Israel's fanaticism is becoming more and more public. If you are not Jewish, you won't have any cultural rights to enjoy what is supposed to be your right by birth. Now, some groups are trying to cleanse Jerusalem, the capital of the three major sects, from anything non-Jewish, and they fought Christmas, to the bone. Christmas, is the season of giving and charity.
This is the link
MFL
PS: Merry Christmas Jerusalem
Friday, December 25, 2009
Friday, December 18, 2009
Hmmm... if that is not Fanaticism, then what is?
Israel accuses its surroundings of being fanatics, nevertheless, this group of people are considered then what? Assigning supremecy to the Torah over the civil republic can be just a little bit insane. I am glad Haaretz is publishing the stories of those fundementalists. Article is taken from here.
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Crazy Israeli police: Police shoot U.S. student's laptop upon entry to Israel
Well the article is taken from here, I think she is lucky because Palestinians are usually taken aside, tortured to admit they are terrorists, then imprisoned.
What makes the story funny is the comments of Zionists saying that range from "an honor to visit Israel" to "No to Peace Makers" bla bla bla
Zionism, I swear it, is a disease that needs to be cured.
What makes the story funny is the comments of Zionists saying that range from "an honor to visit Israel" to "No to Peace Makers" bla bla bla
Zionism, I swear it, is a disease that needs to be cured.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Tony Cliff: Why socialists must support gays (1978)
Article Taken from here, written in 1978.
IN CLASS-INFESTED society there is oppressor and oppressed in all walks of life. Employer oppresses employee; man oppresses woman; white oppresses black; old oppresses young; heterosexual oppresses homosexual.
The true socialist is able to overcome all these divisions. An engineering worker who can only identify with other engineering workers may be a good trade unionist but he has not proved himself to be a socialist. A socialist has to be able to identify with the struggles of all oppressed groups.
We are all the children of capitalism, so we tend to conceive of the future - even the socialist future - in an ordered and hierarchical way.
It is as though the socialist revolution will be led by the Father of the Chapel in the print union, the NGA working on Fleet Street. Second in command will be an AUEW Convenor Section 1 from the toolroom in a big car factory. The lieutenants of the revolution will all be forty-year-old white male shop stewards.
If there is enough space then we'll allow blacks and women and gays to take part - providing they stand quietly at the back!
A lot of socialists still have difficulty believing that gays will be taking part in the revolution at all.
On the contrary we should took forward now to the first leader of the London workers' council being a 19-year-old black gay woman!
The system rules by dividing us. This means there is no natural way by which one oppressed group identifies with another. The most racist extremists in the Southern States of America are the poor whites - not the rich whites.
In the same way blacks do not automatically support women and women do not automatically support blacks. Gays will not automatically support other oppressed groups.
The Nazis sent thousands of gays to concentration camps. In Chile gays were castrated and left bleeding on the street.
But it is not true that, even given these facts, gays automatically become anti-fascist.
Tens of thousands of gays supported Hitler. Many were in the Brownshirts. After Hitler took power he turned on the gay support and slaughtered them in the Night of the Long Knives.
How can we explain gays joining the Nazis?
If you are an oppressed gay putting on a Nazi leather jacket and leather boots gives you for the first time a sense of power. It makes it easy to put down Jews, women and anyone else.
For any oppressed group to fight back there is need for hope.
If you are on the way down you feel despair. You look for a victim to kick.
If you are on the way up you look for a back to pat.
That's why only by building a socialist movement can you unite workers with oppressed blacks, women and gays.
And that's why it is so important for gays to organise for demonstrations like at Brick Lane and to feel able to identify themselves proudly as gays and - where possible - as revolutionary socialist gays.
Karl Marx wrote that capitalism unites the forces of opposition. But it also divides us. We have to struggle consciously for that unity.
We are one - all of us together - but only when we fight together.
IN CLASS-INFESTED society there is oppressor and oppressed in all walks of life. Employer oppresses employee; man oppresses woman; white oppresses black; old oppresses young; heterosexual oppresses homosexual.
The true socialist is able to overcome all these divisions. An engineering worker who can only identify with other engineering workers may be a good trade unionist but he has not proved himself to be a socialist. A socialist has to be able to identify with the struggles of all oppressed groups.
We are all the children of capitalism, so we tend to conceive of the future - even the socialist future - in an ordered and hierarchical way.
It is as though the socialist revolution will be led by the Father of the Chapel in the print union, the NGA working on Fleet Street. Second in command will be an AUEW Convenor Section 1 from the toolroom in a big car factory. The lieutenants of the revolution will all be forty-year-old white male shop stewards.
If there is enough space then we'll allow blacks and women and gays to take part - providing they stand quietly at the back!
A lot of socialists still have difficulty believing that gays will be taking part in the revolution at all.
On the contrary we should took forward now to the first leader of the London workers' council being a 19-year-old black gay woman!
The system rules by dividing us. This means there is no natural way by which one oppressed group identifies with another. The most racist extremists in the Southern States of America are the poor whites - not the rich whites.
In the same way blacks do not automatically support women and women do not automatically support blacks. Gays will not automatically support other oppressed groups.
The Nazis sent thousands of gays to concentration camps. In Chile gays were castrated and left bleeding on the street.
But it is not true that, even given these facts, gays automatically become anti-fascist.
Tens of thousands of gays supported Hitler. Many were in the Brownshirts. After Hitler took power he turned on the gay support and slaughtered them in the Night of the Long Knives.
How can we explain gays joining the Nazis?
If you are an oppressed gay putting on a Nazi leather jacket and leather boots gives you for the first time a sense of power. It makes it easy to put down Jews, women and anyone else.
For any oppressed group to fight back there is need for hope.
If you are on the way down you feel despair. You look for a victim to kick.
If you are on the way up you look for a back to pat.
That's why only by building a socialist movement can you unite workers with oppressed blacks, women and gays.
And that's why it is so important for gays to organise for demonstrations like at Brick Lane and to feel able to identify themselves proudly as gays and - where possible - as revolutionary socialist gays.
Karl Marx wrote that capitalism unites the forces of opposition. But it also divides us. We have to struggle consciously for that unity.
We are one - all of us together - but only when we fight together.
Arrest Warrant for Levni
Damn it, next time we will get that war criminal: article taken from here This is what I was talking about earlier.
A British court issued an arrest warrant for former Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni on war crimes charges but withdrew it on finding she had cancelled a planned trip to Britain, the Guardian newspaper reported.
Westminster magistrates court issued the warrant at the request of lawyers acting for Palestinian victims of fighting in Gaza earlier this year, the paper said in an article published online on Monday.
The warrant was later dropped after it was realized that Livni -- who had been due to address a meeting in London last weekend -- was not in Britain.
Human rights groups and UN investigators accuse Israel of war crimes in the Gaza Strip during a 22-day offensive against Hamas-led Islamist militants in which Palestinians say more than 900 civilians died -- a figure Israel disputes.
Livni, who is head of the opposition Kadima Party, played a key role in launching the offensive.
The Foreign Office said it was "looking urgently at the implications of this case."
"The UK is determined to do all it can to promote peace in the Middle East and to be a strategic partner of Israel," a spokeswoman said. "To do this, Israel's leaders need to be able to come to the UK for talks with the British government."
The justice ministry said it would not comment on individual cases and the interior ministry also declined to comment.
In September pro-Palestinian groups failed to persuade a London court to issue an arrest warrant for Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, whom they also accuse of war crimes.
The court said Barak, who attended the ruling Labour party's annual conference and met Prime Minister Gordon Brown, had diplomatic immunity.
(Reporting by Kylie MacLellan and Peter Griffiths, editing by Tim Pearce)
A British court issued an arrest warrant for former Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni on war crimes charges but withdrew it on finding she had cancelled a planned trip to Britain, the Guardian newspaper reported.
Westminster magistrates court issued the warrant at the request of lawyers acting for Palestinian victims of fighting in Gaza earlier this year, the paper said in an article published online on Monday.
The warrant was later dropped after it was realized that Livni -- who had been due to address a meeting in London last weekend -- was not in Britain.
Human rights groups and UN investigators accuse Israel of war crimes in the Gaza Strip during a 22-day offensive against Hamas-led Islamist militants in which Palestinians say more than 900 civilians died -- a figure Israel disputes.
Livni, who is head of the opposition Kadima Party, played a key role in launching the offensive.
The Foreign Office said it was "looking urgently at the implications of this case."
"The UK is determined to do all it can to promote peace in the Middle East and to be a strategic partner of Israel," a spokeswoman said. "To do this, Israel's leaders need to be able to come to the UK for talks with the British government."
The justice ministry said it would not comment on individual cases and the interior ministry also declined to comment.
In September pro-Palestinian groups failed to persuade a London court to issue an arrest warrant for Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, whom they also accuse of war crimes.
The court said Barak, who attended the ruling Labour party's annual conference and met Prime Minister Gordon Brown, had diplomatic immunity.
(Reporting by Kylie MacLellan and Peter Griffiths, editing by Tim Pearce)
Monday, December 14, 2009
The Step By Step Return of the "Palestinian"
Palestine may have been "temprarily" obliterated a by racist colonial movement that dates back to the 19th century, but the Palestinians needed at least 30 years to bring back the case of Palestine back.
One can never forget a lunatic speech delivered by Ben Gurion that traces the sufferings of the Jews to 2500 years ago. Ilian Pappe quotes him by saying: " We will establish a Christian State in Lebanon. We will break Transjordan, bomb Amman and destroy its army, and then Syria falls, an of Egupt will still continue to fight – we will bombard Port Said, Alexandria, and Cairo. This will be in revenge for what they (the Egyptians, the Aramis, and Assyrians) did to our forefathers during Biblical Times). " (I. Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of the Palestine, 144).
Having heard such a statement, it is no surprise that Israel is a perverted state, carved out by a minority called Zionism that doesn't even represent the majority of the Jews in the world. As a matter of fact, Zionism was and still the greatest bad news for Jews across the world because it calls for their isolation and importing them to Israel under a crazier banner: "Unifying the Diaspora". Some Christian fanatics support Zionism based on the biblical logic of "Israel was occupied for 2000 years by Arabs." They never read on how Israel of 1948 is different from the Kingdom of Israel 2000 years ago. They never read how Israel ethnically cleansed anyone who was not a Jew: Christian or Muslim Palestinian. They never bother to know how there was an entity called Palestinian Jews who were subjected to harassments by Zionism and threats.
Palestine by 1948 was omitted, and the logic of Israel was: "The Palestinians freely left their lands hence they have no right to return." Israel omits to mention Plan D which aimed way before the riots of 1947, after the partition with the Jews themselves being a minority in the Jewish half of Palestine, to clean the Palestinians out of their historical homelands. Yosif Weitz was not a manager of a luxury pub, rather the Transfer Committee of the Palestinians out of Palestine, ie , a genocidal committee since international law regards transferring populations as "an act of genocide."
Whenever someone mentioned Palestine since 1948, Israel and its lobbies attack the person as anti-Semite and brings back the memories of the Holocaust. Currently, in the Arab World, there is no longer the WWII Holocaust, it is the Gaza War of 2009. This became as the new Holocaust in the heads of every person who believes in Human Rights. For Gaza, it has been suffering from a blockade worse than that inflicted on Cuba, and living conditions couldn't have been more horrible as Israel remains to break international law and expand fake settlements on Gaza, West Bank, and attempt to take over East Jerusalem.
By 1951, things couldn't have been worse. The creator of the Universal Declaration of the Human Rights, Eleanor Roosevelt, visited Israel. When humanitarian activists were cheerful of her visit, and hoped she would check out the refugees in Gaza and the West Bank then, she simply said that she is only visiting some friends in Israel. That, sadly, puts the United States as a 'defender' of human rights in the bottom.
Most of the Palestinian figureheads were originally from the Palestinian Middle Class. And for them, life was horrible. Edward Said, in the opening of the book Joe Sacco's Palestine, argued how by the 1960s, the term Palestine or Palestinian was barred out from usage. Several academics couldn't defend, or revive what happened in Palestine 1948 without risking their own jobs. This goes with Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir's most racist statement on the behalf of the Palestinians: "Palestinians? What Palestinians? There was never a Palestine?". Apparently she never read President Woodrow Wilson's King-Crane Commission which proved that 92% of the people were Muslims and Christians, while only 8% are Jews.
Ironically, peaceful demands were never the solution. With the Arab defeat of 1967, the Palestinians found themselves in a position that only they should fight for their lands. This of course was accompanied with Arab treason. In 1948, when the Arab armies entered to protect the Palestinians, Egypt, Jordan, and Iraq were still under the British Mandate. In 1967, they themselves sponsored the PLO but refused to assist them militarily, except in 1968's Battle of Dignity where Jordan along with the PLO blocked Israel's invasion.
Israel's plans of denying the existence of the Palestinians was part of the plan. There were several Palestinian authors, such as Sayyegh, and Hadawi, writing. It was Edward Said's Orientalism that shocked the foundation of the Zionist claims. Orientalism shed light on the treatment of Palestinians. This went hand in hand with the PLO bulldozing their way through military operations to the "Observant Status" in the UN. This was much to the disgust of Israel. When the Palestinians received such a status, it meant the Palestinians, Christians, Muslims, (and even Jewish), were recognized as an official nation. This nation, is dispersed, due to something, what was it? Oh yes, Israel's attempt to delete the existence of the Palestinians.
Till this day, Palestinians wonder: "How can the Zionists do to us what the Nazis did to them?" Rereading Ben Gurion's crazy statement in the beginning of the article answers this question: they are racists, and they do not care about human rights.
Israel's denial of Palestine/Palestinians falls in the category of blocking the return of the Palestinians. UN resolution 194 insists that every Palestinian has the right to return home, or at least compensated. The descendants of the Palestinians also have the right for such a claim. Some would argue that currently this is insane, bringing back Palestinians who were dispersed in 1948 and 1967 is out of reach. This is a false claim. Israel argued that it is bringing a state that existed 2500 years ago. If someone reads Shlomo Sands, most of these Jews that are "returning" to Palestine, are not originally part of the 2000 year old diasporas. They are people who converted into Judaism as a religious sect in Europe, Africa, or Europe. Nevertheless, the barring out of refugees returning to Palestine was the main goal of the Arab-Israeli peace process with Egypt and followed later by Jordan. Neither the Egyptians nor the Jordanians (whose population is beyond 80% composed of Palestinian refugees) are satisfied with the peace treaties, with the on-going atrocities of civilians in Israel and beyond it.
Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982 probably opened the gateways for knowing the Israeli army for the truth it is: a racist army. Israel, amidst mass media, invaded Lebanon. Its atrocities were covered by several journalists, and these same journalists complained that Israel tried to force them to write "its' version" of the war. With Sabra-Chatila massacres taking place, Israel, as a beacon of democracy in the image of the West, fell. This of course was a concrete reference on Israeli behavior. People wondered who was the real democracy: Israel that focuses on Judaism as an ethnicity trait, or Lebanon: the homeland of 18 sects co-existing with each other till the civil war broke out.
Currently, more and more scandals are published on Israel, past or present. The world's shrinkage through the mass communication and media revolutions means that if Israel slaps a Palestinian in its ground, the whole world knows. Israel may have held the upper hand in the media, but the other side of the coin is finding more and more space to highlight the reality of the region, and Israel's racist atrocities.
This was caused by the neo-Israeli historians who found the guts to speak. Benny Morris, a hard core Zionist, was condemned by different Israeli spheres for being a traitor, because he simply brought into light what happened in 1948. ILan Pappe had to flee Israel out of safety because he also accused Israel of ethnically cleansing the Palestinians.
The biggest example was probably the Israeli offensive on Lebanon 3 years ago. Israel was bombarding also the Palestinians as well. The reactions of Israeli offensive to Lebanon was highly condemned by mass demonstrations (part of the reason is the large Lebanese diaspora across the world), while the Palestinians were covered second. This lies in the fact that not everyday Israel bombed Lebanon, while the repetition news of Israel torturing Palestinians is new. The suicide bombings of some Palestinians across the 1990s gave Israel the pretext to behave under the banner of fighting terrorism. 9/11 also gave it the flexibilities to commit atrocities and massacres on the remaining Palestinians. This is changing.
With the offensive on Gaza 2009, several Israeli figureheads are getting cornered. The voting on the Goldstone Report in the UN highlights to what extent the world is fed up from Israel's butcheries. They still as arrogant as possible. They accused the entire world as "immoral" while only few states were "moral". Why? Because the majority of the world was disgusted with Israel's atrocities on the Palestinians. Luckily for Israel, the veto power always saved them.
Now, in 2009, when you say Palestinian, it is no longer: "non-existent". (PS: Times Square in New York has a gigantic road called Golda Mair St.), or terrorist. It is the struggle for existence. Israel's campaign of equating the Palestinians to terrorists is failing. More Israelis are speaking out against their racist government, and more people are informed of what is going on globally. Those who hate the Palestinians or believe that Israel is the suffering state for 2500 years are under bombardment of criticism, and the center for mockery. Palestinian these days means the exact definition of the fight for Human Rights. The fact the world is seeing the fanatic religious Jewish settlers, with their angry beards and automatic machine guns, brings the question of who is really the religious fanatic? The Palestinian Muslims? (Israel always attempts to omit its atrocities and racism towards the Palestinian and Arab Christians to avoid losing support from the Christian fanatics in the West). The fact the International Courts are tightening the knot on Israeli warcriminals is a beginning.
The battle for existence continues, and Israel is failing to do anything about it. If anything, they only have their superior airforce bombardment of innocent civilians and the veto power. At this slow rate, the way I see it, Israel is going to enter dark times. Other than the United States, we seriously do not see any media blackouts on what is happening there. And even in the United States, the alternate media of the truth is gradually breaching Israeli barriers.
MFL
One can never forget a lunatic speech delivered by Ben Gurion that traces the sufferings of the Jews to 2500 years ago. Ilian Pappe quotes him by saying: " We will establish a Christian State in Lebanon. We will break Transjordan, bomb Amman and destroy its army, and then Syria falls, an of Egupt will still continue to fight – we will bombard Port Said, Alexandria, and Cairo. This will be in revenge for what they (the Egyptians, the Aramis, and Assyrians) did to our forefathers during Biblical Times). " (I. Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of the Palestine, 144).
Having heard such a statement, it is no surprise that Israel is a perverted state, carved out by a minority called Zionism that doesn't even represent the majority of the Jews in the world. As a matter of fact, Zionism was and still the greatest bad news for Jews across the world because it calls for their isolation and importing them to Israel under a crazier banner: "Unifying the Diaspora". Some Christian fanatics support Zionism based on the biblical logic of "Israel was occupied for 2000 years by Arabs." They never read on how Israel of 1948 is different from the Kingdom of Israel 2000 years ago. They never read how Israel ethnically cleansed anyone who was not a Jew: Christian or Muslim Palestinian. They never bother to know how there was an entity called Palestinian Jews who were subjected to harassments by Zionism and threats.
Palestine by 1948 was omitted, and the logic of Israel was: "The Palestinians freely left their lands hence they have no right to return." Israel omits to mention Plan D which aimed way before the riots of 1947, after the partition with the Jews themselves being a minority in the Jewish half of Palestine, to clean the Palestinians out of their historical homelands. Yosif Weitz was not a manager of a luxury pub, rather the Transfer Committee of the Palestinians out of Palestine, ie , a genocidal committee since international law regards transferring populations as "an act of genocide."
Whenever someone mentioned Palestine since 1948, Israel and its lobbies attack the person as anti-Semite and brings back the memories of the Holocaust. Currently, in the Arab World, there is no longer the WWII Holocaust, it is the Gaza War of 2009. This became as the new Holocaust in the heads of every person who believes in Human Rights. For Gaza, it has been suffering from a blockade worse than that inflicted on Cuba, and living conditions couldn't have been more horrible as Israel remains to break international law and expand fake settlements on Gaza, West Bank, and attempt to take over East Jerusalem.
By 1951, things couldn't have been worse. The creator of the Universal Declaration of the Human Rights, Eleanor Roosevelt, visited Israel. When humanitarian activists were cheerful of her visit, and hoped she would check out the refugees in Gaza and the West Bank then, she simply said that she is only visiting some friends in Israel. That, sadly, puts the United States as a 'defender' of human rights in the bottom.
Most of the Palestinian figureheads were originally from the Palestinian Middle Class. And for them, life was horrible. Edward Said, in the opening of the book Joe Sacco's Palestine, argued how by the 1960s, the term Palestine or Palestinian was barred out from usage. Several academics couldn't defend, or revive what happened in Palestine 1948 without risking their own jobs. This goes with Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir's most racist statement on the behalf of the Palestinians: "Palestinians? What Palestinians? There was never a Palestine?". Apparently she never read President Woodrow Wilson's King-Crane Commission which proved that 92% of the people were Muslims and Christians, while only 8% are Jews.
Ironically, peaceful demands were never the solution. With the Arab defeat of 1967, the Palestinians found themselves in a position that only they should fight for their lands. This of course was accompanied with Arab treason. In 1948, when the Arab armies entered to protect the Palestinians, Egypt, Jordan, and Iraq were still under the British Mandate. In 1967, they themselves sponsored the PLO but refused to assist them militarily, except in 1968's Battle of Dignity where Jordan along with the PLO blocked Israel's invasion.
Israel's plans of denying the existence of the Palestinians was part of the plan. There were several Palestinian authors, such as Sayyegh, and Hadawi, writing. It was Edward Said's Orientalism that shocked the foundation of the Zionist claims. Orientalism shed light on the treatment of Palestinians. This went hand in hand with the PLO bulldozing their way through military operations to the "Observant Status" in the UN. This was much to the disgust of Israel. When the Palestinians received such a status, it meant the Palestinians, Christians, Muslims, (and even Jewish), were recognized as an official nation. This nation, is dispersed, due to something, what was it? Oh yes, Israel's attempt to delete the existence of the Palestinians.
Till this day, Palestinians wonder: "How can the Zionists do to us what the Nazis did to them?" Rereading Ben Gurion's crazy statement in the beginning of the article answers this question: they are racists, and they do not care about human rights.
Israel's denial of Palestine/Palestinians falls in the category of blocking the return of the Palestinians. UN resolution 194 insists that every Palestinian has the right to return home, or at least compensated. The descendants of the Palestinians also have the right for such a claim. Some would argue that currently this is insane, bringing back Palestinians who were dispersed in 1948 and 1967 is out of reach. This is a false claim. Israel argued that it is bringing a state that existed 2500 years ago. If someone reads Shlomo Sands, most of these Jews that are "returning" to Palestine, are not originally part of the 2000 year old diasporas. They are people who converted into Judaism as a religious sect in Europe, Africa, or Europe. Nevertheless, the barring out of refugees returning to Palestine was the main goal of the Arab-Israeli peace process with Egypt and followed later by Jordan. Neither the Egyptians nor the Jordanians (whose population is beyond 80% composed of Palestinian refugees) are satisfied with the peace treaties, with the on-going atrocities of civilians in Israel and beyond it.
Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982 probably opened the gateways for knowing the Israeli army for the truth it is: a racist army. Israel, amidst mass media, invaded Lebanon. Its atrocities were covered by several journalists, and these same journalists complained that Israel tried to force them to write "its' version" of the war. With Sabra-Chatila massacres taking place, Israel, as a beacon of democracy in the image of the West, fell. This of course was a concrete reference on Israeli behavior. People wondered who was the real democracy: Israel that focuses on Judaism as an ethnicity trait, or Lebanon: the homeland of 18 sects co-existing with each other till the civil war broke out.
Currently, more and more scandals are published on Israel, past or present. The world's shrinkage through the mass communication and media revolutions means that if Israel slaps a Palestinian in its ground, the whole world knows. Israel may have held the upper hand in the media, but the other side of the coin is finding more and more space to highlight the reality of the region, and Israel's racist atrocities.
This was caused by the neo-Israeli historians who found the guts to speak. Benny Morris, a hard core Zionist, was condemned by different Israeli spheres for being a traitor, because he simply brought into light what happened in 1948. ILan Pappe had to flee Israel out of safety because he also accused Israel of ethnically cleansing the Palestinians.
The biggest example was probably the Israeli offensive on Lebanon 3 years ago. Israel was bombarding also the Palestinians as well. The reactions of Israeli offensive to Lebanon was highly condemned by mass demonstrations (part of the reason is the large Lebanese diaspora across the world), while the Palestinians were covered second. This lies in the fact that not everyday Israel bombed Lebanon, while the repetition news of Israel torturing Palestinians is new. The suicide bombings of some Palestinians across the 1990s gave Israel the pretext to behave under the banner of fighting terrorism. 9/11 also gave it the flexibilities to commit atrocities and massacres on the remaining Palestinians. This is changing.
With the offensive on Gaza 2009, several Israeli figureheads are getting cornered. The voting on the Goldstone Report in the UN highlights to what extent the world is fed up from Israel's butcheries. They still as arrogant as possible. They accused the entire world as "immoral" while only few states were "moral". Why? Because the majority of the world was disgusted with Israel's atrocities on the Palestinians. Luckily for Israel, the veto power always saved them.
Now, in 2009, when you say Palestinian, it is no longer: "non-existent". (PS: Times Square in New York has a gigantic road called Golda Mair St.), or terrorist. It is the struggle for existence. Israel's campaign of equating the Palestinians to terrorists is failing. More Israelis are speaking out against their racist government, and more people are informed of what is going on globally. Those who hate the Palestinians or believe that Israel is the suffering state for 2500 years are under bombardment of criticism, and the center for mockery. Palestinian these days means the exact definition of the fight for Human Rights. The fact the world is seeing the fanatic religious Jewish settlers, with their angry beards and automatic machine guns, brings the question of who is really the religious fanatic? The Palestinian Muslims? (Israel always attempts to omit its atrocities and racism towards the Palestinian and Arab Christians to avoid losing support from the Christian fanatics in the West). The fact the International Courts are tightening the knot on Israeli warcriminals is a beginning.
The battle for existence continues, and Israel is failing to do anything about it. If anything, they only have their superior airforce bombardment of innocent civilians and the veto power. At this slow rate, the way I see it, Israel is going to enter dark times. Other than the United States, we seriously do not see any media blackouts on what is happening there. And even in the United States, the alternate media of the truth is gradually breaching Israeli barriers.
MFL
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Chibli Mallat: Is Israel a democracy? It's conditional
Article taken from Daily Star
(MFL notes: I wanted to take a section out of it, but since articles usually disappear the next day, so I posted the whole thing)
On December 6, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI, website www.acri.org.il) released a 73-page report on democracy and human rights in Israel, entitled on “Human Rights – On Condition, Democracy – On Condition.” The chapters of the report develop the characteristic list of an authoritarian state: “Freedom of Expression – as long as you have nice things to say;
Harassment of Human Rights Organizations and Activists: Freedom of Expression and Activity – as long as you don’t criticize;
Palestinian-Arab Citizens of Israel: Rights – as long as you’re loyal,
Bedouin Rights – as long as you live where we tell you;
Criminal Justice Rights – as long as you’re not suspected of a security offense;
Hatred and Racism: Rights – as long as you’re one of us;
Rights of the Elderly – as long as you’re young;
The Right to Education – as long as you fit in;
The Right to Housing – as long as you’re one of us;
The Right to Social Security – as long as you’re gainfully employed; The Right to Health Care – as long as you pay;
The Occupied Territories: Rights – as long as you’re Israeli;” and a conclusion entitled “Undermining the Foundations of Democracy.”
As The Daily Star law page presents excerpts of the report, it is time for a serious discussion among jurists and human rights advocates on one basic premise which remains the received mantra in the West: can Israel be considered a democracy, in the same way we consider the US, France or India democracies?
I have argued in my “Introduction to Middle Eastern Law,” published two years ago, that Israel does not qualify as a democracy by standards a universal jury recognizes. This is not only on account of history, where patterns of ethnic cleansing and of legal discrimination are hardly in dispute. The argument of Israel not qualifying as a democracy rests on the persistence of these patterns as structural traits of Israel to date, six decades after its foundation.
The evidence is plain in the treatment of all the people living under Israeli control, by which I mean those whose lives have been and continue to be determined by Israel’s legal structure and its political treatment of their daily existence. Next to 7 million Jewish Israelis who enjoy by-and-large a Western-style democracy, over a million so-called Israeli Arabs have no place in governmental representation and are subject to a large array of rights breaches; 4 million “occupied Palestinians” in the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem suffer from open legal exclusion in a system of Israeli decisions that have governed their lives for over a generation. West Bankers, Gazans and Jerusalemites are respectively the victims of land settlement and expropriation, siege and daily physical harassment of their right to live and move freely; and 4-6 million Palestinians are denied their universal right to return to the place from which they fled or were evicted in successive waves in 1948, 1949 and 1967. To this should be added over 100,000 Syrians in the Golan, not to mention the 22-year occupation of south Lebanon and the victims of repeat massacres, from Deir Yasin to Sabra and Shatila, Qana and Jenin.
This is a serious discussion to be undertaken on a world level on the type of system that Israel is, as serious indeed as the legal investigation carried out in the mid-1960s on the legal nature of the apartheid regime in South Africa. In the early 1960s, Yale Law Journal published a long, two-part article by Elizabeth Landis entitled “South African Apartheid legislation,” part one, “Fundamental structures,” part two “Extension, enforcement and perpetuation.” It was no longer possible for white Afrikaners and their US supporters to argue that apartheid, a neutral term until then in world politics, was an intolerable system of discrimination.
We need a similar study for Israel. While insufficient, the present ACRI report is a step toward a correction of the mantra of democracy for Israel’s legal and political system.
Chibli Mallat is a lawyer and law professor at the Universities of Utah and Saint Joseph in Lebanon. His books include “Introduction to Middle Eastern Law,” Oxford paperback 2009, and “The Middle East into the 21st Century,” at Ithaca press in 1996. He edits the weekly law page of The Daily Star.
(MFL notes: I wanted to take a section out of it, but since articles usually disappear the next day, so I posted the whole thing)
On December 6, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI, website www.acri.org.il) released a 73-page report on democracy and human rights in Israel, entitled on “Human Rights – On Condition, Democracy – On Condition.” The chapters of the report develop the characteristic list of an authoritarian state: “Freedom of Expression – as long as you have nice things to say;
Harassment of Human Rights Organizations and Activists: Freedom of Expression and Activity – as long as you don’t criticize;
Palestinian-Arab Citizens of Israel: Rights – as long as you’re loyal,
Bedouin Rights – as long as you live where we tell you;
Criminal Justice Rights – as long as you’re not suspected of a security offense;
Hatred and Racism: Rights – as long as you’re one of us;
Rights of the Elderly – as long as you’re young;
The Right to Education – as long as you fit in;
The Right to Housing – as long as you’re one of us;
The Right to Social Security – as long as you’re gainfully employed; The Right to Health Care – as long as you pay;
The Occupied Territories: Rights – as long as you’re Israeli;” and a conclusion entitled “Undermining the Foundations of Democracy.”
As The Daily Star law page presents excerpts of the report, it is time for a serious discussion among jurists and human rights advocates on one basic premise which remains the received mantra in the West: can Israel be considered a democracy, in the same way we consider the US, France or India democracies?
I have argued in my “Introduction to Middle Eastern Law,” published two years ago, that Israel does not qualify as a democracy by standards a universal jury recognizes. This is not only on account of history, where patterns of ethnic cleansing and of legal discrimination are hardly in dispute. The argument of Israel not qualifying as a democracy rests on the persistence of these patterns as structural traits of Israel to date, six decades after its foundation.
The evidence is plain in the treatment of all the people living under Israeli control, by which I mean those whose lives have been and continue to be determined by Israel’s legal structure and its political treatment of their daily existence. Next to 7 million Jewish Israelis who enjoy by-and-large a Western-style democracy, over a million so-called Israeli Arabs have no place in governmental representation and are subject to a large array of rights breaches; 4 million “occupied Palestinians” in the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem suffer from open legal exclusion in a system of Israeli decisions that have governed their lives for over a generation. West Bankers, Gazans and Jerusalemites are respectively the victims of land settlement and expropriation, siege and daily physical harassment of their right to live and move freely; and 4-6 million Palestinians are denied their universal right to return to the place from which they fled or were evicted in successive waves in 1948, 1949 and 1967. To this should be added over 100,000 Syrians in the Golan, not to mention the 22-year occupation of south Lebanon and the victims of repeat massacres, from Deir Yasin to Sabra and Shatila, Qana and Jenin.
This is a serious discussion to be undertaken on a world level on the type of system that Israel is, as serious indeed as the legal investigation carried out in the mid-1960s on the legal nature of the apartheid regime in South Africa. In the early 1960s, Yale Law Journal published a long, two-part article by Elizabeth Landis entitled “South African Apartheid legislation,” part one, “Fundamental structures,” part two “Extension, enforcement and perpetuation.” It was no longer possible for white Afrikaners and their US supporters to argue that apartheid, a neutral term until then in world politics, was an intolerable system of discrimination.
We need a similar study for Israel. While insufficient, the present ACRI report is a step toward a correction of the mantra of democracy for Israel’s legal and political system.
Chibli Mallat is a lawyer and law professor at the Universities of Utah and Saint Joseph in Lebanon. His books include “Introduction to Middle Eastern Law,” Oxford paperback 2009, and “The Middle East into the 21st Century,” at Ithaca press in 1996. He edits the weekly law page of The Daily Star.
Responding to Tony Blair
In Response to Blair's "Removing Saddam Was Right"
Nobody likes Saddam, Mr. Blair.
Nevertheless, the problem is pulling such a crazy operation and by-passing the entire UN forums,
Attempting to re-invent the causes of war after the WMDs were not located, specially the invasion couldn't wait any longer due to Saddam's 'nuclear threat'.
There was no Qa'eda in Iraq till the US-UK invasion took place, thank you "democracy" for bringing terrorism to that region.
Thank you for demolishing a state entity called Iraq. If this war is war of democracy, then how come in the first two years of the Iraqi invasion, more Iraqis died than lunatic Saddam's entire rule era?
Wasn't the United States that funded Saddam in the Iranian-Iraqi war and made him a super dictator over his people? We know democracy, and fight for it, it is the United States that funds most of the dictators in the Arab World (Egypt's Moubarak, Morocco's Sultan dynasty, The Saudi Dynasty, ... etc).
Of all the Iraqi officials, whose legitimacy is severely under check, they couldn't find but this minister? BBC can do better.
Accelerating the operation without a Plan B to Iraq which led to the swift breakdown of the regime and the presence of terrorist groups and ethnic wars?
Does Blair know that every Iraqi that died and still dies blame him and Bush Jr. due to the swift breakdown of the state?
Finally, I love it how several people underscore the Iraqi lives by simply calling the war on Iraq as 'policy changing' and conflict management. People's lives from that corner can be so cheap for such men from this corner of the world.
MFL
Nobody likes Saddam, Mr. Blair.
Nevertheless, the problem is pulling such a crazy operation and by-passing the entire UN forums,
Attempting to re-invent the causes of war after the WMDs were not located, specially the invasion couldn't wait any longer due to Saddam's 'nuclear threat'.
There was no Qa'eda in Iraq till the US-UK invasion took place, thank you "democracy" for bringing terrorism to that region.
Thank you for demolishing a state entity called Iraq. If this war is war of democracy, then how come in the first two years of the Iraqi invasion, more Iraqis died than lunatic Saddam's entire rule era?
Wasn't the United States that funded Saddam in the Iranian-Iraqi war and made him a super dictator over his people? We know democracy, and fight for it, it is the United States that funds most of the dictators in the Arab World (Egypt's Moubarak, Morocco's Sultan dynasty, The Saudi Dynasty, ... etc).
Of all the Iraqi officials, whose legitimacy is severely under check, they couldn't find but this minister? BBC can do better.
Accelerating the operation without a Plan B to Iraq which led to the swift breakdown of the regime and the presence of terrorist groups and ethnic wars?
Does Blair know that every Iraqi that died and still dies blame him and Bush Jr. due to the swift breakdown of the state?
Finally, I love it how several people underscore the Iraqi lives by simply calling the war on Iraq as 'policy changing' and conflict management. People's lives from that corner can be so cheap for such men from this corner of the world.
MFL
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