Wednesday, April 22, 2015

My own comments in the comment thread of this article: A response from Huwaida Arraf of the International Solidarity Movement

My own comments in the comment thread of this article: A response from Huwaida Arraf of the International Solidarity Movement

1
If Americans don't like armed resistance against occupation, which is legal right in international law, they should have never rebelled against the British.

That was, after all, violence and "terrorism" based on the claims of Washington Post columnists and thus wrong.

If Samer Issawi is a "terrorist", then all of US "Founding Fathers" were terrorists.

2
You are voicing Israeli propaganda, which is proven false.

Instead, Israel has special forces - acting quite openly every day - which use civilian clothes in occupied areas to target, kill or arrest people. Israel also transports it's military personnel among civilians in public transport both on occupied areas and in Israel itself, including during last summer's war in Gaza. Based on Israel's own claims, this would make Israeli busses with even single soldier in them legal targets, but as it happens, those Israel's claims have no basis in international law.

3
You are incoherent and lying. The only thing the link proves is that ISM - of whose main founders two are Jews - members bravely help occupied people, like escorting children to school through occupation checkpoints - and monitor Israel's crimes on occupied areas

4
He''s a propagandist in service to an Apartheid state and will use every opportunity for misleading propaganda in behalf of oppression.

5
Zionist terror is the everyday daily experience of millions of Palestinians not only in the occupied areas and besieged Gaza, but in Israel itself, where homes of Palestinian citizens of Israel are regularly destroyed.

The Negev village of al-Arakib was just destroyed for the 84th time by Israel and Israel has ordered that 25 000 homes of Palestinians who are Israeli citizens are to be demolished for "breaking" Israel's own building rules, which see only 4.6 % of housing in Israel being build for non-Jews that make almost 24 % of the population.

In occupied E. #Jerusalem and "area C" of West Bank, which is under direct Israeli occupation rule, only 3 % of Palestinian applications for house building are approved by the Israeli occupation, which has moved 560 000 of it's own citizens to occupied areas in contravention to international law that forbids all deliberate demographic change on occupied areas by the occupier.

6
Zionists are terrorists. Israel was established by terrorists through terrorism. Shall we go through the long list of Zionist terrorist attacks like the King David Hotel bombing in 1946 (still the most devastating bomb attack in Palestine with almost a hundred dead), the murder of UN envoy Folke Bernadotte who had saved 30 000 prisoners from Nazi concentration camps, the massacres that killed thousands of Palestinian civilians in 1947-1948, the murders of kidnapped British colonial personnel etc?

7
Israel has killed an estimated 9300 Palestinians during this century, of whom 1500 alone were children.

Of the at least 2311 Palestinians killed by Israel in its attack on Gaza last summer at least 70 % were civilians based on Israeli NGO estimate and according to UN, 84-85 % were civilians. 324 of casualties were children under the age of 13.

At the same time of Israel's own casualties, including those who have died later of their wounds, 67 were soldiers (4 killed by friendly fire officially) and 9 were civilians, of whom 3 were children.

During this century total Israeli military and civilian casualties of all ages are less than the deaths of Palestinian children in hands of Israel.

8
Then you should have never become a Zionist, because you can't separate support of oppressive violence from Zionism.

9
Samer Issawi was then and is currently again a political prisoner because Israeli occupation accuses him of political "crimes". The crime being taking part, dozen years ago, in armed fight against the occupation that had killed his teenage brother and which has imprisoned his mother and all surviving six siblings at different times.

10
Samer Issawi's 16 y/o brother Fadi was killed by US born Baruch Goldstein in the 1994 Hebron massacre along with 28 other civilians.

Israel "celebrated" the massacre by taking the site, a mosque, to partial use by illegal Israeli colonists in Hebron, who still today make a weekly American funded "tour" through the centre & Palestinians are forced inside.

Samer Issawi is a member of DFLP, minor left-wing party part of PLO and pres. Abbas' government. DFLP is not in US' terrorism list but none of that stopped Israel from bombing homes of local DFLP leaders in Gaza during last summer, killing 3 of them and over 50 relatives.

During 2nd intifada Issawi, as member of DFLP's armed wing, took part in few attacks that did not kill anyone. The "civilians" were armed illegal colonists.

Samer Issawi was released in 2011 as part of prisoner exchange, but Israeli occupation re-arrested him on technicality, claiming that he - native of E. Jerusalem's Issawiya - had crossed Israeli occupation declared municipal boundary (unrecognized internationally) of Jerusalem to West Bank.

Issawi went on to fight a hunger strike that lasted 277 days & during which Israel as a collective punishment destroyed the home of one his brothers and arrested another brother and sister, the prominent human rights lawyer Shireen Issawi, whom the occupation then condemned to house arrest.

Issawi won his hunger strike, made a deal with Israel and was released in December 2013 to his home in E. Jerusalem and not to Gaza, like Israel had long demanded. But in the summer of 2014, as Israel betrayed the prisoner exchange deal of 2011, it also betrayed the second deal with Issawi and re-arrested him. It now declares it wil keep him imprisoned for decades.

As collective punishment, another brother is also imprisoned, as is again Shireen Issawi, whose lawyer colleague arrested at the same time was tortured by Israel and committed suicide. The whole Issawi family is being collectively punished by Israel to this day.

11
Samer Issawi is not a 'terrorist'. He's a political activist and a former armed resistance fighter who played a minimal role during the second Intifada, taking part in a few attacks against the Israeli occupation and it's illegal armed settlers - who, under Israeli law, can serve (still as "civilians") in command positions over regular Israeli army units on the occupied areas - who to this day do daily armed attacks against Palestinian civilians, their homes and livestock.

Armed resistance against occupation is a right under international law and all US citizens who claim that Palestinians have no right to armed resistance should just remember that United States of America did not get it's independence through non-violent resistance or decades long negotiations led by Great Britain's Best-Friend-For-Ever, but through seven years of armed fight.

12
The truth is fully with ISM, who do admirable work in harsh circumstances and who has lost many volunteer members through Israeli occupation and illegal settler violence that has killed or injured them.

13
Samer Issawi and his siblings Medhat and Shireen have been imprisoned by Israel since last summer. The whole family have been targeted by Israeli occupation collective punishment and I hope that you and others whose eyes have been at least partially opened will look at more information at their experience and help them regain their freedom. 
 
Shireen is one of imprisoned Palestinian women to whom people have been encouraged to send letters to show that they are not forgotten. She and her brothers, of whom Samer Issawi would be world famous as a result of his 277 day hunger strike if he would have not been imprisoned by Israel, deserve both freedom and the support of all freedom loving people in their efforts to gain it.


14
There was no 'defensive war'. Israel was the attacker. Typically for a Zionist, you are unwilling to see a situation undistorted by your fanaticism, uncapable of seeing the viewpoint of the oppressed and the historical equivalents.

No, you just come up with standard hasbara, the typical Zionist claim that because Apartheid Israel 'won' against Jordan in 1967 it means that Palestinians should always have Israeli military boot on their face pressing them down.


15
You can take your Iranians and Jews and put them where there sun doesn't shine, along with your other delusions.

It's a simple case of oppressed people resisting their oppressors, the colonialists who have stolen their land and driven them to bantustans with the help of the "West", especially the US, expert in land-theft and dispossession of indigenous people itseld.

Israel is keeping 1.8 million people imprisoned on 360 square kilometer piece of land, with 80 % of Gaza's population being refugees of Zionist ethnic cleansing in 1947-48.

Your beloved Israel surely wants "peace and security" - but not to their victims. And it's obedient US politicians, tightly in Israel Lobby's leash, go on endlessly about the racist occupier Israe's "safety", with none daring to speak about the safety of the occupied.

Do you think that you are buying a place in Christian heaven with bucketloads of Palestinian blood and are supporting Israel's crimes because of this?


16
If opposing Apartheid, ethnic cleansing, oppression, torture to death and torturing of children is the same as "hating Jews", then I must hate Jews...

Why do your worship Israel? Is it because of it's racist, endless violence, it's arrogant feeling of entitlement and utter incapability of accepting even the slightest criticism?

Saturday, April 18, 2015


The world’s largest minefield marks the front line of a frozen conflict over the Sahara Desert. With Islamism and impatience rising in Western Sahara, old grievances may ignite a new insurgency.
RABOUNI, Western Sahara refugee camps, Algeria
There were three in the truck when it happened. Said Mohamedfathal Ali was riding shotgun with a fellow guerrilla. Both of them made it. The driver never stood a chance. It was late November 1982, and in Ali’s opinion at least, his fellow Sahrawis, the native inhabitants of Western Sahara, were winning the war for their homeland. Tales of great victories, inflicted on the many by the few, swept across the desert like its sands.

Ali and his fellow marine units played a big role in that. By night they’d wash up on the region’s Atlantic coast beside garrisons, towns or outposts, surveying the scene ahead of an attack. By morning, dozens or sometimes hundreds of Sahrawi guerrilla forces, the Polisario, would storm — in most instances successfully. One attack, he recalls, in the territory’s featureless south, sent some 3,000 Moroccans running. A thousand were killed, he says, his voice elevated. Two hundred were captured, and some ran across the border to Mauritania, the once-aggressor that had bowed out of the war three years previously...