Tag Apartheid

Entries 2 Total

Israel’s greatest loss: its moral imagination

Jun 13, ’10 10:40 AM

Henry Sieg­man, writ­ing for Haaretz:

When I man­aged to get over the shock of that exchange, it struck me that the invoc­a­tion of the Hitler era was actu­ally a fright­en­ingly apt and sear­ing ana­logy, although not the one my friend inten­ded. A mil­lion and a half civil­ians have been forced to live in an open-air prison in inhu­man con­di­tions for over three years now, but unlike the Hitler years, they are not Jews but Palestini­ans. Their jail­ers, incred­ibly, are sur­viv­ors of the Holo­caust, or their des­cend­ants. Of course, the inmates of Gaza are not destined for gas cham­bers, as the Jews were, but they have been reduced to a debased and hope­less existence.

Fully 80% of Gaza’s pop­u­la­tion lives on the edge of mal­nu­tri­tion, depend­ing on inter­na­tional char­it­ies for their daily nour­ish­ment. Accord­ing to the UN and World Health author­it­ies, Gaza’s chil­dren suf­fer from dra­mat­ic­ally increased mor­bid­ity that will affect and shorten the lives of many of them. This obscen­ity is a con­sequence of a delib­er­ate and care­fully cal­cu­lated Israeli policy aimed at de-developing Gaza by des­troy­ing not only its eco­nomy but its phys­ical and social infra­struc­ture while seal­ing it her­mit­ic­ally from the out­side world.

Par­tic­u­larly appalling is that this policy has been the source of amuse­ment for some Israeli lead­ers, who accord­ing to Israeli press reports have jok­ingly described it as “put­ting Palestini­ans on a diet.” That, too, is remin­is­cent of the Hitler years, when Jew­ish suf­fer­ing amused the Nazis.

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The intellectual dishonesty of those who don’t speak out against Zionism

Jan 2, ’09 2:25 PM

It’s deplor­able the num­ber of people, mostly so-called “lib­er­als,” who choose to keep their mouths shut in the face of the scourge that is Zion­ism, some­thing Ron­nie Kas­rils, a South African politi­cian who was act­ive in the fight against apartheid from the 60’s onwards, described as “far worse” than apartheid South Africa.

Ima­gine what these same people would be say­ing, or doing, if their own coun­try had been unlaw­fully occu­pied and embar­goed for 60 years of relent­less oppres­sion and repres­sion, and all attempts at peace­ful change had been force­fully pre­ven­ted or scuttled.

And yet they don’t stay silent because they think Zion­ism is a just cause, surely; it’s clearly not. They stay silent because of 9/11 and the sub­sequent con­fla­tion of any Arab oppos­i­tion to West­ern dom­in­ance as ter­ror­ism. They stay silent because of the Jew­ish Holo­caust — some­thing the Arabs had noth­ing to do with — because they’re too scared of been tarred with the brush of anti-Semitism.

And mean­while we have aber­ra­tions like John Bolton — who have long torn up the les­sons of WWII—still run­ning around try­ing to start WWIII on the back of it all.

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