Tag: Palestine

Over at FireDogLake.com, you’d better not post anything too critical of Israel.  Moderator and abuser of power Rayne will probably step in to disrupt the thread, issue threats, and order people to cease asking questions she doesn’t like.

Rayne’s latest round of abuse began when truthexcavator posted an entry on what turned out to be a five-year-old news article about an israeli soldier acquitted of murdering a 13-year-old Palestinian by filling her body with enough bullets to drop a charging rhinoceros.  Truth made the horrendous mistake of comparing what Israel is doing to palestinians to what the Nazis did to Jews during the Holocaust.

I was shocked when I heard about this story, but I am less shock of the verdict by the Israeli Army. I’m passed the point of getting mad at Israel. I don’t even think of it as a country anymore. I wish it was a country because the Jewish people deserve better. But it’s not a country, just as Nazi Germany wasn’t a country.

cross-posted from Sum of Change

Professor Marc Gopin is the Director at the Center for World Religions, Diplomacy, and Conflict Resolution (CRDC) with the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University. You can follow his work by visiting www.MarcGopin.com. He has focused a lot of his work around interfaith conflict resolution, which is why we asked to speak with him about the controversy over the proposed construction of the Cordoba Mosque in lower Manhattan. Right after we scheduled the interview, news broke that peace talks among Israel, Palestine, and the United States would resume in September. This is an issue that Professor Gopin has been deeply involved with for a very long time now, so we included that in our line of questioning.

Highlight clips with partial transcripts and the full 40-minute interview below the fold…

Crossposted at Daily Kos

THE WEEK IN EDITORIAL CARTOONS

This weekly diary takes a look at the past week’s important news stories from the perspective of our leading editorial cartoonists (including a few foreign ones) with analysis and commentary added in by me.

When evaluating a cartoon, ask yourself these questions:

1. Does a cartoon add to my existing knowledge base and help crystallize my thinking about the issue depicted?

2. Does the cartoonist have any obvious biases that distort reality?

3. Is the cartoonist reflecting prevailing public opinion or trying to shape it?

The answers will help determine the effectiveness of the cartoonist’s message.

:: ::

Cheney Spews by Pat Bagley, Salt Lake Tribune, Buy this cartoon

Yup, I speak for the site.

Greens: President Obama must press Israel to end East Jerusalem settlements

• Green Party urges divestment as Israeli outrages mount

WASHINGTON, DC — President Obama must put pressure on Israel immediately to stop the construction of settlements and displacement of Palestinians in East Jerusalem, Green Party leaders and candidates said today.

“President Obama should send Prime Minister Netanyahu a message: enough is enough. If Israel continues to violate Palestinian human rights, the US must cancel the $30 billion military aid package pledged to Israel for 2009-2018. The plan to build 1,600 housing units for Israeli Jews in East Jerusalem is the latest outrage. Although a rumored US abstension from a possible UN Security Council resolution against the settlements would be an improvement over its usual veto on Israel’s behalf, this would still be an act of moral cowardice,” said Sanda Everette, co-chair of the Green Party of the United States. (News story on the possible UN resolution: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/8591714.stm)

“The White House’s angry response to the East Jerusalem settlement announcement was a necessary first step, but it needs to be followed by concrete action, like support for a UN resolution against the settlements or actually withdrawing military aid. President Obama should show the kind of leadership that led Eisenhower to demand that Israel leave Sinai in 1955,” said Ms. Everette.

The Green Party has demanded that the US end military assistance to Israel, which has used such aid to displace Palestinians from their homes and farm lands, hold them in concentration camp conditions, maintain Bantustans in the style of apartheid-era South Africa, and launch illegal military assaults such as last year’s bloody invasion of Gaza.

“While the international community has been unable to deal with Israel’s violations after decades of UN resolutions, civil society has increasingly endorsed BDS (boycott, divestment, sanctions) as a powerful nonviolent strategy to pressure Israel into ending the Palestinian occupation and guaranteeing equality for all in Israel-Palestine. In 2005, the Green Party endorsed a BDS resolution (http://www.gp.org/press/pr_2005_11_28.shtml) comparable to the one passed by the Senate of the Associated Students of UC Berkeley in March,” said Derek Grigsby, Green candidate for State Representative in Michigan, District 7 ([email protected]).

The Berkeley students’ bill calls on the university to divest its assets from two General Electric and United Technologies for “materially and militarily supporting the Israeli government’s occupation of the Palestinian territories” and to advocate that the UC, with about $135 million invested in companies that profit from Israel’s illegal actions in the Occupied Territories (http://blogs.asuc.org/2010/03/18/announcements/sb-118-amended-passed).

Greens have urged the White House and Congress to reject the influence of AIPAC and to establish Middle East policy based on recognition that the rights of Palestinians must be equal to the rights of Israelis, on peaceful negotiation to resolve the conflict, and complete regional nuclear disarmament. Greens have noted the hypocrisy of applying sanctions against Iran for its alleged nuclear ambitions without insisting that Israel get rid of its nuclear weapons — especially since Israel, unlike Iran, has launched military attacks on other countries. (See “Arab Leaders Call for Middle East Free of Nuclear Weapons” Earth Times March 28, 2010, http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/316159,arab-leaders-call-for-middle-east-free-of-nuclear-weapons.html#ixzz0jUbcWzVi)

“We encourage Israeli and Palestinian leaders — and President Obama — to follow the lead of human rights activists like Dr. Mazin Qumsiyeh, organizer of the Wheels of Justice tour (http://justicewheels.org). In his embrace of nonviolent resistance as a tactic for justice, Dr. Qumsiyeh continues an often unrecognized history of Palestinian non-violent resistance and keeps alive the tradition of Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King. In response, the Israeli army has targeted him for arrest,” said Tony Affigne, Rhode Island Green and member of the party’s International Committee (http://www.gp.org/committees/intl).

Dr. Qumsiyeh (http://qumsiyeh.org), former associate professor of genetics at the Yale University School of Medicine and a member of the Green Party of Connecticut before he moved back to Palestine, wrote about his experiences in a New Haven Register op-ed published on March 9, 2010 (“Peaceful protest in Israel can lead to arrest,” http://www.nhregister.com/articles/2010/03/09/opinion/doc4b95ab40a3642160727871.txt).

“The US’s uncritical support for Israel and flow of military and financial aid endanger US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and threaten US security and global stability. Even Gen. Petraeus and VP Biden have admitted this,” said Rodger Jennings, Green candidate for US Congress in Illinois, District 12 (http://www.rodgerjennings.org). (See “The Petraeus briefing: Biden’s embarrassment is not the whole story,” Foreign Policy, March 13, 2010, http://mideast.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/03/14/the_petraeus_briefing_biden_s_embarrassment_is_not_the_whole_story). “The Gaza assault, which couldn’t have happened without US weapons, was a major turning point for people worldwide, including many American Jews. Like the misery that continues for Gazans, the memory of that horrific assault lingers.”

Greens note that, until recently, a campaign to silence critics of Israeli policies and actions helped maintain unilateral support for Israel, especially in the US, and that censorship of such criticism has sustained the conflict. Many US Greens expressed alarm when the Heinrich Boell Foundation (http://www.boell.de), a legally independent political foundation affiliated with the German Green Party, canceled February speaking engagements in Germany by Dr. Norman Finkelstein, an American Jewish scholar, child of Holocaust survivors, and author of books on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the politics of the Holocaust (http://www.normanfinkelstein.com).

“There is increasing recognition that the two-state solution is not viable. Israel-Palestine is already a de facto single state, mainly because of Israel’s illegal settlement policies, with over 500,000 Israeli Jews living in the Palestinian Occupied Territories. It’s time to consider the one-state solution — one homeland for both peoples — with a secular democracy that ensures full and equal rights regardless of religion or ethnicity, ” said Farheen Hakeem, co-chair of the Green Party of the United States. (See “Palestinians Increasingly Back 1-State,” Jerusalem Post, March 22, 2010, http://www.jpost.com/MiddleEast/Article.aspx?id=171559 and “Who’s Afraid of a One-State Solution?” by Dmitry Reider, Foreign Policy, March 31, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/03/31/whos_afraid_of_a_one_state_solution)

MORE INFORMATION

Green Party of the United States http://www.gp.org

“Ensure Israel arms curbs, say MPs”
BBC News, March 30, 2010
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/8594402.stm

“Open Letter to Berkeley Students on their Historic Israeli Divestment Bill”
By Naomi Klein, Common Dreams, March 31, 2010
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/03/31-9

“Palestinians increasingly back 1-state”
Jerusalem Post, March 22, 2010
http://www.jpost.com/MiddleEast/Article.aspx?id=171559

“US Can’t Afford Military Aid to Israel”
Josh Ruebner, The Huffington Post, February 26, 2010
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/josh-ruebner/us-cant-afford-military-a_b_478104.html

“Evidence of misuse of US weapons in Gaza”
Amnesty International, February 23, 2009
http://www.amnesty.org.au/news/comments/20277

US Campaign to End the Occupation
http://www.endtheoccupation.org

Green Pages: The official publication of record of the Green Party of the United States
Winter 2010 issue now online
http://gp.org/greenpages-blog

• Green Party Speakers Bureau: Greens available to speak on foreign policy http://www.gp.org/speakers/speakers-foreign-policy.php

Gotta love it that the corporate media is so unified in their outrage over the Iran situation.  

Where was their outrage when Israel massacred 1400 civilians in Gaza?  

This piece by Margaret Kimberley sums it up in a sad and devastating way:

In December 2008 Israel began what can only be described as a massacre in Gaza. More than 1,400 Gazans were killed so that Israel might inflict collective punishment on a civilian population, a direct violation of the Geneva Conventions. They were not even allowed to flee and save their lives, instead even hospitals and ambulances were targets in Israel’s efforts to kill as many Gazans as possible.

“The corporate media are quite selective when they decide who deserves our sympathy.”

Just as they prevented civilians from fleeing, the Israeli government did not permit the world’s news organizations to enter Gaza. The American media conducted incomplete coverage of the crisis without even pointing out that the Israeli government prevented them from doing their jobs. They didn’t exhort their readers and viewers to remind Israel that “the world is watching” them. There was no campaign to use Twitter as a tool to protest the killings and defend the Gazans right to live.

The United States Congress did not pass resolutions condemning the Israeli government. Neither Democrats nor Republicans exhorted then president elect Obama to speak out on behalf of the Gazans. Editorial pages did not criticize his silence and tacit approval of a truly horrific human rights violation.

In contrast, congress rushed to condemn the Iranian government, allegedly on behalf of the Iranian people. Their hypocrisy is breath taking. During the presidential campaign, Senator John McCain composed his only little ditty, “Bomb bomb bomb bomb Iran” in a horrendous disregard for human life. Now he attacks Obama for not speaking out against the government of Iran.

“The U.S. Congress’s hypocrisy is breath taking.”

Throughout 2006 and 2007 both houses of Congress passed resolutions which condemned Iran as a terrorist state and were meant to begin the process of authorizing war. Many of these same house members now claim to care, by a 405 to 1 vote margin, about the people they previously had been willing to kill.

It’s no accident why.  It’s not random.  The U.S. government has been funding covert operations within Iran to help destabilize Iran’s government.  

Congressional leaders agreed to a request from President Bush last year to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran aimed at destabilizing Iran’s leadership. This according to a new article by veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker magazine.

The operations were set out in a highly classified Presidential Finding signed by Bush which, by law, must be made known to Democratic and Republican House and Senate leaders and ranking members of the intelligence committees. The plan allowed up to $400 million in covert spending for activities ranging from supporting dissident groups to spying on Iran’s nuclear program.

According to Hersh, US Special Forces have been conducting cross-border operations from southern Iraq since last year. These have included seizing members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and taking them to Iraq for interrogation, and the pursuit of so-called “high-value targets” who may be captured or killed.

So this major media orgasm over the protests in Iran are the culmination of what the Covert Ops people hope is a successful overthrow of the Iranian government.  

That is why it’s getting so much coverage, and getting things like a 405 – 1 vote of approval by the United States Congress.

Anybody remember the way we tend to treat other protestors?

Anger Mounts After U.S. Troops Kill 13 Iraqi Protesters

Yeah, how dare they protest an illegal invasion of their country?  Fuckers.  

And do you think anyone in America read about this sort of thing?

“That’s the beauty of Gaza. You see a man walking, he doesn’t have to have a weapon, and you can shoot him,” one soldier told Danny Zamir, the head of the Rabin pre-military academy …

Where was all the grand twittering then?

And even though in Gaza entire villages were literally wiped off the map, our American “leaders” didn’t say a word.  Their support for the war criminals of Israel was unwavering, the reality of the crimes by the Mouthpiece Media kept hidden.

As Margaret Kimberley says:

The corporate media behave in a fashion that requires us to question everything they present to us as fact.

Ain’t that the truth.