Yes We Camp

It’s the slogan of the citizens committees that have formed in the central Italian city of L’Aquila, hit by a 6.3 magnitude earthquake on April 6, 2009. And it was on display for world leaders during the G8 summit being held just outside the city in an area off limits to the local people.

On the morning of July 8, as the Group of Eight leaders began arriving in L’Aquila, activists scaled the hill overlooking the red zone and laid out huge sheets of white plastic to form 10-meter high letters reading ‘Yes We Camp.’ As Mattia Lolli of the 3e32 Committee, which takes its name from the time the earthquake hit, explained, “We want to make sure the G8 leaders as well as public opinion in Italy know that three months after the earthquake there are still over 22,000 people living in tents.”

The G8 summit was originally to take place on the island of Sardinia. On April 23, Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s scandal ridden prime minister, made the surprise announcement that it would be moved to L’Aquila, saying it would put the world’s spotlight on the devastated city. But that’s not how it is seen by local residents, who are still mourning the loss of friends and loved ones — 300 people died in the quake — as well as their homes and their city.

Among the first events organized by the citizens committees on the occasion of the G8 summit was a candlelit march the night of June 6, the three-month anniversary of the earthquake, to remember the victims and “shed light on the responsibilities.” ((Video))

I arrived in L’Aquila with a group of over 40 people from Vicenza, Italy, where local residents have been working for more than three years to block construction of a new U.S. military base. Despite having worked tirelessly for weeks to organize a national demonstration just the day before on July 4th, the No Dal Molin movement in Vicenza was able to fill an entire bus for the seven-hour ride to L’Aquila, intent on showing their solidarity with the local people who, like those in Vicenza, are working to defend their city.

The march started at midnight, with 5000 people holding candles illuminating what everyone remarked is now a ghost town. Only 23,000 of the 70,000 residents remain in the city — nearly all of them living in the tent camps — while the others have been sent to hotels on the coast. “L’Aquila is Italy’s New Orleans” commented Francesca, a CodePink activist from California who was in Italy for the No Dal Molin demonstration.

Unlike most Italian marches, there were no signs, flags or banners, aside from one with the names of victims and another with two simple but effective words, ‘Truth and Justice,’ a demand seen as “the best way to keep the memory of those who are no longer with us alive.” The silence was broken only by the inappropriate sound of helicopters flying overhead monitoring this most peaceful of marches.

The police and military presence in L’Aquila had been on the increase as the G8 approached. Officers with machine guns were present at every intersection and citizens are subjected to what one 70-year-old woman referred to as “check points.” As I walked through the city in the pre dawn hours following the march, the number of police and military vehicles on the streets was overwhelming.

While waiting for a regional bus, I asked people what they thought of holding the G8 in L’Aquila. Not a single person had anything positive to say. The most common criticism was the inappropriateness of using the tragedy as a backdrop for the international summit, especially so soon after the earthquake. Others talked about how the G8 was bringing more inconvenience to people who were already suffering, with roads closures and the blocking of internet and cell phone service for the duration of the summit. In addition, the frenetic 24-hour work being done to prepare the city for the G8 took vital resources away from the reconstruction work that would help get people back into their homes before the cold of winter hits this city in the mountains.

However, it wasn’t just with the G8 that more control and restrictions were imposed on the citizens of L’Aquila. As the residents of the tent camps began to recover from the shock of the earthquake and started organizing to demand a role in the rebuilding of their city, new rules came into effect. In an attempt to stifle dissent, distributing fliers was forbidden within the camps as was organizing assemblies and meetings. As Renato of the Abruzzo Social Forum noted, “The upcoming G8 summit was then used as an excuse to crush any dissent in L’Aquila.”

But organize they did. In part thanks to the space set up in a public park by the 3e32 committee, the only place in L’Aquila where people can gather outside the tent camps and where everyone can come and go as they please — no check points! There is a main tent for events, meetings, concerts and theatre as well as an internet point and a fair trade shop.

On July 7, the day before the official start of the G8, the citizens committees organized an all-day forum. Local residents as well as people from all over Italy gathered under the 3e32 tent to talk about the reconstruction, both physical and social, of L’Aquila.

The central focus of the citizens committees is the 100% Campaign, which calls for 100% reconstruction of the city, 100% participation on the part of the local residents in the decisions that affect the city, 100% transparency regarding how reconstruction money is spent.

The funds thus far authorized by the Italian government are deemed to be insufficient to rebuild the city. If compared to the 1997 earthquake in Umbria, with more than twice the number of people left homeless, the government has authorized 20% less for the reconstruction of L’Aquila, or Euro 5.7 billion. Adding insult to injury, the Italian parliament just recently approved the purchase of 131 Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jets for a total of Euro 13 billion. It is not yet clear who Italy intends to bomb.

In addition, the Italian government has handed down a decision made with no local input to build new housing on privately owned property outside the city expropriated from small landowners, changing forever the urban makeup of the city and risking the abandonment of the historic center. In other words, creating suburbs around a medieval city! The local residents are fighting to keep their city in tact. In fact, the second part of the ‘Yes We Camp’ slogan is ‘But we won’t go away.’

Berlusconi, as owner of three private television channels and in control of the three public channels, has managed to create a very different image of L’Aquila. Antonello talked about a recent trip with his family to the seaside, where he was told, “You people from L’Aquila are so lucky! You get free meals. You’re going to have free houses. Berlusconi has solved all your problems and you have the nerve to complain!” It was reminiscent of Barbara Bush’s comments on the people living in the Astrodome in Houston, Texas after hurricane Katrina.

But the Yes We Camp protests have managed to garner media attention. As Obama passed through L’Aquila on his way to tour the damage in the historic center, activists were on hand with banners to greet his motorcade. And on July 9, as the First Ladies toured the same area, the women of L’Aquila organized the march of the “Last Ladies” and occupied an empty apartment building demanding that is be used for the people still living in tents.

There are some concerns that, as the G8 comes to a close, there will be no “withdrawal” from L’Aquila. In fact, throughout Italy, unpopular decisions handed down from the central government are increasingly enforced by the military, including the construction of incinerators at Acerra and mega-landfills at Chiaiano near Naples. Berlusconi has also threatened to use the military to enforce the construction of new the U.S. base in Vicenza and, more recently, for the construction of new nuclear power plants.

However, in each of these cases, the local people have succeeded in creating a movement to defend their territory and vindicate their right to dissent. And in this day and age of “representative systems” that are in effect killing democracy, what we see with the local citizens committees and assemblies are instead examples of true democracy.

Yes we camp. And we won’t go away!

Stephanie Westbrook is a U.S. citizen who has been living in Rome, Italy since 1991. She is active in the peace and social justice movements in Italy. She can be reached at: steph@webfabbrica.com. Read other articles by Stephanie.

62 comments on this article so far ...

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  1. Michael Kenny said on July 10th, 2009 at 11:33am #

    A lovely example of the advantages of Berlu’s big mouth! Having first offended people with the camping remark (which he really did make, in spite of some press reports to the contrary), his latest piece of flat-footedness will add insult to injury. George Clooney says he ‘s going to make a film there, to “bring money into the area” (and starlets for Berlu!).

  2. Mulga Mumblebrain said on July 10th, 2009 at 11:48pm #

    The militarisation of the West continues apace. 13 billion Euros for F-35s is imperial tribute to the cappo in Washington, and money no longer available to be wasted on the poor or social welfare, so deeply detested by the Right,while lesser cappi like Berlusconi turn their sham democracies, in his case where he controls the media which is biased to an extent that would even shame Murdoch/Moloch itself, into crypto-fascist surveillance states. The Masters are clearly preparing the scene for the coming global collapse, with a plethora of draconian ‘anti-terrorism’ laws, CCTV surveillance becoming ubiquitous and other technologies of control from extensive DNA data-bases to ID cards being inexorably introduced . Berlusconi was a harbinger of things to come when he first emerged yeares ago. The quasi-fascist, authoritarian media boss, the rich man no longer content to merely hire political stooges, who would rather do the job himself. He’s been followed by, amongst others, Thaksin in Thailand, and the ‘crorepathis’ in the latest Congress Government in India, the multi-millionaires who dominate not just Cabinet but the parliament itself, in the country with the greatest and most entrenched mass poverty on earth. That is the real face of India’s ‘market miracle’. The establishment of a naked plutocracy, the role model for the planet. Indeed, with its ancient, firmly entrenched, caste system, no doubt the global kleptocrats look to India as a role model for how the neo-feudal market capitalist system might be entrenched in perpetuity. Alas, as we all know, or suspect, the human race, without a complete revolution in global governance and some new economic system that makes ecological sustainability the highest priority, has no posterity in prospect.

  3. Danny Ray said on July 11th, 2009 at 7:46pm #

    God Damn America, I can’t believe that we are making those poor Eyties live in tents. and forcing them to buy those planes.

  4. Mulga Mumblebrain said on July 11th, 2009 at 9:36pm #

    Danny Boy, why don’t you go back to what you do best-tossing off over descriptions of the effects of Yankee know-how in the business of death as it is inflicted on ‘soft targets’ around the world.

  5. Danny Ray said on July 12th, 2009 at 7:44am #

    Mulga, What in the world would I do without you? You make my life conplete.

    As for yankee know-how, Why thank you, we are the best at killing the world has ever seen. compared to us the leigons of the Romans look like a bunch of girl guides.

    Bye the Bye the soft targets I was referring to in the post where I fell in love with you are unarmored vehicles not the people in them. When we kill people on the ground we usually refer to them as people or as hostiles.

    Have a wonderful week Mulga.

  6. Mulga Mumblebrain said on July 13th, 2009 at 2:29am #

    A distinction without a difference, Danny old chap. Your ‘soft target’ unarmoured cars, as you say, contain even softer targets, human beings, that you label ‘hostiles’ as you obliterate them. That makes it OK, then, does it? And if they are women, children, the totally innocent, as so often in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Lebanon, Gaza, etc, etc, what nasty little euphemism do you have for the corpses then, or the bits of corpses? Ah, I remember-‘collateral damage’. By the by Danny, you Yanks are only good at killing when you have massive firepower advantage. Otherwise you are notorious for ‘bottling it’ and screaming for your ‘moms’ if it’s a fair fight. That’s why you prefer the coward’s path of bombing wedding parties, funerals etc, or obliterating women and children with missiles fired by drones from far, far, away as they sleep in dead of night. A word to the wise Danny. No matter how many hundreds of thousands of Afghan women and children you Yanks butcher, their fathers, sons and brothers are going to kick your arse.

  7. Danny Ray said on July 13th, 2009 at 4:13am #

    Mulga, one of your said it best.

    A great and glorious thing it is
    To learn, for seven years or so,
    The Lord knows what of that and this,
    Ere reckoned fit to face the foe —
    The flying bullet down the Pass,
    That whistles clear: “All flesh is grass.”

    Three hundred pounds per annum spent
    On making brain and body meeter
    For all the murderous intent
    Comprised in “villanous saltpetre!”
    And after — ask the Yusufzaies
    What comes of all our ‘ologies.

    A scrimmage in a Border Station —
    A canter down some dark defile —
    Two thousand pounds of education
    Drops to a ten-rupee jezail —
    The Crammer’s boast, the Squadron’s pride,
    Shot like a rabbit in a ride!

    No proposition Euclid wrote,
    No formulae the text-books know,
    Will turn the bullet from your coat,
    Or ward the tulwar’s downward blow
    Strike hard who cares — shoot straight who can —
    The odds are on the cheaper man.

    One sword-knot stolen from the camp
    Will pay for all the school expenses
    Of any Kurrum Valley scamp
    Who knows no word of moods and tenses,
    But, being blessed with perfect sight,
    Picks off our messmates left and right.

    With home-bred hordes the hillsides teem,
    The troopships bring us one by one,
    At vast expense of time and steam,
    To slay Afridis where they run.
    The “captives of our bow and spear”
    Are cheap, alas! as we are dear.

  8. Danny Ray said on July 13th, 2009 at 4:18am #

    sorry every one I forgot to attribute this to Rudyard Kipling
    1865 to 1935

  9. mary said on July 13th, 2009 at 5:32am #

    Your point in quoting this poem is ….?

    You miss the title out. Arithmetic on the Frontier. The poem speaks of the comparitive value of lives risked in combat ie a brown skin is worth many times less than a white one.

    Read the third para. of this. Kipling’s only son was killed at Loos in WWI having joined up after pressure from his jingoistic father.

    http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/the-great-war-and-its-aftermath-the-son-who-haunted-kipling-413795.html

    Why do you speak so easily of killing and soft targets? You should be ashamed. Your people were persecuted and killed by the Nazis yet you perpetrate the same crimes against the Palestinians. Why are you so hate-filled?

  10. jon s said on July 13th, 2009 at 6:33am #

    Mary, “why are you so hate-filled” is a question you should ask yourself, especially since you repeat the vile comparison between Israel and the Nazis.

  11. joed said on July 13th, 2009 at 7:06am #

    jon s
    the leaders of israel learned well from their mentors–the nazis.
    israel is performing genocide on the palestinians. pretty hard to deny that fact!
    the human factor here is remarkable in that after the horrors of the 1930’s and 40’s that the jews suffered through, the minute the jews get the chance they do to the palestinians what the nazis did to the jews.
    have the jews forgotten already?
    factual and real the comparison between israel and nazis. i am begining to think the israelis are mean and hate filled people. or at least as imature and ignorant as the amerikan people.

  12. Danny Ray said on July 13th, 2009 at 7:23am #

    Mary I had no Idea the nazis persecuted the Episcopal Church I will have to look into that.

    No, sarcasm aside, Mary ,I am an American, Mulga just pointed out that Americans were only good at killing with technology that man to man in the kyber pass we are somewhat at a loss. in the post above Ms Mulga pointedout that we will get our comeuppance from those who have less money spent on their training.

    The same thing that Mr kipling said. The third stanza does not make any comparison between anyone’s color but the cost of getting the fighter there. and the phrase ,” the odds are on the cheaper man” ring as true today as in the 1890’s.

    As far soft targets go that relates back to an earler exchange .

  13. mary said on July 13th, 2009 at 7:26am #

    Here is Wiki’s definition of a troll:

    “In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts *controversial, inflammatory*, irrelevant or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room or collaborative content community, with the primary intent of provoking other users into an emotional or disciplinary response”

  14. mary said on July 13th, 2009 at 7:33am #

    I was speaking of the Jews being persecuted by the Nazis.

    The Episcopalian Church – that would be the ‘Church’ thay includes the B=ush family amongst their numbers. numbers the Bushes amongst th

  15. mary said on July 13th, 2009 at 7:38am #

    Oh dear, that dammed submit button. I will start again and then go out for a walk for some fresh air.

    I was speaking of the Jews as the people, amongst other groups, persecuted by the Nazis.

    The Episcopalian Church – that would be the one that includes the Bush family amongst its numbers. Enough said. I rest my case.

    http://www.newsweek.com/id/63518

    And not hate filled Jon S. Just full of love and admiration for an oppressed people whose land was stolen.

  16. Danny Ray said on July 13th, 2009 at 8:14am #

    Mary, I was just trying to say that I am not Jewish, as far as the Episcopalian Church welcoming the Bushes they also welcom Gays and desenters.

  17. Danny Ray said on July 13th, 2009 at 8:25am #

    Mary I was trying to say (in a funny way) that I am not Jewish, do Pardon me I forgot that you have no humor. As for the church I belong to they also welcome gays and lesbians, and people of any group with no preconditions. they Support a womans right to choose. and many other social programs.

    Mostly you need to read all the post before you put your nickels worth in and try to get a life.

  18. Danny Ray said on July 13th, 2009 at 8:33am #

    Also Bush 41 was episcopalian, Bush 43 was a methodist. However your beloved FDR was a proud C of E man. as were 12 other presidents inculding G Washington

  19. bozhidar balkas vancouver said on July 13th, 2009 at 9:10am #

    it cld be noted that nazism, a cult cld not tolerate another cult: moshe’s cult.
    and moshe’s cult cannot tolerate any other cult.
    and if a cult proclaims that its adherents are chosen by ‘god’ [in nazi case, it may have been a ‘devil’] to lead the ‘godless’, then that, to me, represents a casus belli.
    so, wars were on for moshe’s cult and wars against the moshe’s cult by other cults.
    and sure enough- and quite predictably- the ten tribes of israel vanished without a trace. Judeans held on in their wars agaisnt and hatred of goyim for 8 centuries longer but they also were either slain or dispersed thru arab world.

    but the new cultists, as ferocious as the ancient cultists, arose in europe and took up hebrew cause of trying to rule the world via genocide, etc.
    but fo r how long, oh my ‘devil’? Not forever, huh? tnx

  20. B99 said on July 13th, 2009 at 10:15am #

    bozh – Can’t really agree that Nazism, a form of capitalism, is a cult. Nazism is an alliance of the state with Big Business. It was capital that funded the rise of Nazism. The concentration camps and gas chambers were built by private concerns – some of which operate today.

    Also would have to say that Judaism (which you call Moshe’s cult) is not a cult. Unless, of course, we consider all religions to be cults. I’m not averse to that but I won’t single out Judaism in that regard.

    You are on to something when you suggest that the Nazis could not abide the Jews. I think there is a tendency in some or all populations to hate those groups perceived to be overachievers and underachievers. In Germany’s case, Jews held positions and status well out of proportion to their numbers. The Roma, on the other hand, represented the underachievers. Both had to go.

  21. jon s said on July 13th, 2009 at 10:46am #

    Mary, I’m sincerely glad that you deny hating, although anyone who compares Israel’s actions to tha Nazi’s is either seriously misinformed or deliberately falsifying reality (see Joed, above).
    Here is one testimony from the Eichmann trial ,the testimony of Rivka Yoselewska . See if it bears any relationship to the Palestinian’s situation:
    http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/e/eichmann-adolf/transcripts/Sessions/Session-030-03.html

  22. mebosa ritchie said on July 13th, 2009 at 11:08am #

    mary,you are a hypocrite big time
    you hate jews
    you can’t stand jews
    you and your like would love to see all jews dead
    that’s why you don’t want the jews to have a home-israel
    israel is a haven for jews persecuted by others-israel has taken in 1 million jews persecuted by muslims.
    well mary,israel lives and prospers despite your pathetic attempts at abuse,denigration,boycott,sending boats to gaza etc
    get used to the idea and live with it
    mebosa-the troll,i believe

  23. B99 said on July 13th, 2009 at 1:09pm #

    Jon S and Mebosa – Why cannot Israeli actions be compared with those of the Nazis? It is not as if the roots of most Israeli parties cannot be traced to the political currents of early 20th century Central and Eastern Europe, where the Reactionaries (the reaction being the fascist reaction to Bolshevism) flourished. The Revisionists – the political ancestors of Likud and Shas and Kadima – were open admirers of Fascism, on close terms with Mussolini, and until late in the 1930s, when they finally figured out that the Nazis were not kidding about their plans for the Jews, admirers of Germany’ ultranationalist and racist ideologly of ‘Blut und Boden.’ What would be surprising is if the Zionists did NOT employ many of the practices of the Nazis. The Yishuv (the Jewish pre-state colony) did round up Arabs and deport them, they did shoot them into ditches, they did throw them into concentration camps, they did confiscate their property, they did employ a ‘lebensraum’ ideology – that of Erez Israel, they did use master race notions of ‘purity of land’ and ‘purity of labor’ as a means to purify the country of non-Jews. They did form Betar – the ideological kin of Hitler Youth, who marched around Jerusalem in their starched Brown Shirts. The Israelis did try to expand into the Sinai, and into Lebanon and Syria and Jordan, they did blitzkrieg Tunisia and Iraq as well, they did invent and innovate a whole range of laws on the books to this day designed to minimalize and marginalize the lesser race. And they continue to shoot Palestinians at will even as they hold what remains of Palestine under siege and occupation. Do you think they did not learn this while in Fascist/Nazi Europe?

    The truth is, the US is THE haven for Jews. The Jews of the stetl and the Russian Pail never wanted to go to Palestine, they wanted to go to the US where millions before had already gone, and where they compose the most successful immigrant group in US history. That Jews sufferered in the Arab states is the direct result of Jewish offenses in Palestine, the direct result of establishing a ‘Jewish state’ in a country inhabited by Arabs, the direct result of continuously fomenting bad relations in Jew’s native countries. Israel profited from those bad relations because it meant they could obtain a million plus Jews to man the frontiers, and to do the farming and scut-work that the Ashkenazis would not do.

    So the comparisons with the Nazis are appropriate – they are historical – even their cooperation well-documented. Both Zionism and Nazism/Fascism are ultranationalist ideologies that took root in the political ferment of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

  24. bozhidar balkas vancouver said on July 13th, 2009 at 1:50pm #

    b99, good point. Wld it have been better to have said that no ideology tolerates another ideology- since quran, torah, mein kampf, bible, das kapital, any constitution consist solely of ideation or i might say of thinking?
    which later is expressed by words. Case in point is americanism abhoring all socialisms and even destroying some of it.
    i do not call islam, christianity, and judaism “religion” but cult. These cults contain hundreds if not thousands of commands [and we are notorious for not learning from or obeying c ommands- we are not dogs], ‘promises’, and condemnations and a few anne landerisms.
    all ‘promises’ i evaluate as lies.
    tnx

  25. jon s said on July 13th, 2009 at 1:57pm #

    B99 -Many of your “facts” are false. The Yishuv did not round up and deport Palestinians, did not carry out Nazi-type massacres, did not put anyone in concentration camps and there were no concepts of “purity of land” and “purity of labor”.
    Again – we should have a rational discussion on the Israeli/Palestinian situation. The comparison with the Nazis is obscene and offensive and shows that you’re not interested in a rational exchange. The Nazi Holocaust was a unique episode, lessons can be learnd from it, but comparisons won’t work.

  26. mebosa ritchie said on July 13th, 2009 at 2:17pm #

    jon s
    i have yet to see anyone who posts on this site want a rational discussion on jews,israel and anything connected to the ongoing success of the jews.
    most postings are pure jew hatred
    the lengths the jew haters go to justify their views merely underlines the obsession they have for our removal like
    1 obama is a zionist
    2 the jews control the world’s economy
    3 the jews are nazis
    etc etc etc etc
    of course it’s offensive and it’s meant to be
    ignore it and bask in the jews 3,500years of existence despite the wishes of the jew haters like boz,nosy,shabnam,mary,b99
    they will fail as did the egyptians,persians,romans,spanish,nazis,soviets and the arabs all have done before
    blessed are those who bless the jews,cursed are those who curse the jews

  27. bozhidar balkas vancouver said on July 13th, 2009 at 2:24pm #

    b99, i have often called the three major ‘religions’ “cults”. But in the post to which you responded, i decided to leave that out.

    however, a label doesn’t explain these ‘religions’ nor does it tell us what these cults do. What these cults do and say is important in evaluting them for their love or hatred of people and for adaptation for survival of its adherents.
    we know koresh’s people were slain in gun battle with police. Some 700 adherents of jones’ cult committed suicide.
    we know that the ten tribes of the northern kingdom were defeated by assyrians- who at that time had been shemitized/cannaanized- and that the israelis vanished without trace.

    one cause for demise of israelites was probably revenge; another cause may have been israeli cultishnes- which had to include supremacism.
    judeans largely disappeared or settled among arabs because they spoke a dialect of the shemitic tongue.

    this does not bode well for euro-afro-asian cultists. tnx

    .

  28. bozhidar balkas vancouver said on July 13th, 2009 at 2:42pm #

    how can i hate even one ‘jew’ let alone 15mn? I wld have to be a ‘god’ or a ‘devil’ to eat, sleep, feel properly if i hated that many people.

    and how cld i hate ‘jews’ with 0000002% of shemitic blood in their veins when i am o.5% ‘jewish and 000001% shemitic?
    oh, i see, i am self hating judean, israeli, zulu, apache, { i am 00003% apache} russian, ugandan, german, roma, innuit, cherokee, lapp!
    tnx

  29. Mulga Mumblebrain said on July 13th, 2009 at 7:27pm #

    jon s and mebisa, I’m afraid everything B99 said about Israel is true, and no amount of lying will change the historical facts. I realise you’ve been spoiled by decades of Judaic controlled or dominated Western media spreading disinformation, but the facts of history, of Israel’s unceasing, sadistic, cruelty and brutality have been established beyond doubt, not just by the eye-witness testimony of the Palestinian victims but by historians including the Israeli New Historians. Indeed denying the Palestinian Holocaust, even to the extent of criminalising commemoration of the Nakbah inside Israel, is another way in which Judeofascism is analogous to Nazism.
    Of course the Israeli Holocaust against the Palestinians has not, yet, reached the levels of depravity of that inflicted on the Serbs, Poles, Slavs of the Soviet Union, gays, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Roma or Jews by the Nazis. But in so many other ways there is a deeply disturbing congruency between the two. Both the Israeli fascists and the German ones imagined themselves as Master Races, or ‘Herrenvolk’ one Aryan one Judaic. Like all delusions of racial purity, let alone supremacy, this is deranged, as the Germans and Jews, like everyone else, are an admixture of various racial types over the millenia, bound together only by ideologies of racial purity and superiority. Like the German Nazis, the Judeofascists demand their God-ordained lebensraum in the East, given to them alone by their mythical God, and for whose sake the ethnic cleansing of the last sixty years has been pursued.
    Of course while the similarities are stark, Israel is not a totalitarian state. There is no Fuhrer, althoughre are Gestapo, the Mossad state terror gang and the Shin Bet, the internal apparatus of repression used against the imprisoned Palestinians. Israelis have freedoms, thus far, to argue against their Government’s multitudinous crimes against humanity, and many cover themselves with distinction in so doing and standing up for human decency against their thoroughly indecent state. In one way, however, Israel represents an even greater danger than Nazi Germany. As far as I am aware, there was no completely analogous phenomenon in Nazi Germany to the Israeli Taliban, the settler movement, and its religious fundamentalist power-base. I know of no Nazi religious doctrine that asserted that murdering civilians is a mitzvah, or good deed, as certain powerful fundamentalist Judaic circles do, although an exactly similar ideology pertained within the secular Nazi apparatus.
    I once imagined that there had been some nasty process of transference between the German Nazis and their Israeli counterparts, perhaps as the result of the overwhelming trauma of the Judeocide allied to a Messianic tribal ideology of absolute supremacy to all other human beings. I now believe that both German Nazism and its Israeli doppelganger are really just two expressuions of the same Western ideology of extreme racial supremacism, where the populations of untermenschen who get in the way of the European colonisers are viewed, as both Nazi and Israeli racist epithets do not hide, as insects to be crushed.However, the bestial nature of the two regimes does not condemn all Germans or all Jews to eternal damnation. Just as Germany has not committed crimes of the Nazi type since 1945, I feel that Israel, if somehow reined in (Mission Improbable) could become a decent society, but the religious fascism must be repressed.

  30. jon s said on July 13th, 2009 at 10:33pm #

    Mebosa,
    Indeed, I’m not interested in Mulga’s Anti-Semitic ravings or bozh’s semi-coherent crackpot musings…
    I would like to have a rational discussion, but I do have a life, and if such a discussion proves to be impossible, I’ll be outta here.
    As to the hatred expreessed on these pages, I was reminded of the poem by Wislawa Szymborska:

    Hatred
    Wislawa Szymborska

    Look, how constantly capable
    and how well maintained
    in our century: hatred.
    How lightly she regards high impediments.
    How easily she leaps and overtakes.

    She’s not like other feelings.
    She’s both older and younger than they.
    She herself gives birth to causes
    which awaken her to life.
    If she ever dozes, it’s not an eternal sleep.
    Insomnia does not sap her strength, but adds to it.

    Religion or no religion,
    as long as one kneels at the starting-block.
    Fatherland or no fatherland,
    as long as one tears off at the start.
    She begins as fairness and equityt.
    Then she propels herself.
    Hatred. Hatred.
    She veils her face with a mien
    of romantic ecstasy.

    Oh, the other feelings —
    decrepit and sluggish.
    Since when could that brotherhood
    count on crowds?
    Did ever empathy
    urge on toward the goal?
    How many clients did doubt abduct?
    Only she abducts who knows her own. Talented, intelligent, very industrious.
    Do we need to say how many songs she has written.
    How many pages of history she has numbered.
    How many carpets of people she has spread out
    over how many squares and stadiums!

    Let’s not lie to ourselves:
    She’s capable of creating beauty.
    Wonderful is her aura on a black night.
    Magnificent cloud masses at rosy dawn.
    It’s difficult to deny her pathos of ruins
    and her coarse humor
    mightily towering above them columns.

    She’s the mistress of contrast
    between clatter and silence,
    between red blood and white snow.
    And above all she never tires of
    the motif of the tidy hangman
    above the defiled victim.

    She’s ready for new tasks at any moment.
    If she must wait she’ll wait.
    She said she was blind. Blind?
    She has the keen eyes of a sniper
    and boldly looks into the future
    –she alone.

    -translated by Walter Whipple

  31. Mulga Mumblebrain said on July 14th, 2009 at 12:28am #

    Sorry jon s, but the thing I hate is racist cruelty and the lies spread to advance it. You, I have already decided, are cut from another cloth, and defend racism and sadistic cruelty just so long as it is a certain group who practice it, and another group who suffer it. That makes you, in my opinion, unfit to lecture anyone concerning morality.

  32. mary said on July 14th, 2009 at 1:47am #

    So cruel that some IDF members wear T shirts with obscene mottos boasting of their successes in Operation Cast Lead. One even has the image of a Palestinian child in gun crosshairs.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mJp5d3ffP8

  33. dino said on July 14th, 2009 at 2:54am #

    jon s protested because b99 made a “vile” comparison between Nazi and Israel.But jon is a hypocrite.The jewish propaganda not hesitated to compare a lot of people with the nazis and it is went so far daring to call a religion as fascist.this propaganda invented the islamo-fascism a notion which amazed everyone who read something about fascism.This pathetic jon although probably knows that almost everyone who said something against Israel became no less than Hitler nevertheless ,how he said repeating an another slogan of Israeli’s propaganda:”the Nazi Holocaust was a unique episode, lessons can be learned from it, but comparisons won’t work”.The holocaust uniqueness not impede people like,Nasser,Arafat ,Hanya,Mashal,and Ahmadinejad to be called Hitler.The late is described as he is even more than Hitler.But even Rabin when he tried to make some steps to reach peace became …Himmler.Today Obama seems to enjoy the same treat.It’s enough to read the idiocies of mabasa ,like this:”jew haters like boz,nosy,shabnam,mary,b99
    they will fail as did the egyptians,persians,romans,spanish,nazis,soviets and the arabs all have done before
    blessed are those who bless the jews,cursed are those who curse the Jews”According to people like mabasa this is the role of a human being:
    to bless the Jews.And the majority of the Jews believe in that and no one will see it as a racist and hubris ideology.

  34. B99 said on July 14th, 2009 at 5:08am #

    The only things unique about the Holocaust is that it occurred in a particular place (Europe), was carried out at a particular time (the 4th and 5th decades of the 20th century), by a particular regime (that of Nazi Germany). But of course, all holocausts are unique because they all have their particulars. King Leopold of Belgium kill as many or more Congolese at the turn of that century. And the genocide by the Israelis of the Palestinians is every bit as meticulous (actually more so) as that of the Germans. And millions more have been killed around the world. So what makes the genocide of Jews – and Roma, and Slavs, and teachers, and gays, and union leaders, and leftists – unique? And pray tell me, how does the Holocaust grant Jews a free pass on carrying out a genocide of their own?

  35. mebosa ritchie said on July 14th, 2009 at 7:03am #

    b99
    you have no idea what the definition of genocide is

  36. jon s said on July 14th, 2009 at 8:06am #

    The Nazi Holocaust was genocide – the Nazis wanted to exterminate the entire Jewish people, once and for all (hence the “Final Solution”), every single one, down to the last baby. Any sane person can see that no such thing is being done to the Palestinians. On the other hand the Hamas, the Hizbullah and the present Iranian regime seem to have genocidal ambitions towards Israel.
    What makes the Holocaust unique can be seen by comparing it to other horrific 20th century genocides – the Armenian genocide perpetrated by the Turks during WW1 , and the Rwandan genocide of 1994.
    The Turks massacred the Armenians because they perceived the Armenians to be disloyal – and indeed some Armenians fought on the Russian side in the war (which of course doesn’t justify the massacre) and wanted an independent Armenia. However , we’re not sure that there was a premeditated plan of total genocide. Moreover , in parts of the Ottoman Empire the Armenians weren’t harmed : in Constantinople (Istanbul) , the capital, the Armenian Quarter remained intact. Can anyone imagine a Jewish quarter surviving in Berlin during the Holocaust?
    In Rwanda there was a terrible slaughter of Tutsis by Hutu, who apparently did want to wipe them out. The context, however was of a conflict over political power and resources between the two peoples.
    In the Holocaust there was no such conflict. The Jews who were murdered were not involved in any kind of dispute with Germany, except in the Nazi’s imagination. Any kind of “war” with the Jews was completely one-sided, a hallucination.
    In this case comparisons are useful to point out how unique the Holocaust was.

  37. B99 said on July 14th, 2009 at 9:15am #

    Uh, Mebosa – What Israel is doing to the Palestinians quite easily meet the United Nations definition of genocide.

  38. B99 said on July 14th, 2009 at 9:35am #

    No Jon, to meet the definition of genocide does not mean that every last soul must be killed. What Israel is doing exceeds the United Nations (and therefore the world’s) definition of genocide – with atrocities to spare.

    Hamas and Hazballa became forces to contend with because of Israeli transgressions – in the first case because of the occupation and Fatah’s failure to secure one acre of land in three decades from Israel – even as Israel killed more Palestinians and stole more land. Hazballa’s existence is owed to Israel’s repeated attacks and occupation of Lebanon. Neither represent an existential threat to Israel and in fact, Hamas put up no resistance to the Israeli blitzkrieg of two summers ago – all while Israel continues to kill Palestinians in their own land for the sake of a bigger Israel.

    Ultimately, the Armenian Holocaust occurred because the Armenians refused to sufficiently ‘Turkify’ themselves – and so were treated as the ‘other.’

    Premeditation?? So what. That hardly qualifies the Nazi Holocaust as unique. Besides, the same Nuremberg laws applied to the Roma, so on that basis alone, what happened to the Jews of Europe was not unique.

    And I see you are overly creative in your effort to distinguish what makes the Holocaust special as if you could make up reasons as you go along. Indeed, the Hutus were premeditatively trying to wipe out all of the Tutsis because they were perceived as a different and identifiable race that needed maximal correction.

    And Pol Pot wanted to wipe out the entire educated and bourgeois class of Cambodia – an entire class of people. Unless you think that its only by ethnicity that people should be grouped.

    A major similarity between the Holocaust and Israel’s genocide is that both were/are one-sided. But in the details, all episodes of genocide are unique – thus none is ‘more’ unique.

    And we have not even begun to discuss the enslavement and murder of tens of millions of Africans in the slave trade.

  39. mebosa ritchie said on July 14th, 2009 at 10:25am #

    b99
    genocide is the destruction of a race
    if israel is committing genocide of the palestinians then how come there are 3 times the number of palestinians now as there were when israel started committing genocide,according to you.
    they must be pretty crap at committing genocide wouldn’t you say
    but that doesn’t suit your pathetic rhetoric

  40. dino said on July 14th, 2009 at 10:42am #

    Tom Segev,an Israeli historian published in Haaretz a couple of days ago a letter from Ben Gurion to a Haym Guri ,a writer and a friend of him.In the letter Ben Gurion named Begin a hitlerist because “he wants to take all the Palestinian lands by all means”.I suppose that Ben Gurion knew what is hitlerism and what wanted Begin and what wanted Zeev Jabotinski the ideologue of the Likud party.Now who knows the people from Likud of today knows that Begin would be considered today as a moderate .
    But leaving the issue of comparison by side i want to ask if a person who write a sentence like this:”On the other hand the Hamas, the Hizbullah and the present Iranian regime seem to have genocidal ambitions towards Israel” is a sane person.I’m sure that he is not.

  41. jon s said on July 14th, 2009 at 10:49am #

    From some of the posts here one could reach the conclusion that Israel is some sort of nightmarish hellhole, populated by trigger-happy homicidal psycopaths. The reality is, of course quite different and any mention of a Palestinian “genocide” or “holocaust” is pure nonsense.
    I feel sorry for the Palestinians for having “friends ” like these…

  42. mary said on July 14th, 2009 at 11:01am #

    Naomi Klein speaking in Ramallah

    I wanted to start by letting you in on a little secret. There is a debate among Jews. I used to say “the Jewish community” but then I got excommunicated. So there is a debate among Jews – I’m a Jew by the way – about whether the lesson of the Holocaust should be “never again to anyone”, or “never again to us.” That’s what it pretty much boils down to. And there are a lot of people who believe that the lessons of the Holocaust was “never again to us, never again to the Jews.” Because we suffered this tremendous crime against humanity, we have the right to do whatever it takes to keep ourselves safe. In fact we even think we get a kind of get one genocide free card out of this. […]

    There is another strain in the Jewish tradition that says that the lessons of the Holocaust is “never again to anyone”, and that it is precisely because of what we experienced as Jews that we must denounce racism, denounce systems of segregation wherever they crop up, even and especially when they crop up amongst our own. I am proud to put myself – and I thank my parents for this – in that second tradition. That’s why I’m proud to join in here tonight.

    Transcript of Naomi Klein Lecture in Ramallah:

    http://www.bdsmovement.net/?q=node/465

    Via Jewish Peace News

  43. mebosa ritchie said on July 14th, 2009 at 11:25am #

    mary,am i meant to take note that naomi klein is a jew?
    as relevant as bubbles is a chimp or your brother is a sailor

  44. mebosa ritchie said on July 14th, 2009 at 11:27am #

    I feel sorry for the Palestinians for having “friends ” like these…

    jon,the palestinians get the friends they deserve

  45. bozhidar balkas vancouver said on July 14th, 2009 at 12:17pm #

    according to some historians, hitler was not favoring mass slaughter of ‘Jews’.
    he wanted to expel them all. He proposed madagascar for them. But clazed ‘zionist’ did not want madagascar since that wld have attracted few ‘jews’.
    meanmwhile, UK did not want ‘jews’ in britain. Brits ‘loved’ ‘jews’ but not in own country.
    US restricted immigration [again according what i read] into US until after the war.

    since nazi ideology seriously clashed with judaistic ideology, nazis opted for final solution. I do not know when exactly nazis have changed their mind.
    canada too ‘loved’ ‘jews’. However, with just 12mn people in ’38 it did not want a ‘jewish’ state on own land even tho yukon and northwesetern territories had a pop of a few thousands.
    and, of course, the land was as large as syria, jordan, palestine, and lebanon combined.
    go figure?! and let me please know what you think? tnx

  46. mary said on July 14th, 2009 at 12:34pm #

    I feel sorry for the Palestinians for being occupied and for having a government that collaborates with the USUKIs axis and receives its stooge the war criminal Bliar.

    The following would be humorous if it wasn’t so tragic.

    http://www.maannews.net/en/index.php?opr=ShowDetails&ID=39243

    Blair sees ‘improvement’ in Nablus
    Date: 14 / 07 / 2009 Time: 18:03

    Tony Blair speaks in Nablus
    [Ma’anImages]
    Nablus – Ma’an – Quartet Envoy Tony Blair said he believes the situation in the Nablus is improving on a visit to the beleaguered West Bank city on Tuesday.

    The former UK prime minister currently represents the grouping of the US, UN, EU, and Russia in the Middle East peace process, but his mandate is limited to improving the Palestinian economy and institutions.

    Blair’s visit to Nablus came one day after a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who pledged to take steps to ease the Israeli military occupation’s crushing effect on the Palestinian economy and civilian life in the West Bank.

    Specifically, Netanyahu pledged to allow the new Palestinian mobile phone company Wataniya to begin operating within a month. On Tuesday Blair said the operator could be working within two weeks.

    While in Nablus Blair met governor Jamal Muheisin and civil society leaders. Speaking alongside the governor at a press conference, Blair hailed the performance of the Palestinian Authority security forces, who were redeployed in Nablus in late 2007 after being decimated earlier in the decade by an Israeli military offensive.

    For his part, the governor of Nablus welcomed Blair saying, “Nablus welcomes the friend of the Palestinian people. We updated him on all Israeli obstacles and disturbances such as semi-daily incursions, military checkpoints, and settlers’ assaults.”

    Nablus is one focal point of Netanyahu’s pledge to make “economic peace” with Palestinians. The Palestinian leadership rejects this notion, however, because it is seen as a watered-down replacement for the removal of occupation and the creation of a fully independent Palestinian state.

    Israeli promises to ease restrictions and reduce military incursions, however, remain to be fulfilled. A day before Blair’s visit, Israeli soldiers raided the headquarters of the Nablus Shopping Festival, a celebration Israel had pledged to boost in the interest of economic improvement.

    This did not stop Blair, however, from saying that Israel deserved more credit for its efforts to ease conditions for Palestinians.
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    Israeli bulldozers raze Palestinian farmland near Nablus
    Date: 14 / 07 / 2009 Time: 15:17

    [Ma’anImages – Archive]
    Nablus – Ma’an – Israeli military bulldozers razed more than 18,000 square meters of farm land belonging to the village of Urif, south of the West Bank city of Nablus on Tuesday, according to Ghassan Daghlas, the Palestinian Authority official monitoring settler activity in the northern West Bank.

    Daghlas told Ma’an via telephone, “Since this morning, Israeli bulldozers razed 8,000 square meters in Khallat Az-Zeit south of Urif, and 10,000 more west of the village in Maris Asira.”

    The village lies near the illegal Israeli settlement of Yitzhar.
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  47. jon s said on July 14th, 2009 at 12:44pm #

    It’s sort of dumb to elaborate the obvious, but nevertheless:
    During the Holocaust the Jews were murdered by mass shooting, by gassing , by starvation, and any other method imaginable (or unimaginable).
    Non of this is happening to the Palestinians.
    Therefore the terms “genocide” and “holocaust” are irrelevant to the Palestinian situation.
    Mary , I absolutely agree with Naomi Klein that one of the lessons of the Holocaust is never again to anyone, anywhere. As Jews we should be sensitive to, and intolerant of any form of bigotry and racism.

  48. B99 said on July 14th, 2009 at 12:46pm #

    No mebosa – The definition of genocide is NOT the destruction of a race. I think you need to look up what the UN says it means instead of posting your feelings on what it means.

  49. B99 said on July 14th, 2009 at 12:50pm #

    Jon S said: “From some of the posts here one could reach the conclusion that Israel is some sort of nightmarish hellhole, populated by trigger-happy homicidal psycopaths.”

    Hey, you got that right. What other nation routinely trains its young to (upon graduating high school) leave their country and kill the unarmed citizens of another just because they are gentiles on land they want?

  50. B99 said on July 14th, 2009 at 1:00pm #

    Jon S said: “During the Holocaust the Jews were murdered by mass shooting, by gassing , by starvation, and any other method imaginable (or unimaginable).”

    Actually, Jews have been killing Palestinians en masse now for the better part of a century. That includes mass shooting, bombing, missile attacks, tank attacks, bulldozing, torture, denial of water and food, and indeed starvation – and gassing!. And back in the pre-state war on the Palestinians, they even put typhoid germs in Palestinian spring water.

    So Jon, you just can’t say you are againt bigotry and racism – your job as a Jew is to work for a Palestinian state and the return of Palestinian refugees to their homes in Israel. After all, the right of return is international law – Its not called, the privilege of return. So mere words is not enough. ‘Never Again’ cannot be an empty slogan reserved for your personal favorite group.

  51. B99 said on July 14th, 2009 at 1:02pm #

    Here’s a question for Mebosa and Jon. Why do you think that Israel, having established a state in 78% of Palestine, is entitled to the rest of Palestine? How has Israel earned the right to all of that land?

  52. mebosa ritchie said on July 14th, 2009 at 1:14pm #

    league of nations split the area into
    1 a jewish state–israel from the river to the sea israel+west bank
    2 an arab state–transjordan
    can you please tell which part of palestine israel occupied in 1967.
    who was the palestine prime minister/president in 1967
    what was the palestinian currency in 1967
    what was the capital of palestine in 1967

    i await your answers with interest

  53. B99 said on July 14th, 2009 at 1:54pm #

    Mebosa – The League of Nations did NO SUCH THING. You either made that up or have no idea of the region’s history.

    In 1967, Israel invaded and occupied the West Bank of Jordan.

    The rest of the questions are nonsense questions as if asking who was the president of the United States before independence. Not very smart question, is it?

    Anyway, it is clear that Mebosa believes that Israel should be declared in all of Palestine. Assuming most Israelis think as he does, then there is no reason for any of us to advocate a two-state solution. There is every reason for moderates to join those advocating ‘one-state fits all’ or maybe even absorbing what is now called Israel into the Greater Arab nation.

    As for training children to kill – I’m glad you admit that Israel does this to its own. However, none you name do so. Israel is the only state actively and illegally occupying the land of others – and in so doing – kills the natives!

  54. Suthiano said on July 14th, 2009 at 2:07pm #

    Mebosa you troll,

    hamas and hizbullah are not nations.

    You pretend as if this entity “Palestine” never existed. Yet it was UNGA Res 181 (II) passed in 1947 which first called for the creation of Jewish state alongside an Arab state.

    The first paragraph of the introduction to this Resolution reads: “Having met in special session at the request of the mandatory Power (Britain) to constitute and instruct a special committee to prepare for the consideration of the question of the future government of PALESTINE at the second regular session;”.

    Similarly, SC resolutions 42, 43 and 44, which served to further establish the boundaries of “Israel” (which is not mentioned by name in these resolutions) all mention PALESTINE in their first paragraphs.

    Mebosa you sophist troll, start coming to terms with the Nakba and stop trying to be a perpetual victim.

  55. B99 said on July 14th, 2009 at 3:10pm #

    People who lived in Palestine prior to 1948 were known as Palestinians (except for the newcomer Jews). There have been no Israelis until 1948. And a political entity known as Palestine was established when the Brits separated it (illegally as it was) out of Greater Syria after WWI. A political entity known as Israel had to wait another three decades. So who was the president of Israel in 1947? No such animal. But what is the point of arguing that?

  56. B99 said on July 14th, 2009 at 3:21pm #

    mebosa – An-Nakba means ‘the catastrophe’. It began in 47 with the Jews killing as many Palestinians as necessary to make the rest leave. It is an ethnic cleansing of Palestine’s native population, the start of the Israeli genocide of Palestinians that continues to this day.

  57. jon s said on July 14th, 2009 at 10:48pm #

    B99, “Mass shooting, starvation, gassing” – where do you make this stuff up? The “typhoid poisoning” is a nice touch, though it owes a lot to the medieval blood libel, when the Jews were accused of poisoning the wells and causing the Black Death. Isn’t it amazing that with all these “massacres” the Palestinian population is growing by leaps and bounds, making the Israelis the most inefficient perpetrators of genocide in history? By comparison, the Jewish people, who really did suffer from a genocide, in which we lost around 1/3 of our people, have still not recovered demographically, over 60 years later.
    I am working for a Palestinian state, in the context of a 2-state solution, which is the only reasonable and (just barely ) workable solution. The refugee problem will have to be negotiated. As I see it the practical solution for most of the refugees should be in the Palestinian state. They can’t return en masse to their former homes in Israel itself, which would endanger Israel.
    Again- your image of Israel is so blinded by hatred as to be totally unrealistic. Even in a conflict it’s a good idea to “know the enemy”, what’s known as “intelligence”. You’re out-of-touch with reality .

  58. Mulga Mumblebrain said on July 15th, 2009 at 1:09am #

    jon s, you dismiss the years of Israeli mass murder, torture, assassination, house destruction, humiliation and all the other manifestations of extreme racist cruelty that have been visited on the Palestinians with what appears, in my opinion, to be the racists’ practised contempt for the suffering of the untermenschen. Of course the Israeli actions do not amount to the same intensity of murderousness as the Nazi crimes against humanity, or the extermination of the indigenous in North America, or the hecatombs of colonialism in the Congo or India. That does not make them any the lesser crimes against humanity, and, of course, to invoke the Nazi Judeocide as some sort of exculpation for Israeli crimes is abominable.
    If there is to be a ‘two-state’ solution, certain conditions are essential. Israel must return to the 1948 borders, although I think any Israelis currently living in the West Bank ought to be allowed to remain, so long as they obey Palestinian law. The ethnically cleansed from 1947-8 and their descendants must be allowed to return to their homelands. That is international law and was a requirement for Israel’s admission to the UN. Israel has no right to demand that its ethnic cleansing be treated as a fait accompli, although similar abominations have been allowed to stand, for example Croatia’s vast ethnic cleansing in Krajina in 1992, similarly because the perpetrators were allies of and were aided by the global Moloch, the US.
    If these conditions are met, I’m sure that within a few generations, if left in peace, that the Israeli and Palestinian states will establish amicable relations. So long as the staus quo is maintained, where one side sees itself as the ubermenschen, and deal with the imprisoned untermenschen with pitiless brutality, while hysterically proclaiming its moral perfection, and villainously vilifying any who dare disagree, including their fellow Jews, then there will never be any peace, and the dangers of a real genocide will grow.

  59. B99 said on July 15th, 2009 at 6:41am #

    Jon S – You have to know that I’m not making this up. The phosphorus shells alone (which even made NPR – National Philosemitic Radio) are in the news even as we speak, and Israel has used poison gas in the past on Gaza. Remember when Arafat’s wife brought up the subject of poison gas, and Zionists wanted Hilary Clinton, who was listening to her, to slap her for such a thought? Mass killings of Palestinians – B’tselem can provide you with those – you pick the day. Putting little girls in their gun sights and firing away? Yup, Israelis do that to. As for the typhoid fever (or typhus) in the water, the Jews did that during their 1948 massacres. Need more details?

    Actually, Israelis are very efficient at massacre. The Final Solution in this regard is the removal of Palestinians from Palestine, the tried and true method is to kill as many Palestinians as necessary, and make life as difficult as possible for the living so as to make staying unbearable – while flying just under the radar of a cowed international public. Even right now there is an international investigation of Israeli atrocities, including using human shields – something the Israelis are fond of – that will likely soon blow over. Hey, if the world will not intervene when millions of Tutsis or Congolese are massacred, who is going to stop an advanced industrial state from killing or maiming a few natives every day?
    Since Israel evicted 750,000 Palestinians from what became Israel, explain how Israel gets around employing international law which guarantees the Palestinians the Right of Return. Or do you only believe in the selective use of international law?

    No hate here for Israel or Israelis. Some of my best friends are Israeli… communists (the only ones who seem to get it). I’m apparently one of the few people on this site who are not advocating Israel’s immediate dissolution. I think you need to read up on the history of the conflict or I will have to provide details of what I write here.

  60. B99 said on July 15th, 2009 at 6:54am #

    Mulga – If Jews want to stay on the West Bank, I think they will need to return to Israel and apply for residency at Palestine’s future Consulate/Embassy in Israel. Perhaps a small number can then reside in the West Bank, subject to the laws of Palestine. Maybe Palestine can keep in mind that if say, 200 of the 750,000 evicted Palestinians are allowed to return to their homes in Israel, a similar percentage of Jews will be allowed to reside in Palestine. Of course, this whole notion of letting Jews remain in Palestine is a generous one, inasmuch as the Palestinians were evicted from Palestine by force – and the Jews on the West Bank were ‘admitted’ by force. To be sure, there was a long existing, if very small, population of Jews living in Hebron on the eve of Israel’s ’67 invasion. They should be allowed to stay without fanfare.

  61. bozhidar balkas vancouver said on July 15th, 2009 at 9:53am #

    mulga, respectfully,
    croatia had not expelled serbs from ‘krajina’ regions in ’92. It was croats from ‘krajina’ regions who were expelled by serbs in ’91-92 period.
    in ’95, croatia was accused by european union of serb expulsion.
    at least three croat generals are now standing trial for excessive bombardment of Knin {once seat of croat kings} and expulsion of some 150-250K serbs.

    the label krajina means frontier; it is not a name for geographic region. One of the krajinas is situated in n. dalmatia- others in slavonia.
    serbs arrived in krajinas in 17th century at behest of austrian empire because croats were either taken to servitude by turks to turkey, fled for life to austria, hungary, and italy, or been slain in battle.

    during our mostly losing battles with ottoman empire, serbia had remained one of the most peaceful lands in all of europe.
    serbs took advantage of the fact that we were losing land and people and sought own lebensraum by other means while under turkish yoke for ab. 500 yrs.
    if it wasn’t for wallachs, romanians, hungarians, poles, czechs, slovaks, austrians, germans, and croats, serbia may have been still a turkish possession.
    so much for serb gratitude in our effotrs to drive back turks and help also emancipation of serbs. tnx

  62. B99 said on July 15th, 2009 at 10:39am #

    Didn’t take long to find this record of a mass killing by Jews of a Palestinian family on its own lawn in Palestine. The family was, of course, guilty of breakfasting while Arab.

    Mus’ad Ahmad ‘Eid Abu Me’tiq
    Under 1 year-old resident of Beit Hanun, North Gaza district, killed on 28.04.2008 in Beit Hanun, North Gaza district, by gunfire, from a helicopter. Did not participate in hostilities when killed. Additional information: Killed with his mother and three siblings while eating breakfast in the yard of their house.

    Saleh Ahmad ‘Eid Abu Me’tiq
    4 year-old resident of Beit Hanun, North Gaza district, killed on 28.04.2008 in Beit Hanun, North Gaza district, by gunfire, from a helicopter. Did not participate in hostilities when killed. Additional information: Killed with his mother and three siblings while eating breakfast in the yard of their house.

    Meyasar Mutlaq Rashid Abu Me’tiq
    40 year-old resident of Beit Hanun, North Gaza district, killed on 28.04.2008 in Beit Hanun, North Gaza district, by gunfire, from a helicopter. Did not participate in hostilities when killed. Additional information: Killed with her four children while eating breakfast in the yard of their house.

    Ruwaydah Ahmad ‘Eid Abu Me’tiq
    5 year-old resident of Beit Hanun, North Gaza district, killed on 28.04.2008 in Beit Hanun, North Gaza district, by gunfire, from a helicopter. Did not participate in hostilities when killed. Additional information: Killed with her mother and three siblings while eating breakfast in the yard of their house.

    Hanaa Ahmad ‘Eid Abu Me’tiq
    2 year-old resident of Beit Hanun, North Gaza district, killed on 28.04.2008 in Beit Hanun, North Gaza district, by gunfire, from a helicopter. Did not participate in hostilities when killed. Additional information: Killed with her mother and three siblings while eating breakfast in the yard of their house.