Flotilla Update: Israel Attacks Convoy, Deaths Reported (2)

[justdrew]

The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement is beginning to make sense to more and more of us...

they could use a better abbreviation than BDSM

[American Dream]

I just added the "Movement" part- it is generally called "BDS"...

[Simulist]

The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement is beginning to make sense to more and more of us...

they could use a better abbreviation than BDSM

Being delivered from bondage seems to be a theme.

[JackRiddler]

delete

[JackRiddler]

Re: EUMC definition of anti-Semitism.

The first half of the definition is not at all objectionable.

Nuance aside - yes, I see the word "could" - the second half is mostly pro-Israeli talking points, smuggled in with the effect of equating criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism.

The first half:

Rhetorical and physical manifestations of anti-Semitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities. In addition, such manifestations could also target the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity. Antisemitism frequently charges Jews with conspiring to harm humanity, and it is often used to blame Jews for “why things go wrong”. It is expressed in speech, writing, visual forms and action, and employs sinister stereotypes and negative character traits. Contemporary examples of anti-Semitism in public life, the media, schools, the workplace, and in the religious sphere could, taking into account the overall context, include, but are not limited to:


Quote:
* Calling for, aiding, or justifying the killing or harming of Jews in the name of a radical ideology or an extremist view of religion.

* Making mendacious, dehumanizing, demonizing, or stereotypical allegations about Jews as such or the power of Jews as a collective – such as, especially but not exclusively, the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy or of Jews controlling the media, economy, government or other societal institutions.

* Accusing Jews as a people of being responsible for real or imagined wrongdoing committed by a single Jewish person or group, or even for acts committed by non-Jews.

* Denying the fact, scope, mechanisms (e.g. gas chambers) or intentionality of the genocide of the Jewish people at the hands of National Socialist Germany and its supporters and accomplices during World War II (the Holocaust).

* Accusing the Jews as a people, or Israel as a state, of inventing or exaggerating the Holocaust.

All valid, logical, and highly specific examples of undeniable anti-Semitism. The text could end right there and lose very little for it.

The second half:

* Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations.

If said of Jews in general, that's anti-Semitism. If directed at a particular person, Jewish or not, who supports Israeli policy, then that depends on the facts of the case. If directed at Capt. Dreyfus, it's anti-Semitism. If at Jonathan Pollard and the AIPAC spies, it's just the justly indictable facts, ma'am.

Examples of the ways in which antisemitism manifests itself with regard to the State of Israel taking into account the overall context could include:

* Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g. by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.

Conflates the right to self-determination of the Jewish people with the State of Israel. Ironically conflicts with the correct idea that Jews and Israel are two separate concepts.

Insofar as the State of Israel is a project to displace Arab inhabitants of Palestine so as to establish an explicitly Jewish state in the territory, what are we supposed to call it? Does it have nothing to do with racial, ethnic or religious definitions of who has the right to live there, and who doesn't?

* Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.

Smuggles in the false assumption that Israel is a democracy. To millions of people living within its territory, it is not. Jewish Israelis have a democracy. Religious Jews enjoy additional right and privileges, such as that to refuse military service. Arab Israelis have different, often inferior rights, though they also have the latter privilege. Palestinians under Israeli control have no rights and no sovereignty. That is not a democracy, it is apartheid. (Athens also was not a democracy, but a slave state in which the small class of citizens, all male, governed themselves by institutions of majority rule. Democracy usually lies in the hope that it may one day come to exist.)

This point also seems to assume, but does not explicitly say, that there is a standard of behavior for nations. (I'll leave out the democratic part. There should be a universal standard of behavior.) But EUMC fails to tell us what that standard of behavior should be.

In my view, the standard should be that already described by international law. (For a start, since interntional law is itself limited and imperfect.) All who violate international law should be expected and demanded to stop doing so. They are wrong. The wrongs of some do not justify those of others. Israel is in violation. Other nations are also in violation. A few other nations are not.

(We should note that every nation is home to people who would like their own nation never to violate international law. And as Alice said above, these are "my people.")

The facts matter. The behaviors matter. No one gets a free pass.

* Using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism (e.g. claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterize Israel or Israelis.

Very true that this is anti-Semitism. It stands out on this part of the list for being something specific and obvious. Once again, the list conflates critique of Israel with genuine anti-Semitism.

* Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.

17 and Percival did that in almost every post with regard to Palestinians. In their view, Hamas exists solely to exterminate Jews, and its election victory makes Palestinians in Gaza generally culpable and fair game for Israeli violence in "self-defense." "Extermination" is what we all call the Nazi policy. That's where the word comes from, in its political sense of ethnic cleansing and genocide. ("Ausrottung.")

The Nazis had their unique aspects, but they also engaged in a great many practices that are generic to oppression, tyranny, racism, totalitarianism, ethnic cleansing and genocide in other times and places. Comparisons of any other country's policy to what the Nazis did are not automatically invalid, let alone "anti-Semitic." It depends on the facts and the argument in each case.

* Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the State of Israel.

Of course this is anti-Semitism. Just as it is a different form of racism to hold Arabs collectively responsible for the actions of Hamas, or for what you imagine their religion and their understanding of "jihad" say.

However, criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic.

A laughably vague statement. Which other country? Finland? Canada? China? Ancient Assyria? Turkey with regard to Kurdistan? There are differences among the countries and what they do. Criticisms therefore will vary, and the criticisms leveled at Israel may indeed validly be very different from those leveled at Vanuatu or Mauritius.

I'm no rocket scientist,

END OF ON-TOPIC PART

------

WAY OFF TOPIC

This is totally off the topic, but I hate that saying! The social and human sciences, history and economics are all a lot more complicated than rocket science. One of the many things complicating them is how easily most people think they know shit without having bothered to learn anything outside their own experiences and prejudices.

By contrast, rocket science is obviously extremely well-understood, and very reliable. (Space shuttles blow up because of faulty parts, never because of a failure in understanding the principles of thrust, gravity and the mechanics that apply at all speeds we have so far achieved.)

Millions of people have no trouble understanding rocket science. Understanding it is hardly a qualification for having an opinion on anything else. If you want to write about politics and morality, you'll have to make the case in the terms of politics and morality. Like Einstein. He never said, "I'm really smart in physics, ergo my political beliefs are true because politics is so much easier than the rocket science of which I am the greatest master." Rather, he wrote proper essays about politics without reference to his brainy physics theories.

The idea that the same objective universal laws and neutral standards as apply in physics can be discovered and applied in the far more complicated and self-reflexive realms of political economy and the social sciences, wherein the "scientist" is always part of the object of study, is one of the greatest fallacies ever to infect these fields. It's a handicap when taken as a holy grail. But more often it's much worse than that. Objectivity and the pretense of science serve as a cover for legitimating the actions of the powerful, or whatever one's preferences are. Which is perhaps an even greater fallacy to have infected these fields: the belief that winning makes you right.

So I like to reverse the saying. When you want to say something is easy, please say:

"It's only rocket science!"

[Elvis]

In the "Democracy Now" appearance of Iara Lee, the filmmaker who smuggled out some of her footage, something stood out to me: the six still-missing and unaccounted-for activists (assuming that's what all six were):

JUAN GONZALEZ: Have you unidentified who those missing are?

IARA LEE: Obviously, we cannot jump to conclusions, but they are not hurt, they are not injured, they are not killed. They disappeared. I don’t know. It’s something that must be investigated. I mean, some people even speculate that we had spies, so maybe some of these missing people were, you know, Mossad agents. We don’t know. We need to investigate. Were they thrown off the boat?

What became of these six people? Who were they?
I hope these questions don't go unasked in the MSM coverage and at the UN.

Transcript of the interview is here:
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/6/10/e ... t_video_of

[Elvis]

Re: EUMC definition of anti-Semitism.

Jack R, thanks for filling in the nuance required in applying those second-part examples. I was actually hoping, unlikely as it was, that 17Breezes would rise to the task.

As to "rocket science," I was, of course, keying off of 17Breezes "It's not rocket science" remark. Clichés are a dime a dozen.
A friend of mine has a funny alternative: 'rocket science' and 'brain surgery' are both tossed off so often, people seldom even notice when he says, "It's not exactly rocket surgery!"

[JackRiddler]

Hey, brain surgery is a lot tougher than rocket science. Rocket scientists lay out their equations and designs, then evaluate them in extensive peer review before anything is built and launched. Answers are right or wrong by the known and very exact physical laws. The building and launching are done over years using incredibly accurate instruments and there are computer models and tests and back up systems. No one gets to rehearse digging around inside your living brain before they actually do so. Of course, once one has been trained in brain surgery, a steady hand generally means more than how smart the brain guiding it happens to be.

I'm so glad we have this chance to demystify shit we don't actually do ourselves.

[JackRiddler]

http://counterpunch.org/weir06092010.html
(Article reproduced here under fair-use provisions, with original link given, solely for non-commercial purposes of archiving, education and discussion.)

While Israel Kills and Maims ...
The Outrage at Helen Thomas

June 9, 2010


By ALISON WEIR

Whenever Israel commits yet another atrocity, its defenders are quick to redirect public attention away from the grisly crime scene.

Currently, there are headlines about allegedly anti-Semitic comments made by senior White House correspondent Helen Thomas. Pundits across the land evince outrage at her off-the-cuff 25-second statement made to a man who appears to be holding a camera right in her face.

Thomas issued a public apology for her words, but this was insufficient to assuage the wounded feelings of powerful antagonists, and she has now retired from a long and distinguished career.

Before we examine her comments and evaluate their possible validity, let’s look at other recent events having to do with Israel.

On May 31st Israeli commandos killed at least nine unarmed volunteers attempting to take humanitarian supplies to Gaza.

According to eyewitness reports and forensic evidence, many of these aid volunteers were shot at close range, including a 19-year-old American citizen killed by four bullets to the head and one to the chest fired from 18 inches away.

Israel immediately imprisoned eyewitnesses and hundreds of other aid participants, confiscated their cameras, laptops, and other possessions, and prevented them from speaking to the press for days. Among the incarcerated were decorated U.S. veterans and an 80-year-old former ambassador who had been deputy director of Reagan’s Cabinet Task Force on Terrorism.

When they finally emerged and were able to tell their stories, many described horrific scenes of Israeli commandos shooting people in the head, of those tending the injured being shot in the stomach, of people bleeding to death while flotilla participants waved white flags and pled for help.

They also described being beaten brutally by Israeli forces, again and again – including those on ships that, in the U.S. media’s judgment, experienced “no violence.” A 64-year-old piano tuner from California, Paul Larudee, described hundreds of Israeli commandos boarding his ship. When he refused to cooperate with them, soldiers then beat him numerous times both on board the ship and after he was imprisoned on land.

Eventually he was taken by ambulance to an Israeli hospital. He wasn’t treated, however, and Larudee believes he was taken there because Israel didn't want media to see his black eye, pronated joints, bruised jaw and body contusions.

Marine veteran Ken O’Keefe described similar beatings while in Israeli custody. In his case, the public was able to see his bloodied, battered face in video clips and still images – but only on the Internet, since American mainstream media failed to report on his press conference or to publish the many still photos of his injuries.

Other gruesome photos available to the American public only on the Internet are of Emily Henochowicz, a 21-year-old American student whose eye and eye socket were recently shattered by Israeli forces. She has since had her eyeball removed, three metal plates inserted in her face, and her jaw wired shut.

Henochowicz was not on the flotilla; she was taking part in a nonviolent demonstration against the Israeli assault when an Israeli soldier shot a high-velocity teargas canister into her face.

A Swedish citizen standing with Henochowicz said, “They clearly saw us. They clearly saw that we were internationals and it really looked as though they were trying to hit us. They fired many canisters at us in rapid succession. One landed on either side of Emily, then the third one hit her in the face.”

Henochowicz is not the first to have been shot by such a canister.

Thirty-year-old Basem Ibrahim Abu Rahmeh died when an Israeli soldier shot one at him at close range while Abu Rahmeh participated in a demonstration against Israeli confiscation of Palestinian farmland. A video of this is also available on You Tube; U.S. networks have also chosen not to broadcast this.

Californian Tristan Anderson was shot in the head by a similar canister while he was taking photographs following another demonstration. Part of Anderson’s brain was removed and he was in a “minimally responsive state” for 6-7 months.

He is now in a wheelchair, has almost no movement in his left arm and leg, is blind in one eye, and his mental functioning is significantly reduced. Photos of the shooting are also available on the Internet.

Since at least 2006 Israeli forces have closed off Gaza to the outside world, essentially imprisoning 1.5 million men, women, and children, and denying them foodstuffs, medicines, and building materials, as documented by such agencies as Amnesty International, Oxfam, and Christian Aid, which said that Israel was using food and medicine as weapons.

One of the multitudinous victims of this illegal siege is five-year-old Taysir Al Burai, who suffers from an acute neurological disorder and requires round-the-clock care. According to the UK Guardian, he could be cured if Israel would allow him to leave Gaza, but to date his parents’ repeated requests have been denied.

Another victim is 7-month-old Mohammad Khader, whose swelling in the brain required specialized treatment unavailable in Gazan hospitals depleted by the Israeli siege. His distraught parents’ applications asking Israel to allow them to travel abroad were similarly denied. Their tiny son died a few days ago.

Such stories go on and on.

Thomas’ “outrageous” statement

Yet, the rage we see in the U.S. media is directed against none of this. People shot in the head, eyes and brain parts destroyed, the elderly beaten, small children and infants caused to suffer and die, parents to grieve – none of this has caused a hint of anger. In fact, most of it has been considered of too little importance even to report.

Instead, media reports are filled with outrage at “anti-Israel” words spoken by 89-year-old Helen Thomas.

In Thomas’s lifetime Israel has ethnically cleansed over a million people, replaced them with colonists from around the world, committed dozens of massacres, tortured thousands of people, killed and maimed untold numbers of children, mangled limbs, and committed outrages on women, old people, the weak and the infirm.

It has assassinated people throughout the world, invaded numerous countries, spied on the U.S., killed and injured 200 American servicemen (the anniversary is this week), and tortured and imprisoned Americans. All while receiving more American money than any other country on earth.

For years, long before her recent words, Thomas has been the target of Israel’s vicious American volunteers, the Zionist blogosphere abounding with nasty slurs on her looks and her Lebanese ancestry, this latter also consistently emphasized by the media, despite her Kentucky birth and upbringing.

One of the reasons for the ferocious animosity toward her is the fact that Thomas is one of the very few mainstream reporters to challenge the neocon engendered lies that led the U.S. into wars that have caused massive death, destruction and tragedy and to continue to expose ongoing policies of violence and cruelty.

As the same groups and individuals who pushed the US into attacking Iraq have in recent years been escalating their efforts to push the U.S. to now similarly decimate Iranians under the pretext that Iran might be developing nuclear weapons, Thomas’s questioning attempted to elicit from Obama the fact that Israel already posses nuclear weapons. While the rest of the press corps has conspired in the cover-up of this fact and others, Thomas worked to expose them.

Not surprisingly, the many people complicit in these manipulations, such as former Bush spokesperson Ari Fleischer, have led the charge against her.

It is useful to examine the video and context of Thomas’s allegedly “anti-Semitic” comment.

A man, apparently holding a camera right in her face, asks for her comments about Israel. She says, “Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine. Remember, these people are occupied. And it’s their land…” He interrupts her and asks where they should go. She responds, “They should go home. To Germany, Poland, America, and everywhere else.”

While Thomas has since apologized for her hasty words and many Israelis have the right to continue living where they are, the reality is that Israeli settlers did, indeed, come from elsewhere; they are, in fact, illegally occupying Palestinian land (a fact acknowledged even by the U.S. State Department); and international law does require that they leave.

Many commentators evince particular anger at Thomas’s inclusion of Germany and Poland as places to which Israeli colonists should return, suggesting that Hitler is still in control and waiting to pounce.

The happy fact is, however, that World War II and the Nazi holocaust ended well over half a century ago. In Poland today there is a vibrant Jewish revival with a 10-foot tall Menorah being lit in the center of Warsaw during Hanukah, and Germany has become, according to the New York Times, “a country where Jews want to live.” In fact, in recent years more Jews have chosen to immigrate to Germany than to Israel.

Thomas’s call for colonists to return to America (this destination was left out of many articles) is far from outrageous given that a great many West Bank settlers are from the U.S.

Overall, reporting on the incident has largely departed from the standard journalistic practice of quoting people from both sides of an issue. Quotes from Thomas supporters are missing, even though the You Tube page featuring the infamous video contains a large number of comments supporting her. In contrast, quotes from Thomas’s detractors, almost all of them Zionists, are ubiquitous, but generally fail to divulge the speakers’ frequent conflicts of interest.

For example, the Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz quotes Jeffrey Goldberg without mentioning that Goldberg is an Israeli citizen who served as a prison guard at an Israeli prison that held hundreds of Palestinians without charge, some killed in cold blood by the prison commander.

Mainstream media organizations do not seem to have investigated reports that the man who videotaped Thomas, Rabbi David Nesenoff, also made an offensive video featuring himself and another man impersonating a buffoonish Catholic priest and Mexican immigrant.

Similarly, news reports that a high school had disinvited Thomas as a graduation speaker almost never inform readers that many of the school’s parents and students wished Thomas to remain, even though this unreferenced group may represent a majority of the school. Members of this group have created a Facebook page, “Helen Thomas should have been our graduation speaker,” that states:

“The purpose of this group is to quietly but firmly protest the ability of a small minority to impose its will on the larger group through engaging or threatening to engage in disruptive discourse. This group affirms a belief in reasonable discussion and feel that in this scenario, a clear minority was able to override a larger majority by distorting the issues and discussion.”

It is not known who will take over Thomas’s front-row seat at White House briefings. Given the record of the current press corps, it is likely that Israel partisans are breathing a sign of relief.

Alison Weir is executive director of If Americans Knew. Photos and videos referenced in the article can be viewed on the website (http://ifamericansknew.org) She can be reached at contact@ifamericansknew.org

[Squatterman]

17Breezes wrote:

I personally see anti-Zionism as "racism" since it almost always comes equipped with hate, prejudice and double standards. I have personally yet to see any anti-zionism that isn't , tho I'm sure it exists. Feel free to show me that is the rule rather than the exception.

Wikipedia entry on Chabad-Lubavitch wrote:
Rabbi Sholom Dovber Schneersohn (1860–1920), son of Shmuel, known as "the Rebbe Rashab". He is known for founding the Tomchei Temimim yeshiva network and his opposition to secular and religious political Zionism.

What can be done about those racist anti-Semitic rabbis?

[compared2what?]

The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement is beginning to make sense to more and more of us...

they could use a better abbreviation than BDSM

No they couldn't. Not in a million years. Think viral. Think copyrighted logo T-shirts. It's a branding (as it were) and merchandising bonanza.

Yes, I'm serious. It's better to raise revenues from the general public than be indebted to the wealthy or their foundations.

[JackRiddler]

There's something to the idea that Israel is indeed subject to a double-standard for having the bad luck of being a severe late-comer to the age-old game of messianic imperialist land-grabs and settler colonialism, just as the world started to free itself from it. We can actually take this as evidence of a partly changed world, that a type of crime that until now has been carried out by the militarily powerful with impunity and without much echo in corners of the world distant from where it is actually happening is today known to all and roundly condemned. There is an unfairness in it; Israeli crime is magnified relative to the crimes of many others who have had the luck of an earlier start -- but also of not having been paraded (and parading themselves) as the Greatest, Most Righteous Hope and Light of the World.

[compared2what?]

[

I'm no rocket scientist,

END OF ON-TOPIC PART

------

WAY OFF TOPIC

This is totally off the topic, but I hate that saying! The social and human sciences, history and economics are all a lot more complicated than rocket science. One of the many things complicating them is how easily most people think they know shit without having bothered to learn anything outside their own experiences and prejudices.

By contrast, rocket science is obviously extremely well-understood, and very reliable. (Space shuttles blow up because of faulty parts, never because of a failure in understanding the principles of thrust, gravity and the mechanics that apply at all speeds we have so far achieved.)

Millions of people have no trouble understanding rocket science. Understanding it is hardly a qualification for having an opinion on anything else. If you want to write about politics and morality, you'll have to make the case in the terms of politics and morality. Like Einstein. He never said, "I'm really smart in physics, ergo my political beliefs are true because politics is so much easier than the rocket science of which I am the greatest master." Rather, he wrote proper essays about politics without reference to his brainy physics theories.

The idea that the same objective universal laws and neutral standards as apply in physics can be discovered and applied in the far more complicated and self-reflexive realms of political economy and the social sciences, wherein the "scientist" is always part of the object of study, is one of the greatest fallacies ever to infect these fields. It's a handicap when taken as a holy grail. But more often it's much worse than that. Objectivity and the pretense of science serve as a cover for legitimating the actions of the powerful, or whatever one's preferences are. Which is perhaps an even greater fallacy to have infected these fields: the belief that winning makes you right.

So I like to reverse the saying. When you want to say something is easy, please say:

"It's only rocket science!"

I know that reading my posts isn't compulsory. And it's not like copyright applies. But ahem:

It's not rocket science.

No, it's not. It's way more complicated. But also, to me, a much worthier endeavor. So thanks again.

I mean, for once I expressed something concisely, too. Albeit at the end of a novella-length post.

Life is so unfair.
_______________

Kid-ding!

Great minds.

[JackRiddler]

Yin and yang, baby!

[Elvis]

compared2what? wrote:


Quote:
It's not rocket science.

No, it's not. It's way more complicated.

Your perspicacity did not go unnoticed by this reader!