Ariel Sharon — dead

1.11.2014 Leave a comment

I’d say this inevitable event came much too soon. Sharon would have lived another 1,000 years if the universe were a justice machine. But it isn’t.

He no longer suffers. His friends and admirers ought to rejoice.

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Recommended: The Limits of Israeli Belligerence

11.21.2012 Leave a comment

Dina Jadallah wrote:

One can watch the latest Israeli assault on Gaza and become overwhelmed with the enormity of the destruction, the loss of human life (one-third of whom are children), and the indiscriminate and disproportionate use of asymmetric power by an occupying state against one million and seven hundred thousand people (mostly refugees) living under an embargo for several years.

On the other hand, one can watch the latest assault and marvel at the resistance, the power of human will, the high morale of a steadfast population that is determined to return to their usurped lands. More importantly, one can be reassured because the people in Gaza are ahead of their leaders, while their resistance is inflicting real damage on their enemy.

The latest conflict might be an inflection point in the struggle, especially if its achievements are employed wisely in order to achieve politically strategic goals such as the lifting of the embargo, a halt to colonies / “settlements, and so forth.

Despite the skewed balance of raw muscular power in Israel’s favor, how is it that it cannot even win what was (wrongly) projected to be a brief and spectacular skirmish that would boost the political fortunes of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and his Minister of Defense, Ehud Barak?

Zohan, like his good friend, Uncle Sam, possesses a vast and ever-increasing military advantage over those he would dominate. But also like Uncle Sam, Zohan mostly fails to achieve the political goals he seeks. Zohan has already lost his latest battle. The imprisoned Palestinians refuse to yield. They continue to fight back, to resist this compelling force. That is his defeat in a nutshell. Zohan now needs a cease-fire settlement as much as the peopled interred in his Gaza prison-land.

When we consider a situation like this one, we should always keep this thought in mind: “You can do anything with bayonets except sit on them,” a maxim attributed variously to Talleyrand, Thomas Hardy, Napoleon I and Bismarck.

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Quote of the day

11.19.2012 Leave a comment

Chris Hedges wrote:

Gaza is a window on our coming dystopia. The growing divide between the world’s elite and its miserable masses of humanity is maintained through spiraling violence. Many impoverished regions of the world, which have fallen off the economic cliff, are beginning to resemble Gaza, where 1.6 million Palestinians live in the planet’s largest internment camp. These sacrifice zones, filled with seas of pitifully poor people trapped in squalid slums or mud-walled villages, are increasingly hemmed in by electronic fences, monitored by surveillance cameras and drones and surrounded by border guards or military units that shoot to kill. These nightmarish dystopias extend from sub-Saharan Africa to Pakistan to China. They are places where targeted assassinations are carried out, where brutal military assaults are pressed against peoples left defenseless, without an army, navy or air force. All attempts at resistance, however ineffective, are met with the indiscriminate slaughter that characterizes modern industrial warfare.

Can this happen here, in the United States, land of the free and home of the brave? Will Uncle Sam turn on the ‘lesser people’ (Alan Simpson)?

Those questions were rhetorical, of course.

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Zohan has owie

11.18.2012 Leave a comment

 

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Some strong words for Israel

7.6.2011 2 Comments

Richard Falk, currently the United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, cuts to quick in his recent article on Flotilla II:

The reports that two of the foreign flagged ships planning to be part of the ten vessel Freedom Flotilla II experienced similar forms of disabling sabotage creates strong circumstantial evidence of Israeli responsibility. It stretches the imagination to suppose that a sophisticated cutting of the propeller shafts of both ships is a coincidence with no involvement by Israel’s Mossad, long infamous for its overseas criminal acts in support of contested Israeli national interests. Recalling the lethal encounter in international waters with Freedom Flotilla I that took place on 31 May 2010, and the frantic diplomatic campaign by Tel Aviv to prevent this second challenge to the Gaza blockade by peace activists and humanitarian aid workers, such conduct by a state against this latest civil society initiative, if further validated by incriminating evidence, should be formally condemned as a form of ‘state terrorism’ or even as an act of war by a state against global civil society [emphasis added].

Falk concludes his article by stating what ought to be obvious to everyone but which propaganda work and physical intimidation want to render obscure:

Shining through the darkness of this experience of obstructing Flotilla II is the raw nerve of the illegitimacy of Israeli occupation policy. Neither the Flotilla movement nor the somewhat complementary BDS campaign are questioning the legitimacy of Israel as such, but they are challenging the unyielding and expansionist Zionist leadership that denies the fundamental rights of the Palestinian people living under occupation, but also the rights of the 5-7 million Palestinians living in refugee camps or in exile and the rights of the 1.5 million Palestinians that have been subject to a range of discriminations ever since the establishment of Israel in 1948. A just and sustainable peace for both peoples requires an acknowledgement and implementation of these rights. Such rights are truly inalienable, and do not lapse because of their long suppression. This is ultimately what the Flotilla II encounter is really about, and this is also why Israel finds it so dangerous.

The Audacity of Hope

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Quote of the day

6.21.2011 Leave a comment

Maral Ghanma tweeted this gem:

An American ship called The Audacity of Hope is sailing to Gaza to break the blockade. Ship is obviously not full of bullshit like the book.

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Quote of the day

5.15.2011 Leave a comment

When answering the always-gripping question “Why do they hate us?”, Glenn Greenwald wrote:

When President Obama explained to the nation (after the fact) why he committed the armed forces to Libya, he declared that the U.S. must not “stand idly by” in the face of violent assaults on unarmed civilians. Today:

Violence erupted on Israel’s borders with Syria, Lebanon and Gaza on Sunday, leaving at least eight dead and dozens wounded . . . Israeli troops shot at protesters in three separate locations to prevent crowds from crossing Israeli frontier lines in the deadliest such confrontation in years.

In other words, Israeli troops opened fire on unarmed protesters on three separate borders today (and other reports now suggest higher numbers of people shot). The protesters were reportedly attempting to infiltrate Israeli territory in commemoration of the annual Palestinian protest of Israel, but by all accounts were unarmed, and some were shot at on their side of their border. Will the U.S. stand “idly by” while this happens, or . . . issue a statement in ringing support of Israeli actions? Sadly, there is no plausible third alternative, and that, too, may shed some light on “why they hate us.”

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