als de Arabische bevolking blijft toenemen en groeperingen als Hezbollah of Hamas zich kunnen blijven bewapenen. Als het om Israel gaat, gelegen in een islamitische setting, dan moet je ook op de lange termijn denken.
Israelis were warned on illegality of settlements in 1967 memo
By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem
Israeli ministers were secretly warned just after the Six-Day War in 1967 that any policy of building settlements across occupied Palestinian territories violated international law.
A "top secret" memo by the Foreign Ministry’s then legal counsel said that would "contravene the explicit provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention". Growth of Jewish settlements over the next three decades followed.
The official advice that a policy which is now a major obstacle to a peaceful settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict had no basis in international law has been highlighted by the Israeli historian, Gershom Gorenberg. His new book, The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements will generate fresh debate on the legality of the West Bank settlements in the wake of Ariel Sharon’s decision to withdraw 8,500 settlers from Gaza last August.
Most of the international community has held that Jewish settlement in the territories seized in the 1967 war contravened international law, and the Geneva Conventions in particular, but this has long been publicly contested by Israel.
The highly classified internal advice was given by Theodor Meron, who left Israel a decade later and became a leading international jurist who until the end of last year was president of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
After the 1967 Israeli prime minister, Levi Eshkol, made it known he wanted settlements in the Golan Heights, seized from Syria in the war, and in the Jordan Valley, to make Israel’s borders more defensible, Mr Meron was asked whether international law allowed such settlement.
The counsel sanctioned short-term settlement "by military bodies rather than civilian ones", but explicitly ruled out civilian settlements which were energetically established by successive Israel governments, leading to an Israeli population of more than 240,00 in the West Bank today.
The Israeli acting Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, has made it clear that while Israel is prepared to withdraw further settlements from the West Bank, it intends, unilaterally if it cannot reach a negotiated peace deal, to annex territory occupied by others, including the three big settlement blocks of Ma’ale Admumim, Gush Etzion and Ariel.
The Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, 78, who is still in a coma, had secured assurances from President George Bush that borders in a "final status" agreement with the Palestinians would allow such blocks to remain in Israel.
Mr Meron’s advice, also referred to in another recent book on the 1967 war and its aftermath by the eminent Israeli journalist Tom Segev, also explicitly rejected an argument now used by Israel to defend the legality of settlements, namely that the West Bank was not "normal" occupied territory because it had not indisputably belonged to another sovereign national power and had been unilaterally annexed by Jordan.
Mr Meron said the international community would regard settlement as showing "intent to annex the West Bank", adding that "certain Israeli actions are inconsistent with the claim that the West Bank is not occupied territory". He pointed out that the government specifically decreed military courts had to apply the Geneva Conventions in the West Bank.
Israel has long argued that the policy of settlement conforms with the 1922 League of Nations decision at the San Remo conference in favour of Jewish settlement in Palestine. It also contests that the Fourth Geneva Convention’s clear prohibition of transfers of civilian population to occupied lands was drafted to deal with forced population transfers in central and eastern Europe in the Second World War.
Yesterday, Mark Regev, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, said Israel did not accept that settlements properly decided by the government contravened international law. "We distinguish between illegal outposts, which will be demolished, and legal communities established according to the law." He said the original advice had not been upheld by decisions of the Israeli courts.
In yesterday’s New York Times, Mr Gorenberg said: "Today it is clear that Israel’s future as a Jewish state depends on ending its rule of the West Bank." He adds: "Thirty-eight years after the missed warning, we must find a way to untie the entanglement."
Is er een op tilt geslagen :-))
Jongens, ik hoop dat Israel hulp krijgt bij het naar voren halen van Abbas, dat Hamas uiteindelijk geen rol meer speelt en dat de VN de rug recht houdt als het gaat om de wapensmokkel van H & H.
Youth believe Arabs dirty, uneducated
http://www.ynetnews.com/Ext/Comp/ArticleLayout/CdaArticlePrintPreview/1,2506,L-3350467,00.html
Recent poll reveals 75 percent of Jewish students believe Arabs uneducated, uncivilized, unclean. Similar stereotypes found amongst Arab students toward Jews, but in lower percentages
Ahiya Raved
A Haifa University survey investigating Arabs and Jews’ views on one another reveals disturbing results.
The poll showed that 75 percent of Jewish students believe that Arabs are uneducated people, are uncivilized and are unclean.
On the other hand 25 percent of the Arab youth believe that Jews are the uneducated ones, while 57 percent of the Arab’s believe Jews are unclean.
Over a third of the Jewish students taking part in the survey confirmed that they are afraid of Arabs.
The poll was conducted by Dr. Haggai Kupermintz, Dr. Yigal Rosen and Harbi Hasaisi of Haifa University’s Center for Research on Peace Education.
The data was presented at a bi-lingual conference held in Haifa. The study, titled "Perception of ‘the Other’ amongst Jewish and Arab Youth in Israel" included 1,600 students studying in 22 high schools around the country.
"We have found a serious expression of stereotypical thinking on the Jewish students’ part regarding the Arab youth," said Dr. Kupermintz, who pointed out that 69 percent of the Jewish students think that Arabs are not smart.
Willingness to meet with Jewish students "These students come in with firm stereotypical baggage regarding the other, and in this case, this is the Arabs," said Kupermintz.
According to the survey, the Arab youth views the Jewish society with fewer reservations: 27 percent of the Arab students believe Jews are uneducated, while 40 percent say they are uncivilized, and 47 percent believe they are not smart.
"We were not surprised with the outcome of the research," Kupermintz told Ynet.
"Anyone who is familiar with the field knows that these warped perceptions exist, but these findings are at the most severe extreme of a disturbing phenomenon. Also, up until now, I dont think such a high level amongst the Jewish students’ population over a third who admit that are afraid of Arabs, has ever been recorded."
Kupermintz further stated that the survey was conducted in October 2004, and that if it was to be held today, he believes the results would be much more extreme.
He also added that, contrary to stereotypes, the Arab public in Israel shows more willingness of integration in the Jewish sector, than Jews do in the Arab sector.
Data from the survey also showed that 75 percent of Jewish students feel Arabs are violent, as opposed to 64 percent of Arab students.
Over 50 percent of Arab students showed understanding towards the feelings of the Jewish students.
75 percent of Arab students showed willingness to meet with Jewish students as opposed to less than 50 percent willingness amongst Jewish students.
@Betty, het is wel relevant wat Mihai hier neerplempt.
The Arab-Israeli Conflict
Freud would not have been surprised at the continuing conflict in the Middle East. He predicted as much 70 years ago.
We can predict Freud’s response because of a letter he wrote to Dr. Chaim Koffler in 1930. In February 1930 Freud was asked, as a distinguished Jew, to contribute to a petition condemning Arab riots of 1929, in which over a hundred Jewish settlers were killed. This was his reply:
Letter to the Keren Hajessod (Dr. Chaim Koffler)
Vienna: 26 February 1930
Dear Sir,
I cannot do as you wish. I am unable to overcome my aversion to burdening the public with my name, and even the present critical time does not seem to me to warrant it. Whoever wants to influence the masses must give them something rousing and inflammatory and my sober judgement of Zionism does not permit this. I certainly sympathise with its goals, am proud of our University in Jerusalem and am delighted with our settlement’s prosperity. But, on the other hand, I do not think that Palestine could ever become a Jewish state, nor that the Christian and Islamic worlds would ever be prepared to have their holy places under Jewish care. It would have seemed more sensible to me to establish a Jewish homeland on a less historically-burdened land. But I know that such a rational viewpoint would never have gained the enthusiasm of the masses and the financial support of the wealthy. I concede with sorrow that the baseless fanaticism of our people is in part to be blamed for the awakening of Arab distrust. I can raise no sympathy at all for the misdirected piety which transforms a piece of a Herodian wall into a national relic, thereby offending the feelings of the natives.
Now judge for yourself whether I, with such a critical point of view, am the right person to come forward as the solace of a people deluded by unjustified hope.
Your obediant servant,
Freud
Reactie is geredigeerd
Zal ik beginnen met hele vellen van Arabisch-georienteerde websites te plakken en knippen? Het is hetzelfde verhaaltje, dat wel, maar dat houdt de boel wat in evenwicht.
Ik ben echt niet onder de indruk. Het gros van de Israeliers zijn hartstikke leuke en normale mensen en kijken niet neer op Arabieren. Ik denk dat Jezzebel dat kan beamen. Bang zijn ze wel, maar daar hebben ze dan ook alle reden voor (zie mijn bericht van 21:53).
Jezzebel, als je het van die kant wilt benaderen, dan moet Mihai ook durven quoten van Arabieren die ontzettend op Joden neerkijken, die anno 2009 nog steeds in hun moskeeen de Protocollen hebben liggen en die, zoals ik al eerder zei, vanuit hun geloof geen Joodse staat dulden. Ik zie dus het verschil niet.
Poll: 62% want Arab emigration
Annual survey shows Israel continues to decline in democracy index; nearly one third of respondents say Jewish majority required for crucial national decisions, almost two thirds want to encourage Arabs to leave the country
Neta Sela
A total of 62 percent of Israelis want the government to encourage local Arabs to leave the country, according to the 2006 democracy index released Tuesday by the Israel Democracy Institute.
Only 14 percent of respondents said ties between Arabs and Jews are good, while 29 percent said a Jewish majority is required for decisions of crucial national significance. Meanwhile, 26 percent said religious Jews and secular Jews enjoy a good relationship.
According to the annual survey, Israelis trust the IDF more than any other institution (79 percent,) followed by the High Court of Justice, the media, and the Knesset.
On the economic front, 40 percent of respondents said the country’s economic state is not good, while 74 percent said the government mishandled economic problems.
However, despite the grim figures, the survey leaves room for optimism: 86 percent of respondents said they were proud to be Israeli and 90 percent said they wish to continue living in Israel in the long run.
Addressing the disengagement plan and objection to the pullout, 82 percent of respondents said no situation justifies the use of violence for political ends. However, a large decline was seen in the overwhelming objection to insubordination due to ideology. This time around 58 percent said they objected to such insubordination compared to 70 percent in last year’s survey.
Israel drops in democracy index
When it comes to the global democracy index, Israel is ranked in 20th place out of 36 countries taking part in the index. The first place countries among least corrupt states are Finland and New Zealand. Argentina and India occupy the last places in the index. Israel, with a grade of 6.3 out of 10, is situated between Estonia and Taiwan.
In 2003, Israel was ranked 14th in the index and dropped to 17th spot by the following year. Researchers at the Israel Democracy Institute said they were very concerned about the continuous decline.
Overall, 62 percent of Israelis said there is plenty of corruption in the country and about half said a candidate must be corrupt in order to reach top leadership positions. Only 10 percent said those who run the country are concerned about the wellbeing of all Israelis.
http://www.ynetnews.com/Ext/Comp/ArticleLayout/CdaArticlePrintPreview/1,2506,L-3248693,00.html
Reactie is geredigeerd
Als ik Israelier was zou ik dat ook willen. De Arabieren in Israel zijn noodgedwongen onderdaan van dat land, maar ook zij hadden liever gehad dat heel het land Palestina zou heten en ideologisch zou zijn (op misschien een enkele vervolgde christen na). De enige reden waarom ze dat tegenhouden is een economische. Dat kan ik goed begrijpen. Maar ik kan dus ook begrijpen dat de Joodse Israeliers hen liever naar de WB zien vertrekken. Dat zou, naar mijn mening, ook het beste zijn, net zo goed als dat alle kolonisten terug moeten, kan het niet goedschiks, dan maar kwaadschiks.
@Betty, ik ben erg geschokt over de woorden die je gebruikte = Jezzebel, het gaat niet om getallen, het gaat om principes. = (21:53 uur)
Mihai hoeft niets of niemand te quoten. Ik ben Mihai erg dankbaar dat hij laat zien, met naam en toenaam, bronvermelding en alles, hoe het óók is.
Opnieuw Betty, realiteit is, Israël bestaat en zij moordt; ‘uit principe’.
Voor de rest ben ik er moe en verdrietig van.
Deze tekening is van Sigalit Landau die ze maakte aan de Dode Zee, een voorloper van haar indrukwekkende installatie ‘The Endless Solution’.
Blijkbaar willen sommige Israëliërs niet alleen dat de Arabieren vertrekken, maar ze denken zelfs aan een groot Israël, zonder Arabieren in Gaza en Westelijke Jordaanoever. En sommige van deze sommige Israëliërs worden zelfs premier.
Olmert: There’s no such thing as ‘Greater Israel’ anymore
By Barak Ravid, Haaretz Correspondent and Reuters
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Sunday reiterated his position that the vision of Israel holding onto the West Bank and Gaza Strip as part of its sovereign territory was finished.
"Greater Israel is over. There is no such thing. Anyone who talks that way is deluding themselves," Olmert told the cabinet during its weekly meeting.
He added, though, that this had not always been his stance: "During Camp David I thought that [then prime minister] Ehud Barak’s concessions were too much, and I told him as much.
"I thought that land from the Jordan River through to the sea was all ours, but ultimately, after a long and tortured process, I arrived at the conclusion that we must share with those we live with, if we don’t want to be a bi-national state."
Meanwhile on Sunday, Channel 2 reported that Olmert will meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday in a last ditch effort to reach agreement on a peace deal with the Palestinians before he steps down when his Kadima party chooses a successor on Wednesday.
Olmert will meet Abbas to try to conclude a U.S.-backed peace plan before President George W. Bush leaves office at the end of this year.
Israeli and Palestinian officials said the parties were working to arrange a meeting this week but that no final date had been set.
Although Olmert has promised to resign after the Kadima ballot, he could stay on as caretaker prime minister for weeks or months until his successor forms a new government.
The media reports said that apart from discussing ongoing issues, Olmert could tell Abbas about a new compensation plan for thousands of Jewish settlers willing to leave their homes in the occupied West Bank.
Sunday’s cabinet session focused on the evacuation-compensation bill, which proposes offering NIS 1.1 million to families willing to move out of West Bank settlements.
During the meeting, Vice Premier Haim Ramon presented the cabinet with an outline of bill, which is estimated at a total cost of NIS 2.5 billion. The plan would offer settlers who choose to relocate to the Negev an additional 25 percent compensation and those who agree to move the Galilee region an additional 15 percent.
18 percent of the 60,000 settlers currently living in the West Bank have said they would be willing to relocate. A survey conducted by the Prime Minister’s Office showed that more than 11,000 settlers living beyond the security barrier would agree to leave their homes.
Ramon told the cabinet members that, "The evacuation of residents of Judea and Samaria is an unavoidable step for those who believe in two states for two peoples – and that includes most of the Israeli public."
Ramon added that Israel’s position in negotiations with the Palestinians and in the eyes of the international community would only be bolstered by an announcement that Israel wants to end its presence in the West Bank.
Shas party Chairman Eli Yishai voiced his opposition to the plan, saying "Whoever brings about the evacuation of settlers will lead to the evacuation of Jerusalem and to the eradication of the Jewish identity."
Yishai said that his ultra-Orthodox Shas would do everything in its power to prevent the proposal from being implemented. "This legislation is a colossal strategic mistake and presents Israel as lacking in principles. We still have not recovered from the cursed expulsion and there are people dragging us into further expulsion," he said, referring to Israel’s 2005 disengagement from the Gaza Strip.
Public Security Minister Avi Dichter said: "This discussion is fundamentally flawed and problematic. It is a little like putting the cart before the horse. Even if homes are legally demolished, it will be hard to prevent them from being rebuilt, and it could get violent. Voluntary evacuation will only serve to weaken rather than strengthening Israel."
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1020929.html
Reactie is geredigeerd
@Jezzebel, als je de Arabische media goed bestudeert, dan zal je moeten toegeven dat zij heel Israel weg willen, dat is hun principe, dus als je het wel over getallen wilt hebben, dan hebben we het hier over een getal van 5,5 miljoen Joodse israeliers.
En ik ben ook heel erg gekwetst: JODEN ZIJN NIET ALLEEN LEUKE MENSEN ALS ZE IN OEGANDA OF ALASKA WONEN!! Ze mogen ook een staat hebben in het land waar zij als volk ontstaan zijn. En dat willen Hezbollah en Hamas niet. Zij willen niet delen, ze willen ALLES! israel heeft geen keus dan Hezbollah en Hamas (hopelijk met de hulp van buitenaf) te stoppen zodat de Pakistaanse of Iraanse wapens ze over 20 jaar niet om de oren vliegen. Je moet vooruit zien. Niet alleen israel heeft verplichtingen. H en H moeten accepteren dat de staat Israel bestaat en MAG blijven bestaan.
Reactie is geredigeerd
Als we zien hoe Olmert dacht, kunnen we heel makkelijk de nederzettingen verklaren:
Onderzoek Israël erkent:
Staat schond wet bij bouw in bezet gebied
Door onze correspondent Oscar Garschagen
JERUZALEM, 9 MAART. Door fraude met Palestijnse documenten, illegaal gebruik van staatsgeld en schending van de wet hebben Israëlische kolonisten, leger en ministeries 105 illegale nederzettingen in bezet gebied gebouwd.
,,Het is één grote chaos, overheidsorganen schenden wetten, regels en bepalingen die door de staat zelf zijn uitgevaardigd, ambtenaren gaan hun boekje ver te buiten.” Dat staat in een vandaag gepubliceerd rapport na een zeven maanden durend onderzoek van de voormalige openbare aanklaagster, Talia Sasson, naar illegale bouw van nederzettingen op de Westelijke Jordaanoever. Sassons conclusies bevestigen jaren oude klachten van Palestijnen en Israëlische organisaties als Vrede Nu.
Het is het eerste dergelijke onderzoek dat is ingesteld in opdracht van de Israëlische regering zelf. De Verenigde Staten hadden erop aangedrongen. President Bush voerde gisteren de druk op Israël op om de illegale ‘buitenposten’ af te breken en de bouwactiviteiten onmiddellijk te staken.
Premier Sharon zal vandaag de VS laten weten dat hij de aanbevelingen van Sasson om het systeem drastisch te hervormen, zal uitvoeren. De ‘illegale buitenposten’, niet te verwarren met de grote, verstedelijkte nederzettingen, worden ontmanteld, aldus een woordvoerder.
Washington heeft Israël laten weten dat de relaties beschadigd raken als Sharon zijn verplichtingen volgens de ‘Routekaart naar Vrede’ niet nakomt.
Leiders van de kolonisten reageerden verontwaardigd op het onderzoek, omdat zij ,,opeens worden afgeschilderd als de kwaden in een spel”, waarbij Sharon en talrijke ministers nauw betrokken zijn geweest. Van de 105 illegale buitenposten zijn er 51 gebouwd sinds het aantreden van premier Sharon en de andere onder het premierschap van Netanyahu (Likud), Barak en Rabin (Arbeidspartij).
Onder Amerikaanse druk heeft Sharon zijn koers om via de bouw van nederzettingen de oprichting van een Palestijnse staat onmogelijk te maken gewijzigd. Hij wil het rapport van Sasson gebruiken als breekijzer om de talrijke maar kleine ‘buitenposten’ te ontmantelen. Ministers en leden van de Knesset hebben aangedrongen op strafrechtelijk onderzoek.
Volgens Dror Etkes, de nederzettingenspecialist van Vrede Nu, heeft Sharon andere motieven. Door het maken van een ,,fundamenteel onjuist onderscheid” tussen ‘illegale buitenposten’ en de grote verstedelijkte nederzettingen zou hij willen voorkomen dat Israël ook deze plaatsen, waaronder Ariël, Ma’ale Adumim en Gush Etzion, moet opgeven.
In de vijf grootste nederzettingen wonen de meeste kolonisten (230.000) terwijl in de 105 buitenposten tussen 3.000 en 5.000 kolonisten wonen, fanatici voor wie de meerderheid van de Israëliërs weinig sympathie heeft. Volgens het internationale recht zijn alle nederzettingen die na de oorlog van 1967 op bezet grondgebied gebouwd zijn, illegaal.
In het rapport schetst Sasson de werking van het systeem. Meestal werd op een zorgvuldig uitgezochte heuvel een antenne voor mobiele telefonie geplaatst, die onmiddellijk op het Israëlische elektriciteitsnetwerk aangesloten moest worden. Vervolgens moest er dan bewaking komen en dat rechtvaardigde de plaatsing van een caravan of de bouw van een huis. Dan arriveerde de bewaker met zijn familie en anderen volgden. Onder het mom van de aanleg van nuts- en onderwijsvoorzieningen stroomden fondsen van de ministeries van Huisvesting, Onderwijs en Landbouw toe.
Onder het hoofdstuk ‘veiligheid’ viel de bemoeienis van het leger en de Civiele Administratie van het leger, dat daarvoor ook speciale fondsen heeft. Betrokken ambtenaren en legerofficieren hadden volgens Sasson geen moeite met het vervalsen van Palestijnse eigendomspapieren om de indruk te wekken dat stukken land op legale wijze van Palestijnse landeigenaren waren gekocht. In 24 van de 105 beschreven buitenposten hebben kolonisten in samenwerking met ambtenaren en officieren land van Palestijnen ‘gestolen’ door fraude. Eerder deze week is een officier, luitenant-kolonel Yair Blumentahl, gearresteerd in verband met diefstal van Palestijns land en het aannemen van steekpenningen.
In de Israëlische media wordt het onderzoek beschouwd als een eerste poging om ,,de Israëlische bananenrepubliek” (commentator Ben Caspit in het dagblad Ma’ariv) af te breken en van Israël een land te maken, waar ,,ook de staat het verschil tussen goed en kwaad kan onderscheiden”.
NRC 9 maart 2005
@Betty, wat me het meest schokt is dat je het verschil tussen de realiteit en je angst niet maakt.
Israël moordt! Er zijn meer dan 600 mensen dood, laatste cijfers (620 doden).
Okay, het beste is om Israël met een hele grote bezem, de zee in te vegen.
Problem aufgelöst.
Wel eens gekeken, hoe groot Israël eigenlijk is? Ongeveer de helft van Nederland.
Hoe groot de bedreigende omringende landen zijn? Immens groot.
Maar goed, de zee in met die hele hap, ze hebben toch maar ong. 6 miljoen inwoners dus dat moet lukken.
Tis eerder gedaan.
Trouwens Rat arrafat was miljonair toen ie de pijp uit ging, z’n weduwe ging er spoorslags vandoor richting Paris.
Die hele Palestijnse zaak en…interesseerde hun geen zak, it’s all about money en de eeuwige anti-semiet.
(Hugo Brandt Corstius)
Wat mij opvalt in de hele discussie is dat de psychopathische moordenaars geen enkel rationeel argument hebben gebracht. Alleen maar drogredenen, leugens, charlatanerieën en rassenhaat.
Als Israël, Amerika, Nederland en andere machtigen in de wereld vrede zouden willen en als ze zouden willen dat de wereld functioneert volgens de principes de zij liegen dat ze volgen, volgens de rule of law, zouden de machtigen toestaan dat er internationale rechtbanken bestaan, die kunnen beslissen wie schuldig is en wie moet iets doen of laten. Bij deze rechtbanken zouden de machtelozen kunnen stappen en daarmee de machtigen op een vreedzame manier dwingen om de wetten te volgen. Maar de machtigen willen zich niet laten inbinden door rechtbanken. En de beste verklaring is dat ze de rest van de wereld willen beroven, onderdrukken en in slavernij drijven. Desnoods uitroeien voor meer lebensraum. Dit is de achtergrond die de psychopathische moordenaars op één of andere manier weg moeten moffelen. En dat kunnen ze niet met geldige argumenten doen, dus ze moeten al die mythes en drogredenen bedenken.
Reactie is geredigeerd
This is an all-out war against the civilian Palestinian population
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ev6ojm62qwA
January 06, 2009
Dr. Mads Gilbert, Gaza,
Dr . Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian doctor in Gaza, tells Sky News that the number of civilians injured and killed in Gaza proves that Israel is deliberately attacking the population.
Just a little bit more than an hour ago the Israelis bombed the central fruit market in Gaza city and we had a mass influx of about 50 injured and between 10 and 15 killed. At the same time they bombed an apartment house with children playing on the roof and we had a lot of children also. So this is really like speaking from the dumps of Inferno, its like hell here now, and its been bombing all night. Until now close to 500 people have been killed and the number of casualties is getting to 2,500 of which 50% are children and women.
Are your hospitals reaching capacity? Can you deal with these people?
We have been doing surgery around the clock. I have just talked with one of my colleagues in the ICU (Intensive Care Unit), he’s not been sleeping for three days and the hospital is completely overcrowded, we are running 6 – 7 Ors (Operating Rooms) and there are injuries you just dont want to see in this world children coming in with open abdomens and legs cut off. We just had a child that we had to amputate both legs and an arm. And their only crime is being civilians and Palestinians living in Gaza. The relief now is not more doctors and more drugs; the relief now is to stop the bombing immediately, this cannot go on, its a disaster.
Youve talked about the civilians, the women, the children, the men who arent involved in this, but are you also getting casualties that are Hamas fighters?
To be honest, we came on New Years Eve in the morning. Ive seen one military person among the tenths I mean hundreds that weve seen and treated, so anybody who tries to portrait this as a totally clean war against another army are lying. This is an all-out war against the civilian Palestinian population in Gaza, and we can prove that with numbers. And you have to remember that the average age of the Gaza inhabitants is 17 years, its a very young population, and 80% are living below the poverty limit of the UN. So this is a poor and very young people, and they are able to escape absolutely nowhere, because they cannot flee like other populations can in war time, because they are fenced in and they are in a cage, so theyre bombing 1.5 million people in a cage young people, poor people and, you know, you cannot separate between the civilians and the fighters in such a situation.
An,ik heb het duistere gevoel,dat ik jou niet teveel moet vertellen.
Trollen zijn gevaarlijk heb ik onlangs vernomen.
Straks schiet Jezza in de stress,met al die trollen op haar blog.
De een nog erger dan de andere.
Of zou Jezza wel gerustgesteld worden door de ip nummers itt tot andere neurotici?
Maar er zijn belangrijker zaken die hier aan de orde komen,de wereld in het MO staat in brand!
The Real Estate War in Gaza
The History and "Morals" of Ethnic Cleansing
By Victoria Buch
January 06, 2009 "Counterpunch" -I arrived in Israel 40 years ago. It took me many years to understand that the very existence of my country, as it is today, is based on an ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. The project started many years ago. Its seed can be traced to the basic fallacy of the Zionist movement, which set out to establish a Jewish-national state in a location already inhabited by another nation. Under these conditions, one has, at most, a moral right to strive for a bi-national state; establishing a national state implies, more or less by definition, ethnic cleansing of the previous inhabitants.
Albert Einstein grasped this fallacy a long time ago. A short time after WWI "Einstein complained that the Zionists were not doing enough to reach agreement with the Palestinian Arabs He favored a binational solution in Palestine and warned Chaim Weizmann against `Prussian style` nationalism"[1]
But such warnings passed un-heeded by the Zionist movement. So here we are, nearly a century later, with a Jewish national state dominated by militaristic and militant nationalists, who diligently pursue colonization and "judaization" of the land under Israeli control, on both sides of the Green Line (1967 border). The project has been pursued continuously and relentlessly under the different Israeli governments, recently under the cover of bogus "negotiations" with President Abbas. Most of the Israeli institutions participate in it. Young Israelis, generation after generation, join the army to provide the military cover. The young folks have been brain-washed to honestly believe that the army pursues Israel’s "fight for existence". However it seems evident to the author of this article, as to many others, that the survival of the Jewish community in this country depends on establishing viable mechanisms of coexistence with the Palestinians. Thus, under the slogan of "fight for existence", the State of Israel is pursuing an essentially suicidal project.
This long-standing outlook of the Israeli governing classes was summarized succinctly in a recent book `Palestine Inside Out` by Saree Makdisi, an American academic. His book "suggests that occupation is merely a feature of an ongoing Israeli policy of slow transfer of the native Palestinian population from their lands. This policy predates the founding of the state, and all of the various practices of the occupier: illegal settlement, land confiscation, home demolition and so on, serve this ultimate purpose."[2]
If you do not believe the above assessment, consider several statements by David Ben Gurion himself, from the time before the establishment of the State of Israel (Ben Gurion was the leader of the Zionist movement before 1948 and the first Israeli Prime Minister after 1948):
"The compulsory transfer of the [Palestinian] Arabs from the valleys of the proposed Jewish state could give us something which we never had, even when we stood on our own during the days of the first and second Temples We are given an opportunity which we never dared to dream of in our wildest imaginings. This is more than a state, government and sovereignty, this is national consolidation in a free homeland." [3]
"With compulsory transfer we [would] have a vast area [for settlement] I support compulsory transfer. I don’t see anything immoral in it."[3]
During the 1948 war, about two-thirds of the Palestinians who would become refugees were in fact expelled from their homes by the nascent Israeli army, and one-third became refugees while escaping the dangers of war. All these people, 0.75-1 million of them, were prevented from returning to Israel after the armistice agreement, while their homes and property were demolished or appropriated by the State of Israel.
Among the common mantras provided to the Israelis to justify the above is the following: "Israel accepted the UN partition plan, and Arabs did not, so what happened afterwards is their own fault". What is conveniently overlooked is that Palestinian Arabs constituted between one third and one half of the population of that designated Jewish homeland (according to various UN reports). Why should these people, whose ancestors lived there for generations, accept living in somebody else’s designated homeland? Imagine, for example, the reaction of French Belgians if their country were designated as a "Flemish homeland" by the UN.
But the main mantra drummed into the conscience of an Israeli citizen from kindergarten, is that in 1948 "it was either them or us", "Arabs would have thrown us into the sea if we did not establish a Jewish majority state with a strong army", etc. I have my doubts about that line, too, but let us suppose for the moment that in fact, it was so. And then came the year 1967, and the Six Day War. Another chapter in the Israeli "fight for existence" against recalcitrant Arabs who just keep trying to throw us into the sea. On the face of it, that is how it seemed. I together with most of my compatriots believed for years that 1967 was in fact a moment of existential danger for Israel. Until I stumbled upon some telling quotes, uttered by our very own leaders [4]:
"(a) The New York Times quoted Prime Minister Menachem Begin`s (1977 – 83) August, 1982 speech saying: `In June, 1967, we had a choice. The Egyptian Army concentrations in the Sinai approaches do not prove that (President Gamal Abdel) Nasser (1956 – 70) was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him.`
(b) Two-time Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (1974 – 77 and 1992 – 95) told French newspaper Le Monde in February, 1968: `I do not believe Nasser wanted war. The two divisions which he sent into Sinai on May 14 would not have been enough to unleash an offensive against Israel. He knew it and we knew it.`
(c) General Mordechai Hod, Commander of the Israeli Air Force during the Six-Day War said in 1978: `Sixteen years of planning had gone into those initial eighty minutes. We lived with the plan, we slept on the plan, we ate the plan. Constantly we perfected it.`
(d) General Haim Barlev, Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) Chief told Ma`ariv in April 1972: `We were not threatened with genocide on the eve of the six-day war, and we had never thought of such a possibility.`"
So: instead of "thwarting an existential danger", in 1967 the State of Israel carried out an effective military operation to acquire some real estate. There is nothing new about that "existential danger" propaganda. Acquisition of real estate by conquest has been already called pleasing names by various other conquerors and occupiers, throughout the old and new history: such as "manifest destiny", "white man’s burden", "spreading true religion / culture / democracy", whatnot.
The reader may like to know that the 1967 real estate acquisition by the State of Israel was anticipated some twenty years earlier by Ben-Gurion, at the time of the partition plan (which was supposedly accepted by the Zionist leadership). See the following quotes of Ben-Gurion, which can be found in the book by an Israeli historian[5]:
"Just as I do not see the proposed Jewish state as a final solution to the problems of the Jewish people, so I do not see partition as the final solution of the Palestine question. Those who reject partition are right in their claim that this country cannot be partitioned because it constitutes one unit, not only from a historical point of view but also from that of nature and economy".
"After the formation of a large army in the wake of the establishment of the [Jewish] state, we shall abolish partition and expand to the whole of the Palestine".
I wonder if at any point in history there was any association of people who acquired goodies by brute force, and who viewed themselves candidly as such. Times and again, conquerors considered themselves unwilling victims of circumstances, and the barbarians (their own victims!) against whom they have to regretfully protect their rights. Consider the following pronouncements of Benny Morris, a historian who documented the 1948 ethnic cleansing. In a 2004 interview with Morris which was published in Haaretz one reads[6]:
Q: The title of the book you are now publishing in Hebrew is "Victims." In the end, then, your argument is that of the two victims of this conflict, we [Israelis] are the bigger one.
Morris: "Yes. Exactly. We are the greater victims in the course of history and we are also the greater potential victim. Even though we are oppressing the Palestinians, we are the weaker side here. We are a small minority in a large sea of hostile Arabs who want to eliminate us.
The above opinion is representative of the Israeli mainstream. It has been raised to the status of axiom over the years, and no reasonable peace offers (such as the latest Saudi one) are likely to put a dent in it. Israelis are using this slogan to exempt themselves from normal human decency towards Palestinians. Most Israeli Jews have convinced themselves that they have a moral right to expropriate and expel Palestinians because Palestinians are such barbarians, who did not respond to Israel’s"generous peace offers" and "only wanted to throw us to the sea". Because we are a nation of Holocaust survivors. My compatriots imagined themselves starring in a modern version of Tolkien’s "Lord of the Rings" – starring as beautiful elves, of course, who were forced by sad fate to fight ugly goblins the Palestinians (goblins = "terrorists"). Human mercy does not apply to "terrorists". You do not make territorial compromises or peace agreements with "terrorists".
The above explains the mass participation of otherwise normal and more-or-less decent Israelis in the ongoing ethnic-cleansing projects. How else can you account for a dying elderly man and his wife being dragged out of their east Jerusalem apartment to make space for Jewish settlers. Building the Jerusalem "Museum of Tolerance" on the site of an ancient Muslim graveyard. Onslaught on West Bank orphanages supported by Islamic charities. State-subsidized Jewish settler-thugs conducting pogroms against Palestinians in Hebron and elsewhere in the Occupied Territories. Widespread sadism practiced by Israeli soldiers against Palestinian detainees. Trashing of Palestinian homes during nightly military incursions in Palestinian towns and villages. Demolitions of Palestinian homes in the West Bank and East Jerusalem under the brazen pretext of "illegal construction". Extensive land grab for settlers. And much more.[7]
The Gaza Strip is the place where the self-righteous Israeli sadism has reached new heights. The Strip is densely populated, mostly by descendants of Palestinians expelled in 1948. Well before the Second Intifada, choice Gazan real estate along the beach (about ¼ of the Strip land) was confiscated for a few thousand Jewish settlers. Still, a million and a half Gazan Palestinians had a sort of normal life (under the Israeli occupation) growing fruits and vegetables, making construction materials and other products for Israeli markets, and working as laborers within the Green Line. Before the second Intifada, very little terror was coming from there to Israel.
However, since the beginning of the Intifada (a year and a half before the first Palestinian rocket landing across the border) the Israeli army embarked on the systematic destruction of the Strip. Incursions were carried out every few weeks and included the destruction of factories and workshops, roads, agricultural land, homes, and whatnot. Access to the Israeli economy was closed. Eventually, desperate Palestinians resorted to shooting Qassam rockets which rarely caused casualties or real damage but served as an excellent pretext for Israeli military "action".
And then Sharon carried out his brilliant propaganda move of "disengagement" from Gaza. The whole operation was marketed as a demonstration of Israeli good will. The Israeli settlements in Gaza were in fact removed, but the army was redeployed around the Strip, and the Strip was converted to a large scale prison. The economic strangulation of Gaza was tightened to a draconian extent, especially after the Hamas government suppressed the Israel-cum-USA sponsored Fatah putsch. (I am no fan of Hamas but their government was democratically elected by the Palestinians) Hamas offered several times to conduct negotiations with Israel, based on 1967 borders, but the offers were under-reported and ignored. It is likely that such negotiations would have stopped the Qassams, but Israeli leaders appeared interested in continuation of the violence. The Qassams created a great opportunity for more "poor little us" propaganda, and a great pretext to wiggle out of legitimate international requests to stop the massive colonization of the West Bank.
Finally, a truce with Hamas was negotiated. Since the beginning of the truce defense minister Barak commenced preparations for a massive attack on Gaza[8]. On November 14th the working truce with Hamas was deliberately broken on Barak’s orders, by killing several Hamas fighters. A totally predictable Palestinian response ensued – cancellation of the truce and a barrage of rockets. The barrage was used by Barak as a pretext for that large-scale operation, including the slaughter of hundreds of people in Gaza with missiles deployed from airplanes. This muscle-flexing is an obvious part of Barak’s and Livni’s forthcoming election campaign, at the price of hundreds of Palestinian casualties, and several Israeli ones (as meanwhile Palestinians have improved their aim). In a forthcoming ground operation Israeli soldiers are also likely to pay with their lives for this form of electioneering.
Do you know what mainstream Israelis make of the above? ‘We, Israelis, in an act of self-sacrifice, removed poor Jewish settlers from their "homes" in the Gaza Strip and gave Palestinians a chance for free and happy existence. But the Palestinians spurned our peace efforts and preferred instead to pursue their addiction to "throwing Jews to the sea." Gaza could have become a new Singapore, but the Gazans chose instead to shoot rockets at Israelis.’
The disengagement was thus an act of brilliance on part of that evil genius, Sharon. He provided mainstream Israelis with a sweeping moral absolution. Palestinians "disappointed" them. Now the Israeli leaders can do anything they wish to Palestinians. Do not expect a squeak of public protest from the Israeli Jewish public, except for a tiny minority of "self hating Jews" like yours truly.
Believe me, these Jewish-Israeli mainstreamers are not natural-born monsters. They just do not know any better. Alas, I used to be one of them. Then one day I stumbled, more or less by chance, into the West Bank with a group of activists. I acquired some Palestinian friends and finally understood the criminality of the treatment of the Palestinians by my country. And I learned to ignore the daily portion of preposterous propaganda which is provided to my compatriots by the media in lieu of "news". But how to convince my compatriots not to listen to this propaganda? I do not know.
Then again, it does not have to be so. In addition to four million or so stateless Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories, there are about a million Palestinians living within the Green Line and carrying Israeli citizenship. Despite the very considerable internal racism, many of these Palestinian citizens are deeply involved in Israeli society. You meet Arab doctors and nurses in Israeli hospitals, Arab students in Israeli universities etc. There is quite an element of coexistence and cooperation between Jews and Arabs there. But a mainstream Jewish-Israeli colleague who might treat his or her Arab co-worker perfectly decently would still be proud of a soldier son who is "serving the country" in the Occupied Territories. He or she would still repeat racist propaganda about the "demographic danger" to the State of Israel from its Arab citizens, and believe the bloodthirsty speeches of generals and ex-generals on the TV. And vote for any of the three major Zionist parties, Likud, Kadima and Labour, whose leaders have been dedicated ethnic cleansers over the years.
For the sake of both nations living in this country, this outrage must be stopped. It must be stopped by pressure from outside, because at present within Israel there are no significant political forces to oppose it. Please do something, my friends, and do it urgently. And kindly ignore the endless "negotiations" between our government and the powerless Palestinian Authority, they are just a cover for more ethnic cleansing. If you do not believe me, come and see the massive settlement construction in East Jerusalem and West Bank. And the walls of the Palestinian ghettos.
Victoria Buch is an Israeli academic and anti-Occupation activist. Her email: vvbb54@yahoo.com
[1] From "The Pity of It All", a book by Amos Elon on German Jews.
[2] From a review of Makdisi’s book: `Palestine Inside Out`, by Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, IMEU 2008.
[3] From "Righteous Victims" by Benny Morris
[4] Collected by Stephen Lendman, see http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/15348 )
[5] From The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities,by Simha Flapan
[6] The full text of the interview can be found in the Counterpunch website
[7] *Information can be found, e.g., in the Occupation Magazine, the website of Israeli anti-Occupation activists.
[8] "Disinformation, secrecy and lies: How the Gaza offensive came about" By Barak Ravid, Haaretz http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1050426.html
De realiteit zal straks zijn dat de angst van nu bewaarheid wordt en daar moet je op anticiperen. Binnen nu en, pak ‘m beet, 20 jaar, hebben extremistische groeperingen die de staat Israel niet in hun midden dulden, ook bv biologische wapens tot hun beschikking en zullen zij niet nalaten deze te gebruiken. Om dat te verkomen is het nu zaak dat er paal en perk wordt gesteld aan illegaal wapenbezit bij organisaties als (o.a) H & H. De internatiole gemeenschap moet hier niet de ogen voor sluiten, zoals zij na de Libanon-oorlog doet met resolutie 1701: Hezbollah zou ontwapend worden en invoer vanuit buurlanden (lees: Syrie) werden verboden. Er is niemand die er iets aan doet, ze staan erbij en kijken ernaar.
Het verhaal dat alles meteen opgelost is met een einde aan bezetting, is klinklare onzin. Een Palestijnse staat binnen de grenzen van 1967, wat zeg ik, die van 1948, is ook voor organisaties behept met een dergelijke ideologie, onacceptabel.
De realiteit is dus:
1) Israel mag Hamas uitschakelen ALS de wereldgemeenschap de dreiging niet serieus neemt (wat tot nu toe niet gebeurd is). Uiteraard moet zij daarbij uiterste oplettenheid jegens de burgerbevolking betrachten).
2) Er moet paal en perk worden gesteld aan wapenleveranties aan groeperingen die de staat Israel niet erkennen en dat in de toekomst ook niet van plan zijn vanuit ideologische overwegingen.
3) Het vredesoverleg moet terug op de rails, met verplichtingen voor beide partijen, dus ook Israel.
4) De naiviteit die er ten aanzien van veel, edoch goedwillende, mensen leeft dat het allemaal wel los zal lopen als er eenmaal een Palestijnse staat is en dat Israel dus uit de gevarenzone zal geraken, moet worden benadrukt. De dreiging t.o.v. de staat Israel zal nooit volledig ophouden te bestaan.
Most genocidal killing from the 15th century onwards has been part of Europes search for lebensraum. – Arundhati Roy
Binnen nu en 20 jaar voegen we ook de Palestijnen aan de lange lijst van Westerse genocides toe. We hoeven echter de propaganda van de psychopathische moordenaars niet serieus te nemen.
@Gus, er sterven onschuldige mensen!
@Betty, mijn grootste angst is de moordlust van de mens. Zeg maar vrij naar Golda; ik ben bang voor het bloed aan de handen van ‘mijn’ mensen.
Het is een angst die gevoed wordt door zij die er belang bij hebben dat jij bang bent. Zodat je bereid bent om … De geschiedenis vertelt je de rest.
@Mihai, dank ook voor het stuk van Victoria Buch.
@Jezzebel, mijn angst is op feiten gebaseerd niet op subjectieve zaken. Ik denk dat je naast de angst voor de moordlust van Golda’s mensen vooral ook bang moet zijn voor de moordlust van Osama’s en Khomeiny’s mensen.
De geschiedenis heeft mij geleerd dat ik op mijn hoede moet zijn. Dat betekent niet dat je geen stappen dichterbij moet komen, maar er moet een behoorlijk krediet worden opgebouwd en gezien de retoriek en handvesten van dergelijke groeperingen, is dat krediet nog lang niet genoeg aanwezig.
Sommigen praten over objectief praten, anderen praten over de feiten. Ze zijn echter niet in Israël geweest in 1948, noch in 1967, noch in 2009. Ze zijn geen geschoolde juristen in internationaal recht, noch heeft een rechter die mensen schuldig verklaard. Bovendien is er geen doodstraf in Nederland. Ondanks alles keuren zij de dood van honderden mensen goed. Ik durf te wedden dat zij niet gedood zouden willen worden door andere mensen na zo weinig argumentatie. Hoe kan dat mensen met zo weinig kennis, zonder een uitspraak van een rechtbank de dood van andere mensen zo makkelijk kunnen goedkeuren? De beste verklaring voor deze bloeddorst is slechts te vinden in hun misdadigheid of in hun psychopathische aanleg.
Reactie is geredigeerd
@Mihai, dat is me te simpel.
Dat is de misdadigheid en psychopatische aanleg van elk mens.
Maar ik vind het wel schokkend.
@Betty, ondertussen is er een land, Israél, land van mijn hart, en dat van jou, dat moordt.
Dat kun je toch niet goedkeuren omdat ‘de andere partij nog lang niet genoeg krediet heeft.’
Man, ik ben bang voor jou.
Stel je voor dat ik zou zeggen dat je alle Nederlanders moet doden, die het eens zijn met het doden van de Palestijnen. Dat zouden ze een rare uitspraak vinden. Maar in feite heb ik net zoveel kennis als zij, kan ik precies dezelfde argumenten aanvoeren als zij. Dus door het eens te zijn met het doden van de Palestijnen zeggen ze niets anders dat ik gerechtvaardigd ben om deze Nederlanders te doden.
@Mihai, laat Betty het niet horen. 🙂
Betty werkt, zoals George Bush, in opdracht van God. Zij mag Palestijnen doden, maar ik mag haar niet doden, omdat zij een speciale, geprivilegieerde toegang tot de objectieve feiten heeft, wat haar meer rechten toekent dan mij.
Reactie is geredigeerd
Mihai, ik vind het over het algemeen slap gelul wat je uitkraamt.
Net zo min als dat Nederlanders Palestijnen willen doden, willen de Israëliers dat ook niet.
Dacht je dat ze dat leuk vinden, elke dag in stress leven, nu al zo’n 60 jaar.
Ze hebben al zo veel oorlogen gehad in hun korte bestaan.
De wapen bevoorrading vanuit Iran, maakt het hun onmogenlijk om vrede te krijgen.
De Hamas heeft straks lange afstandswapens, nou en dan wordt het echte puinhoop.
Betty, volledig mee eens.
Maar de eeuwig anti-semiet steekt telkens weer de kop op.
Ik ken mensen, jonge mensen die schuchter vertellen dat ze van Joodse komaf zijn.
Mijn reactie afwachtend, nou ik vind dat verschrikkelijk.
Je zal maar een Joodse Homofiele Moslim Neger zijn en je bekeert je tot het gristendom, met de nadruk op dom, tenminste als je Katholiek wil worden. Lijkt me niet zo swingend; duikvlucht maken vanaf een flatgebouw.
Hm, inlog.
@Gus, in Israël wordt gemoord. Er sterven mensen. Dat zijn feiten.
@Gus
Hetzelfde argument is tijdens alle Westerse genocides gebruikt, heeft Antony Anghie in het boek Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law aangetoond. Een klein voorbeeld over hoe Francisco de Vitoria de genocide op 20-100 miljoen indianen heeft gerechtvaardigd:
Vitoria’s apparently innocuous enunciation of a right to ‘travel’ and ‘sojourn’ extends finally to the creation of a comprehensive, indeed inescapable system of norms which are inevitably violated by the Indians. For example, Vitoria asserts that to keep certain people out of the city or province as being enemies, or to expel them when already there, are acts of war’.Thus any Indian attempt to resist Spanish penetration would amount to an act of war. which would justify Spanish retaliation. Each encounter between the Spanish and the Indians therefore entitles the Spanish to ‘defend’ themselves against Indian aggression and. in so doing, continuously expand Spanish territory, as discussed below.
Vitoria zelf schrijft: And so when the war is at that pass that the indiscriminate spoliation of all enemy-subjects alike and the seizure of all their goods are justifiable, then it is also justifiable to carry all enemy-subjects of into captivity, whether they be guilty or guiltless. And inasmuch as war with pagans is of this type, seeing that it is perpetual and that they can never make amends for the wrongs and damages they have wrought, it is indubitably lawful to carry of both the children and women of the Saracens into captivity and slavery and this is especially the case against the unbeliever, from whom it is useless ever to hope for a just peace on any terms. And as the only remedy is to destroy all of them who can bear arms against us.
De Spanjaarden hadden dus niks tegen indianen en ze wilden ze net zo min doden als de Nederlanders of de Israëliërs de Palestijnen willen doden. Inmiddels zijn de indianen uitgeroeid en hun landen zijn door de Westerlingen beroofd. De Palestijnen worden ook stukje bij beetje etnisch gezuiverd en hun land beroofd. Dus kom maar met een argument, niet alleen met onbewezen stellingen.
Beste Gus, Angst is heus niet uitsluitend voorbehouden aan de Israeliers. Die angst is er ook bij die boer die niet weet of hij volgend jaar zijn olijfgaard nog heeft. Die angst is er ook bij de ouders die het eens zijn dat hun kinderen zich verzetten tegen de bezetting, maar vrezen voor hun leven. Die angst is er ook bij mensen die zich uitspreken en opgepakt worden. Die angst is er ook elders in de wereld waar mensen zich verzetten en met Uzi’s worden neergemaaid die Israel levert. Die angst is er ook bij buurlanden dat Israel zijn kernwapens nog eens gaat gebruiken. Angst is een slechte raadgever.
Holocaust Denied
The lying silence of those who know
By John Pilger
January 08, 2009 -"When the truth is replaced by silence," the Soviet dissident Yevgeny Yevtushenko said, "the silence is a lie." It may appear the silence is broken on Gaza. The cocoons of murdered children, wrapped in green, together with boxes containing their dismembered parents and the cries of grief and rage of everyone in that death camp by the sea, can be viewed on al-Jazeera and YouTube, even glimpsed on the BBC. But Russia’s incorrigible poet was not referring to the ephemeral we call news; he was asking why those who knew the why never spoke it and so denied it. Among the Anglo-American intelligentsia, this is especially striking. It is they who hold the keys to the great storehouses of knowledge: the historiographies and archives that lead us to the why.
They know that the horror now raining on Gaza has little to do with Hamas or, absurdly, "Israel’s right to exist." They know the opposite to be true: that Palestine’s right to exist was canceled 61 years ago and the expulsion and, if necessary, extinction of the indigenous people was planned and executed by the founders of Israel. They know, for example, that the infamous "Plan D" resulted in the murderous depopulation of 369 Palestinian towns and villages by the Haganah (Jewish army) and that massacre upon massacre of Palestinian civilians in such places as Deir Yassin, al-Dawayima, Eilaboun, Jish, Ramle and Lydda are referred to in official records as "ethnic cleansing." Arriving at a scene of this carnage, David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, was asked by a general, Yigal Allon, "What shall we do with the Arabs?" Ben-Gurion, reported the Israeli historian Benny Morris, "made a dismissive, energetic gesture with his hand and said, Expel them’. The order to expel an entire population "without attention to age" was signed by Yitzhak Rabin, a future prime minister promoted by the world’s most efficient propaganda as a peacemaker. The terrible irony of this was addressed only in passing, such as when the Mapan Party co-leader Meir Ya’ari noted "how easily" Israel’s leaders spoke of how it was "possible and permissible to take women, children and old men and to fill the roads with them because such is the imperative of strategy who remembers who used this means against our people during the [Second World] war we are appalled."
Every subsequent "war" Israel has waged has had the same objective: the expulsion of the native people and the theft of more and more land. The lie of David and Goliath, of perennial victim, reached its apogee in 1967 when the propaganda became a righteous fury that claimed the Arab states had struck first. Since then, mostly Jewish truth-tellers such as Avi Schlaim, Noam Chomsky, the late Tanya Reinhart, Neve Gordon, Tom Segev, Yuri Avnery, Ilan Pappe and Norman Finklestein have dispatched this and other myths and revealed a state shorn of the humane traditions of Judaism, whose unrelenting militarism is the sum of an expansionist, lawless and racist ideology called zionism. "It seems," wrote the Israeli historian Ilan Pappe on 2 January, "that even the most horrendous crimes, such as the genocide in Gaza, are treated as desperate events, unconnected to anything that happened in the past and not associated with any ideology or system Very much as the apartheid ideology explained the oppressive policies of the South African government, this ideology in its most consensual and simplistic variety has allowed all the Israeli governments in the past and the present to dehumanize the Palestinians wherever they are and strive to destroy them. The means altered from period to period, from location to location, as did the narrative covering up these atrocities. But there is a clear pattern [of genocide]."
In Gaza, the enforced starvation and denial of humanitarian aid, the piracy of life-giving resources such as fuel and water, the denial of medicines and treatment, the systematic destruction of infrastructure and the killing and maiming of the civilian population, 50 per cent of whom are children, meet the international standard of the Genocide Convention. "Is it an irresponsible overstatement," asked Richard Falk, the United Nations Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and international law authority at Princeton University, "to associate the treatment of Palestinians with this criminalized Nazi record of collective atrocity? I think not."
In describing a "holocaust-in-the making," Falk was alluding to the Nazis’ establishment of Jewish ghettos in Poland. For one month in 1943, the captive Polish Jews led by Mordechaj Anielewiz fought off the German army and the SS, but their resistance was finally crushed and the Nazis exacted their final revenge. Falk is also a Jew. Today’s holocaust-in-the-making, which began with Ben-Gurion’s Plan D, is in its final stages. The difference today is that it is a joint US-Israeli project. The F-16 jet fighters, the 250-pound "smart" GBU-39 bombs supplied on the eve of the attack on Gaza, having been approved by a Congress dominated by the Democratic Party, plus the annual $2.4 billion in war-making "aid," give Washington de facto control. It beggars belief that President-elect Obama was not informed. Outspoken on Russia’s war in Georgia and the terrorism in Mumbai, Obama’s silence on Palestine marks his approval, which is to be expected, given his obsequiousness to the Tel Aviv regime and its lobbyists during the presidential campaign and his appointment of Zionists as his secretary of state, chief of staff and principal Middle East advisers. When Aretha Franklin sings "Think," her wonderful 1960s anthem to freedom, at Obama’s inauguration on 21 January, I trust someone with the brave heart of Muntadar al-Zaidi, the shoe-thrower, will shout: "Gaza!"
The asymmetry of conquest and terror is clear. Plan D is now "Operation Cast Lead," which is the unfinished "Operation Justified Vengeance." The latter was launched by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in 2001 when, with Bush’s approval, he used F-16s against Palestinian towns and villages for the first time. In the same year, the authoritative Jane’s Foreign Report disclosed that the Blair government had given Israel the "green light" to attack the West Bank after it was shown Israel’s secret designs for a bloodbath. It was typical of New Labor Party’s enduring, cringing complicity in Palestine’s agony. However, the 2001 Israeli plan, reported Jane’s, needed the "trigger" of a suicide bombing which would cause "numerous deaths and injuries [because] the ‘revenge’ factor is crucial." This would "motivate Israeli soldiers to demolish the Palestinians." What alarmed Sharon and the author of the plan, General Shaul Mofaz, the Israeli Chief of Staff, was a secret agreement between Yasser Arafat and Hamas to ban suicide attacks. On 23 November, 2001, Israeli agents assassinated the Hamas leader, Mahmud Abu Hunud, and got their "trigger"; the suicide attacks resumed in response to his killing.
Something uncannily similar happened on 5 November last, when Israeli special forces attacked Gaza, killing six people. Once again, they got their propaganda "trigger." A ceasefire initiated and sustained by the Hamas government which had imprisoned its violators was shattered by the Israeli attack and homemade rockets were fired into what used to be Palestine before its Arab occupants were "cleansed." The On 23 December, Hamas offered to renew the ceasefire, but Israel’s charade was such that its all-out assault on Gaza had been planned six months earlier, according to the Israeli daily Ha’aretz.
Behind this sordid game is the "Dagan Plan," named after General Meir Dagan, who served with Sharon in his bloody invasion of Lebanon in 1982. Now head of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence organization, Dagan is the author of a "solution" that has seen the imprisonment of Palestinians behind a ghetto wall snaking across the West Bank and in Gaza, effectively a concentration camp. The establishment of a quisling government in Ramallah under Mohammed Abbas is Dagan’s achievement, together with a hasbara (propaganda) campaign relayed through a mostly supine, if intimidated western media, notably in America, that says Hamas is a terrorist organization devoted to Israel’s destruction and to "blame" for the massacres and siege of its own people over two generations, long before its creation. "We have never had it so good," said the Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Gideon Meir in 2006. "The hasbara effort is a well-oiled machine." In fact, Hamas’s real threat is its example as the Arab world’s only democratically elected government, drawing its popularity from its resistance to the Palestinians’ oppressor and tormentor. This was demonstrated when Hamas foiled a CIA coup in 2007, an event ordained in the western media as "Hamas’s seizure of power." Likewise, Hamas is never described as a government, let alone democratic. Neither is its proposal of a ten-year truce as a historic recognition of the "reality" of Israel and support for a two-state solution with just one condition: that the Israelis obey international law and end their illegal occupation beyond the 1967 borders. As every annual vote in the UN General Assembly demonstrates, 99 per cent of humanity concurs. On 4 January, the president of the General Assembly, Miguel d’Escoto, described the Israeli attack on Gaza as a "monstrosity."
When the monstrosity is done and the people of Gaza are even more stricken, the Dagan Plan foresees what Sharon called a "1948-style solution" the destruction of all Palestinian leadership and authority followed by mass expulsions into smaller and smaller "cantonments" and perhaps finally into Jordan. This demolition of institutional and educational life in Gaza is designed to produce, wrote Karma Nabulsi, a Palestinian exile in Britain, "a Hobbesian vision of an anarchic society: truncated, violent, powerless, destroyed, cowed Look to the Iraq of today: that is what [Sharon] had in store for us, and he has nearly achieved it."
Dr. Dahlia Wasfi is an American writer on Palestine. She has a Jewish mother and an Iraqi Muslim father. "Holocaust denial is anti-Semitic," she wrote on 31 December. "But I’m not talking about World War Two, Mahmoud Ahmedinijad (the president of Iran) or Ashkenazi Jews. What I’m referring to is the holocaust we are all witnessing and responsible for in Gaza today and in Palestine over the past 60 years Since Arabs are Semites, US-Israeli policy doesn’t get more anti-Semitic than this." She quoted Rachel Corrie, the young American who went to Palestine to defend Palestinians and was crushed by an Israeli bulldozer. "I am in the midst of a genocide," wrote Corrie, "which I am also indirectly supporting and for which my government is largely responsible."
Reading the words of both, I am struck by the use of "responsibility." Breaking the lie of silence is not an esoteric abstraction but an urgent responsibility that falls to those with the privilege of a platform. With the BBC cowed, so too is much of journalism, merely allowing vigorous debate within unmovable invisible boundaries, ever fearful of the smear of anti-Semitism. The unreported news, meanwhile, is that the death toll in Gaza is the equivalent of 18,000 dead in Britain. Imagine, if you can.
Then there are the academics, the deans and teachers and researchers. Why are they silent as they watch a university bombed and hear the Association of University Teachers in Gaza plea for help? Are British universities now, as Terry Eagleton believes, no more than "intellectual Tescos, churning out a commodity known as graduates rather than greengroceries"?
Then there are the writers. In the dark year of 1939, the Third Writers’ Congress was held at Carnegie Hall in New York and the likes of Thomas Mann and Albert Einstein sent messages and spoke up to ensure the lie of silence was broken. By one account, 3,500 jammed the auditorium and a thousand were turned away. Today, this mighty voice of realism and morality is said to be obsolete; the literary review pages affect an ironic hauteur of irrelevance; false symbolism is all. As for the readers, their moral and political imagination is to be pacified, not primed. The anti-Muslim Martin Amis expressed this well in Visiting Mrs. Nabokov: "The dominance of the self is not a flaw, it is an evolutionary characteristic; it is just how things are."
If that is how things are, we are diminished as a civilized society. For what happens in Gaza is the defining moment of our time, which either grants the impunity of war criminals the immunity of our silence, while we contort our own intellect and morality, or gives us the power to speak out. For the moment I prefer my own memory of Gaza: of the people’s courage and resistance and their "luminous humanity," as Karma Nabulsi put it. On my last trip there, I was rewarded with a spectacle of Palestinian flags fluttering in unlikely places. It was dusk and children had done this. No one told them to do it. They made flagpoles out of sticks tied together, and a few of them climbed on to a wall and held the flag between them, some silently, others crying out. They do this every day when they know foreigners are leaving, believing the world will not forget them.
Jezz je hoeft voor mij niet bang te zijn hoor !
Martin, ik heb het niet over angst, de Israëlies zijn het gewoon zat.
Mihai, schrijf alsjeblieft nog langere epistels, kom je er op klaar? Fijn zo.
Jezzebel, het is maar welke naam je er aan wilt geven. Voor mij zijn oorlogsdoden of gaskamermoorden 2 verschillende dingen.
Israël vecht tegen de Hamas en Iran.
Libanon mengt zich nu in de strijd, jij begrijpt toch ook wel welke kant dat uit gaat?
Wordt wakker schat en gebruik je verstand.
Gus, behalve dat je woorden erg kwetsend zijn, zou ik het op prijs stellen als je ze niet in combinatie met ‘schat’ gebruikt.
Er gaan onschuldige mensen dood, elke dag.
Eenvandaag zond een mooi filmpje uit, zolang er meisjes als http://player.omroep.nl/?aflID=8589935&start=0:0:18&end=0:8:20 zijn, is er hoop.
Gus nu is het me helemaal duidelijk: de Israëlies zijn het gewoon zat. Meer dan 700 doden niet uit angst, maar gewoon uit irritatie. Interessante annalyse.
Waarom beginnen de psychopathische moordenaars altijd een aanval op persoon als ze geen andere argumenten hebben?
Disinformation, secrecy and lies: How the Gaza offensive came about
By Barak Ravid, Haaretz Correspondent
Long-term preparation, careful gathering of information, secret discussions, operational deception and the misleading of the public – all these stood behind the Israel Defense Forces "Cast Lead" operation against Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip, which began Saturday morning.
The disinformation effort, according to defense officials, took Hamas by surprise and served to significantly increase the number of its casualties in the strike.
Sources in the defense establishment said Defense Minister Ehud Barak instructed the Israel Defense Forces to prepare for the operation over six months ago, even as Israel was beginning to negotiate a ceasefire agreement with Hamas. According to the sources, Barak maintained that although the lull would allow Hamas to prepare for a showdown with Israel, the Israeli army needed time to prepare, as well.
Barak gave orders to carry out a comprehensive intelligence-gathering drive which sought to map out Hamas’ security infrastructure, along with that of other militant organizations operating in the Strip.
This intelligence-gathering effort brought back information about permanent bases, weapon silos, training camps, the homes of senior officials and coordinates for other facilities.
The plan of action that was implemented in Operation Cast Lead remained only a blueprint until a month ago, when tensions soared after the IDF carried out an incursion into Gaza during the ceasefire to take out a tunnel which the army said was intended to facilitate an attack by Palestinian militants on IDF troops.
On November 19, following dozens of Qassam rockets and mortar rounds which exploded on Israeli soil, the plan was brought for Barak’s final approval. Last Thursday, on December 18, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and the defense minister met at IDF headquarters in central Tel Aviv to approve the operation.
However, they decided to put the mission on hold to see whether Hamas would hold its fire after the expiration of the ceasefire. They therefore put off bringing the plan for the cabinet’s approval, but they did inform Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni of the developments.
That night, in speaking to the media, sources in the Prime Minister’s Bureau said that "if the shooting from Gaza continues, the showdown with Hamas would be inevitable." On the weekend, several ministers in Olmert’s cabinet inveighed against him and against Barak for not retaliating for Hamas’ Qassam launches.
"This chatter would have made Entebe or the Six Day War impossible," Barak said in responding to the accusations. The cabinet was eventually convened on Wednesday, but the Prime Minister’s Bureau misinformed the media in stating the discussion would revolve around global jihad. The ministers learned only that morning that the discussion would actually pertain to the operation in Gaza.
In its summary announcement for the discussion, the Prime Minister’s Bureau devoted one line to the situation in Gaza, compared to one whole page that concerned the outlawing of 35 Islamic organizations.
What actually went on at the cabinet meeting was a five-hour discussion about the operation in which ministers were briefed about the various blueprints and plans of action. "It was a very detailed review," one minister said.
The minister added: "Everyone fully understood what sort of period we were heading into and what sort of scenarios this could lead to. No one could say that he or she did not know what they were voting on." The minister also said that the discussion showed that the lessons of the Winograd Committee about the performance of decision-makers during the 2006 Second Lebanon War were "fully internalized."
At the end of the discussion, the ministers unanimously voted in favor of the strike, leaving it for the prime minister, the defense minister and the foreign minister to work out the exact time.
While Barak was working out the final details with the officers responsible for the operation, Livni went to Cairo to inform Egypt’s president, Hosni Mubarak, that Israel had decided to strike at Hamas.
In parallel, Israel continued to send out disinformation in announcing it would open the crossings to the Gaza Strip and that Olmert would decide whether to launch the strike following three more deliberations on Sunday – one day after the actual order to launch the operation was issued.
"Hamas evacuated all its headquarter personnel after the cabinet meeting on Wednesday," one defense official said, "but the organization sent its people back in when they heard that everything was put on hold until Sunday."
The final decision was made on Friday morning, when Barak met with Chief of Staff General Gabi Ashkenazi, the head of the Shin Bet Security Service Yuval Diskin and the head of the Military Intelligence Directorate, Amos Yadlin. Barak sat down with Olmert and Livni several hours later for a final meeting, in which the trio gave the air force its orders.
On Friday night and on Saturday morning, opposition leaders and prominent political figures were informed about the impending strike, including Likud chairman Benjamin Netanyahu, Yisrael Beuiteinu’s Avigdor Liebermen, Haim Oron from Meretz and President Shimon Peres, along with Knesset Speaker Dalia Itzik.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1050426.html
How Israel brought Gaza to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe
Oxford professor of international relations Avi Shlaim served in the Israeli army and has never questioned the state’s legitimacy. But its merciless assault on Gaza has led him to devastating conclusions
The Guardian, Wednesday 7 January 2009
The only way to make sense of Israel’s senseless war in Gaza is through understanding the historical context. Establishing the state of Israel in May 1948 involved a monumental injustice to the Palestinians. British officials bitterly resented American partisanship on behalf of the infant state. On 2 June 1948, Sir John Troutbeck wrote to the foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin, that the Americans were responsible for the creation of a gangster state headed by "an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders". I used to think that this judgment was too harsh but Israel’s vicious assault on the people of Gaza, and the Bush administration’s complicity in this assault, have reopened the question.
I write as someone who served loyally in the Israeli army in the mid-1960s and who has never questioned the legitimacy of the state of Israel within its pre-1967 borders. What I utterly reject is the Zionist colonial project beyond the Green Line. The Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the aftermath of the June 1967 war had very little to do with security and everything to do with territorial expansionism. The aim was to establish Greater Israel through permanent political, economic and military control over the Palestinian territories. And the result has been one of the most prolonged and brutal military occupations of modern times.
Four decades of Israeli control did incalculable damage to the economy of the Gaza Strip. With a large population of 1948 refugees crammed into a tiny strip of land, with no infrastructure or natural resources, Gaza’s prospects were never bright. Gaza, however, is not simply a case of economic under-development but a uniquely cruel case of deliberate de-development. To use the Biblical phrase, Israel turned the people of Gaza into the hewers of wood and the drawers of water, into a source of cheap labour and a captive market for Israeli goods. The development of local industry was actively impeded so as to make it impossible for the Palestinians to end their subordination to Israel and to establish the economic underpinnings essential for real political independence.
Gaza is a classic case of colonial exploitation in the post-colonial era. Jewish settlements in occupied territories are immoral, illegal and an insurmountable obstacle to peace. They are at once the instrument of exploitation and the symbol of the hated occupation. In Gaza, the Jewish settlers numbered only 8,000 in 2005 compared with 1.4 million local residents. Yet the settlers controlled 25% of the territory, 40% of the arable land and the lion’s share of the scarce water resources. Cheek by jowl with these foreign intruders, the majority of the local population lived in abject poverty and unimaginable misery. Eighty per cent of them still subsist on less than $2 a day. The living conditions in the strip remain an affront to civilised values, a powerful precipitant to resistance and a fertile breeding ground for political extremism.
In August 2005 a Likud government headed by Ariel Sharon staged a unilateral Israeli pullout from Gaza, withdrawing all 8,000 settlers and destroying the houses and farms they had left behind. Hamas, the Islamic resistance movement, conducted an effective campaign to drive the Israelis out of Gaza. The withdrawal was a humiliation for the Israeli Defence Forces. To the world, Sharon presented the withdrawal from Gaza as a contribution to peace based on a two-state solution. But in the year after, another 12,000 Israelis settled on the West Bank, further reducing the scope for an independent Palestinian state. Land-grabbing and peace-making are simply incompatible. Israel had a choice and it chose land over peace.
The real purpose behind the move was to redraw unilaterally the borders of Greater Israel by incorporating the main settlement blocs on the West Bank to the state of Israel. Withdrawal from Gaza was thus not a prelude to a peace deal with the Palestinian Authority but a prelude to further Zionist expansion on the West Bank. It was a unilateral Israeli move undertaken in what was seen, mistakenly in my view, as an Israeli national interest. Anchored in a fundamental rejection of the Palestinian national identity, the withdrawal from Gaza was part of a long-term effort to deny the Palestinian people any independent political existence on their land.
Israel’s settlers were withdrawn but Israeli soldiers continued to control all access to the Gaza Strip by land, sea and air. Gaza was converted overnight into an open-air prison. From this point on, the Israeli air force enjoyed unrestricted freedom to drop bombs, to make sonic booms by flying low and breaking the sound barrier, and to terrorise the hapless inhabitants of this prison.
Israel likes to portray itself as an island of democracy in a sea of authoritarianism. Yet Israel has never in its entire history done anything to promote democracy on the Arab side and has done a great deal to undermine it. Israel has a long history of secret collaboration with reactionary Arab regimes to suppress Palestinian nationalism. Despite all the handicaps, the Palestinian people succeeded in building the only genuine democracy in the Arab world with the possible exception of Lebanon. In January 2006, free and fair elections for the Legislative Council of the Palestinian Authority brought to power a Hamas-led government. Israel, however, refused to recognise the democratically elected government, claiming that Hamas is purely and simply a terrorist organisation.
America and the EU shamelessly joined Israel in ostracising and demonising the Hamas government and in trying to bring it down by withholding tax revenues and foreign aid. A surreal situation thus developed with a significant part of the international community imposing economic sanctions not against the occupier but against the occupied, not against the oppressor but against the oppressed.
As so often in the tragic history of Palestine, the victims were blamed for their own misfortunes. Israel’s propaganda machine persistently purveyed the notion that the Palestinians are terrorists, that they reject coexistence with the Jewish state, that their nationalism is little more than antisemitism, that Hamas is just a bunch of religious fanatics and that Islam is incompatible with democracy. But the simple truth is that the Palestinian people are a normal people with normal aspirations. They are no better but they are no worse than any other national group. What they aspire to, above all, is a piece of land to call their own on which to live in freedom and dignity.
Like other radical movements, Hamas began to moderate its political programme following its rise to power. From the ideological rejectionism of its charter, it began to move towards pragmatic accommodation of a two-state solution. In March 2007, Hamas and Fatah formed a national unity government that was ready to negotiate a long-term ceasefire with Israel. Israel, however, refused to negotiate with a government that included Hamas.
It continued to play the old game of divide and rule between rival Palestinian factions. In the late 1980s, Israel had supported the nascent Hamas in order to weaken Fatah, the secular nationalist movement led by Yasser Arafat. Now Israel began to encourage the corrupt and pliant Fatah leaders to overthrow their religious political rivals and recapture power. Aggressive American neoconservatives participated in the sinister plot to instigate a Palestinian civil war. Their meddling was a major factor in the collapse of the national unity government and in driving Hamas to seize power in Gaza in June 2007 to pre-empt a Fatah coup.
The war unleashed by Israel on Gaza on 27 December was the culmination of a series of clashes and confrontations with the Hamas government. In a broader sense, however, it is a war between Israel and the Palestinian people, because the people had elected the party to power. The declared aim of the war is to weaken Hamas and to intensify the pressure until its leaders agree to a new ceasefire on Israel’s terms. The undeclared aim is to ensure that the Palestinians in Gaza are seen by the world simply as a humanitarian problem and thus to derail their struggle for independence and statehood.
The timing of the war was determined by political expediency. A general election is scheduled for 10 February and, in the lead-up to the election, all the main contenders are looking for an opportunity to prove their toughness. The army top brass had been champing at the bit to deliver a crushing blow to Hamas in order to remove the stain left on their reputation by the failure of the war against Hezbollah in Lebanon in July 2006. Israel’s cynical leaders could also count on apathy and impotence of the pro-western Arab regimes and on blind support from President Bush in the twilight of his term in the White House. Bush readily obliged by putting all the blame for the crisis on Hamas, vetoing proposals at the UN Security Council for an immediate ceasefire and issuing Israel with a free pass to mount a ground invasion of Gaza.
As always, mighty Israel claims to be the victim of Palestinian aggression but the sheer asymmetry of power between the two sides leaves little room for doubt as to who is the real victim. This is indeed a conflict between David and Goliath but the Biblical image has been inverted – a small and defenceless Palestinian David faces a heavily armed, merciless and overbearing Israeli Goliath. The resort to brute military force is accompanied, as always, by the shrill rhetoric of victimhood and a farrago of self-pity overlaid with self-righteousness. In Hebrew this is known as the syndrome of bokhim ve-yorim, "crying and shooting".
To be sure, Hamas is not an entirely innocent party in this conflict. Denied the fruit of its electoral victory and confronted with an unscrupulous adversary, it has resorted to the weapon of the weak – terror. Militants from Hamas and Islamic Jihad kept launching Qassam rocket attacks against Israeli settlements near the border with Gaza until Egypt brokered a six-month ceasefire last June. The damage caused by these primitive rockets is minimal but the psychological impact is immense, prompting the public to demand protection from its government. Under the circumstances, Israel had the right to act in self-defence but its response to the pinpricks of rocket attacks was totally disproportionate. The figures speak for themselves. In the three years after the withdrawal from Gaza, 11 Israelis were killed by rocket fire. On the other hand, in 2005-7 alone, the IDF killed 1,290 Palestinians in Gaza, including 222 children.
Whatever the numbers, killing civilians is wrong. This rule applies to Israel as much as it does to Hamas, but Israel’s entire record is one of unbridled and unremitting brutality towards the inhabitants of Gaza. Israel also maintained the blockade of Gaza after the ceasefire came into force which, in the view of the Hamas leaders, amounted to a violation of the agreement. During the ceasefire, Israel prevented any exports from leaving the strip in clear violation of a 2005 accord, leading to a sharp drop in employment opportunities. Officially, 49.1% of the population is unemployed. At the same time, Israel restricted drastically the number of trucks carrying food, fuel, cooking-gas canisters, spare parts for water and sanitation plants, and medical supplies to Gaza. It is difficult to see how starving and freezing the civilians of Gaza could protect the people on the Israeli side of the border. But even if it did, it would still be immoral, a form of collective punishment that is strictly forbidden by international humanitarian law.
The brutality of Israel’s soldiers is fully matched by the mendacity of its spokesmen. Eight months before launching the current war on Gaza, Israel established a National Information Directorate. The core messages of this directorate to the media are that Hamas broke the ceasefire agreements; that Israel’s objective is the defence of its population; and that Israel’s forces are taking the utmost care not to hurt innocent civilians. Israel’s spin doctors have been remarkably successful in getting this message across. But, in essence, their propaganda is a pack of lies.
A wide gap separates the reality of Israel’s actions from the rhetoric of its spokesmen. It was not Hamas but the IDF that broke the ceasefire. It di d so by a raid into Gaza on 4 November that killed six Hamas men. Israel’s objective is not just the defence of its population but the eventual overthrow of the Hamas government in Gaza by turning the people against their rulers. And far from taking care to spare civilians, Israel is guilty of indiscriminate bombing and of a three-year-old blockade that has brought the inhabitants of Gaza, now 1.5 million, to the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe.
The Biblical injunction of an eye for an eye is savage enough. But Israel’s insane offensive against Gaza seems to follow the logic of an eye for an eyelash. After eight days of bombing, with a death toll of more than 400 Palestinians and four Israelis, the gung-ho cabinet ordered a land invasion of Gaza the consequences of which are incalculable.
No amount of military escalation can buy Israel immunity from rocket attacks from the military wing of Hamas. Despite all the death and destruction that Israel has inflicted on them, they kept up their resistance and they kept firing their rockets. This is a movement that glorifies victimhood and martyrdom. There is simply no military solution to the conflict between the two communities. The problem with Israel’s concept of security is that it denies even the most elementary security to the other community. The only way for Israel to achieve security is not through shooting but through talks with Hamas, which has repeatedly declared its readiness to negotiate a long-term ceasefire with the Jewish state within its pre-1967 borders for 20, 30, or even 50 years. Israel has rejected this offer for the same reason it spurned the Arab League peace plan of 2002, which is still on the table: it involves concessions and compromises.
This brief review of Israel’s record over the past four decades makes it difficult to resist the conclusion that it has become a rogue state with "an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders". A rogue state habitually violates international law, possesses weapons of mass destruction and practises terrorism – the use of violence against civilians for political purposes. Israel fulfils all of these three criteria; the cap fits and it must wear it. Israel’s real aim is not peaceful coexistence with its Palestinian neighbours but military domination. It keeps compounding the mistakes of the past with new and more disastrous ones. Politicians, like everyone else, are of course free to repeat the lies and mistakes of the past. But it is not mandatory to do so.
Avi Shlaim is a professor of international relations at the University of Oxford and the author of The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World and of Lion of Jordan: King Hussein’s Life in War and Peace.
An Unnecessary War
By Jimmy Carter
Thursday, January 8, 2009; A15
I know from personal involvement that the devastating invasion of Gaza by Israel could easily have been avoided.
After visiting Sderot last April and seeing the serious psychological damage caused by the rockets that had fallen in that area, my wife, Rosalynn, and I declared their launching from Gaza to be inexcusable and an act of terrorism. Although casualties were rare (three deaths in seven years), the town was traumatized by the unpredictable explosions. About 3,000 residents had moved to other communities, and the streets, playgrounds and shopping centers were almost empty. Mayor Eli Moyal assembled a group of citizens in his office to meet us and complained that the government of Israel was not stopping the rockets, either through diplomacy or military action.
Knowing that we would soon be seeing Hamas leaders from Gaza and also in Damascus, we promised to assess prospects for a cease-fire. From Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, who was negotiating between the Israelis and Hamas, we learned that there was a fundamental difference between the two sides. Hamas wanted a comprehensive cease-fire in both the West Bank and Gaza, and the Israelis refused to discuss anything other than Gaza.
We knew that the 1.5 million inhabitants of Gaza were being starved, as the U.N. special rapporteur on the right to food had found that acute malnutrition in Gaza was on the same scale as in the poorest nations in the southern Sahara, with more than half of all Palestinian families eating only one meal a day.
Palestinian leaders from Gaza were noncommittal on all issues, claiming that rockets were the only way to respond to their imprisonment and to dramatize their humanitarian plight. The top Hamas leaders in Damascus, however, agreed to consider a cease-fire in Gaza only, provided Israel would not attack Gaza and would permit normal humanitarian supplies to be delivered to Palestinian citizens.
After extended discussions with those from Gaza, these Hamas leaders also agreed to accept any peace agreement that might be negotiated between the Israelis and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who also heads the PLO, provided it was approved by a majority vote of Palestinians in a referendum or by an elected unity government.
Since we were only observers, and not negotiators, we relayed this information to the Egyptians, and they pursued the cease-fire proposal. After about a month, the Egyptians and Hamas informed us that all military action by both sides and all rocket firing would stop on June 19, for a period of six months, and that humanitarian supplies would be restored to the normal level that had existed before Israel’s withdrawal in 2005 (about 700 trucks daily).
We were unable to confirm this in Jerusalem because of Israel’s unwillingness to admit to any negotiations with Hamas, but rocket firing was soon stopped and there was an increase in supplies of food, water, medicine and fuel. Yet the increase was to an average of about 20 percent of normal levels. And this fragile truce was partially broken on Nov. 4, when Israel launched an attack in Gaza to destroy a defensive tunnel being dug by Hamas inside the wall that encloses Gaza.
On another visit to Syria in mid-December, I made an effort for the impending six-month deadline to be extended. It was clear that the preeminent issue was opening the crossings into Gaza. Representatives from the Carter Center visited Jerusalem, met with Israeli officials and asked if this was possible in exchange for a cessation of rocket fire. The Israeli government informally proposed that 15 percent of normal supplies might be possible if Hamas first stopped all rocket fire for 48 hours. This was unacceptable to Hamas, and hostilities erupted.
After 12 days of "combat," the Israeli Defense Forces reported that more than 1,000 targets were shelled or bombed. During that time, Israel rejected international efforts to obtain a cease-fire, with full support from Washington. Seventeen mosques, the American International School, many private homes and much of the basic infrastructure of the small but heavily populated area have been destroyed. This includes the systems that provide water, electricity and sanitation. Heavy civilian casualties are being reported by courageous medical volunteers from many nations, as the fortunate ones operate on the wounded by light from diesel-powered generators.
The hope is that when further hostilities are no longer productive, Israel, Hamas and the United States will accept another cease-fire, at which time the rockets will again stop and an adequate level of humanitarian supplies will be permitted to the surviving Palestinians, with the publicized agreement monitored by the international community. The next possible step: a permanent and comprehensive peace.
The writer was president from 1977 to 1981. He founded the Carter Center, a nongovernmental organization advancing peace and health worldwide, in 1982.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/07/AR2009010702645.html
@Mihai, dank voor al deze artikelen.
Iemand die wil, kan het lezen, hoe het precies zit.
Dankjewel.
Martin, er gaan al stemmen op om de Israëlies te verhuizen. Onder begeleiding van de U.N.
En zo vreemd was mijn opmerking niet, na 60 jaar oorlog ben je het zat.
We hebben het toch niet over kattekwaadstreken, waar je op een gegeven moment ‘zat’ van bent?
Mihai, ik speel het niet op de man, als je mijn vorige reacties had gelezen, wist je wat ik bedoelde. Ik ga het niet nog een keer uitleggen.
Maar ik ben nu een psychopatische moordenaar omdat ik je persoonlijk aanpak. OK.
Jezzebel, ik weet niet welke passages je kwetsend vindt, klaarkomen? Ik meen dat je ooit een artikel schreef Neuken met God, zou nogal hypocriet zijn als je dus dat bedoelde.
Mensen die tijdens een oorlog worden doodgeschoten of bewust worden vergast, daar zie ik een verschil tussen.
Was dat het wat je kwetste?
Dat ik je schat noemde is a matter of speak.
Expressie.
Maar borden voor koppen zijn niet weg te halen.
Ik hou er mee op.
@Gus, ik vind zeer kwetsend: = Voor mij zijn oorlogsdoden of gaskamermoorden 2 verschillende dingen. =
Je maakt dus verschil tussen de ene en de andere moord. Dát is wat ik het ergst vind.
Er worden mensen vermoord!
En je ‘schat’ kan wel een matter of speak zijn, in deze combinatie nogal denigrerend.
Ik heb geprobeerd je een mail te sturen. Even niet via blog.
Want het was te persoonlijk. Maar je hebt me geblokkeerd?
Just another try om iets duidelijk te maken.
Er staan geen Palestijnse orkesten te spelen als er geschoten wordt door Israël.
Bij de gaskamers stonden Joodse orkestjes te spelen. Ze moesten.
Anti-semitisme is onderhand zo ingekankerd en ik verzet me daar tegen.
Met hand en tand.
Ik neem niets meer aan van iemand die enigerlei wijze op ‘dit’ moment anti Israël is.
Natuurlijk is het verschrikkelijk dat er onschuldige Palestijnse slachtoffers vallen.
Ik denk dat de echte goeie Palestijn er onderhand ook zat van is, altijd maar dat geweld.
Vreemd hë, dat nu juist deze oorlog onder een loep wordt bekeken.
Dat mensen schreeuwen, "joden aan het gas" bij een voetbalwedstrijd.
Dat vind ik verschrikkelijk.
Ik ken mensen, jonge mensen die niet graag meer zeggen dat ze van joodse komaf zijn.
Nederland anno 2009.
‘Schat’, bedoelde ik op een bepaalde manier ook lief.
Maar een blokkade dus en ruzie tussen ons.
Dat was nou juist wel het laatste wat ik wou.
Is er al niet genoeg ruzie?
Jij voelt je shit, ik voel me shit.
Het ga je goed, Jezzebel.
@Gus, ik denk dat je een mail hebt gestuurd naar een adres dat niet meer bestaat. Ik ben ondertussen verhuisd en er is een nieuw mailadres. Maar je kunt gewoon een mail naar dit blog sturen, dan komt het altijd binnen.
Gus, je kunt mij moeilijk antisemiet noemen. Of anti-israël.
Maar elke dag sterven onschuldige mensen.
En het kan mij niet schelen hoé er gemoord wordt, elk mensen leven telt.
Gus, ik heb in Israël, gewoond, elf lange jaren, mijn vrienden wonen daar.
Maar wat de regering daar doet maakt me intens verdrietig.
Het deugt niet, het is niet oké.
Er gaan onschuldige mensen dood!
Een leuk fragment uit het http://www.knesset.gov.il/elections/knesset15/elikud_m.htm:
Settlements
The Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza are the realization of Zionist values. Settlement of the land is a clear expression of the unassailable right of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel and constitutes an important asset in the defense of the vital interests of the State of Israel. The Likud will continue to strengthen and develop these communities and will prevent their uprooting.
The Partition of the Negev
Israel rejects out of hand ideas raised by Labor Party leaders concerning the relinquishment of parts of the Negev to the Palestinians. The practical meaning of this plan is that the "Green Line" should no longer be viewed as a "Red Line", which draws us closer to the partition plan of 1947 as it opens the door to the principle that the fate of the Galilee, the Triangle and additional areas within Israel is negotiable. The Likud asserts that such proposals by the Labor Party leadership may literally cause the dismemberment of the State of Israel.
.
The Jordan River as a Permanent Border
The Jordan Valley and the territories that dominate it shall be under Israeli sovereignty. The Jordan river will be the permanent eastern border of the State of Israel.
Wie heeft zo’n mail gekregen?
Hasbara spam alert
With Israel’s foreign ministry organising volunteers to flood news websites with pro-Israeli comments, Propaganda 2.0 is here
* Richard Silverstein
Friday 9 January 2009 11.05 GMT
The hasbara brigade strikes again! You always hear about Israeli attempts at media manipulation. Everyone knows it’s going on but usually the process happens through cyber insurgents like those involved with Giyus (and its media monitoring software, Megaphone). Now, we know that the Israeli foreign ministry itself is orchestrating propaganda efforts designed to flood news websites with pro-Israel arguments and information.
A reader of my blog has received the following email which documents both the efforts and the agency that originated them. The solicitation to become a pro-Israel "media volunteer" also includes a list of media links which the ministry would like addressed by pro-Israel comments:
Dear friends,
We hold the [sic] military supremacy, yet fail the battle over the international media. We need to buy time for the IDF to succeed, and the least we can do is spare some (additional) minutes on the net. The ministry of foreign affairs is putting great efforts in balancing the media, but we all know it’s a battle of numbers. The more we post, blog, talkback, vote the more likely we gain positive sentiment.
I was asked by the ministry of foreign affairs to arrange a network of volunteers, who are willing to contribute to this effort. If you’re up to it you will receive a daily messages&media package as well as targets.
If you wish to participate, please respond to this email.
My friend did so and received this official communique from the ministry with talking points about Operation Cast Lead which s/he was to use in her/his propaganda efforts. Among the links was was a Peter Beaumont Cif piece. The following were identified as "target sites": the Times, the Guardian, Sky News, BBC, Yahoo!News, Huffington Post, and the Dutch Telegraaf. Also targeted were other media sites in Dutch, Spanish, German and French considered critical of the invasion.
Locally, here in Seattle, peace activists held a rally at our federal building attended by 500 protesters. In the foreign ministry communique issued the next day, activists were directed to comment in the Seattle Post Intelligencer’s article about the demonstration. The comment thread for the article is riddled with clear hasbara "plants" who distort the balance and tone of the discussion with their programmed arguments, making it much more favorable than it otherwise would be.
Here the foreign ministry’s coordinator describes a meeting he attended at the government’s offical office:
Hi all,
I had a meeting in the ministry of foreign affairs today, and was very happy to hear that their metrics show that Israel’s position in the internet is getting better every day. It means that you’re doing a good job! MFA are concerned with the biased public opinion in Europe. So please focus your efforts on European media.
What can you do to help?
– Identify internet battle-grounds in different languages, and let me know
– Comment/post/vote in the listed links and others; you can use the material attached below
– Write letters to authors and editors. Identify yourself as a local resident
– Have your friends join this activity
This message was meant to encourage the pro-Israel activists in their work:
World governments are still patient with Israel’s justified operation in Gaza. The [sic] public opinion, on the other hand, is impatient, to say the least. This gap will soon close it always does.
It is our goal to shift the public opinion, as conveyed in the internet; avoiding, or at least minimising, sanctions by world leaders. We need to buy the IDF enough time to achieve its goals.
Besides the talking points provided by the foreign ministry to the pro-Israel web activists, they are offered online pro-Israel material to link to in their comments such as these:
Bicom.org.uk/
Aish HaTorah’s What Really Happened in the Middle East
YouTube video: Amid Gaza violence, Israeli and Palestinian doctors save baby’s life –
CNN’s Amanpour interviews Tzipi Livni
Military incursion should be seen as part of War on Terror
Blog from Southern Israel, Morit Rozen
Remember when the defence department was paying public relations companies and Iraqi newspapers to insert articles praising the Iraq war? The companies also attempted to plant coverage favorable to the US military in US newspapers. There rightly was a media uproar about the manipulation. We’ll see whether the same happens over this.
The foreign ministry shouldn’t get a pass on this one. It may view such hasbara as maximising its efforts to "explain" Israel’s position in the world media. I view it as a cynical attempt to flood the web and news media with favorable flackery in a vain attempt to tilt public opinion toward Israel. Not only does it do Israel a disservice, it stains every legitimate effort that the ministry might make to explain Israel to the world, since no one will believe a word it says knowing it engages in such outright propaganda.
Not to mention that this is such cheap pennyante stuff. What do they gain by this? How effective can it be and how many can be convinced? By the way, I’ve even noticed the hasbaraniks in my own blog. You can see them a mile away because they’ve never published a comment before yet write something like: "I’ve enjoyed your blog for a long time, but anyone with a brain in their head knows that Hamas is out to destroy Israel blah, blah blah." Pretty formulaic stuff. Also, you can Google a few phrases of the comment and if you find it appears elsewhere on the web you know you either have a hasbaranik or someone who has repetition compulsion.
In some instances, western media may intentionally or unintentionally fall victim to manipulation. Tony Karon points out that pro-Israel journalist-historian Michael Oren has published several stories since the Gaza incursion began in US media outlets like the New Republic and Los Angeles Times. He is also on active duty with the IDF in Gaza serving as a public affairs officer liasing with foreign media. You will find nothing noting this in the Los Angeles Times op ed. In effect, the media is allowing advocates like Oren to pass themselves off as disinterested experts when they are anything but. It behooves editors to do some due diligence when they publish any piece that advocates for one side or the other to determine whether there may be conflicts of interest or other unacknowledged factors influencing a commentator’s judgment.
It seems we are now well and truly in the world of Propaganda 2.0.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/09/israel-foreign-ministry-media/print
Reactie is geredigeerd
Israel Is Committing War Crimes
Hamas’s violations are no justification for Israel’s actions.
By GEORGE E. BISHARAT
Israel’s current assault on the Gaza Strip cannot be justified by self-defense. Rather, it involves serious violations of international law, including war crimes. Senior Israeli political and military leaders may bear personal liability for their offenses, and they could be prosecuted by an international tribunal, or by nations practicing universal jurisdiction over grave international crimes. Hamas fighters have also violated the laws of warfare, but their misdeeds do not justify Israel’s acts.
The United Nations charter preserved the customary right of a state to retaliate against an "armed attack" from another state. The right has evolved to cover nonstate actors operating beyond the borders of the state claiming self-defense, and arguably would apply to Hamas. However, an armed attack involves serious violations of the peace. Minor border skirmishes are common, and if all were considered armed attacks, states could easily exploit them — as surrounding facts are often murky and unverifiable — to launch wars of aggression. That is exactly what Israel seems to be currently attempting.
Israel had not suffered an "armed attack" immediately prior to its bombardment of the Gaza Strip. Since firing the first Kassam rocket into Israel in 2002, Hamas and other Palestinian groups have loosed thousands of rockets and mortar shells into Israel, causing about two dozen Israeli deaths and widespread fear. As indiscriminate attacks on civilians, these were war crimes. During roughly the same period, Israeli forces killed about 2,700 Palestinians in Gaza by targeted killings, aerial bombings, in raids, etc., according to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem.
But on June 19, 2008, Hamas and Israel commenced a six-month truce. Neither side complied perfectly. Israel refused to substantially ease the suffocating siege of Gaza imposed in June 2007. Hamas permitted sporadic rocket fire — typically after Israel killed or seized Hamas members in the West Bank, where the truce did not apply. Either one or no Israelis were killed (reports differ) by rockets in the half year leading up to the current attack.
Israel then broke the truce on Nov. 4, raiding the Gaza Strip and killing a Palestinian. Hamas retaliated with rocket fire; Israel then killed five more Palestinians. In the following days, Hamas continued rocket fire — yet still no Israelis died. Israel cannot claim self-defense against this escalation, because it was provoked by Israel’s own violation.
An armed attack that is not justified by self-defense is a war of aggression. Under the Nuremberg Principles affirmed by U.N. Resolution 95, aggression is a crime against peace.
Israel has also failed to adequately discriminate between military and nonmilitary targets. Israel’s American-made F-16s and Apache helicopters have destroyed mosques, the education and justice ministries, a university, prisons, courts and police stations. These institutions were part of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure. And when nonmilitary institutions are targeted, civilians die. Many killed in the last week were young police recruits with no military roles. Civilian employees in the Hamas-led government deserve the protections of international law like all others. Hamas’s ideology — which employees may or may not share — is abhorrent, but civilized nations do not kill people merely for what they think.
Deliberate attacks on civilians that lack strict military necessity are war crimes. Israel’s current violations of international law extend a long pattern of abuse of the rights of Gaza Palestinians. Eighty percent of Gaza’s 1.5 million residents are Palestinian refugees who were forced from their homes or fled in fear of Jewish terrorist attacks in 1948. For 60 years, Israel has denied the internationally recognized rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes — because they are not Jews.
Although Israel withdrew its settlers and soldiers from Gaza in 2005, it continues to tightly regulate Gaza’s coast, airspace and borders. Thus, Israel remains an occupying power with a legal duty to protect Gaza’s civilian population. But Israel’s 18-month siege of the Gaza Strip preceding the current crisis violated this obligation egregiously. It brought economic activity to a near standstill, left children hungry and malnourished, and denied Palestinian students opportunities to study abroad.
Israel should be held accountable for its crimes, and the U.S. should stop abetting it with unconditional military and diplomatic support.
Mr. Bisharat is a professor at Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123154826952369919.html
Reactie is geredigeerd
Things One Sees From The Hague
By Gideon Levy
January 15, 2009 "Haaretz" -When the cannons eventually fall silent, the time for questions and investigations will be upon us. The mushroom clouds of smoke and dust will dissipate in the pitch-black sky; the fervor, desensitization and en masse jump on the bandwagon will be forever forgotten and perhaps we will view a clear picture of Gaza in all its grimness. Then we will see the scope of the killing and destruction, the crammed cemeteries and overflowing hospitals, the thousands of wounded and physically disabled, the destroyed houses that remain after this war.
The questions that will beg to be asked, as cautiously as possible, are who is guilty and who is responsible. The world’s exaggerated willingness to forgive Israel is liable to crack this time. The pilots and gunners, the tank crewmen and infantry soldiers, the generals and thousands who embarked on this war with their fair share of zeal will learn the extent of the evil and indiscriminate nature of their military strikes. They perhaps will not pay any price. They went to battle, but others sent them.
The public, moral and judicial test will be applied to the three Israeli statesmen who sent the Israel Defense Forces to war against a helpless population, one that did not even have a place to take refuge, in maybe the only war in history against a strip of land enclosed by a fence. Ehud Olmert, Ehud Barak and Tzipi Livni will stand at the forefront of the guilty. Two of them are candidates for prime minister, the third is a candidate for criminal indictment.
It is inconceivable that they not be held to account for the bloodshed. Olmert is the only Israeli prime minister who sent his army to two wars of choice, all during one of the briefest terms in office. The man who made a number of courageous statements about peace late in his tenure has orchestrated no fewer than two wars. Talking peace and making war, the "moderate" and "enlightened" prime minister has been revealed as one of our greatest fomenters of war. That is how history will remember him. The "cash envelopes" crimes and "Rishon Tours" transgressions will make him look as pure as snow by comparison.
Barak, the leader of the party of the left, will bear the cost of the IDF’s misdeeds under his tutelage. His account will be burdened by the bombing and shelling of population centers, the hundreds of dead and wounded women and children, the numerous targetings of medical crews, the firing of phosphorus shells at civilian areas, the shelling of a UN-run school that served as a shelter for residents who bled to death over days as the IDF prevented their evacuation by shooting and shelling. Even our siege of Gaza for a year and a half, whose ramifications are frighteningly coming into focus in this war, will accrue to him. Blow after blow, all of these count in the world of war crimes.
Livni, the foreign minister and leader of the centrist party, will be remembered as the one who pushed for, legitimized and sat silent through all these events. The woman who promised "a different kind of politics" was a full partner. This must not be forgotten.
In contrast to the claims being made otherwise, we are permitted to believe that these three leaders did not embark on war for electoral considerations. Anytime is good for war in Israel. We set out for the previous war three months after the elections, not two months before. Will Israel judge them harshly in light of the images emanating from Gaza? Highly doubtful. Barak and Livni are actually rising in the polls instead of dipping. The test awaiting these individuals will not be a local test. It is true that some international statesmen cynically applauded the blows Israel dealt. It is true America kept silent, Europe stuttered and Egypt supported, but other voices will rise out of the crackle of combat.
The first echoes can already be heard. This past weekend, the UN and the Human Rights Commission in Geneva have demanded an investigation into war crimes allegedly perpetrated by Israel. In a world in which Bosnian leaders and their counterparts from Rwanda have already been put on trial, a similar demand is likely to arise for the fomenters of this war. Israeli basketball players will not be the only ones who have to shamefully take cover in sports arenas, and senior officers who conducted this war will not be the only ones forced to hide in El Al planes lest they be arrested. This time, our most senior statesmen, the members of the war kitchen cabinet, are liable to pay a personal and national price.
I don’t write these words with joy, but with sorrow and deep shame. Despite all the slack the world has cut us since as long as we can remember, despite the leniency shown toward Israel, the world might say otherwise this time. If we continue like this, maybe one day a new, special court will be established in The Hague.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1054578.html
@Mihai, je moet eens proberen in contact te komen met Bram Moskowitz, http://player.omroep.nl/?aflID=8643590.
Ik denk dat het interessant zou kunnen zijn.
Wat mij betreft mogen er zoveel mogelijk van dit soort rechtszaken plaatsvinden. Maar Fitna zette bewust tot haat aan en Wilders werd niet schuldig gevonden, het lijkt me dus sterk als van Bommel schuldig wordt gevonden. Daarna lijkt het me praktisch onwenselijk. Want hoe kan je dan een demonstratie organiseren mbt tot dit conflict zonder dat er iemand dit soort leuzen komt schreeuwen? Dat betekent dat je nooit demonstraties kan organiseren of mee doen. Sterker nog, het is voldoende dat de Mossad een agent opstuurt om dit soort leuzen te schreeuwen en iedereen in de demonstratie moet snel vertrekken of anders wordt men vervolgd.
@Mihai, who cares about Van Bommel. 🙂
Ik denk dat Bram wel gewaagd is aan je.
Misschien moet je hem eens vragen over hoe hij Israël internationaal zou indammen.
Ik weet niet of we dezelfde uitzending hebben gevolgd, maar Bram vertelde daar dat hij aangifte heeft gedaan tegen van Bommel en vervolgens verdedigde hij de Israëlische acties. Dus je kan hem niet vragen hoe hij Israël internationaal zou indammen, want dat vindt hij zeker geen goed plan.
@Mihai, toch zou het interessant zijn eens van gedachten te wisselen…
Verandering zal van binnenuit moeten komen.
Ronny Naftaniël wilde mij ooit hebben als hoofd van de prittstiften en het plakband. Ik was er te arrogant voor…
Maar misschien kan jij het.
Als jij Bram regelt, ga ik met hem van gedachten wisselen. Maar ik betwijfel dat ie interessante gedachten zou hebben, omdat hij geen jurist in internationaal recht is en ik veronderstel dat ie zich daarin niet verdiept.
Je weet nooit… ik heb je zijn email gestuurd.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21781.htm, who was brought up as an orthodox Jew and Zionist, said: "My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came to her home town a German soldier shot her dead in her bed.
"My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza. The present Israeli government ruthlessly and cynically exploits the continuing guilt from gentiles over the slaughter of Jews in the Holocaust as justification for their murder of Palestinians."
…
He accused the Israeli government of seeking "conquest" and added:"
ICC lacks jurisdiction to investigate Israel war crimes in Gaza: chief prosecutor
Jaclyn Belczyk
[JURIST] International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo on Wednesday said that the ICC has no jurisdiction to investigate possible war crimes committed by Israel in Gaza. Moreno-Ocampo’s statement came after calls by the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) for the UN Security Council to refer Israel to the ICC for an investigation. Moreno-Ocampo said the court currently lacks jurisdiction over Israel because it is not a member state. The ICC could obtain jurisdiction over Israel if it is referred by the Security Council or if Israel voluntarily accepts jurisdiction.
On Tuesday, European Union Humanitarian Aid Commissioner Louis Michel said that Israel is not respecting international human rights law [JURIST report] in the Gaza Strip. On Monday, the UN Human Rights Council adopted a resolution condemning the Israeli occupation in Gaza [press release] and demanding the immediate withdrawal of military forces. The council also decided to dispatch a fact-finding mission to investigate possible human rights violations. Last Friday, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights called for an independent investigation of possible war crimes and human rights violations in the ongoing conflict between Israel and combatants in the Gaza Strip. She called on Israel to respect the bounds of international law regarding the protection of civilians, even if the Gaza combatants do not, stressing that Israel’s responsibility to fulfill its international obligations is completely independent from the compliance of Hamas with its own obligations under international law.
Olmerts Poodle
Posted on January 17th, 2009 by Patrick J. Buchanan
As Israel entered the third week of its Gaza blitz, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert regaled a crowd in Ashkelon with an astonishing tale.
He had, said Olmert, whistled up George Bush, interrupted him in the middle of a speech and told him to instruct Condi Rice not to vote for a U.N. resolution Condi herself had written. Bush did as told, said Olmert.
The crowd loved it. Here is the background.
After intense negotiations with Britain and France, Secretary of State Rice had persuaded the Security Council to agree on a resolution calling for a cease-fire. But Olmert wanted more time to kill Hamas.
So, here, in Olmerts words, is what happened next.
In the night between Thursday and Friday, when the secretary of state wanted to lead the vote on a cease-fire at the Security Council, we did not want her to vote in favor.
I said, Get me President Bush on the phone. They said he was in the middle of giving a speech in Philadelphia. I said I didnt care. I need to talk to him now. He got off the podium and spoke to me.
According to Olmert, Bush was clueless.
He said: Listen. I dont know about it. I didnt see it. Im not familiar with the phrasing.
I told him the United States could not vote in favor. It cannot vote in favor of such a resolution. He immediately called the secretary of state and told her not to vote in favor.
She was left shamed. A resolution that she prepared and arranged, and in the end she did not vote in favor.
The U.N. diplomatic corps was astonished when the United States abstained on the 14-0 resolution Rice had crafted and claimed her country supported. Arab diplomats say Rice promised them she would vote for it.
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack, with Rice at the United Nations during the debate on the resolution, said Olmerts remarks were just 100 percent, totally, completely untrue.
But the White House cut Rice off at the knees, saying only that there were inaccuracies in the Olmert story. The video does not show Bush interrupting his speech to take any call.
Yet the substance rings true and is widely believed, and Olmert is happily describing the egg on Rices face:
He (Bush) gave an order to the secretary of state, and she did not vote in favor of it a resolution she cooked up, phrased, organized and maneuvered for.
She was left pretty shamed.
With Bush and Rice leaving office in hours, and Olmert in weeks, the story may seem to lack significance.
Yet public gloating by an Israeli prime minister that he can order a U.S. president off a podium and instruct him to reverse and humiliate his secretary of state may cause even Ehuds poodle to rise up on its hind legs one day and bite its master.
Taking such liberties with a superpower that, for Israels benefit, has shoveled out $150 billion and subordinated its own interests in the Arab and Islamic world would seem a hubristic and stupid thing to do.
And there are straws in the wind that, despite congressional resolutions giving full-throated approval to all that Israel is doing in Gaza, this is becoming a troubled relationship.
Two weeks ago, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, in opposing any truce, assured the world there is no humanitarian crisis in the (Gaza) Strip, and the humanitarian situation there is completely as it should be.
Not so to Hillary Clinton. In her confirmation hearings, the secretary of state-designate, reports the New York Times, struck a sharper tone toward Israel on violence in the Middle East.
Clinton seemed to part from the tone set by the Bush administration in calling attention to what she described as the tragic humanitarian costs borne by Palestinians, as well as Israelis.
More dramatic was a weekend report by the Times David Sanger that the White House had rebuffed Olmerts request for new U.S. bunker-buster bombs and denied Israel permission to overfly Iraq in any strike on Irans nuclear enrichment plant at Natanz.
Sanger described these U.S.-Israeli talks as tense.
Repeatedly, Israel has warned that Iran is close to a bomb and threatened to attack unilaterally. Indeed, Israel simulated such an attack in an air exercise of 100 planes that went as far as Greece.
Bush both blocked and vetoed that attack, says Sanger. But he did assure Olmert that America is engaged in the sabotage of Irans nuclear program by helping provide Tehran with defective parts.
This would seem a stunning breach of security secrets, but no outrage has been heard from the White House, nor has any charge come that the Times compromised national security.
With Olmert, Rice, and Bush departing, and Obama and Hillary taking charge committed to talking to Iran, can the old intimacy survive the new friction and colliding agendas?
http://www.amconmag.com/blog/2009/01/17/olmerts-poodle/
Rabbi told Israeli troops ‘to show no mercy’ in Gaza
Mon Jan 26, 9:21 am ET
JERUSALEM (AFP) An Israeli human rights group on Monday called for the immediate dismissal of the chief military rabbi, claiming he gave soldiers fighting in Gaza pamphlets urging them to show no mercy.
Yesh Din said it had written to both Defence Minister Ehud Barak and Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi, urging them to "take this incitement seriously and fire Chief Military Rabbi" Brigadier General Avi Ronzki.
It said a pamphlet distributed to soldiers taking part in Operation Cast Lead stressed that the troops should show no mercy to their enemies, and that the pamphlet borders "on incitement and racism against the Palestinian people."
"When you show mercy to a cruel enemy you are being cruel to pure and honest soldiers. These are not games at the amusement park where sportsmanship teaches one to make concessions. This is a war on murderers," Yesh Din quoted the pamphlet as saying.
It said the pamphlet quotes at length statements by Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, a spiritual leader of the Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank who opposes any compromise with Palestinians.
"The Palestinians claim they deserve a state here, when in reality there was never a Palestinian or Arab state within the borders of our country," the pamphlet quoted Aviner as saying.
The rights group said the pamphlet contains "degrading and belittling messages that border on incitement and racism against the Palestinian people. These messages can be interpreted as a call to act outside of the confines of international laws of war."
The Haaretz newspaper reported on Monday that far right-wing groups also gave out pamphlets bearing racist messages on military bases.
It said one urged soldiers to "spare your lives and the lives of your friends and not to show concern for a population that surrounds us and harms us…"
"Kill the one who comes to kill you. As for the population, it is not innocent," the daily quoted the pamphlet as saying.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090126/wl_mideast_afp/mideastconflictgazareligion/print
Prosecutor looks at ways to put Israeli officers on trial for Gaza ‘war crimes’
Catherine Philp in Davos and James Hider in Jerusalem
The International Criminal Court is exploring ways to prosecute Israeli commanders over alleged war crimes in Gaza.
The alleged crimes include the use of deadly white phosphorus in densely populated civilian areas, as revealed in an investigation by The Times last month. Israel initially denied using the controversial weapon, which causes horrific burns, but was forced later, in the face of mounting evidence, to admit to having deployed it.
When Palestinian groups petitioned the ICC this month, its prosecutor said that it was unable to take the case because it had no jurisdiction over Israel, a nonsignatory to the court. Now, however, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the ICC prosecutor, has told The Times that he is examining the case for Palestinian jurisdiction over alleged crimes committed in Gaza.
Palestinian groups have submitted arguments asserting that the Palestinian Authority is the de facto state in the territory where the crimes were allegedly committed.
It is the territorial state that has to make a reference to the court. They are making an argument that the Palestinian Authority is, in reality, that state, Mr Moreno-Ocampo told The Times at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
Part of the Palestinian argument rests on the Israeli insistence that it has no responsibility for Gaza under international law since it withdrew from the territory in 2006. They are quoting jurisprudence, Mr Moreno-Ocampo said. Its very complicated. Its a different kind of analysis I am doing. It may take a long time but I will make a decision according to law.
Mr Moreno-Ocampo said that his examination of the case did not necessarily reflect a belief that war crimes had been committed in Gaza. Determining jurisdiction was a first step, he said, and only after it had been decided could he launch an investigation.
The prosecutors office has already received several files on alleged crimes from Palestinian groups and is awaiting further reports from the Arab League and Amnesty International containing evidence gathered in Gaza.
Under the Rome treaty that founded it, the ICC can investigate and prosecute allegations of the most serious war crimes only if the country responsible is unwilling or unable to do so through its national courts.
States that are party to the treaty can refer cases of crimes committed by their citizens or on their territory. Cases involving the citizens or territory of a country that has not signed up to the court can be referred by the United Nations Security Council as in the case of Darfur. Ivory Coast set a precedent as the first nonstate party to accept the ICCs jurisdiction over alleged war crimes on its territory. It signed the Rome treaty but never ratified it. In 2005 it lodged a declaration with the court accepting the ICCs jurisdiction over crimes committed there since September 2002.
Palestinian lawyers argue that the Palestinian Authority should be allowed to refer the cases in Gaza on this same ad hoc basis despite its lack of internationally recognised statehood.
The case has wide-reaching ramifications for the Palestinian case for statehood. If the court rejects the case, it will highlight the legal black hole that Palestinians find themselves in while they remain stateless. However, it also underlines some of Israels worst fears about a Palestinian state on its borders. A Palestinian state that ratified the Rome treaty would then be able to refer alleged Israeli war crimes to the court without the current legal wrangling. The case could also lead to snowballing international recognition of a Palestinian state by countries eager to see Israel prosecuted.
One avenue would be for Israel to agree to investigate its commanders and prosecute any crimes discovered. That would remove any case from the orbit of the international court. So far that appears unlikely, given Israels repeated denials of war crimes in Gaza.
The Israeli army has, however, launched an internal inquiry into whether white phosphorus was used in some cases in built-up areas, having eventually admitted that it did use the incendiary substance, which is not illegal as a battlefield smokescreen but is banned from being used in civilian areas. Camera footage from one such attack shows what appears to be white phosphorous raining down on a UN school in Beit Lahiya, where Red Crescent ambulances and their crews were stationed.
A coalition of Israeli human rights groups has urged the countrys attorney-general to open an independent investigation into allegations of war crimes by troops, urging that to do so could head off international court cases. The groups, including the antisettlement organisation BTselem, said that there had been reports of Israeli forces firing into civilian areas, denying medical aid to the wounded and preventing Palestinian ambulances from reaching them, and of firing at people carrying white flags.
Meanwhile, the UN is preparing an inquiry into the bombardment of a UN school in Jabaliya, in the northern Gaza Strip. Israeli forces fired artillery shells outside the school, which had been converted into a refugee shelter for Gazans fleeing their homes. At least 43 people were killed. Israel said that Palestinian militants had fired from the compound, which was denied by the UN.
Last update – 16:26 02/02/2009
Israel state prosecutor to meet officials at center of Spanish war crimes probe
By Haaretz Service
State Prosecutor Moshe Lador was to Monday summon the seven senior Israeli defense officials who were named as defendants in a war crimes trial that will be heard by a Spanish court.
Judge Fernando Andreu launched an investigation last week into seven current or former Israeli officials over a 2002 bombing in Gaza that killed a top Hamas militant, Salah Shehadeh, and 14 other people, including nine children.
The judge acted under a doctrine that allows prosecution in Spain, and other European countries, to reach far beyond national borders in cases of torture or war crimes. The universal jurisdiction ruling sparked outrage in Israel and elsewhere.
Lador will meet Monday with minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer and Avi Dichter; the two former army chiefs of staff, Dan Halutz and Moshe Ya’alon; the former GOC Southern Command Doron Almog; the former head of the National Security Council, Giora Eiland; and Mike Herzog, Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s liaison to the army.
Click here for more on Hamas
The International Criminal Court is exploring ways to charge Israel Defense Forces officers over alleged war crimes committed in Gaza, The Times reported on Monday.
The alleged crimes included the use of white phosphorus in densely populated civilian areas, the British daily said.
According to The Times, when Palestinian groups initially petitioned the ICC, its prosecutor said that it was unable to take the case because it had no jurisdiction over Israel, a nonsignatory to the court.
Now, however, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the ICC prosecutor, reportedly told The Times that he is examining the case for Palestinian jurisdiction over the alleged crimes.
The Times reported that part of the Palestinian argument rests on Israel’s insistence that it has no responsibility for Gaza under international law since it withdrew from the coastal territory in 2005.
"They are quoting jurisprudence," Moreno-Ocampo was quoted as saying. "It’s very complicated. It’s a different kind of analysis I am doing. It may take a long time but I will make a decision according to law."
But Moreno-Ocampo also reportedly said that his examination of the case did not necessarily reflect a belief that war crimes had been committed in Gaza. Determining jurisdiction was a first step, he was quoted as saying, and only after it had been decided could he launch an investigation.
The IDF is itself currently investigating whether a reserve paratroops brigade made improper use of phosphorus shells during the 22-day offensive against Hamas in Gaza.
The brigade fired about 20 such shells in a built-up area of northern Gaza.
Aside from this one case, the shells were used very sparingly and, in the army’s view, in compliance with international law.
Last week, the Cabinet declared that it would grant aid and support to IDF officers in cases where they face suits for alleged war crimes in Gaza.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1060872.html
IDF colonel leaves speaking tour of UK for fear of arrest
Feb. 2, 2009
JONNY PAUL, JPost correspondent in LONDON , THE JERUSALEM POST
An Israeli colonel involved in Operation Cast Lead returned to Israel in haste on Friday, fearing arrest on charges of war crimes during a visit to the UK.
Col. (res.) Geva Rapp had arrived in London three days before for appearances in which he was to explain Israel’s position and refute media representations of the hostilities.
His trip had been cleared by Israeli security services.
On Thursday night, after news of his visit reached pro-Palestinian groups, some 80 protesters demonstrated outside the offices of the Union of Jewish Students (UJS) in central London, where Rapp was scheduled to speak.
Calling for police to arrest him, the protesters blocked public pathways, while one scaled the building’s walls. Police made several arrests.
The event was cancelled and the decision was made for Rapp to return to Israel out of fear of a universal jurisdiction arrest warrant for alleged war crimes.
A loophole in British law allows private criminal complaints of war crimes to be lodged against military personnel, even if they are not British citizens and the alleged crimes were committed elsewhere. Pro-Palestinian groups in Britain and other countries have been trying to exploit the loophole against IDF officers and Israeli leaders.
Israel is working with the British government to change the law.
Before leaving Britain, Rapp addressed students at the Hasmonean and Jewish Free (JFS) high schools in London. He also spoke at events organized by the Jewish Agency and Aish UK.
This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com /servlet/Satellite?cid=1233304666671&pagename=JPArticle%2FShowFull
UN official slams Israel for blocking textbooks
Head of UNRWA operation in Gaza ‘extremely frustrated’ by Israel’s refusal to allow paper into Strip, says new textbooks meant for children’s human rights program
Associated Press
The top UN Official in Gaza criticized Israel on Monday for blocking the shipment of paper to print textbooks for a new human rights curriculum that will be taught to children in all grades in the Palestinian territory.
Israel also has refused to allow 12 truckloads of notebooks into Gaza as well as plastic sheeting which is
turned into plastic bags to distribute food that the UN provides to some 900,000 people, John Ging, head of Gaza operations for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency which helps Palestinian refugees, said in a videoconference with reporters at UN Headquarters.
He said 60% of the textbooks needed in Gaza have not been printed, so children don’t have the material they need to study.
Ging said he was "extremely frustrated" at Israel’s refusal to allow paper into Gaza, "Not least because we have a new human rights curriculum which everybody here is very excited to teach the children."
The human rights courses are modeled on those developed by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, with input from the human rights community in Gaza, he said. They will be taught by specialist human rights teachers in every school, and human rights organizations in Gaza will evaluate the teachers’ performance.
"Hopefully when the kids leave our schools, they’ll have the clearest understanding of rights, responsibilities and the effective mechanisms to uphold and achieve those rights," Ging said.
"We want these kids to come up with a civilized outlook, with the mindset that is orientated toward peace and tolerance, and we’re being obstructed," he said. "Not being allowed to bring in paper to print the human rights textbooks means that there is an obstruction for the teaching of human rights to the children here in Gaza."
http://www.ynetnews.com/Ext/Comp/ArticleLayout/CdaArticlePrintPreview/1,2506,L-3669379,00.html