Showing posts with label palestine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label palestine. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Palestine: Resistance or Terrorism?
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Text in the picture states:
"Ahmad of Palestine yearns to be Mahatma Gandhi. Dare we say that his yearning is in vain?
Gandhi wanted peace & freedom above all things Ahmad wants exactly the same thing.
The path to peace begins by understanding why Palestinians are not even free to yearn. Ahmad is dying to believe that such a path exists "
(Source: wwww.dyingtolive.com)
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In Gaza, Palestinians have once again been blamed for their own deaths.
The British made a similar argument 151 years ago when they killed thousands of Indian civilians -- 1,200 in a single village -- in response to the largest anti-colonial uprising of the 19th century.
If Israel truly desires peace with the Palestinians and safety for its citizens, it should look back to one of the greatest, and misunderstood, independence movements in history.
Most people believe India won its independence from the British exclusively through Gandhi's famous strategy of nonviolence.
They're wrong; armed resistance has deep roots in India. During the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, also known as the First War of Independence, Hindus and Muslims serving in the infantry for the British East Indian Company revolted against the British Empire, killing British officers and civilians alike.
While the majority of these cavalrymen were Hindu, Muslims also partook in the rebellion. These Muslim fighters called themselves "jihadis" and even "suicide ghazis."
The British quashed the revolt, but for the next 90 years Indian violence, even terrorism, in response continued.
In the early 20th century, Indian militants, frustrated with the Congress party -- the party of Gandhi and Nehru -- regularly resorted to acts of violence to overthrow the British. Official government reports note 210 "revolutionary outrages" and at least 1,000 "terrorists" involved in more than 101 attempted attacks between 1906 and 1917 in the state of Bengal alone (see Peter Heehs, "Terrorism in India During the Freedom Struggle," The Historian, 22 March 1993).
One young revolutionary, Bhagat Singh, later referred to as "Shaheed" Bhagat Singh, bombed the Legislative Assembly in 1929.
On the other hand, Palestinians are usually portrayed in Israel and the West as exclusively militants or terrorists.
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Yet Palestinians have a vibrant, albeit unsuccessful, history of nonviolent resistance.
In 1936, the Palestinians maintained a six-month general strike, the beginning of what became known as the Great Arab Revolt.
The British retaliated by declaring martial law, jailing and killing large numbers of Palestinians, and destroying numerous Palestinian homes. The revolt lasted for three years and was the largest and longest anti-colonial uprising in the British Empire.
Fifty years later, the first Palestinian intifada was largely nonviolent and included acts of mass civil disobedience like flying the Palestinian flag, organizing strikes and boycotting Israeli products.
In 1985, Mubarak Awad, a Palestinian-American psychologist from Jerusalem established a center for nonviolent resistance on the teachings of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. He was deported by Israel in 1988 (see Mubarak Awad, "Non-Violent Resistance: A Strategy for the Occupied Territories." Journal of Palestine Studies. Summer 1984).
A year later, Beit Sahour, a town near Bethlehem, engaged in a tax revolt against Israel, under the famous American slogan "No taxation without representation." The Israeli army responded by arresting over 80 Palestinians, cutting telephone lines, blocking food shipments into the town and confiscating millions of dollars in Palestinian goods.
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What about the current conflict?
All the public hears about are the small, makeshift rockets Palestinians fire into southern Israel. But farmers, fisherman and children had been nonviolently resisting the Israeli occupation for years.
Up until the Israeli invasion, Gaza fishermen had been d*isobeying Israeli orders by fishing in their waters* -- not unlike Gandhi when he urged Indians to march to the sea to collect their own salt against British orders.
In response, the British beat and imprisoned Gandhi's marchers. Likewise, the Israeli navy repeatedly forced Palestinian fisherman to strip to their underwear and swim to Israeli navy ships, where they are detained and their boats confiscated.
Since 2002, Palestinian men, women and children have been sitting in front of Israeli bulldozers flattening their olive groves to construct a wall deep into the West Bank.
The Israeli army has responded to these peaceful protestors with tear gas, beatings, arrests and even death.
The pattern occurred time and again: nonviolent Palestinian resistance would be crushed by Israeli force and ignored by the West.
With nothing to show for their efforts, is it any surprise that the Palestinian peaceful protest movement founders?
Violence has always been a historical response to colonialism and repression, in conflicts from India to Algeria to South Africa.
That doesn't make attacks on civilians right -- or strategically effective, for that matter.
In fact, as we all know, the Indian revolt against the British Empire only finally succeeded when Gandhi convinced his countrymen to resist peacefully.
Extremist factions, like those during the Indian independence movement, only gain strength and popularity when Israel flattens even the most harmless dissent.
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Radhika Sainath is a civil rights attorney and an editor of Peace Under Fire: Israel/Palestine and the International Solidarity Movement. She lived in the West Bank from October 2002-December 2003.
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The questions raised by Radhika in this fascinating comparison are very valid. So let's consider:
(a) Do you think that Palestinian resistance against Israeli occupation should continue to be labeled terrorism or freedom fighting?
(b) Do you think that Israel's continued disproportional response will breed more violence?
(c) Do you think that the collective punishment inflicted upon Gaza - (inc. 18 months of seige culminating in the recent war) - is justified when Hamas was their democratically elected choice?
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Monday, January 26, 2009
Judaism rejects Zionism
"We seek the return of all Palestinian refugees to their rightful land.
We seek to live in the land of Palestine as anti Zionist Jews.
To reside as loyal and peaceful Palestinian citizens, in peace and harmony with our Muslim Brethren.
Just as our ancestors lived in Palestine for centuries before the usurpations of this tragic century."
Jews united against Zionism: http://www.nkusa.org/AboutUs/Palestine/support.cfm
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Consider the following:
One of the greatest myths created by the zionist movement is the claim that zionism is a fulfillment of the historical aspiration of every jew to return to Palestine. By the year 250 B.C., Alexandria, Egypt contained the largest number of jews in the world; most had fled from Palestine.
These Palestinian Jews would never return to Jerusalem.
As Judaism spread due to vigorous proselytizing, Jewish communities, which emerged in Yemen, India, China, Italy and France, never considered migrating to Jerusalem or Palestine.
Even during the periods of extreme persecution, such as under the Romans at various times, and under the Spaniards after the demise of Islamic Rule in the Iberian Peninsula, there was never a movement to migrate to Palestine.
The Jews who fled the Spanish Inquisition went to other parts of Europe, to North Africa, and to other regions of the Islamic world.
The central idea of Zionism, an organized worldwide Jewish migration to Palestine, has no precedence in Jewish history.
Zionist occupation of Palestine has no moral, historical or religious basis.
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The question here is:
Do you think that Zionism is racist?
Why do you think religious Rabbis are protesting against Zionism?
Do you think that Zionism breeds violence?
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Background reading: http://www.nkusa.org/AboutUs/Zionism/index.cfm
Background Video: CBS report: Is Peace out of reach? (25/1/2009)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7XtT91yO6g
Has peace in the Middle East become nothing more than a pipe dream? As Bob Simon reports, a growing number of Israelis and Palestinians feel that a two-state solution is no longer possible.
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Is Peace out of Reach?
Watch CBS Videos Online
Has peace in the Middle East become nothing more than a pipe dream? As Bob Simon reports, a growing number of Israelis and Palestinians feel that a two-state solution is no longer possible.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Israel: Stop Crying Wolf
By Rula Zein-Iddin
http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-200507
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It is clear that your oppression
Consistently breeds repression
And such blatant suppression
Only provokes more aggression
This constant brutality
Induces fatality
Why is all this mutilation,
Greeted with jubilation?
Distasteful salivation
At destroying a whole nation
How can you rejoice
Giving racism a voice?
Realize that what you once beseeched
Is about to get you impeached
Tell me, how did all this hate spawn?
Will you forever only act out with brawn?
Knowing that children are being used as a pawn
When will you stop rendering them forlorn?
Will the suffering awaken a conscience asleep?
Your silence speaks volumes, not even a peep
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Saturday, January 24, 2009
Who am I?
Today I was asked on http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-199704 who I 'represent'.
Well here is my answer:
Who am I?
I am the voice of every innocent child that was cruelly murdered.
Of every orphaned child who no longer has a mother.
Of every mutilated child whose limbs were amputated by Israeli's DIME weapons.
Of every scarred child still burning from the Phosphorous bombs dropped on them
Of every disturbed child who wakes up petrified because they can still hear the F16's about to bomb them.
Of every wretched child whose spirit has been broken.
I, am your worst nightmare. For I am here to shatter the prejudice, racism & hatred that you perceive is reality.
Well here is my answer:
Who am I?
I am the voice of every innocent child that was cruelly murdered.
Of every orphaned child who no longer has a mother.
Of every mutilated child whose limbs were amputated by Israeli's DIME weapons.
Of every scarred child still burning from the Phosphorous bombs dropped on them
Of every disturbed child who wakes up petrified because they can still hear the F16's about to bomb them.
Of every wretched child whose spirit has been broken.
I, am your worst nightmare. For I am here to shatter the prejudice, racism & hatred that you perceive is reality.
Friday, January 23, 2009
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Israel's Right to "Self -Defense"
We are by now familiar with the over-abused "defense" card. It is continually used to explain away the mass murder of civilians and to support the pathetic "we had no choice" argument.
It says that Hamas rhetoric and their ineffectual tin pot rockets are so awful that it's ok to deliberately kill children.
If you want more offensive rhetoric try the "better Zip-it-up" Livni saying "there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza" or anything out of the mouth of aussie Mark Regev from the moment he wakes to the second he sleeps.
Why more offensive? Because Israel not only claims the moral high ground, they also claim sole and uncontested ownership of it!
They assume, quite mistakenly, that they are automatically right because they are automatically the victims.
And it's always self defense against terrorists; even as they scrawl hate graffiti on the wrecked walls of homes & mosques they've destroyed for no other reason than a Palestinian lived or worshiped there.
Except this loathsome theory is the product of twisted minds in Tel Aviv, in Jerusalem, and inside IDF tanks.
Israel's words bear no relation at all to it's deeds, and its constant pontificating on it's own moral superiority is a worthless exercise in emotional self-delusion as the Gaza Genocide has proven.
The injustice of Israel's actions over 61 years just leaps out of the page, only to be slammed shut by a residue of international guilt, perverted international political structures, good old fashioned religious bigotry, and by Israel officially & publicly abandoning the last remnants of it's humanity.
Israeli "Defense" Forces are Mass Murderers of women & children. Your politicians are War Criminals. Plain and simple.
It's there for all to see, in front of your eyes, unless you're Mark Regev and can call every broken child in Gaza a politically motivated liar.
Zionist Quotes
One more thing on the holier than thou Zionist mannifesto:
"We must expel Arabs and take their places."
David Ben Gurion, 1937, Ben Gurion and the Palestine Arabs, Oxford University Press, 1985.
"There is no such thing as a Palestinian people... It is not as if we came and threw them out and took their country. They didn't exist."
Golda Meir, The Sunday Times, 15 June, 1969.
"[Israel will] create in the course of the next 10 or 20 years conditions which would attract natural and voluntary migration of the refugees from the Gaza Strip and the west Bank to Jordan. To achieve this we have to come to agreement with King Hussein and not with Yasser Arafat."
Yitzhak Rabin (Quoted in David Shipler in the New York Times, 04/04/1983)
If you want more offensive rhetoric try the "better Zip-it-up" Livni saying "there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza" or anything out of the mouth of aussie Mark Regev from the moment he wakes to the second he sleeps.
"The Partition of Palestine is illegal. It will never be recognized .... Jerusalem was and will for ever be our capital. Eretz Israel will be restored to the people of Israel. All of it. And for Ever."
Menachem Begin, the day after the U.N. vote to partition Palestine.
"The past leaders of our movement left us a clear message to keep Eretz Israel from the Sea to the River Jordan for future generations, for the mass aliya, and for the Jewish people, all of whom will be gathered into this country."
Yitzhak Shamir November 1990. Jerusalem Domestic Radio Service
"The settlement of the Land of Israel is the essence of Zionism. Without settlement, we will not fulfill Zionism. It's that simple."
Yitzhak Shamir, Maariv, 02/21/1997.
"Israel should have exploited the repression of the demonstrations in China, when world attention focused on that country, to carry out mass expulsions among the Arabs of the territories."
Benyamin Netanyahu, Hotam, November 24, 1989
"It is the duty of Israeli leaders to explain to public opinion, clearly and courageously, a certain number of facts that are forgotten with time. The first of these is that there is no Zionism, colonialization, or Jewish State without the eviction of the Arabs and the expropriation of their lands."
Ariel Sharon, Agence France Presse, November 15, 1998
"Everybody has to move, run and grab as many hilltops as they can to enlarge the settlements because everything we take now will stay ours...Everything we don't grab will go to them."
Ariel Sharon, Agence France Presse, Nov. 15, 1998.
So you tell me - who is spreading the hatred now?
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Friday, January 9, 2009
The Fundamental Rights of Humanity
by ALBERT SCHWEITZER
The fundamental rights of Humanity are:
First: The right of habitation;
Second : The right to move freely;
Third: The right to the soil and subsoil, and to the use of it;
Fourth: The right of freedom of labor and of exchange;
Fifth: The right to justice;
Sixth: The right to live within a natural national organization; and
Seventh: The right to education.
The fundamental rights of Humanity are:
First: The right of habitation;
Second : The right to move freely;
Third: The right to the soil and subsoil, and to the use of it;
Fourth: The right of freedom of labor and of exchange;
Fifth: The right to justice;
Sixth: The right to live within a natural national organization; and
Seventh: The right to education.
Thursday, January 8, 2009
7 Myths about Gaza
by Daoud Kuttab - Jordan Times www.jordantimes.com/index.php
It is known that truth is the first casualty in wars. The current war on Gaza is no different. Below is a list of myths perpetuated by Israel and repeated ad nauseam by may in the media.
Myth No. 1: Israel had no alternative.
Ever since starting the air campaign, the Israelis have been stating that they had no choice but to carry out this invasion. The acting Israeli prime minister repeated this myth, saying that Israel had no alternative but to begin the ground war on Gaza Strip.
The truth is that Israel had a clear alternative. The Islamic Hamas movement and the various Palestinian factions in Gaza offered to extend the truce in December if the Israelis agreed to lift the massive blockade and siege on Gaza. Israel would have had an even easier alternative: agree to talk to Hamas and work out a true and lasting ceasefire, but it chose to refuse to legitimise the rulers of Gaza, helped by the so-called global war on terror that Israel’s main ally, the Bush administration, has been carrying on.
Myth No. 2: Hamas rockets were targeting Israeli civilians without provocation.
Every Israeli spokesman repeats this myth. International leaders and media anchors repeatedly ask how could any country tolerate its citizens being attacked without provocation, as was happening to the citizens of south Israel.
The truth is that Palestinians and Israelis have been at war since 1948, when nearly 500 Palestinian villages were erased and its residents became refugees (the refugees constitute more than 50 per cent of the population of Gaza). The UN resolved that the refugees should be allowed to return and the Arab countries have offered a peace agreement that includes a resolution of the refugee problem. Furthermore, Israel occupied Gaza in 1967 and has not (according to international standards) ended its occupation of Gaza. As stated above, Hamas has offered short- and long-term truce to Israel, but the latter rejected these offers.
Myth No. 3: Israel is acting in self-defence.
This myth has been repeated so many times that the naïve rotating head of the European Union initially stated that Israel’s ground invasion is a defensive act (he later recanted). Emerging from a Security Council meeting that failed to stop the Israeli ground attack, the United States’ deputy chief at the UN stated that the UN Charter allows member countries to defend themselves and that “Israel’s right to defend itself is not negotiable”.
The truth is that the Israeli offensive against a population still legally under its occupation is anything but defensive. Countries do have a right to defend themselves, but they do not have the right to occupy and continue to occupy. The same charter that the deputy US official was quoting also states in its preamble: “We the peoples of the United Nations determine to: save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind” and “to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small”.
Myth No. 4. Israel is only targeting Hamas fighters not Palestinians.
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livini has been repeating that the Israeli army is targeting only what she called Hamas terrorists and that her country has no fight with the Palestinian people.
The truth is that by shelling the densely populated Gaza Strip (1.5 million living in a 350-square-kilometre area) the Israelis hit both Hamas combatants and civilians. One of the best proofs of this is the fact that about one-third of the casualties in the first week alone were children - hardly members of Hamas.
International law is very clear about the responsibility of warring parties to limit deaths of civilians. The Israelis totally destroying a four-storey building in which a Hamas leader and his wives and children living with F16 planes is a clear example of lack of desire to distinguish between civilians and fighters.
Myth No. 5. Israel ended its occupation of Gaza in 2006.
Part of the well-weaved Israeli narrative is that Palestinians are not really interested in land-for-peace because they have continued to attack Israel after the Israelis ended the occupation of the strip in 2006.
Again the truth is different. The UN Security Council Resolution 242, which called the occupation of Gaza “inadmissible”, called on Israel to withdraw from occupied territories, to acknowledge the sovereignty and territorial integrity and political independence of every state in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognised boundaries, and affirmed the need to “achieve a just settlement to the [Palestinian] refugee problem”. By all standards, and as agreed by neutral international observers, the occupation of Gaza that started in 1967 continues with all the responsibility that befalls on the Israeli occupying authorities.
Myth No. 6. Hamas is the military arm of Iran.
As part of justifying the attacks on Gaza, Israel and its apologists paint a much larger regional picture, with Hamas and Hizbollah as the military arm of Iran and the Iranian Islamic revolution.
The truth is that whereas as a Shiite movement, Hizbollah might have natural relations with Shiite Iran, Hamas is a Sunni Islamic movement and in general Sunnis look down on Shiites and reject them theologically. True, Hamas leaders have visited Iran, but it is a long shot to say that they are the military arm of Iran.
Myth No. 7 Hamas uses the Palestinian population as human shields.
The difficulties that Israel has had in locating and destroying Hamas leaders has led to this myth. The Israeli PR machine uses quotes made by Hamas leaders that the Palestinian population is not afraid of death as proof that they are using Palestinians as human shields.
The truth is that the international law that forbids the use of human shields is referring to militants who use captured enemy civilians as hostages to prevent an attack. There is no evidence that Hamas is forcing its own population to be where it is. In fact, the irony is that Palestinian civilians have nowhere to go within the Gaza Strip even if they wanted to leave.
It is known that truth is the first casualty in wars. The current war on Gaza is no different. Below is a list of myths perpetuated by Israel and repeated ad nauseam by may in the media.
Myth No. 1: Israel had no alternative.
Ever since starting the air campaign, the Israelis have been stating that they had no choice but to carry out this invasion. The acting Israeli prime minister repeated this myth, saying that Israel had no alternative but to begin the ground war on Gaza Strip.
The truth is that Israel had a clear alternative. The Islamic Hamas movement and the various Palestinian factions in Gaza offered to extend the truce in December if the Israelis agreed to lift the massive blockade and siege on Gaza. Israel would have had an even easier alternative: agree to talk to Hamas and work out a true and lasting ceasefire, but it chose to refuse to legitimise the rulers of Gaza, helped by the so-called global war on terror that Israel’s main ally, the Bush administration, has been carrying on.
Myth No. 2: Hamas rockets were targeting Israeli civilians without provocation.
Every Israeli spokesman repeats this myth. International leaders and media anchors repeatedly ask how could any country tolerate its citizens being attacked without provocation, as was happening to the citizens of south Israel.
The truth is that Palestinians and Israelis have been at war since 1948, when nearly 500 Palestinian villages were erased and its residents became refugees (the refugees constitute more than 50 per cent of the population of Gaza). The UN resolved that the refugees should be allowed to return and the Arab countries have offered a peace agreement that includes a resolution of the refugee problem. Furthermore, Israel occupied Gaza in 1967 and has not (according to international standards) ended its occupation of Gaza. As stated above, Hamas has offered short- and long-term truce to Israel, but the latter rejected these offers.
Myth No. 3: Israel is acting in self-defence.
This myth has been repeated so many times that the naïve rotating head of the European Union initially stated that Israel’s ground invasion is a defensive act (he later recanted). Emerging from a Security Council meeting that failed to stop the Israeli ground attack, the United States’ deputy chief at the UN stated that the UN Charter allows member countries to defend themselves and that “Israel’s right to defend itself is not negotiable”.
The truth is that the Israeli offensive against a population still legally under its occupation is anything but defensive. Countries do have a right to defend themselves, but they do not have the right to occupy and continue to occupy. The same charter that the deputy US official was quoting also states in its preamble: “We the peoples of the United Nations determine to: save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind” and “to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small”.
Myth No. 4. Israel is only targeting Hamas fighters not Palestinians.
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livini has been repeating that the Israeli army is targeting only what she called Hamas terrorists and that her country has no fight with the Palestinian people.
The truth is that by shelling the densely populated Gaza Strip (1.5 million living in a 350-square-kilometre area) the Israelis hit both Hamas combatants and civilians. One of the best proofs of this is the fact that about one-third of the casualties in the first week alone were children - hardly members of Hamas.
International law is very clear about the responsibility of warring parties to limit deaths of civilians. The Israelis totally destroying a four-storey building in which a Hamas leader and his wives and children living with F16 planes is a clear example of lack of desire to distinguish between civilians and fighters.
Myth No. 5. Israel ended its occupation of Gaza in 2006.
Part of the well-weaved Israeli narrative is that Palestinians are not really interested in land-for-peace because they have continued to attack Israel after the Israelis ended the occupation of the strip in 2006.
Again the truth is different. The UN Security Council Resolution 242, which called the occupation of Gaza “inadmissible”, called on Israel to withdraw from occupied territories, to acknowledge the sovereignty and territorial integrity and political independence of every state in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognised boundaries, and affirmed the need to “achieve a just settlement to the [Palestinian] refugee problem”. By all standards, and as agreed by neutral international observers, the occupation of Gaza that started in 1967 continues with all the responsibility that befalls on the Israeli occupying authorities.
Myth No. 6. Hamas is the military arm of Iran.
As part of justifying the attacks on Gaza, Israel and its apologists paint a much larger regional picture, with Hamas and Hizbollah as the military arm of Iran and the Iranian Islamic revolution.
The truth is that whereas as a Shiite movement, Hizbollah might have natural relations with Shiite Iran, Hamas is a Sunni Islamic movement and in general Sunnis look down on Shiites and reject them theologically. True, Hamas leaders have visited Iran, but it is a long shot to say that they are the military arm of Iran.
Myth No. 7 Hamas uses the Palestinian population as human shields.
The difficulties that Israel has had in locating and destroying Hamas leaders has led to this myth. The Israeli PR machine uses quotes made by Hamas leaders that the Palestinian population is not afraid of death as proof that they are using Palestinians as human shields.
The truth is that the international law that forbids the use of human shields is referring to militants who use captured enemy civilians as hostages to prevent an attack. There is no evidence that Hamas is forcing its own population to be where it is. In fact, the irony is that Palestinian civilians have nowhere to go within the Gaza Strip even if they wanted to leave.
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