Tag Repression

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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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Let Netanyahu Win

Feb 10, ’09 9:28 AM

Gideon Levy, writ­ing for Haaretz:

Net­an­yahu would offer some­thing else. First, he is a faith­ful rep­res­ent­at­ive of an authen­tic “Israeli” view — an almost com­plete dis­trust of Arabs and the chance of reach­ing peace with them, mixed with con­des­cen­sion and dehu­man­iz­a­tion. Second, he will finally arouse the world’s rage towards us, includ­ing that of the new U.S. admin­is­tra­tion. Sadly, this may be the only chance for the kind of dra­matic change that is needed.

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Israel’s military goal to kill a 1000 Gazans?

Jan 12, ’09 9:21 AM

No Right Turn spec­u­lates on Israel’s real mil­it­ary goal:

Israel has announced that it is near­ing its mil­it­ary goals in Gaza. Given that they seem to have accom­plished noth­ing of mil­it­ary sig­ni­fic­ance in their cam­paign — they have not des­troyed Hamas, and the rock­ets they claim to want to stop (but in fact pro­voked with their inva­sion) are still fall­ing — this raises the obvi­ous ques­tion: what is Israel’s goal?

At this stage, I can’t help but notice that they’ve killed 900 Palestini­ans so far. Which makes me won­der: is a thou­sand dead all they’re after? An object les­son writ­ten in civil­ian blood? Because their mil­it­ary spasm seems utterly point­less otherwise.

Along with the Zion­ist dehu­man­isa­tion of Palestini­ans it would help to explain why Israeli troops her­ded 110 civil­ians into a house under the guise of their own safety before shelling it and killing 30 of them.

the-body-of-little-girl-from-zeitoun-bombing

The body of a girl who was found in the rubble of her des­troyed house fol­low­ing an Israeli air strike on a house in Zeitoun Pho­to­graph: Mohammed Abed

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A short history of Zionism and the indigenous people of Palestine

Jan 7, ’09 9:59 AM

Oxford pro­fessor of inter­na­tional rela­tions Avi Shlaim served in the Israeli army and has never ques­tioned the state’s legit­im­acy. But its mer­ci­less assault on Gaza has led him to dev­ast­at­ing con­clu­sions:

The only way to make sense of Israel’s sense­less war in Gaza is through under­stand­ing the his­tor­ical con­text. Estab­lish­ing the state of Israel in May 1948 involved a monu­mental injustice to the Palestini­ans. Brit­ish offi­cials bit­terly resen­ted Amer­ican par­tis­an­ship on behalf of the infant state. On 2 June 1948, Sir John Trout­beck wrote to the for­eign sec­ret­ary, Ern­est Bevin, that the Amer­ic­ans were respons­ible for the cre­ation of a gang­ster state headed by “an utterly unscru­pu­lous set of lead­ers”. I used to think that this judg­ment was too harsh but Israel’s vicious assault on the people of Gaza, and the Bush administration’s com­pli­city in this assault, have reopened the question.

I write as someone who served loy­ally in the Israeli army in the mid-1960s and who has never ques­tioned the legit­im­acy of the state of Israel within its pre-1967 bor­ders. What I utterly reject is the Zion­ist colo­nial pro­ject bey­ond the Green Line. The Israeli occu­pa­tion of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the after­math of the June 1967 war had very little to do with secur­ity and everything to do with ter­rit­orial expan­sion­ism. The aim was to estab­lish Greater Israel through per­man­ent polit­ical, eco­nomic and mil­it­ary con­trol over the Palestinian ter­rit­or­ies. And the res­ult has been one of the most pro­longed and bru­tal mil­it­ary occu­pa­tions of mod­ern times.

 

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Israelis showing off how monstrous they are

Jan 7, ’09 9:40 AM

Israelis1 show­ing off how mon­strous they are:

Israel’s assault on Gaza has exac­ted the blood­i­est toll of civil­ian lives yet, when the bomb­ing of UN schools being used as refugee centres and of hous­ing killed more than 50 people, includ­ing an entire fam­ily of seven young children.

Most of those killed were in the school play­ground and in the street, and the dead and injured lay in pools of blood. Pic­tures on Palestinian TV showed walls heav­ily marked by shrapnel and blood­stains, and shoes and shred­ded clothes scattered on the ground. Win­dows were blown out.

The UN was par­tic­u­larly incensed over tar­get­ing of the schools, because Israeli forces knew they were packed with fam­il­ies as they had ordered them to get out of their homes with leaf­let drops and loud­speak­ers. It said it had iden­ti­fied the schools as refugee centres to the Israeli mil­it­ary and provided GPS coordinates.

Nat­ur­ally the Zion­ist gov­ern­ment says Gazans fired at them from the school. Of course they can lie with impun­ity because they’ve banned journ­al­ists from wit­ness­ing their crimes in Gaza.

Notes:
  1. Yes, not just the Zion­ist gov­ern­ment, but Israelis. Appar­ently 95% of Israelis approve of this assault on Gaza [↩]
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Raw footage of aftermath of one of Israel’s terrorist attacks on Gaza

Jan 5, ’09 12:53 AM

This video clip was taken with a mobile cam­era imme­di­ately after a ter­ror­ist Israeli air strike hit a busy mar­ket early on Sat­urday 03, Jan 2009, Gaza.

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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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A message from some of the world’s real leaders

Dec 29, ’08 12:23 PM

Send your mes­sage to Israel: www.december18th.org

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Britain: not so much 1984 as Minority Report

Nov 24, ’08 2:07 PM

Kiwi Tom Chap­man writes for Pub­lic Address about the author­it­arian bur­eau­cracy that has been tak­ing root under New Labour’s watch in Britain.

The UK police, who have my DNA, have already sold DNA data to private com­pan­ies and, accord­ing to Jenny Wil­lott MP, this includes “sin­is­ter explor­a­tions into eth­nic profiling.”

I’ve pen­cilled in the advent of a National ID card and/or bio­met­ric pass­ports as points at which I might leave Bri­tain. I just don’t want to be a part of a soci­ety that has a cent­ral­ised infra­struc­ture whereby the gov­ern­ment or some numb­skull at the Post Office/Police can have access to all this inform­a­tion and use it against people they don’t like.

I don’t how many times I’ve heard the cliché “if you don’t have some­thing to hide you’ve got noth­ing to worry about” so in some ways a lot of people here deserve such a government.

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The shooting of Thomas Hurndall

Oct 12, ’08 7:22 PM

There’s a doc­u­ment­ary drama on the UK’s Chan­nel 4 tomor­row night at 9 PM, telling the story of Thomas Hurndall’s murder by an Israeli sniper, and his family’s fight to uncover the truth.

I met Tom on the human shield action to Iraq in 2003. He left Iraq when war became inev­it­able and trav­elled on to Gaza where he was even­tu­ally shot in the head by Hayb, an award-winning Israeli marks­man, while try­ing to save Palestinian chil­dren who were hav­ing pot shots fired around them by Israeli snipers.

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