With media reports increasing recently about the conclusion of the on-again, off-again prisoner exchange between Hamas and the Zionist entity, Addameer’s monthly statistics on Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails are a good reminder of the disparity between colonizer and colonized, occupier and occupied, oppressor and oppressed.
It is pathetic that the Israeli
army tank gunner who was pulled out of his tank by Palestinian freedom fighters with the aim of exchanging his freedom for that of hundreds of illegally detained Palestinians has become one of the most famous prisoners in the world. The Israeli corporal was involved in the indiscriminate shelling of the Gaza Strip that had left dozens of innocent Palestinians dead in the preceding weeks, yet since his capture on June 25th, 2006, he has been portrayed sympathetically in the Western press.
No sympathy is reserved for the two Palestinians abducted by Israel from Gaza the day before. Their names and fate are not known, and the indifferent reaction to their fate would’ve been the same had 200 Palestinians been abducted that day.
The October statistics are startling; while world leaders lobby for the release of one soldier involved in the shelling of refugees, more than 7,000 Palestinians languish in Israeli jails. Of these, 350 are children held with adults rather than in their own wings. 335 prisoners are held in administrative detention-imprisoned for consecutively renewable six month periods without trial, without charge and without ever being allowed to access the evidence held against them.
Israel runs a network of notorious prisons and interrogation/torture centers within the Green Line, such as Petah Tikva, Megiddo, Hadarim and the notorious Nafha desert prison, where Palestinian prisoners are held in tents. It is a violation of international law for prisoners from an occupied territory (such as the West Bank and Gaza) to be transferred outside these territories for detention. The families of prisoners must face torturous labyrinthine bureaucracy for the chance to visit their loved ones for a few minutes every few months, and many are regularly denied permission to do so. Prisoners from Gaza have been banned from family visits for over two years now.
And while most media reports of this issue parrot the Israeli party line by describing those that may be freed in any prisoner swap as ‘terrorists’, the plight of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel without charge or trial and in violation of international law receives no comparable coverage. The entire world knows the name and life story of the Israeli tank gunner-but not many people think the fate of Mohammad Othman is of any importance. Othman is a human rights defender and a member of the grassroots Stop the Wall Campaign in Palestine. He was arrested on his way back into Palestine from a speaking tour in Norway where he was advocating non-violent resistance to Israeli occupation. He has been in jail and under interrogation for two months, and was recently given a six month administrative detention order.
In the end, it’s the grassroots activism of Othman that will eventually change the biases that deem the fate of a colonial soldier more important than that of a human rights defender. And until then, its only the capture of these colonial soldiers that will win the freedom of people like Othman.
Related posts:
Yes, more violence will surely help. Capturing another Israeli soldier is surely the way to go.
That is why the world does not care so much about Palestinian terrorists, sorry "freedom fighters".
I thought Kabobfest at least did not support violence, but I see I was wrong about that. You are no different than Hamas.
Posted by iii | November 28, 2009, 9:40 pmThat's right you piece of shit the Palestinians should just sit there and get get exterminated …"The world doesn't care about Palestinians " because organized Jewery have been demonizing Arabs for a 100 years through their domination of mass media in the West, and the control of Western govts. with Jewish money, it ain't brain surgery.The problem was NOT ENOUGH VIOLENCE WAS USED AGAINST THE JUDEO NAZIS. The Palestinians were too shocked and traumatized for too long, they sat there and let you kill them for 60 years. If Hamas was around in 1948 maybe the baby -killing, rapin', thieving Zionazis would be now imprisoned in Gaza, being tormented and used for target practice like they should be, instead of the Palestinian farmers, and fishers. Fuck you playing pacifict now as you throw poison in water wells and burn olive groves. Read the "PLAN DALET " YOU JUDEO NAZI SCUM, YOU CAME TO PALESTINE WITH GENOCIDE ON YOUR BREATH.
Posted by Chauncey | November 29, 2009, 2:36 pmChauncey is your turban wrapped too tight? The Palestinians didn't just "sit there" for 60 years, since the creation of Israel, they have been attacking and committing terrorism. Hamas wasn't around in 1948, but there were plenty of other Palestinian guerrillas/terrorists then. Plan Dalet was a contingency plan for defending a nascent Jewish state from invasion (although the propagandist Walid Khalidi says otherwise). Walid Khalidi is a stupid old fart!
Jews control the media and the western governments? Holy shit! Do they control everything????
Posted by whoa | November 29, 2009, 2:50 pmits only the capture of these colonial soldiers that will win the freedom of people like Othman.
So you think that military conflict with Israel is the way to go? The Palestinians got shit-hammered in Gaza, and you think they should keep messing with Israel until they get shit-hammered again?
not many people think the fate of Mohammad Othman is of any importance
Israel must end 'unfair' jailing
Israel holds hundreds of Palestinians without trial or any way to clear their names, say two Israeli rights groups which urge an end to such detentions.
People should keep blogging about Mohammad Othman. and keep focusing attention on that.
Trying to draw some sort of moral equivalency to the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit (and the two IDF soldiers who were killed, and the three others wounded) is a losing strategy.
It has become common rhetoric to refer to Israel as a colonialist country, and its defense forces as colonialist soldiers – this is incorrect because colonialism is the building and maintaining of colonies in one territory by people from another territory and sovereignty over the colony is claimed by the metropole. The metropole is the nation which maintains or extends its control over foreign dependencies. Israel is not a foreign dependency of another country. And the occupied territories are not colonies of Israel. So continuing to use incorrect language just makes people seem ignorant or else demonstrates a desire to misrepresent the facts.
You are obviously trying to justify the kidnapping. And yes there is a disparity between the Palestinians and Israelis, but the reasons for that are obvious.
Posted by eagle007blogger | November 29, 2009, 8:31 amLets not forget that the Palestinians intended to destroy Israel in 1948 and 1967, and they have engaged in violence ever since. After the 1948 War, Palestinian Arab terrorist groups, the Fedayeen, began systematic raids against the Israelis. Attacks from the Palestinian guerrilla groups (fedayeen) were supported by Syria, Egypt, and Jordan.
Let's not forget that the Zionists intended to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians from day one, and the process of ethnic cleansing began long before the 1948 war. Immediately prior to the 1948 war, the Zionists occupied areas that were supposed to be part of a Palestinian state including the city of Haifa, from which they ethnically cleansed the majority of the population. The Deir Yassin massacre of over 100 Palestinian men, women and children occurred one month before the 1948 war.
It is clear who was the aggressor in the 1948 war.
Israel has been under attack from the Fedayeen, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Fatah's Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and the Abu Nidal Organization.
The Palestinians within Israel were placed under martial law for over 17 years. Palestinian peasants who tried to return to the land from which they were ethnically cleansed were declared "infiltrators" and shot on sight by Israeli soldiers. Over 5,000 Palestinians were murdered for attempting to return home. Israel not only repeatedly attacked its neighbors throughout the period from 1948 to 1967, but also attacked its allies including the US and Britain. In 1954, Jewish terrorists in Egypt bombed US and British targets in Egypt in an attempt to pin the blame on the Egyptian government and bring the US and Britian into Israel's planned war against Egypt. The incident became know as the "Lavon Affair" and though the Israeli government denied any involvement, the terrorists in question were later honored as heroes in Israel.
http://theuglytruth.wordpress.com/2009/11/11/isra…
In 1967 Israel also deliberately attacked and attempted to sink the USS Liberty, a US intelligence ship, in yet another false flag attack designed to drag the US into a war against Egypt. The brutal attack that left over 30 sailors killed and 150 wounded. The man in charge of the cover-up of this crime was Vice-Admiral Hohn McCain Sr, the father of presidential candidate John McCain.
http://www.gtr5.com/
http://www.counterpunch.org/stclair1126.html
Americans interested in just what sort of country their tax dollars are being used to finance should read "Israel's Sacred Terrorism" which documents Zionist terrorism during the 1940s and 1950s, but is still a revealing glimpse into the mindset and practices of modern Israel.
The personal diary of Moshe Sharett sheds light on this question by amply documenting the rationale and mechanics of lsrael's "Arab policy" in the late 1940s and the 1950s. The policy portrayed, in its most intimate particulars, is one of deliberate Israeli acts of provocation, intended to generate Arab hostility and thus to create pretexts for armed action and territorial expansion. Sharett's records document this policy of "sacred terrorism" and expose the myths of Israel's "security needs" and the "Arab threat" that have been treated like self-evident truths from the creation of Israel to the present, when Israeli terrorism against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and against Palestinians and Lebanese in South Lebanon, has reached an intolerable level. It is becoming increasingly evident that the exceptional demographic and geographic alterations in Israeli society within the present generation have been brought about, not as the accidental results of the endeavor to guard "Israel's security" against an "Arab threat," but by a drive for lebensraum.
http://chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/essays/rok…
Posted by Sean2009 | November 29, 2009, 4:49 pmLet's not forget that the Zionists intended to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians from day one, and the process of ethnic cleansing began long before the 1948 war.
While we're working on the non-forgetting part, lets try to remember that it was the Arabs who were the aggressors in 1948. No amount of revisionist history can change that inconvenient fact.
Posted by programmer craig | November 29, 2009, 10:07 pmHow were the Arabs the aggressors when the Zionists had moved to seize Palestinian territory outside of the Jewish side of the partition and ethnically cleansed and massacred Palestinians to make way for Jewish settlers, all before the Arab armies entered the Palestinian side of the partition to prevent further ethnic cleansing? Even after the war began, the Arabs never entered into the Jewish side of the partition nor did they ever assemble a military force large enough to make the assumption its purpose was for a full scale invasion, as their numbers were equal to that of the Jews but they were heavily outgunned.
No amount of Zionist mythology and bullshit can change the facts of what happened and the realities of military science.
Posted by Sean2009 | November 30, 2009, 9:52 amSean just do yourself a favor and read these two items:
1947–1948 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine
1948 Arab–Israeli War
Interesting and informative.
Posted by eagle007blogger | November 30, 2009, 12:39 pmEngaging in violence against Israel is not the best way forward for the Palestinians. Period.
Let's not forget that the Zionists intended to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians from day one… It is clear who was the aggressor in the 1948 war.
On Nov. 29, 1947, the United Nations General Assembly approved a plan to split Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. The as yet unnamed Jewish state — or, as they say in Arabic, “Zionist entity” — would be tiny and divided: nearly half its citizens would be Arabs. Still, the Jews danced the hora that day on the streets of Tel Aviv.
Through the following May, when the British Mandate expired, civil war raged in Palestine. On paper and on the ground, the Palestinians had the edge: there were twice as many of them, they occupied the higher altitudes and they had friendly regimes next door. But isolated and outnumbered as they were, the Jews were far better organized, motivated, financed, equipped and trained than their adversaries, who were so fragmented — by geography and tradition and clan — that the term “Palestinian” was either unwarranted or at least premature. The war became a rout once the Jews took the offensive, and the Palestinian refugee crisis began (if “crisis” can be used to describe anything so chronic).
Transfer — or expulsion or ethnic cleansing — was never an explicit part of the Zionist program, even among its more extreme elements. The first Arabs who left their homes did so on their own, expecting to return once the Jews lost or the fighting stopped. The Jewish mayor of Haifa begged Arab residents to stay; Golda Meir, then head of the Jewish Agency Political Department, called the exodus “dreadful” and even likened it to what had befallen the Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe. While Jewish atrocities — notably, the infamous massacre at Deir Yassin — were very real, apocalyptic Arab broadcasts induced further flight and depicted as traitors those who chose to stay behind.
The Arabs, it was said, had only themselves to blame for the upheaval: they’d started it.
Matters took another turn in May 1948, when the British left, Israel declared statehood and the armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Iraq marched in. Again, for all their numerical superiority, the Arabs were ill-equipped, inexperienced, unprepared. Some Arab leaders knew they were in over their heads. But given the anger over the Jewish state on their streets and their own tenuous hold on power, not to invade was even more perilous.
Within five and a half months, they were crushed, militarily and psychologically. But for international intervention, their defeat would have been still worse; the Egyptian army would have been annihilated. Only King Abdullah of Jordan, with the best (British-trained) army and limited objectives (not to destroy the Jewish state, but to annex the West Bank), got what he wanted. Meanwhile, Israel grew beyond the partition lines, gained more defensible borders and — by destroying Arab villages — further reduced the Palestinian population.
But had the Israelis committed systematic ethnic cleansing, there would not be 1.4 million Arabs in Israel today. Of course, by promptly driving out their own Jews, the vanquished Arab leaders became the greatest Zionist recruiters of all.
1947–1948 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine
lasted from 30 November 1947, the date of the United Nations vote in favour of the termination of the British Mandate of Palestine and the UN Partition Plan, to the termination of the British Mandate itself on 14 May 1948.
In the immediate aftermath of the United Nations' approval of the Partition plan, the explosions of joy amongst the Jewish community were counterbalanced by the expression of discontent amongst the Arab community. Soon after, violence broke out and became more and more prevalent. Murders, reprisals, and counter-reprisals came fast on each other's heels, resulting in dozens of victims killed on both sides in the process. In all the mixed zones where both communities lived, particularly Jerusalem and Haifa, increasingly violent attacks, reprisals and counter-reprisals followed each other. Isolated shootings evolved into all-out battles. Attacks against traffic, for instance, turned into ambushes as one bloody attack led to another.
Jerusalem and the great difficulty of accessing the city became even more critical to its Jewish population, who made up one sixth of the total of Yishuv settlers. The route from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem was long and precipitous, which, after leaving the Jewish zone at Hulda, went through the foothills of Latrun. Then, the 28 kilometre route between Bab al-Wad and Jerusalem took no less than 3 hours, and the route passed the vicinity of the Arab villages of Saris, Qaluniya, Al-Qastal and Deir Yassin.
Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni arrived in Jerusalem with the intent to surround and besiege its Jewish community.
Posted by eagle007blogger | November 30, 2009, 4:47 amEthnic cleansing was always part of the Zionist agenda.The goal of Zionism was to create a Jewish majority in a number of candidate countries for a "Jewish State" in which Jews were not the majority, including Argentina, Madagascar, Uganda and Palestine. The only way a Jewish majority could have been achieved in any of these countries was through ethnic cleansing of the natives.
On 12 June 1895, Herzl confided to his diary his programme for the removal of the indigenous non-Jewish population from the Jewish State and the expropriation of private property by the Jewish State.
In those days, countries consisted of the few rich landowners and the multitude of poor, and Herzl had plans for each of these classes of population. With regard to the landowners, Herzl wrote in his diary: “When we occupy the land, we shall bring immediate benefits to the state that receives us. We must expropriate gently, the private property on the estates assigned to us.”(1) For the remainder of the population, he wrote in his diary on the same day: “We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries whilst denying it any employment in our own country.”(2) We can thus see that the means Herzl envisaged to transfer non-Jews out of the Jewish State, was to deny them sources of livelihood in the Jewish State, and find them employment elsewhere.
http://chaimsimons.net/transfer03.html
Other Zionist leaders have been quoted as favoring or endorsing ethnic cleansing, and even the Roosevelt Administration favored population transfer of the Palestinians to Jordan. Here is Ben-Gurion:
And in 1938, he also wrote:
"With compulsory transfer we [would] have vast areas …. I support compulsory [population] transfer. I do not see anything immoral in it. But compulsory transfer could only be carried out by England …. Had its implementation been dependent merely on our proposal I would have proposed; but this would be dangerous to propose when the British government has disassociated itself from compulsory transfer. …. But this question should not be removed from the agenda because it is central question. There are two issues here : 1) sovereignty and 2) the removal of a certain number of Arabs, and we must insist on both of them." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, 117)
http://www.palestineremembered.com/Acre/Famous-Zi…
The Haganah and Irgun began the process of seizing land in the Arab side of the partition before the 1948 war began, and ethnically cleansed Haifa of most of its citizens. There is no historical evidence that "Arab commanders" (of which there were none, as the war hadn't started yet" ever issued order for the population of Haifa to leave, but there is evidence the Zionists broadcast terror messages threatening those who stayed behind with reprisals.
Based on declassified Israeli documents, the Israeli historian Benny Morris concluded that the Jewish civilian population (especially Haifa's Jewish mayor Shabtai Levy) was at peace with their Palestinian neighbors, but the Haganah and the IZL leadership had a different agenda to ethnically cleanse the city from its Palestinian Arab population. Benny Morris wrote:
"In Haifa, the civilian authorities were saying one thing and the Haganah was doing something else altogether. Moreover, Haganah units in the field acted inconsistently and in a manner often unintelligible to the Arab population" (Benny Morris, p. 90).
To expedite the ethnic cleansing process, the Haganah broadcasted terror messages, via loudspeakers, to psychologically terrorize the Arab inhabitants into fleeing. (Benny Morris, p. 76)
According to Ben-Gurion's biographer, Micheal Bar-Zohar, the dispatching of Golda Meir to Haifa soon after the city's occupation was nothing but a political and tactical ploy, Zohar wrote:,
"The appeals to the Arabs [of Haifa] to stay, Golda's mission, and other similar gestures were the result of political considerations, but they did not reflect [Ben-Gurion's] basic stand. In internal discussions, in instructions to his people, the 'old man' demonstrated a clear stand: it was better that the smallest possible number of [Palestinian] Arabs remain with in the [Jewish] state." (Simha Falpan, p. 84)
Out of the 61,000 Palestinian Arabs who used to call Haifa home, only 3,566 Palestinians were allowed to stay. The remaining population were in constant fear on their lives and properties, and many of them witnessed the looting of their homes and possessions by the Zionists.
Ironically, many of Haifa's residents were literally "pushed into the sea" which is the Zionists have always falsely maintained without evidence was the intent of the Arabs.
http://www.palestineremembered.com/Haifa/Haifa/
Posted by Sean2009 | November 30, 2009, 9:38 amYou are going to have to sort through history and propaganda for yourself. That "palestine remembered" site is really bad, offering ideology and interpretations and faulty labeling. It is obviously a site to explain history from one ideological perspective, it is rife with propaganda and false assumptions, and reinforces the misconceptions people have. I'm not saying its all wrong, but some of it is.
I suggest using neutral sites, I've found Wikipedia to actually be pretty good.
Funny that your propaganda site is quoting Benny Morris. when it suits them, because he is generally hated by your kind for telling the inconvenient truth.
Posted by eagle007blogger | November 30, 2009, 12:23 pmBut had the Israelis committed systematic ethnic cleansing, there would not be 1.4 million Arabs in Israel today. Of course, by promptly driving out their own Jews, the vanquished Arab leaders became the greatest Zionist recruiters of all.
And if the Nazis had really planned to systematically exterminate the Jews, there would not have been millions of Holocaust survivors.
Amazing how quick the Zionists are to appropriate the bogus arguments of Nazi apologists, proving yet again that Nakba deniers and Holocaust deniers are cut from the same cloth.
BTW, Eagle, if you wish to use your usual cut and paste gibberish and non-sequiturs in lieu of an argument, you should at least cite your sources.
Posted by Sean2009 | November 30, 2009, 9:44 amAnd if the Nazis had really planned to systematically exterminate the Jews
NEWSFLASH: The Nazis really were systematically exterminating Jews. Are you a Holocaust-denier also? This is a well documented historical event, it is not made up, the Nazis really planned and carried out systematic extermination of millions of Jews.
There is nothing even similar to "arguments of Nazi apologists" in the factual analysis I have provided you.
And there are no denials that the Palestinians experienced a catastrophe, which they call the Nakba. As usual, you twist the truth.
Posted by eagle007blogger | November 30, 2009, 12:14 pmThe Deir Yassin massacre took place on April 9, 1948, when around 120 fighters from the Irgun and Lehi Zionist paramilitary groups attacked Deir Yassin near Jerusalem, a Palestinian-Arab village of roughly 600 people. The invasion occurred as Jewish militia sought to relieve the blockade of Jerusalem during the civil war that preceded the end of British rule in Palestine.
Around 107 villagers, including women and children, were killed. Some were shot, while others died when hand grenades were thrown into their homes.
Posted by eagle007blogger | November 30, 2009, 4:47 amYour point being what, exactly? The 1948 war begin in May, the Deir Yassin massacre occurred in April.
Posted by Sean2009 | November 30, 2009, 9:46 amCivil War in Mandatory Palestine began on November, 30, 1947.
The Deir Yassin massacre took place on April 9, 1948.
The killings were condemned by the leadership of the Haganah, the Jewish community's main paramilitary force, and by the area's two chief rabbis. The Jewish Agency for Israel sent King Abdullah of Jordan a letter of apology, which he rebuffed.
In the months leading up to the end of British rule, in a phase of the civil war known as "The Battle of [the] Roads,"[7] the Arab League-sponsored Arab Liberation Army (ALA)—composed of Palestinians and other Arabs—attacked Jewish traffic on major roads in an effort to isolate the Jewish communities from each other. The ALA managed to seize several strategic vantage points along the highway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv—Jerusalem's sole supply route and link to the western side of the city where 16% of all Jews in Palestine lived—and began firing on convoys traveling to the city. By March 1948, the road was cut off and Jerusalem was under siege.
In response, the Haganah launched Operation Nachshon to break the siege. On April 6, in an effort to secure strategic positions, the Haganah and its strike force, the Palmach, attacked al-Qastal, a village two kilometers north of Deir Yassin overlooking the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway.[8] On April 9, Irgun and Lehi forces attacked nearby Deir Yassin.
MORE HERE
Posted by eagle007blogger | November 30, 2009, 12:54 pmSo you think that military conflict with Israel is the way to go? You advocate violent confrontation, but then when you lose, you cry foul.
That's right. You have Mohammad correctly identified. He's always advocating war on this blog but then he starts whining non-stop about humanitarian concerns and Israeli violence and so on and so forth. I suppose he wants to play the victim long enough to try to get some Euro-weenies to feel sorry for him, in between advocating violent resistance and terrorism.
The Palestinians got shit-hammered in Gaza, and you think they should keep messing with Israel until they get shit-hammered again?
He made a post complaining about how he and his friends in the West Bank were being prohibited by the Israelis and their Palestinian lackeys from going to Gaza to help fight the war, last time. Ware doesn't scare him none, He looks forward to the day when he can do his part.
Posted by programmer craig | November 29, 2009, 10:05 pmGreat article as always, Mohammad. The disparity in reporting between the reality of thousands of Palestinians held without trail and tortured within Israeli jails contrasts sharply with the attention given a single Israeli soldier captured while enforcing an illegal and immoral blockade aimed at civilians. As a tank gunner, it is reasonable to assume that Shalit engaged in firing on Palestinian civilians, as Israel routinely uses its tanks to shell Palestinian homes. Eagle is ironically correct when says there is no moral equivalency between the two.
The obvious reason for this disparity is the Western media's dominance by Zionist and pro-Zionist elements, which in turn points to the need to develop alternative media sources to challenge the propaganda that many in the West have been bombarded with for decades.
Much as I support the BDS movement and feel it is entirely the right direction to go in, I also feel that it is too limited and should really aim at the heart of Zionism's power, which is its virtual lockdown on mainstream media. The BDS movement should target not just Israeli goods, but all aspects of the Zionist support infrastructure, particularly in the US.
As individuals, we often do not have a choice what our government does other than to vote for some other corporate-owned stooge, but we can decide what we do and do not buy, and what we do and do not watch. If every American and European who believes in justice for the Palestinians were to boycott the corporatist and Zionist media, it would collapse overnight. Without control of the media, Zionists cannot continue their grossly disproportionate influence on the political systems of the West, particularly in the US. Without US and European support, Israel cannot continue to oppress the Palestinians or achieve its expansionist goals.
Outlets like Fox News or the New York Times are businesses that rely on viewers and readers to generate the advertising revenue they survive on. If people stop reading the papers and stop watching the news, as well as boycott any business associated with the Israel Lobby or any of its members and supporters, we might perhaps see the day when the alternative media becomes mainstream, and people will be exposed to the truth of what is going on in the Mideast. It is also a worthy goal to free your mind from this mental poison for your own sake.
Simlarly, we should boycott all political candidates who support Israel, regardless of party. Never mind lesser evilism. Do not vote for anyone who does not share your moral and political views. If Obama and the Democrats have accomplished anything, it is to demonstratet the moral bankruptcy and political infantilism of lesser evilism. We will not see "change" until we change the people we put in office. Any politician who attends AIPAC's annual grovelathon should see his political career ruined as a consequence.
Posted by Sean2009 | November 29, 2009, 5:27 pmThank you for the feedback Sean, and for taking time to engage the idiots above. I don't have much time for a thorough response, but I completely agree with your assessment about the need to target the mainstream media. In a twitter post yesterday, I linked to a list of 20 companies to boycott for their support of the Israeli military-but I also called for a boycott of the New York Times. So much is made of the power of the Israel lobby over US policymakers-but I believe it is the collusion of the mainstream media that makes the blind support of Israel in Washington so uncontroversial amongst the US public.
In the early 2000's, the NYT and Washington Post were both targetted for widespread boycott by Zionists for their perceived anti-Israel reporting. Since then, the Times' coverage in particular can hardly be differentiated from pure hasbara bullshit. So boycott does work-the Zionist have used it for their own ends.
Honestly, the flood of publicity given to a captured colonial tank gunner and the total silence on the plight of freedom fighters or even human rights activists makes me want to throw up, and as you said, we need to realize that the BDS movement will be hindered unless it targets the media's biases.
Posted by MohammadKF | November 29, 2009, 9:26 pmIsrael is not a foreign dependency of another country. And the occupied territories are not colonies of Israel.
Terrorists are not "freedom fighters" they are Islamists who believe Allah wants them to destroy Israel.
You hate the "News" because straight facts don't support your warped world view. Since the "News" doesn't agree with your perverted perception of reality, it must be secretly controlled by your "enemy" – the Jews.
The modern and advanced western world has gotten it all wrong, they should just listen to the Islamists to get the straight dope. Right?
Posted by eagle007blogger | November 30, 2009, 5:25 amIsrael's settlements are definitely a colonialist enterprise. All the usual moronic Zionist sophistry aside, they are flat out illegal under international law, and no country, not even the US, recognizes their legitimacy. They are a flagrant theft of Palestinian land and a denial of the Palestinian's right to self-determination.
The right of self-determination is a first principle under international law, and is one of the first things mentioned in the UN Charter and a number of other human rights instruments, such as the "Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples":
"1. The subjection of peoples to alien subjugation, domination and exploitation constitutes a denial of fundamental human rights, is contrary to the Charter of the United Nations and is an impediment to the promotion of world peace and co-operation.
2. All peoples have the right to self-determination; by virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development."
Article 2 UN Charter:
"4. All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations."
http://www.un.org/aboutun/charter/
Declaration on Principles of International Law
No territorial acquisition resulting from the threat or use of force shall be recognized as legal.
http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/instree/principles19…
From the Geneva Convention, First Protocol:
4. In addition to the grave breaches defined in the preceding paragraphs and in the Conventions, the following shall be regarded as grave breaches of this Protocol, when committed wilfully and in violation of the Conventions or the Protocol: (a) the transfer by the occupying Power of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies, or the deportation or transfer of all or parts of the population of the occupied territory within or outside this territory, in violation of Article 49 of the Fourth Convention;
http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/7c4d08d9b287a42141256… a77fdc125641e0052b079
These laws make the Israel's seizure of Palestinian land and construction of settlements on that land illegal. If there is any doubt about this, the text of Resolution 242, which requires Israel to withdraw from the territories it seized in the 1967 War, makes clear there is no right to capture territory in a war:
Resolution 242 (1967)
of 22 November 1967
The Security Council,
Expressing its continuing concern with the grave situation in the Middle East,
Emphasizing the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war and the need to work for a just and lasting peace in which every State in the area can live in security,
Emphasizing further that all Member States in their acceptance of the Charter of the United Nations have undertaken a commitment to act in accordance with Article 2 of the Charter,
1. Affirms that the fulfilment of Charter principles requires the establishment of a just and lasting peace in the Middle East which should include the application of both the following principles:
(i) Withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict;
(ii) Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgment of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force;
Posted by Sean2009 | November 30, 2009, 10:22 amYou are free to believe whatever corporate-sponsored, corporate-owned bullshit you like, Eagle, but the rest of us are also free to boycott anything we find objectionable and are under no obligation to endorse propaganda and lies.
Alexander Cockburn exposes why the Western media is such a farce.
Hezbollah, Hamas and Israel: Everything You Need To Know <excerpts follow:>
http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn07212006.html
"As the tv networks give unlimited airtime to Israel’s apologists, the message rolls out that no nation, least of all Israel, can permit bombardment or armed incursion across its borders without retaliation.
The guiding rule in this tsunami of drivel is that the viewers should be denied the slightest access to any historical context, or indeed to anything that happened prior to June 28, which was when the capture of an Israeli soldier and the killing of two others by Hamas hit the headlines, followed soon thereafter by an attack by a unit of Hezbollah’s fighters.
Memory is supposed to stop in its tracks at June 28, 2006.
Let’s go on a brief excursion into pre-history. I’m talking about June 20, 2006, when Israeli aircraft fired at least one missile at a car in an attempted extrajudicial assassination attempt on a road between Jabalya and Gaza City. The missile missed the car. Instead it killed three Palestinian children and wounded 15.
Back we go again to June 13, 2006. Israeli aircraft fired missiles at a van in another attempted extrajudicial assassination. The successive barrages killed nine innocent Palestinians.
Now we’re really in the dark ages, reaching far, far back to June 9, 2006, when Israel shelled a beach in Beit Lahiya killing 8 civilians and injuring 32.
That’s just a brief trip down Memory Lane, and we trip over the bodies of twenty dead and forty-seven wounded, all of them Palestinians, most of them women and children….
….Now Israel says it wants to wipe out Hezbollah. It wishes no harm to the people of Lebanon, just so long as they’re not supporters of Hezbollah, or standing anywhere in the neighborhood of a person or a house or a car or a truck or a road or a bus or a field, or a power station or a port that might, in the mind of an Israeli commander or pilot, have something to do with Hezbollah. In any of those eventualities all bets are off. You or your wife or your mother or your baby get fried….
…In 1982 Israel had a problem. Yasir Arafat, headquartered in Beirut, was making ready to announce that the PLO was prepared to sit down with Israel and embark on peaceful, good faith negotiations towards a two-state solution.
Israel didn’t want a two-state solution, which meant — if UN resolutions were to be taken seriously — a Palestinian state right next door, with water, and contiguous territory. So Israel decided chase the PLO right out of Lebanon. It announced that the Palestinian fighters had broken the year-long cease-fire by lobbing some shells into northern Israel.
Palestinians had done nothing of the sort. I remember this very well, because Brian Urquhart, at that time assistant secretary general of the United Nations, in charge of UN observers on Israel’s northern border, invited me to his office on the 38th floor of the UN hq in mid-Manhattan and showed me all the current reports from the zone. For over a year there’d been no shelling from north of the border. Israel was lying.
With or without a pretext Israel wanted to invade Lebanon. So it did, and rolled up to Beirut. It shelled Lebanese towns and villages and bombed them from the air. Sharon’s forces killed maybe 20,000 people, and let Lebanese Christians slaughter hundreds of Palestinian refugees in the camps of Sabra and Chatilla….
….I hope you’ve enjoyed these little excursions into history, even though history is dangerous, which is why the US press gives it a wide birth. But even without the benefit of historical instruction, a majority of Americans in CNN’s instant poll –- about 55 per cent out of 800,000 as of midday, July 19 — don’t like what Israel is up to."
Posted by Sean2009 | November 30, 2009, 10:30 amSean, I wouldn't rely too much on COUNTERPUNCH. Their purposes are political and ideological, not informational.
Posted by eagle007blogger | November 30, 2009, 12:05 pmLike you've ever read Counterpunch. But this is your standard rebuttal to every post: "that's just a propaganda site!" For the record Counterpunch is regarded as one of the premier websites of the genuine Left in this country. It's one of the best sources for people who want non corporate-filtered news and opinions.
Posted by Sean2009 | December 1, 2009, 3:45 amIn the early 2000's, the NYT and Washington Post were both targetted for widespread boycott by Zionists for their perceived anti-Israel reporting. Since then, the Times' coverage in particular can hardly be differentiated from pure hasbara bullshit. So boycott does work-the Zionist have used it for their own ends.
This is my point exactly. If the small minority of Zionists and their supporters can accomplish this with a mere threat, how much more could be achieved if everyone in America who professes to be a liberal were simply to boycott the media, or give money and most importantly support to genuinely progressive political candidates like Cynthia McKinney or Ralph Nader?
Posted by Sean2009 | November 30, 2009, 10:37 amCynthia McKinney??? LOL ! The one who likes to punching Capitol Hill police? That is your idea of a stable, rational person? Then she tries to sail a boat through a blockade in another country? Holy! Can you imagine if she were actually in Obama's position? If you thought Obama was bad….. good grief.
Ralph Nader is pretty interesting, although I don't agree with his ideas about corporations or capitalism. I guess you knew he was of Arab descent.
Posted by eagle007blogger | November 30, 2009, 11:58 amShe didn't punch a cop. That cop grabbed her forceably by the arm when she was rushing past the medical detectors as congresspeople routinely do. She turned around and instinctively poked him in the chest with her cellphone. It's interesting that you see someone getting manhandled by a cop and responding by poking him in the chest as an act of violent assault, but are perfectly comfortable with a cop tazering a 14-year-old girl in the head for misbehaving.
And you call Cynthia McKinney nuts.
Cynthia McKinney is one of the few politicians in recent memory who has demonstrated she has the guts and integrity to put her career and her very life on the line for what she believes is right. If that is crazy, then that is the kind of craziness we need right now.
Posted by Sean2009 | December 1, 2009, 3:39 amI have no idea how you still have the will to respond to these trolls Sean.
But good job nonetheless.
Posted by Arayus | November 30, 2009, 8:45 pmThanks. Every now and then I get a wild hair up my ass and decide to respond to the cut-and-paste hasbara here. I do think its should always be challenged and refuted for the nonsense it is, but it does get tiresome.
Posted by Sean2009 | December 1, 2009, 3:41 amIts interesting that none of them addressed any of the points in the article either. But ditto what Arayus said, I long decided it wasn't worth it. Do you do any writing yourself by the way?
Posted by MohammadKF | December 1, 2009, 6:25 am