The call by the US Presidential spokesman for Hamas to stop its rocket attacks on Israel, as Israel pours over 100 tonnes of high explosive into that cooped-up territory, illustrates perfectly the “Big lie” school of propaganda about Palestine to which the people of the United States have been subjected for the past sixty years.
Of course Hamas should stop the rocket attacks. But the Israeli response is wholly disproportionate. Only today did Hamas kill their first Israeli in the last twelve months. So far today Israel has killed 212 Palestinians, and counting.
I regard Hamas as an unpleasant aberration, but just the kind of aberration you will get when you steal the land of an entire population, and ethnically cleanse them into a ghetto so tight, poor and beleagured it is simpy a prison. What Israel has done to the Palestinians for decades, with strong US support, is as unconscionable as the crimes of Hitler and Stalin. It may not reach those tyrant’s full scale, but there comes a level of evil where further scale is irrelevant. After what has been done, and is being done, to the Palestinians, did people seriously expect them to turn round and vote for Liberals?
The Israeli state is an appalling racist aberration. Israel’s creation was, exactly like the growth of Hamas, an understandable but deeply regrettable phenomenon arising from a terrible evil done to a people, hijacked by a rampant religious extremism and its pre-existing plans. For cultural reasons, and in strong contrast to the religous extremism of Hamas, the religious extremism of Zionism found strong support in the West.
Zionism is complete bullshit. I have just as much right to claim the Celtic lake sites in Switzerland that were holy to my vague and supposed ancestors.
It is high time that thinking Europeans had the courage of their convictions and completely rejected the notion of the racist and mystic Israeli state. There can and should be no two state solution. What is needed is a single state, blind to ethnicity or religion, on the lands of Israel/Palestine. That is the only path that has any hope of leading to peace.
Bishop Brennan
Thanks, and very happy I had your support when it was rather scarce :-).
The only reason the Jewish people should ot have their homeland, is that they stole it from someone else, and herded them into something very like concentration camps. But that is a rather important reason.
lwtc247 – yup, obsessed (Israyhell? come ON. Akin to Satanists? What, you mean all their "crimes" are made up by the media? I tell you, if the Satanists were running Israel the world would be a happier place.) I think your basic premise about the *foundation* of Israel is correct (it was a caving-in to Zionist terrorism). However, the holocaust (subsequently hijacked by Israel as a wholly Jewish tragedy) provided the Zionists with a unparalleled public relations windfall that ensured Israel's later *survival*.
Writerman – spot on.
Craig – while you're undoubtedly right that Israel was formed by ethnic cleansing and should all be given back to its owners, you run up against the UN on that one. And speaking as someone who keeeps banging on about all those UN resolutions Israel ignores (the ones requiring it to give back its more recent and not-at-all-UN-sanctioned bits of Lebensraum) I don't feel I can just ignore the UN when it suits me. Hell, Israel and the USA do that. The fact is that a single state solution, like an independent Scotland, would be ideal: a two-state solution, like Scottish devolution, is a damned sight better than what it would replace, and has the advantage of being achievable in principle by political means.
In any case, if successive Israeli governments keep up the genocide of the Palestinians and their charming habit of invading ther neighbours whenever it gets a bit crowded at home, I am confident that the sleeping tiger that is the rest of the world (minus the USA, of course) will eventually awaken and squash it. Israel really is its own worst enemy.
And wary as I am of any further nuclear proliferation, it must be said that if Iran did have nukes (it hasn't) it would be a useful counterbalance in the region….
Craig,
You're ignoring quite a lot of history, including the genocidal attempts by the Arab Palestinians against the Jews in the 1930's and 1940's.
The situation now did not come out of nowhere.
Ruth,
OK, sorry. But I still maintain that while holocaust deniers should be entitled to their view, they are fair game for intellectual ridicule.
There isn't enough mutual trust between the Israelis and the Palestinians to form a single state, and the formation of such a state would not itself solve the land theft by settlers issue. AFAICS the only way a single state solution could occur is after a generation of peace with separate de facto states, e.g. after the 20-year cease fire Hamas has proposed.
Chomsky's position is similar to mine I think.
Huge chunks of the world are now inhabited by peoples whose ancestors stole it. It is not possible to return these isles to the pre-Celts, or North America to the natives, or Japan to the Ainu. At the same time, future land thefts must be prevented, and no-one must be given the idea that if they can hang onto stolen land for a generation, then it's their descendants to keep. As such, there needs to be a method to decide which land thefts to correct, and which not. The only viable method to do this is through the UN, and the UN says Israel stays.
I agree with Rob's UN argument above.
Bishop Brennan, what is your source for your claim that "Palestinian children are taught that Jews are filth and should die"? I've seen fraudulent claims of horrible Palestinian textbooks, so I'm sceptical of claims like these.
"Bishop Brennan, what is your source for your claim that "Palestinian children are taught that Jews are filth and should die"? I've seen fraudulent claims of horrible Palestinian textbooks, so I'm sceptical of claims like these."
Bishop Brennan
I think you will find its the other way round but only for a few thank God…most are not like that.If they were we are all lost.
Watch it all…
http://tinyurl.com/8t7enf
"The Holy Land Unvelied"…
http://tinyurl.com/9lr9o6
"Gaza Massacre"…
http://tinyurl.com/9zzdd9
Be careful, half truths are very dangerous.
I understand your principled stance that there should be a one state solution, but I am intrigued as to the practicalities of that proposition.
Can you give us an outline as to how this would be applied. Should the inhabitants of Sderdot be cleansed and the village pass back to its original name and be repopulated by those who were forced out of Najd in 1948?
Can you please explain exactly what would happen to the Israelis?
You say Hamas is an aberration, but as it is a branch of Al Ikhwan, the world's most extensive Islamist political movement, I suspect you are incorrect. The movement predates Israel by twenty years and was heavily involved in fighting Jewish immigration into the region from its inception.
I think it is necessary to address these issues. Currently the only people proposing a one state solution come from Al Ikhwan, as it says in the Hamas Charter:
"The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Muslim generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up."
As a land consecrated for Muslims, what should happen to the Jews and Christians who currently live there?
In arguing the case for Palestine, and given that this is not the only example of mass population movements, where in history should the line of status quo be drawn?
Should we reassess the treaties of Sevres and Lausanne? Should Turkey be split and Kurdish territories pass into self government? Should Turkey vacate lands that had been owned by Armenians?
Please let us know exactly where this line should be as you have already ridiculed any claim you might have on the lakes of Switzerland and lauded the Palestinian claims, please specify exactly what should be returned and what should not.
Ivc24 wrote
"The state of Israyhell was planned and agreed upon way before the horrors of what was done to the Jewish people was discovered."
Before the Holocaust – yes. Before pogroms against Jews – no – they'd been going on since medieval times.
Rob wrote "Craig,
You're ignoring quite a lot of history, including the genocidal attempts by the Arab Palestinians against the Jews in the 1930's and 1940's.
The situation now did not come out of nowhere."
Those Palestinians involved in it – mainly the Grand Mufti – did something shameful and criminal. That doesn't somehow make all Israeli actions (and ones by Zionist groups before Israel was founded) justified.