America deaf to Palestinian screams
If one seeks to see the difference between the way the USA sees the world and the way the rest of the planet sees it, then one need only look at the way the US interpreted the incident of the Israeli shelling of a Gaza beach which resulted in the deaths of the parents and five siblings of 11 year old Palestinian Huda Abu Ghalia (Pictured above).
The US was not only unique in being the only major power not to condemn the incident, it went even further by labelling the incident an act of "self defense".
As long as the US indulges in this kind of knee jerk support for Israel's worst excesses, then the less likely the Israelis will be to exercise any degree of restraint before embarking on these military misadventures, and the more complicit the US will become in Israeli crimes.
Indeed, when Ehud Olmert called Israel's army the "most moral" in the world, one could only think that this statement must have been for US consumption, because the rest of the planet was simply left blinking at the statement's audacity.
Here's how the rest of the planet views the situation:
Amnesty International's 2006 Report criticizes Israel's excessive use of force: "Some 190 Palestinians[1], including around 50 children, were killed by the Israeli army in the Occupied Territories in 2005. Many were killed unlawfully, in deliberate and reckless shootings, shelling and air strikes in densely populated residential areas."The US must realise that the rest of the world sees the occupation as unacceptable, not because we are in some way anti-Semitic, but because the act of occupation is, in itself, an act of violence.
Following years of Israeli oppression, in July, 2005 171 Palestinian civil society organizations initiated a global campaign calling for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israeli apartheid.
A growing number of international organizations have responded to the call. On May 22 the World Council of Churches (WCC), with 340 member churches in over 100 countries, declared that "Israel bears the responsibility for the present crisis of the Middle East."
In 2005 the WCC encouraged members to divest from Israel. On May 27, the Ontario chapter of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, Canada's largest union voted to "support the international campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions" against Israel.
On May 29, members of the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education, Britain's largest academic trade union, voted to boycott Israeli lecturers and academic institutions that did not publicly declare their opposition to Israeli policy in the Occupied Territories.
In 2004 The Presbyterian Church in the United States (PCUSA) voted to divest from companies supporting Israel's occupation. That decision will be revisited this week at the PCUSA General Assembly in Alabama.
Nobel Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu has written, "Yesterday's South African township dwellers can tell you about today's life in the Occupied Territories.... If apartheid ended, so can the occupation, but the moral force and international pressure will have to be just as determined. The current divestment effort is the first, though certainly not the only, necessary move in that direction."
In the West Bank, every day I see, feel and touch the segregation between the Palestinian and Israeli communities: on the roads, at checkpoints, and through collective punishment of Palestinians.
When a suicide bomber targets Israeli civilians, Israeli forces often arrest his relatives and demolish his home within hours, without allowing the family to save their possessions.
In August 2005 a Jewish settler opened fire on civilians in Shfamar, an Israeli town, murdering four Palestinian citizens of Israel and injuring 15. The attacker, Natan Zada, lived in the West Bank settlement of Tapuah, near my village. I was curious to see if bulldozers would demolish his house and his family would be arrested. That didn't happen.
The massacre's Palestinian victims weren't recognized as "victims of a terrorist act" because Israeli law recognizes only "victims of Palestinian terrorism".
Last month, the Israeli Supreme Court approved a law denying West Bank and Gaza Palestinians married to Israelis the right to live in Israel, cementing judicial support for apartheid. In the region of Salfit where I live, the US government has funded a new Palestinian road network which completely separates Palestinian and Israeli traffic. As my village struggles with scarce water, across the road in the Israeli settlement of Ariel which is built on Palestinian land we see green lawns, sprinklers and swimming pools.
According to the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem, Palestinians are allotted just 70 liters of water per person, per day, while each Israeli consumes 350 liters daily.
Ronnie Kasrils, South Africa's Intelligence Minister, called by Tutu "a Jewish hero of the anti-apartheid movement," wrote in the UK Guardian in May, "The Palestine crisis is now more dramatic even than apartheid, but it is the victims who are punished."
Kasrils concludes, "Israel should face sanctions". I agree completely with Kasrils. Sanctions are a peaceful method to combat Israel's racist acts against Palestinians in Israel and the Occupied Territories.
Like the boycott imposed on the apartheid regime of South Africa, which forced that country to accept change, it's the international community's responsibility to boycott Israel in order to enhance peace and coexistence in the Middle East.
The US are not being a good friend of Israel when they condone Israel's worst excesses.
A good friend would help Israel extricate herself from the hook she hung herself on in 1967, not further entrench her into an unsustainable position.
The US's reaction to the events on that Gaza beach are drearily predictable and further proof that the US is part of the problem rather than the solution.
If the US backed off Europe, Russia and China would sort this mess out in days. The solution is in resolution 242. And no matter how much blood is spilt, no matter how many years pass, when the final borders are agreed, they will follow 242's path.
Click title to read full article.
Tags:
12 comments:
First, as for your absurd comments about the rest of the world versus the US, what can I say? The rest of the world is either despotic (China), ridiculous (British leftists), or just French (France). Who cares?
I'm curious as to what you have in mind for a final resolution for the conflict. You apparently want a two-state solution along the 1967 boundaries.
The only knee-jerk support going on here is your knee-jerk support of Hamas and Palestinian terrorism. Of course, I'm sure like all good leftists, you'll deny that you support Palestinian terrorism, but then you'll never seriously and wholeheartedly condemn it, either. When Hamas gets serious about stopping the rocket attacks then we will see an end to Israeli shelling.
I've already spoken to the clearly fictional nature of the video you highlight.
We'll never see eye-to-eye on this, I suppose.
Two questions, Kel:
1) What would you do about Jerusalem?
2) What would you do about the refugee issue?
Oh, Kel. I hope you will visit Richard Landes' site (augeanstables.com) for information on the nature of this incident from time to time. Landes recently posted information regarding photographs by a (presumably) Palestinian photographer taken for a German paper on the Gaza beach that are said to contradict claim that an IDF shell killed the Ghalia family.
Your pal Garlasco, BTW, is beginning to backtrack on his earlier claims. He even praises the IDF investigation as quite professional.
Of course, Garlasco isn't ruling out the idea that unexploded ordinance may have caused the explosion but he does admit that the Israelis didn't target civilians. An associated Human Rights Watch member states that the Israelis did a good job ruling out the possibility of an errant shell.
Of course, if it was an unexploded shell that wouldn't explain Garlasco's earlier claim that the explosion must have been something "dropped" on the victims because their wounds were concentrated on the upper part of the bodies, now would it?
Hmmm...I'm doubting this guy's credentials more and more.
At least this Pallywood hoax is crumbling.
I think this "hoax" as you call it is only disintegrating in your own head. And I notice in your version of events you make no attempt at all to deal with the missing Israeli shell. I presume it's still hanging in the sky is it?
You ask what I would do about Jerusalem. I would have East Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital as international law stipulates. As for what you spuriously term "the refugee issue", I presume that's some oblique reference to the right of return. I actually regard the right to return as a non-starter that will be negotiated away at some point. However, if their refugee status is to be removed then Israel will have to pay them some form of compensation as UN Res 191 states that only "compensation or repatriation" will remove their refugee status.
I would say that any Palestinians who wanted to return to the West Bank or Gaza could do so, but to allow them back into Israel is simply a formula to wish Israel out of existence that I do not support.
And I would condemn Palestinian terrorists especially for the tactic of suicide bombing which is obscene. However, I will not condemn the right of an oppressed people to fight back against their oppressors. Is there any people anywhere in history who did not fight occupation? Here in Britain we have a TV programme called Dad's Army that celebrates the men who were prepared to fight the Nazis, with pitchforks if necessary, to defend their land from occupation. Why do you suppose that when the Palestinians display such emotion that this is somehow wrong? Did you condemn the Afghans when they fought against their Russian occupiers? No, Reagan brought them to the White House and said the were the equivalent of your nations founding fathers.
You are very particular in what you condemn and what you don't.
If the Russians invaded and occupied the US are you saying that you would sit back and simply accept this?
No, you are doing what all defenders of Israel's occupation do, you condemn the reaction to the occupation whilst finding no fault with the occupation itself. I repeat the occupation is in itself an act of violence. It is also the longest occupation in modern history.
Your position is simply hypocritical.
I think this "hoax" as you call it is only disintegrating in your own head. And I notice in your version of events you make no attempt at all to deal with the missing Israeli shell.
If it is disintegrating in my head then I'm not alone. Even Human Rights Watch, the source that leftists gleefully cited for their "expert opinion" a few days ago is now starting to back down. Unsurprisingly, Palestinian sympathizers like yourself aren't backing down from your claims. I don't know exactly what happened with the missing shell but is it possible, that since the shells were fired around a beach, the shell landed in the water? Just a thought.
Thank you for your responses to my questions. It is good to see you are not one of those "right of return" nutjobs who will not compromise on anything. However, I disagree with you on most points.
I don't believe in dividing Jerusalem. Jerusalem should remain in Israeli hands. The Israelis should continue to make the al-Aqsa mosque available for Muslims who wish to visit the site.
I don't favor the 1967 boundary. I think it is untenable and militarily unwise for Israel. I think the Israelis should consider swapping land within the state of Israel for land in the West Bank if and when the Palestinians are ready to negotiate a settlement in good faith. In any event, the land in question is a small percentage of the West Bank, this problem should not be insurmountable via negotiations.
I believe that Palestinian refugees should be absorbed into the Arab societies they live in. I agree with you that they should also have the option of entering the West Bank or Gaza when those areas attain statehood. Israel actually had a longstanding but little known program of allowing refugees into Israel, as full Israel citizens, if they were willing to take an oath of loyalty to the country. A small percentage of refugees over the years did so. While I don't believe the Israelis are obligated to pay compensation for a problem largely created by the Arabs, I do believe it might be in Israel's strategic interest to offer some sort of cash payment as a form of assistance in helping Palestinians establish new lives as a goodwill gesture. It needs to be made abundantly clear that Israel is not accepting responsibility for the problem, however.
However, the Palestinians will not, in the near future, go for the compensation you propose or the buy-out that I propose. The refugee issue seems to be a sticking point in finding a permanent solution.
Then again, maybe the Israelis should do exactly what you propose. When the Palestinians continue to engage in terrorism after that point (which is inevitable), the Israelis will be fully justified in waging a total and final war against the Palestinians and doing what they would have done had they taken the path I advocate: draw the boundaries unilaterally.
However, I will not condemn the right of an oppressed people to fight back against their oppressors.
In what manner? The vast majority of Palestinian attacks are directed at Israeli civilians. I find it interesting that you would argue that the US should treat terrorists with all the rights accorded soldiers under the Geneva Conventions, yet you wouldn't hold the Palestinians to standards of warfare that any internatonal body would recognize as legitimate.
No, you are doing what all defenders of Israel's occupation do, you condemn the reaction to the occupation whilst finding no fault with the occupation itself.
You are doing what defenders of Palestinian terrorism do. Defending and drawing moral equivalences between Palestinian terrorism and legitimate warfare while denying you are doing so.
Furthermore, I don't believe the Palestinians have any legitimate claim to the land in question. I don't buy the historical propaganda of the Palestinians. As you mentioned earlier, you believe that the Israelis should pay compensation for the refugee issue. I don't. The Arabs should take responsibility for the refugee problem they have created. Israeli should not. You buy the Palestinian historical narrative that all these refugees were just driven from the land by Israelis. I don't. Just as I don't buy absurd Palestinian claims that they are descended from the Biblical Canaanites or Philistines either.
Your position is simply hypocritical.
No. My position is consistent. Your position is hypocritical. You can't see that many of the Israeli actions that you decry, such as roadblocks and security barriers, are a direct response to Palestinian terrorism. The Palestinians have chosen, unnecessarily and foolishly, the path of terrorism to that of negotiated settlement. The Palestinian resistance you celebrate has gotten them nowhere. It is both morally and strategically foolish.
Oh well. It will soon be over I suppose. The wall will be built and Israel will draw its boundaries unilaterally leaving the Palestinians to sort out their mess of a society on their own.
Let them have the reward for terrorism.
Then again, maybe I'm wrong....
I might be open to the possibility of partitioning Jerusalem and a return to strict '67 boundaries and demolition of the "apartheid wall", etc. under one circumstance; namely, that British soldiers enforce the peace between Israelis and Palestinians and guard the '67 boundary for the indefinite future. Since the UK was the last nation to control the area prior to the establishment of the state of Israel and British actions had a good deal to do with the current situation in the region, I believe they would be the most appropriate country to handle this responsibility.
Of course, the UN could foot the bill but only British lives should be at stake in this. If the Palestinians are a reasonable and peaceable people as you seem to believe, then there should be little cause for concern from the British public in this arrangement. If, as I suspect, the Palestinians are less gentle than you imagine, British soldiers will eventually find themselves in the crosshairs of Palestinian terrorists. At that point, leftists such as youself can explain to the British public why the loss of British lives is worth it and continue to make excuses for the Palestinians.
In other words, everyone wins.
Sound like a deal?
Oh, and one other correction to a previous post. The website I was referring to was theaugeanstables.com not augeanstables.com.
Well, interesting development Kel, it looks like they've been caught. Hamas, that is. It turns out that a snippet of the Gaza beach video shows a landmine:
http://forums.randi.org/imagehost/374244900ea76abfd.jpg
(This snippet, which appeared in the first showing of the video by al-Jazeera has been edited out in later presentations according to the buzz, BTW.)
A picture of a standard landmine:
http://www.freeburmarangers.org/Images/20050503_03_landmine.jpg
The family probably got killed when they walked into a bunch of daisy-chained landmines.
That would explain the lack of a huge crater around the bodies.
Tommy,
I have just typed a long response and when I tried to preview I was given a "Page cannot display" and lost the bloody thing competely.
I'll try and do it all again.
Firstly, I appreciate the fact that you come daily to a left wing site and argue a right wing viewpoint. I enjoy our exchanges.
It also appears that we are not as far away on a solution as we are on the blame game, but let's not play that anyway.
I am stunned that you claim that I argue for Palestinian moral equivalence as I thought I had made it clear that I do not support suicide bombings or the killing of innocents. The Palestinians have a genuine cause and if they are to target anyone it should be the Israeli military and illegal settlements. Those are legitimate targets that highlight the occupation. To target civilians is immoral and plain dumb as it makes the occupier look like the victim.
And I have previously argued that the settlements could stay as long as land from Israel was handed over in way of compensation.
I have no interest in whether the 1967 borders are good for Israel "militarily" as that is simply an excuse for an Israeli land grab. And I find your argument that the Palestinians have not descended from certain tribes as simply meaningless. They have lived on that land for thrteen hundred years and that gives them a right to it in my book.
However, as there is more that we agree on than disagree on I think we shouldn't quibble.
We both want Israel to be able to live there in peace and it is for that reason that I think a unilateral solution is bad for Israel.
Peace cannot be imposed, if it could Israel with her superiour military power would have imposed it years ago. And I know where you're going to go from here. The US and others have held Israel back and if she just uses even more violence this will be sorted.
I think that's right wing nonsense.
The truth is that even Ariel Sharon, the father of the settlements, came to realise that Israel cannot hold on to this land.
I am genuinely pleased that Israel appears to be coming to her senses over this.
And I would agree to UK forces manning the borders, however Israel have turned down every offer of UN help so she would be unlikely to accede to that request.
There is much more I could pick on but in this new spirit of amiability, I'll stop.
One last thing, where do you get these Paintshop Pro pictures of mines? And if those pictures are genuine why is the national media ignoring this story?
I've even checked Ha'aretz and they have nothing on this. Doesn't that lead to question whether or not they are fakes?
Whether Tommy wants to acknowledge it or not, the fact is that near unilateral support for Israel is a liability in any other Middle East interest. It affects every other exchange the US has with every Arab nation in the region. I still have not quite figured out why the US media is so invested in good Israel/bad Palastine story line, when it is clear that they both have engaged in reprehensible behaviour. And the Israelis, of course, have committed the brunt of the killing, something that you won't find out about, even from so-called liberal outlets like the NY Times.
Re: ew York Times Minimizes Palestinian Deaths
This references a two year study of the paper and its reporting of violence in the conflict. People who are firm supporters of Israel generally have no idea how much killing Israeli forces actually do there.
Of course, the situation is intolerable and tit-for-tat killings will never solve this problem. In fact, they do everything possible to prevent a reasonable solution. An actual cease fire would help, rather the idiot situation we usually see where both Palastinians and Israeli forces continue to launch rockets and lob artillery at each other while claiming there is a cease fire. WTF? I would just like to see the US stand in the middle for once and stop them both from shooting.
Yes. I basically agree that we both acknowledge that a two-state solution is the only path forward. It sounds like Olmert will ultimately divide Jerusalem. I think this is unwise, but so be it.
1967 boundaries are untenable. Boundaries should be drawn as closely as possible to the 1967 border but land exchanges seem feasible for the small amount that cannot be returned. Even Arafat was willing to consider this in negotiations. (He wasn't willing to compromise on the 'right of return' for Palestinian refugees though. This remains a difficult problem.)
The modern-day Palestinians have not, as you claim, lived on the land for 1300 years. The overwhelming majority came to the region much more recently.
The desolation of the area at the turn of the 20th century has often been remarked upon by European travelers. The Jewish Virtual Library has just a few accounts of this:
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/Arabs_in_Palestine.html
Compare those accounts of desolation to later Arab emigration to the region. During the period of the British Mandate alone, it is estimated around 100,000 Arabs settled in the area of modern Israel from surrounding countries.
Furthermore, as the history of Yasser Arafat's own family indicates (who actually lived in Egypt at the time of his birth) the modern-day Palestinians had no particular attachment to that piece of land now known as Israel. They might as easily well have lived in Jordan or southern Syria or Egypt. Arafat frequently fabricated his place of birth as being Jerusalem, the same way the entire notion of 'Palestinians' as an ethnic identity apart from other Levantine Arabs is largely a fabrication.
Regarding my sarcastic proposal for British soldiers: Israel would not, and should not, accept UK soldiers on the border. A barrier is a better solution. The British people would never accept it either. Especially if things get nasty. The British tried to keep the peace between Arabs and Jews during the Mandate with disastrous results. Ironically, much of our current situation in the region is a result of the "cut-and-run" mentality of the British at that time. History repeats itself.
At the end of the day with the whole affair, while I find the history of the region interesting, I think decisions about how to proceed in the peace process should be motivated by current reality rather than past history. I don't really care if Jews had a homeland in the region at one point; I don't care about the origins of the Palestinians; I don't care about the sacredness of religious sites aside from their obvious current value to the participants in the conflict; I don't care about 1948 or 1967 or 1973. I care about coming to a solution that will promote long-term stability and peace,
Concerning the mine pictures:
Actually, I found them during discussions around the blogosphere. I'll try and find the sources of the pictures later on today if I have time.
The blogosphere itself is only slowly getting around to this most recent discovery. Most of this mine stuff has only appeared in the comments sections of various blogs closely following the story. In the next few days we may begin to see more widespread reporting on blogs regarding the mine as word gets around.
The mass media will be light years behind developments, as usual.
The national media is ignoring the story for the same reason they are only tentatively acknowledging that Israel disputes the Palestinian charges - they leapt to conclusions too quickly and don't want to admit any mistakes. That is why for instance, when CNN was criticized for blaming the incident of Israeli shelling, they jumped
Have you ever seen the short documentary Pallywood, Kel? If not, go find it on the web and watch it. This is nothing new. It was made by Richard Landes over at Augean Stables and is on the Second Draft website (along with a sequel concerning the al-Dura affair).
Richard Landes also has an article "Palestine: A History" on his own website; it is worth a read.
Landes dates the media's uncritical acceptance (very often from questionable sources) of claims of Palestinian victimhood back to the War in Lebanon.
For instance, he notes that the media relied upon Yasser Arafat's brother's unrealistic estimates of casualty and refugee figures caused by the Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon without bothering to compare them to even basic demographic facts concerning southern Lebanon.
Arafat's brother claimed that 10,000 people were killed and 600,000 people were made refugees during the Israeli invasion. The problem is that only 300,000 people lived in southern Lebanon at the time.
Have a nice one, Kel.
Tommy,
There are only a few points where we disagree, but I'm glad we have general agreement that the situation will be sorted.
I would argue that the Ottomans established an Arab presence in the region around 700AD and I am aware of the "land without people for a people without land" argument put forward by the Jewish Virtual Library and others. It's generally been discounted by mosr serious Jewish figures.
And I love how you ask if I'd offer UK troops then immediately say Israel should never accept such a thing!
And no, I've never seen the film Pallywood and imagine from the title that it wouldn't be to my taste! :-)
As for the photos I think time will prove them to be fakes.
We shall see. Have a good one.
Bhc,
I agree that media presentation of this conflict is incredibly one sided.
Even the supposedly "biased towards the Israelis" BBC often report suicide bombs as going off "after a period of relative calm" which, when you look into, turns out to be a period in which 67 Palestinian civilians died.
Calm is broken, even in the eyes of the BBC, only when Israelis die.
Not when their Palestinian counter parts are dying in far greater numbers.
Post a Comment