Click this You-Tube for a good visual juxtaposition and song: "Is It For Freedom? Mourning the Innocent Lives Lost in Gaza":

http://www.mnprogressiveproject.com/diary/2404/is-it-for-freedom-mourning-the-innocent-lives-lost-in-g...

Those who can be made to believe absurdities can be made to commit atrocities. Voltaire

"Where are all of the Arab leaders? What are THEY doing...."

These puppets are silent as the puppetmaster(s) are too busy slaughtering Palestinians and are therefore unable to provide animus to the puppets. That would account for Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iraq, Pakistan, etc. etc. etc.

A more interesting question would be "why is this being allowed to happen?" and the implications are sickening. ALL disenfranchised peoples need to pay close attention AND REACT ACCORDINGLY because they will face similar treatment if these BEASTS are allowed to continue their rampage against the earth's meek. Yep. I am talking about MOST amerICKans as well. So many of "US" actually still believe that it couldn't happen "here" and our country is so special etc. while they march straight toward the camps that the should-have-been-aborted bush has set up.

The meaning of the phrase "good germans" has NEVER been more clear!

The Palestinians have suffered through countless Israeli trespasses.

Israel would like nothing better than to destroy the Palestinians. Period. It would suit their purposes. Ask any Israeli if his/her life would be better without the pesky Palestinians. Yes, a hundred times, yes. Kill them all would be their refrain--and that's what's going on.

To stop this disaster is the job of decent people and decent nations. How? Establish a military force between the 2 fighting groups--the UN, EU, etc. This group is master of the situation, much like NATO in Kosovo. Then set up the so-called 2 state solution. If Israel builds more settlements or blockades or Hamas sends over rockets , then this force intervenes.

Tough love indeed. But both sides need it because it has gotten out of hand.

Dr Wu, the last of the big-time thinkers

Seriously, Joe Hope... get real. You discover some old Jewish relative in your blood and suddenly everything Israel does is gold-plated and A-OK? Is this for real? You've been "studying the Jewish Culture" ??? So now you know right from wrong? You didn't even understand what clovis wrote in response to you, you just start being insulted that everyone hates the jews. Oh my god... everyone hates the jews... everyone hates the jews!!! As clovis mentioned, please do remove your head from your ass when you post. And it's bad enough that you discover a drop of jewish blood in your veins and immediately become an expert in how we all should feel about Israel -- but PLEASE stop your masturbatory navel-gazing about whether you should convert or not. You come here with your disinformation and uninformed bias, then want us to help you complete your ignorance???? Please... You can be a Muslim-hating Christian or a Muslim-hating Jew, but either way you're insulting to actual Native peoples and you're still whacking off.

Joe Hope, it's you who have no sense of decency, since you simply spew back the lies (such as that Hamas "violated the ceasefire" and "uses human shields etc. etc.) that the mainstream press uses to "justify" an endless and savage assault on the defenceless people of Gaza. Clearly if you can so easily defend the slaughter of children, such as was done during Israel's recent bombing raids at 11:30 am, when the kids were getting out of school, then you really do have no sense of decency. Indeed like most intransigeant ideologues, you submit the value of human life to a distorted, unmoving idea.

You also seem to have a very tenuous grasp of plain English and basic logic, if you if you think I meant to cast aspersions on "the Irish," "the Jews," "the blacks," etc. I think most readers here know that I meant the exact opposite. But just to make it perfectly clear, let me repeat the final sentence of my last post. I said:

"Be careful about making blanket statements about whole groups like 'the Jews,' 'the blacks,' 'Muslims' and so on. Because when you do, you're almost certain to be wrong."

As any fool with a modicum of reading knowledge would know, I mean to say DO NOT GENERALIZE, or you will probably be wrong. Which of course is what you did when you said "the Jewish people are native to Israel." What Jewish people are you talking about, Joe? Prating on about Joshua and other such fairy tales will not help to clarify matters. Judaism is a religion, not a people. It was European anti-Semitism that first cast "the Jews" as a "race" and a "people." And it was generalizations about such things as "the Jews" and "the Mediterraneans" and "the Germans," and, as a whole, the racial quality of nationhood that gave rise to such scourges as anti-Semitism, especially its virulent 19th-century form, which culminated in the Nazi extermination campaign.

There, is that clear, Joe? Do I need to spell out anything else?

Now, I suggest you try taking your head out of its customary place in your backside (presently in search of your God, be he Christian or Jewish), set aside your Bible, at least for the moment, TURN OFF THE TV, and read some history, for Christ's sake!

And finally, I suggest you change your web name to Joe Despair, at least while waiting for divine inspiration, because it's thanks to the hopeless inability of people like you to tell simple right from wrong, to separate the wheat from the chaff in the barrage of information/misinformation/disinformation we are daily fed by an endless raft of interests trying to get us TO SEE THINGS THEIR WAY, to make even the slightest effort tear away the veil and see our horrid political reality for what it is, that the world is in such desperate straits today.

I, too, wish for a better world, Joe. But we have to understand at least a little of what's going on before we can hope to be effective.

Namaste, my fellow being.

It's interesting that you mention Native Americans. Because the Jewish People are native to Israel. Jews have lived in Israel continuously from the time of its original conquest by Joshua more than 3200 years ago until the present day. The land of Israel is central to Judaism. A substantial portion of Jewish law is tied to the land of Israel, and can only be performed there. Living outside of Israel is viewed as an unnatural state for a Jew. The world outside of Israel is often referred to as "galut," which is usually translated as "diaspora" (dispersion), but a more literal translation would be "exile" or "captivity."

So if you care about the plight of Native People then you should care about Israel.

joehope

Jews were dispersed centuries ago. In a lot of our minds that means they gave up their legal claim to the region. They left the land for other people's to settle and call their own. Then suddenly in the 40's they decided to take the area back by means of force. They displaced people who had lived their for centuries all in the name of religion. So I guess in some people's minds that makes the crime of displacing millions of people all right. They have no claim to the land because of their religion. A lot of us used to sympathize with the Jewish people. Until they started persecuting other people and treating them as badly as they had been treated in the past. I no longer feel a gram of sympathy for the Jews. If they are being terrorized by Palestinians so what???? What did they honestly expect when they took someone else's land???? They were going to throw flowers at them like Bush imagined Iraqi's were going to???? Grow up!

If any country should be ousted from the UN, it is Israel. They have no intention of following international law. They only require adherence from all other countries.

Their violations have far outnumbered any Sadam Hussein and Iraq ever did.

How do the other participating nations stand for that?

Joe Hope, since you've got your head so firmly up your backside, I suggest you do your religious conversion right there. You can think of it as a way of talking directly to your God, be he Christian or Jewish. And while you are searching your soul in that dark place, please ask your God, be he Christian or Jewish (or both), how he feels about wanton disregard for human life in pursuit of purely political goals that have nothing whatsoever to do the moral principles behind most religious doctrine (but seldom practiced).
And allow me to correct your egregious misstatement. "The Jews," as you put it, are not "native to Israel." When Zionists began colonizing Palestine in the late 19th century, there were very few native Jews already there. And what few were there lived in peace with their Muslim and Christian cousins and were generally hostile to the European Jewish settlers colonizing their land. Apparently you don't know that the word "native" comes from the Latin "nativus," the adjectival form of "natus," which means "born." The Palestinian Arabs are in the overwhelming majority the only historical "natives" to that land. And now one can say that the Israeli-born Jews, too, are natives, of recent minting. But not "the Jews," as you put it. By your reasoning, a third-generation Irish-American is somehow "native" to Ireland. And an American Jew whose parents or grandparents came from Lithuania and whose ancestors never dreamed of setting foot in Palestine are somehow "native" to Israel. Tell me something, are those Peruvian Indians hastily converted to Judaism a few years back by some activist Israeli rabbis desperately looking for new "Jews" to populate the Occupied Territories (since native Jewish reproductive rates are low), are these Indios, too, "native" to Israel, since they are now "Jews"? Does their right to the land trump that of Palestinians whose roots go back centuries, even millennia? How about the blond, six-foot four Russian who hasn't a clue about Judaism and Jewish tradition, has never set foot in a synagogue, but happened to have a Jewish grandmother? "Native," him too? Granted, he would make an excellent soldier for Tsahal, but is it right for him, too, to push the destitute native Palestinian off his ancient olive groves, courtesy of a check from the Israeli government (which comes, in part, courtesy of US taxpayer dollars)?
Be careful about making blanket statements about whole groups like "the Jews," "the blacks," "Muslims," and so on. Because, when you do, you're almost certain to be wrong.

American foreign policy can be summed up in a sentence spoken by Captain Willard in Apocalypse Now.... "We cut them in half with a machine gun and then hand them a band-aid."

Have a nice day..... Would you like paper or plastic with that???

the funny thing is -- the FATE of the UNITED STATES and ISRAEL - tied as they are at the belly -- is really in the hands of the foreign DEBT HOLDERS...which , under US DOLLAR MONETARY HEGEMONY allowing the USA to be the "power" that it is today , if they really were wiser - and finally got sick and tired (or their populations sick and tired ENOUGH to REALLY threaten their leaders with real MASSIVE revolt that USA can NOT possibly counter if this started to sprread from country to country) -- of holding US DEBT in dollar demoninations which actually DIMINISHES the wealth holdings of those countries like China and the Saudis, etc. (this is because the US dollar hegemony really makes the countries use up their resources and own reserves to PAY the USA to BE in DEBT TO THEM while holding US dollar as the "promise of the usa to pay" - in short - they are LOSING money BY holding the US debt) --

if they did that -- the USA AND israel are FINISHED.

i believe that if this was to happen (and probably hasn;'t happened YET because most Dollar-debt holding countries are still in the process of "diversifying" their economies and eventually AWAY FROM Dollar denomination subjugation) - and can't YET let go of this "relationship" -- if this was to happen -- the collapse of the USA would be so swift - it would literally be "overnight" and just a few weeks or even days later -- US citizens would LITERALLY be out in the streets without jobs, food, energy grids blacking out. etc...a total paralysis.

in part -- the OTHER countries ARE being "compassionate" in a pragmatic, almost cynical sense -- but also "unsure" what their next step is. ...or even if things seem CLEAR as to which direction they SHOULD proceed - even the dictatorial ones who'll find out their prosperity and even the POWER of THEIR ELITES DOESN"T HAVE TO DEPEND ON US SPONSORSHIP -- but actually recieve GREATER support FROM their citizens for RETURNING their SOVEREIGN WEALTH INTO INTERNAL needs and uses , and i think the USA is pretty LUCKY that these debt-holding countries in "dollar denominations" and trade transactions are basically STILL giving the USA -- for whatever reason of their own -- the "GRACE PERIOD" to continue on this "dollar hegemony" global regime.

I am convinced -- the ENTIRE economy and viability , in a global sense as the "power" of teh USA rests on the simple matter of the BUCK - the $$$$ used as the currency of the world.

if China SO MUCH as -- say - is FORCED to INCREASE its INTERNAL "bail out" of its INNER REGIONS that are economically lagging behind the industrialized coastlines - and by this USE even half of its Dollar Reserves IN china's DOMESTIC MARKET DEVELOPMENT rather than -- "RECYCLING them" BACK to the USA as "loans" to prop up the USA -- while continuing to "receive BACK US DOLLAR" as US "payment or promise in federal bonds" for the US debt.......

it would practically STARVE the US economy....

or at least the central nervous system of it - which is the Dollar Hegemony and the banking system - bad as it is now - having lost trillions upon trillions of dollars in "assets" would be in even worse shape that the USA would NEVER again be able to "demand" or "threaten" any nation --

simply because of an "act" that was "forced" upon - say - China by CHINA's OWN domestic problems and challenges to PROP UP and invigorate ITS domestic market - by using its reserves internally - and THEN as a consequence of improving internal market (which is, after all, UNDER DEVELOPED and has PLENTY of room for decades to come to fulfill its promise while diminishing its reliance of "growth on export -orientiation" (primarily to the USA and europe) -

that is the END of the USA as an empire ...as EVEN a "military threat" .

I think this can be the case IF a big "debt holder" like china TRULY diversifies in SOME significant way - AWAY from dollar denomination and propping up the US DEBT itself (different from the US economy being given loans). it would,i think, encourage other governments and their industries to realize that the usa CAN be effectively isolated - and rendered a nation that is NOT "indispensable". -- allowed to prosper ON ITS OWN by ITS OWN -- and

as the americans like to say, but really dont' follow in terms of their foreign policies :

"PICK YOURSELF UP BY THE BOOTSTRAPS, boy".

UNITED NATIONS – The United States late Saturday blocked approval of a U.N. Security Council statement calling for an immediate cease-fire in the Gaza Strip and southern Israel and expressing concern at the escalation of violence between Israel and Hamas.(AFP)
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Obviously, any vote against Genocidal Slaughter of the Innocents is a vote against the interest of the United States of Israel.
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Amnesty International calls on Israeli forces to immediately halt the unlawful attacks carried out as part of the escalation of violence which has caused over 400 Palestinian deaths and 2000 injuries since December 27. Amnesty International also condemns the rocket fire by armed Palestinian groups including Hamas which resulted in 4 Israeli deaths with several dozen injured.

This is the highest level of Palestinian fatalities and casualties in four decades of Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Scores of unarmed civilians, as well as police personnel who were not directly participating in the hostilities, are among the Palestinian victims of the Israeli bombardment in the Gaza Strip.
http://www.amnestyusa.org/

Third paragraph. "Israel's disproportionate response". Is Israel required by law to respond with equal proportion? Can anyone please answer this question for me?

Where are the Arab governments and their non-arab muslim sycophants? If the Arab governments with all of their oil wealth and moral high ground can not win a victory for their Palestinian brothers, then who can?

Huffington Post reported yesterday that Bush said, "leave it for Obama".

And, as a security person for Israel said some years ago, Palestinians and Israelis (including Israeli Arabs)look the same; if they are wearing similar clothing, you can't tell one from the other.

Let's get off our asses and join demonstrations being held in major cities or start our own in smaller towns. It is time to 'put up or shut up' your humanity in protest of US support for war crimes:

1. targeted assassination of Hamas leader - and 10 innocent members of his family with a 1 TON bunker buster, courtesy of the Pentagon

2. Targeting civilian institutions, especially mosques during time of prayer services.

etc. etc........

But I could be wrong !

The Bush Administration is complicit in these crimes. Why am I not surprised?

If Israeli politicians put Palestinians on a spit, roasted them in an open fire and feasted on their flesh they would deny it is cannibalism. They destroy the means to maintain a civilized way of life then consider Palestinians subhuman.

The US government is totally complicit in this collective punishment and terrorism.

One must also wonder, meanwhile, which Western policymakers enabled the arming of Israel with nuclear weapons when it was obvious that Israel is a collective psychosis.

Not in my name.

-30-

At what point, US citizens, do we realize our government DOES NOT represent us, and WITHDRAW our support and begin resistance to what our government does in our name? (As proposed by Thoreau in his pamphlet "On Civil Disobedience" about his refusal to pay taxes for the US war against Mexico, briefly jailed for his withdrawal of support.)

Withdraw support: For example:
Stop paying taxes;
Stop purchasing ANYTHING that we do not actually NEED;
Stop voting for ANYONE who does not speak plainly about these matters.

Begin resistance: For example:
Talk to our neighbors, friends, co-workers, and families;
Work with people we know to organize:
Find local places where our REPRESENTATIVES carry out their work, and blockade their workplaces;
Find local places where our military ships weapons out of the country, and blockade these transshipment points;
Find local places where corporations manufacture or administer the manufacture of arms, and blockade these workplaces;
All the while, produce our own media to reach out to other citizens with our reasons and our goals, in our own terms.

OK, if you do NOT think our country and our world are at the point of demanding principled resistance by citizens who put their own lives on the line - what do you propose to do?

Remember, all of this firepower is causing a crisis in Israel, too. Just like in the Lebanon incursion, the Israelis are expending a lot of very expensive ammo on the Palestinians. I am sure though that, just as during Lebanon, we are flying in squadrons of cargo planes with replenishment of all the high tech weaponry being expended. Just part of our several billion in "humanitarian" aid we annually give to Israel, courtesy of the American taxpayer (and now China, who holds our markers).

Parsing Livni's "There is no humanitarian crisis":
If the Palestinians are reduced to less than human status, as they obviously have been in her mind, then there can be no humanitarian crisis.
It's all very simple, you see.

Apparently you can forget the "disproportionate" response argument. It seems that Israel did not sign that treaty/agreement.

Its not serving their interests to commence a ground incursion into Gaza. I don't see their reasoning here. Hamas leadership is in Syria. All you are going to do here is kill Palestinians.

How exactly do you tell Hamas from Palestinian civilians anyway?

Condi, the wicked witch of the west, is just AIPAC's whore. And when she steps down, Hillary will be ready to bend over even harder for AIPAC. Prior to that was Mad Albright, who did not know she was a jew.....

The Jews are God's choosen people, so anything they do is OK.
Like America, they are the good guys, God is on our side.(and
theirs) If Hamas does something it's terrorism, if Israel does
the same thing it's defending their country. Maybe it's kinda
like the difference between Russia attacking a country, and
the US attacking Iraq. OK for USA--Bad for Russia!

This what happened to Native Americans in the 19th century. They were condemned for fighting to get what they lost just like the Palestinians are today.

bush adminstration and israel adminstration is something you step in and have to scrap off your shoe

For a similar behavior like Israel's, the US of A has assaulted the tiny Serbia, bombed it mercilessly for 87 days (Bill Clinton = war criminal ordered the bombing of TV Station in Belgrade that killed 17 civilians) and then they took away the part of Serbia's territory and declared "independence" of it, like Russia in Ossetiya...

Why not bomb Israel this time for using the fighter planes to bomb the civilians, mosques, schools...?

LOPsided to the Republicans means Love Our President. For the Democrats it's LOPEsided, Love Our President Elect. For the Gazans, it's Leave Or Perish. For George Wanker Bush, it's Lies, Our Poison. Bush has been living on a steady and plentiful diet of lies since he discovered, as a child, the perverse pleasure of the Lie, the "thrill up the leg", as Tweety Matthews might say. Lying has been more important to him than sex, whiskey or cocaine. No lie is too small to be repeated a thousand times and no truth to big to be throttled in its cradle.

Israel's attack on the Gaza getto reminds me most closely of the Nazi's attacks on the Warsaw getto.

Herd the Palistinians into a small getto area, deprive them of food, water, political representation, gas and oil, then systematically exterminate them.

Zieg Heil Israel! You learned your lessons well from Hitler.

400 dead men, women and children from high tech air assaults seems kind of a dispraportionate response to 4 dead Israeli occupiers and land stealers from primative rocket fire.

"The only means of strengthening one's intellect is to make up one's mind about nothing, to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts." - John Keats

The "lopsided stance" taken by the Bush administration, as well as the previous administrations is directly related to the misguided concept that those in Washington, are basically exempt from a logical approach to matters; and are bound by the political obligations and loyalties that put them into power.

The USA has fallen short in recognizing the very real fact that the world as never before is a "global community", and the inhabitants of one part of the Globe are subject to the same rules of conduct that they hold others to.
This sense of being 'above" or "apart and separate" are contradicted by many programs the USA is currently participating in and the USA will use the most ridiculous examples to show that they are successful in this approach. Just one example is the 'Cold War' victory claimed by the Reagan administration, while at the same time denying the very real fact that the Soviet Socialists fell apart from their own excess and corruption, and flawed doctrine.

The USA is headed it seems to the same "cliff's edge" and the inevitable "fall" and this is revealed in the Bush administration's lawlessness of which Ms. Rice was and is a main player. The Israelis being heavily supported by the corrupt USA would have little desire to conduct themselves differently by following the lead of the USA. (It also helps to think that you are "Gods Chosen ones" but that is another story, for another time.)

Whether anyone has the answers to these and the many problems now confronting the USA and the world is a matter yet undecided. However as a result of the Conservative thinkers domination of the past twenty years or more ( even though Clinton did mark a change in the Presidency, both houses of congress were firmly in the hands of the Conservative Republicans; and that damage is just now coming into full view) and many believe led to the current administration taking the lawlessness to the international level.

All of these problems are directly tied to the lack of participation of the American People. They will vote for the candidate of their choice, and then leave them to their own resources for the term of office never or rarely taking the trouble to watch what they are doing with those "votes" that put them into office. All federal employees are subject to quarterly reviews of their performance while in their respective jobs. Even the military has 'fitness reports" which all NCO and above ranks and pay grades are subject to, and required to comply with. Two consecutive unfavorable "fitness reports" can result in a reduction of rank or grade or extinguish the possibilities of advancement. Why not with the politicians who have even more control over the lives of the people who put them into office?

This lack of accountability became evident in the Nixon administration, when Nixon was allowed to resign instead of face impeachment proceedings. This in turn led to the Bush administration's many violations of international law.
If a person, any person, who may be lacking the restraints of "character" that prevent all out lawlessness is convinced that they can "get away" with crimes, the lack of character will lead them to the commission of those crimes. GW Bush really feels himself above the law, and "untouchable". Without that arrogant belief the confessions of VP Cheney on national TV would have needed to be extracted with "waterboarding", sleep deprivation, and the other methods used by them to extract confessions from their prisoners in Cuba and else where.

The USA has more than 2million people incarcerated in state and federal custody for violations of laws on any given day, and this includes several members of the Congress from both parties. This fact alone will prove that not all of the American people believe the same as the Bush administration and that lawlessness need not be answered; if it is committed by the higher office holder.

All the next administration needs is for the American People to remain silent on these many crimes. Then Ms. Rice, and the others will be free to tour the country, receiving millions in "speech fees", and nice jobs in American Business that pay ridiculously high salaries with benefits. Mr. Clinton for example increased his wealth by $50 million or more after his two terms, and all of this without a "job", and this after being convicted of perjury. I would be extremely wary of a Lawyer who is convicted of perjury, and certainly would not pay $1000.00 per plate for dinner, and cocktails, with desert and a speech from a mediocre Lawyer with a conviction for perjury; even if he was the president and world famous for receiving fellatio in the Oval office.

Until the American people actually take charge of their own nation, and hold their public officials in high office as accountable as they do the "drug dealers on the street corner", they will continue to have these problems; and compounded.

We can start with the Bush administration and trials for their crimes in the International Court of Justice.

Or you can remain silent; which has not made any changes so far with that approach.

nurembergrevisited@gmail.com

In other news the US Government has asked the Governments of the UAE, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia for a loan of 300 billion dollars to help bail out its economy.

Why not ask Israel?

Will the Arab states comply? Will Israel attack the United States next for accepting money from "Terror States" ?

As others have pointed out. IT is one of the listed WAR CRIMES to target police stations with bombs. Police men are considered Civilians.

Israel is openly bragging about it having targeted Police Stations.

End of story. There can be absolutely NO DOUBT these are war crimes. It is not "collateral damage".

The UN Security council is a total and abject failure.

Back to Qana. The US Statement regarding US Israeli assurances that there will be no repeat of Qana where 106 civilians were killed escaping Israeli fire.

Why is it that two years later, even the United States suggests this was a crime and PREVENTABLE and why is it there still no Israelis on trial for that war crime?

Are we going to have a repeat in another 4 years time where a US spokesman says "Israel has assured us that there will not be repeats of what happened in the Gaza strip where schools, hospitals and mosques where targetted and where thousands of civilians were killed. The United States supports Israel defending it self against XXXXXXXXX (Plug in Syria, Jordan, The West bank, Iran , Lebanon)

Is it not time to stop this mindless mass murder NOW and not wait two years before it is condemned?

"There is no humanitarian crisis, and therefore there is no need for a humanitarian truce," Livni told reporters in Paris.
This phrase will go down in world history. It is much more than a simple lie. The humanitarian crisis in Gaza was deliberately designed and implemented by Israel with Washington's approval. It is amply documented by countless respected sources and even the official MSM news can hardly cover it up, in spite of the Israeli prohibition on reporters entering Gaza, so world public opinion is quite well informed. Livni obviously is well aware of all this, and is not an ignorant fool, so why does she come up with this seemingly stupid lie? Like that famous Washington anonymous source she believes she is creating the true history. That with sufficient destruction, repression and media control Israel can realise achieve the programme of Orwell's Big Brother.

Amnesty International is one organization that I support as they do a lot of good and are solution oriented. If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem by your silence and acquiescence.