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woohoo,, Go Burrris go!
Believe me, if my neighborhood was sealed off from the rest of this county for the gain of others and we could not get work or food or medical care, people here would pull out their guns and shoot those responsible for their crimes against us.
They hit one of our TANKS with a bunch of stones - we were fearing for our lives inside that tank.
$3-$6 billion in US taxpayer money so they can purchase weapons (largely from the US) to commit a slaughter every couple of years...
american politicians sure have a lot to say about russia and georgia tangling for a couple of days but not much when israel is doing the invading and killing
HIS SILENCE ON GAZA IS DEAFENING
Barack Obama says that there is only one President at a time and he will not comment on policy issues until he takes office on January 20, 2009.
However, he can't stop talking about the economy and he was even on Capitol Hill yesterday pushing his economic package. But he has not said a word about the Gaza tragedy. People are dying by the hour and he refuses to comment. At least the economy is not killing people, Gaza war is and he should stand up and make his views known.
He says he talks to Condi Rice on Gaza situation every day and that is not a good thing. Rice is a straight faced liar probably telling Obama how hard she is working to bring peace, while at the same time encouraging Israel not to stop despite World pressure.
I hope the reason for Obama's silence is that he is trying not to be confrontational because he is diametrically opposed to Bush Administration's Middle East policy and intends to change course of events immediately upon taking office. If this is not the case, his silence on Gaza is immoral.
Let us hope this is the case.
Sorry, I don't mean to be intrusive. It just looks more Germanic with the ümlaut.
Here's a comment from YouTube, signed by xiphods, that says it well:
Unbelievable... I thought something was off when I first saw the video. It's a fake.
First off, it has nothing to do with the operation in Gaza. This video was posted ELEVEN months ago.
Second, watch the soldiers carefully. The palestinians are marching towards them. They are there to hold the demonstraters back. Also notice the vast amounts of footage from very different looking villages. Add in emotional soundtrack at the end, standard fraud.
Just another attempt to twist the truth.
Seeing as how I can hear, I did notice the narrator. I asked a friend to translate the gist of it for me and I'm waiting to hear back from her.
Shame on you.
He said "it's simple - we piss people off". He then laughed, shrugged his shoulders and admitted it was true.
He told me this about 25 years ago, and I have witnessed nothing since then to refute his statement.
and what do we get in return?
blowback.
Israeli with American supplied F16 = underdog
I get it now.....the everlasting false equivalency....the reason your country with it's lapdog media are in such a world of shit right now.
These are not blackwater thugs.
The Pals. throw ROCKS and STONES at Israeli TANKS, ARMORED vehicles, soldiers wearing HELMETS and kevlar vests.
Throwing STONES at TANKS, et al, "forces" Israelis to SHOOT and BLOW UP the stone-throwers.
Think about that. Seriously.......think about that.
And don't even get me started on the notion of the Israelis blowing up schools because the Israelis thought "terrorists" were operating from those schools.......and then the world discovers that - NO - there were NO terrorists in those schools.....only CHILDREN. Sounds like an Al Queda operation, doesn't it?
Any Palestinians throwing rocks at Hamas or local police for mismanaging their government? Just wondering?
Seriously, think about that.
And the jury may still be out about the whereabouts of the rocket launchers in the area of that school - I've heard that the launchers were just adjacent to it. Adjacent is just about as good as inside. Human shields still.
Any issues with Hamas using schools, hospitals, homes as storage areas for bombs/missiles?
The entire creation of the state of Israel was a disaster from the get-go. It was an imposition on the mideast by western colonial powers. It was based on ancient claims that should have had no bearing in any modern division of countries, and it failed to recognize centuries of Arabic/Muslim development in the region after the Israelite diaspora. The only reason why anyone thought that Israel would succeed is that the western powers thought they would always have more money and military power than the non-Israeli people they imposed this "solution" on. (I also suspect no small amount of guilt from WW2 was involved in creating Israel, or perhaps more darkly, a desire from much of anti--semitic Europe to get the remaining Jews OUT.)
And this has nothing to do with me being anti-semitic, or hating Jews, or thinking they don't have a right to exist or live peacefully. It's simply taking a long and hard look at the incredibly STUPID way the country of Israel was created, no, FORCED upon the Middle East.
Failing to understand that the Palestinians and other Arab nations actually do have some legitimate complaints about the situation is ignoring reality. This doesn't justify their actions, either. As a buddhist, I abhor the violence on both sides. But the U.S. involvement in the region is neither fair nor balanced, and we will never have a good, peaceful solution until we recognize the reality on both sides of this conflict and act as a true impartial peace broker.
And I don't think it's necessarily true that "every" other ethnic group has one, it depends on how narrowly or broadly you describe "ethnic group".
Furthermore... "right to a nation" doesn't necessarily include "right to only one specific plot of land". Had modern Israel been created out of under- or unpopulated tropical islands, for example, we'd likely have avoided 60 years of bloodshed.
My main issue isn't with the creation of an Israel, it's more with the "how" (and possibly "where") of such creation.
Juan Cole says
"She is being identified by my facebook friends as Huwaida Arraf, a Detroiter married to Adam Shapiro, a University of Michigan Poli Sci graduate, and a founder of International Solidarity Movement, a nonviolent activist organization."
Huwaida's not alone. At about 4 seconds before the end, another woman's head enters the frame briefly from the right.
Remember that this is a news clip, edited and framed. Don't make snap judgments based on incomplete information.
Her poses with her arms -- are those sports referee gestures, or do they have some other specific meaning that they communicate?
The problems are obviously deeper and wider than soldiers shooting at rock throwers (even if they're shooting rubber bullets, which I'll be honest I don't know the relative danger of compared to regular bullets, nor if that's what they were shooting in that video). I don't think we're going to achieve any kind of peace in that region until the Palestinians have their Desmond Tutu or Martin Luther King, Jr. Until Israel has its FW de Klerk or Lyndon Johnson. And until worldwide Islam has its Martin Luther and Richard Hooker. The world seems largely unpersuaded by the current excuses for Israel's nonproportional response, just as much of the world also seems unpersuaded at Hamas's claims to legitimacy, given its abjuration of peace with Israel. The world (and most of the world's religions, which hold sway in great numbers, whether you like it or not) only recognize proportional violence in the interest of self-defense ("an eye for an eye..."), and even then, it's a gravely doubtful moral position in such religions as Christianity ("offer your other cheek...") and Buddhism. As much of this conflict is based in religio-ethnic conflict, then the religious and ethnic parties to it need to dig deep and put their politics and militarism subservient to their religion and not the other way around, as they've been doing.
Politics (and militarism) that uses religion as an excuse for violence and repression is bastardizing the religion (cf. the Middle East; Yes on Prop 8, etc., etc.). Religion that uses politics for its higher ends (the abolitionist movement, the civil rights movements, the anti-war movement, the anti-apartheid movement, etc., etc.) is a true "faith with works." When Israelites and Palestinians start to understand this, we'll start to see peace in the Middle East.
Why would anyone have expected a different outcome, when foreigners come to their land and took some of it away, basically by force? This idea that Palestine or other Muslims should have somehow been grateful that they got back some of the land that had been taken from them by western colonial powers is patronizing at best.
The creation of the modern state of Israel remains, essentially, something that was done TO middle easterners, rather than WITH them.
Link please?
Thanks!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Corrie
Further, saying things like "without recognizing that Israel and Jews have just as much a right to that claim..." demonstrate an extreme lack of knowledge about the history of the Israeli - Palestinian conflict and the occupied territories.
Which claim? The claim to the occupied west bank? Gaza? The Golan Heights? Jerusalem? As an American who supports the right of the Palestinian people to have a state, I don't do so because they are the "Underdog." I do it because Israel has been an occupying military power for 40 odd years... a power that has ghettoized and oppressed a different ethnic group in the lands it grabbed during a military conflict.
I also do it because US monetary and military support for Israel means that an Israeli operations are seen around the world, but especially by the muslum world, as the actions of the US. At recent demonstrations around the world against the recent Gaza actions, muslims threw and waved shoes... this was in response to the bush shoe throwing incident -- in many peoples eyes... Israels actions and the US are directly connected. The rest of the world sees Israel as acting out American foreign policy. Thus, it is NOT in our best interest that Israel is indiscriminately killing civilians in gaza and enforcing illegal "collective punishment" against the residents there.
A month long blockade of food and medicine that has children dying, followed up by bombing and an invasion, right before a political election? Sound familiar at all? It's immoral and illegal, AND... to the rest of the arab world, it is the Iraq invasion all over again -- another extension of of US imperialism. Support, both vocally, and with money and guns, of this kind if Israeli policy makes the US less safe, because it radicalizes people all over the world.
And the scary Qassam rockets Israel claims to be frightened of? They are home-made unguided rockets make from cheap pipes and filled with fertilizer-based explosives. They are simply designed to go up-and-over the prison-fence surrounding Gaza. If you stole my home and shoved me into the Gaza Prison Camp I'd be shooting rockets over the fence too.In 2006, the Israeli Ministry of Defense viewed the Qassams as "more a psychological than physical threat." But now apparently they are a grave danger to the very survival of the Jewish State.
Photo of Qassam missiles:
http://tinyurl.com/7gwgw9
Photo of rocket launchers:
http://tinyurl.com/9yd45g