Miscellanous thoughts on issues that interest, annoy or fascinate me.
Thursday, February 06, 2014
1
We have one state solutions both in Burundi and Rwanda. Death toll in Burundi's almost unnoticed civil war was 300 000 and during Rwanda's 52 years of independence 1.2 million people have been killed in ethnic violence according to Rwandan official statistics.
Yet the same Western leaders who chant "Jewish state!" when it comes to Palestine, are quite happy to accept one state solutions in Burundi and Rwanda.
Let's remember that Britain in effect created the whole conflict. There were 84 000 Jews in Palestine when Britain took over, and when it left, there were over 630 000.
Jews, in the words of the first British governor of Palestine, were intended to be the local "loyal Ulstermen" who would be the pillar of the British rule, because they would owe everything and would depend on Britain.
2
Burundi and Rwanda show that Western governments are quite happy to support one state solutions even after massive bloodshed, yet they use the possibility of a future bloodshed to oppose a one state solution in Palestine.
Which I find very unlikely. One state in Palestine would be in a very different position, a likely EU and NATO member.
Britain's role in creating this problem has very much to do with a solution, as reminding the British government and people of this fact might actually make them more likely to support a solution, instead of accepting the status quo.
Britain sells large amount of weapons, ammunition and parts used in manufacture of weapons to Israel too and in the UN Security Council Britain has been reluctant to push or even let to pass any action directed to ending the occupation without US approval.
When Palestinians sought to have the Security Council to vote for full membership for Palestine in UN, British government indicated that it would not support it nor vote against it.
There are people who have been living in refugee camps for 66 years because of what Britain did and did not do when it ruled Palestine.
Bluntly said, Britain owes more to those people than David Cameron complaining about boycotts against Israel as "attempts to delegimitise Israel".
3
If Britain would truly support a two state solution in Palestine, it should recognize the state of Palestine.
Instead the British position is that Palestine can't be recognized without approval from Israel, which is daily creating new "facts on the ground" to make this impossible.
Since the peace negotiations began again in the summer, Israel has announced almost 11 000 new illegal settlement housing units on occupied areas.
Latest announcement is 558 new illegal settlement housing units in East Jerusalem, where Israel destroyed the homes of over 1000 Palestinians during 2013 and dozens more already during this year.
The British position that any movement towards solution is conditional of Israeli regime accepting it freely without outside pressure will only lead to a one state solution.
The people any deal needs to be satisfy are those voting in the promised referendums on either side. Palestinian leaders can't sacrifice right of return without consent from voters, and there are 650 000 Palestinians from Syria who are now refugees second time.
If Israel can take average of up to 100 000 people of Jewish descent per year, it can take for example 50 000 of them and an equivalent number of Palestinian refugees per year in the future without any demographic change. And the equivalent number to any illegal settlers remaining on the occupied areas.
First version: The illegal settlement of Maaleh Adumin is not only intended to cut West Bank in half - same role as the illegal settlement of Ariel, which Israel and USA insist Israel must get, plays in the northern part of West Bank - but to cut off East Jerusalem from the West Bank.
Israel demands that it will get not only Maaleh Adumin, but also all land between it and East Jerusalem and whole of East Jerusalem. John Kerry demands that Palestinians give up entire East Jerusalem proper and get few outlaying neighbourhoods, but Netanyahu refuses even this and has announced that Jerusalem can't even be mentioned in the entire peace agreement.
To those who claim that Jerusalem is originally a "Jewish city" and thus Israel must get it all - which is, Israelis claim, why Barack Obama supports Israeli annexation of whole East Jerusalem proper - let's remind what the Old Testament says: That the Hebrews conquered the city and killed its entire original population.
Holocaust, anyone?
Israeli annexation of East Jerusalem would mean the ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem's remaining 250 000 Palestinian residents. In Israel itself, in Haifa and Jaffa, local Jewish-run governments have accepted plans that would mean the destruction of the last remaining Arab neighbourhoods, in whose place would be build neighbourhoods in which only Jews can live.
According to Israel, there is room for only Jews in Jerusalem and increasingly also in Israel itself. Everybody else must be driven out.
And Maaleh Adumin plays a major role in all of this US supported Apartheid and Ethnic Cleansing.
As he is so fervent supporter of Israeli Apartheid, I wonder when Barack Obama will re-instate the Jim Crow laws in the United States? After all, when Israel has entire towns where only Jews are allowed to live and entire road network, partly funded by the USA, in the occupied areas that only Jews can use, why shouldn't US follow in Israel's footsteps?
After all, Chosen People of the God, the Righteous Among the Nations can't be wrong - after all, that would be antisemitism, wouldn't it? Second version:
The illegal settlement of Maaleh Adumin is not only intended to cut West Bank in half - same role as the illegal settlement of Ariel, which Israel and USA insist Israel must get, plays in the northern part of West Bank - but to cut off East Jerusalem from the West Bank.
Israel demands that it will get not only Maaleh Adumin, but also all land between it and East Jerusalem and whole of East Jerusalem. John Kerry demands that Palestinians give up entire East Jerusalem proper and get few outlaying neighbourhoods, but Netanyahu refuses even this and has announced that Jerusalem can't even be mentioned in the entire peace agreement.
To those who claim that Jerusalem is originally a "Jewish city" and thus Israel must get it all - which is, Israelis claim, why Barack Obama supports Israeli annexation of whole East Jerusalem proper - let's remind what the Old Testament says: That the Hebrews conquered the city and killed its entire original population.
Holocaust, anyone?
Israeli annexation of East Jerusalem would mean the ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem's remaining 250 000 Palestinian residents. In Israel itself, in Haifa and Jaffa, local Jewish-run governments have accepted plans that would mean the destruction of the last remaining Arab neighbourhoods, in whose place would be build neighbourhoods in which only Jews can live. In Jaffa this will be done by US contractor Yaakov Hayman, who openly calls his "development plan" as "Making Jaffa Jewish".
According to Israel, there is room for only Jews in Jerusalem and increasingly also in Israel itself. Everybody else must be driven out. In the Negev desert up to 80 000 Bedouins are threatened with ethnic cleansing so that Jewish only towns can be build in the place of their "illegal" villages.
And Maaleh Adumin plays a major role in all of this US supported Apartheid and Ethnic Cleansing.
As he is so fervent supporter of Israeli Apartheid, I wonder when Barack Obama will re-instate the Jim Crow laws in the United States? After all, when Israel has entire towns where only Jews are allowed to live and entire road network, partly funded by the USA, in the occupied areas that only Jews can use, why shouldn't US follow in Israel's footsteps?
After all, Chosen People of the God, the Righteous Among the Nations can't be wrong - after all, that would be antisemitism, wouldn't it? (I don't claim that Israel represents all Jews, in fact I deny it, but that's Israel's official position; when it destroys a Palestinian village, like it did this week on the West Bank, it claims to do it in the name of all the Jews in the world.)
Palestinians have been ready to give up 78 % of British Palestine to Israel so that they could get just 22 %. But according to both Israel and the USA government they have to give up more and the more they give up, the more Israel wants. Every concession by the Palestinian Authority has been followed with by more demands by Israel.
If you don't boycott SodaStream, you support occupation, oppression, Apartheid, Ethnic Cleansing and torture, including children, which sometimes leads to death.
There is no gray area, there are no excuses. Everyone who buys SodaStream's products is responsible for the crimes of the Israeli occupation by giving their money in its support.
Problem is that European Union is biased towards Israel and against Palestinians. EU is paying for the occupation with other aid donors and ungrateful Israel frequently destroys the EU paid infrastructure out of spite, yet Israel gets the most favourable trade deals - which it largely gets to write on its own according to EU sources and EU's foreign representative Catherine Ashton has never condemned any action by Israel during her entire tenure.
She only deplores or is concerned. Same Blairite Ashton has also announced that Israel has a de facto veto to EU's Palestine policy, claiming that EU and its member states won't recognize Palestine without Israel's permission. And after all this Israel shrieks madly that EU is biased against it, when it's the pampered outsider getting treated as a favoured insider by the EU. Israel is arrogant, ungrateful and blind.
EU should recognize the pre-1967 lines as borders, hit Israel with sanctions and throw all the trade deals into wastebasket. Perhaps then Israel would understand how much it has taken for granted.
Rosetta was supposed to carry a US miniprobe Champollion along with Philae. Champollion was cancelled in 1996 for lack of funding, but revived as an independent mission to another comet. It would have brought back to Earth first samples from the surface of a comet. The sample-return part was cancelled first and the entire mission was cancelled in 1999 for budgetary reasons.
CRAF was a cometary mission, a sibling craft to Cassini, which was supposed to fly past an asteroid and orbit a comet and send a penetrator to its surface. CRAF was approved in 1990 but cancelled in 1992 after US Congress cut NASA's budget.
NASA's CONTOUR mission was supposed to fly past five comets. It exploded when it left it Earth-Moon system in 2002, probably as a result of a problem with the main engine as contact was lost immediately after it was used first time. Telescopes were able to detect that the probe had disintegrated into several parts.
So US has tried to reach comets and has also successes: Stardust, which was operational from 1999 to 2011, succeeded in flybys of comets Wild 2 and Tempel 1. returning samples from the coma of the former, as did Deep Impact with its flybys of Tempel 1 and Hartley 2. Deep Impact was launched in 2005 and contact was lost in 2013.
Israel is an Apartheid state created through ethnic cleansing and which commits ethnic cleansing today not just against people in occupied territories, but against its own Arab citizens from Negev to Haifa.
There never has been a slave who would have loved his master, yet you Zionists demand that Palestinians should have only warm thoughts of every Zionist who oppresses them with American financial and political support.
Real people don't love those that oppress them, nor those who enable the oppression.
2. The simple fact is that even "progressive" US publications like The Nation tend to act like they are walking on a minefield when it comes to criticism of the Israeli regime and that shows.
The Nation also tends to have the typical American liberal habit of viewing the conflict in Palestine from the Jewish viewpoint, even when criticizing Israel, thus making Palestinians subordinate to Jewish history and Jewish concerns and when the conflict is thus not seen in a neutral but Jewish context, even the most well-meaning writer can't avoid some pro-Israel bias.
Palestinians and other Middle Eastern people like Lebanese who have suffered at the hands of Israel have their own independent history, their own independent existence and their experiences deserve to be viewed on their own terms also, not just as part of Jewish history which always tends to end up involving the Holocaust and then the inclination of viewing Israeli actions with less criticism than if it's ruling ethnic-religious group would not have that experience.
Kerry's plan is utterly biased, giving Israel what it's leaders wanted still a few years ago - East Jerusalem, almost all illegal settlements, continued control over borders of Palestine and Jordan Valley without any right of return - although now they demand more, as is their habit, moving the goalposts for peace again.
The plan would have no chance in passing in a referendum among Palestinians even on West Bank (as Israel would not allow it being held in East Jerusalem and Hamas probably not in Gaza). It would unlikely to pass in Israel either. If Abbas government would accept Kerry's plan and Israel as a "for Jews only" state - recipe for ethnic cleansing - they would make themselves into Quislings.
Diplomacy to gather international support and pressure until Israel withdraws from the last centimeter of land occupied in 1967 would be a wise path to take. Refugees would again suffer, but at least there would be more land left in West Bank to settle them there.
The "terrorist" and "man" in question is a 14 year old child and "Rachel's Tomb" has nothing to do with any biblical figures; even the most charitable interpretation is that the origins of the site go to no farther than 4th century CE.
The number of Palestinians killed by Israeli occupation forces on the West Bank was in 2013 highest since 2008, 27 killed. Last night an old man, Eid Ali, died of suffocation after inhaling Israeli tear gas in Kafr Quddoum. He's the first Palestinian to be killed by Israel in 2014.
The release of these political prisoners was agreed already in the late 90s. They have spent a decade and a half imprisoned just because Israeli regime doesn't respect the deals it itself makes.
Their release means nothing for chances of the peace. The "West's" toleration of illegal settlement building, Apartheid policies, Gaza siege and the killing of Palestinians by Israel means that there is little chance for peace.
John Kerry's team that is supposedly neutral party in the negotiations is full of AIPAC men, Israeli Lobby members and what Kerry will offer for Palestinians will be so biased on Israel's favour based on leaks that even if Abbas' government is forced to accept it, the Palestinian people will not accept it in a referendum.
Israel's own government will probably fall over the issue as several government parties oppose peace negotiations and even a rump Palestinian state and chances of any realistic peace agreement being passed in a referendum there are close to zero, as support for total ethnic cleansing and annexation of East Jerusalem and West Bank have been around 60 % among adult Israeli Jews according to Israeli polls.
Wednesday, January 01, 2014
Person of the Year 2013: Palestinian Hunger Striker Samer al-Issawi
Published Tuesday, December 31, 2013
One can only imagine the looks on the faces of Israeli settlers living in Masharef Mountain, near the Hebrew University that overlooks Issawiya, as they watched the celebrations welcoming back Palestinian prisoner Samer al-Issawi.
Issawi returned victorious to his village despite Israel’s desperate attempts to ban celebrations. The occupation forces delayed his release for about 10 hours last Monday, December 23, and erected military checkpoints near the village, but young men and Palestinian mothers insisted on welcoming their hero.
Following his nine-month hunger strike amid the “battle of the empty stomachs,” Issawi was released along with 1,026 other Palestinians in an exchange for the return of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.
He wished to remain loyal to those who lost their lives while planning and conducting the Shalit kidnapping, and didn’t want the Israelis to arrest the liberated prisoners all over again, forcing them to serve the rest of their sentences.
From the first intifada until the mid-1990s, Issawi, born 1979, resisted Israeli occupation by setting settler cars of fire and throwing Molotov cocktails. He told Al-Akhbar that he was careful not to be arrested because he wanted to support his family, since his four brothers – Raafat, Medhat, Firas, and Fadi – were held by the Israelis. But all that changed when his brother Fadi was killed in clashes that erupted in Issawiya, following the Hebron massacre in 1994.
The day Samer saw his brother in a pool of his own blood was the last straw.
Issawi was first arrested in 1998 and sentenced to a year and a half in prison for throwing a Molotov cocktail. He was later sentenced to six months in jail for beating up an Israeli soldier, then he was imprisoned again in 2000 for 15 days at the beginning of al-Aqsa intifada. He was later arrested for six months without charges.
“Israeli military attacks escalated during the second Intifada, and we began to hear about airstrikes on Gaza,” said Issawi, revealing that on the first day of his release he joined the ranks of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine. He formed a five-member cell with friends and conducted 11 shooting operations targeting Israeli vehicles in the Ma’ale Adumim settlement, seven kilometers east of Jerusalem.
These shootings caused material damages and injured one Israeli officer. Once Issawi’s role was revealed, the Israelis hunted him down for a whole year and finally arrested him during the 2002 Operation Defensive Shield in Ramallah.
Issawi refused to appear before the Beit Eil military court and rejected the presence of an attorney because he didn’t acknowledge the legitimacy of the court. He told the judges that it was more of a traveling circus that the Israelis brought along to every territory they occupied.
Issawi was sentenced to 30 years in jail. He wasn’t surprised. Usually sentences in such cases are life in prison, even though no injuries were caused.
He said he was confident he wouldn’t serve his entire sentence, and told the judge, “I will be out before 30 years.” Ten years later, Issawi was released within the “Loyalty to the Free Men” prisoners’ deal.
Issawi as Art
Occupation forces arrested Issawi again on 7 July 2012. His interrogation continued for 30 days, following which he was accused of planning to kidnap Israeli soldiers. Meanwhile, the head of Israeli intelligence in the West Bank threatened to send him back to jail to serve the remaining 20 years of his sentence.
Issawi realized that he was in a serious situation. Hence, on July 27, he started returning two of his meals and settling for a simple one of two slices of bread and a spoonful of labneh and jam.
He maintained this diet for 19 days and was transferred to Nafha Prison. On August 24, he started training his body for an open hunger strike. He wrote a letter to prison services and informed them about his escalation. Back then, he settled for a glass of juice or milk or soup until he cut off food completely and started his open hunger strike on September 14, which also included a strike on water from time to time.
Finally, Issawi reached an agreement with the Israelis last April allowing him to return home to Jerusalem within eight months.
Israelis resorted to different tactics to try and exhaust Issawi into giving up his hunger strike. They sent him on prisoners’ buses to courts and moved him from prison to prison, forcing him to wait for hours for his jailers. They demolished his brother Medhat’s house and attacked him and his family in court despite his deteriorating health.
Samer dropped to 99 pounds and suffered attendant health risks. “When I slept on my right side, I felt numb, and the same with my left side. I also couldn’t sleep on my chest because I had a broken bone,” he said.
With His Family
“Every time I heard about Palestinians and freedom-loving people around the world joining this this battle, I forgot my own pain, mainly after the martyrdom of Mahmoud al-Titi and Mohammed Asfour. There was nothing I could offer them, just insisting on the goals that we put together before the hunger strike. I was also moved by young men protesting for the first time in front of Jerusalem Magistrates Court,” he said.
Issawi said, “The anger I saw in the eyes of the jailers after seven months of the hunger strike proved to me that we succeeded in raising the voices of prisoners and revealing Israeli violations of the prisoner swap deal, while preserving Palestinians dignity. All the goals were accomplished and the only thing left was me going back home.”
On the Palestinian official position, Samer said, “Let’s be honest, all of us Palestinians, from the president to common citizens, can’t even move from one region to the other without Israeli authorization. We don’t count on the official position as much as we count on the will of the people to exercise pressure to force politicians to take more serious steps. A Palestinian negotiator can sign a deal, but it would not be applicable on the ground without popular support.”
This article is an edited translation from the Arabic Edition.
We see them as human beings also, and also as victims of the Israeli regime and it's inhumane policies.
But the oppressed people come before the occupiers, just like most people consider first the suffering of the Jewish victims of the Holocaust before the German civilians who suffered in the Allied bombings.
It's not denying the humanity or the suffering of the latter.
Palestine was mentioned already by the Carian-Greek historian Herodotos(484-425 BCE).
United States of America must not exist either, as it was a Colonial invention by the British settlers of the eastern seaboard of the Turtle Island and had no previous existence prior to 1776.
Same goes naturally for Australia, Canada, New Zealand and that later invention of European settlers, Israel.
The first part is pure fantasy. The first written examples of Hebrew, for example, are short texts from the mid-8th century BCE.
Everything you write about Palestinians beyond the anthem is just wrong and I bet you know it. Even "liberal Zionists" Kimmerling and Migdah in their "The Palestinian People" date Palestinian identity (and national struggle) back to 1834.
Palestinian National Congresses were already meeting in the 1910s. Those who established PLO in 1964 included members of Palestinian parties of the 1920-1940s and participants of the 1936-1939 uprising against the British rule.
Palestinian flag was the Palestinian flag already in the 1930s and then it had the Muslim Crescent Moon and the Christian Cross in it, which were later removed to make it religiously neutral.
Israeli occupation claimed that Samer had broken the rules of his probation by visiting another village. Israel claims to have (illegally) annexed this particular village and claims it is part of Jerusalem, but now decided - so that they could get Samer back in jail - that it was actually on the West Bank. Because of this, as a part of the deal to end his hunger strike, Samer was sentenced to 8 months for supposedly breaking the rules of his probation.
Part of the prisoner exchange deal. Israel has imprisoned again dozens of ex- political prisoners released as part of it by using various excuses or none at all in some cases.
Israel accused Samer Issawi of being a member of DFLP - a small leftwing party (enjoys 3-4 percent support among Palestinians in the occupied territories), member of the Abbas' government, and no longer in US "terrorism" list - and having taken part in the second intifada in an armed attack against illegal settlers, in which no one was injured.
In the typical Israeli manner they had sentenced him for decades in jail for this act of opposing the occupation.
Baruch Goldstein, the illegal settler terrorist, murdered Samir's teenage brother and 28 other people in 1994. Goldstein is considered a great hero among large number of Jewish Israelis and his grave is a place of modern day pilgrimage.
Majority on either side is not interested in a lasting peace that majority on the other side would be ready to accept.
Palestinians are ready to give up far more than Israel, but this is still not enough for the majority on the Israeli side, which Israeli elections clearly show.
There simply isn't a majority on the Israeli side which would accept pre-1967 lines with few land swaps, which is basically the minimum for a viable Palestinian state.
In the current negotiations Israel demands that it would be allowed to annex Jordan Valley or at least control it for 25 more years. According to World Bank, Jordan Valley could produce 3.5 billion dollars a year for Palestinian state (currently Israel gets 620 million dollars a year from the illegal agricultural colonies in there), which is twice the whole international yearly aid to Palestinians.
Samer Issawi's hunger strike was a quite genuine hunger strike, otherwise the Israeli occupation would have claimed otherwise loud and clear.
His teenage brother was one of Baruch Goldstein's victims, most members of his family have been imprisoned by Israel, his brother Medhat for 19 years and one brother's home was destroyed by Israel as a "revenge" for his hunger strike.
3 civilians were killed in Gaza. 3 year old Hala Abu Sheikha, a so far unnamed man in Beit Lahiya and 22 year old Salah Abu Latif (the Israeli Bedouin). 6 others wounded, including mother and brother of Hala, the latter seriously.
These follow attacks in recent days against Gaza and Palestinian fishermen on sea by Israel. On 20th Israeli sniper killed civilian Odeh Jehad Hamad 1 kilometer inside Gaza.
Israel has broken the November 2012 truce almost 300 times, but Western media like CNN refuse to report Israel's atttacks on Gaza - and also most killings on West Banks by Israel, which have increased since the peace negotiations began again.
There have been increasing Israeli attacks in recent days, one civilian death, and apparently as a revenge a Popular Resistance Committee's sniper shot dead an Israeli civilian employee of IDF working on the border fence. After that Israel made artillery and bomb attacks, killing unnamed man and 3/4 year old Hala Abu Sheikha and injured badly her brother and mother.6 other Palestinians at least have been wounded, 3 combatants and 1 child among them.
In 1890 the actual population statistics for Palestine were 432 000 Muslims, 57 000 Christians and 43 000 Jews.
(In 1800 the numbers had been 246 000 Muslims, 22 000 Christians and 7000 Jews.)
In 1922 the numbers were 589 000 Muslims, 71 000 Christians and 84 000 Jews.
In 1931 the numbers were 760 000 Muslims, 89 000 Christians and 175 000 Jews.
In 1947 the numbers were 1 181 000 Muslims, 143 000 Christians and 630 000 Jews.
Oh, by the way, according to the Israeli Supreme Court in their recent decision to reject "Israeli" in national identification cards, there's no such people as "Israeli".
In 1890 the actual population statistics for Palestine were 432 000 Muslims, 57 000 Christians and 43 000 Jews.
(In 1800 the numbers had been 246 000 Muslims, 22 000 Christians and 7000 Jews.)
In 1922 the numbers were 589 000 Muslims, 71 000 Christians and 84 000 Jews.
In 1931 the numbers were 760 000 Muslims, 89 000 Christians and 175 000 Jews.
In 1947 the numbers were 1 181 000 Muslims, 143 000 Christians and 630 000 Jews.
Oh, by the way, according to the Israeli Supreme Court in their recent decision to reject "Israeli" in national identification cards, there's no such people as "Israeli".
Judaism is a religion, ethnically Jews are diverse as recent genetic studies show. Palestinians have deep roots in their land. Genetically they are also very close to the original followers of Judaism; Ashkenazi Jews for example are genetically what a child between a Palestinian and a Northern Italian would be.
International law gives occupied people full right to resist militarily and Americans should remember that George Washington and the other Founding Fathers did not lead a non-violent resistance to the British, but fought a long war to gain independence for the United States.
Americans have no right to say to Palestinians that they should not follow the same path which they themselves took in 1776.
Apologists of Israel expect that there should be something equivalent of Hoover dam on the borders of Gaza and as there isn't, they go on claim that the Palestinian claims are just propaganda.
But there are small dams and two major reservoirs, one seasonal, just on the borders of northern Gaza. Normally these are used to stop water from getting to the Gaza side.
The even occasionally lush vegetation on the ethnically cleansed side of the border is one of the symbols of oppression, not a "miracle" of "making the desert bloom" - just a result of denying water from Gaza.
burning tibet: Last Words of Tsultrim Gyatso: (My rough translation of Tsultrim Gyatso's last words. As you can see some parts are hard to read. If anyone comes across a picture in ...
Thursday, December 19, 2013
Observe the death of Saleh Yasin today: A Palestinian security forces member becomes immediately "a suspect" to the US media - Associated Press in this case - after the Zionist Apartheid State's occupation forces have killed him. Victim is immediately made to look guilty. But when a Zionist dies, it's immediately a horrible event to the media in the USA, no matter his status and actions.
Like this thread shows, people who "support Israel" tend to be the middlebrow version of people who write love letters to condemned serial killers to prisons.
Saying that shows that you are ignorant what Israel has done - and probably willfully ignorant at that.
51 Israeli laws that treat people differently based on their ethnicity and religion, separate towns build even now for Israeli citizens based on their ethnic-religious identity shows that.
And that's just people with Israeli citizenship. To live under Israeli occupation is much worse for the Palestinians.
It's easy to check whether any action can be morally justified by just changing the sides around. And I doubt that more than a few Americans would be ready to accept regular drone strikes in US no matter how "justified" they would be claimed to be by those doing them.
Hezbollah already builds its own drones. And with Amazon planning to use drones to deliver packages in the US, one wouldn't even have to build own drones, just to hack existing ones.
And speaking of hacking, one CIA drone was forced to land to Iran when it was hacked and I'm not so sure that all the various drones already used in US regularly could not be hacked and used in terror attacks.
Opposition to Apartheid, ethnic cleansing and an occupation which has gone on for 46 years is not "antisemitism".
Claiming that it is hurts efforts to oppose actual antisemitism.
Support American Studies Association and its members in their brave stance for human rights and academic freedom in occupied Palestine.
Just because Israel calls itself "a Jewish state" doesn't mean that it should get a free pass when it comes to human rights violations and war crimes.
Why do you want every other problem solved before Palestinians could be given any justice?
Because you think that when the oppressors identify themselves as Jews, the victims should have neither rights, justice nor publicity.
Palestinian universities are being choked by Israel and Jews are allowed to live in Arab countries, and when it comes to Jewish refugees from them, Israel could ask right of return for them but never has, not even when signing peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan.
Before it fell in an Israeli supported coup, Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood government actually asked Egyptian Jews to return to Egypt.
According to "liberal Zionist" historians, Palestine's struggle is 179 years old, but unlike fools like Martin Amis claim, past Jewish suffering doesn't give Zionists right to cause suffering to Palestinians. That's the result of morally bankrupt thinking.
Hendrik Verwoerd, "the Father of South African Apartheid", declared that Israel was an Apartheid state - and meant it as a compliment - and he met his bit of Earthly justice already back in 1966.
Once again supporters of the Apartheid State show that one can't be a racist towards Palestinians without showing racism towards others oppressed peoples.
Truth is "antisemitism", so ban the Truth so that Zionists and their worshipful Christian Zionist hordes can continue to commit and support atrocities.
That's what you demand.
Because Israel commits Apartheid, Ethnic Cleansing and has kept up occupation for 46 years. That's the truth.
If you can't handle that, your place is in a nice round room with padded walls, pumped full of drugs, because Truth and Reality are not going to change just because you deny them as they don't fit with how you would want the world to be like.
You supporters of the Apartheid State want Palestinians to play the role of a "Happy Slave Who Loves His Master" and just stay oppressed and humiliated in dwindling bantustans as your version of the Master Race can do whatever crimes it wants without any criticitism towards it at all.
That's not how the real world works.
If Zionists don't want oppressed people "wanting to kill them", they can stop oppressing them. But that's not that they are ready to do and the oppressed people surely are not going to be the "Happy Slaves" of your imagination.
Go and be a house slave for illegal settlers in their illegal settlements' agricultural fields and play a banjo when their children throw rocks at you - oh yes, the Zionists do that every day, but you folks never mention that, do you? - but don't demand it from others.
I don't know why the article again and again claims strong support for Israel among US population like an article of faith. Everybody knows that majority of US voters have little knowledge on the situation in Palestine, thanks to rabidly "pro-Israel" media, and their support for the Apartheid State is in many cases as shallow as their knowledge.
Ask whether they support Israel and you get big numbers in favour of the Apartheid State, but ask whether they are ready to spend another trillion dollars and 5000 US lives to fight Iran in behalf of Israel and the numbers will change.
It's easy to support evil when you are a)denied evidence that what you support is evil and b)there's no price to be paid for doing so. Add a price and support plummets.
In turning towards organizing practices designed to work in the American context and on nationalist terms, the Left often neglects these anticolonial principles and seeks out Jewish voices to validate Palestinian claims. In turn, it privileges Jewish discourse, anxieties, and histories in ways that marginalize Palestinians in their own struggle. At its least productive, the exclusion of Palestinian community voices from both popular narratives and organizing treats the question of Palestine as an intra-Jewish problem. In turn, this prods activists to organize for Palestinian rights under the Jewish state, towards multiculturalism and tolerance rather than justice, towards a better colonialism rather than the end of colonialism.
It should be allowed to questioned, like any events in history, but as an anti-Zionist and a trained historian I have to say that the gas chambers are a proven fact.
There are some questions about number of casualties. 6 million deaths is not set in stone, but it's proven that at least 5.1 million people identified by the Nazis or their own authorities in demographics as Jewish died in World War II.
We also know that the number is higher than 5.1 million, but because the information from Soviet Union - where Nazis would often just gather Jews up and kill them when they conquered a village or town, without bothering to make records of their victims - especially has large differences in estimates, an exact number can never be established.
The main problem that I see with the Nazi genocide of Jewish, Roma and other minorities is that the public gets their view of it from fiction - books, movies and TV - which tend to concentrate on aspects that often give a distorted view of what happened.
Instead of "industrialized genocide" it was especially in the Eastern Front "normal" genocide. Larger amount - at least 1.3 million - of Jewish victims were probably shot than died in gas chambers (at least 900 000).
People were burned, hanged and drowned and at least 1.5 million died of famine and disease in concentration camps, work camps and ghettos.
Friday, November 01, 2013
Time, when seen as a chain of events, is not an illusion. Physicists tend to forget other subjects than their own which put limits on what can actually happen.
Whether its a star or a human being, there is a deliberate chain of events that must happen for them to come into being and that chain of events goes back to the beginning of the universe. Paul Davies could not have come into existence before 3.5 billion years of evolution on Earth, his place in this chain of events that is time is set, not an illusion he holds.
The same is true for changing the direction of the flow of time. In very simple models of universes made of only elementary particles it could happen, but in more complicated universe like ours you can't put a star that exploded ten billion years ago back together or raise dead people from their graves. Universe is not a video that can be just rewind. For that to happen, every bit of information from the history of the universe would have to be stored in the universe itself somehow and the more complex the universe, the more amount of information would be needed to be stored.
Macro-level events and objects in a universe also put constraints on the micro-level realm of particles. The micro-level of particles is not more "real" or the only one that matters when considering the nature of the universe and time. The universe is based on them, but the more complex universe they create, the more the micro-level is constrained by the macro-level.
Complex universe orders itself in a manner that severely constricts what is possible in it. That includes the concept of time.
Time arises from this necessary need for order in a complex universe, where events can't have random chain of events or there would be no complexity. Time and complexity are thus intertwined.
Thursday, October 31, 2013
What stopped absolut monarchy in Britain is that the crown failed to make the large landowning aristocratic families to bend to its will like happened in France and instead the high-ranking aristocrats captured a large part of power through force of arms and the rotten parliament, stopping the development of a powerful centralized state led by an absolutist monarch.
The reason was that the crown failed to rally the emerging bourgeois class to its side against the aristocracy as happened in many other countries where absolut monarchies emerged nor was it succesful in selling to the high-ranking aristocracy the idea of increasing royal powers as a protection against the bourgeois.
Oliver Cromwell might have been able to create an absolut monarchy, had he lived much longer than he did. His position was much better and stronger than any of the Stuart rulers in the 17th century.
Even as the British Empire was build, it was internally weak, its bureaucracy a mess and it was haphazardly governed until the mid-Victorian period. Different towns could have different laws until the 1870s.
Wednesday, October 30, 2013
Israel was created through ethnic cleansing and has done oppression ever since, killing tens of thousands and making 4.9 million people refugees and still the Zionists themselves and their US fans think that Israel should be able to commit all its human rights abuses and international law breaking without suffering any casualties itself, and treat those who try to defend their country against colonialist as criminals.
If the colonialists in Palestine don't want to suffer any casualties, they should go go elsewhere. And they and their US fans should grow up to be even a little more stoical. If Israel insists of wielding a sword, it should also accept that swords will be wielded against it.
Wednesday, October 23, 2013
Such horrible comments here. Many of these people in the film are Palestinian refugees, who have lived their entire lived in refugee camps in Syria and now forced to escape Syria too. About 150-200 Palestinians drowned in the three refugee boat accidents in the span of one week.
British people should look at their own actions in the Middle East; much of what is fault there is the result of British actions - and not just the recent ones by Blair and Cameron. I know that history is one of those subjects suffering in state schools in Britain, but thanks to the internet you can look up a map of the Middle East in 1920.
The parts of Cyprus you still hang on are the last remains of a Middle East you dominated and the results of that domination and carving up colonies, protectorates and vassal states are behind much of the current disturbance.
Tuesday, October 22, 2013
Israel's latest victim, 24 year old old Mohammed Assi, killed today in Bi'lin village on the West Bank:
Thursday, October 17, 2013
BDS is about justice and reminding people that music doesn’t exist in a vacuum, separate from the society and world around it.
Israel is an Apartheid state that segregates people based on their identity and commits Ethnic Cleansing on a daily basis against Palestinians on the occupied territories and also its own Arab minority, planning to ethnically clean at least 40 000 Bedouins, Israeli citizens, from their Negev villages into townships described by Israeli NGOs as “garbage dumps”. Already existing townships have 70 % unemployment and lack basic services.
On the occupied territories Israel is concentrating Ethnic Cleansing at the moment on East Jerusalem and Jordan Valley, trying to force remaining Palestinian population out from this area comprising large part of West Bank and its most important agricultural areas. In the ongoing peace negotiatons Israel’s regime demands that it can control this area indefinitely. Occupation of Jordan Valley by Israel costs Palestinian economy 3.4 billion US dollars a year according to World Bank.
Telling facts to musicians about the state they plan to appear in is not harassment, its educating them about facts and reminding them that music is not separate from politics. If Israeli Jews still dislike of Wagner’s music because the Nazis liked promoted it, then they can have no complaints if advocates of human rights and freedom for Palestinians have a similar message to those who would be ready to appear in an Apartheid State.
