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

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

Postby JackRiddler » Mon Jun 07, 2010 11:27 pm

Sorry to repeat a post, but this is four pages ago and no one seems to have noticed this piece by a man who freely tells of being among those on the Mavi Marmara who fought the Israeli soldiers when they landed on that ship.

Ken O'Keefe, Mavi Marmara passenger who fought Israeli soldiers wrote:
June 7, 2010
Reflections by a Former US Marine on the Mavi Marmara
On Cowardice and Violence

By KEN O'KEEFE

Istanbul

In 2002 I initiated the TJP Human Shield Action to Iraq because I knew that the invasion of Iraq had been planned well in advance, that it was part of a ‘Global Spectrum Dominance’ agenda as laid out by the Project For A New American Century. I knew that protests had no chance of stopping the invasion, and that largely these protests were just a way of making us feel better about the coming mass murder; by being able to say “I protested against it.” With that understanding I argued that the only viable way to stop the invasion was to conduct a mass migration to Iraq. A migration in which people from around the world, especially western citizens, would position themselves at sites in Iraq that are supposed to be protected by international law, but which are routinely bombed when it is only Iraqi, Palestinian, generally non-white, western lives who will be killed. I felt 10,000 such people could stop the invasion, or at the very least, expose the invasion for what it was from the start, an act of international aggression, a war crime and a crime against humanity.

I have for many years understood that we, people of conscience, are the true holders of power in this world. Frustratingly however we have largely relinquished that power and failed to reach our full potential. Our potential to create a better world, a just world. Nonetheless I have conspired with others of like mind to reveal and exercise our true power.

When our two double decker busses travelled from London to Baghdad through Turkey, it was ever clear that the people of Turkey also could sense the power of this act, and they were the biggest participants in it. In the end we did not get the numbers required to stop the war, with at least one million Iraqi’s dead as a result, but I remain convinced that it was within our power to prevent the invasion. A massive opportunity lost as far as I am concerned.

In 2007 I joined the Free Gaza Movement with its plan to challenge the blockade of Gaza by travelling to Gaza by sea. From the moment I heard of the plan I knew it could succeed and ultimately I served as a captain on the first attempt. The Israeli government said throughout our preparation that we were no better than pirates and they would treat us as such. They made clear we would not reach Gaza. And still I knew we could succeed. And we did. Two boats with 46 passengers from various countries managed to sail into Gaza on August 23, 2010; this was the first time this had been done in 41 years.

The truth is the blockade of Gaza is far more than three years old, and yet we, a small group of conscientious people defied the Israeli machine and celebrated with tens of thousands of Gazans when we arrived that day. We proved that it could be done. We proved that an intelligent plan, with skilled manipulation of the media, could render the full might of the Israeli Navy useless. And I knew then that this was only the tip of the iceberg.

So participating in the Freedom Flotilla is like a family reunion to me. It is my long lost family whose conscience is their guide, who have shed the fear, who act with humanity. But I was especially proud to join IHH and the Turkish elements of the flotilla. I deeply admire the strength and character of the Turkish people, despite your history having stains of injustice, like every nation, you are today from citizen to Prime Minister among the leaders in the cause of humanity and justice.

I remember being asked during the TJP Human Shield Action to Iraq if I was a pacifist, I responded with a quote from Gandhi by saying I am not a passive anything. To the contrary I believe in action, and I also believe in self-defence, 100 per cent, without reservation. I would be incapable of standing by while a tyrant murders my family, and the attack on the Mavi Marmara was like an attack on my Palestinian family. I am proud to have stood shoulder to shoulder with those who refused to let a rogue Israeli military exert their will without a fight.

And yes, we fought.

When I was asked, in the event of an Israeli attack on the Mavi Marmara, would I use the camera, or would I defend the ship? I enthusiastically committed to defence of the ship. Although I am also a huge supporter of non-violence, in fact I believe non-violence must always be the first option. Nonetheless I joined the defence of the Mavi Mamara understanding that violence could be used against us and that we may very well be compelled to use violence in self defence.

I said this straight to Israeli agents, probably of Mossad or Shin Bet, and I say it again now, on the morning of the attack I was directly involved in the disarming of two Israeli Commandos. This was a forcible, non-negotiable, separation of weapons from commandos who had already murdered two brothers that I had seen that day. One brother with a bullet entering dead center in his forehead, in what appeared to be an execution.

I knew the commandos were murdering when I removed a 9mm pistol from one of them. I had that gun in my hands and as an ex-US Marine with training in the use of guns it was completely within my power to use that gun on the commando who may have been the murderer of one of my brothers. But that is not what I, nor any other defender of the ship did. I took that weapon away, removed the bullets, proper lead bullets, separated them from the weapon and hid the gun. I did this in the hopes that we would repel the attack and submit this weapon as evidence in a criminal trial against Israeli authorities for mass murder. I also helped to physically separate one commando from his assault rifle, which another brother apparently threw into the sea.

I and hundreds of others know the truth that makes a mockery of the brave and moral Israeli military. We had in our full possession, three completely disarmed and helpless commandos. These boys were at our mercy, they were out of reach of their fellow murderers, inside the ship and surrounded by 100 or more men. I looked into the eyes of all three of these boys and I can tell you they had the fear of God in them. They looked at us as if we were them, and I have no doubt they did not believe there was any way they would survive that day. They looked like frightened children in the face of an abusive father.

But they did not face an enemy as ruthless as they. Instead the woman provided basic first aid, and ultimately they were released, battered and bruised for sure, but alive. Able to live another day. Able to feel the sun over head and the embrace of loved ones. Unlike those they murdered. Despite mourning the loss of our brothers, feeling rage towards these boys, we let them go.

The Israeli prostitutes of propaganda can spew all of their disgusting bile all they wish, the commandos are the murderers, we are the defenders, and yet we fought. We fought not just for our lives, not just for our cargo, not just for the people of Palestine, we fought in the name of justice and humanity. We were right to do so, in every way.

While in Israeli custody I, along with everyone else was subjected to endless abuse and flagrant acts of disrespect. Women and elderly were physically and mentally assaulted. Access to food and water and toilets was denied. Dogs were used against us, we ourselves were treated like dogs. We were exposed to direct sun in stress positions while hand cuffed to the point of losing circulation of blood in our hands. We were lied to incessantly, in fact I am awed at the routineness and comfort in their ability to lie, it is remarkable really. We were abused in just about every way imaginable and I myself was beaten and choked to the point of blacking out… and I was beaten again while in my cell. In all this what I saw more than anything else were cowards… and yet I also see my brothers. Because no matter how vile and wrong the Israeli agents and government are, they are still my brothers and sisters and for now I only have pity for them. Because they are relinquishing the most precious thing a human being has, their humanity.

In conclusion; I would like to challenge every endorser of Gandhi, every person who thinks they understand him, who acknowledges him as one of the great souls of our time (which is just about every western leader), I challenge you in the form of a question.

Please explain how we, the defenders of the Mavi Mamara, are not the modern example of Gandhi’s essence? But first read the words of Gandhi himself. I do believe that, where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence.... I would rather have India resort to arms in order to defend her honour than that she should, in a cowardly manner, become or remain a helpless witness to her own dishonour. – Gandhi And lastly I have one more challenge. I challenge any critic of merit, publicly, to debate me on a large stage over our actions that day. I would especially love to debate with any Israeli leader who accuses us of wrongdoing, it would be my tremendous pleasure to face off with you. All I saw in Israel was cowards with guns, so I am ripe to see you in a new context. I want to debate with you on the largest stage possible. Take that as an open challenge and let us see just how brave Israeli leaders are.

Ken O'Keefe is a former US Marine and Gulf War veteran.
We meet at the borders of our being, we dream something of each others reality. - Harvey of R.I.

To Justice my maker from on high did incline:
I am by virtue of its might divine,
The highest Wisdom and the first Love.

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

Postby 17breezes » Mon Jun 07, 2010 11:38 pm

barracuda wrote:
17breezes wrote:So you are advocating for de facto war and slaughter. Sounds self defeating.


Isn't that what Percival means?

Percival wrote:I think the animosity or hatred, if you will, that both sides has for one another, is something that will never be undone.


He's not advocating it, but he is resigned to it.


He doesn't strike me as someone who would advocate such a thing. He has also asked what alternatives are there. Seems to me that a lot of people don't wanna approach that question and are resigned themselves to constant violence. Help arm Hamas, you are de facto part of the problem. If you are concerned about aid, take it to where it can be unloaded and inspected and then convince Hamas to let it through. Or even better, come up with some ways the blockade could be lifted without Hamas getting armed.
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Re: Flotilla Update: Israel Attacks Convoy, Deaths Reported (2)

Postby Percival » Tue Jun 08, 2010 12:38 am

17breezes wrote:
barracuda wrote:
17breezes wrote:So you are advocating for de facto war and slaughter. Sounds self defeating.


Isn't that what Percival means?

Percival wrote:I think the animosity or hatred, if you will, that both sides has for one another, is something that will never be undone.


He's not advocating it, but he is resigned to it.


He doesn't strike me as someone who would advocate such a thing. He has also asked what alternatives are there. Seems to me that a lot of people don't wanna approach that question and are resigned themselves to constant violence. Help arm Hamas, you are de facto part of the problem. If you are concerned about aid, take it to where it can be unloaded and inspected and then convince Hamas to let it through. Or even better, come up with some ways the blockade could be lifted without Hamas getting armed.



Thats it, well said.

I will say it again.

Israel fucked up.

They MURDERED 9 people, those people should not have died over this.

Heads should roll and people should be held accountable.

BUT none of this addresses the larger issue of how Israel is supposed to deal with the Hamas threat to exterminate every Jew in the region.


You say they cannot make good on that promise, in todays world they CAN indeed and they will, take away that blockade and it may not be long until Hamas finds a way to get its hands on a nuke, you say they wouldnt use it I say bullshit, given the opportunity they would in a minute and THAT is what Israel is doing, TRYING TO LIMIT THOSE OPPORTUNITIES.

They are not perfect but sans a better idea I dont know how else they can handle this.
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Re: Flotilla Update: Israel Attacks Convoy, Deaths Reported (2)

Postby 17breezes » Tue Jun 08, 2010 12:44 am

Percival wrote:
17breezes wrote:
barracuda wrote:
17breezes wrote:So you are advocating for de facto war and slaughter. Sounds self defeating.


Isn't that what Percival means?

Percival wrote:I think the animosity or hatred, if you will, that both sides has for one another, is something that will never be undone.


He's not advocating it, but he is resigned to it.


He doesn't strike me as someone who would advocate such a thing. He has also asked what alternatives are there. Seems to me that a lot of people don't wanna approach that question and are resigned themselves to constant violence. Help arm Hamas, you are de facto part of the problem. If you are concerned about aid, take it to where it can be unloaded and inspected and then convince Hamas to let it through. Or even better, come up with some ways the blockade could be lifted without Hamas getting armed.



Thats it, well said.

I will say it again.

Israel fucked up.

They MURDERED 9 people, those people should not have died over this.

Heads should roll and people should be held accountable.

BUT none of this addresses the larger issue of how Israel is supposed to deal with the Hamas threat to exterminate ever Jew in the region.


You say they cannot make good on that promise, in todays they CAN indeed, take away that blockade and it may not be long until Hamas finds a way to get its hands on a nuke, you say they would use it I say bullshit, given the opportunity they would in a minute and THAT is what Israel is doing, TRYING TO LIMIT THOSE OPPORTUNITIES.

They are not perfect but sans a better idea I dont know how else they can handle this.



Agree 100% about the 9 deaths. It sometimes makes me wonder if there is a Ministry of Fucking Up somewhere in Israel. Cause they sure seem to do it a lot even before the right got the helm.
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Re: Flotilla Update: Israel Attacks Convoy, Deaths Reported (2)

Postby Percival » Tue Jun 08, 2010 1:04 am

17breezes wrote:
Percival wrote:
17breezes wrote:
barracuda wrote:
17breezes wrote:So you are advocating for de facto war and slaughter. Sounds self defeating.


Isn't that what Percival means?

Percival wrote:I think the animosity or hatred, if you will, that both sides has for one another, is something that will never be undone.


He's not advocating it, but he is resigned to it.


He doesn't strike me as someone who would advocate such a thing. He has also asked what alternatives are there. Seems to me that a lot of people don't wanna approach that question and are resigned themselves to constant violence. Help arm Hamas, you are de facto part of the problem. If you are concerned about aid, take it to where it can be unloaded and inspected and then convince Hamas to let it through. Or even better, come up with some ways the blockade could be lifted without Hamas getting armed.



Thats it, well said.

I will say it again.

Israel fucked up.

They MURDERED 9 people, those people should not have died over this.

Heads should roll and people should be held accountable.

BUT none of this addresses the larger issue of how Israel is supposed to deal with the Hamas threat to exterminate ever Jew in the region.


You say they cannot make good on that promise, in todays they CAN indeed, take away that blockade and it may not be long until Hamas finds a way to get its hands on a nuke, you say they would use it I say bullshit, given the opportunity they would in a minute and THAT is what Israel is doing, TRYING TO LIMIT THOSE OPPORTUNITIES.

They are not perfect but sans a better idea I dont know how else they can handle this.



Agree 100% about the 9 deaths. It sometimes makes me wonder if there is a Ministry of Fucking Up somewhere in Israel. Cause they sure seem to do it a lot even before the right got the helm.



I think its a mentality that they all grow up with, they are obviously paranoid and for good and justifiable reasons but that same paranoia is what is causing a lot of their problems. What they need to do is stick to their guns with the blockade but ease up on the trigger a little and dont be so quick to use lethal force unless there is absolutely no other alternative. Hopefully someone in the ministry of defense is telling IDF commanders exactly this and from here on out we will see some changes but one thing that cannot change is the blockade, without it there would just be too many opportunities for Hamas militants to arm themselves and possibly even get their hands on a dirty bomb or even a nuke and do some real damage in the region, possibly making good on their promise of extermination.
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Re: Flotilla Update: Israel Attacks Convoy, Deaths Reported (2)

Postby compared2what? » Tue Jun 08, 2010 3:44 am

JackRiddler wrote:From another thread - I've already lost track which one:

compared2what? wrote:
17breezes wrote:
smiths wrote:i will excuse your complete ignorance of the point barracuda and put it down to feeling a little on the defensive yourself

to simplify it for you,

israel is a 'jewish' state (a racial designation which is pretty fucking flimsy)


It's actually a religious designation, which is pretty fucking flimsy.

smiths wrote:there are a pre-existing non-jewish population who are living in prison camps


Where?

They live in something very close to prison camps in Lebanon. Which also doesn't allow them citizenship, restricts their movements, and forbids them from working in some jobs, and so forth, although many of them were born and have lived in Lebanon all their lives. Nevertheless. There are checkpoints and, I'm sure, lots of petty harassment and degradation by Lebanese guards on a daily basis, and so on. But the difference between "prison" and "not prison" is pretty significant. As just about anyone who's ever even visited one always says. And as far as I know, while the Palestinians in Lebanon live...[url=http://rigorousintuition.ca/board2/viewtopic.php?p=341060#p341060][rest of blather by me here, if anyone cares].


c2w?, every single thing you say here is a) true and b) important. ("Including, notably, Turkey.")


Thank you. I was trying to keep a lid on it, because, you know: Poor smiths, it's not due to his weakness that I can't leave simplicity alone, but to mine. Why should he end up paying for it?

But since you bring it up:

I didn't just mean the Armenian genocide that Turkey denies committing and bribes the United States congress not to acknowledge. Presumably so that it can continue to occupy most of historic Armenia. Just as it's done since, oh, around 1918, when -- according to Turkey -- the Armenians just walked off it. And totally without being massacred of long-marched to death, too, no matter what every non-Turkish historian on the planet says to the contrary. Quite amazing.

Though I was thinking of that, of course.

But besides that, chance being a fine thing, Turkey too has a blockade going against the less powerful peoples they've been fighting with on and off since the end of World War One. Because they and Azerbaijan have had a blockade going on Armenia since 1994.

Which ain't no small thing, since Armenia (like Turkey) has no natural gas or oil resources of its own. And it looks to me like when (or if, but I'm betting on "when") the Armenians do end up having to say "Uncle" and make various humiliating concessions and what-not in order to start getting gas and oil from the Azerbaijanis again, it's probably actually going to find itself going hat in hand to get them from Turkey.

Because Turkey has spent the last 16 years building pipelines and railroads and so on that take a sharp detour south at the point that they'd otherwise be going through Armenia. Which presently lives with all the of nuclear-health risks (and probably health consequences, though I don't actually know) you'd expect in any country that relied entirely on an ancient Armenian nuclear power plant to meet its energy needs.

To say nothing of their treatment of the Kurds. Who -- seriously -- probably have as much right to be where they are as any ethnic class anywhere on the planet earth the map of which was re-drawn to suit the British and French following the War That Not Only Didn't End All Wars But Which Is Still Being Fought In Quite a Few Places To This Very Day. Including Gaza and the West Bank. Though not as purely there as elsewhere.

Anyway. Poor Kurds. They've been preexisting in the same place since late antiquity. Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Syria should just give it back to them, imo. It's not like they haven't earned it.

Nevertheless, I feel you're leaving out the differences that make Israel the object of such passion, pro and con. Differences that I know you are aware of, some of which you have at times mentioned in your other comments:

- A colonial, expansionist project in the European imperialist mold, which acquired a mini-empire outside its original borders and plays the attack-dog role in a larger US-UK decades-long assault on the most strategically imporant region in the worldwide struggle for power.


YES. EXACTLY.

What happens in the Congo or China is sometimes worse as atrocity (or at any rate, larger-scale as atrocity), but tends not to be as destabilizing on a world scale. It's also the difference between expansion and cross-border aggression, as opposed to possibly even worse crime within a state's established borders.

- Nuclear weapons in the hands of a state that still won't admit to it and just doesn't seem rational in its responses. I'd trust Iran or possibly even North Korea to take deterrence doctrine (mutual assured destruction) more seriously than I do Israel.


Yep. That has a lot to do with why my first response was a fear-the-follow-up OMG-WHAT-IF-THIS-MEANS-WAR-(WITH IRAN). Because it might not. But it could. Anyway. YES. I AGREE..

You may attribute this to their own conscious use of "mad dog" rhetoric (as Nixon coined it). They seem to want it to sound like they're ready to use nuclear weapons in a preventive war - and fuck what the world thinks, you got a problem? It's not so easy to distinguish between "mad dog" strategy and actual mad dog.

- The claims as a democratic state, widely disseminated and emphasized. Is Israel "held to a higher standard"? Yes, as the powerful and "advanced" tend to be.


And should be.

If they claim moral superiority, they tend to be judged by that standard. In the US, Israel is held up as a role model. You and I living where we do have been hearing about it all around us our whole lives, as a very, very good and noble country under siege from very, very barbaric forces. If that hadn't been the case, the reaction wouldn't be as great.


That isn't at all what I heard growing up, actually. Though it's not that far off what I can remember hearing before, maybe, the late '60s.

But....We lived in the Middle East when I was very little. So we had (Arab) friends from all over it visiting pretty regularly thenceforth. As well as (Jewish) friends, of course. One or two of whom, much to the world's disadvantage, contributed quite a bit to what later became the playbook used by Bush-Cheney.

So mostly I heard a lot of heated discussions. To put it mildly. And constantly, too. In fact, if an evil elf had appeared on my 18th birthday to announce that (due to a curse laid upon me in the cradle) I either had to chose a single subject about which I never wanted to hear another single word or die horribly, I would have said "Middle Eastern politics" before he got any further than "or." To be quite candid with you.

- For me, most of all: its special role in the US....


YES.

The military aid, the Security Council vetoes, the semi-sacred status, the difficulty and costs of deviating from the official line in the US media. We don't pay for Chinese crimes out of our taxes (though we have of course for Indonesian crimes, though not as much). No one in the US media has ever lost their job or had to apologize for telling outrageous lies about Venezuela, or Iraqi WMDs. Remember this is a mostly North American/Anglosphere discussion board.

- Hasbara. If you condemn the other states you mention for their crimes, it isn't usually going to attract a persistent counter-attack coupled to accusations that you are some kind of racist. This gets a merry-go-round of overheated rhetoric going.


I know.

Because for one thing, I understand and share that emotional response.

And for another, I understand that most people everywhere of every race, creed, color, nationality, class and temperament all over the world not only don't have any political mode other than emotional response, but also genuinely neither feel the need nor see the point of ever employing any other.

Including me, when you get right down to it. It's just that a very large part of my emotional response to all bad news of any kind, even if it's just a local news forecast including possible thunderstorms, is a haunted sense of personal responsibility...


- The mutual reinforcement (or is it a satanic pact?) between the pro-Israeli lobby and the worst elements of US imperialism. See: PNAC. Also between the pro-Israeli lobby and the worst of the Christian fundamentalists.

None of which detracts from the truth of any given thing you've said above, which is one reason I quote -- not merely to critique, but also to re-emphasize your own points.


...which in this case I'd say couldn't be more fully rationally justified. Assuming that you are, as I am, an American citizen. Because even though Israel rarely does what the United States wants or tells it to do via official public channels (and also breaks the deep-political-covenant rules of its own accord when it feels like it, just as it did when it was Britain's problem infant), it's still very much our baby.

Exactly as it has been in totally plain sight since before I or most of the posters here were even born. And to the best of my knowledge, we've never stopped (literally) supporting it in the lavish style to which it's long since become accustomed.

And not at any point, as far as I'm aware. I mean, we never gave it so much as a time-out after it committed its first, second, third, or thirtieth juvenile offense, back in the days when it was still just the spoiled little sociopathic teen thug that we raised it to be by design.

Nor, to the best of my knowledge, has the state of Israel ever lost a cent of its stipend for shrugging off whatever token gentle-guidance-style rules we've occasionally gotten it to promise to abide by in its long and thuggish sociopathic adulthood. And it probably wouldn't matter all that much even if it had.

Because through us -- "us" in this context being the through-official-channels "us" that tentatively lays down a little whisp of law every now and again -- it's grown to be so very close to all the numerous black-sheep super-rich (mostly) American uncles that occupy positions of permanent power, either in American finance and in (or near) the nastier and less visible corners of the apparatus of state or (as in Richard Perle's case, briefly) both that it could always hit them up for a few nukes and sundries until the next pay-out from its trust came due.

Which is not in any way to say that Israel isn't guilty to the highest degree of guilt possible for its actions. It's an adult, so to speak, it knows perfectly well what it's doing.

But you know what? I'm an adult too. I pay taxes. And the U.S. has been spoiling Israel rotten with taxpayer money since before I was born. And, like Israel, I know perfectly well what I'm doing. Which means that I know perfectly well that every benefit I've ever enjoyed as an American citizen was drenched in Palestinian blood, or Indonesian blood, or Guatemalan blood, or whatever.

Another thing I know perfectly well is that like all white Americans who aren't desperately and chronically poor and abused -- such as perhaps, some of you -- I've lived the whole of my adult life in what's still just barely enough of a democracy that the people of, for and by which it's governed could exercise their right to govern it in some way that took a little more effort than being pissed off does.

You know. Like maybe on those occasions when -- once in a way -- an unconscionable crime in which they could easily have discovered they'd been implicated for the whole of their lives at any point over the last sixty years struck them as important enough to require that kind of thing.

I mean, obviously, I don't have answers. And equally obviously, I too have regularly pointed my finger at Israel. And still do point my finger at Israel. But given that it's been decades since I kind of couldn't help noticing that my hand was covered in blood when I did that -- and it strikes me as beyond dispute that my responsibilities definitely extend to the cleanliness of my own hands -- it's been decades since I've done it for any other reason than that, pragmatically speaking, identifying a problem is a necessary prerequisite to resolving it.

Usually by going on to work as hard as you can to understand and address it, to the best of your ability to do so. And usually not by becoming so intolerant of complete strangers on the internet that you rally group consensus to declare them vicious and amoral non-people.
_________________

"Best of ability to do so" is a very limited thing in my case. Just as I imagine it is for every other lone individual on earth, though I can only really speak for myself, as a weak-ass and ineffective bitch. But speaking in that capacity, if I may, what I have to say about that dilemma is:

That's a shame, but no reason to stop, Because between shame and tragedy is exactly how it will stay forever and ever and ever (while wars rage on until the planet is nothing but radioactive dust) for as long as most people everywhere remain uninterested in having any political response beyond an emotional one. IMO.

So basically, when I recur to history as much as I've boringly been doing, that's ultimately the point that I'm doing such an incredibly bad job in attempting to make.

Because you only have to look at American wars and/or American-backed wars of the last two decades to see that we're still not only still fighting World War One, we've been escalating it consistently at least since the Balkan peace-keeping non-war, to choose a nice familar and clear-cut example.

Although the Soviet-Afghani war works just as well, if you feel like going back further than that. As does every single war in the modern Middle East, the immediate post-WWI era being when the modern Middle East -- including what eventually became Israel -- got drawn up and parceled out.

And why and how could it be that the War to End All Wars never ended and nobody noticed, you might ask?

Well.

I don't actually know. But I guess that I'd say that it's in part because some people -- for example, people who have been damaged or still are being damaged by war, poverty and oppression -- usually can't get over their emotions. Which is a no-fault-attached fact of life within very wide parameters, afaic. Because, as I said in some other post, that shit lasts for generations in the best of circumstances, such as a free and prosperous society. Which is a luxury that most people in the modern Middle East haven't had for any significant length of time.

Though as I also said, Israel could have and should have started getting over itself in 1967. They had the resources. I mean, they also should have had some pretty forceful encouragement for using them from their more clear-sighted-and-distant friends, of course. But they hang out with a bad crowd -- ie, us -- and they've had plenty of time in which they weren't being too badly traumatized by anything that was objectively happening to realize that and do the right thing about it. Which they haven't even made much of a pretense of trying to do.

But anyway. Obviously, as a general rule, you can't and shouldn't ask people who are killing or being killed or witnessing one or the other or both of those things on a regular basis and their immediate descendants not to have such strong feelings about it. Because whoever and wherever they are, they're people. And that's no way to treat people.

That said, in my view, all American citizens who are saying either "Fuck Israel" or (implicitly) "Hamas is a vile, primitive and savage group that knows no reason, punishment is the only thing they understand" or "I cannot continue to post to a board on which a small minority does not honor and respect the righteousness of my temper tantrum" should grow the fuck up.

Because, as JackR says, you're fucking talking about something that might be a nuclear war. As well as something that's already plenty bad enough without that prospect. In short, something much more serious than you could possibly have tried very hard to understand if any of those responses strike you as righteous. In addition to which, although it's not about you in the way that you seem to feel that it is, it is about you. So get over it.

I say all of that with love and understanding. Believe it or not.

Including the understanding that it doesn't make either what I just said or me any more likable than if I'd said it out of spite. But whatever. I do my level best, even if it's not that good. Same as everybody here, I know.

But fwiw, that's my opinion. And I'm now done with this thread. I think. Unless anyone has raised an issue with me I haven't seen yet that deserves a reply. Which I doubt anyone has.

Because, you know. tl; dr.
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Alice, as you know, I don't and can't agree with your honest conviction that the United States is controlled by its Zionist overlords. I've read your case for it many times, and I encourage you to continue making it. I respect your views. But I don't share them. Out of my own honest convictions, based on the best information available to me to the best of my ability to understand it. So please don't be hurt, shocked or outraged. I want what you want. I just see the situation from a different perspective. Our differences aren't any more substantial than that from my point of view. And, I hope, yours.

Although if not, speak your mind. I wouldn't want you to do anything else.
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Re: Flotilla Update: Israel Attacks Convoy, Deaths Reported (2)

Postby compared2what? » Tue Jun 08, 2010 4:26 am

Percival wrote:I was away yesterday so I didnt get to respond to several people who adressed me so I will try and do so now, I am at work so I dont have a lot of time but I will be here and there the rest of the day trying to catch up.

To C2W, I have to agree that the antisemitism here is a little frightening, I also agree with you other post and would like to give that more consideration as I have time this afternoon. Thanks for taking the time to share your viewpoint as a fellow Jewish person, I certainly appreciate that.


I share my viewpoint as a person. But thank you.
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Re: Flotilla Update: Israel Attacks Convoy, Deaths Reported (2)

Postby Percival » Tue Jun 08, 2010 4:37 am

compared2what? wrote:
Percival wrote:I was away yesterday so I didnt get to respond to several people who adressed me so I will try and do so now, I am at work so I dont have a lot of time but I will be here and there the rest of the day trying to catch up.

To C2W, I have to agree that the antisemitism here is a little frightening, I also agree with you other post and would like to give that more consideration as I have time this afternoon. Thanks for taking the time to share your viewpoint as a fellow Jewish person, I certainly appreciate that.


I share my viewpoint as a person. But thank you.
I understandm I didnt mean to imply otherwise, I just didnt until this thread realize that you were Jewish and obviously I think that does influence your world view one way or another no matter how objective we as Jews try and be.


But yes, you are a person like any other and I certainly have always enjoyed your contributions in spite of the misunderstanding that we had a while back that sort of turned ugly for a while, still my apologies for that now and forever until I feel I have paid my dues for disrespecting you for such a simple misunderstanding from both of us.


Carry on.
He left in a huff and he is back even huffier.
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Re: Flotilla Update: Israel Attacks Convoy, Deaths Reported (2)

Postby AlicetheKurious » Tue Jun 08, 2010 4:47 am

Percival et al, re: Hamas & "terrorism" and Israel as victim

This may come as a shock to you, but propaganda on behalf of a state that is objectively based on armed robbery and murder and terrorism should not be trusted as a credible source of information about the causes of the bloodshed, or the 'true' motivations of its victims.

On the one hand, there are the well-documented facts published by qualified historians (including prominent Israeli historians), international law and legions of eyewitnesses, all of which leave no question that the zionist enterprise was a crime against the people of Palestine from its earliest beginnings, one that is based on the denial of their humanity and all their basic rights, even their very existence.

Justifying a plan to set up a violent, expansionist Judeo-supremacist state on Palestinian land would strain the resources of even the most sophisticated propaganda apparatus, even one that commands a bully-pulpit comprising most of the world's media conglomerates. As a result, the zionist apologists have been relegated to a mindless repetition of such stupid claims as:

1) The resistance fighters of Hamas, whose approximately 10,000 fighters live in a literal goldfish bowl under the minute surveillance of the Israeli occupiers, and who are murdered at will, frequently by unmanned drones from the sky killing not only the immediate Hamas "target" but his entire family, neighbors and passers-by, that these trapped victims of zionist ethnic cleansing and genocide not only "rule" what is a de facto concentration camp run by Israel (but which hasbarists claim is "an enemy country"), but that this concentration camp surrounded by concrete walls and watchtowers, where Israelis can and do feel free to kill the inhabitants and even decide what they eat and drink, is a belligerent independent state engaged in genocidal war against Israel.

2) That one piece of paper that few have even heard about (even within Hamas, even at the higher levels) except through zionist propaganda, the "Hamas Charter", which was never ratified by Hamas, and which was written when Hamas was a tiny fringe movement financed and otherwise supported by the Israeli occupation, is representative of the movement today, a movement that has matured and evolved into a genuinely popular political and resistance movement that represents a far greater spectrum of Palestinian popular will than when it first emerged.

And that this one piece of paper is more significant to understanding the conflict than a century of zionist threats in theory and in practise to literally destroy the Palestinian people, including many, many indiscriminate massacres accompanied by racist incitement from prominent and authoritative zionist political, military and religious leaders that openly and repeatedly refer to Palestinian people as "vermin", "lice", "cockroaches" and "demographic threats" to be eliminated, and invoking the biblical commandment to "utterly exterminate Amalek" (Palestinians are called "Amalek" by the heavily-armed religious colonists, many of whom serve as soldiers in the illegal occupation of Palestine).

3) That Israel is the victim of Arab/Muslim terrorism, that its violence is only a response to crazed enemies. Many years before the declaration of the Israeli state, it was in fact the zionist colonists who introduced terrorism into the Middle East, first against the British occupiers:

Terrorist operations were first introduced in Palestine by the Jewish underground to demoralise the British Army. These operations were carried out by those Jewish elements trained by British Army in North Africa as an adjunct to their WWII effort against the Nazis. By 1939 this Jewish auxiliary force numbered 20,000 strong.

This force, which was given the innocuous name of The Jewish Settlement Force, employed terrorist tactics (the first to be carried out in the Middle East) against British troops inside Palestine supplemented by terrorist operations carried out by their underground brethren throwing bombs in bus stops, cafes and marketplaces. These bombs were hidden in milk cans, fruit baskets and similar ordinary containers. Parallel with these operations, terrorist innovations included the kidnapping of British officers, whipping them, hanging them and booby-trapping their hanging bodies which made shocking headlines back home in the UK.

In the last year of the British Mandate, the ratio of British officers dead to Jewish terrorists killed was 4 to 1. A very high ratio even in today's standards. No wonder Britain wanted out of Palestine. Link



Plan D (Dalet): “It was this plan that sealed the fate of the Palestinians within the territory the Zionist leaders had set their eyes on for their future Jewish state. Indifferent as to whether these Palestinians might decide to collaborate with or oppose their Jewish state, Plan Dalet called for their systematic expulsion from their homeland.”

In 1947, Ben-Gurion was prone to boasting of Jewish military supremacy in the region, informing a correspondent: “We can starve the Arabs of Haifa and Jaffa [if we wish to do so].”

It was Ben-Gurion who helped orchestrate the image of Arabs as Nazis “as a deliberate public relations ploy to ensure that, three years after the Holocaust, Jewish soldiers would not lose heart when ordered to cleanse, kill and destroy other human beings.”

It was ethnic cleansing instigated by Ben-Gurion in 1948 that “ensured that “the number of Palestinians was reduced to less than twenty percent of the overall population in the new Jewish state.”

The quoted material is from Ilan Pappe’s The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (Oxford, England: Oneworld, 2006).

    “By 1948, as David Ben-Gurion [the spiritual leader] remarked, Jerusalem was more Jewish than it had been at any time since its destruction by the Romans in A.D. 70. What had happened in Jerusalem might well be repeated in other parts of the country. Great changes stood ahead, not all of them disadvantageous to Jews. Deeds followed words: a few days later, Ben-Gurion ordered the Hagana High Command to clear the Arab Quarter of Jerusalem and settle Jews there instead. After the murder of an Arab woman, a Hagana—owned truck drove through the streets of the suburb of Talbiya, announcing over a loudspeaker that its Arab residents must leave, ‘or else be blown up with your possessions.’ The Arabs fled indeed, soon followed by the residents of other Arab neighborhoods and villages close to Jerusalem. Intimidation, terror, and expulsion triggered a flood of refugees in the coastal plain as well.” (Gudrun Kramer, A History of Palestine: From the Ottoman Conquest to the Founding of the State of Israel, 2008).

It was not just the Stern Group who committed massacres at this time (e.g., Deir Yassin, which was no doubt coordinated with Haganah), as the troops under the Labor leaders of the yishuv were clearly responsible for nearly all other massacres, as Sylvain Cypel has made clear. Mapam, the Zionist left, had abundant reason to denounce the behavior of the IDF in 1948.

Ben-Gurion, the spiritual leader: “As Ben-Gurion told Nahum Goldmann, president of the World Jewish Congress, in 1956, ‘If I was an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country. Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God is not theirs. We come from Israel, it’s true, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been anti-semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that?’” Link


Subsequently, the same methods were used to terrorize and expel the Palestinians from their homes and to strip them of all their belongings, which were then handed over to Jewish colonists. The process continues today. But Percival and 17breezes and barracuda are preoccupied with the safety of the zionist terrorists from their victims, and they demand that the rest of humanity to share their delusions. Black is white and 2+2=5. Palestine "belongs" to "the Jews" and it is the Palestinians who use terrorism in order to take what is not theirs.

A final note about Hamas' supposedly "genocidal" intentions: Hamas, like the Israelis, are perfectly capable of speaking for themselves, although one would not know it given the vastly disproportionate media coverage given to "IDF spokespersons" and "Israeli officials", who are given the authority to tell the rest of us what Hamas really thinks and really wants, despite the zionists' dismal record of self-serving lies, distortions and fabrications. On the rare occasions that Hamas' legitimate representatives are allowed to express themselves directly, without the mediation of their oppressors, they do so admirably, and in the exact same terms that we who live in the Arab world have heard directly from them for years:

Our message to the Palestinians is this: our people are not only those who live under siege in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip but also the millions languishing in refugee camps in Lebanon, Jordan and Syria and the millions spread around the world unable to return home. We promise you that nothing in the world will deter us from pursuing our goal of liberation and return. We shall spare no effort to work with all factions and institutions in order to put our Palestinian house in order. Having won the parliamentary elections, our medium-term objective is to reform the PLO in order to revive its role as a true representative of all the Palestinian people, without exception or discrimination.

Our message to the Israelis is this: we do not fight you because you belong to a certain faith or culture. Jews have lived in the Muslim world for 13 centuries in peace and harmony; they are in our religion "the people of the book" who have a covenant from God and His Messenger Muhammad (peace be upon him) to be respected and protected. Our conflict with you is not religious but political. We have no problem with Jews who have not attacked us - our problem is with those who came to our land, imposed themselves on us by force, destroyed our society and banished our people.

We shall never recognise the right of any power to rob us of our land and deny us our national rights. We shall never recognise the legitimacy of a Zionist state created on our soil in order to atone for somebody else's sins or solve somebody else's problem. But if you are willing to accept the principle of a long-term truce, we are prepared to negotiate the terms. Hamas is extending a hand of peace to those who are truly interested in a peace based on justice.

Khalid Mish'al is head of the political bureau of Hamas, upon Hamas' election in free and democratic, internationally-supervised elections, in 2006


Every word is consistent with international law and UN resolutions, unlike zionist propaganda which is designed to defend war crimes and crimes against humanity. No wonder the zionists kill journalists and cameramen and imprison Palestinian representatives to deny them direct access to the Western public, but try to ensure that the West hears and sees only what suits the zionists' purposes. Percival, you are neither an objective nor credible source of information about what Palestinians think or want, let alone Hamas, particularly when your assertions are both outrageous and uncorroborated, and directly contradict verifiable evidence from the horse's mouth, so to speak. I could make up all kinds of stuff about what zionists have confided to me personally, but I'd be lying, just as I believe you are.
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Re: Flotilla Update: Israel Attacks Convoy, Deaths Reported (2)

Postby compared2what? » Tue Jun 08, 2010 5:23 am

Percival wrote:Like I have asked before, instead of the name calling and criticism why dont you tell us all how Israel is supposed to deal with the threat of extermination?

Seems funny that nobody has stepped up to the challenge of answering that. Could that be because they dont have any answers.


Now you know how Israel feels.


The same way every other country that's had to accommodate yesterday's bitter foe for the sake of tomorrow. (Or any other country that did that because itwanted to, if there are any.) Pay them off. Give them some of what they want. Enfranchise them but don't enforce their right to vote very strenuously. Coopt a generally admired leader from the group that's (ostensibly) threatening you with extermination, and give him or her a very visible position in government.

And btw, I wouldn't say Hamas is threatening Israel with extermination, meaningfully. They'd need more powerful state sponsorship from a third-party state than they've got, for one thing. And while leadership in some neighboring or nearby countries to whose advantage it is to threaten Israel with extermination might or might not want actually to act on that threat, I don't see how any could do sit and survive US reprisals. Or how any could be unaware that they'd be exterminated by the U.S. and others for exterminating Israel.

In any event, it's long past time for the US either to start propitiating some of those powers and/or genuinely doing something to win the hearts and minds of the populations on whose necks they're standing. For both its own good and the good of the world, quite apart from the consequences that would have for Israel.

In fact, just the US acting unilaterally could do a whole hell of a lot to make that part of the world less furious with both itself and Israel, if it wanted to. Or at least could have until seven or so years ago. But either way, it could and should try.

The part of the above that sounds cynical does not proceed from a position of cynicism. btw. I'm just listing some of the commoner opening maneuvers employed by the bigger power in such situations. To make the point that it can be done, theoretically at least. If it's done well and with a little luck.

It's not that complicated., really. Treat them like people. It'd be a start.
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Re: Flotilla Update: Israel Attacks Convoy, Deaths Reported (2)

Postby compared2what? » Tue Jun 08, 2010 5:53 am

Percival wrote:
compared2what? wrote:
Percival wrote:I was away yesterday so I didnt get to respond to several people who adressed me so I will try and do so now, I am at work so I dont have a lot of time but I will be here and there the rest of the day trying to catch up.

To C2W, I have to agree that the antisemitism here is a little frightening, I also agree with you other post and would like to give that more consideration as I have time this afternoon. Thanks for taking the time to share your viewpoint as a fellow Jewish person, I certainly appreciate that.


I share my viewpoint as a person. But thank you.
I understandm I didnt mean to imply otherwise, I just didnt until this thread realize that you were Jewish and obviously I think that does influence your world view one way or another no matter how objective we as Jews try and be.


But yes, you are a person like any other and I certainly have always enjoyed your contributions in spite of the misunderstanding that we had a while back that sort of turned ugly for a while, still my apologies for that now and forever until I feel I have paid my dues for disrespecting you for such a simple misunderstanding from both of us.


Carry on.


You don't owe me any apologies, honey. But I very much appreciate you willingness to offer them.

Again, I do not attempt to be objective "as a Jew." I attempt to be fair, honest and humane as a person. Who's the sum of what her experiences acting upon the natural material she was born with have made her plus what she's made of herself. Period. I'm a free woman, in short. I've been as influenced by coming to know how other people were affected by their...for lack of a better word "neo-tribal" heritage as I have been by coming to know how I was. That's one and the same process, as far as I'm concerned. I just kind of enjoy understanding people, and within my natural limits, I'm not bad at it. IRL, anyway. So I don't discriminate all that much, in that regard. The pleasure is mine either way.

I'm not trying to bicker with you or anything. I just don't owe nor am I owned by that kind of fealty to anything or anybody on a pre-fab basis. I refuse and reject that as a concept.

I mean, I'm American and a woman. Since membership in both of those groups is too pervasively present in every part of my life for their being a part of my identity to be optional, I wouldn't dispute the assertion that everything I say or do is the speech or action of an American woman, I suppose.

But apart from that....I don't know. I'm subjective as myself. So I'm subjectively Jewish, among many other things. That's as far as it would be accurate to go.
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Re: Flotilla Update: Israel Attacks Convoy, Deaths Reported (2)

Postby American Dream » Tue Jun 08, 2010 5:59 am

The Deadly Closing Of The Israeli Mind

June 08, 2010

By Ilan Pappe
Source: The Independent



The decline in Israel's reputation since the brutal attack on the Gaza flotilla is unlikely to influence the country's leaders

At the top of Israel's political and military systems stand two men, Ehud Barak and Benjamin Netanyahu, who are behind the brutal attack on the Gaza flotilla that shocked the world but that seemed to be hailed as a pure act of self-defence by the Israeli public.

Although they come from the left (Defence minister Barak from the Labour Party) and the right (Prime Minister Netanyahu from Likkud) of Israeli politics, their thinking on Gaza in general and on the flotilla in particular is informed by the same history and identical worldview.

At one time, Ehud Barak was Benjamin Netanyahu's commanding officer in the Israeli equivalent of the SAS. More precisely, they served in a similar unit to the one sent to assault the Turkish ship last week. Their perception of the reality in the Gaza Strip is shared by other leading members of the Israeli political and military elite, and is widely supported by the Jewish electorate at home.

And it is a simple take on reality. Hamas, although the only government in the Arab world elected democratically by the people, has to be eliminated as a political as well as a military force. This is not only because it continues the struggle against the 40-year Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip by launching primitive missiles into Israel – more often than not in retaliation to an Israel killing of its activists in the West Bank. But it is mainly due to its political opposition for the kind of "peace" Israel wants to impose on the Palestinians.

The forced peace is not negotiable as far as the Israeli political elite is concerned, and it offers the Palestinians a limited control and sovereignty in the Gaza Strip and in parts of the West Bank. The Palestinians are asked to give up their struggle for self-determination and liberation in return for the establishment of three small Bantustans under tight Israeli control and supervision.

The official thinking in Israel, therefore, is that Hamas is a formidable obstacle for the imposition of such a peace. And thus the declared strategy is straightforward: starving and strangulating into submission the 1.5 million Palestinians living in the densest space in the world.

The blockade imposed in 2006 is supposed to lead the Gazans to replace the current Palestinian government with one which would accept Israel's dictate – or at least would be part of the more dormant Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. In the meantime,Hamas captured an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, and so the blockade became tighter. It included a ban of the most elementary commodities without which human beings find it difficult to survive. For want of food and medicine, for want of cement and petrol, the people of Gaza live in conditions that international bodies and agencies described as catastrophic and criminal.

As in the case of the flotilla, there are alternative ways for releasing the captive soldier, such as swapping the thousands of political prisons Israel is holding with Shalit. Many of them are children, and quite a few are being held without trial. The Israelis have dragged their feet in negotiations over such a swap, which are not likely to bear fruit in the foreseeable future.

But Barak and Netanyahu, and those around them, know too well that the blockade on Gaza is not going to produce any change in the position of the Hamas and one should give credit to the Prime Minister, David Cameron, who remarked at Prime Minister's Questions last week that the Israelis' policy, in fact, strengthens, rather than weakens, the Hamas hold on Gaza. But this strategy, despite its declared aim, is not meant to succeed or at least no one is worried in Jerusalem if it continues to be fruitless and futile.

One would have thought that Israel's drastic decline in international reputation would prompt new thinking by its leaders. But the responses to the attack on the flotilla in the past few days indicate clearly that there is no hope for any significant shift in the official position. A firm commitment to continue the blockade, and a heroes' welcome to the soldiers who pirated the ship in the Mediterranean, show that the same politics would continue for a long time.

This is not surprising. The Barak-Netanyahu-Avigdor Lieberman government does not know any other way of responding to the reality in Palestine and Israel. The use of brutal force to impose your will and a hectic propaganda machine that describes it as self-defence, while demonising the half-starved people in Gaza and those who come to their aid as terrorists, is the only possible course for these politicians. The terrible consequences in human death and suffering of this determination do not concern them, nor does international condemnation.

The real, unlike the declared, strategy is to continue this state of affairs. As long as the international community is complacent, the Arab world impotent and Gaza contained, Israel can still have a thriving economy and an electorate that regards the dominance of the army in its life, the continued conflict and the oppression of the Palestinians as the exclusive past, the present and future reality of life in Israel. The US vice-president Joe Biden was humiliated by the Israelis recently when they announced the building of 1,600 new homes in the disputed Ramat Shlomo district of Jerusalem, on the day he arrived to try to freeze the settlement policy. But his unconditional support now for the latest Israeli action makes the leaders and their electorate feel vindicated.

It would be wrong, however, to assume that American support and a feeble European response to Israeli criminal policies such as one pursued in Gaza are the main reasons for the protracted blockade and strangulation of Gaza. What is probably most difficult to explain to readers around the world is how deeply these perceptions and attitudes are grounded in the Israeli psyche and mentality. And it is indeed difficult to comprehend how diametrically opposed are the common reactions in the UK, for instance, to such events to the emotions that it triggers inside the Israeli Jewish society.

The international response is based on the assumption that more forthcoming Palestinian concessions and a continued dialogue with the Israeli political elite will produce a new reality on the ground. The official discourse in the West is that a very reasonable and attainable solution is just around the corner if all sides would make one final effort: the two-state solution.

Nothing is further from the truth than this optimistic scenario. The only version of this solution that is acceptable to Israel is the one that both the tamed Palestine Authority in Ramallah and the more assertive Hamas in Gaza could never ever accept. It is an offer to imprison the Palestinians in stateless enclaves in return for ending their struggle.

Thus even before one discusses either an alternative solution – a single democratic state for all, which I support – or explores a more plausible, two-state settlement, one has to transform fundamentally the Israeli official and public mindset. This mentality is the principal barrier to a peaceful reconciliation in the torn land of Israel and Palestine.

Professor Ilan Pappé directs the European Centre for Palestine Studies at Exeter University and is the author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine

From: Z Net - The Spirit Of Resistance Lives
URL: http://www.zcommunications.org/the-dead ... ilan-pappe
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Re: Flotilla Update: Israel Attacks Convoy, Deaths Reported (2)

Postby American Dream » Tue Jun 08, 2010 6:08 am

www.consortiumnews.com

Terrorism and Israel's Attack at Sea

By Ivan Eland
June 8, 2010

Editor’s Note
: The word “terrorism” is often thrown around imprecisely or selectively, a kind of geopolitical epithet. But the word has real consequences because, once applied, it can then be used to justify punitive actions toward a target population, behavior that someone else might deem “terrorism.”

In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the cycle of violence and counter-violence – all justified by the some prior outrage or injustice – has brought the region much bloodshed but little hope. Now, with Israel’s fatal commando raid at sea, there has been another turn in the cycle, as the Independent Institute’s Ivan Eland notes in this guest essay:


Details of Israel’s attack on the flotilla carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza remain in dispute as Israel and other nations negotiate over who will conduct an investigation. But even if Israel’s spin about its attack on the flotilla is accepted, the situation is still fairly damning for Israel.

Israel maintains that it ordered the flotilla to divert to the Israeli port of Ashdod from the blockaded Gaza coast. When the ship did not do so, Israel launched a commando raid that killed at least nine passengers and wounded dozens more. At least seven Israeli soldiers were wounded in the attack.

The Israelis maintain that their soldiers, boarding the ships by repelling from helicopters, were attacked by the passengers with metal rods, knives, slingshots, and two pistols commandeered from the soldiers themselves.

The Israelis released a video from early in the operation showing passengers attacking the military men, who claimed to carry only paintball guns and pistols that they didn’t expect to use. The Israelis claimed they killed the aggressive passengers only in self-defense.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, at a press conference, claimed, “The entire flotilla is a political and media provocation by anti-Israeli activists. They have absolutely nothing to do with humanitarian aid.”

The passengers have a different story. One al-Jazeera reporter maintained that the Israelis shot at the ships before boarding. The organizers of the flotilla maintain that the commandos began shooting from the time they landed on the ship at 4 a.m. and released videos to support that position.

Yet even if we disregard flotilla organizers’ rendition of events and charitably accept Israel’s story as what happened, Israel is still culpable. The Israeli military attacked unarmed ships in international waters about 41 miles from the Israeli coastline — well beyond the 12-mile limit of Israeli territorial waters — to enforce an illegal and inhumane blockade of Gaza.

The blockade is a violation of international law and an act of war. Thus, the passengers of any ship being illegally attacked have a right to defend themselves with any armaments they can scrounge up, including pistols captured from incompetent commandos.

The Israelis claiming self-defense while in attack mode is similar to what their former patron, George W. Bush, claimed as he invaded the sovereign state of Iraq. As with Bush, the Israelis have always believed that “the best defense is a good offense.”

Not only were the Israelis in attack mode, they used what French President Nicolas Sarkozy aptly called “the disproportionate use of force” against the flotilla. After all, the flotilla contained aid supplies for the Gazan people, not weapons going to Hamas.

Einat Wilf, a member of the Israeli parliament’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, admitted, “This had nothing to with security. The armaments for Hamas were not coming from this flotilla.”

Before the attack, she had cautioned the Israeli government that this was a public relations issue, not a military one.

The Israelis have repeatedly justified the total blockade of Gaza on the basis of preventing such weapons from reaching Hamas and have also maintained that no humanitarian crisis in Gaza exists because of the quarantine.

But the United Nations and non-governmental organizations have debunked the latter notion. And even though the Obama administration supports the Israeli blockade, Obama’s aides say that he has privately criticized the poor humanitarian conditions in Gaza.

It is clear that the Israelis only let enough supplies through the blockade to prevent an immediate humanitarian disaster and politically manipulate the strictures by saying nothing will change until an Israeli soldier captured by Hamas has been returned.

Terrorism is usually defined as harming a population by collective punishment to pressure its leadership to make political changes. Normally we think of small groups terrorizing a population with bombs, but governments purposefully killing civilians with bombs (such as the allies did to Japan and Germany in World War II) or inducing starvation and illness with a more slow-motion blockade should also be considered terrorism.

It is appalling that civilized nations, such as Israel and its U.S. patron, are committing or endorsing, respectively, this illegal and immoral quarantine.
The one silver lining to Israel’s unconscionable attack on a humanitarian flotilla is that its reprehensible collective punishment of Gazans through blockade likely will be made politically “unsustainable.”


Ivan Eland is Director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at The Independent Institute. Dr. Eland has spent 15 years working for Congress on national security issues, including stints as an investigator for the House Foreign Affairs Committee and Principal Defense Analyst at the Congressional Budget Office. His books include The Empire Has No Clothes: U.S. Foreign Policy Exposed, and Putting “Defense” Back into U.S. Defense Policy.
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Re: Flotilla Update: Israel Attacks Convoy, Deaths Reported (2)

Postby Percival » Tue Jun 08, 2010 6:40 am

compared2what? wrote:
Percival wrote:
compared2what? wrote:
Percival wrote:I was away yesterday so I didnt get to respond to several people who adressed me so I will try and do so now, I am at work so I dont have a lot of time but I will be here and there the rest of the day trying to catch up.

To C2W, I have to agree that the antisemitism here is a little frightening, I also agree with you other post and would like to give that more consideration as I have time this afternoon. Thanks for taking the time to share your viewpoint as a fellow Jewish person, I certainly appreciate that.


I share my viewpoint as a person. But thank you.
I understandm I didnt mean to imply otherwise, I just didnt until this thread realize that you were Jewish and obviously I think that does influence your world view one way or another no matter how objective we as Jews try and be.


But yes, you are a person like any other and I certainly have always enjoyed your contributions in spite of the misunderstanding that we had a while back that sort of turned ugly for a while, still my apologies for that now and forever until I feel I have paid my dues for disrespecting you for such a simple misunderstanding from both of us.


Carry on.


You don't owe me any apologies, honey. But I very much appreciate you willingness to offer them.

Again, I do not attempt to be objective "as a Jew." I attempt to be fair, honest and humane as a person. Who's the sum of what her experiences acting upon the natural material she was born with have made her plus what she's made of herself. Period. I'm a free woman, in short. I've been as influenced by coming to know how other people were affected by their...for lack of a better word "neo-tribal" heritage as I have been by coming to know how I was. That's one and the same process, as far as I'm concerned. I just kind of enjoy understanding people, and within my natural limits, I'm not bad at it. IRL, anyway. So I don't discriminate all that much, in that regard. The pleasure is mine either way.

I'm not trying to bicker with you or anything. I just don't owe nor am I owned by that kind of fealty to anything or anybody on a pre-fab basis. I refuse and reject that as a concept.

I mean, I'm American and a woman. Since membership in both of those groups is too pervasively present in every part of my life for their being a part of my identity to be optional, I wouldn't dispute the assertion that everything I say or do is the speech or action of an American woman, I suppose.

But apart from that....I don't know. I'm subjective as myself. So I'm subjectively Jewish, among many other things. That's as far as it would be accurate to go.



Understood and thanks for that clarifiction, I do see what you mean now and I think I will strive more towards that myself as of now I am admittedly and terribly biased towards my heritage and cultural Jewishness but I have tried and am trying to see the other side without the blinders that my elders forced upon me because of their own past and hatred for our brothers of the Gaza.
He left in a huff and he is back even huffier.
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Re: Flotilla Update: Israel Attacks Convoy, Deaths Reported (2)

Postby Percival » Tue Jun 08, 2010 6:41 am

Can someone direct me to the delete button that I am unable to find so I can deal with these double posts that are the result of a seemingly glitchy board now and then..
Last edited by Percival on Tue Jun 08, 2010 6:43 am, edited 1 time in total.
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