Tag Palestine and Israel

Entries 29 Total

Hero: Inbar Michelzon

Aug 22, ’10 11:45 PM

Inbar Michelzon:

I felt very alone in the army. I couldn’t talk about the things I felt were mis­placed … I didn’t have strong views but I felt uncom­fort­able about the talk, about sol­diers hit­ting Arabs and laugh­ing. I thought every­one else was nor­mal and I was the one who wasn’t. I felt an out­sider to the group experience.

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My mate the terrorist

Jul 3, ’10 2:13 AM

While I was party­ing at Sun­rise Cel­eb­ra­tion in Somer­set recently my good friend Ken O’Keefe was sail­ing off to Gaza on the Mavi Mar­mara, as part of the Gaza Free­dom Flo­tilla.

The flo­tilla was car­ry­ing human­it­arian aid, med­ical sup­plies, and con­struc­tion mater­i­als, intent on break­ing the Gaza Strip block­ade being per­pet­rated by the apartheid state of Israel against the people of Palestine.

In the middle of the night on 30 May, while in inter­na­tional waters, they were for­cibly boarded by armed Israeli com­mandos. The pas­sen­gers defen­ded their ship against the invaders and nine of them were murdered, most shot at close range in the back of the head.

Ken helped over­power two com­mandos and man­aged to dis­arm one of his pis­tol and empty it’s ammuni­tion. The com­mandos even­tu­ally over­powered the flo­tilla, then promptly kid­napped every­one, tow­ing the ships to a deten­tion camp. After steal­ing everyone’s pos­ses­sions and gen­er­ally treat­ing them like dogs the kid­nap­pers relen­ted to inter­na­tional pres­sure, releas­ing and deport­ing most of those they had kid­napped. Ken wanted to appeal his deport­a­tion to Ire­land and instead go to Gaza, but, hav­ing already been ser­i­ously beaten twice by Israeli sol­diers while cap­tive, his soli­citor advised him that for his own safety he should leave Israel.

For his troubles Ken was laugh­ably lis­ted on the IDF’s offi­cial pro­pa­ganda web­log — IDF Spokes­per­son — as “known to be involved in ter­ror­ist activ­ity,” and con­tinu­ing with:

Ken O’Keefe (Born 1969), an Amer­ican and Brit­ish cit­izen, is a rad­ical anti-Israel act­iv­ist and oper­at­ive of the Hamas Ter­ror organ­iz­a­tion. He attemp­ted to enter the Gaza Strip in order to form and train a com­mando unit for the Palestinian ter­ror organization.

To form and train a com­mando unit? I’ve had some heated argu­ments with Ken over the years but ‘ter­ror­ist com­mando’? Someone in the IDF pro­pa­ganda unit’s been telling porkies. (Note to IDF: when you’re falsely accus­ing someone of being a ter­ror­ist try not to get their nation­al­ity wrong. Kind of makes you look like you don’t know what you’re talk­ing about.)

So let’s get this straight. They kid­nap Ken (whose life story hap­pens to be an open book). Then they deport him. And then they tell us he’s a known ter­ror­ist? Wouldn’t it per­haps be a little more prudent to hold onto a terrorist?

Someone in the IDF pro­pa­ganda unit doesn’t know how to tell porkies.

External links

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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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Neda’s death used selectively as a propaganda tool

Jun 25, ’09 8:36 AM

Neda Agha-Soltan is a young women from Iran who was shot dead while protest­ing against repres­sion in Iran. She has a page on Wiki­pe­dia. Pho­tos and video and of her death have been widely broad­cast by the West­ern media, with copi­ous amounts of faux sympathy.

She deserves our sym­pathy because she appears to be a vic­tim of the latest West­ern bogey­man: Iran. She, as Noam Chom­sky might note, is a “worthy victim.”

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Free Ezra Nawi

Jun 19, ’09 7:30 PM

Sign and send a mesage: freeezra.org

Join Naomi Klein, Neve Gor­don, Noam Chom­sky and thou­sands of oth­ers and tell Israel not to jail Ezra Nawi, one of Israel’s most cour­ageous human rights activists.

His crime? He tried to stop a mil­it­ary bull­dozer from des­troy­ing the homes of Palestinian Bedouins in the South Hebron region.

Nawi, a Jew­ish Israeli of Iraqi des­cent, is a threat to the set­tlers and the Israeli gov­ern­ment because he has brought inter­na­tional atten­tion to efforts to illeg­ally remove Palestini­ans from the Hebron region. He will be sen­tenced in July.

Watch these young Israeli sol­diers demol­ish the home, arrest Nawi and then laugh about the deprav­ity. Truly lost in the darkness.

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“What is the difference between Zionism and racism?”

Apr 26, ’09 10:30 AM

Jeremy Pax­man: What is the dif­fer­ence between Zion­ism and racism?

Peter Gooder­ham: Well we see the two as being quite dis­tinct, um, Zion­ism is clearly a …

Jeremy Pax­man: Yeah what’s the difference?

Peter Gooder­ham: Well Zion­ism is a polit­ical move­ment, um, relat­ing to the establishment …

Jeremy Pax­man (queitly): So are some forms of racism.

Peter Gooder­ham: … of a home­land, a Jew­ish home­land, in the er…er, in in what is now Israel, um, and racism is some­thing else. I mean racism is, I think we all know it when we see it and it’s not, it’s not that, and we have fought long and hard at the United Nations to keep that, to main­tain that distinction.

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I can’t believe he said that

Apr 22, ’09 8:40 PM

Groups of people all over the world call­ing them­selves “news organ­isa­tions,” such as The Times, con­tinue to spread myths about Mah­moud Ahmad­ine­jad, such as that he called for Israel to be “wiped off the map” or that he denies the Nazi Holocaust.

In the mean time the Israeli Deputy Prime Min­is­ter has been quoted as say­ing “What Iran is try­ing to do right now is not far away at all from what Hitler did to the Jew­ish people just 65 years ago.”

Sorry, what the fuck?

So on one hand you have an oil-rich nation — Iran — that has never attacked another, let alone with nuc­lear weapons, and has just had its oil-rich neigh­bour invaded and occupied.

On the other you have a nation that has invaded and occu­pied Iran’s neigh­bour and is the only nation in the world to have attacked another with ther­mo­nuc­lear weapons, along with another nuclear-armed quasi-nation — Israel — which can’t stop get­ting into wars with its neigh­bours, bru­tally represses those in its midst who don’t belong to the right race or reli­gion, and openly dis­cusses attack­ing Iran, along with its part­ners in the crime the U.S. and a group of European nations, all of whom helped cre­ate the racist state in the first place.

If you believe Iran is the bel­li­ger­ent party in all of this and is about to pull an Adolf Hitler on us, then you are a stu­pid fuck.

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You can’t trust the BBC on the Middle East

Apr 17, ’09 8:37 AM

Robert Fisk, writ­ing for The Independent:

… why is it that Haaretz’s1 top cor­res­pond­ents — Amira Hass and Gideon Levy — write so much more cour­ageously about the human rights abuses of Israeli troops (and war crimes) than the BBC has ever dared to do? Whenever I’m asked by lec­ture audi­ences around the world if they should trust the BBC, I tell them to trust Amira and Gideon more than they should ever believe in the wretched broad­cast­ing station.

I can cer­tainly advise view­ers to turn to Sky TV’s infin­itely tougher cov­er­age of the Middle East and … I can recom­mend the cour­age with which Al-Jazeera Eng­lish cov­ers Gaza and the rest of the Palestinian-Israeli war.

My exper­i­ence is that you can’t trust the BBC on the Middle East either. While I was in Iraq on the human shield action, the BBC — some­what to my sur­prise — turned out to be one of the most fac­tu­ally incor­rect and least object­ive news source report­ing on the action. In fact I remem­ber at one point read­ing more object­ive stor­ies on the Fox News web­site, a pro­pa­ganda chan­nel for the Repub­lican Party of the U.S.

I doubt any­thing will change there until the place is cleansed of people like the mor­ally cor­rupt Mark Thompson, the BBC’s dir­ector general.

Notes:
  1. Haaretz is Israel’s old­est daily news­pa­per. [↩]
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Tony Blair gets payoff from Zionists

Feb 18, ’09 2:09 PM

War Crim Tony Blair has been awar­ded a prize from Zion­ist organ­isa­tion Dan David Found­a­tion, amount­ing to $1 million.

Pre­sum­ably for his efforts to ensure Israel can con­tinue its eth­nic cleans­ing of Palestinians.

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Arabic press on Israeli elections

Feb 11, ’09 12:05 AM

Arabic press on Israeli elec­tions:

Mazin Hammad in Qatar’s Al-Watan

Regard­less of who will win, the dif­fer­ences between the right, left and centre [of Israel’s polit­ics] are not clear for those who closely watch the elec­tion from out­side. They all pounce on Palestinian blood.

Rashid Hasan in Jordan’s Al-Dustur

The vic­tory of extrem­ists, with [Likud Party leader Ben­jamin] Net­an­yahu in the lead, would mean that the situ­ation — i.e. the set­tle­ment and the so-called peace pro­cess — will return to square one … The Israeli state was built on mas­sacres and gen­o­cides com­mit­ted by Zion­ist gangs … There­fore, it is not strange if extrem­ists win.

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