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BARAK OBAMA history in Pictures : http://tinyurl.com/Barak-Obama-photo-history
I never quite understood why any religion needs it's own country. When your spirituallity exists within you.
I realize this is an American perspective. But having said that, why do we support Israel so much. I don't get it.
I understand Israel has not allowed free access in or out of Gaza thus creating a desperation for supplies for the Palestinians, but what have the oil rich Arab nations done to help the plight of the Palestinians other then egg on the conflict? Hamas has been lobing rockets into Israel for months. What do people expect Israel to do?
What am i not seeing?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCL6WdnuNp4&feat... Part One
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mo2HW4T7wK4&feat... Part Two
It'll show you how the palestinians are forced to live and how both the US and Israel are guilty of heinous crimes.
I have a question for anyone on here. Forgive my ignorance, but are there any Palestinians living in Israel at all? Surely there must be doctors, a lawyer or two, a teacher etc. that live in peace in Israel. perhaps they are secular? Is this a comon scenario?
This is getting all too dizzying.
If we were being bombed by Canada, do you think we should not protect our citizens with a counter attack?
Desperate people fight back any way possible. Starving children and old people is reason enough. Sometimes the slaves rebel.
Hamas is to blame. Not the Palestineans, or the Israelis. Hamas. They do not know how to govern. Period.
If I am incorrect in my assessement. Please, politely and intelligently tell me so. I want to learn.
If we slowly expanded Guantanmo Bay by a 50 square miles every year.
If we put in Checkpoints all over the country that can take all day to get through.
If everytime a Cuban Terrorist killed 20 people, we killed 20 terrorists and 200 innocent civilians.
If we put up a number of Walls between farmers and their fields.
Then would you be surprised if Cuba fired Rockets at you?
It's a chicken and egg scenario...with no simple answers.
constantly making pro Israel policies, that anger the rest of the world. Perhaps this might be the reason for terrorist attacks against the US and Israel.
It is no surprise that Israel's neighbors want to arm themselves, even with WMD's. Having a bully like Israel as a neighbor, will make any neighbor ultimately stop the rock throwing, and want to change to equal military might. The Jewish lobby has been able to make the US government dance to their tune, and get their unending, and unconditional support.
As a tax payer, I wish I had the right to stop my money from going to a bully country like Israel, who has broken more than a hundred UN resolutions, to say the least.
Get real people.
Sometimes the Israelis are right, someimes the Palistineans are right. Let's excersise objectivity here please kids.....
I remember well how the PLO bombed Israeli school buses in the late sixties.
Israel gave the Palestinians Gaza. The Arab Nations have done nothing to help.
Let's put the blame where it belongs.
I'm no historian but I do believe you'll find out if you read up on it (start with Sachar's Rise of Zionism c. 1892) that Israeli comes a lot closer to terrorism then does the Palestinian people - and I have never heard the statement that Israel (generous that they are) "gave the Gaza strip" to the Palestinians. Last I looked it was theirs from the start.
I enjoy your posts Karol so don't take this criticism personal - really nothing on this board should be that way - though we all fall into this kind of thing once in a while. But I do beg to differ with your historic review.
It makes no sense to me. They were given everything they asked for.
I think if you really look close you'll find that the were not given everything they asked for (propaganda?). Try this Karol. Find out why the peace initiative was rejected. Why? Then think about that, look into that. Then report back here. I'm all ears.
In my mind there will be no peace until there is Justice. Coralling Palestinians as if they were cattle, cutting off their very daily needs for "punishment" is cruel. Very very cruel. I am not anti-semitic by any stretch so I can say this without discourse - history will not be kind to Israel. They are and have been a cruel people (not all) - their leaders - and until they discover what Justice is there will never be peace - of course another alternative might lie along the say line as the American Indian - just mow 'em down to the last squaw - which it appears Israel is doing. I do not respect Israel, though I know there are good people there. They are cruel. And until they stop being cruel, I will never embrace their hopes and dreams.
Dubya does his dad better again!
IRAN killing civilians in a neighboring country, whilst thumbing it's nose at the rest of the world!!
It seems that only the US and Israel are entitled to have the most sophisticated weapons in the entire world, and that
they are the only two nations who can use them at their will.
If we use your standards, we would be bombing the Vatican right now. Not only are they as homophibic as Hamas, but they actually have much more power and influence in the world.
I was in Israel a short while back on a assistance/mission trip to the Palestinian Occupied Territories.............was there an extended period of time and I heard and saw alot. Some areas were some of the most, squalid, fetid, hopeless places I have ever been to in all my numerous trips of relief, Katrina included. I was stuck at a checkpoint into Bethlehem out of Jerusalem one day, and I watched a small group of young ladies passing through into the city to shop, work, I don't know. Israeli soldiers, both male and female, were searching and maybe harassing them more than necessary, I don't have a judgement on that. As the women passed and went their way, two/three of the male soldiers shouted something at them. I turned to an Israeli man standing next to me boarding the same bus as I, and asked him what they were shouting. He told me they were calling them Monkeys and Whores. In all my time there that was the sum total of all I witnessed-----Israeli to Palestinian.
And I've got no use for the fucking Vatican either, but I'll call for the bombing of Vatican City when it starts lobbing missiles at civilians.
from Uptake:
Alright, unofficialy, we are ballparking the Franken lead at 174 votes.
from MNCampaignReport:
Franken WINS!
by: Grace Kelly
Sat Jan 03, 2009 at 17:41:37 PM CST
The exact number is debatable and may change, however a Franken win of more than 200 votes is now a certainty
http://www.mncampaignreport.com/diary/2403/fran...
It's even worse than the analogy of taking a knife to a gunfight...
The thinking being that they'd start selling arms all over the world then to support it.
Sort of like the way we sell arms all over the world to support our domestic arms industry.
We don't want them to be like us, basically.
Everybody knows they're just talking big for domestic consumption.
Unfortunately, it plays into the hands of the Wingnuts, who get the dumb f*cks who watch Fox News to believe they're serious..
Bottom line, watch for Christo-centric policy decisions ala Bush with a little more style thrown into the mix to dominate the next 4 to 8 years (if we last that long given the current unfolding economic disaster).
Kennedy came before the fundi-revolution. Obama's brand of Christianity (read his book) is different than a standard mainstream Catholic of the 1960s. Listen to him talk about the Bible, either he really believes the stuff or he is really the biggest con man yet.
The Israel/Palestine "conflict" will end one of two ways:
1. Israel will finally murder all the Palestinians.
2. A nuclear-armed Iran will do what no other nation seems willing or capable, which is to bring a balance of power and thus force Israel to abide by international law and human decency.
Israel is a terrorist state committing genocide of the Palestinians. Was, Is, and unless stopped, Will Be.
Friday, January 02, 2009
Totally Different
by digby
Jonathan Schwarz takes a trip down Israel's Memory Lane and finds something interesting:
The funny thing about the Israeli attack on Gaza following its long blockade is that Israel's original justification for taking over Gaza in 1967 was that Israel was being subject to a blockade. This is from the official Knesset history of the Six Day War:
Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser blockaded the Straits of Tiran on May 21st and 22nd to all shipping from and to Eilat; the area was open to Israeli ships under UN supervision since 1957, and Israel repeatedly stated that such a blockade will be considered as casus belli (justification for acts of war).
Ooops.
Jonathan also does a search and finds that nobody in journalism seems to drawn attention to this obvious parallel in all the talk about blockade and retaliation.
How odd.
.
digby 1/02/2009 07:30:00 PM Comments (12) | Trackback (0)
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/
Prisons, child molesters, after-life experiences.....anything but live news.
The actions of Israel are dishonest and they act as terrorists, and they know it.
I especially like your line "I am not anti-semitic, I am anti-Isreal policy". I agree 100%++.
I have heard far too many Israelis describe palestinians as "sub human" and practically "vermin"...so where have I heard that disgusting description being pressed on human beings before?
The ugliness of this conflict, is killing the world. Bin Laden, and countless other actions have happened because of exactly THIS kind of thing. If I were an arab, I wouldn'¨t have to spend a lot of time before coming to the conclusion that all of the west, led by Israel and the US was out to kill me and my kind.
Nobody ever learns about blowback.
Seriously?
I am not being snarky...I really want to learn.
It is hard for me to comprehend that someone who writes such thoughtful and informed comments, as you do, believes that there are now no Israeli-constructed walls around Palestinian "ghettos," but here's a good place to start if you want to learn about this one subject (and which may help you better understand Palestinian rocket attacks):
http://www.google.com/search?q=Israeli+walls+ar...
Thank you for the link. I will check it out.
Take care-
Hamas indeed respected their side of the ceasefire, except on those occasions early on when Israel carried out major offensives in the West Bank. In the last two months, the ceasefire broke down with Israelis killing several Palestinians and resulting in the response of Hamas. In other words, Hamas has not carried out an unprovoked attack throughout the period of the cease-fire.
Israel, however, did not live up to any of its obligations of ending the siege and allowing vital humanitarian aid to resume in Gaza. Rather than the average of 450 trucks per day being allowed across the border, on the best days, only eighty have been allowed in - with the border remaining hermetically sealed 70% of the time. Throughout the supposed 'cease-fire' Gazans have been forced to live like animals, with a total of 262 dying due to the inaccessibility of proper medical care.
Now after hundreds dead and counting, it is Israel who refuses to re-enter talks over a cease-fire. They are not intent on securing peace as they claim; it is more and more clear that they are seeking regime change - whatever the cost.
http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/2008/...
http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=10659
http://localgrit.blogspot.com/2008/12/natural-g...
Did you get edited or bitch-slapped by the moderator?
There are so many lies, and I don't see anyone reporting things that are not being spun...by Israel.
Their stated goal is as impossible as "stamping out terror" in that as they use violence they create more. Who cares if it goes by the name Hamas or Googledy-bogedly? It will be the same thing.
They spread leaflets telling people to do the impossible (evacuate, in that area...to WHERE?) so they have done their duty, and can then shoot anything that moves?
They timed it so Bush the lame duck will not lift a finger, and Obama isn't in power. They are terrorizing, and out of all proportion, and they are practicing "collective punishment" (clearly, no sane person could not see this) after shutting down shipments into gaza from 400 truckloads a day (in 2005) to around FOUR...this last month. They seem to have expected palestinians to just die off, go away, starve, or die from lack of medicine.
Now they hurry up the process.
I also wrote that I think countries need therapists. Just as abused children often grow up to be abusers of children, I think the terms officially thrown around smack of the bastards that killed and terrorized the jews, the nazis. Official (reported by Israeli newspapers) statements such as "we are putting gaza on a diet" and referring to freezing them in place as putting them in "formaldihyde" (you know, how to preserve "dead" tissue) is not much different than the euphamisms the damned nazis used of jews.
And what I wrote, I respect and my heart goes out to the jews, for their suffering in WWII and their persecution through many, many years. It was monstrous...and no people deserved that. But opposing Israeli policy, is not opposing "jews" or being anti-semetic, it is treating them as a country just like any country, and holding them accountable for their actions. The term anti-semite is way overused, to anyone suggesting they are practicing overkill, or against policy. That won't hold, and they MUST be seperated if they will act like a nation you cannot suddenly then escape being judged by actions.
We all know this is wrong, many (or some anyway, enough to demonstrate) Israelis also know this, and are shamed by the monstrous attack now underway.
The proportions are way off. There are children all over gaza that will never be "normal" after this. They didn't have much chance even before, but this..There are a lot of innocent people in Gaza, that will either be dead or way less innocent after tonight, and they will be creating MORE resistance.
1) Numerous roadblocks make employment difficult/impossible.
2) Israel cut off supplies to Gaza, long before the attack
3) Israel continues to build and expand settlements. They remove a few settlements "for show," but then allow numerous other to grow
4) Their security wall was arbitrary and cut off numerous people from their farms, jobs, etc.
So in my view, Israel essentially oppresses the Palastinians until they burst. When they do burst, make no mistake its an act of terrorism. However, the Israelis then counter act with multiple times the force and further oppress the Palastinians. Essentially, they're slowly killing them off by encouraging terrorism, so they have an excuse to attack on a massive scale.
If you treat someone like a caged animal, they're eventually going to become that animal and you shouldn't be surprised or horrified that you caused it.
http://www.brasscheck.com/videos/middleeast/me5...
Israel has 300+ nukes (for some reason it is allowed to keep its entire nuclear program a complete secret from the rest of the world), a vastly superior military, and the backing of the United States, so it can invade/kill/injure/bomb the Palestinians anytime they want and as long as they want. They know that the America political structure (left right and center) will back and support them no matter what. That is a very dangerous thing.
Remember.. Israel has killed at least (and probably more) then 500 people, and injured countless more. Now answer me this, how many of those injured or family of those killed will suddenly love Israel? None. Israel is probably creating the next generation of terrorists as we speak.
Oh, and they do it with a military supplied largely by the United States.
The well armed Israelis (thanks to the US) vs. the poor Palestinian people, who are trapped between closed borders and an expanse of water.
And no one can do a damn thing to stop this bloodbath.
It's a horrible situation, but really, what did Hamas expect. They are doing it on purpose to draw Israel in so Hamas will look like martyers. What a screwed up part of the world.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1052057.html
I hate all the terrorists in the world, whatever the purpose of their struggle. However, I support every active civil revolt against any occupation, and Israel too is among the despicable occupiers. Such revolt is both more just and more effective, and it does not extinguish one's spark of humanity. And perhaps I'm just too much of an old codger to be a terrorist.
But, and pay attention to this but, if a normative young person has a spontaneous answer that is different from mine, and that answer also escaped the mouth of an Israeli lieutenant general, then every individual must see himself as though his son is running with the wrong crowd. If things were the other way around, our son-whom-we-loved would be a damned terrorist, almost certainly, because he is of the third and fourth generation of refugeehood and oppression, and whence cometh salvation? He has nothing to lose but his chains.
From what I understand as an objective observer, it seems to me there were 80 or 90 rockets a day being shot into Israel, and I just don't understand why.
Hamas has pulled the wool over your eyes my friend. Freely elected, sure, I will give you that. But then again so was Bush, and that bastard has nearly ruined our country. Hamas is terrible and incapable of opperating in a civilized world.
Let's not confuse our leaders with our people. Bush is evidence, that he does not represent me or my views. Hamas is self serving and does not represent the views of the Palestineans. They (Hamas) are thugs with an agenda and are using the people in Gaza to further that self serving agenda.
If Hamas was serious about peace, their actions would be quite different.
...and for what it's worth, I don't know if Israels actions are justified. One cannot rely on the news anywhere anymore. So you don't know anymore about this situation than anyone else. So stop acting like you are on the 'inside' and we are all just morons for having another opinion.
Different opinions create dialogue and learning, and thus create understanding and peace.
You should try it sometime, instead of name calling....which only creates more war.
I just finished watching The Freedom Writers. It was touching when the African American, Cambodian and Latino kids visited the Holocaust Museum and learned to empathize with the white Jews, understood their common humanity and began to work together rather than shoot each other.
I guess I'm wondering where the Jews will go to understand that just because they have historically suffered they do not hold a license to eradicate every living Palestinian because of the accident of their birth...
Ehud Barak, Prime Minister of Israel at the time - August 28, 2000. Reported in the Jerusalem Post August 30, 2000.
"The Palestinians are beasts walking on two legs."
Menachem Begin, speech to the Knesset, quoted in Amnon Kapeliouk, "Begin and the Beasts". New Statesman, 25 June 1982.
"The Palestinians" would be crushed like grasshoppers ... heads smashed against the boulders and walls."
Israeli Prime Minister [Yitzhak Shamir] in a speech to Jewish settlers New York Times April 1, 1988.
"When we have settled the land, all the Arabs will be able to do about it will be to scurry around like drugged cockroaches in a bottle."
Raphael Eitan, Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defense Forces, New York Times, 14 April 1983.
"Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you because geography books no longer exist. Not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahlal arose in the place of Mahlul; Kibbutz Gvat in the place of Jibta; Kibbutz Sarid in the place of Huneifis; and Kefar Yehushua in the place of Tal al-Shuman. There is not a single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population."
Moshe Dayan, address to the Technion, Haifa, reported in Haaretz, April 4, 1969.
"There was no such thing as Palestinians, they never existed."
Golda Meir, Israeli Prime Minister June 15, 1969.
"The thesis that the danger of genocide was hanging over us in June 1967 and that Israel was fighting for its physical existence is only bluff, which was born and developed after the war."
Israeli General Matityahu Peled, Ha'aretz, 19 March 1972.
"Everybody has to move, run and grab as many hilltops as they can to enlarge the settlements because everything we take now will stay ours... Everything we don't grab will go to them."
Ariel Sharon, Israeli Foreign Minister, addressing a meeting of the Tsomet Party, Agence France Presse, November 15, 1998.
"Every time we do something you tell me America will do this and will do that . . . I want to tell you something very clear: Don't worry about American pressure on Israel. We the Jewish people, control America and the Americans know it."
Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, October 3, 2001, speaking to Shimon Peres, as reported on Kol Yisrael radio.
The Israeli reaction is getting to be all too familiar: hypervigilant, bellicose, maybe even a little hysterical. But rather than pursue this geopolitical psychoanalysis, one translates simple pathologies into the language of international treaties and concludes that the attacks are "disproportionate."
When you have to kill between 10 and 100 innocents to get one "suspect," that lies somewhere between random "success" and complete incompetence.
Chorus of Exiled Palestinians
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jw33u9qAsE
btw: it's about g-damn time americablog started covering this story...
btw2: the occasional amped-up bottle rockets, is no excuse for torture, illegal imprisonment, murder and did I mention genocide?
They report it as a genocide. They are reporting electricity gone, which means no heat and it is very cold (which makes it worse treating the patients), that the absolute most are obviously civilians, children, with arms blown off, legs blown off, chests ripped open, not adequate medicine.
They both report this (and both have been in war zones before) as like "hell", and as the absolute worst they have ever seen. Also that they have never seen this much an absense of western reporters, at a war zone.
This is more than frightening, and the obtuse, ridiculously worded US response in the UN is disgusting. Must be a legality fine point also as our spokesman says "MEMBER nations of the UN have a right to defend themselves" and there is "NO discussion" of "equivalence" between Palestinians and Israel.
WTF? Green light boys, go ahead and kill as many as you want, eh? There aren't words for his absolutely evil ignorance and intentions. Children are dying. Innocent children.
If you lived in a neighborhood where there was a crack house in the middle, would you say it was okay if the police just bombed the shit out of the whole neighborhood?
Bank robbery goes wrong, robber takes hostages, send for the police, they kill all inside...one robber and 43 hostages, would you be happy with those police?
This is just...no words for it. Israel has made it clear before they would punish the people for voting in Hamas, and they are doing it. But this is having the effect of putting the Palestinian parties (that were against each other) together....of course. When in the WORLD has bombing not made the people more resistant and more blowback? Except maybe Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Generally, it has the opposite effect....and this shame, even with blackouts of news media, is just going to start way more headaches and problems and death in the world.
This affects ALL of us.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Quassam_rocke...
They use a fertilizer-based explosive and are designed to go up and over the barrier-fence surrounding Gaza. In 2006 the Israeli Ministry of Defense viewed the Qassams as "more a psychological than physical threat."
...I guess it's time to ship me down to gitmo now, it was nice knowing you guys....
But seriously, as long as we have these blatant double standards in our culture and national character, Our country will continue to feel like a sham, and like we the people are just thoughtless dysfunctional automatons, living in a dream land.