One of CD's resident trolls, Thomas More, has joined the ranks today of one of Mexico's least fondly remembered PRI dictators, José López Portillo, who said--when he went on a campaign to get rid of all critical press in Mexico:

"No les pago para que me peguen". (I don't pay you to hit me.)

Another champion of free speech--Congratulations!

I have made the picture of a Palestinian mother caught in this ghastly Gazan nightmare the desktop image on my computer. She is hovering over her blood soaked son and while her eyes are hidden, the boy stares up at her. It is hard to know if death has already visited the child but his eyes are still open. If he is still alive it is a vacant but chilling look of numbness, emptiness and shock. It is a horrific image but I should never be allowed to avert my eyes from it until I have lived the rest of my life trying to destroy Zionism.

In my judgement the greatest contribution I can make to that end is to heed the words of Mario Savio in the Berkley Free Speech Movement of '64 applied to the world capitalist economy of today as it is directed from Washington, D.C.. “There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part, you can’t even passively take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop! And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!”

Under normal circumstances the impending death of a form of racism like Zionism (see the picture of young Israeli girls bused onto military bases as a school-day field trip writing messages and drawing on missile warheads soon to rain down on Lebanon) and the establishment of a secular state on the territory Israel now occupies where Palestinian Arabs of various religious persuasions and Jews could peacefully co-exist as equals would be cause for human celebration. Unfortunately, the panic that clearly grips Israel means they will likely join in U.S. attacks on Damascus and Tehran and resort to the use of the “Sampson Option”, their nuclear arsenal, when all else fails. And that, on a larger scale, is the dilemma that the whole world faces as the capitalist system spearheaded by the United States begins experiencing the pangs of its death throes.

Both anti-Semitism and Zionism are the bitter fruits of capitalism. The imperatives of that economic system forced the Jewish people to endure the pogroms and the Holocaust. Meanwhile Zionists, propelled by the same economic dynamic, have since executed their own crimes against humanity. 62-years-ago, an unconscionable attack on the King David Hotel killed Britons, Arabs and Jews. Later would come Sabra and Shatila and now the Zionists are demonstrating in Gaza that Germany’s National Socialists had nothing on them for cold-blooded brutality and the capacity for murder on a massive scale.

Capitalism created the idea of Zionism in its relentless drive to divide and more fully exploit the working people of the world. For the historic moment of capitalism’s rise to planetary dominance Zionism has effectively built a figurative and literal wall between Jewish workers and their non-Jewish brothers and sisters. In the US it has made a distant memory of Jewish leadership of immigrant workers of every stripe in pitched battles on the streets of American cities to form and build the garment and furriers unions. It has squashed the great Civil Rights Era coalition consecrated by the blood of Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman. It has made unity with anyone but the US ruling class all but impossible. Zionism has performed as designed and isolated Jewish workers around the world in a “new Warsaw ghetto” called Israel.

The state that Zionism created has begun sensing its mortality and is thrashing around accordingly. The clearly deranged attack on Gazans and the recent ravings of Israeli intellectual Benny Morris published by the New York Times can now be added to mounting evidence that the guardians of the state are in the grip of panic. It recalls the 2006 attacks on Lebanon and Gaza and the resultant killing of civilians and destruction of infrastructure, the kidnapping of Hamas legislators, the targeting of a U.N. observer post, and the outrage on Qana. Each a desperate act farther outside the bounds of common sense than the one before.

One thing the Israeli assault on the Gaza and Lebanon before it has made clearer is the alignment of forces in the Arab and Muslim world. Ironically, in different fashions both Hamas and Hizbollah were creations of Israel. Hamas was supposed to act as a counterweight to the Palestine Liberation Organization when Israel considered the PLO the most immediate threat to their domination of the Arab majority. Hizbollah filled the gapping chasm Israel created with the 1982 invasion and years long occupation of southern Lebanon. Both Hamas and Hizbollah have, through years of disciplined work and organizing, woven themselves into the lives of the respective peoples they seek to liberate. What a stark contrast with the rich Arab boys who have created the cult they call al-Qaeda. The clownish Ayman al-Zawahiri rushed to his camcorder after Hizbollah faced down the Israeli military to spout some silly rhetoric about a caliphate from Spain to Iraq in front of a poster that screams, “Please remember us, we did 9/11!”

During the fighting with Hizbollah, completely out of the blue on repeated occasions and in leaflets dropped on the Lebanese, Israeli leaders felt compelled to mention their power to erase Lebanon from the planet. A strong and confident force does not act so. The Israelis are seeing their graves in the corner of their eyes and their bully’s trepidation is now growing as the end nears.

HuffPo says death toll is over 1000. In the right hand column on CD, under press releases, is a good FAIR press release on violations of international law not being covered in the media.

Thomas More is right in criticizing the manner in which I posted the link. It was in poor taste. The statement was made in irony and does not translate into web-land. I offer my sincere apologies for that.

However, I do not apologise for posting the link to the photo (the article is very much worth a read, as is all of Chris Floyd’s work). IMO there are much too few photos like this being published or shown these days.

Thomas, you obviously have very strong views about this post, and you are entitled to them. I would argue, that this has everything to do with Gaza. Israeli officials (Mark Regev in particular) trying to assure people that Israel is only targeting Hamas militants. It is obvious to the World, that Israel is carrying out a "collective" punishment on the Palestinian people for the actions of Hamas. This is a war crime as set out in the 4th Geneva convention. Israel of course has not ratified the ICC, so in theory cannot be tried for war crimes - how convenient.

Thomas More, we have been made to watch the most horrible scenes from the death camps of Adolf Hitler's Germany. We have seen the emaciated people, the dead bodies piled on top of each other. The Holocaust was an awful event which the World has not been able to forget, and rightly so. Why should we not see these pictures from Gaza, we should be seeing more of them, so that the World is united in its disgust at the horror being perpetrated on Palestine.
Every single UN resolution which has been proposed, to help the Palestinians, has been vetoed by the US as a result of pressure brought to bear by the Israel lobby. Our politicians in the UK have been slow to criticise, but have finally made half hearted comments.
This situation has to change, or the next time we could be seeing 10,000 or 100,000 dead Palestinians.

When will the palestinian a-holes quit hiding among the children when they commit their terrorist acts? allahu akbar or whatever they say, I have the same compassion for their children that they do.

Theinitiate - they will never forget this, how can anyone simply "move on" (in the words of Tony Bliar) when you have faced this disgusting tragedy. Should anyone be surprised if there are further attacks by "terrorists", due to our complicity in this matter? It is almost as if the powers that be want to create an everlasting war on terror.

theinitiate
This says it all..Why would the parents of these children -if still alive -want to forgive and forget?

Bin Laden has a new tape out- they are reporting on CNN. I he's calling for jihad to stop Israel. and the US support for the onslaught. I WONDER WHAT THEY THINK NOW...
I can't stand watching, but I can't turn away... You have to pay attention, otherwise the you'l be duped into believing lies... stay alert and informed.

Someone posted a link earlier, to a young Palestinian child, who had been "murdered", and there was outrage from a few people - why? Was there outrage when the twin towers were attacked, or when "shock and awe" was unfolding? The reason why people feel outrage at this, is because it is horrific and real, and to a certain extent we are responsible for it, for not complaining to our politicians. We should be outraged at our governments, and at the Israeli government.
This is a "slaughter in progress" and the United States (helped by the lack of decisive criticism from the UK) is enabling this process. What will happen at the end of this conflict? Will Israel and the Palestinians retreat, only to live happily ever after? No they won't, Israel will be emboldened by this lack of criticism, lack of UN sanctions (because of the US power of veto), lack of war crimes charges (because of the US power of veto). The blockade and inhumane treatment of the Palestinians will continue on an even larger scale. Maybe foreign journalists and aid agencies will be banned altogether.
Nobody is taking Israel to task for these atrocities, and until they do the situation will only get worse.

I've been really confused for years on how to solve this whole Mid-East crisis

and then I came upon a brilliant idea.... I'd sail to Greece and ask the Oracle

at Delphi what should be done...... And ya know what she said after a couple

moments of contemplation? "Push the sons of bitches into the sea!"

Usually she's a bit more cryptic but I guess she's pissed too about what's

going down....

And ya know what... I don't think their god is gonna part the sea this time for

'em...... The word on the street is that he's pretty pissed too....

Have a great day.... Uncle Billy.....

Pan

With Justice and Liberty For All

Greetings to CommonDreamers from xglampf and rglorpf, who watch the earth from afar.

rglorpf and I have been having a serious argument over whether earth people are ready to hear the intergalactic definition of wartime ethics. Here in the extra-planetary zone we have long understood that where the obliteration of other creatures is concerned, moral responsibility is a function of altitude. Whereas it is ok for the extraterrestrial you call God to smite whom He chooses, it is not ok for Him to get on one of your buses with a suicide belt and blow you up. You are like ants to God, so for Him to kill hundreds of thousands of you with, for example, a tidal wave is because He/She/It lives many hundreds of miles overhead, at a location in space known only to your Mormons. Similarly, rglorpf and I could zap you all with a death ray if we wanted to, and would feel sorrow only at the loss of your entertaining tv signal.

So here is the ethics index: If you are right in front of a bunch of cowering schoolchildren at a UN school and take them out with a machine gun, you are a bad guy. But if you are far away, above them in the sky or at a remote missile launching site, no problem. Blasting children, not ok. Blasting school buildings, ok. However transposing the same rule of thumb into a mental state, you are justified in the sniping of children simply by thinking of them as ants. Responsibility and distance are inversely proportional, and thus a responsibility quotient (RQ) can be easily established using even primitive pocket calculators.

rglorpf has dozed off with the remote, so nitey nite for now.

x&r

So far, 917 people are dead, and the number of wounded have reached 4,100 ... and this ethnic cleansing of Gazans and their elected representatives continues.

Meanwhile, the U.S. corporate/militarily-controlled congress, along with its incoming president - B.O., continue to align themselves with the state of Israel.

I'm not assuming that Obama is a stupid man and that the members of congress are certifiably dumb (developmentally disabled - obviously - but maybe not certifiably dumb). However, one wonders: how and where does information reach these handicapped, DC lackeys? Obama has shackled himself with his (forced?) choices of advisors and appointees. So for him, his mindset is not hard to figure out. The congress - who and what are they guided by? Certainly not by their own morals and intelligence - and certainly not by we the people.

But let me not stray from mentioning the most important event of the past decade (according to many). The focus in this coming week will be upon the crowning achievement of our times - the election of a half-white, pompous male to become our next U.S. president. According to the right-leaning centrist Danny Schechter: "The breathless buildup to the Barack inauguration is steaming ahead."

So, what's really important? From my point of view, if information like the following was to be released to the general public by MSM, or even by certain alternative news sites, the American people might start to have a clue:

"...the record shows that Hamas wanted to continue the ceasefire, but only on condition that Israel eases the blockade. Long before Hamas began the retaliatory rocket attacks on Israel, Palestinians were facing a humanitarian crisis in Gaza because of the blockade. The former High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, described what was going on in Gaza as a destruction of a civilization. This was during the ceasefire period.

What does the record show? The record shows for the past twenty or more years, the entire international community has sought to settle the conflict in the June 1967 border with a just resolution of the refugee question. Are all 164 nations of the United Nations the rejectionists? And are the only people in favor of peace the United States, Israel, Nauru, Palau, Micronesia, the Marshall Islands and Australia? Who are the rejectionists? Who’s opposing a peace?
From http://www.counterpunch.org/finkelstein01132009.html

It's your call, America.

I glanced at the Post Gazette the other day, and there was a picture on the front page taken from a service being held at a synogogue...

...denouncing Palestine's firing of missles into Israel.

Yep. I couldn't believe it either.

I'm fearful for the respective futures of the Arab world and Jewry. Hate is an infectious disease. Israel is being used as a battering ram for the imperial powers.

I still think Israel should be dismantled and that the Jews should be dispersed throughout the globe.

Or make an even trade with Europe for her Muslim citizens? Is that doable?

By the way, nobody's asking the US the most FUNDAMENTAL QUESTION. Where are we getting the funding from? Answer, we're still borrowing from China and Japan. If China and Japan were to quit letting the US borrow, then the US would be unable to waste taxpayer money building massive WMDs and shipping them to rogue nations such as Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Israel, India, etc ... Either we the people are gonna stop Congress or else China and Japan will do it one day and when they do, the US will witness the most horrendous financial meltdown that will make 2008 look like a minor annoyance !

Damn the right wing Harper "Government".

t_g
I think we live in historical times: because of the economic difficulties; because of whipped-up and constantly emphasized religious differences; because of the huge inequalities of wealth there'll be a lot of disenchanted and disenfranchised people.
Let's look at who is benefitting from all that chaos and try to stop them!
Part of the above is happening in the Middle East: the US ally (or part of the US??) Israel is representing all that's wrong and ugly with our First World society: greed, selfishness and deception/hipocrisy.
As long as there is no independent state for the Palestinians, there'll be no peace. This should be the priority of the incoming US Administration. Unfortunately my Government (Australia) is parroting the US Gov't propaganda, so no pressure from here. We don't really have a powerful Jewish lobby. Not yet, anyway, but we do have some very strong conservative voices.
I think us, moderate Jews should raise our voices, as this Israeli policy is certainly no benefitting us. We are being hated everywhere we go. I feel VERY uncomfortable with publicly calling for equal rights for Palestinians - I've been called a self-hating Jew, I had hate-mail and threatening phone calls. They were anonymous (of course!!), but I think most came from fellow Jews. Shame!!!!!
I have stopped commenting on my views publicly - I'm an elderly woman. Do I need all these hassles? Anybody else had similar experiences? How do you deal with it? Is there any way to express my views without being afraid?
p.s. my husband is also of my views and he has stopped voicing them years ago - because of similar reasons. He is also Jewish...

I am absolutely disgusted with some of the posts here. I don't know what has happened, but apparently there are a lot of folks here that speak of dying lightly.

This slaughter of innocents is disgusting. Heard this really battered woman lying in a hospital today crying about her child (conceived after 22 years of marriage) who dies in her arms and of a father who lost two of his three young daughters who were out with their grandmother. I think one was hit with 17 bullets.

Finally we have a weapons expert to confirm that it was white phosphorus being used:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPw-mqGkL9M&feature=channel_page

And just when I thought I heard everything - the the Canadian Jewish Congress (the Pro Israel group) is trying to get protests against the slaughter in Gaza considered a hate crime! The Congress is also putting pressure on government stating that the government should insist that they stop!

~QUOTE~ The congress said it would release a list of those who co-sponsored the anti-Israel protests, among them the Ontario wing of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, the Canadian Peace Alliance and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers.

One of the groups Farber is naming, the Canadian Arab Federation, calls the congress's approach an unsurprising attempt to divert attention from the horrors the Israeli military has been visiting on Gaza and its people.

It's only normal that many Canadians, horrified by what has occurred in Gaza, would react strongly, but labelling them anti-Semitic or Muslim extremists is just fear-mongering, said Mohamed Boudjenane, executive director of the federation.

"We had 10,000 people (protest)," Boudjenane said. ...

Boudjenane pointed out that numerous Jews have also rallied against the Israeli attacks, naming some prominent ones such as author Naomi Klein and political and social activist Judy Rebick.

They aren't anti-Jew, he said, but were only there to protest the ``massacre" happening in Gaza. ~END QUOTE~

http://www.thestar.com/News/Canada/article/570376

(The Star is free registration if you don't see article at first glance)

Israel's cruel tactics don't surprise me. After all, they were the ones who gave the US training in how to torture prisoners in Abu Ghrab.

Israel always presents itself as the poor victim, but in reality, it is as blood-thirsty as the people she accuses of being the agressor.

Where are the liberals in Congress? Why aren't they speaking out against this atrocity? Where are Gaza's Arab neighbors? Are they all wimps with no
sense of compassion?

900 to 13 dead, and this is not genocide? Is Bush gone yet?

A few days ago I discovered the free download Livestation http://www.livestation.com/ (for Mac users like me, too!), and have been watching streaming television coverage from Gaza by English Al Jazeera, whose reporters are actually in Gaza, not just hanging out in Israel like the U.S. "reporters." There are lots of other international broadcasting networks on Livestation, too. Now we can see exactly what the rest of the world sees, in real time, not just on youtube, unfiltered by our corporate media.

It is beyond heartbreaking to see war crimes as they happen, carried out by our client state Israel with weapons our taxes have paid for. There is not much more to say, except God help us, we are complicit in a new holocaust. Israel is carrying out a slaughter of civilians in a cage. I think that their universal military service in Israel has created a nation of people who have been carefully trained to commit atrocities without remorse. The relatively few Israelis who are speaking out against this carnage deserve our great respect for their courage and humanity.

This is absolutely disgraceful that over 1,000 Palestinians have died (at least 1/3 were civilians) compared with 13 Israelis. If this isn't textbook example of war crimes then I don't know what is. Maybe the illegal invasion/occupation of Iraq perhaps and the associated torture.

Where is the rest of the world? Demand that Israel get their asses out of Gaza and the other illegally occupied territories that the UN Resolutions required. Give them one week, then send in troops.

This is what's done to teenaged foreign Human Rights workers when they try to protect Palestinian schoolchildren by accompanying them to their homes--and this was during "peacetime", in front of the world's cameras and dozens of onlookers. Here are more details on same incident and this is how you can express your discomfiture, if you have any that is.

Can you imagine what the zionist trolls would be screaming if those children were Israeli and even Jew? They act no different from Bill Bennett who rails against "abortion" on one side while at the same time calling for the "abortion" of black babies which by the way got him into trouble.

And our CONgress has passed TWO resolutions stating that THE AMERICAN PEOPLE SUPPORT THE SLAUGHTER OF INNOCENT CHILDREN. Welcome to the NEW AMERICAN CENTURY...where love is hate and truth is a lie.

Sigh. I read this. I listened to DemocracyNow this morning. www.democracynow.org Jews Against the Occupation had a demonstration yesterday. www.jatonyc.org I'm glad it was the segment after some of the comments made by people at the pro-Israel demonstration. I'm older; I've never heard such hawkish, ugly comments as at the pro-Israel demonstration,(of the day before,) except for pro-war on Iraq comments by Southern US Republicans (Christians)in 2003. It's up to us, all of us. I sent thank you's to Dennis Kucinich and Maxine Waters, and let them know I appreciated their "NO" votes in the House of Reps on Friday, that I am a Jew. Do what you can. We can. We have to.