The Horror of all this stuns me. The commentator’s revelation that Israeli tanks rolled over a cemetery destroying many Palestinian graves is an apt reflection of Israeli’s mindset.

Israel Shahak, author of the book “Jewish History, Jewish Religion…” states (pp. 23-4) that “Jewish children are actually taught” to utter a ritual curse when passing a non-Jewish cemetery…So these Israeli tanks while driving over these graves did some very impressive cursing of their own…

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=9hjyq2FzRBo

The protests are growing in the UK, especially on some University campuses including Kings College London, at SOAS and in many towns. There are also increasing calls for an academic and economic boycott of Israel.

Following a large rally (approx 10,000) in Trafalgar Square last Saturday, a protest will be held outside the BBC this Saturday followed by a march to Downing Street. We will be giving the BBC (for their biased anti Palestinian reporting) and PM Gordon Brown (for his craven kowtowing to Olmert’s criminal gang) the ‘order of the old shoe’ if not the boot.

How much damage, did you say? What? I can’t hear you!
Louder, please! So what was the damage they inflicted on the Israelis?
Sorry, can’t hear! Louder! Louder! Louder, please!
What damage was that, you say?
Oh, damn it! I just can’t get your numbers! What did you say?
Sorry, I give up! I just can’t get a word from you….

” “Atrocities in Gaza” – hey, remind me of how loud your outcry was when Palestinians blew up a discotheque, a pizza parlor and all those buses. Yeah, that loud.”

So a “discotheque, a pizza parlor and all those buses….” Oh, really Neil, and how many Jews died in such a ‘horrific’ blitz? 300? 1300?
How many Israeli houses, neighbourhoods and villages were bombed to rubble by Palestinians in the last 10 years?

“You’re ranting not just against Israel but against jews in general.”
Oh, Yea? This is the standard stock reaction of those who can’t handle specifics, because these are too painful to contemplate.

What I ‘rant’ about is not ‘against jews in general’, but STUPIDITY and BRUTALITY in general…

Like you, I have had Jewish teachers and friends I greatly admired…
In fact, my schooling was at a Marist Brothers’ College where quite a significant number of pupils were Jewish. Of course, they attended this educational institution not because of a desire to get acquainted with Catholicism or get closer to, or rub shoulders with another Jew, Jesus Christ. They attended it simply because of the excellence of education provided there. For this, they were willing to pay the high fees, which they could easily afford because most of them were the children of businessmen, doctors, lawyers, etc.

Presently, too, there are many Jews I greatly admire, Jews who have the guts and ‘balls’ to expose the Israeli government for what it really is: a cabal of Zio-Nazis, who like their former counterparts in Nuremberg should be, today, standing trial for murder.

One Jew, in particular, I would like to mention here. A man, who in his relentless fight for TRUTH and JUSTICE, was not long ago fired from his teaching post at Catholic DePaul University as a result of a vicious Zionist campaign, lead by Alan Dershowitz, of Dream Team notoriety, and shamelessly rubber stamped by Pope Ben Ratz XVI…

This man is none other than Professor Norman Finkelstein.
So, dear man, if you don’t just carry SLUDGE between your ears, and pride in it, I would, for starters, strongly recommend you visit his site and get enlightened:

http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/

http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/politics/international_politics/scale+of+gaza+devastation+revealed+/2908257

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=11906

word today, majority of literate world population are familiar with
Israel’s lies and deception, therefore, people believe Zionism must be destroyed completely today because tomorrow is too late. No one buys Israel’s game which intends to manipulate world opinion to bring about ‘world government’ protocol of zion style since Zionism has been exposed and its veil has been removed. The Zionist agents have to find another site because this site is familiar with all of the zionist’s tricks, lies and deception and it is not going to change even one’s fu**ing opinion, therefore, they are wasting their time and energy. Israel has no right to exist. United Palestine for all where includes Jews, except the colonists, European and American.
http://www.amconmag.com/article/2009/jan/26/00006/

How did Israel come into existence (did the UN perhaps play a big role in giving Israel legitimacy)? And on what precedent can it be argued that the creation of the state was lawful or justifiable (The Balfour Declaration, a document drafted by an empire at the peak of it’s colonialist endeavors)?

You go around citing eyeontheun as if it’s anything other than a zionist propaganda website. Why don’t you mention that the UN also loved to pass resolutions against South Africa… Or was that part of the Islamic anti-semite conspiracy to undermine the “west” as well?

You’re bogus arguments will not distract from the concrete reality at issue. The rubble will have to be cleared, and the homes rebuilt. 1.5 million people’s lives have been changed for the worse. No more bullshit about how Israeli’s care about the Palestinians… Israel tears up olive trees, diverts water, and uses Palestinian land as garbage dumps, and an industrial zone. Along with this, their use of depleted uranium has scarred the land permanently.

Perhaps Israel’s delegate to the UN should draft some resolutions on the conflicts you mention. Or perhaps many of the conflicts have been created by people with zionist-like mentalities?

The occupaThere is a woman who has been attacked by her ex-husband five times. She is a strong woman and has resisted those attacks. But now the courts are arguing that since she can fight off her attacker, she should remove the restraining order and unlock her door.

The closing of the checkpoints is a result of Palestinian mortar and rocket attacks after Israel left Gaza three years ago. Israel left working farms, greenhouses and facrtories for the Palestinians. The Gazans trashed those and proceeded to fire against the Israelis. A closed border was Israel’s response to terrorism, not its motive.

The occupation is NOT the root of the problem. The root of the problem is the Islamic demand that no dhimmi (non-Moslem) have any rights to legal protection or property. The root problem involves the Palestinian unwillingness to recognize the right of the Jewish people to have a state.

Bethlehem used to have about 140 churches and five mosques – that number is now 55 churches and 75 mosques. The Christian population was reduced from a 60% majority in 1990 to a 20% minority in 2001 to 23,000. Before 1995, Bethlehem had a majority-Christian municipal council. After the PA take-over, Arafat replaced the municipal council with a predominately Muslim council. Today Christians have virtually no political power in Bethlehem.

There is one fundamental issue in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and that is the steadfast unwillingness of Islamic fundamentalists to tolerate a non-Muslim state in their midst. From this one issue all else flows, including all the wars and terrorist campaigns preceding the current Gaza battle.

Andrew F: you wrote on Tuesday, “no one is suggesting the annihilation of Jews, nor is there any suggestion that it is realistic to expect the Israeli state suddenly to be dismantled in order to create a more equitable (federal or otherwise) structure to serve all the peoples of the territories in question.”
If only. The most common declaration in Europe, and obviously in the Arab world, is for the dismantling of Israel. Just google “one state solution” and you’ll get 5,000,000 hits. While the majority of commentators on this site pretend to be leftists, they are in fact Islamists or Islamic apologists and they are calling for an Islamic Palestine from river to sea.

And as far as the call for the annhilation of Jews, I regret that you’re being equally naive: the Arab rhetoric since before the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 has always been “Death to the Jews” – a call that has also been made at every antiwar rally in the past three weeks.

You ignore that the Jews are the people most subjected to calls for their destruction, even right on this blog.
Since the start of 2007, 16,000 civilians have been killed in fighting. Not in Gaza, so you may have missed it. It was in Somalia, where an Islamist movement is fighting Ethiopian troops. This is the 18th year of civil strife in that country.
In Sri Lanka, some 70,000 people have perished in a civil war that has flared on and off since 1983. The regime in Myanmar (formerly Burma) has killed thousands and forced an estimated 800,000 into involuntary servitude.
In the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire) 45,000 people are dying every month. Nearly 5 and a half million have died since 1998 in a conflict that grew out of the violence in Rwanda and spread. Half of those deaths were of children under the age of 5, according to the International Rescue Committee. The violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has caused more human devastation than any conflict since World War II.
In Darfur, Sudan last week, the Sudanese began bombing Darfur again, while at the same time the Janjaweed have continued with their raping and pillaging. more than 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million made homeless by violence. Where’s the outcry? In the Democratic Republic of Congo people are being burned alive. In Zimbabwe, thousands have died because of government aided cholera and others of starvation. Where’s the outcry? Where’s the UN? Where’s the BBC?

But to watch the news in Brussels or Boston and certainly in Islamabad or Caracas, you will get the distorted impression that the Palestinian plight is the worst on earth — an impression that is reinforced almost daily by the United Nations. We in the United States pay almost no attention to the resolutions, findings, and advocacy of the U.N., regarding it as stinking hypocrisy and cant. But the rest of the world does pay attention. According to Eye on the UN (www.eyeontheun.org), in 2008, 68 percent of General Assembly resolutions regarding violations of human rights targeted Israel. Afghanistan was cited in 4 percent of the resolutions along with Azerbaijan, Georgia, the United States and a few others.

Russia, Sudan, China, and Saudi Arabia, just to name a few, were not cited at all.

In 2007, 32 countries were mentioned for human rights violations, though most just barely. Israel once again topped the list with 121 actions taken against it. Sudan came in second with 61, Myanmar third with 41. (The U.S. was No. 4, with 39 actions, tied with the Democratic Republic of the Congo.)

Next:
You wrote, “The moral high ground cannot be occupied by those who resort to treating individuals as means to their ends with blatant disregard to human dignity and by disregarding the issue of proportionality.” Israel has allowed in humanitarian aid, has set up field hospitals for Palestinians and allows the Red Cross visits to its prisoners.
The Arab world and the Palestinians call for the total destruction of the Jews; they do this vocally, frequnetly and publicly, so I have to challenge your claim. Proportionality works when dealing with a rational enemy but Israelis are dealing with a religious, not a nationalistic force in Hamas, whose goal is not the preservation of Palestinian children, despite their rhetoric, so much as the elimination of Israel from what they insist is Islamic holy ground.This is a Holy War for them. Look at the Hamas declaration just yesterday: Abu Obeida of Hamas told Al-Jazeera, “Our capacity to launch rockets hasn’t been diminished, and we will launch more rockets with God’s help.” (Note the invocation of God, by the way. Not “peace with God’s help.”)

As I mentioned in an earlier post, All Israel wants is to stop Hamas’ attacks the only way it can: by eliminating the terrorists and destroying their arsenals. Hamas is not a political organization with which agreements can be reached, but a fanatical religious assembly of zealots intent on wiping Israel off the map. To achieve this objective, its members are even willing to turn their own children into human bombs, just to kill the hated Jews.

Sorry to go on so long but one more thought on “proportionality”: What would a proportionate response look like? From the time Israel withdrew from Gaza, Hamas and terror affiliates launched eight thousand missiles into Israeli civilian areas. If Israel had returned equivalent fire each time, would that have been proportionate, or a war crime? If Israel had tried to bomb the Egyptian border to close the smuggling tunnels, would that have been proportionate, or inhumane?
For those who find fault with Israel, the only proportionate response to terror is for Israel to disappear.

My response: Yes, and the U.S is not the U.S., it’s the United States of America—so what’s your point? We use acronyms for ease of communication. And if you had read through to the end of the article you would have seen the reference to the Islamic Resistance Movement. Most of your statements indicate that you either did not read the article, did not understand it because you have little or no background on the issue, or you are just content to mouth Israeli talking points and misinformation.

Jennifer said: Why do you defend the right of Muslims to seize and take over land by the sword, but not the right of Jews to have a homeland?

My response: Again, did you actually read this article? There is no mention in the article of the right of anyone to “seize and take over land by the sword”—even though that is exactly what Israel has done.

Jennifer said: Israel should not allow anybody who does not wish to be Israeli, live in Israel. They should not have agreed to slice the land and should have taken over completely in 1948.

My response: This is a blatant colonialist position. The land you’re referring to was not Israel’s to “slice” or “take over”—that’s actually the root of the problem. And Israel actually does not give the same rights to non-Jews in Israel. As for the occupied territories, well the world is now accurately referring to it as apartheid.

Jennifer said: Gaza is occupied by land that Israel should have kept.

My response: Really? Annexing or building settlements on occupied territory is a violation of international law. Clearly, neither you nor Israel seems to be bothered by this, but the rest of the world justifiably is.

Jennifer said: Are you suggesting they allow suicide bombers to blow up more buses and restaurants? Really? Wow. They should receive MORE shipments from Iran, who just had 70,000 university students petition Ahmedi. to train for suicide missions? They should allow helicopters to drop shipments?

My response: Israel created a state of war by its illegal military occupation and its siege of Gaza. Closing the checkpoints and ports and not allowing in food and medicine is another violation of international law—it’s called collective punishment. Again, either Israel is part of the civilized world community and abides by international law, or it is recognized as a rogue state committed to state terrorism. There would never have been a resistance movement if there had been nothing to resist—the occupation is the root of the problem. Palestinians have been willing to ignore the blatant inequality of the 1948 boundaries and the land, homes and villages stolen by Israel at that time. They simply ask for a return to the 1967 boundaries.

Jennifer said: In 2000, Israel agreed to recede to it’s pre ‘67 borders, and have a Two State solution, but HAMAS did not agree and instead began operations again.

My response: Your history is pathetic. Israeli and Palestinian negotiators came very close to an acceptable agreement at the Taba (January 2001) talks, which were held after Clinton’s Camp David talks in July 2000. But Ehud Barak apparently felt it was too close, and ordered his negotiators to break off the talks. See: http://www.nahost-politik.de/friedensbewegung/camp-david-barak.htm

Hamas was not a major player at the time, since Arafat was involved in the talks, so saying that “HAMAS did not agree” is ludicrous. Even when the second Intifada broke out in Sept. 2000, Hamas was only one group among many other Palestinian political and armed groups to participate.

The article states that: “In Gaza, numerous accounts of Israel targeting civilians have been reported by the UN, human rights organizations,”
and you responded: Document these. It is not true. I’ve researched this and if you do too, you will find that the UN is not interested in human rights. In fact, a Jew, by the name of Hillel Neuer from UN Watch, is one of the few who are actually trying to hold the UN accountable. Watch the videos for yourself. Watch C-Span. The UN on Darfur is sickening.

My response: Well, your “research” is also pathetic. The war crimes accusations are just beginning. Israel has already admitted that Hamas did not fire from the UN building that the IDF bombed, killing more than 40 people, and today the IDF admitted that it might have used white phospherous against civilians. So, you can defend Israel’s war crimes as much as you like, but the IDF won’t back you.

The article states: “Our sources in Gaza report that Israeli soldiers have entered and taken up positions in a number of Palestinian homes, forcing families to stay in a ground floor room while they use the rest of their house as a military base and sniper position,” and you said,
Well, let’s see. Let’s use reason. If Israeli soldiers are using civilian homes, that tells us the HAMAS soldiers are taking the fight into civilian areas.

My response: In Gaza, there are only civilian areas. Gaza is one large refugee camp—refugees from land Israel stole in 1948. Hamas fighters do not live in “military barracks” or apart from the rest of the people. This is why Israel’s war, using F16s, white phospherous, and other weapons, is totally disproportionate (another war crime). The weapons Israel used were never intended for fighting in a refugee camp. Hospitals, police stations, UN buildings, universities, and schools are all civilian areas and whether or not Hamas people were hiding there, international law demands that they not be bombed. In most cases, it was determined that Israel lied and there was no gunfire from these structures.

Israel is fully aware that it doesn’t really ‘need’ to act in a multilateral manner, so long as it enjoys the unconditional support of the world’s superpower – this along with the enduring political implications of the Holocaust feeds Israel’s arrogance and arbitrariness. Israel responds to implorations for fairness, by arrogantly asserting that it ‘needs’ not. Superpowers know no limits other than their own conscience (in this context i.e., their own values, true essence, ideology and so on). In the case of Israel, when her conscience is distracted and confused by blindingly bright notions of historical victimhood/persecution, there is little scope for any equitable solution to be perceived as not prejudicing her survival, or to not be antithetical to jewishness per se. So, no matter how many perish (in excess of 1,300 Palestinians compared to 13 Israelis during the recent offensive on Gaza – source http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7841999.stm ) Israel will not yield to accusations of disproportionality and dismiss these as irrelevant – she will insist that this is not about numbers, and that her critics do not get it. But in the final analysis it should be about numbers (as in, about human suffering and human misery which is best quantified by how many actually perish/suffer) rather than about mystico-ideological considerations.

The moral high ground cannot be occupied by those who resort to treating individuals as means to their ends with blatant disregard to human dignity and by disregarding the issue of proportionality. It was Marx who said that those who occupy another people can never be free – and Israel should know this only too well as she is living with the realities of being the occupying force since her inception.

I also consider it unfortunate that Gaza is being compared to the Nazi Holocaust – these are all separate historical events with their own distinct sets of facts and so on. And although the past contextualises the present, comparisons do not in any way amplify or deminish the severity and realness of the recent catastrophe on those affected. Let’s anatomise this according to all that is objectively material to it.

Jennifer – I regret I haven’t any blog or webpage of my own – glad for your comments in this forum – that way we all benefit.

My point – if you can just keep your fuming selfrighteousness in control for a minute – is that this site is full of antisemitic charges. You’re ranting not just against Israel but against jews in general. First of all, you’re wrong. Second of all, if its OK to denounce an entire people, then you’re justifying the Israelis in denouncing all Palestinians. get it? Prejudice is prejudice.

“Atrocities in Gaza” – hey, remind me of how loud your outcry was when Palestinians blew up a discotheque, a pizza parlor and all those buses. Yeah, that loud.

“When I was a pacifist…” so you were a pacifist?
So what are you now? A warmonger? No offense intended…and what made you change from one extreme to the other, may I ask? Should be interesting reading….