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Today's Top News
06.28.11 - 11:16 AM
On Clowns and Tear Gas and Having No Words Left
Having been urged to "Bring Your Colorful Smile" to the weekly peaceful demonstration in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh, kids and their parents painted faces, flew kites and danced with clowns - until Israeli soldiers arrived and tear gassed them. More distressing yet is the thought of how many other villages regularly endure this. More here, here, here.
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41 Comments so far
Show AllNine year olds with kites - definitely a threat to the state of Israel. Only big, brave soldiers standing between Israel and - children with kites! Sheesh!
The girl speaking to the soldiers said it all - "one day you are going to have children." Then, the big, brave soldiers that throw tear gas bombs at children with kites can tell their own children what they did in the genocide.
The (self)"chosen" people (whether jewish, xtian, nazis, romans, Murkans, etc) are, by definition, superior, the apotheosis of what it means to be human. Other people aren't really people at all to the "chosen" ones, so it doesn't matter what happens to them. In fact, as Sade understood, tormenting the lesser humans (or, for the rapture xtians, having front-row seats to delight over their future torments while sitting at the hand of their God) only happens to make the "chosen" people feel even more superior. The more the lesser people are victimized, the more their dignity is shorn from them, the less like people they seem as they become more like objects of scorn, and thus seem more and more to deserve their victimhood. And thus the dance of oppression spirals downward... (And we see with Israel how easily the victim can become the oppressor by sharing such similarly zealous in-group ideologies.)
Cowardly, barbaric, supremacist thugs. There is literally no "country" on Earth I would rather not live than Palestine, up to and including the Congo, Ethiopia, North Korea and the multi-national base Antarctica. Imagine being ruled over by these freaks!
When can we expect to see Obama and Biden and Clinton condemn this latest outrage perpetrated by the Israelis? Or is Israel immune from any lengthy criticism by the United States?
Israel owns the American political system.
Don't be silly. The PTB are sitting behind their computer screens watching this and wishing they could get away with doing that to the poor in the USA.
That is horrible! More and more Israelis are moving to America and how can I be friends or look at them after seeing what they do? If Israelis won't speak out and I am supposed to be anti-semitic for my disgust at Nazi behaviour? Actions speak louder than words.
Israel's actions are pure Nazi style fascism.
My brother, an expatriate Amerikan living in France, thinks my negative attitude toward Israel is much too harsh because I "only know Israel by what their government does".
He's never visited the "Holy Land", as he recently referred to it, himself-- but he recently mentioned that friends of his, including a rabbi involved in the peace movement, keep inviting him to visit.
I've tried to explain that I DO realize the obvious distinction between an evil government and a civilian population, i.e. that I certainly understand that ordinary citizens in Israel shouldn't be simplistically tarred by the actions of their monstrous government any more than Yr. Obd't Servant should be reflexively lumped in with the monstrous Amerikan government.
I believe that my brother's friends, like the rabbi in the peace movement, are decent and conscientious. But I've come to think of our difference of opinion or attitude as comparable to that of a skeptical Amerikan in the 1930s whose brother does business with reputable German businessmen and has limited social contact with ordinary Germans.
From his perspective, I'm always growling about the incipient and intolerable monstrosity of the government and military, whereas he thinks that I'm ignorantly or selectively confined to just a small part of the overall reality that he's come to "know" through his social experience.
I haven't sent him a link to this video, but I already know that his reaction would be, "Yes, yes, this is terrible, and of COURSE I'm aware that 'the government' or 'the IDF' does such things. But 'the people' in Israel don't approve of them any more than you do!"
Alternatively, my brother often cites input from other acquaintances, Israeli and non-Israeli alike, who regularly travel to Israel or socialize with Israelis. He repeatedly mentions unhappily that they all confirm that when it comes to the issue of national security and the Palestinians, etc., even "normal" Israelis in the post-Holocaust generations display a cultural paranoia and horror.
"They're just not rational on the subject!" my brother laments; I always feel that he's urging me to be more sympathetic to the modern-day equivalent of the "Good Germans" inside Israel who really want to be part of the solution, and mute or restrain my criticisms-- even if they're only expressed in Internet comments.
His sympathetic perspective makes him cringe at any "harsh", i.e. honest and forceful, open criticism of Israel. He sees it as wrong-headed and counter-productive because it only provokes, offends, or emotionally devastates his "good" Israeli friends and doesn't "accomplish" anything.
I can't help but see his advocacy of venturing only the mildest, most muted, and minimal criticism as a way of enabling the "Good Israeli" mind-set he claims to deplore. And so we continue to agree to disagree.
>>I always feel that he's urging me to be more sympathetic to the modern-day equivalent of the "Good Germans" inside Israel who really want to be part of the solution<<
Then Israel's "Good Germans" better soon get off their asses and do some solving.
even "normal" Israelis in the post-Holocaust generations display a cultural paranoia and horror.
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I knew there was a cultural pathology akin to the one Mayer found in postwar Germany the moment I read, several years ago, that even Prof. Benny Morris has turned against justice for the Palestinian people. He more than anyone knows the truth thanks to the exhaustive research about the Naqba that he himself conducted and published.
That he could betray his training that way just revolted me.
OS, Your brother is not focusing on the root causes. He's just riding off the emotions of others who may very well have little to do with the policies of the state of Israel, and hence aren't relevant to understanding the problem.
In essence, the problem is that the state has based its organization on one religion. People sometimes refer to Israel as a democracy, but it has to be less than a democracy if it's conceived as a Jewish state.
The fact that this Jewish state was formed late in the game on other people's lands is a big problem. The state, under those conditions, cannot be legitimate, despite the borders drawn up by the Brits decades ago. Certainly, it's possible to carve out territories by force, which is what the Israelis are doing. It's what the Nazis did. It's what the U.S. government did to the Native Americans. No one argues what guns can do, and only an extreme ideology can sustain that sort of destruction over time, but no purity or safety results from this psychotic behavior, which is initiated by state powers mostly, rather than individuals.
Your brother may admire the Holy Land aspect of it, but civil society founded on one religion or on sectarianism or tribalism will always be a tyranny and undemocratic by definition. Organized religions have centralizing powers, but they are equally divisive too. Often the differences between religious beliefs are really about nothing. Instead, the fights are about economic struggles, prejudices and hatred of "the other." That's the paradox of most religions, which often preach about love and tolerance. (Exception: read the Bible. Most of it isn't about love and tolerance.)
As for what that economic struggle is in Israel, it's largely a land grab. And it has a lot to do with access to land with water. That's one nonreligious explanation for the conflict.
It is not enough to claim the middle ground, saying that "both sides have committed atrocities." Any state that commits violence on one faction of the people living there is committing gross human rights crimes, by any international standard.
It is possible for anyone faced with violence, or the potential threat thereof, to not think clearly. However, if there is to be any resolution of situation, root causes must be addressed.
My understanding is that to own land in Israel, an individual has to prove generations of maternal Jewish ancestry. So, there's been a general theft of Palestinian lands in that way through the laws. Of course the walls and the physical oppression add to this injustice. It's no wonder people fight back, despite the odds (Israel is the fourth largest military power in the world, it's said).
So, focus on the root cause. There can be no Jewish state or any other state founded on a single religion that will not commit gross crimes. That's the end of argument. People will have to learn to live with their fellow human beings under different organizing principles. Even if the Israeli state were to purge all of the Palestinians from Palestinian lands, they'd still have to deal with the internal heretics of one kind or another, and they'd be just as brutal. A religious state is one that's in a perpetual state of war against imagined demons, and has no legitimacy in civil affairs.
No American tax dollar should go to such a state, just as no American tax dollar should have gone to the mujahedeen in Afghanistan, who later turned their terrorist training back toward Americans via Al Qaida attacks. As I say, none of this is really about religion per se, but as Voltaire once said, "Those who believe in religious absurdities are capable of great atrocities."
A very astute analysis. Thank-you.
Thanks for this trenchant, informative, and insightful response, Thoughts_Into_Action.
Thanks also to the others who provided thoughtful feedback.
Well done. You've expressed my thoughts with more eloquence than I can generally muster. Thank you, and special thanks for the quote by Voltaire. I think I'll have that made into a t-shirt.
The Israeli Military is disgusting.
The Palestinian people are beautiful!
America's Israel apologists, who fill the corporate media and our government, are just as despicable as the Israeli criminals, and are a disgrace to our country.
This week an activist from Nabi Saleh stands before a military tribunal in the West Bank. Bassem Tamimi is accused of incitement and organizing illegal protests. In the past years he has been arrested 11 times and tortured; his wife was arrested twice; two of his sons were injured by Israeli soldiers; after the protests began in December 2009 ten houses were served with a demolition order, his house is on that list. Ruthless collective punishment against any opposition!
http://popularstruggle.org/content/trial-west-bank-protest-organizer-bassem-tamimi-resume-tomorrow
Anyone who hasn't read Joe Sacco's "Palestine" needs to do it. Some of the events he reports are chilling, other parts stomach-turning, all are saddening and infuriating.
By now it should be obvious to all that there is no negotiating with Zionism. The only solution is to work towards is the forced decountrifying of Israel and massive reparations to the world for the harm Zionism has caused.
I'll continue to disagree with you, GoingGreen. Decountrifying Israel, as you call it, isn't the solution. The real solution is the two-state solution, with Jerusalem as a shared capitol between Israel (Jewish West Jerusalem) and Palestine (East Jerusalem). The solution is the help both groups work towards the peaceful two-state solution.
What's the generally-accepted principle that would support your claim that the Zionist thieves should get to keep some part of what they stole?
I think your demands exceed those of most Palestinians, who hunger for peace and justice, but not so much revenge.
This is a tough call. In the cases both of Israel and the US, people who considered themselves oppressed fled to a new land and then quickly morphed into land grabbing oppressors. I think we should ask Native Americans for guidance on this issue. As for me, I think it is difficult to undo history, impossible to repatriate many millions to the lands of their ancestors, but it is possible to construct justice for the future with reparations, restorations, rights. We owe debts to the current generations Native Americans as the Israelis owe debts to the Palestinians.
Because of the corrupting influence of Zionism, as shown in the video of soldiers attacking children and hundreds of similar videos that I have seen, Israel will have to be forced to change. The US should not send the usual billlions every year. None of us should buy or invest in Israeli products. Entertainers should refuse to go there. The complacency and comfort of Isrealis needs to be disrupted. We should support whatever peace and justice movements exist among Jews and Jewish Israelis.
And then we should look at the log in our eye.
I think your demands exceed those of most Palestinians, who hunger for peace and justice, but not so much revenge.
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What makes getting one's ancestral land back revenge rather than justice, Joe? Should it be made a general principle that if thieves can prevent recovery long enough, they get to keep what they stole? Or should the Charter be amended to re-legitimise violence as a tool for land-grabbing?
These might sound harsh questions, but my motive is only that they be taken seriously; I'm genuinely interested in your answers and reasoning.
For example, how could anything less than returning their land to the victims or their survivors possibly be construed as justice when many of those original victims, and many more of their children, still live? If you can imagine a way, should it apply to other thefts by violence, other thefts, non-violent thefts only, thefts aided by the US, thefts figleafed (against their own Charter) by the UN, or what?
Those who deprived the aboriginal Americans of their land and rights did so when it was accepted practice. Those who deprived the Palestinians did not have that shield, which was discarded in 1946.
That feels like a decisive benchmark, to me, since otherwise every group everywhere who'd been conquered could demand restoration and have restoration demanded of them by those *they'd* conquered. There'd be no end to it.
Hi Mairead - Thanks for your thoughtful and civil reply. First one detail - I do not understand this statement. "Those who deprived the Palestinians did not have that shield, which was discarded in 1946. "
Starting with the Balfour Declarations in 1917 the British started their usual divide and conquer shenanigans. They declared that Jews had the right to move to Palestine. Between then and the establishment of the state of Israel the population of Jews increased to about half a million. Of course I think that the British had a colossal nerve to issue those declarations and to divide off Jordan etc. But they were trying to set up divisions so that the local population would be less likely to interfere with their oil and hegemony.
So the influx of Jews, mostly European, to Palestine has been going on for almost 100 years now. It was also the height of arrogance to establish the state of Israel in Palestine using the lying slogan "a land without people for a people without a land". Considering the Holocaust and my total ignorance of the area, I fell for this slogan and celebrated the establishment of the "homeland". Now I think that if a Jewish state were to be established, the best German land should have been confiscated and used.
So that is water under the bridge. The only reason to raise all that is to illustrate how complicated it would be to return the land to the Palestinians, to find the deeds and former owners, to locate the victims of the Nakba, to sort out Jewish arrivals before and after any date and to expel the Jews. It sounds like a legal and logistical nightmare that would drag on and on, which usually gives those who have ownership a big advantage.
I do think that all the recent settlements should be dismantled as they were built in defiance of treaties and laws. And that any proven confiscation should be returned and paid for. Why should someone from LA be allowed to dispossess a Palestinian family whose ancestors have lived there for millenia?
I feel wary of the following statement, since similar statements have been so abused recently as a way to circumvent simple justice - solutions should not focus on disentangling the past, but on establishing a liveable and just situation for the future. Reparations, restoration and rights are in order. I hold out the hope that Israeli Jews, Moslems, Christians and atheists can find a way to live in peace. Right now, the main obstacle seems to be the dehumanized actions by the Zionist regime and the support for whatever it does, however bestial, by our own government. How we get to a solution I do not know. I am a not the cleverest when it comes to strategies on this issue. But I am heartened by criticism, resistance by so many people including Jews inside and outside Israel, and especially by those Jews who are on the flotilla right now, some of whom I know.
I do not understand this statement. "Those who deprived the Palestinians did not have that shield, which was discarded in 1946. "
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By that I meant that it was in 1946 -- two years before the illegal Partition of Palestine -- that the Nürnberg Tribunals executed the Nazi and Japanese leaderships for "the crime against peace", and the UN Charter was created declaring it to be international law that people have a right to political self-determination.
So 1946 (or the year when a certain treaty was signed, according to Taylor at Nürnberg - I can't remember the name of the treaty or its date, but it was some time in the '20s or '30s) was a benchmark year. Before 1946, conquest was an accepted, legal method for taking over land. After 1946, it was not.
So while the Euro invaders/butchers in the Americas had the shield of customary practice while they did their conquest and genocide, the UN (aka US, and to a degree the UK), and the Zionists did not have it in 1948. It had lapsed in 1946 at the latest, and the Balfour Declaration should not have been implemented, but rather scrapped as being illegal.
I've found the booklet "The Origin of the Palestine-Israel Conflict" by Jews for Justice in the Middle East (available at http://www.wrmea.com/component/content/article/5695.html) to be quite useful in winkling out the truth from all the Zionist propaganda.
A few excerpts:
#######################
Why did the UN recommend the plan partitioning Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state?
"By this time [November 1947] the United States had emerged as the most aggressive proponent of partition...The United States got the General Assembly to delay a vote 'to gain time to bring certain Latin American republics into line with its own views.'...Some delegates charged U.S. officials with 'diplomatic intimidation.' Without 'terrific pressure' from the United States on 'governments which cannot afford to risk American reprisals,' said an anonymous editorial writer, the resolution 'would never have passed.'" John Quigley, "Palestine and Israel: A Challenge to Justice."
Why was this Truman's position?
"I am sorry gentlemen, but I have to answer to hundreds of thousands who are anxious for the success of Zionism. I do not have hundreds of thousands of Arabs among my constituents." President Harry Truman, quoted in "Anti Zionism", ed. by Teikener, Abed-Rabbo & Mezvinsky.
Was the partition plan fair to both Arabs and Jews?
"Arab rejection was...based on the fact that, while the population of the Jewish state was to be [only half] Jewish with the Jews owning less than 10% of the Jewish state land area, the Jews were to be established as the ruling body—a settlement which no self-respecting people would accept without protest, to say the least...The action of the United Nations conflicted with the basic principles for which the world organization was established, namely, to uphold the right of all peoples to self-determination. By denying the Palestine Arabs, who formed the two-thirds majority of the country, the right to decide for themselves, the United Nations had violated its own charter." Sami Hadawi, "Bitter Harvest."
Were the Zionists prepared to settle for the territory granted in the 1947 partition?
"While the Yishuv's leadership formally accepted the 1947 Partition Resolution, large sections of Israel's society—including...Ben-Gurion—were opposed to or extremely unhappy with partition and from early on viewed the war as an ideal opportunity to expand the new state's borders beyond the UN earmarked partition boundaries and at the expense of the Palestinians." Israeli historian, Benny Morris, in "Tikkun", March/April 1998.
Public vs private pronouncements on this question.
"In internal discussion in 1938 [David Ben-Gurion] stated that 'after we become a strong force, as a result of the creation of a state, we shall abolish partition and expand into the whole of Palestine'...In 1948, Menachem Begin declared that: 'The partition of the Homeland is illegal. It will never be recognized. The signature of institutions and individuals of the partition agreement is invalid. It will not bind the Jewish people. Jerusalem was and will forever be our capital. Eretz Israel (the land of Israel) will be restored to the people of Israel, All of it. And forever." Noam Chomsky, "The Fateful Triangle."
The war begins
"In December 1947, the British announced that they would withdraw from Palestine by May 15, 1948. Palestinians in Jerusalem and Jaffa called a general strike against the partition. Fighting broke out in Jerusalem's streets almost immediately...Violent incidents mushroomed into all-out war...During that fateful April of 1948, eight out of thirteen major Zionist military attacks on Palestinians occurred in the territory granted to the Arab state." "Our Roots Are Still Alive" by the People Press Palestine Book Project.
Zionists' disrespect of partition boundaries
"Before the end of the mandate and, therefore before any possible intervention by Arab states, the Jews, taking advantage of their superior military preparation and organization, had occupied...most of the Arab cities in Palestine before May 15, 1948. Tiberias was occupied on April 19, 1948, Haifa on April 22, Jaffa on April 28, the Arab quarters in the New City of Jerusalem on April 30, Beisan on May 8, Safad on May 10 and Acre on May 14, 1948...In contrast, the Palestine Arabs did not seize any of the territories reserved for the Jewish state under the partition resolution." British author, Henry Cattan, "Palestine, The Arabs and Israel."
Culpability for escalation of the fighting
"Menahem Begin, the Leader of the Irgun, tells how 'in Jerusalem, as elsewhere, we were the first to pass from the defensive to the offensive...Arabs began to flee in terror...Hagana was carrying out successful attacks on other fronts, while all the Jewish forces proceeded to advance through Haifa like a knife through butter'...The Israelis now allege that the Palestine war began with the entry of the Arab armies into Palestine after 15 May 1948. But that was the second phase of the war; they overlook the massacres, expulsions and dispossessions which took place prior to that date and which necessitated Arab states' intervention." Sami Hadawi, "Bitter Harvest."
#################
Did you mean your response to be answers to my questions, Joe? If you did, could you perhaps make them a bit more explicit?
Thank your for the historical details, which are illustrative of political opportunism as well as the brutality that accompanied the taking of Palestine. I tried my best to answer your question, as I understood it. The complexity of this situation and its history defy solution in a comments section.
How would you accomplish your goals? Do you think there is even a 1% chance of them being implemented?
How would you accomplish your goals? Do you think there is even a 1% chance of them being implemented?
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Consider South Africa and Rhodesia: very comparable situation - worse, if anything, and lasting 300 years, not 70. Yet the SAians at least are on the road out of the pit. Hadn't Mbeki sold out after Mandela retired, they'd be a great deal further along, but life is better.
Why wouldn't it work in broadly the same way for Palestine?
The world says "it's over, Zionists. Give up power while you have the chance" and the Zionists decide, as the Afrikaners decided, that it is indeed over. They might have to be helped to do the right thing by the Sixth Fleet enforcing no-fly and a few Army divisions imported to disarm the IDF and maintain order, but any resistance would have a foregone conclusion.
Deport the "settlers", give the Palestinian/Semitic Jews citizenship, and tell everyone in between that they can go if they like, or they can stay if they can demonstrate good character and the Palestinian government agrees.
I presume we could conjure that outcome for the same reason I presume we can take power in the US: if we can't take power in the US, or won't, then it will hardly matter who runs what for the last few decades of human existence - we'll all be finished.
RE: "...until Israeli soldiers arrived and tear gassed them. More distressing yet is the thought of how many other villages regularly endure this." - Abby Zimet
FROM ALISTAIR COOK, 03/03/11: (excerpt)...It was [Ariel] Sharon who pioneered the philosophy of ‘maintained uncertainty’ that repeatedly extended and then limited the space in which Palestinians could operate by means of an unpredictable combination of changing and selectively enforced regulations, and the dissection of space by settlements, roads Palestinians were not allowed to use and continually shifting borders. All of this was intended to induce in the Palestinians a sense of permanent temporariness. Maintaining control of the Occupied Territories keeps open to Israel the option of displacing Palestinian citizens of Israel into the Territories by means of limited land swaps. It also ensures that Israel retains the ability to force future returning refugees to settle in their ‘homeland’, whereas a sovereign Palestinian state might decline to accept the refugees. It suits Israel to have a ‘state’ without borders so that it can keep negotiating about borders, and count on the resulting uncertainty to maintain acquiescence...
SOURCE - http://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n05/alastair-crooke/permanent-temporariness
Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business. - Michael Ledeen, holder of the Freedom Chair at the American Enterprise Institute
Well, Mr. Ledeen, Neoconservative Zionist, I have in mind just the country for your consideration. Please get back to me so we can discuss this matter further.
Apartheid is not the correct comparison. The correct comparison is the Warsaw ghetto.
How can anyone watch this video and feel anything but shame,sorrow, and utter disgust for the fact that we are providing support to this evil country?!
I can't understand that either.
"Moreover, there has never been a government so totally oblivious of its relation to world Jewry. It passes laws that increase the Orthodox establishment's stranglehold on religious affairs and personal life - completely disregarding that 85 percent of world Jewry are not Orthodox - and simply dismissing their Jewish identities and their institutions. As a result, this majority of world Jewry feels Israel couldn't care less about its values and identity. "
(from the 3rd link)
It would appear to me that Israel now has a tiered system. It's no longer enough to be Jewish in Israel one has to be certain kind of Jew. Israel is not any form of "democracy".
How today more than anytime in history reminds me of "Animal Farm" by George Orwell. It's now impossible to tell the pigs from the men or vice versa.
Israel can get away with these atrocities because it is fully aware that videos and stories like these will never show up in the American MSM. Israel owns the American government which continues to fund it and will forever be an accomplice to such atrocities.
Well for now Main Stream Media is not the only game in town anymore is it? In fact it's increasing less important. Not until they buy up the internet and our governments give them control over our net surfing. Until then we have alternative methods of getting the word out. Even grandma is on email today. We can get the stories and videos out for now anyway.
How many of us are aware that women are being pushed to the back of buses in Israel?
http://972mag.com/just-how-liberal-is-israel/
I have just watched parts of the powerful film Cry Freedom [I have recorded the rest of the movie] which is about the African activist Steven Biko who died while in police custody and the writer Donald Woods who exposed South Africa's pernicious treatment of Africa's native people such as Steven Biko by the South African government and was immediately struck by the similarity between the apartheid system that South Africa had toward its black population and the current oppressive system that is in place in Israel toward the Palestinian people.
I am also reading a book called Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner's Guide by Ben White which points out how Israeli leaders admired the political system that was in place in South Africa in the 1950s. White writes of how South Africa's prime minister Daniel Malan visited Jerusalem in 1953. But even before Israel achieved statehood "a personal friendship had thrived between Chaim Weizmann, who became Israel's first president and Jan Smuts, South African prime minister and senior military leader for the British." As White notes:
"Weizmann often turned to Smuts in time of crisis-and both men took for granted the moral legitimacy of each other's respective position."
There are journalists in Israel such who write for Ha'aretz such as Gideon Levy who have the courage to condemn the actions of Israel and its treatment of the Palestinians. Unfortunately the same cannot be said for the most part for those who write for the corporate media in the United States as that criticism seems to be implicitly if not explicitly forbidden by its reporters.
Good post. Just in case you do not know, for many years Israel served as a covert conduit for military goods coming from the US and other countries going to the South African apartheid regime.
I hate Nazi's..especially Jewish ones
I hate all nazis, especially reverse nazis such as yourself.