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Nobel Laureate Accuses Israel of 'Ethnic Cleansing'
Nobel peace laureate Mairead Maguire on Tuesday accused Israel of "ethnic cleansing" policies in annexed east Jerusalem, where the municipality plans to tear down almost 90 Arab homes.
Nobel peace laureate Mairead Maguire speaks during a press conference in the Silwan neighborhood of east Jerusalem. Maguire on Tuesday accused Israel of "ethnic cleansing" policies in annexed east Jerusalem, where the municipality plans to tear down almost 90 Arab homes. (AFP) "I believe the Israeli government is carrying out a policy of ethnic cleansing against Palestinians here in east Jerusalem," said Maguire, who won the 1976 Nobel prize for her efforts at reaching a peaceful solution to the violence in Northern Ireland.
"I believe the Israeli government policies are against international law, against human rights, against the dignity of the Palestinian people," she said at a news conference.
It was held in a protest tent erected by residents of east Jerusalem's Silwan neighbourhood where 88 Arab homes are under demolition orders.
The Israeli authorities say the houses were built or extended without the necessary construction permits. Palestinians say the planned demolitions aim at forcing them out of east Jerusalem.
If the demolition orders are carried out 1,500 people would be left homeless in one of the largest forced evictions since Israel occupied mostly Arab east Jerusalem in the 1967 war and later annexed it.
Israel considers Jerusalem to be its eternal and undivided capital, while Palestinians want to make east Jerusalem the capital of their future state.
The Israeli human rights group B'Tselem says that since 2004 the Israeli authorities have torn down more than 400 homes in east Jerusalem.
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112 Comments so far
Show AllThe crimes of Israel have gone worldwide. Their heinous acts-their acts of brutality and cruelty- are no longer cloaked in secrecy. They are disgrace as a county-and must be brought before the bar of justice.
it is obvious to any sane person that among the many lessons the jews learned from the holocaust was how to conduct one of their own
the palestinians can't say the anti-semites didn't warn them
what is truly sick though is watching the state of zion try to invoke legalities of land deeds and other shyster type bullshit to cover their war crimes
the jews ought to remember that what goes around - comes around
I'm not too comfortable calling the Palestinians my friends for several reasons;
Sirhan Sirhan - who murdered Bobby Kennedy in the cause of protesting Isreal, the videos of Palestinians dancing in the street after 9/11, and the chants of "death to America" - they certainly are not our friends. The jews have an historical claim to the state of Isreal as it exists and Isreal has a legitimate function in preventing still another jewish holocaust (remember there have been several). Because Isreal is prevailing in this conflict, the knee jerk reaction is to sympathize with the Palistinians and radical Islamists, even though the real hate and violence is coming from them.
Those videos were debunked but the video of Israeli high-fiving and congratulating is real.
"Because Isreal is prevailing in this conflict, the knee jerk reaction is to sympathize with the Palistinians and radical Islamists, even though the real hate and violence is coming from them."
Sorry, but no. The reaction is because Israel is bombing civilians, and pulling ridiculous stunts like quibbling over rice or spaghetti is legitimate food aid.
odoco
The Jews have no historical claim to Israel.
dreamer- dream on. The Ashekenazi Jews have no such claim. Their ancestral lands are not those of the Palestinians. They are decendents of the the Khazar ethnic group (who converted to Jusdaism rather than be seen as Christian or Muslim). Modern genetic research clearly shows the Palestinians to be the heirs to the people of the Biblical era in Palestine.
Anybody else here forgetting the Five dancing Mossad agents when the WTC was demolished? Here is a video link to the agents confessing their crime http://www.erichufschmid.net/TFC/Bollyn-dancing-Israelis.html
zionism is the scourge of the Jews- remember the USS Liberty!
Sophie Scholl-The Final Days
"...the knee jerk reaction is to sympathize with the Palistinians and radical Islamists..."
No, the reaction is coming to the fact that Israel has now become that which they once condemned.
You are outnumbered, dreamer, by people who have been awakened from the nightmare that is apartheid. Violence is never trumped by more violence. It is a death-spiral of the insane and stupid.
Dreamer has bought into decades of propaganda against the Palestinians. He needs to wake up.
Sirhan Sirhan did not kill Bobby Kennedy. He shot him, yes, but from several feet in front. The bullet that killed Kennedy was fired from behind, probably by an off-duty LAPD officer working security. Sirhan was a patsy.
And the Israelis do not have an historical claim to Palestine. The descendants of the people to whom God "gave this land" are called "Palestinians." The European Jews who have taken over the land have no ancestors among the "chosen people."
" Both houses need to be swept clean ..."
We don't NEED to do jack squat, except withdraw our support and complicity in genocide, and quit facilitating the holocaust of the Palestinian people on their own land, and support sanctions against the Israelis in Palestine a la South Africa.
Remember, the PEOPLE OF PALESTINE ELECTED HAMAS in a fair election. We COULD do something about OUR leadership, which is involved in slowly killing the entire world.
Peace!
STOP MEDIA CONTROL!!!
"We don't NEED to do jack squat, except withdraw our support and complicity in genocide"
Amen. We have to stop giving money and selling arms to Israel. Most of the money we give has strings that Israel must spend it on US made weapons. So behind it all is feeding the war industry. Sick and nightmarish - that we would allow the bombing, deprivation, starving, ghettoization of a population in order to funnel taxpayer money through Israel to the weapons industry.
Joe
STOP MEDIA CONTROL!
The child who is abused often times grows up to become the abuser. The same obviously goes for nations like Israel too. A lot of used to have respect for Israel as a nation. But, with this last episode we have soured completely on them They are just as bad if not in some cases worse than the Arabs who want to destroy them.
Sorry, tumnblewind. While I laud your sentiments, comparing the current state of Zionist Israel to "Arabs" is not valid. By its present actions, Israel is much, much worse than the "Arabs who want to destroy them". The Muslim world doesn't think that the state of Israel should exist, and there's a good case for that. Jerusalem is NOT the center of the Jewish world, hasn't been since the Romans kicked Jews out of Palestine two thousand years ago. It is an international city, holy to the three religions of the Book, and should be recognized as such. Israel exits on Arab land, stolen from them with the help of the UN (read USA) and US weapons. Zionist Jews could at least be humble, but as with most thiefs, they must maintain an attitude. Something similar happened in the United States with Native Americans, who were almost eradicated, physically and culturally. Arrogant is the conquerer.
Let's not forget that it was first the Brits who drank the Zionist Koolaid, when it was sold to them as European colonization of the pesky Middle East.
Every thing else you said was spot on. And, in fact, prior to the creation of the state of Israel, the 3 People of the Book did share Jerusalem.
Rainborowe
And the self investigation by the israelis found themselves to be innoccent of War Crimes or anything unproper. Who could have guessed?
Of course it is ethnic cleansing, it is obvious.
The zionists who found israel were not abused by the Nazis; Irgun and the Stern gang did absolutely nothing to help their fellow jews in Germany instead they were killing Palestinian villagers and Brit soldiers in Palestine.
Jews against Zionism reports that the Nazis had a dozen training for zionist terrorists.
Israel has no intention of a two state solution they have refused it since the country was conceived.
And remember Rahm Emmanuel is Son of Irgun
"The Israeli authorities say the houses were built or extended without the necessary construction permits."
And who gives (or withholds) construction permits? The Israeli government of Jerusalem which hardly ever grants the permits to Palestinians. Shame on AFP for not mentioning this--or maybe they assume all French people know that fact.
Rainborowe
This happens all the time in the American media, too, whenever there is a rare story about house demolitions. They deliberately, I think (and this may be the fault of editors, rather than the reporters on the ground), omit the fact that permits are almost never granted, so Palestinians are forced to build without them. It is definitely one more tactic in Israel's arsenal of ethnic cleansing, hoping the Arab families will get so fed up with sub-standard housing conditions that they eventually leave. The Israeli government knows full well that tactics like these will fly under the radar of most Western media, or will seem justifiable (Well, gosh, they broke the law after all!) to those who are ignorant about the context.
Its Jerusalem so these homes were built no doubt hundreds of years ago and passed down amongst Palestinian families so of course there are no permits! The whole silly concept of permits probably didn't even exist then making this whole thing a catch-22 and the Israelis know it!
What is so aggraviting about it all is how the powerful imperial intersts - be they Isreali of US, deliberately design things so there are no peaceful courses of action that redress grievances - this results in not-so peaceful resistance - which then, very convieniently, will get the aggrieved labeled a "terrorist threat" and being hunted down.
It has GOT to be a deliberate plan.
If Gandhi were a Palestinian, he would have been ignored by the media and did his work in complete anomynity. If, he was then forced to choose a more active form of resistance he would have been declared a terrorist and shot.
There is no way to win.
Not necessarily all old. Silwan is a suburb of the Old City and outside the walls. There's quite a lot of new construction, and the Israelis have had their sights on it and been building busily there since the 1970s.
Rainborowe
Finally someone speaks truth to power. When the president of Iran says the same things that Jimmy Carter and Desmond Tutu and Mairead Maguire say, he's demonized as an anti-Semite by US politicians. But he is in good company apparently.
Re donna April 22nd, 2009 10:25 am, who observes,
"When the president of Iran says the same things that Jimmy Carter and Desmond Tutu and Mairead Maguire say, he's demonized as an anti-Semite by US politicians."
That will change if oil is discovered under any of the three you mentioned.
Very nicely put. Iran has some of the largest reserves of oil in the world. We are feeling around for an excuse to take their sh*t.
Jimmy Carter and Desmond Tutu did criticize Israel. But they never denied the Holocaust, nor did they call or predict the death of Israel, or called Israel the most racist country in the world.
Right on target. The demonization of Ahmadinejad is an ominous sign that we are being softened up to approve attacks by Israel or ourselves on Iran. That would be sooo crazy, sooo dangerous, sooo immoral. So lawless.
Besides being wrong on the face of it, it could set off such a conflagration in the area such as we have not seen before. There are lots of nuclear weapons in the region, and I doubt if we know who has control of each and every one. Such an attack on a country that has done NOTHING aggressive could flip key people from a position of restraint over to a willingness to retaliate out of an increasing feeling of hopelessness and desperation.
Joe
Another welcome voice speaking the tragic truth.
And everyone knows it-- except for the Israeli government's not-so-silent partners in Amerikan government, and the handful of mediocre resident hasbarists who will probably pepper this comments thread with their usual same stale disinformation and absolute self-righteousness.
· Yr Obd't Servant
And everyone knows it! No exceptions for the Israelis or the Americans (who pay for the destruction of Palestine and the genocide of those people). It's our fault!
We citizens of the United States must insist that our Representatives in Congress CUT THE FUNDING TO THE ISRAELI MILITARY. So, go to your phone book and get the name and address of your three Representatives, your Congress Rep and your two Senators and tell them to STOP FUNDING ISRAEL.
Well, we'll see if Maguire gets any carrots from the White House garden.
q
Now here is someone with courage!
Zionism was from the very beginning a racially exclusivist ideology based on ethnic cleansing of the native people. Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism in the 19'th century, wanted his dream state to be "a protecting enclave of Europe against Asia, a civilization against Asiatic barbarism". Less publicly he noted in his diary the dream of "spiriting the penniless population" across the border "discreetly and circumspectly". This was in 1865, well before the great ethnic cleansers of the 20'th century Hitler and Stalin were born.
http://www.greenleft.org.au/2006/666/6774
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-134884394.html
odoco
Do you see any connections between the Jewish cabal in the Office of Special Plans during Rumsfeld's reign leading up to the war, the Neocons and their media plants, The Project for a New American Century, Christians United for Israel, Jane Harman and other elected Zionists in Washington, D.C., etc. I sense something much greater here than the simple destruction of Palestine. I fear it is much, much more expansive in scope.
Maried McGuire, Caoimhe Butterly, Damien Moran, Cathy Kelly, the Pitstop Ploughshares" Rachael Corrie, the Berrigans and too many others to name.... It is no coincidence that so many of those who speak out against injustice are Irish or of Irish descent - opression, and successfully rising above it is their historic heritage.
One tends to see a disproportionate number of Armenians in justice-activism for the same reason.
And one used to see a lot of Jews working for justice too in the old days, but they seem to have retreated into a sort of clannish, tribal, and power-insider sort of mentality over the past couple decades.
Well, everyone loves the Irish but the Jews, not so much.
NOOOOO the Brits hate the Irish still and refuse to return their land! As for the Jews we love the ones that support justice.
All this Ireland-philia is largely just a US phnenomenon.
There is a long long history of ethnic cleansing and opression of of the Irish by the British, Cromwells Puritains, then the Protestsnt Ulster-Scots - who then went on to Maritime Canada and ethnically cleansed the French from Acadia - driving them to the swamps of Louisiana.
In the 1980's, before the Celtic-tiger boom days, the Brits I met regarded the Iriah as lazy, stupid poor people who, by insisting on being a Republic, blew their chance at living under the beneficnece of Her Majesty's Commonwealth - like the Canadians, Jamaicians, Australians, etc.
Ireland-philia in the US has several sides. One is the movies side, in which Irish Americans had been presented as cute cartoony people with a perpetual twinkle in the eye. The other is the immigration side from the 1800's - early 1900's in which Irish were presented as intellectual dullards, drinkers and thieves. Both these views are combined in movies when some sweet old Irish mother claims in a heavy brogue that her gangster son "Johnny is a good boy".
These views are a result of stereotyping those who are poor and outsiders. You can find a similar range of stereotypes of African-Americans, Poles, Latinos etc.
I am happy that so many Irish people are prominent in the movement for Gazan human rights. No need to go further into the land of sweeping characterizations. They are usually misleading.
Joe
Weird Brits you know. Or have people been pulling your leg, perhaps? It's hard to find families there that aren't mixed; England is full of Irish and Irish-English people. So is Scotland, so is Wales. They're just neighbors and were long before the Celtic Tiger days. The difference is that before the Irish boom (now a bust, of course)the Irish, like the Scots, in England tended to fall into two categories: upper-middle class such as doctors, barristers, writers and statesmen; and navvies, the guys who built and maintained the roads and railways and were appreciated. Plus, of course, the priests; where whould the Catholic church in England be if it hadn't had a ready supply of Irish priests? There must have been others but those groups stood out as being heavily populated by Gaels. Now, of course, they are represented more by other middle-class occupations. And none of that includes the vast number of families who have Irish AND English grandparents.
I was astounded to find so many Americans assume that if one is English one hates the Irish and vice versa. I never met a English person in England who disliked the Irish or an Irish person in Ireland who disliked English people. Doesn't mean there weren't any, but I never came across it and I never heard anyone else claiming to have come across it the way one so easily comes across casual anti-black, anti-Hispanic and anti-Semitic expressions in the USA. There certainly was exasperation at their inability--or unwillingness--to sort themselves out in Northern Ireland, but most usually that thought ended with the expression that if only someone would tow the whole damn province out into the mid-Atlantic and let them sort it out themselves. That was a thought I heard over and over in the 70s and 80s.
Rainborowe
Actually, american Jews are among the most progressive and activist sectors of the population. If you go to a middle east peace action in the SF Bay Area, mostly you'll see Arabs and Jews, with lately a lot of Filipinos, some Irish, and a smattering of everyone else. Of course, there are always a contingent of Zionist Jews counter-demonstrating nearby.
Actually, not.
Ethnic cleansing means the forced removal of an ethnic group from an area to clear the area for settlement by an aggressor-ethnic group. Any killing of the targeted ethnic groups being incidental to the task.
Genocide is the physical killing of the individuals of a particular ethnicity of culture, pursusnt to the elimination of all traces the ethnic group or culture.
Both are high crimes against humanity - but obviously genocide is the worst one.
The Zionazis do not give building permits to "subhuman" arabs.
"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
When Iran President Ahmadinejad said much the same thing [as Maguire] about Israeli policies at the UN conference on racism a few days ago, dozens of western nation delegates walked out in a huff, and the US (which is boycotting the conference) issued a denunciation calling A's remarks 'vile and hateful.'
Other western nation's MSM editorials also quickly rose up in a seemingly orchestrated chorus to call A's remarks 'anti-Semitic.'
Calling the [basically-identical] observations of Irish Nobel Laureate Maguire 'anti-Semitic' wouldn't fly as easily in world opinion, so, naturally, another method of deligitmating such observations is required.
In sum: when Islamic spokespersons tell the truth about Israeli abuses of Palestinians, that truth is automatically labeled 'anti-Semitic' by the official west, and thus 'deligitimated.'
And when a notable western personage tells the same truth, the official response from the west is to systematically ignore it.
Either way, the mindlessly pro-Israeli caboodle sees to it that the facts of the Palestinian matter never go anywhere.
Why behaving in this insane way is in the interests of the west is a question you can't examine too openly -- because as soon as you do, you, too, will either be labeled anti-Semitic, or, as the case may be, loudly ignored.
Good point, although plenty of western critics of Israel get accused of Anti-Semitism too.
anti-semitic (adj): To engage in, or one who engages in principled, compassionate criticism of any policy of the State of Isreal
It has come to the point that we can start wearing the label "anti semitic" as a badge of honor.
Maybe the Skinheads have badges they could sell.
Shalom
You know what I mean.
Ihe frequency of the phrase's use, compared to the prevalance of actual anti-semites, is rapidly changing it's meaning altogether.
Norman Finkelstein, Michael Neumann, or Noam Chomsky, and DN's Amy Goodman all wear their anti-semitism (or more accrately "self-hating Jew") badges.
Do you even know what is anti-semitic?
Criticising Israel by itself is not anti-semitic.
Read here to find out when critisism of Iseael is legit, and when it could be regards as anti-semitism.
http://www.eumc.eu.int/eumc/material/pub/AS/
AS-WorkingDefinition-draft.pdf
"Critisism of Israel similar to that level against any other country, could not be regarded as antisemitic."
Good, since I criticise Isreal at the same level that I criticise the United States,I should be considered immmune from "anti-semitism"
But the facts are, besides the Sudan and the Kosovo Albanians, where else is ethnic clensing going on right now?
Speaking out against these other cases is important, but since Isreal is practically an appendage of the US military, as a US citizen, I am obligated to speak out against Isreal because so much of my tax dollars are going directly there.
Far more US federal money goes to the support of Isreali ethnic cleansing than to the crumbling infrastructure of my populous home state of Pennsylvania.
Leftist: "besides the Sudan and the Kosovo Albanians, where else is ethnic cleansing going on right now?"
I don't know everything. A few extra examples:
Some republics in the former Soviet Union, Iraq , Morocco, Congo, Zimbabwe, to name a few.
I'm not sure though that "ethnic cleansing" is the right word to describe east Jerusalem.
- On one side, evicting someone from a house he built without a permit is not ethnic cleansing. (I live in Canada, if I'll build a house without a permit, I'll be evicted too.)
- On the other hand, it's not easy for a Palestinian to obtain a build permit in Jerusalem.
- Moreover, the other side is not clean as well. Palestinians are being executed by Palestinians for selling to Jews.
- Also, how would you describe when Israel evicts settlers? (As in Gaza, 2005?) Is it too "ethnic cleansing"?
Anyway, its far greyer than say Iraq, where 4,000,000 became refugees and 100,000 were killed because of their ethnic background.
Ahmadinejad also questioning the Holocaust, calls / predicts the extermination of Israel, executes gays, stone to death married woman who see (not sleep with) other man, executes people who convert from Islam to other religions, discriminates Arab, Azar, Kurd and Baha’i minorities in Iran.
And you, jj crowns him as your Human Right champion?
Ahmadinejad came to the UN, declaring that Israel (a country which on many Human Right issues is the most progressive in the Middle East) is the only racist country in the world. (Or at least the only country worthy of being mentioned as racist).
Single out ONLY the Jewish state in a global forum on racism is an act of racism. This is why the delegation left when your champion spoke his racist words.