There are so many reasons to be irate about Israel's current assault on the Gaza Strip, and a whole other set of outrages about the way officials and hawk pundits (aka Israeli apologists) are processing the current situation, that i've been mentally multi-tasked into a state of mesmerization. Where does one start to dissect all this insanity? Yet continued silence is not a viable option; after recently living in Palestine for 2 years, now is hardly an appropriate time to bail on my support for an end of Israeli occupation and establishment of a viable Palestinian state. So i'm just going to pick one or maybe two points to address right now and deal with other aspects of this debacle in later posts. Unfortunately, this is a conflict that keeps on giving...
This evening there's a story in the Jerusalem Post about attacks on jews in various european countries. Oh no! anti-semitism on the rise in Europe, we all know where that leads. Concurrently, i've been coming across random blogs where people are noting threats and attacks on individuals who've been expressing their criticism of Israel, as well as invectives unleashed by zionists (or maybe just arab/muslim haters?) on mainstream media comment boards that are just as hateful as anything spewed out by a neo-nazi. The thing i 've always noticed about zionists and israelis in general, is that they are expert in throwing tantrums that shut down any possibility of rational dialogue. i don't support hate crimes, but the way that israelis deal with criticism is so infuriating that it hardly comes as a surprise that people outraged by the situation in Gaza are choosing to lash out in these ways. Blaming the victim here? To some extent, yes, i am. As long as world jewry continues to support Israel as their haven, their property, their private little playground in which they are free to commit war crimes on a daily basis, they have very little grounds for complaint when people the world over decide to crash this delusional party. Unfortunately and predictably, attacks on jews in Europe only feeds zionist logic, so not only are such hate crimes morally wrong, they are also counter-productive. What i'd like to see are large groups of jews protesting outside israeli embassies covered in anti-zionist grafitti.
On the flipside, the demonization of Hamas is so out of control that it makes anti-jewish anti-semitism look absolutely mild. Personally, i don't support Hamas as any kind of liberation movement, but i do support the right of Palestinians to choose the lesser of two evils when it came time to vote in 2006. The crazy thing about what's happening now is that Israel has controlled this history from the very beginning. They funded the islamic movement at its inception in order to drive not a wrench but an abyss between palestinian political factions, and then worked with the US to so corrupt their supposedly preferred lackeys, Fatah under Abbas, that Hamas' victory in the elections was more or less assured. i know lifelong Fatah supporters who, in spite of having extremely low opinions of Hamas leaders as competent government officials, still voted for them with the hope that giving them a chance to govern (and hopefully tone down the islamic rhetoric as a result) was a better option than acquiescing to the self-destructive rule of Fatah. Now we've got Tzipi, Condi and everyone in between screaming about how they have to keep killing kids until Hamas is destroyed - what the hell are they talking about? They need Hamas - otherwise the whole premise of palestinians as israel-hating fanatics is going to collapse on their cute little New Jersey doppelganger settlements.
i say this because i think most of the world has had enough of israeli bullying and now supports a free palestinian state. That is a change in global consciousness that is not going back into any closet - ever. i was glad to read that israeli diplomats have been expelled from Venezuela and would like to see more countries follow Chavez' lead. Personally, i'm renewing my commitment to boycott israeli goods and services, and to not casually socialize with zionists, (which i've tried to do in an effort to be even-handed). These people need to be isolated and punished in all the ways that nonviolent resistance can come up with. Gary Kamiya offered an analogy to how the US has treated Native Americans, and rightly concludes that although there are differences, if the US tried to conduct a campaign similar to what Israel's been doing, people would not accept it. Certainly if whites in South Africa said the post-apartheid govt's been a failure so let's go back to the way it was before, we know what the global response would be the minute that first bullet was fired into a Soweto child. Outrage, pure and simple, and very creatively multi-tasked.
This evening there's a story in the Jerusalem Post about attacks on jews in various european countries. Oh no! anti-semitism on the rise in Europe, we all know where that leads. Concurrently, i've been coming across random blogs where people are noting threats and attacks on individuals who've been expressing their criticism of Israel, as well as invectives unleashed by zionists (or maybe just arab/muslim haters?) on mainstream media comment boards that are just as hateful as anything spewed out by a neo-nazi. The thing i 've always noticed about zionists and israelis in general, is that they are expert in throwing tantrums that shut down any possibility of rational dialogue. i don't support hate crimes, but the way that israelis deal with criticism is so infuriating that it hardly comes as a surprise that people outraged by the situation in Gaza are choosing to lash out in these ways. Blaming the victim here? To some extent, yes, i am. As long as world jewry continues to support Israel as their haven, their property, their private little playground in which they are free to commit war crimes on a daily basis, they have very little grounds for complaint when people the world over decide to crash this delusional party. Unfortunately and predictably, attacks on jews in Europe only feeds zionist logic, so not only are such hate crimes morally wrong, they are also counter-productive. What i'd like to see are large groups of jews protesting outside israeli embassies covered in anti-zionist grafitti.
On the flipside, the demonization of Hamas is so out of control that it makes anti-jewish anti-semitism look absolutely mild. Personally, i don't support Hamas as any kind of liberation movement, but i do support the right of Palestinians to choose the lesser of two evils when it came time to vote in 2006. The crazy thing about what's happening now is that Israel has controlled this history from the very beginning. They funded the islamic movement at its inception in order to drive not a wrench but an abyss between palestinian political factions, and then worked with the US to so corrupt their supposedly preferred lackeys, Fatah under Abbas, that Hamas' victory in the elections was more or less assured. i know lifelong Fatah supporters who, in spite of having extremely low opinions of Hamas leaders as competent government officials, still voted for them with the hope that giving them a chance to govern (and hopefully tone down the islamic rhetoric as a result) was a better option than acquiescing to the self-destructive rule of Fatah. Now we've got Tzipi, Condi and everyone in between screaming about how they have to keep killing kids until Hamas is destroyed - what the hell are they talking about? They need Hamas - otherwise the whole premise of palestinians as israel-hating fanatics is going to collapse on their cute little New Jersey doppelganger settlements.
i say this because i think most of the world has had enough of israeli bullying and now supports a free palestinian state. That is a change in global consciousness that is not going back into any closet - ever. i was glad to read that israeli diplomats have been expelled from Venezuela and would like to see more countries follow Chavez' lead. Personally, i'm renewing my commitment to boycott israeli goods and services, and to not casually socialize with zionists, (which i've tried to do in an effort to be even-handed). These people need to be isolated and punished in all the ways that nonviolent resistance can come up with. Gary Kamiya offered an analogy to how the US has treated Native Americans, and rightly concludes that although there are differences, if the US tried to conduct a campaign similar to what Israel's been doing, people would not accept it. Certainly if whites in South Africa said the post-apartheid govt's been a failure so let's go back to the way it was before, we know what the global response would be the minute that first bullet was fired into a Soweto child. Outrage, pure and simple, and very creatively multi-tasked.
2 comments:
i want your opinion on this: i heard a discussion on the BBC about israeli public opinion about the attack on gaza. one speaker claimed the problem is that the government has clamped down so firmly on media coverage that no criticism is allowed, no dissenting voices.
but another speaker (i'm sorry i can't identify them, but let's assume for the sake of the argument they have some business talking about the situation) said public opinion in israel is firmly in favor of the attacks - that israelis have bought into this idea that they MUST act to defend themselves against the hamas rockets.
what say you?
not sure i'm qualified to answer your question. when i've been there, the general impression is that being a 2-state peacenik is not a popularly supported position. There have been sizable demos in Israel against these incursions, and small groups in Sderot, et al speaking out. the israeli pr world is tightly controlled, but as i don't read their press very often, i can't say what they're cutting out.
there are 2 arab journalists working for an iranian tv network who are being charged with violating censorship rules. the claim is that they announced the ground troop movement a few hrs before the censor squad had given the ok... as if people in gaza would not have known it was coming.
last point is that there are no unembedded foreign journalists in gaza now (non-arab media, who live there) heads of intl aid agencies who are themselves not already based in gaza also cannot enter.
also, you should check out this story: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/09/israel-foreign-ministry-media
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