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Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos' Speech on Gaza
http://vivirlatino.com/2009/01/08/su...-gaza.php#more
Unique credentials I think.
http://vivirlatino.com/2009/01/08/su...-gaza.php#more
Unique credentials I think.
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Re: Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos' Speech on Gaza
I read an article by Immanuel Wallerstein (a very old, famous, and respected commentator on geopolitics, at Binghamton University).
It was written a year or two ago, and he said that Israel's best future prospects lie in establishing better and more peaceful relations with its Arab neighbors.
Because, he said, the U.S., Israel's major ally, is on a downward trend, in terms of both economic and military power worldwide, ie, with its weakening economic position vis-a-vis the rest of the world, the U.S. cannot long-term sustain a super-power military establishment, and open-ended military support for Israel indefinitely.
Re: Comandante Marcos, he was certainly right about the Israel military's inability to control the information flow in the age of the Internet. With camera phones, Youtube, and Liveleak, more and more film clips and photos of suffering and dying Gaza civilians are leaking out. -
Ed.Comment
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Re: Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos' Speech on Gaza
If it's true that Mossad created the most virulent anti-Isreal groups, and considering the US interventions have backfired too (cf Dahlan),
Isreal should rely on Mossad & the US more - if these 2 become less effective, they'll produce less poweful & less committed anti-Isreal foes
Originally posted by World Traveler View PostComment
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Re: Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos' Speech on Gaza
An interesting point and new to me:
The mainstream media make no effort to communicate to the general public the uniquely debilitating effects of statelessness. Statelessness is not merely to be without "a land of one's own." Max Weber's definition of the state is most relevant here: the state is the political institution that monopolizes the legitimate use of violence.
The state may rightfully employ violence as a means of addressing injustices done to its citizens. If someone kills your child, you may not imprison her in your attic as punishment. Instead, you report the perceived injustice to the state authorities, who then adjudicate your complaint through the justice system. A moment's reflection reveals that a stateless people are a people who lack any legitimate means of defending themselves against injustice.
A stateless people are structurally helpless in the face of injustice. For if modernity limits the violent response to injustice to state intervention, then statelessness mandates the passivity of the stateless. The latter are turned into involuntary pacifists. Statelessness disallows Palestinians the only kinds of resistance appropriate to the instruments of oppression they face, namely forceful, aggressive resistance.
In spite of all this, the statelessness of Palestinians dictates that they may not "take matters into their own hands." For Palestinians to take the measures that would normally be taken by a state whose citizens are treated by an enemy power as Palestinians are treated by Israel is termed "terrorism." Lacking a state to protect their interests, Palestinians find themselves in the following unenviable position: irrespective of what is done to them, the only 'legitimate' responses are passivity or reliance on the kindness of strangers.
Note the peculiarity of the use of the word "illegitimate" in this context. To call private or non-state violence "illegitimate" is to imply that state action is available. But in the remarkable case of an oppressed people without a state, the normal distinction between legitimate and illegitimate action has no application.Comment
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Re: Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos' Speech on Gaza
Yes Don,
Don't forget to include a few due credits to the havoc caused across thirty odd years by their "visionary leaders". The sophistication of your analysis below is compelling - and by the same token misleading in that it studiously omits any references to failure of their own leaders to sieze several **very large** political opportunities handed to them on a silver platter. World Traveler's comments too - regarding the abjectness of their quite evident misery, slip easily into the same westernized sophistries. You seem to suggest this entire people have been pushed, shoved and marginalized to this point entirely without reference to the lack of vision of their successive leaderships.
Being fully objective means resisting the compartmentalization of such history into anything which might portray the Palestinians as a people carried along helplessly in the stream of events. They have had their leaders, and those leaders have played very large roles in where they find themselves today. To suggest otherwise would be highly patronizing both to them as a people capable of any scrap of self determination, and also patronizing to those who may disagree with the conclusions you suggest. What all that means, in very simple terms, that when examining the horrific plight of Gaza today you examine the putative leaders of these people, and their most critical choices going back across 30++ years.
"Structurally helpless in the face of injustice" is not as probing an analysis as might be made. Try examining the process by which their current crop of *leaders* HAMAS have espoused a doctrine of total war against the Israeli state from a tiny spit of land without any resources to sustain their people. What does this choice evidence of their willingness to get beyond "glorious abstractions" regarding sheltering their own people from further bloodshed and death? It is a tautology to claim that they "must wage a liberation war" because they are critically embargoed, because they could enjoy perfectly free borders with Israel and a normalized condition for work, ttade and services with both Israel AND Egypt if they ever stopped the state encouraged waves of suicide bombers and the shelling?
Meanwhile, these HAMAS "freedom fighters" spout a lot of high-flown moralistic rhetoric about the "honor" of their Palestinian subjects, but by all intents don't appear to really care a shit if a quarter of them were to die while they strut and shoot salvoes into Israel ever more eagerly inviting the eventual crushing response. Just my humble two cents here, but these "leaders" are the single most toxic thing affecting the life and health of the Palestinians in Gaza. Banish all the gunslingers and suicide bombers, and within 5 years you'd see the embargo of Gaza to Israel disappear. Hence your sophisticated" analysis paints a picture of a sort of spontaneous destitution among the Palestinians which has surgically removed any slightest reference to the quixotic (and catastrophic) choices their leaders have made at several important junctures when elaborate brokered land for peace agreements were worked out which all they needed to do was sign and proceed upon.
I would put less trust in the subtle sociological analyses regarding the spontaneous mayhem which supposedly befalls stateless people, and ask yourself instead how plausible it is that their entire plight must be due to *external factors* in the majority of causes. In fact, and all respects to Mahmoud Abbas, but he is practically the only statesman, elected or un-elected, out of an entire 30 years of Palestinian leaders, who emerges as even a potential statesman for his people.
It is the tireless double-standard of the rest of the world to lay this simple observation neatly aside in order to resume the dirge and Greek Chorus of wails regarding oppression of Palestine as an event engineered entirely from without - which is a quite significant falsehood. For all the rest of the people who have *led* the Palestinians, in my humble opinion they have all been one of the worst things to befall the weary Palestinian people. I would land on the Israelis without mercy, and insist upon large concessions from them in settlement, if I could ever get stomach the brand of disingenousness which artfully omits any reference to the catastrophically short sighted (and in some cases alternately venal, slippery or downright bloody-minded) Palestinian political interlocutors whom the Israelis have tried repeatedly to strike a deal with.
Translation: The people who have wound up being leaders for the Palestinian plight have been plodding, visionless, and enamored of the power of the gun to win them their goals - and against the Israelis, surrounded by many other states of the same view for decades, that has been a singularly catastrophic strategy for the CIVILIAN Palestinians themselves. And the Israelis HAVE tried, tried to strike a significant, all encompassing deal with Arafat, tired more times than just at Camp David. Instead, and catastrophically, Arafat single handedly steered history into another direction, yet you blessed commentators don't wish to utter a murmur about it. Please note, this "Palestinian leader" who determined their fates at all the critical junctures for 20++ years, is the guy who left his wife with a hundred million dollar private account in Switzerland - money siphoned off of the international aid which was to deliver the Palestinians from their misery. What exactly did you expect to befall a stateless people, who entrust their deliverance to the likes of such a leader then, or to the likes of the violence-besotted gunslingers HAMAS today?
Subcommandante Marcos is full of shit in my opinion. No wonder he finds HAMAS alluring. They all speak the same language, and it is a toxic language for any civilians in Gaza that would love to get past all their leaders speciously grandstanding "nationbuilder" rhetoric and get on with the business of simple commerce. Put a moratorium on any and all explosives and gunfire for five years, and their commerce would blend in seamlessly with that of the Israelis. You don't need to be a genius to see that far - in fact I bet half the residents of Gaza understand these principles far better than their putative *statesmen* leaders. You wrote: "Note the peculiarity of the use of the word "illegitimate" in this context. To call private or non-state violence "illegitimate" is to imply that state action is available. But in the remarkable case of an oppressed people without a state, the normal distinction between legitimate and illegitimate action has no application."
This is a very seductive and apparently sophisticated argument - too bad it's practicable precepts have evolved to be supremely toxic for the very Palestinian civilians we purport to express concern about. They have institutionalized violence in the form of human suicide bombers for years now such that Palestinian "documentaries" now heroicise and propagandize mothers sallying forth to blow up some Jews while chiding their daughters that to do this is the highest cultural expression of their people. The little daughters know better - but the mothers and fathers among these hapless tools of HAMAS appear to be wholly brainwashed by the tripe and bilge HAMAS has institutionalized as their version of "national leadership". If you've ever watched one of these videos and you have a scrap of sanity about you, you will understand the virulent poison buried deep within the core of such teaching. That is, you SHOULD understand it. If you don't instantly understand the profound moral perversion you are lost.
And WorldTraveler wrote, quoting Prof. Immanuel Wallerstein: "he said that Israel's best future prospects lie in establishing better and more peaceful relations with its Arab neighbors". This expression ranks right up there among the most [dis]ingenuous comments on the Arab / Israeli predicament I've read anywhere - just about ever. It is of a truly awe-inspiring naivete'. Prof. Wallerstein seems to be under the impression that they have never really tried before. :eek: :rolleyes: [I am genuinely aghast at his probing grasp of Israeli history in the region, and of his perspicacity in genera]. The fact that the present conflict in Gaza was a direct result of the Israelis offering Gaza back as a preliminary (not merely rhetorical) gesture of reconciliation to Mahmoud Abbas, which was expressly intended to promote the Israeli wish for a re-invigorated discussion for comprehensive peace - such mundane details seem lost on the good professor.
He probably today concludes that the Israelis should "redouble their efforts" with more chunks of territory signed over to the Palestinian Authority to assure a more "positive result" elsewhere? After all, Hamas' "confidence-building gestures" in response to the cession of Gaza have been highly encouraging, no? Seriously, this Prof succumbs to the same non-think which vast swathes of the international opinion do with monotonous regularity on this question.
Originally posted by don View PostLast edited by Contemptuous; January 15, 2009, 04:29 AM.Comment
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Re: Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos' Speech on Gaza
I posted that excerpt, only the first line was mine, because I had never thought of the dilemma that a stateless entity like Gaza faces.
I was not looking to take a side in the minutia of the Israeli/Palestinian question, which, in a nutshell, is Manifest Destiny writ small.Comment
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Re: Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos' Speech on Gaza
My personal opinion of both Marcos and the EZLN are similar...Originally posted by Lukester View Post
How can you speak of "self determination of indigenous peoples" letting thrash Europeans that have no idea about Mexican History or indigenous culture intervene in communities?
How can anybody reject the building of roads uttering that "they are made so the Government tanks can get into the communities"?
Howe can anybody accewpt or support onto constitutional status the figure of "uses and customs" when they include religious, sex or party segregation, or when they allow servitude figures already abolished in the rest of the country?
How can anybody reject the development of an indigenous owned cooperative enterpeneurship because of "rejection of any form of capitalism that can aleniate the communities"?
I really have tried to understand Zapatistas, but so far haven't been able to...sigpic
Attention: Electronics Engineer Learning Economics.Comment
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Re: Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos' Speech on Gaza
Ocelotl - Pienso que somos en el acuerdo completo en el peligro de estos "combatientes para la libertad". ¡No hay nada mal con la lucha de la libertad en principio, salvo que atrae generalmente a los que sepan no hacer nada sino luchar!! Estos individuos (Subcommandante Marcos y HAMAS por ejemplo) parecen siempre encontrar la espada y el arma más atractivos que la energía demostrada por los líderes que saben imponer su voluntad y cambiar la dirección nacional con razón, la organización eficiente, el discusión claro y la negociación resistente. Éstos son los líderes verdaderos para la era moderna. Una gente con tanto sufrimiento en su historia como los palestinos no debe permitir esta clase de machismo, jugando a juegos estúpidos y peligrosos fingiendo ser una "lucha de la resistencia popolar"; fingiendo ser con una visión y un plan verdadero para la paz luego. Esta gente no tiene NINGUNA visión - éstos no son líderes verdaderos, llevan solamente en muerte y el sufrimiento peor.Last edited by Contemptuous; January 17, 2009, 01:09 AM.Comment
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Re: Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos' Speech on Gaza
Also
VIDEO: Israel’s leaders are not simply war criminals; they are fools
Statement in the British House of Commons of Sir Gerald Kaufmann
It is times for a total arms ban on Israel.
Israel was born out of Jewish Terrorism.
Sir Gerald Kaufmann, A Righteous Among The Jews, Member of British parliament speaks :
"Israel was born out of Jewish Terrorism" Tzipi Livnis Father was a Terrorist" Astonishing claims in the Hous of Parliamnet. SIR Gerald Kaufman, the veteran Labour MP, yesterday compared the actions of Israeli troops in Gaza to the Nazis who forced his family to flee Poland.
During a Commons debate on the fighting in Gaza, he urged the government to impose an arms embargo on Israel.
Sir Gerald, who was brought up as an orthodox Jew and Zionist, said: "My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came to her home town a German soldier shot her dead in her bed.
"My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza. The present Israeli government ruthlessly and cynically exploits the continuing guilt from gentiles over the slaughter of Jews in the Holocaust as justification for their murder of Palestinians."
He said the claim that many of the Palestinian victims were militants "was the reply of the Nazi" and added: "I suppose the Jews fighting for their lives in the Warsaw ghetto could have been dismissed as militants."
He accused the Israeli government of seeking "conquest" and added: "
They are not simply war criminals, they are fools."Comment
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Re: Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos' Speech on Gaza
Sigh.Originally posted by Rajiv View Post
Originally posted by we_are_toast View Post
Since I recall recently having posted comments both on the inflamed Israel / Gaza topic and also on the fascinating "Beyond Rational" topics (what is then lampooned somewhat woodenly as "mysticism") I have an inkling this comment posted elsewhere was intended as a veiled aspersion to the discussions going on here regarding Israel and Gaza. and possibly my own posts have been what was aimed at? - Maybe not, but I'll have my say on this anyway. Having cast an eye around for any other "political rants" worthy of the moniker on these pages, I must assume that some sensibilities here have been bruised by suggestions that the Palestinian Authority could have actually contributed anything of significance, let alone profoundly morally compromised in it's own right, to the present horrific intermingling of fighting with civilian casualties there.
So let's apply a little scrutiny to the topic in the form of documentation regarding violations of international human rights and war conduct law on the Palestinian side, shall we? We get very expertly produced pictorial coverage of casualties resulting from the Israeli incursion as the Palestinian plight is far more popular than the Israeli precursor events and much more assiduously documented. Conversely you won't find muxh coverage of the seven years of Gazan factions systematic bombardment of Israel as a preamble to present events. That part has been considered by international opinion to be "far less interesting". :rolleyes:
And most certainly, this incursion on Israel's part is in large part a massive folly. These are wars they cannot win, for the war upon public perception (the much more powerful background struggle alongside the hot war) in such engagements is routinely lost for them.
One senses the majority opinion on these pages is swayed and primarily moved by the perception that gross human rights violations are being perpetrated by the Israelis - that the public is innocent is overhwelmingly true - and yes there are indeed violations of international law on human rights - it's horrific - but there is a problem in the way such critics voice their concern - any human rights violation put forwards here which has been carefully peeled out from it's "significant corrolaries" in the immediate prior history is a factoid not too much different from agenda driven propaganda, as we all know that by removing corollaries the meaning or correct evaluation of news can be powerfully manipulated.
What does this mean? Any reader unwilling to apportion blame a wee bit more impartially - the kind who is drawn like a bee to honey to indulge in blazingly indignant censure of the Israelis with little to no comment observing the prior systematic Palestinians disdain for "human rights" issues, succumbs to a notable component of hypocrisy - they regard anyone suggesting there is the smallest scrap of predictability in the Israeli response as merely exhibiting "crass reactionary tendencies".
I think these are called in the unthinking vernacular "neocon tendencies" (remark exhibits a willfully narrow andedited focuse on the salient facts). In effect moral outrage directed at anyone offering the slightest suggestion Hamas have brought this eventually upon themselves. The emotionally obfuscated grasp of the issue is striking. Given the reality underpinning the Israeli moral quandary - that any response at all towards Hamas et. al. is a non-starter according to international rules of war because Hamas brilliantly exploit those same rules for cover, waging any sort of reprisal at all against HAMAS is a hopelessly controversial cause for Israel.
To be "good neighbors" the Israelis must sit there in complete passivity for a decade and bring their pleas to the UN to press their case, while HAMAS continue to practice their range artillery into Israel with gusto month after month. HAMAS don't have to bring their arguments for discussion to the UN beause they are deprived of normal countries usual means of operating the levers of state power (or some such gobbledegook) and hence their volleys of explosives and suicide bombers represent the last available means of protest. These guys (Israel and Hamas) have different rules of dispute resolution to abide by apparently
I find such emotionally distraught stereotypical thinking about the "inevitable virtue of the underdog" to be stifling. Moral relativism takes many subtle shapes and is cleverly disguised by inflamed emotion here. Yes, you are witnessing aberrant Israeli behavior - politically and morally disastrous (booby trapped) Israeli attempts to give HAMAS some kind of scare - to bring them to their senses - that continuing bombardments of missiles into Israel are an absurd strategy for resolving the multi year impasse. But regardless I bet some here with long and comfortably habitual histories of decrying Israeli immorality exclusively have very bruised feelings that their righteousness has been affronted, after reading a few blunt comments to the contrary.
Is this then why dissenting posts here which seek to hold you to a slightly less ambiguously one-sided ethical standard are then labeled "rants"? How convenient - it's a rant - so one does not have to respond substantively to these pointed questions.
Will anyone who mumbles terms like "direct violation of the international laws governing the conduct of war" in reference to the Israelis please rouse themselves sufficiently to submit to the acute (ideologically distressed) discomfort of actually reading the systematic records of Palestinian institutionalization of human shields, below, and could they then offer a refreshingly blunt and honest comment as to which side in this conflict seems to have craftily institutionalized such civilian involvement not only far earlier, but as a core practice?
How many people here thirstily lap up tales of Israeli uniformed troops (checking their Israeli Army strategy manuals) and then using young children premeditatedly as "minesweepers" or "front line decoys" as did the Iranians in the Iran / Iraq war?
Get off it - and while you are at it, give a fair scrutiny to the simple interpretation staring right back at you from the documentation of wholesale employment of human shields and civilian targeting described below. These gothic yarns ascribed to the Israelis as part and parcel of their "Zionist racism" have all the hallmarks of a HAMAS political operative's wet dream - what is most telling is that the strategies they ascribe to the Israelis are such a carbon copy of what is amply visible in HAMAS strategy itself, and on a much broader scale spanning many years. But the world is so contorted up into it's own rear end on this emotionally fraught topic as to lap this bilge up about Israeli "standard practices using Palestinian children as minesweepers" as though it were gospel truth.
This agitprop is as wooden as Pravda. Of course, all Israeli soldiers would just love to flirt around with an international all for a court martial right? Great sport and very advantageous to enhancing their nations political capital in the world. Mossad have these little gnomes who astutely calculate just how much advantage Israel will accrue winning the world's "hearts and minds" by institutionalizing such uniformed solder comportment. An insight so brilliantly counterintuitive as to disappear up it's own sphincter, It seems the international community's ability to discern all sides of this conflict even-handedly has morphed into a collective squalling, self righteous partisan outrage bordering on cognitive dysfunction.
Nations enamored of peace and good relations must submit PERMANENTLY and in TOTAL PASSIVITY to being shelled for years by a sovereign neighbor they righteously declare. ("Just don't try it in our neighborhoods or we'll kick your ass back to the stone age"), these righteous protesters mutter sottovoce. They all appear drunk on the heady wine of self righteous moral outrage where any political consequences, of prolonged cross border shelling are a matter only effectively settled by a UN quorum - and that only after a properly comprehensive debate. ... Very liesurely and "comprehensive" debate spanning another decade maybe.
The instant conscription of civilian and even children runners, decoys and active participants of all sorts in hot battlezones has been standard, textbook practice in the Palestinian territories since the first Intifada - a long time, and really quite formally "institutionalized" by now. There are massive demonstrations throughout Europe today on the Israeli atrocities. These demonstrators expound quite learnedly on Geneva convention rules of engagement - where were their active concerns for 7 years of HAMAS shelling into civilian areas in Israel, or their ethical concerns at the massive flowering of the practice of civilian suicide bombers, once again into civilian areas?
Why did these same morally outraged demonstrators not issue so much as a squeak when witnessing HAMAS sponsored documentaries exhorting their womenfolk to bid their families goodbye and join the martyring waves, let alone any smallest squeak at the ongoing spectacle of 6000 missiles lobbed out of Gaza, with a sharp increasing of that pace after HAMAS had "mopped up" the last of the FATAH resistance in a bloody purge?
Palestinians (notably HAMAS but certainly every splinter group and Fatah also) use civilians, regularly, routinely, as targets (Jews preferably, but they have zero compunction about blowing up civilian Arabs with carefully premeditated planning either) and as shields. They have for a long time now done this as a systematic guerrilla tactic, as anyone not utterly blinded by their ideological enthusiasms might care to note. Whether this gruesome means is ennobled by their desperate plight is for you to decide. The point and the core fact to acknowledge impartially is, of the two sides, these are the ones who have PIONEERED this concept and who have broken all international law precedents with supreme regularity for 7+ years there.
What's more, the other groups most inclined to employ willfully indiscriminate "civilian warfare" are like minded "freedom fighters" in Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and ... well, you (may or may not) get the point. What a surprising similarity of approach throughout this region, eh? It's a very popular form of protest - self immolation while taking a few dozen along with you. So - for those of you imbued with a seductive glow of righteous indignation against any state in the region that occasionally circumvents the UN in attempting to convey a "cease and desist" message - I suggest you are indulging rank hypocrisy by caricaturing these more balanced objections elsewhere as "rants". This is not the genuinely inquiring response.
Endorsing such groups methods of indiscriminate and institutionalized use of civilians as agents and targets appears, at least to this pedestrian reader, like the height of "moral relativism". A nice slippery morass for you sentimentalists to wander off into.
Must be more than a few bruised ultra-liberal sentiments here, among readers who had read some of the rather frank comments I posted about the "statesmanship" and "caliber" of the current crop of Palestinian leaders on the Gaza strip. First an Israeli comments, then below are documentary reports of institutionalized implementation of human shields from the civilian population. The most intelligent discussion here would be to dissect the dillemmas faced by nations as polarizing as Israel, attempting to bring their objections to civillian shelling, civilian suicide bombing, and civilian human shields to the UN for a "resolution".
How far do you honestly feel that appeal would go? We'd get the largest global display of hypocrisy in response to such an appeal. The UN would emit such voluminous clouds of rhetorical smoke as to force the Israelis to go home empty-handed. Of course, their current attempts are possibly even worse. Fucked if they do something about it, and fucked if they don't. And with regard to the article below referring to the Palestinian combatants as "terrorists" you don't need to go all sophisticated and then try to parse the "politics of power" on this point. After seven years and a virtually uninterrupted rain of missiles, the Israelis can call them anything that might come to mind and it may be understood they are "a little overwrought" about the ongoing dillemma.
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- Posted by Haim Shafir - Get your facts straight …
January 18th, 2009
3:51 am GMT
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israele
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications /the-world-factbook/geos/is.html
In general Israel is about 800 km in length and less then 40 km in width at some points (which is a very very very small place).
When speaking of Arabs in Israel you need to know that there are two different “categories”: There are Arab-citizens and there is the “Palestinian-Authority”.
Israel’s population is 7 million, about 20% of them are Arab-citizens (muslim and christian Arabs) - we get along most of the time.
On the other hand there is the Palestinian-Authority which consists of about 4 milion people - all Muslim.
The Palestinian authority consists of the Gaza strip on the west (with a border of 51 km with Israel) and the eastern part of “Yehuda and Shomron”.
On the west they have a border with Egypt and on the east with Jordan. The Palestinian-Authority does not have a continuity in geography.
In 2004 israel cleared almost all the mixed territories and left it to the internal Palestinian leadership.
In 2007 some form of “democratic” elections took-place at the Palestinian-Authority and a terror organization called the “Hamas” movement won most of the seats in their parliament.
The Hamas movement began hunting and executing the Fatah representators in Gaza and actualy took the leadership over the Gaza strip by force.
After these elections - the Hamas tried and executed most of the previous Parliament members and took hold of Gaza by force. So - Now we are talking about 2 prime-ministers of the Palestinian-Authority. The one on the east and the one on the west.
For the past 7 years - starting as early as 2001 - from the border of Gaza strip (which holds its indipendence since 2004) there are missiles and rockets showering the cities close to the border up to 40 km from Gaza.
When the Hamas rose to power they began to fire more intensively.
About one month ago - trying to take advantage of the Israeli elections that are planned on the 10th of February - the number of rockets fired into Israel rose dramatically after a ceasefire of several months.
At 2008 Israel suffered from over 890 missiles - can you imagine living in such a place?!
See the graph of incoming rockets from Gaza! :
2001 4
2002 35
2003 155
2004 281
2005 179
2006 946
2007 783
2008 890
And these are only one type of rocket - and does not include the amount which was in use since this war started.
In addition - these are directed at Israeli civilians - so don’t come babbling about civilians being hit by accident on the other side.
After 7 years (!) we are finally doing something about the problems!
Our mistake is that we do not show the world pictures of our injuries, there had been a lot. The Palestinian rockets are fired upon our civilian populations but we do not release such pictures as they do on the media.
I know the photos on the television look bad when we try to hit the terrorists in Gaza but they are everywhere - using mosque and kindergartens as places to launch and store missiles.
More about human shield in the gaza strip: http://www.terrorism-info.org.il/malam_m ultimedia/English/eng_n/html/human_s_e.h tm
- Posted by Haim Shafir
___________________
Now read these reports and wonder where all those morally outraged demonstrators against Israeli "Ziuonist imperialistic racism" parked their on again off again "moral outrage" for all the years the Gazan splinter groups rained missiles and suicide bombers onto civilians in Israel. They will tell you: "Oh, but in that case it's a different set of rules because they are oppressed". Moral relativism is seductively accomodating isn't it?
During the last round of escalation inthe Gaza Strip the terrorist organizations again made extensive use of Palestinian civilians as human shields.
Popular Resistance Committees Rocket fire from within a built-up area (PRC Muqawamah Website, February 27)
Civilians called out by Hamas to form a human shield on the roof of a house in the northern Gaza Strip to prevent the IDF from attacking (Al-Aqsa TV, March 1)
Overview
1. Using civilians as human shields, which is in direct violation of the international laws governing the conduct of war , is a procedure common among the Palestinian terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip. In recent years its use has been extended and honed for both offensive (rocket and mortar shell fire at Israeli civilians) and defensive purposes (preventing the IDF from hitting terrorist bases).
2. The Palestinian terrorist organizations' use of civilians in the Gaza Strip as human shields is manifested in the following ways, as was seen during the last round of escalation:
1) Firing rockets from densely populated areas and targeting population centers in Israel with the overt intention of harming Israeli civilians. Jabaliya, Beit Hanoun and other populated areas of the northern Gaza Strip are the preferred launching areas for attacking the western Negev towns and villages.
2) Locating the terrorist operative infrastructure within the civilian population : weapons (including rockets), bases, offices, headquarters, tunnels, lathes and weapons stores. During Operation Hot Winter IDF soldiers fought against Hamas operatives who established themselves inside civilian homes.
3) Enlisting Palestinian civilians (including women and children ) through the use of terrorist-owned media and loudspeakers. That is done to call them to gather at the houses they expect the IDF to attack in order to serve as human shields.
3. The following are updated examples of the use of Palestinian civilians as human shields:
Firing Rockets at Israel from within Palestinian Population Centers
4. Hamas and the other Palestinian terrorist organizations turned populated areas in the Gaza Strip into launching centers from which to attack Israel . Prominent in the northern Gaza Strip were the Jabaliya refugee camp, Beit Lahia and Beit Hanoun, from within which rockets are systematically fired at Israel :
Rocket fire into Israeli territory from within a residential neighborhood of Beit Lahia
(Photo courtesy of Israel's Channel 10 TV, February 27).
Rockets fired from a built-up area by the PRC's Zakariya Dughmush faction
(the PRC's Muqawamah Website, February 23).
Hamas rocket fire from a populated area (Al-Aqsa TV, February 27).
Locating Hamas's Terrorist Operational Infrastructure within Populated Areas
5. During the last round of fighting the IDF hit Hamas lathes and weapons factories located in the heart of densely-populated residential neighborhoods. Placing a weapons factory within such neighborhoods endangers the local residents by exposing them to both the dangers of living near weapons and explosives and a possible attack by Israeli security forces.
6. The following are examples of weapons factories located within residential areas:
Lathe for manufacturing weapons, located in the Daraj neighborhood of Gaza City .
Weapons manufacturing factory located in the Shaboura neighborhood of Rafah.
Weapons manufacturing factory located in the
Jabaliya refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip.
Mosque Used As a Terrorist Organization Base
7. In the last round of escalation IDF forces carried out an action in the Jabaliya refugee camp and the Sajaiya neighborhood on the outskirts of Gaza City . During their actions the soldiers met with resistance from terrorist operative squads located inside civilian dwellings. During the fighting two IDF soldiers were killed and seven wounded, one of them seriously.
8. During operational activities an IDF force uncovered weapons in a mosque in the Jabaliya refugee camp. They included a telephone-detonated charge, coils of wire for detonating charges, mortar shells, hand grenades and magazines for assault rifles. At the mosque entrance there were coils of wire which would detonate charges from inside the mosque building and parts of magazines , indicating that terrorist operatives used the mosque to shoot from. 1
Left: Weapons found in a mosque, among them mortar shells and hand grenades. Right: IDF forces on patrol in a mosque in the Jabaliya refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip (IDF Spokesman, March 2)
Left: Coils of wire used to detonate charges. Right: Magazine for assault
rifle and charges found in the mosque (IDF Spokesman, March 2).
Hamas Used Women and Children to Patrol and Gather Weapons during Operation Hot Winter (February 27 – Night of March 2, 2008)
9. Givati Brigade commanders who took part in Operation Hot Winter told interviewers that the fighting with Hamas operatives was waged inside buildings where civilian families lived. The Givati soldiers came upon Hamas squads waiting in ambush in houses and alleys. The commanding officers noted that in certain instances Hamas operatives deliberately sent women and children to carry out missions for them, including patrols and collecting the weapons of Hamas operatives who had been killed (Ron Ben-Yishai for Ynet, March 4).
10. In one instance the soldiers saw a child pick up the weapon of a dead Hamas operative and bring it to his comrades who were waiting aound a corner. The Givati commanders stated that they had not shot at him, assuming he had been forced to retrieve the weapon by terrorist operatives. They also stated that IDF forces did their best not to harm non-combatant civilians and that instructions to that effect had been given before the operation ( Ibid ).
Right: IDF soldiers searching the Jabaliya refugee camp (northern Gaza Strip) (IDF Spokesman, March 2). Left: Palestinian terrorist operative with his weapons sitting in the doorway of a residential dwelling (Muhammad Salem for Reuters, March 1).
Enlisting Civilians as Human Shields
11. During Operation Hot Winter Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad called upon Palestinian civilians to go to buildings they expected the IDF to attack. They were to gather at the building and serve as human shields on the assumption that the IDF would not deliberately attack terrorist targets if many civilians were in the area. The same tactic was used in the past by terrorist organizations during IDF activities in the Gaza Strip during the second half of 2006 2 and again during the latest round of escalation.
12 . Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniya encouraged the use of the tactic and even boasted of it. He told Al-Jazeera TV that he praised the Palestinians' “firm stand.” As an example he said that the “occupation” threatened to blow up buildings but nevertheless, hundreds and thousands of Palestinians had left their homes “in the middle of the night” and gone up on the roofs of the designated buildings (Al-Jazeera TV, February 29).
13. On March 1 Hamas's Al-Aqsa TV interviewed a Palestinian named Abu Bilal al-Ja'abir, who lives in the northern Gaza Strip. He said that on March 1 the “occupation forces” telephoned him and threatened to blow up his house. He said that he “hung up immediately and called some friends who used loudspeakers to call out a crowd of people and they filled the roof of my house and stayed there until now to protect the house…” According to the interview, when other civilians heard about the treat they “left their homes and went to Bilal Ja'abir's house to form a human shield in an attempt to prevent his house from being attacked…”
Civilians on the roof of the house of Abul Bilal Ja'abir serve as a human shield. The subtitle reads:
“The occupation threatens to attack a house…and civilians go up against
them [the Israelis]” (Al-Aqsa TV, March 1).
14. The following are examples of Hamas and PIJ media appeals to Palestinian civilians to rush to locations about to be attacked to serve as human shields:1) Hamas's Al-Aqsa TV and PalMedia Website appeals to civilians to form a human shield at the house of Abu al-Hatal in Al-Sha'f neighborhood because the IDF had threatened to blow it up (March 1).
The call for volunteers to form a human shield at Abu al-Hatal's house (Al-Aqsa TV, March 1).
2) Hamas's Al-Aqsa TV called upon the Palestinians in the northern Gaza Strip to go to the house of shaheed Othman al-Ruziana to protect it because the IDF was threatening to attack it (February 29).
3) Hamas's Al-Aqsa TV called upon the residents of Khan Yunis to gather at the house of Ma'amoun Abu ‘Amer because the IDF was threatening to attack it (February 28). An hour later dozens of Palestinians from Khan Yunis were reported to have gathered on the roof of Abu ‘Amer's house to serve as human shields to prevent the house from being hit (Pal-today Website, February 28) .
4) Hamas's Al-Aqsa TV called upon Palestinians in the northern Gaza Strip to go to the house of shaheed Musab al-Ja'abir to protect it because Israel was threatening to attack it (February 29).
5) The PIJ's Radio Sawt al-Quds called upon civilian to gather around the house of Fawzi Abu al-Hamed in the Absan al-Kabira region to prevent it from being attacked by the IDF (March 1).
1 The terrorist organizations also exploited mosques during in Operation Autumn Clouds, November 6, 2006. Dozens of terrorists barricaded themselves in the Al-Nasr mosque in the village of Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip. The terrorists were rescued by a procession of 200 women who exploited the fact that the IDF would not open fire on them. For further information see our November 26, 2006 Bulletin entitled “The Palestinian terrorist organizations, have recently made more frequent use of civilians as human shields to protect their bases and operatives” at http://www.terrorism-info.org.il/malam_multimedia/English/eng_n/html/human_shield_e.htm .
2 For further information see pages 29-34 our March 11, 2007 Bulletin entitled “Anti-Israeli Terrorism, 2006: Data, Analysis and Trends” at http://www.terrorism-info.org.il/malam_multimedia/English/eng_n/pdf/terrorism_2006e.pdf .
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Re: Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos' Speech on Gaza
It real simple. The Palestinians are the Indians.
You know the drill.
Can't be trusted.
Don't fight fair.
Won't respect any of the generous treaties they've been offered
Have resorted to mysticism when exhausted, desperate and cornered.
Both share looking down the business end of the Manifest Destiny barrel.
Both share a European -launched idee fixe, one prompted by Colonialism and the other by Antisemitism, two of Europe's Greatest Hits :pComment
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Re: Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos' Speech on Gaza
Don -
You are being a little too "sophisticated" here. The landmark "land for peace" treaty rejected over a 2% technicality by Arafat at Camp David renders your response somewhat shallow or ahistorical. I otherwise have great respect for the great majority of your posts and think you really are a very smart poster. On this topic, you are being maybe just a little bit glib too. Immense blood and suffering ensued after the failure of Camp David, snd Begin was not the one who scuttled that huge opportunity - Arafat was, for quixotic (and I suspect merely shallow) reasons he never clearly substantiated afterwards.
09/11 was a ringing protest against Arab Israeli peace as it is actually the anniversary of the Camp David talks, - It was the ringing voice of a deep and powerful sentiment in the region that will determinedly refute any settlement with Israel, while you will gaze fixedly at the (to your presumption bigoted and "forward leaning") "Israeli Cowboys" here and exhort them to "finally make a real effort at peacemaking", which IMO is tripe because ever since Arafat that day at Camp David they have had no serious interlocutor sitting across the table to make the settlement with.
Too many nifty and slick gunslingers among these "Indians" know only one way of life - great at being professional "underdog freedom fighters" and utterly clueless about taking the first steps towards a peacetime economy coupled with constructive goal bound negotiation of land FOR PEACE with Israel. These much broader and deeper and more substantive points are things you skate over very breezily. Frankly, I find your analysis callow on this one point. Disappointed with your insight (or was it your form of a concession to any point I made above? :rolleyes: ).
Respectfully.
Originally posted by don View PostLast edited by Contemptuous; January 19, 2009, 07:06 PM.Comment
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