Strangely, even the sight on television of the body of a small boy, the same age as Cameron, being dug by hand from the bomb rubble, is not what has stayed with me strongest from the latest attack on the Palestinians. Instead, I recall most vividly a radio broadcast on the BBC World Service two days before the attack on Gaza began.
It was a banal, everyday story of Palestinian villagers being evicted from their land in the occupied West Bank, to make way for an Israeli “military zone”. These pastoralists had lost a thousand hectares to the Israelis in the last few years, and now these ancient villages were being finally, forcibly, evacuated in a vicious act of ethnic cleansing. The shepherds claimed that what this was really about, was the precious springs that watered their livestock. Work was already starting to divert their water to nearby, and illegal, burgeoning Israeli settlements.
The BBC World Service TV has this minute, at 9.00am GMT, started its news broadcast as usual from Ashkelon in Israel, highlighting rocket attacks on Israel. There is no mention on the BBC – there has never been any mention on the BBC, or anywhere in the Western mainstream media – that for at least 4,000 years Ashkelon was an Arab town, until in 1948 the entire, Arab population of 12,000 was driven out by armed force, many being massacred. Doubtless some older inhabitants of Gaza are refugees whose home is Ashkelon.
Israel is exercising its right of self-defence in precisely the same sense that Hitler was exercising the right of self-defence in Normandy in 1944 – ie not at all. Why the world puts up with this blatant ethnic cleansing and prolonged, agonizing genocide of the Palestinain people, I have no idea. It is not just about bombs and rockets and deaths now. It is about the shepherds being pushed out of their village in 2012 as part of the same process of the massacre of Ashkelon in 1948, all a process of genocide of the Palestinians in which Obama, Clinton, Cameron and Hague, as two wholw generations of western politicians before them, are actively complicit.
Craig, I’m not sure how the term ‘self-defence’ is defined in international-legalese, but I have heard it said that any occupier who continues to maintain an occupation in contradiction of international law cannot lay claim to the rationale of self-defence for any retaliatory actions against those being occupied. Is this the case?
That said, Brendan, Seumas Milne has written a good piece for today’s print Guardian, with some of the points Israel would rather were not published –
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/nov/20/palestinians-have-right-defend-themselves
CiFWatch (a subsidiary of BICOM) are apoplectic about it. Well done, Seumas. Keep it up.
Am I hearing right? Claims that one or two people (one said to be female) got on bus, left package and got off again right outside a military base? Suspects not apprehended as of latest news.
Was listening to some official Zionist stooge doing ‘earnest’ nearly as well as Alan Partridge last night. All Israel wanted, he said, was peace.
Yeah. That’s what he said. Let’s deconstruct that a little:
http://occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com/2010/10/03/the-deathmasters-israeli-massacres-on-palestinians/
From Haaretz today:
Activists from the Coalition Against Racism in Israel demanded Tuesday that Upper Nazareth Mayor Shimon Gafsou be “indicted for racist statements” after he sent a letter to Interior Minister Eli Yishai claiming that Nazareth is full of “Israel-hating residents whose place is in Gaza and not here.”
http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/israeli-mayor-calls-on-state-to-declare-arab-city-hostile-to-israel.premium-1.479366
Hamas denies claiming responsibility. There were unofficial claims in Gaza but it seems that Hamas has not (as of now anyway) officially claimed responsibility despite reports saying they have. They have supported the action though but not claimed responsibility.
Oh, hell.
http://www.itv.com/news/update/2012-11-21/israel-radio-reports-of-second-explosion-near-shopping-centre/
Looks like Fatah is getting sick of just watching in horror.
….that ol’ divide-and-conquer thing doesn’t work so well if you’re pissing on ALL the divided, does it?
Massive sequence of explosions in Gaza right now.
Last Saturday the BBC’s “Any Answers” ‘phone-in had a line of people queuing to congratulate/ defend Israeli action, all sounded British. It was the usual thing, “If Israel lays down its weapons, there would be no Israel the next day. If Hamas lays down its weapons, there would be peace the next day” etc. etc. – surprised the old “pushed into the sea” cannard never got aired. But a lone voice did speak for Palestine, a woman speaking out the incursions, occupation, settlements and so on. She got a couple of points across, but was pretty drowned out in the pro-Israeli calls.
I find it very hard to believe this sample is representative of British public opinion.
Then again, the BBC led for a couple of days with the solemn announcement that a third person has now been killed in Israel, spoken with a gravity usually reserved for the death of an ancient Royal. No mention of the vastly greater number killed on the less defended side.
“Israel is exercising its right of self-defence in precisely the same sense that Hitler was exercising the right of self-defence in Normandy in 1944 – ie not at all”.
Sorry, Craig – although I really don’t think the Israelis are nearly as evil as the Nazis were, I think there’s a flaw in your analogy.
Surely France declared war on Germany in 1939 – not the other way round? And I don’t think France could claim any real provocation. How could the German invasion of Poland – on its opposite flank from France – seriously injure France’s interests? (By that logic many nations should have declared war on the USA in the last 50 years!)
Having started the war, France then lost it fair and square. Its armies were defeated, its territory was overrun, and its government surrendered. No ifs or buts – France declared war on Germany, was completely defeated, and surrendered. I’m not sure what international law says about the occupation of a country under those circumstances, but if the occupation was illegal then surely so was that of Germany, Italy and Japan by the Allies after 1945.
So I would argue that Hitler’s legal position was substantially stronger than that of the Israelis.
I think we have to start firmly and consistently pinning the label of “appeasers” of psychopathic genocide on the leaders of the Western world who are refusing to condemn Israel’s massacres in Gaza.
This not a war. It is a one-sided massacre.
The Palestinians have no army, navy, air-force, no air defence system, no air-raid shelters and they have no heavy weapons–just small arms. They are surrounded on all sides by Israel’s state of the art, high-tech armed forces and navy courtesy of the USA.
Yet, the Israelis yesterday dropped leaflets on Gaza cynically calling upon them to “evacuate” knowing full well that there was nowhere for them to go.
Now Hague is saying that ‘Terrorists must not be allowed to set the agenda’
Surely the terrorists have been allowed to set the agenda since at least 1948, with the support of the like of Hague, or am I missing something here?
He’s also apparently “concerned at emerging reports of a bomb attack on a bus in Tel Aviv”
He doesn’t show such concern when it’s Palestinian chidren being blown to bit by his friends.
Surely the craven hypocrisy of this man is apparent to even the dimmest of humanity.
http://www.itv.com/news/story/2012-11-14/israel-hamas-gaza/#hague-terrorists-must-not-be-allowed-to-set-the-agenda_120523
http://www.timeturk.com/en/2012/11/21/israel-intensifies-attacks-during-visit-of-ministers.html
And Libya has sent aid to Gaza. WTG.
Jews sans frontiers blog has this ironic post exposing the train of “logic” of the good “hasbara” (propagandist for Israel): “How apologize for Israel like a pro”.
http://jewssansfrontieres.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/still-relevant-especially-today-four.html
This is a good account of what happened to this village and its occupants during the period of the Mandate and then again in Al Naqba.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarafand_al-Amar
and
{http://www.theage.com.au/national/massacre-that-stained-the-light-horse-20090724-dv3o.html}
How fitting, all these explosions and suspicious people not being apprehended, before the 1’oclock news.
I do not think the first explosion was from Hamas, why such a small package designed to injure and not kill?
We have to wait what the second explosion is all about but this looks like the masters of false flagging are at it again, since when did they ever care about innocent bystanders if they can fool the International community that this is the last drop that fills the barrel, look at us poor mites taking all this stick from those terrorists.
What’s Harry making of all this?
I think you have a good point, A Casual Observer.
“Why is it when Israel begin a fresh bout of ethnic cleansing do the BBC repeatedly ram the Holocaust down our throats? Is this coincidence?”
The points of similarity between Israel and Nazi Germany are many and glaringly obvious. Apparently someone decided that “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em”. Apart from the fact that most of the Nazis’ most horrible policies came straight out of the Old Testament, we can immediately cite
1. Belief in a single Master Race destined to rule the world. (Including belief in the outdated and discredited notion that there are distinct human “races”).
2. Belief that all other human beings are only slightly, if at all, more dignified than animals; both animals and foreigners (non-Aryans or gentiles respectively) existing purely to help make life more comfortable for the Master Race.
3. Desire for the Master Race to procreate rapidly, thus filling up the earth. What about the other races? What about the other races indeed? They can be displaced into arid desert regions, where with any luck most of them will die of “natural causes” (starvation, thirst, exposure, disease, etc.) If too many survive, measures can be taken…
4. Willingness, verging on eagerness, to use extreme violence. After all, forgiveness and tolerance are signs of weakness, which the Master Race cannot afford. Utter ruthlessness becomes a virtue when dealing with Untermenschen (sorry, gentiles).
5. Great sophistication in the use of applied violence. Cultivation of techniques such as control of the air, commando tactics, and Blitzkrieg (sorry, “Shock and Awe”).
6. Determination to demonstrate that one member of the Master Race is worth more than hundreds or thousands of subhumans. So, when a MMR is killed by an SH, reprisals involve the killing of scores, hundreds, or thousands of SHs.
7. Mastery of propaganda. (See the writings of Hitler, Goebbels, etc., passim). Particularly the Big Lie: “The great masses of the people in the very bottom of their hearts tend to be corrupted rather than consciously and purposely evil … therefore, in view of the primitive simplicity of their minds, they more easily fall a victim to a big lie than to a little one, since they themselves lie in little things, but would be ashamed of lies that were too big”.
8. Self-conscious pride in Culture, which helps to prove how superior the MR is to the SHs.
Adding further points to this indictment, a fairly easy task, is left as an exercise to the student. It should, however, be noted that the above beliefs are by no means exclusive to Israelis or even Jews. Most contemporary Americans, for instance, seem to feel that – even if they have been reluctantly compelled to accept black Americans as equals – brown Asians (especially if Muslim) are far less important than themselves.
Israelis didn’t seem interested in forensics from that bus from the pictures. Bus was also driven away from scene under its own power within an hour or so of the blast
Are these explosion false flag ops to give Netanyahu the pretext to extend the attacks on Gaza? I think we should be told. It stinks.
This was written a day or so ago when the death toll in Gaza stood at 100.
Nevertheless, it makes a good analysis of Israel’s game plan.
[..]Indeed, with the sectarian attacks taking place in Syria spilling over into Lebanon, Hezbollah itself is similarly in little position to lend the type of support to Gaza that it did in 2006, for example, by opening a second front in response to Israeli shelling of Palestinians. Stratfor again: “Hezbollah will likely be extremely cautious in deciding whether to participate in this war. The group’s fate is linked to that of the embattled regime of Syrian President Bashar al Assad; should Syria fracture along sectarian lines, Lebanon is likely to descend into civil war, and Hezbollah will have to conserve its strength and resources for a battle at home against its sectarian rivals.”
If Syria does fall, therefore, we can expect to see far more Israeli massacres of the type now currently under way. Not only will Syria be knocked out of the ‘resistance axis’ altogether, and Hezbollah left without a supply line from Iran, but Iran itself will be left isolated and less able to provide the Gazans with the missiles that currently provide their only effective deterrent to a renewed Israeli occupation.
This goes some way to explaining why the Israelis have been so supportive of the Syrian rebels, with Peres and Barak both throwing their weight behind the militias. Syria’s support for Hezbollah, and the link it provides to Iran, has been a key obstacle to Israel’s ability to attack the Palestinians with impunity, and therefore to its ability to unilaterally impose a final settlement on Palestine. For now, the main obstacle to Israeli diktat remains the Fajr-5.
http://dissidentvoice.org/2012/11/gaza-and-syria/
“The dark charisma Adolf Hitler”
I also saw this, and was puzzled. The programme was almost entirely content free – simply stock footage of the nazis with a highly loaded commentary on what we should think of them. It had ludicrous graphics, and a sound track of barbarically edited classical music (three bars of this, four of that, cacophonous throughout). It came across like a longer version of Orwell’s Two Minute Hate. What on earth was it for?
Ronaldo donates 1.5 million € to the children of Gaza ! A great gesture from a great player. I hope other celebrities join him in what amounts to a protest to the slaughter and destruction taking place.
Comparing the IDF to the German army does not really ring true.The Germans fought against armies. The IDF pick on the defenceless and have been doing the same since 1947 and before that in the 30’s when they were known as Irgun and Hagannah.The children of those Terrorists are now running Israel, and calling the ethnically cleansed the terrorist.
Our media is pathetic and just like our Foreign Minister (Little Willie)and the British Ambassador to Israel are part of the Zionist mouthpiece.The anti semites are the Zionists.
exactly venceremos, this will be used as the final incitement to re-occupy Gaza.
Agree with Tom Welsh and casual Observer, the set up was planned for month ahead so it seems, and all the trailers were working up to some dark and dank mood before it even went out. Full spectrum media dominance over the tricks department, but only us who sit outside their bubble can see this, the vast majority of apolitical apathetic non voters and the average 9-5 Joe Bloogs does not understand the nuances of this contrite news management.
All those who ever wanted to scratch my eyes out/have a pint in mutual solace, this Sat. will be your chance if Phil comes up with a venue suggestion. would love to meet you all, but do recognise that many of you live in Scotland.
Sorry Suhayl, no London tea for you, unless….
Nevermind,
IDF bombed very close to Harry as he was interviewing an injured cameraman for RT about an hour ago. Harry commented that “Israel has shot itself in the foot as never before have Palestinians been more united against them.”
For the record, the Middle East debate yesterday in the HoC. Hours of waffle from Hague,
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmhansrd/cm121120/debtext/121120-0001.htm#12112042000004 and the following page.
12.35pm onwards until 2.10pm
plus a point of order from Halfon who like many others in the debate forgot to mention his allegiance to Israel.
Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con): On a point of order, Mr Speaker. For the avoidance of doubt, when I asked the Foreign Secretary my question I should have referred Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.
Mr Speaker: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for putting that on the record.
Was a time I was ashamed to be the same nationality as William Hague, nowadays I’m ashamed to be the same species. How the hell did a boverboy get to be Foreign Secretary anyway? How did someone who lost an overwhelming vote of no confidence in his ability to run the country from the people of Britain in 2001 get to be deciding foreign policy?
Don’t suppose him joining Conservative Friends of Israel when he was 15 has harmed his career prospects any.
If you give, as America and her satraps have, a blank cheque to Israel, sooner or later a psycho will get to play with drones. Netanyahu has created more ‘terrorists’ than OBL could have hoped for.
“Why the world puts up with this blatant ethnic cleansing and prolonged, agonizing genocide of the Palestinain people, I have no idea.”
Two words: Suez Canal. You think the ghost of Abdel Nasser isn’t haunting a lot of people right now?
Guess what the Western media news will lead on this evening and tomorrow? (Hint. It won’t be dead children in Gaza).
Never forget that Zionism was a terrorist movement during the British mandate. The King David Hotel in Jerusalem–British HQ–was blown up by their militia. The present Israeli government has its roots in that movement. And they are not above bombing their own kind on a bus if it gives them the pretext to slaughter more defenceless Palestinians Gaza.