Emergency rally for Gaza : Stop the Massacre! End the Siege Now!
2pm, Sunday, 4th January
Victorian State Library
Cnr La Trobe and Swanston St
Melbourne
…previously…
5pm, Tuesday, 30th December
Victorian State Library
Cnr La Trobe and Swanston St
Melbourne
Hmmm. Looks like the Israeli authorities are taking the opportunity presented by George II’s last few weeks in office to conduct “Operation Cast Lead”, aka “Operation Commit Another War Crime By Damaging Hamas Infrastructure & Murdering Several Hundred People in Gaza Ahead of An Israeli General Election”. Naturally, George II has responded with a nod and a wink, and Acting Prime Minister Julia Gillard of the Australian Working Families Party Government has tactfully stated that Hamas had engaged in “an act of aggression against Israel”. “They (Hamas) should cease any further action. We are saying to the Israelis that all care should be taken to avoid injuring civilians,” she said.
As for US President-elect Obama…
Robert Fisk’s World: How can anyone believe there is ‘progress’ in the Middle East?
The Independent
December 27, 2008
A test of Obama’s gumption will come scarcely three months after his inauguration
If reporting is, as I suspect, a record of mankind’s folly, then the end of 2008 is proving my point.
Let’s kick off with the man who is not going to change the Middle East, Barack Obama, who last week, with infinite predictability, became Time‘s “person of the year”. But buried in a long and immensely tedious interview inside the magazine, Obama devotes just one sentence to the Arab-Israeli conflict: “And seeing if we can build on some of the progress, at least in conversation, that’s been made around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will be a priority.”
What is this man talking about? “Building on progress?” What progress? On the verge of another civil war between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, with Benjamin Netanyahu a contender for Israeli prime minister, with Israel’s monstrous wall and its Jewish colonies still taking more Arab land, and Palestinians still firing rockets at Sderot, and Obama thinks there’s “progress” to build on?
I suspect this nonsensical language comes from the mental mists of his future Secretary of State…
I was amazed to learn of the training system adopted by the Met lads who put Jean Charles de Menezes to death on the Tube. According to former police commander Brian Paddick, the Met’s secret rules for “dealing” with suicide bombers were drawn up “with the help of Israeli experts”. What? Who were these so-called “experts” advising British policemen how to shoot civilians on the streets of London? The same men who assassinate wanted Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza and brazenly kill Palestinian civilians at the same time? The same people who outrageously talk about “targeted killings” when they murder their opponents? Were these the thugs who were advising Lady Cressida Dick and her boys?
Funnily enough, Lord Blair cancelled a recent (December 2008) trip to Gaza following advice from Israeli authorities that his life might be in danger. Fisk:
Not that our brave peace envoy, Lord Blair, would have much to say about it. He’s the man, remember, whose only proposed trip to Gaza was called off when yet more “Israeli experts” advised him that his life might be in danger. Anyway, he’d still rather be president of Europe, something Sarko wants to award him. That, I suppose, is why Blair wrote such a fawning article in the same issue of Time which made Obama “person” of the year. “There are times when Nicolas Sarkozy resembles a force of nature,” Blair grovels. It’s all first names, of course. “Nicolas has the hallmark of any true leader”; “Nicolas has adopted…”; “Nicolas recognises”; “Nicolas reaching out…”. In all, 15 “Nicolases”. Is that the price of the Euro presidency? Or will Blair now tell us he’s going to be involved in those “conversations” with Obama to “build on some of the progress” in the Middle East?
Antony Loewenstein has news — There are real people under Israeli bombs — some analysis, and a huge number of useful links on his blog. Ellen Cantarow’s essay on ‘Gaza Is Buckling: Richard Falk, Israel and the New York Times’ (Counterpunch, December 26-28, 2008) is also worth reading (Falk, United Nations Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, was recently denied entry to Israel; in 2007, Falk wrote ‘Slouching toward a Palestinian Holocaust’), as is ‘If Gaza falls . . .’ by Sara Roy (London Review of Books, January 1, 2009).
See also:
The Electronic Intifada (EI), found at electronicIntifada.net, publishes news, commentary, analysis, and reference materials about the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict from a Palestinian perspective. EI is the leading Palestinian portal for information about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its depiction in the media…
International Solidarity Movement : a Palestinian-led movement committed to resisting the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land using nonviolent, direct-action methods and principles.
The Refuser Solidarity Network (RSN) was formed in April of 2002 to provide support for the growing Refuser Movement in Israel. The initial impetus for the establishment of the RSN was the publication in January 2002 of the Combatants Letter by a group of 52 reserve officers, which later became Ometz Le’sarev or Courage to Refuse…
Yesh Gvul (“There is a limit!”) is an Israeli peace group campaigning against the occupation by backing soldiers who refuse duties of a repressive or aggressive nature. The brutal role of the Israeli army in subjugating the Palestinian population places numerous servicemen in a grave moral and political dilemma, as they are required to enforce policies they deem illegal, immoral and ultimately harmful to Israeli interests. The army hierarchy demands compliance, but many soldiers, whether conscripts or reservists, find that they cannot in good conscience obey the orders of their superiors…
That caricature is very funny, very funny, very funny. Ha ha ha. ROFLMAO. Do you know anything at all about the holocaust?
The only reason “only” 1 Israeli citizen was killed from a barrage of over 70 rockets fired into Israel that day, was because we have an early warning system, so people take shelter when the missiles strike.
The big difference is that Israel targets Hamas bunkers/bases, and because many of these are located INTENTIONALLY in civilian houses civilians [get] in harm’s way too, whereas the rockets fired by Hamas are targeted directly at civilians, again INTENTIONALLY.
Think about this too – 100 tonnes of ammunition were dropped on Gaza yesterday. 100 tonnes. If you wanted to kill indiscriminately or even just not be super careful, you would cause A LOT more innocent deaths than under half of 250. One palestinian suicide bomber with 10 kg of explosives kills on average (yes, we have averages unfortunately) around 10 people in close contact. Here you have 100 tonnes, 10000 times more. So 10000 times 10 is… right, 200 people, more than half being armed militants, the others unlucky innocent people (like the innocent ones killed in their suicide bombings, oh wait no – they are targeted INTENTIONALLY again).
Yep. It’s exactly like killing 6 million unarmed people, persecuting them everywhere in the world, regardless of any political situation and with no prior provocation. Exactly.
Ofer:
I’m not sure exactly what you’re referring to by way of caricature: the illustration by Latuff or the post as a whole? I do know a little about the Holocaust; I also know that the only reference to it in the above post is a link to an essay by Richard Falk. I’m therefore at something of a loss as to why you ask if I “know anything at all about” it.
I think he’s referring to the cartoon. It references a famous photo of a Jewish boy in the Warsaw Ghetto being threatened by an SS soldier.
http://www.akdh.ch/images/warschau1.jpeg.JPG
It’s amazing how you call for the world to support you and still [you’re] playing like [you’re] the victim when [you’re] the black evil monster! [You’re an oppressor!] Stop playing the victim! I don’t see Hamas having F16 planes, napalm bombs etc.. The Israelis use them daily on the Palestinian people! No human has the right to hold off humanitarian aid! No human has the right to cut off food, water and power supplies! But Israel still does it! Israel was the one who built the biggest open air prison in the world! And yet you play the victim! Israel has isolated Palestine from the rest of the world! And yet you play the victim! Israel kills, rapes, and tortures and they still play the DAMN victim! Even though you have might and strength through your weapons, [you’re] still not and will not EVER have the strength of the Palestinian people! That little child that has the courage to walk straight up to a solider and spit in the middle of his face has more courage than the supposed “soldier” that holds the gun trembling! The rocks in the[ir] hands are like atomic bombs exploding in your hearts! You will never have the[ir] will, because they are fighting for what is rightfully the[ir]s!
Ah…
I’ve never seen anything like this. It all happened so fast but the amount of death and destruction is inconceivable, even to me and I’m in the middle of it and a few hours have already passed. I think 15 locations were hit during the air raid on Gaza. The images are probably not broadcast in US media. There are piles and piles of bodies in the locations that were hit. As you look at them you can see that a few of the young men are still alive, someone lifts a hand here, and another raises his head there. They probably died within moments because their bodies are burned, most have lost limbs, some have their guts hanging out and they’re all lying in pools of blood. Outside my home (which is close to the universities), a bomb fell on a large group of young men, university students. They’d been warned not to stand in groups, it makes them an easy target, but they were waiting for buses to take them home. This was about 3 hours ago. 7 were killed, 4 students and 3 of our neighbours’ kids, teenagers who were from the same family (Rayes) and were best friends. As I’m writing this I heard a funeral procession go by outside, I looked out the window and it was the 3 Rayes boys. They spent all their time together when they were alive, and now [they’re] sharing the same funeral together. Nothing could stop my 14 year old brother from rushing out to see the bodies of his friends laying in the street after they were killed. He hasn’t spoken a word since.
A little further down the street about an hour earlier 3 girls happened to be passing by one of the locations when a bomb fell. The girl’s bodies were torn into pieces and covered the street from one side to the other.
Leaders lie, civilians die, and lessons of history are ignored
Robert Fisk
The Independent
December 29, 2008
We’ve got so used to the carnage of the Middle East that we don’t care any more – providing we don’t offend the Israelis. It’s not clear how many of the Gaza dead are civilians, but the response of the Bush administration, not to mention the pusillanimous reaction of Gordon Brown, reaffirm for Arabs what they have known for decades: however they struggle against their antagonists, the West will take Israel’s side. As usual, the bloodbath was the fault of the Arabs – who, as we all know, only understand force.
Ever since 1948, we’ve been hearing this balderdash from the Israelis – just as Arab nationalists and then Arab Islamists have been peddling their own lies: that the Zionist “death wagon” will be overthrown, that all Jerusalem will be “liberated”. And always Mr Bush Snr or Mr Clinton or Mr Bush Jnr or Mr Blair or Mr Brown have called upon both sides to exercise “restraint” – as if the Palestinians and the Israelis both have F-18s and Merkava tanks and field artillery. Hamas’s home-made rockets have killed just 20 Israelis in eight years, but a day-long blitz by Israeli aircraft that kills almost 300 Palestinians is just par for the course.
The blood-splattering has its own routine. Yes, Hamas provoked Israel’s anger, just as Israel provoked Hamas’s anger, which was provoked by Israel, which was provoked by Hamas, which … See what I mean? Hamas fires rockets at Israel, Israel bombs Hamas, Hamas fires more rockets and Israel bombs again and … Got it? And we demand security for Israel – rightly – but overlook this massive and utterly disproportionate slaughter by Israel. It was Madeleine Albright who once said that Israel was “under siege” – as if Palestinian tanks were in the streets of Tel Aviv.
By last night, the exchange rate stood at 296 Palestinians dead for one dead Israeli. Back in 2006, it was 10 Lebanese dead for one Israeli dead. This weekend was the most inflationary exchange rate in a single day since – the 1973 Middle East War? The 1967 Six Day War? The 1956 Suez War? The 1948 Independence/Nakba War? It’s obscene, a gruesome game – which Ehud Barak, the Israeli Defence Minister, unconsciously admitted when he spoke this weekend to Fox TV. “Our intention is to totally change the rules of the game,” Barak said.
Exactly. Only the “rules” of the game don’t change. This is a further slippage on the Arab-Israeli exchanges, a percentage slide more awesome than Wall Street’s crashing shares, though of not much interest in the US which – let us remember – made the F-18s and the Hellfire missiles which the Bush administration pleads with Israel to use sparingly.
Quite a lot of the dead this weekend appear to have been Hamas members, but what is it supposed to solve? Is Hamas going to say: “Wow, this blitz is awesome – we’d better recognise the state of Israel, fall in line with the Palestinian Authority, lay down our weapons and pray we are taken prisoner and locked up indefinitely and support a new American ‘peace process’ in the Middle East!” Is that what the Israelis and the Americans and Gordon Brown think Hamas is going to do?
Yes, let’s remember Hamas’s cynicism, the cynicism of all armed Islamist groups. Their need for Muslim martyrs is as crucial to them as Israel’s need to create them. The lesson Israel thinks it is teaching – come to heel or we will crush you – is not the lesson Hamas is learning. Hamas needs violence to emphasise the oppression of the Palestinians – and relies on Israel to provide it. A few rockets into Israel and Israel obliges.
Not a whimper from Tony Blair, the peace envoy to the Middle East who’s never been to Gaza in his current incarnation. Not a bloody word.
We hear the usual Israeli line. General Yaakov Amidror, the former head of the Israeli army’s “research and assessment division” announced that “no country in the world would allow its citizens to be made the target of rocket attacks without taking vigorous steps to defend them”. Quite so. But when the IRA were firing mortars over the border into Northern Ireland, when their guerrillas were crossing from the Republic to attack police stations and Protestants, did Britain unleash the RAF on the Irish Republic? Did the RAF bomb churches and tankers and police stations and zap 300 civilians to teach the Irish a lesson? No, it did not. Because the world would have seen it as criminal behaviour. We didn’t want to lower ourselves to the IRA’s level.
Yes, Israel deserves security. But these bloodbaths will not bring it. Not since 1948 have air raids protected Israel. Israel has bombed Lebanon thousands of times since 1975 and not one has eliminated “terrorism”. So what was the reaction last night? The Israelis threaten ground attacks. Hamas waits for another battle. Our Western politicians crouch in their funk holes. And somewhere to the east – in a cave? a basement? on a mountainside? – a well-known man in a turban smiles.
“Israel targets Hamas bunkers/bases…”
Inre the most recent sortie, IDF states:
http://dover . idf.il/IDF/English/News/the_Front/08/oper/default.htm
Civilian casualties would appear to be the result not of the targeting of Hamas bunkers in residential homes but rather the proximity of Hamas-owned and controlled buildings to those belonging to civilians. For example, the main police station in Gaza, controlled by Hamas, was destroyed by air strikes:
It’s also the case the Gaza is a very densely-populated city and territory.
From The Age today:
PEACE broke out in the Middle East today after a crowd of 3000 marched down Swanston St, Melbourne, last night, calling for Israel to end its military campaign against Gaza that has left at least 360 Palestinians dead.
The rally, called at short notice by Justice For Palestine and the Palestinian Community Association, included Palestinian Muslims and Christians, Lebanese, Iraqis, Muslims from other countries, and Australian-born protesters, including Jews.
—
There is a photo of the protest including some folks w/ some sneaky Hezbollah flags. Was Michael Burd in attendance?
On fourth day of Gaza battle, no end in sight
Ethan Bronner and Taghreed El-Khodary
International Herald Tribune
December 30, 2008
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/12/30/mideast/31mideast-2.php
JERUSALEM: Israel launched air strikes against Hamas targets in Gaza for a fourth consecutive day on Tuesday as Prime Minister Ehud Olmert called the bombardment “the first of several stages,” suggesting that the conflict was far from resolution.
Israeli aircraft bombed a government compound, buildings linked to the Islamic University and the home of a top Hamas commander on Tuesday in a continued onslaught that left Gaza without electric power, according residents of the beleaguered enclave.
Gaza residents said Israeli warships in increasing numbers were visible from the enclave’s Mediterranean shoreline, while Israeli tanks and troops massed on its land border. But despite the encirclement, Hamas militants remained defiant, launching 10 rockets into southern Israel on Tuesday. One hit an apartment house in the town of Sderot, injuring one person, witnesses said.
So far, more than 350 Palestinians – about 60 of them civilians – have been killed, according to the United Nations. Four Israelis – three civilians and a soldier – have died.
Israeli says its offensive, which began Saturday, is designed to neutralize the threat posed to southern Israel by Hamas rockets. As the air strikes continued Tuesday, Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit told Israel Radio: “There is no room for a cease-fire.”
‘I didn’t see any of my girls, just a pile of bricks’
Hazem Balousha Jabalia and Rory McCarthy in Jerusalem
The Guardian
December 30, 2008
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/dec/30/israel-and-the-palestinians-middle-east
THE family house was small: three rooms, a tiny kitchen and bathroom, built of poor-quality concrete bricks, with a corrugated asbestos roof, in block four of the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza. There are hundreds of similar homes crammed into the narrow streets, filled with some of the poorest and most vulnerable families in the overcrowded Gaza Strip.
But it was this house, where Anwar and Samira Balousha lived with their nine young children, that had the misfortune to be built next to what became, late on Sunday night, another target in Israel’s devastating bombing campaign.
An Israeli bomb struck the refugee camp’s Imad Aqil mosque about midnight, destroying the building and collapsing several shops and a pharmacy nearby.
The force of the blast was so great it also brought down the Baloushas’ house, which yesterday lay in ruins. The seven eldest girls were asleep together on mattresses in one bedroom and they bore the brunt of the explosion. Five were killed where they lay: Tahrir, 17, Ikram, 14, Samar, 13, Dina, 8, and Jawaher, 4…
This here:
the response of the Bush administration, not to mention the pusillanimous reaction of Gordon Brown, reaffirm for Arabs what they have known for decades: however they struggle against their antagonists, the West will take Israel’s side.
You do a little research and it’s not a surprise where the Arabs are failing. They just can’t seem to out-think the Israelis. I mean they’ve had oil wealth and plenty of clout, but they don’t channel in the appropriate places, or if they do they don’t care in the same context that the Israelis do. Take a closer look at the US you don’t even have to look at Britain, and you’ll see government lobbyists and wealthy individuals ensuring the interests they support are not forgotten. You don’t have to believe in Zionist conspiracies, Jewish individuals have sworn an oath of ‘Never Again’, and every day they are taking a path typically of asymmetric warfare – they don’t outnumber Arabs and they don’t have strategic depth with Israel, but what they do look for is a point of difference, that point of difference lies West, and as an ethnic group they have learnt very well from the holocaust to look out for each other, sometimes those alliances are temporary but always with the threat of extermination on their mind.
I’m pretty cluey as to how Jews think as it’s not a country mile different to how Evangelicals think, but they are very effective at making moves as they always perceive it in terms of survival of their culture and peoples. Some names to look up include Paul Wolfowitz, Rahm Emanuel, Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke, and try to put into context how this can benefit their asymmetric warfare. I sit back and after reading Paul Johnson’s ‘A History of the Jews’, these guys are scrappy fighters sometimes ineffective but always desperate for an answer to keep their place and sometimes in the past even gain more ground. The Arabs, on the other hand, are divided amongst each other.
It can occasionally be useful — arguably — to speak in terms of ‘The Jews’ and ‘The Arabs’, but it’s problematic to regard this as being anything more than a highly superficial, and misleading, political construct. Since the end of WWII, pan-Arab nationalism, along with the secular left, has largely been destroyed, and replaced, as a unifying ideology among ‘The Arabs’ of the Middle East, with various forms of Islamic belief and politics.
The current situation in the Middle East — and elsewhere on the globe, for that matter — is not principally a function of ‘intelligence’, but power. Without crucial US economic, military and diplomatic support, Israel would be (in) an even more parlous state. Further, this support is conditional. That is, it continues while it serves US interests to have a friendly ally in the Middle East of the kind Israel provides.
See also, Noam Chomsky:
Guillotining Gaza, Information Clearing House, July 30, 2007.
“You don’t have to believe in Zionist conspiracies, Jewish individuals have sworn an oath of ‘Never Again’…”
Israel, the Holocaust, and Anti-Semitism, Excerpted from Chronicles of Dissent, 1992:
Jews think all kindsa krazy stuff. Some names to look up include Noam Chomsky, Uri Gordon, David Rovics and Howard Zinn.
It can occasionally be useful — arguably — to speak in terms of ‘The Jews’ and ‘The Arabs’, but it’s problematic to regard this as being anything more than a highly superficial, and misleading, political construct.
I agree, but I have learnt to not look at other people and their cultures and the world as a ‘misleading political construct,’ but rather as they see it, as non-intellectuals, as typical people, and how they see it tends to pattern what I wrote above. Some issues, some ways of thought, they keep popping up, you have to acknowledge it’s there, it’s not the greatest part of human nature mind you, but it’s a truism.
The current situation in the Middle East — and elsewhere on the globe, for that matter — is not principally a function of ‘intelligence’, but power. Without crucial US economic, military and diplomatic support, Israel would be (in) an even more parlous state. Further, this support is conditional. That is, it continues while it serves US interests to have a friendly ally in the Middle East of the kind Israel provides.
I think the US interest in Israel has more than a ‘democratic ally’ bent. America is more than arguably the most religious nation in the West. If you know some Christianity you will have heard that among them they believe that Israel is returned as the time of the gentiles is coming to a close and never allowed to be defeated again according to the bible. For Muslims, obviously, this is a belief that needs defeating for their vision to come alive… And it goes beyond ‘intelligence’ between Jews and Arabs, I do not believe that the Israelis have truly ‘out-thought’ the Arabs by using America and the West, I think America is going bankrupt and some of that can be attributed to its support of Israel in foreign policy terms. Supporters there took powerful positions and used them to take faith in the protection of the US Goverment rather than through God in their Synagogues. But America’s foreign policy has had problems since WWI and Jews had no role in what sparked that interventionism in Europe, or the blowback from it that led to WWII.
By the way, Chomsky aims in one direction, there are two, Arabs are not poor, and if they really took an interest in the non-oppression of their Palestinian brethren they’d be much more open to immigration, from Gaza and the West Bank, if skilled Palestinians wanted out. Talented Palestinians who want to leave should be more welcomely embraced by their brothers in other Arab nations.
@ndy has been supporting the Jews for so long, now he decides to turn on them in an attempt to retain his status.
The moral of the story is: If you support the Jews, you do not support the workers.
Full-wit Mick / ‘Tony’ / Mick / Timmy / WR / Mick Reyfield / Tony Whitemore / Michael J Reyfield / Exchron… Big Beautiful Man.
After two years, your temporary protection visa has expired.
My BigBeautifulBrain hurts.
If you support the Jews, you do not support the workers.
Dude, Karl Marx was a Jew. I believe they call that ‘pwned’. The labour theory of value is so easily pwned once you realise that value is subjective, it’s not something that can so easily be defined, so when they go Value = Capital Labour, they get owned by the Austrian School.
[BBM thinks The Jew is Bad. I think he is stoopid.]
ANDY, I LOVE YOU!!!!!!
[BBM thinks The Jew is Bad. I think he is stoopid.]
Supernatural curses from the Old Testament should mean nothing to the majority of folks so I say, go ahead! Curse the Jews! Defeat Israel! Go ahead…