More than luck, Ann, I say "God bless.!

"In Buddhism, such are truely noble people and are called Boddhisattvas."
That is utter nonsense.

Higgs:

Here's what you and the rest of us can do: contribute what we can afford to Free Gaza and/or other relevant organizations.

tj

Don't count on Israel not daring confrontation. They revel in international condemnation. In fact, they often appears quite uneasy in its absence and (not unlike the U.S. in some ways) actually seem driven to create more global hated for themselves. Here's a brief excerpt from a recent article entitled "Hallalujah, the Whole World is Against Us!" written by a Jewish author, Uri Avnery, on that subject:
__

I have a theory which would explain everything.

For many centuries, the Jews were persecuted in Christian Europe. Anti-Semitism turned their life into hell. They fell victim to pogroms, mass expulsions, confinement in ghettos, oppressive edicts and discriminatory laws. In the course of time, they developed mental and practical defense mechanisms, methods of survival and routes of escape.

Since the Holocaust, the situation has changed radically. In the US the Jews now live in a paradise unparalleled since the Golden Age in Muslim Spain. When the State of Israel came into being, it attracted world-wide admiration and sympathy.

That was wonderful, but below the surface of the national consciousness – if one may generalize - a sense of unease, of disorientation, set in. The tried and trusted defense mechanisms, which had given the Jews a feeling of orientation and awareness of lurking dangers, disintegrated. They felt that something was out of order, that the well-known road signs were not working anymore. When the Gentiles laud the Jews or are ready to make alliances with them, that is suspicious. Clearly, something sinister must be behind it. Things are not as we knew them. That’s frightening.

Since then, we have been working feverishly to bring the situation back to normal. Without being conscious of it, we do what we can to be hated again, to feel at home, on familiar ground.

If there is a conspiracy, it is a conspiracy of ourselves against ourselves. We shall not rest until the world is anti-Semitic again, and we know how to behave.

As the jolly song goes: “The entire world is against us, but what the hell.”
__

REF: http://www.counterpunch.org/avnery05252010.html

International condemnation is apparently a small price to pay when Israel can count upon the American taxpayers to heft eighty percent of their war-making costs. To quote Diamond Jim Fisk, "Nothing is lost save honor".
Tony Vodvarka

Sounds like something Mark Regev, the self-hating Australian, would say.

"On NPR this morning some Israeli spokesperson was claiming the flotilla violated international law."

It violates International Law to put a ship on the ocean? Thats real news. Surely you aren't serious?

Yup. Definitely. All of Isreal's problems are completely undeserved and are due only to the intransigence of sworn enemies of its self-proclaimed legitimacy as a "Jewish state", including all those totally unwarranted criticisms by the United Nations itself of course.

Incidentally, you forgot to mention those nasty Persians in Iran. And the Turks aren't exactly playing nice recently either. In fact, apart from USA Incorporated for its own purposes, Israel seems to be losing even its few remaining friends for some strange reason.

It can't possibly be any fault of its own actions. It must be another one of those global anti-Semitic plots that seem to surface from time to time throughout history. Whatever the reason, it's not looking good. Thank God for all those "unofficial" nuclear weapons and the "Samson option" to hasten the ultimate rapture -- although that's not such a great outcome for Jews either if you believe the version espoused by the Zionists' fundamentalist Xian allies.

Perhaps you'd care to explain how construction materials and humanitarian aid will hurt the ultimate goal of "a lasting peace and a permanent end to decades of hatred and bloodshed." While you're at it, maybe you could tell us how destroying homes and preventing shipments of food, medicine and building materials helps to bring about peace.

You weren't suggesting the Israeli were blameless were you?

I don't think people here are either smug, self righteous, international do gooders when it comes to this, they are just hoping for peace.

Are you referring to the 'Arab Leadership' that hasn't yet been assassinated or imprisoned by the Israelis? Or murdered under the guise of trying to broker peace - Arafat (poisoned by Mossad).

And any reading of history will point CLEARLY to the fact that the Israelis and not the Arabs have been the true 'deniers' of peace.

What the Palestinians need is for the 'occupying force (read Israel)' to withdraw from the occupied territories. Further what they need is for the Israelis to stop cold bloodedly murdering and torturing their children, woman, infirmed, elderly and all innocents.

And if the mission brings hope, food, a new home, the belief that there is solidarity in the outside world it will have been a success.

Israel is the sole cause for brutality and bloodshed in the region and few if any rational people doubt that. Withdraw, at the very least Israel, from the occupied territory and Stop stealing land that isn't yours and stop killing children.

I can see how bulldozing someone's home is aggressive, but how is bringing them materials to rebuild it aggressive?

Please explain.

Lily_otv's statement could easily have been heard in 1963-64 at the time of the Freedom Riders and the Alabama-Mississippi Civil Rights marches, or at the time of the anti-Nuclear encampments in Britain, or.... any non-violent confrontation of unjust authority or militarism. Aggressive marchers. Aggressive peace encampment.

Is the flotilla armed? No.
Is it carrying weapons, weapons-making materials or combatants? No.
Is Israeli control of the perimeter of Gaza legal under international law? No.
Is threatening and ramming civilian vessels and jailing foreign nationals taken outside the internationally recognized boundaries of the state legal? No.

So please use that word "aggression" more sensibly and sensitively.

Lily says: "The flotilla idea was just as bad last week as it is this week."
I say: "Lily utters nonsense."

'Aggression breeds aggression.'

Perhaps the United States and the Western European countries should not have tried to halt the aggression of Hitler's Third Reich. Perhaps they should have just let him have his way. After all in your words 'aggression breeds aggression.'

One must ask, are you a fool or a shill?

I don't recall you complaining when Israel blanket-bombed Gaza with phosphorus. You pals with Letto?

If we want this world to change for the better, we must be willing to risk our lives. Israel has lost its way and has become an evil entity. I am not joking. Israel has become a danger to itself and to the United States, and I pray that Obama sees that and calls Netanyahu's bluff. All he has to do is to cut off aid.
God bless all those who sail on the boats! They are the highest kind of heroes, those who risk their lives for justice. If a cause is not worth dying for, then its not worth living for either. I wish them Godspeed!

What Israel and the long standing plentiful Jewish support for Israel is doing is steadily making clear that the Jews asked for the holocaust. I do not mean this in any conspiratorial sense even if there seems to be evidence to that effect.
Concepts such as Anti Semitism and Nazism disguise the reality of a cultural clash between self-consciously elect groups.

This analysis deplores the consequences but indicates one cannot distinguish between it and the premises.

This has happened before in Jewish history. just read the Old Testament. But when doing so see how inventive the Jewish history writers are at interpreting the happenings of history as a justification for their elect status. It is classic self-serving nonsense: a remarkable, ultimately very slippery development of tribal self-consciousness and superiority that relies on firmly positioning oneself as the victim.

One Biblical understanding suffices to make the whole edifice crumble, and that is that God works through history and stress on the nation of Israel even one Jew is therefore a sign of error in the world for which Jews have to pay. Modern Jews see this as an indication of their innocence but this idea is numbingly illogical because it allows the Jew to do anything he likes. It makes him God. This fact is hidden under a cloud of high sounding words; ultimately under sentiment.

Indeed, every monotheist ultimately believes he is God, because the God he worships can only come from his mind. Ironically, the history is there to show this.

4th paragraph should have been...

Sounds like a propaganda article to me. In the Jerusalem Post article the Isreali Defense Force sends some 15,000 tons of food a week from Israel. The article makes it seems downright benevolent. Still, Gaza is in a lock-down which sounds more like a Nazi tactic of doling out just so much at a time and only for their own reasons (ref no 2 below).

Dunno what slipped but it clipped some text in the middle. Pardone!