it looks like abbas is willing to agree to a bantustan state, more or less under israeli/u.s. terms, so the troll has given us the new party line, sig heil!

Mikep is a hit and runner. He'll never respond to a reply of one of his posts, I doubt he knows how to track what he's written online.

He's a classic troll.

THE time was 1940, the place was Warsaw, Poland. Jews had never had an easy time if it in Poland, but they did live there with some dignity and were able to carry on business and life, until the Nazi Blitzkreig. I don’t intend to do more than touch upon the story of the Warsaw ghetto. Hundreds of books, plays and songs have been written, movies have been made. It was a time of horror, hopelessness and heroism.

In October-November 1940, Germans established the Warsaw ghetto, into which some 500,000 Jews were crowded. Food and medicine was withheld; heavily armed Germans were allowed into the ghetto to go Jew hunting. An average of 5,000 to 6,000 died each month from starvation, disease, exposure to cold, and the shootings.

In the summer of 1942, about 300,000 Jews were deported by train from Warsaw to Treblinka. When the reports of mass murder in the killing center leaked back to the Warsaw ghetto, a surviving group of mostly young people formed an organization called the Z.O.B. (for the Polish name, Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa, Polish for Jewish Fighting Organization). ZOB issued a proclamation calling for the Jewish people to resist being deported. In January 1943, Warsaw ghetto fighters, using a small supply of weapons that had been smuggled into the ghetto, fired upon German troops as they tried to round up another group of ghetto inhabitants for deportation. After a few days, the troops retreated. This small victory inspired the ghetto fighters to prepare for future resistance

On April 19, 1943, the Warsaw ghetto uprising began after German troops and police entered the ghetto to deport its surviving inhabitants. About seven hundred-fifty fighters fought the heavily armed and well-trained Germans. The ghetto fighters were able to hold out for nearly a month, but on May 16, 1943, the revolt ended. The German’s overwhelming force had slowly crushed the resistance. Of the more than 56,000 Jews captured, about 7,000 were shot, and the remainder were deported to killing centers or concentration camps.

The deaths of over six million Jews and hundreds of thousands of others in the concentration camps and the death camps of Nazi Germany should be a lesson to the entire planet. Unfortunately, something seems to be hardwired into humanity, to chose oppression over charity and good will. Even Israel, which knows better through its own experience, has fallen into the same trap in its dealings with Palestine.

The point of this article is that I see a parallel behavior between “Palestine” and the “Warsaw ghetto.” As the Germans did in Warsaw, the Jews are walling in the Palestinians. They are cutting off their access to work, food, medical care. The Palestinian youth have little or no hope for any future other than deprivation and arbitrary rule, backed up by superior firepower. When the youth do fight back, Israelis come in, bulldozing and killing in reprisal.

It would seem to me that somewhere in this history should be a learning experience. Historically, oppressed peoples fight back and the more heartless the repression, the stronger the fight. The Germans made a policy in occupied France that if something was sabotaged or a German soldier killed, a number of French villagers would be killed at random. This happened many times, but the sabotage and killing of Germans went on despite the cost. The terror bombings of civilian cities prolonged the resistance and will to fight in England, Germany and even Japan before “the bomb.” We are seeing the same thing in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Israelis are seeing it in Palestine. A desperate people with nothing to lose will fight to the death.

Palestine had an election which was, according to the international observers, a fair election. They elected Hamas, which has a history of violence. It is not unheard of for violent revolutionary groups, upon acquiring power, to discover that there is more to governing than throwing bombs. Some have proved to be good at government, given the chance. Hamas might or might not have evolved in that direction, but apparently is to be given no chance. (We are already seeing the fruits of the decision to starve out Hamas, with the attack in Tel Aviv.) The Palestinian people made their choice and are to be bombed and starved until they make another choice. This is presented to them as Democracy. Chose the government someone else wants for you or face the consequences. This will give Hamas little incentive to change and, in fact, may accelerate the resistance and terrorism.

The same apparently pertains to the Iraqis, the Afghans, and now Iran. People in those countries who have been working for a democratic solution are being shown that it is fruitless to try. If they make a choice that doesn’t agree with the powerful, then they will be forced to choose what the powers want or turn to violence. Many have chosen to turn back to violence.

Sanctions don’t work. They just starve and kill the rank and file populations. In Iraq, the twelve years of sanctions affected an entire generation of women and children through bad diet and malnutrition. “if the substantial reduction in child mortality throughout Iraq during the 1980s had continued through the 1990s, there would have been half a million fewer deaths of children under-five in the country as a whole during the eight year period 1991 to 1998" Unicef, 12 August 1999. http://www.casi.org.uk/ During that period, Saddam didn’t lose a pound.

It doesn’t work! We can’t keep killing everyone who doesn’t agree with us. There is an ancient maxim; “Do not unto others as you would not have done unto you.” Some call it the Golden Rule. We must cultivate empathy; be able to put ourselves in another’s shoes, to understand and feel the pain, grief and joys of another. This can lead to understanding and understanding can lead to healing.

Part of an article I wrote in 2006.