Nit Twit Propaganda on Twitter
Want to question an Israeli talking head about Israel’s murderous rampage in Gaza? One will be taking questions on Twitter from 1 to 3 pm EST today.
From Phillip Weiss’ blog:
To participate, create an account at Twitter.com and compose a message to user israelconsulate, including the keyword #AskIsrael in your tweets.Twitter messages have to be 140 characters or less – so keep it short and sweet.
I plan on asking some short and direct questions. I am sure he’s mastered the talking points so well he only needs 140 characters to answer them.
Feel free to share your 140 character or less questions in the comments section.
[Tarboush tip: Adam H.]
I submitted: Will Israel ever acknowledge responsibility for the fact that 80% of Gazans are refugees as a result of Israel’s establishment?
Hell, I have questions that the talking heads here won’t answer. Pretty basic, simple questions, like:
What are the rocket attacks intended to accomplish?
To what degree are they succeeding?
when a terrorist entity controls territory bordering that of a sovereign nation, and indiscriminately lobs rockets into that nation’s territory, terrifying the civilian population and making normal life unlivable, what is a proportionate response?
Why did you wait so long to begin bombing Gaza? Didn’t you fail to protect your citizens? Why don’t you invade gaza and exterminate hamas?
How likely is it that, if Hamas refuses to stop the rockets, that the entire population of Gaza will be evicted, and the territory annexed to Israel?
Y is it right 4 Israel but wrong for Hamas to bomb civilians for self-defense? Israel attacked Palestine 1st in 48′
Intl Law criminalizes targeting civilians. R Israeli leaders scared they will be charged with war crimes 4 killing so many?
I posted a question but I didn’t see it show up on the consulate’s Twitter page. Pretty convenient to use Twitter which does not give you enough characters for proper syntax let alone a complex question, but here is mine:
@israelconsulate Does the Gaza ghetto have the same right to resist its oppression as the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto? #AskIsrael.
That is the proper format for sending “tweets” on this topic to the Israeli consulate Twitter page, BTW. Just substitute my question for yours.
Yeah, they’re ignoring mine as well. They claim to be flooded but are answering several of some people’s. I suspect they go after the low-hanging fruit. One response was to noted zionist, Joel Pollack. I wonder what softie he launched.
Maybe KABOBfest should do a press conference for Gaza.
WIll
I can answer your questions, Will:
Y is it right 4 Israel but wrong for Hamas to bomb civilians for self-defense?
Hamas isn’t engaging in self-defense by attacking Sderot. Israel is engaging in self-defense by attacking Hamas militants.
Here’s your sign.
R Israeli leaders scared they will be charged with war crimes 4 killing so many?
No. It’s pretty clear that they’re not targeting civilians.
Here’s your sign.
Does the Gaza ghetto have the same right to resist its oppression as the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto?
Yes. Except the “Gaza ghetto” isn’t occupied, and they aren’t resisting anything. So the comparison is specious.
Hope this helps.
Israel rams the Mercy boat carrying aid, and the tweet from the spokesman says:
israelconsulate @jinjirre During c.f 3 ships were let in. Due to the escalation, we have decided to keep the ships out of harms way 4 their safety
ha ha
More tweets from KF:
U broke the ceasefire on november 3rd. you never eased the siege during the ceasefire. did you expect anythng less?
why doesnt israel allow palestinian refugees to return to the homes it kicked them out from?
Will Israel really be safer after all this? How many Palestinians will have to die to make Israel secure? Zionism aint worth it.
U broke the ceasefire on november 3rd.
Both sides have violated the “truce”.
Despite the cease-fire violations — the firing of more than 170 rockets and mortar rounds into Israel by Palestinian militants and small-scale Israeli incursions that have killed 15 militants — neither side has renounced the truce.
why doesnt israel allow palestinian refugees to return to the homes it kicked them out from?
Because they have no reason to believe they won’t use it as an opportunity to kill a bunch of civilians.
Will Israel really be safer after all this?
Yes.
How many Palestinians will have to die to make Israel secure?
That’s up to Hamas. Who, I believe, have set the number at “all of them”. But I’m pretty sure it’s lower.
Zionism aint worth it.
How about anti-Zionism?
Yes. Except the “Gaza ghetto” isn’t occupied, and they aren’t resisting anything. So the comparison is specious.
Hope this helps.
The Warsaw Ghetto wasn’t “occupied” either. It was surrounded on all sides by a hostile enemy that barred movement in an out of the ghetto and restricted supplies of food, fuel and medicine leading to conditions of severe deprivation for the inhabitants, just as Israel does to the people of Gaza. No civilized person questioned the right of the Jews to resist under those circumstances. We shouldn’t question the right of the Palestinians to resist identical oppression.
The comparison is anything but specious.
In answer to your other posts, let us remember that it was Israel, and not Hamas, that was the first to violate the ceasefire. In addition, Israel from day one failed to abide by the terms of the ceasefire by continuing to collectively punish the people of Gaza through their illegal and immoral blockade of food, medicine and other necessities, which is a war crime under the Geneva Convention.
Israel clearly targeted civilian infrastructure in its recent attacks, which is also a war crime.
You can try to coat shit with sugar as much as you like, Roy, but it still wont make it sweet no matter how much you feast on it.
The Warsaw Ghetto wasn’t “occupied” either.
Germany occuped Warsaw, Poland. And the Germans came in at least to ship residents out to concentration camps. There had to be someone there to rise up against. They didn’t lob rockets into residential neighborhoods in Germany. If they had, that wouldn’t have been resistance.
How’s that crow tasting?
let us remember that it was Israel, and not Hamas, that was the first to violate the ceasefire.
That’s bullshit. Let us remember it was Hamas who decided not to extend the ceasefire, and to instead renew military actions, which are (yawn) crimes of war. Not ones you care about, of course.
Israel clearly targeted civilian infrastructure in its recent attacks, which is also a war crime.
Just because you say it doesn’t make it so. Give me some reason to believe you. Every indication has been that Israel has been pretty specific about targeting Hamas centers of activity.
What are the rockets intended to accomplish?
Germany occuped Warsaw, Poland. And the Germans came in at least to ship residents out to concentration camps. There had to be someone there to rise up against. They didn’t lob rockets into residential neighborhoods in Germany. If they had, that wouldn’t have been resistance.
The insurgents of the Warsaw Ghetto didn’t have rockets to lob, but they did kill Polish and Jewish civilians on “suspicion” of being collaborators. The allies certainly had no hesitation bombing civilians to bring about the defeat of Germany. Do you imagine that the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto would have refrained from bombing Germany if they thought it would increase their chances of survival? Though we know in retrospect what the intentions of the Nazis were towards the Jews in Warsaw, we don’t know what Israel’s intent towards the people of Gaza is…yet. But we can make deductions based on their previous behavior of ethnic cleansing, massacres and land theft from the Palestinians, as well as the widespread support for religious leaders in Israel calling for the “extermination” of the Palestinians or political leaders who call for their ethnic cleansing. We can draw conclusions by the fact the right wing uses killing Palestinians as an election ploy to convince Israeli voters they are tough enough to lead Israel.
Palestinians lack the military means to take on one of the most powerful armies on the planet by direct means. While I do not agree with Hamas’ targeting of civilians, the reality is they have little other means to resist, and lack weapons that can target military installations with precision. Israel has not responded to Hamas’ honoring of the ceasefire by lifting its illegal and barbaric siege against Gaza as it agreed to do under that ceasefire. Indeed, it tightened the blockade and violated the ceasefire with an armed incursion before Hamas fired a single rocket.
What would you have the Palestinians do to make Israel stop its land theft, imprisonment without trial, collective punishment, deliberate economic and cultural strangulation, mass killings, and other crimes committed by its military and settlers? Sit back and hope they stop?
let us remember that it was Israel, and not Hamas, that was the first to violate the ceasefire.
That’s bullshit. Let us remember it was Hamas who decided not to extend the ceasefire, and to instead renew military actions, which are (yawn) crimes of war. Not ones you care about, of course.
http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/news/gaza-ceasefire-at+risk-20081105
“The killing of six Palestinian militants in Gaza by Israeli forces in a ground incursion and air strikes on 4 November was followed by a barrage of dozens of Palestinian rockets on nearby towns and villages in the south of Israel. The Palestinian attacks caused no casualties or damage, but there is a real risk that any further armed actions by either side would risk igniting another deadly campaign.”
Hamas has previously attempted to renew the ceasefire prior to the current Israeli attacks, but Israel refused. It is only after those attacks that Hamas is now refusing a ceasefire.
Israel clearly targeted civilian infrastructure in its recent attacks, which is also a war crime.
Just because you say it doesn’t make it so. Give me some reason to believe you. Every indication has been that Israel has been pretty specific about targeting Hamas centers of activity.
Mosques, universities, police stations and factories are not “Hamas centers of activity.” They are part of the civilian infrastructure and deliberate, targeted attacks against them are a war crime if they are not being actively used for a military purpose. I have seen no evidence that they were save Israel’s unproven assertions.
Just because Israel says a mosque or a university is being used by militants for military activities doesn’t make it so.
What are the rockets intended to accomplish?
(quote)Hamas is even clearer in what it is striving to achieve from this confrontation. In the first official statement on the first day of the attack it declared that the “practical response to the Israeli attack is the opening of the Rafah crossing and the cutting of diplomatic relations between Israel and Arab states.” (endquote)
http://www.bitterlemons.org/issue/pal1.php
Roy.. just give up, you’ve already embarrassed yourself multiple times, in this exchange.
The comparison to the Warsaw Ghetto uprising is completely devoid of intellect.
1) The uprising was NOT in response to the conditions of the ghetto, which involved the forced starvation of tens of thousands of people. The Palestinians are fed, free of charge, by the international community.
2) The uprising resulted from it being discovered that the Jews who were removed from the ghetto were being exterminated, and not “resettled in the East”, as the Germans had claimed.
3) The equivalent scenario, would be if Israel opened up the Gaza crossings and asked to transfer 100,000 Gazans to the West Bank, to help ease overcrowding.
Then, instead of transferring them to the West Bank, it gassed them all in the Negev, and then came back to Gaza to pick up more.
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The bottom line is this:
This blog is a creation of radical Palestinians who have no intention of living, in peace, with Jews. Their lives are consumed in this eternal struggle, to cleanse the Jew from Palestine.
They will never give in. They will never give up. They will gladly die if their death will further their cause. They will happily martyr their people to achieve this result.
No amount of dialogue, no amount of understanding, no degree of empathy for the suffering of their people will sway them from their mission.
They will seek this result as uneducated farmers, wealthy merchants, or Western-educated intellectuals. They will do in whole when they can, or in parts where they can’t; with emotion where it hurts, or intellect where it counts; using history when it suits and abusing history when it helps. They will rationalize any action, betray any friend and befriend any foe, to ensure the survival of their mission – to liquidate the Jewish presence in Israel.
This is who they are, and no one, ever, will take it away from them, so long as they live.
“The uprising was NOT in response to the conditions of the ghetto, which involved the forced starvation of tens of thousands of people. The Palestinians are fed, free of charge, by the international community.”
Sorry, Mr. Victor, but had you ever visited Gaza you would know that the people are not fed and Lord knows that the people of Gaza had never had a free lunch. As Red Cross members to see how well the Palestinians are being fed. Israel has imposed a blockade for 2 years which makes it extremely difficult for food, medicine, fuel to get in to Gaza. What happened before the 2 years? Israel just brutally occupied Gaza, now they still do, just indirectly.
Do you imagine that the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto would have refrained from bombing Germany if they thought it would increase their chances of survival?
Do you imagine that anyone in Palestine is so stupid as to think that rocketing civilians increases their chances of survival?
How’s that working out for ya?
David: fuck off. You’ve added nothing to the discussion.