Anyway President Obama refuses to take sides over Israeli action in Gaza as if they were equal opponents. If the the situation were reversed in all probability Obama would not be reluctant to speak out criticizing the Palestinians - Maybe Obama needs to find out more about how the Palestinians are treated by the Israelis from Independent sources rather than from his more prejudicial and biased pro-Israel advisers such as Hillary Clinton.There must surely be a few less biased middle east experts he could call on. Or maybe Obama needs to see the Israeli Wall and checkpoints and visit Gaza and the West Bank and see it for himself. But if he or a member of his administration go to Israel they will probably be taken on a sanitized tour by Israeli officials who have no interest in showing them how bad things are.
Otherwise President will settle for the same old status quo in regards to Israel.
Obaam should speak to the various Humanitarian aid organizations and NGOs and those in Israel who are outspoken in their criticism of Israeli policies.
Post Menu:
Israeli Apartheid human rights & the Palestinians
The right to question Israeli policies
Critics silenced by charge of anti-Semitism
Checkpoints & MachsomWatch
Children during curfew use rooftops to go to school
Israeli soldiers speak out about abuses
Israeli War Crime petition to the UN
Although 14 percent of their children were already suffering from levels of malnutrition that match sub-Saharan Africa, food supplies into Gaza were restricted. "It's like a meeting with a dietician. We have to make them much thinner, but not enough to die," said the prime minister's adviser Dov Weissglas. Feb.16, 2006 Haaretz
"[The Palestinians] are beasts walking on two legs."
-- Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, speech to the Knesset, quoted in Amnon Kapeliouk, "Begin and the 'Beasts,"' New Statesman, June 25, 1982.
"The Partition of Palestine is illegal. It will never be recognized .... Jerusalem was and will for ever be our capital. Eretz Israel will be restored to the people of Israel. All of it. And for Ever."
-- Menachem Begin, the day after the U.N. vote to partition Palestine.
see more at: Zionist Quotes
As we see below when Sharon's government allowed members of the extremist & racist National Union Party to join his cabinet.The US media who should have seen this as a bad sign for the Peace Process instead ignored it.
US media ignore Sharon's embrace of ethnic cleansers in new Israeli cabinet by Ali Abunimah, Michael Brown & Nigel Parry, The Electronic Intifada, 3 March 2003
The inclusion in the new Israeli government of the racist National Union, which openly calls for the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians, received muted coverage in the US media and passed largely without comment.
The National Union is an alliance of three small parties: Moledet, Tekuma and Yisrael Beitenu. Moledet calls openly for "solving" the Palestinian-Israeli conflict by forcing millions of Palestinians out of their homeland, while the National Union's joint platform states that all three parties espouse "transfer" and "population exchange."
On its website, Moledet, led by Benny Elon, states that the party, whose name means "homeland," is "an ideological political party in Israel that embraces the idea of population transfer as an integral part of comprehensive plan [sic] to achieve real peace between the Jews and the Arabs Living in the Land of Israel."
If we review the various statements made by Israel's heroes and most distinguished politicians and generals what we find is some common themes which have become part of the mindset of many Israelis. There is the underlying view that Israel is not merely a nation state like any other but is exceptional. The reason Israel is exceptional to begin with is because Israel was given to the ancient Israelites and their modern descendants by God/ Jehovah/ Yahweh. Many of Israel's leaders promise that one day Israel will be expanded to take in all of the land promised to them in the Jewish Bible and this would include the land now occupied by the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank and beyond . This larger piece of property with its boundaries or borders spelled out in the Bible is referred to as Eretz Israel. The so called Settlers Movement are those Jewish Israelis who insist on expanding the borders of Israel while driving out most of the Arabs who occupy these lands. Over the years since the Six-Day War in 1967 the Settlers first in small groups set up their tiny communities bu these have now expanded so that there are over 300,000 settlers illegally occupying land within the so called Occupied territories. These settlements are no longer just a few crude shelters but are towns and cities which are still growing.
The Settlers Movement believes that once they are fully established in these disputed areas they would have established "Facts on the Ground " and that the Israeli government would not dare remove them from these areas. Sometimes the Israelis will remove some small community of settlers but usually it is more to do with Public Relations than an actual policy.The Settlers Movement has a disproportionate sway over the Israeli government and the Israeli army. Israel itself has in a sense become captive to this extremist faction which is unwilling to compromise with the Palestinians or Arab Israelis or their neighboring Arab countries. So while the Israeli government might say it is willing to compromise with the Palestinians etc. this more often than not seems like more of a ploy to give them time to eventually achieve the agenda of the Settlers Movement.
Israel has become less and less democratic over the decades reducing the Palestinians to a meagre existence. An Arab town begins to grow and prosper and the IDF go in and purposely disturb and harass the local population destroying their homes and businesses disrupting their daily lives in a hundred different ways. Then losing patience the Palestinians strike back which then brings more reprisals and even stricter controls over the Palestinians daily lives ,restricting their movements , creating a cumbersome rigid bureaucracy and the infamous Checkpoints and system of permits creating modern roads for Jewish Israelis only while Palestinians and Arabs are forced to travel on old decrepit roads .
So given this duplicity it is easier to understand why Israel treat Palestinians and Arab Israelis unjustly and inhumanely . The recent conflict in Gaza could have been avoided for example. Hamas was elected legally and was willing to work with the Israeli government but Israel made excuses even while Hamas agreed to a ceasefire and stopped suicide bombings Israel put in place a full scale blockade and siege on Gaza while six months before the conflict the Israelis planned for it in detail .The Israelis decided it was best to undertake this action in Gaza during the presidential transition period in the US after the election and before the next president was put into office who would most likely be a Democrat who might be more apt to be somewhat critical of Israel's action. And so all went according to plan. Gaza which was already in desperate shape has been largely reduced to rubble with most of its infrastructure destroyed. Because of the checkpoints a trip that should take an hour takes three or four on a good day and the list of issues seems almost endless as soldiers at a checkpoint can make up the rules as they see fit or just out of spite, revenge and callousness.
As we see in the second clip below in times of curfews which can last for days weeks or months the Arab children find ingenious ways to get to their schools. One wonders why the Israelis would prevent children from attending schools often run by the UN. Is it to deprive these people of a proper education and thereby keep them in their place as White Supremacists did in Southern United States by allowing Black children to attend inferior schools and doing everything possible to keep them from going to colleges or universities.
This is the reality of the authoritarian and draconian police state which Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Obama support . They claim as the Israeli government does that Israel is a shinning example of a Democracy with equal rights for all . But they have been duped or know but don't care as once many Americans didn't want to know how bad things were for Black people especially in the South their lives restricted by JIM CROW the Klan and the lynch mobs. But in Israel the Palestinians and Arab Israelis are second class citizens. And anyone who is too outspoken against the government or who criticizes the fanatical Jewish Israeli Settlers Movement risk losing their livelihood and their freedom they can be tossed in jail for indefinite periods and denied their rights , they can be beaten and tortured.
Video of checkpoint at Bethlehem Machsom Watch.org
MachsomWatch, in existence since 2001, is an organisation of peace activist- Israeli women against the Israeli Occupation of the territories and the systematic repression of the Palestinian nation. We call for Palestinian freedom of movement within their own territory and for an end to the Occupation that destroys Palestinian society and inflicts grievous harm on Israeli society.
The Entrance to Bethlehem Checkpoint
housands of people have to wait in line for hours on their way to work. This is the line leading to the checkpoint itself. Inside the checkpoint they will have to go through additional checks and wait once more in long lines.
Filmed by Neta Efroni.
Edited by Hadass Shuve.
Anyway we are informed that it is tantamount to anti-Semitism to criticize Israeli policies related to the Palestinians or Arab Israelis . This is especially true if one makes the comparison to South African Apartheid . What's considered worse is to compare Gaza to the Warsaw Ghetto. It doesn't matter whether the comparisons have any validity.
from AntiWar blog State Dept: Criticism of Israel = Anti-Semitism? March 14, 2008 by Jim Lobe
In the most recent edition of its annual “Contemporary Global Anti-Semitism” released Thursday, the State Department — and hence the U.S. government — moves ever more closely to a long-standing neo-conservative tenet: that criticism of Israel or Israeli policies often, if not always, equals anti-Semitism. The report also suggests that comparing Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories to South African apartheid — as former President Jimmy Carter did in his 2006 book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid — also amounts to anti-Semitism. And it focuses on the United Nations as a breeding ground for anti-Semitism as expressed through criticism of Israel, another major neo-conservative theme that has intensified sharply over the past five years, notably through the efforts of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, the National Review Online and the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page.
and the new definition of anti-Semitism includes:
....“Comparing contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis is increasingly commonplace. Anti-Semitism couched as criticism of Zionism or Israel often escapes condemnation since it can be more subtle than traditional forms of anti-Semitism, and promoting anti-Semitic attitudes may not be the conscious intent of the purveyor. Israel’s policies and practices must be subject to responsible criticism and scrutiny to the same degree as those of any other country. At the same time, those criticizing Israel have a responsibility to consider the effect their actions may have in prompting hatred of Jews. At times hostility toward Israel has translated into physical violence directed at Jews in general. There was, for example, a sharp upsurge in anti-Semitic incidents worldwide during the conflict between Hizballah and Israel in the summer of 2006.” [Italics added.]
--but given this wide interpretation of anti-Semitism one wonders if reasonable criticism of Israel could ever be permitted. Part of the Problem is that one of the reasons for the comparing of Israeli policies to South African Apartheid is that Jews who lived in South Africa who moved to Israel often make the comparison because it is a system which they fought against in South Africa and they are outraged to see similar attitudes in the government and the media which are shared by a large number of Jewish citizens of Israel towards the Palestinians.
As the next author points out the Israelis don't want to carefully examine their own actions or their basic beliefs about Israel's moral superiority. Reality is that which most Jewish Israelis want to avoid. They like many other people prefer their fantasy world which they have spent an enormous amount of energy and time creating. Or as they say they don't want to think about anything that might undermine their delusions.
" Gaza: Israel's (And America's) Moral Equivalent Of The Warsaw Ghetto " Ruminant With A View by Elizabeth Boleman-Herring Jan. 11, 2009
...But, people of Israel, if I, a resident of New Jersey, have to bite my own bullet, and admit that my own deeply flawed country has sinned, again and again, on the world stage, by manipulating this or that group, supposedly in my country's best interests, then, some day, you, too, will come to the realization that what you have done, what you continue to do, in the name of God, to the Palestinian people, IS the moral equivalent of what was done to your fellow European Jews at the hands of the Nazis (to the American Indians at the hands of the white "settlers" of North America, to the Armenians and the Kurds at the hands of the Turks, to the Blacks of South Africa at the hands of the White Africaaners and. . .but oh, hell, the list is endless). Your time in the dock of self-realization will come.
To deny the ongoing Palestinian genocide is, I believe strongly, the moral equivalent of denying the Holocaust. But can I get an "Amen, Sister!" only from Jimmy Carter* and Dr. Ron Paul? How long will it take for your hearts to soften, Oh Israel, your eyes to see? When does Israel's Twelve-Step-Program begin?
Can I get some readers in Israel to write me and admit the painful, the excruciating, truth of just how they came by their current homeland, and how they have—funded by America, it's true—marginalized and ghetto-ized the Palestinian people. . .before it's really too late for their, our, everyone's salvation?
Because I'm here to tell you—and, after their slimy, sucking-it-up "campaign" speeches at AIPAC, I hope Brother Barack and Sister Hillary are listening to me—if the Messiah were to come back right now, I think he'd be thumping a lot of American and Israeli heads into ploughshares, perhaps with a great big, old, fat copy of the Koran. "People of the book, my ass!" He'd be yelling. "Did you miss the part about loving thy neighbor? Did you miss the part where you Jews actually morphed into Pharaoh and the Philistines?"
I'm not kidding, Israel. Ask the Nazis. Ask the Africaaners. Ask the folks who locked the Indians up on the reservations. Ask the Turks who massacred the Armenians. (Well, don't ask the Turks quite yet: they're still coming to grips with their own inner Adolph.) When you create a ghetto, and wall in the folks you consider "other," you pull the pin from the very grenade that will blow off your own short-sighted head.
The scenes depicted in this video below are of Palestinian children trying to get to school during an Israeli imposed curfew. This clip runs for five minutes. Imagine children putting themselves at risk just to get to school. The question is why would the Israelis want to keep Arab children from attending school. You would think if the children are in school then they wouldn't be somewhere else possibly causing trouble.
The Israeli intent is to undermine any semblance of normality in Palestinian towns . Bit by bit the Israelis using the IDF chip away at the living conditions of Palestinians hoping the Palestinians will leave these areas . Or do the Israelis want to push the Palestinians into a corner as it were keeping them under control or are they doing so hoping that the Palestinians might fight back and give the IDF the excuse to kill Palestinians , to destroy their homes and towns so that the Israelis can then take control of these lands . Once the Israelis take control of another piece of land a village or town or some farms which once were occupied by Palestinians the Israelis can say but the Palestinians abandoned these areas voluntarily.
The Israelis treat the Arabs and Palestinians as the Africaaners treated black South Africans or as the white Americans in Southern United States treated African-Americans. The Africaaners and Southern White Supremacist believed that these people whom they treated unfairly were a constant threat to their way of life that their values were inferior to that of the Africaaners or the Southern Whites or Jewish Israelis and so were subhuman. So do the average Israeli believe all Arabs are subhuman or is it that an extremist group of racist Israelis have taken contol in Israel .
Secret Hebron: The School Run - 28-min documentary
March 2003
Palestinian children in Hebron regularly risk being attacked by Israeli soldiers as they try to go school.
Children in the old part of Hebron are kept under curfew for months at a time, making it impossible for them to go to class. However, instead of giving up on their right to an education, the children scramble across the roofs to avoid soldiers. "Whenever I go to school it's so scary. When we meet soldiers they force us back with tear gas or percussion grenades," states 12 year old Islam. A local doctor reports treating children whose legs or hands have been broken by soldiers. The violence and disruption has a severe psychological impact on the children. Pass rates in Arabic fell from 71% to 38% between 2000 and 2001 and parents claim that the children are becoming more violent. With even young children now being treated as terrorists, the prospect of peace looks distant.
What Americans Don't Want to Know
Even President Obama appears indifferent to the suffering of Palestinians
Israel Wall racial segregation wall- Israeli Apartheid Supported By The US
Israeli West Bank Wall
physical barrier between the Israeli and Palestinians
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_...
Village Destroyed for Israeli Security Wall
Nov. 26, 2007
http://www.btselem.org/english/Video/
More than 200 Palestinians lived in Khirbet Qasa, West of Hebron. The village was an enclave in the area between the Green Line and the Separation Barrier, whose construction was recently completed. www.btselem.org
B'Tselem is an Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories
Another group of Jewish Israelis formed an organization to bring out into the open the routine crimes committed by Israeli soldiers told by the soldiers themselves who act as witnesses to the truth and act as the conscience of Israel.
Breaking the Silence: Israeli Soldiers Talk about the Occupied Territories
Breaking the Silence is an organization of veteran Israeli soldiers that collects testimonies of soldiers who served in the Occupied Territories during the Second Intifadah. Soldiers who serve in the Territories are witness to, and participate in military actions which change them immensely. Cases of abuse towards Palestinians, looting, and destruction of property have been the norm for years, but are still excused as military necessities, or explained as extreme and unique cases. Our testimonies portray a different and grim picture of questionable orders in many areas regarding Palestinian civilians. These demonstrate the depth of corruption which is spreading in the Israeli military. While this reality which is known to Israeli soldiers and commanders exists in Israel's back yard, Israeli society continues to turn a blind eye, and to deny that which happens in its name. Discharged soldiers who return to civilian life discover the gap between the reality which they encountered in the Territories , and the silence which they encounter at home. In order to become a civilian again, soldiers are forced to ignore their past experiences. Breaking the Silence voices the experiences of those soldiers, in order to force Israeli society to address the reality which it created.
And for those who might be interested there is petition to be sent to the UN regarding Israel's alleged War Crimes:
To: President and Member States of United Nations General Assembly PETITION To President and Member States of United Nations General Assembly The Creation of a Special Tribunal to try Israeli War Criminals
Recalling that Israel was created by virtue of a General Assembly Resolution in 1947 against the wishes of the indigenous population of Palestine;
Recalling that the creation of Israel was achieved through the ethnic cleansing of the indigenous population, which resulted in the creation of the Palestinian refugee problem, and that more than half of the population of 1.5 millions of the Palestinian Occupied Territory called the Gaza Strip are Palestinian refugees who have become, with the other civilian population, victims of the recent Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip;
Noting that the UN Human Rights Council, in its ninth Special Session, has adopted on 12 January 2009, a resolution “on the grave violations of human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory including the recent aggression of the occupied Gaza Strip” in which it “strongly condemned the ongoing Israeli military operation which had resulted in massive violations of human rights of the Palestinian people and systematic destruction of the Palestinian infrastructure”; and “decided to dispatch an urgent independent international fact-finding mission to investigate all violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law by the occupying power against the Palestinian people throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory”(United Nations Press Release of 12 January 2009, Human Rights Council, ROUNDUP);
Recalling that Israel has in the past refused to cooperate with similar fact-finding commissions or even give them visas to enter;
Recalling Article 22 of the Charter of the United Nations
Recalling further the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice of 9th July 2004 on the Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall by Israel, the occupying power, in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, in which the Court emphasized the special responsibility of the General Assembly for the Question of Palestine;
The undersigned NGOs and individuals
Call upon the General Assembly to create a special international tribunal to try Israel, its political and military leaders, for such crimes in violation of international law, human rights law and international humanitarian law in the Palestinian Occupied Territory of which they may be charged.
also see: Rehavam Ze'evi: A controversial figure CNN.com April 28, 2002
and:
The forthright politician sparked controversy in July for referring to Palestinians working and living illegally in Israel as "lice" and a "cancer."
Hatikvah: Nationalist Party for 'Tel Aviv Settlers' by Nissan Ratzlav-Katz Israel National News Nov.2007
"I, personally, for instance, am a settler in Tel Aviv, a settler in Ramat Aviv," Breiman confessed. "I think that for the 'orange seculars' in Ramat Aviv and throughout the center of the country, there is no real address for their vote. We want to be that address for them, in order to return the State of Israel to Zionism. Instead of worrying about the 'right of return' for Arabs, worry about our return to Zionism."
and also see:
"Israeli Cabinet Approves Adding Ultra-Nationalist Party to Coalition".Publication: Israel Faxx Date: Tuesday, October 31 2006
and:
Dec 18, 2008 Moledet breaks from newly formed Bayit Hayehudi
By ABE SELIG Jerusalem Post
and :
ISRAEL'S IMAGE by Shifra Hoffman Shuva Return Blog January 13, 2009 in which she writes that Hamas has won the propaganda war-
Also see for views by Israel's right wing Moledet. org Website
the following is a statement on their website:
Moledet, Israel’s foremost right-wing political party, was founded in 1988 by General Rechavam Ze’evy (res.).
The following is a brief synopsis of Moledet’s objectives, as stated in the party’s platform.
Introduction
* Moledet seeks to achieve the vision of settling the Land of Israel, as was promised to the Jewish People.
* Moledet follows the guidelines set by the founding fathers of Zionism, who recognized the exclusive right of the Jewish nation to settle in Eretz Yisrael, building a great country with peace and security, and ensuring that the Land of Israel remains in the hands of the Jewish People.
* The Moledet Party is comprised of both secular and religious constituents who share common beliefs such as unity among Jews, and the staunch support of the Nation of Israel, the Land of Israel, and the Jewish Bible.
and so it goes,
GORD.
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