I should start by saying that I deeply regret, and have always regretted, the support for Hamas amongst Palestinians. I view Hamas as a nasty organization espousing an unpleasant and narrow version of Islam, and far too ready to turn to violence. I regret the passing of the secular minded and sophisticated wide culture of the urbane Palestinian elite of my youth.
I understand that Palestinian willingness to embrace the limiting certainties of Hamas is due to the appalling pressure caused by decades of unspeakable violence and repression by Israel, the squeezing of Palestinians into ever-shrinking over-crowded reservations, the killings, the continual unrelenting humiliation, the deliberate destruction of all economic base. I understand Hamas won support through social programmes. I understand the extreme corruption of the Fatah leadership, where some seemed to do very nicely out of the disaster that repressed everybody else. I understand the role of Israel and the US in promoting the initial growth of Hamas to weaken the Palestinian cause. My regret is that they succeeded.
Personally I doubt that this latest Hamas/Fatah rapprochement will last any longer than the previous ones. Even for a people in the direst situation, there will always be self-seeking sociopaths emerging as leaders.
But even with all that, the appalling smug reaction of Netanyahu is sickening. Israel at no stage had the slightest intention of entering any meaningful peace process, stopping settlement building, or reducing the dispossession and discrimination suffered by Arabs of all sorts within Israel itself. The World’s most vicious and unrelenting theological and racist state continues to be just that. The United States was not in any sense genuinely involved in abetting a peace process; it was managing the process of genocide of the Palestinians, drawn out over decades, just conducted with enough disguise to allow the mainstream media to pretend it is not happening.
I do not like Hamas, but they remain morally superior to Netanyahu on every conceivable measure.
Brian, if Blair had said it it would be the first honest mouthful to have passed over his forked tongue and into the public domain. Nice one!
Just to confuse John we now have the OSCE which has its roots in the CSCE. These Wiki links might clarify. It’s all about global domination which the TTIP will extend.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organization_for_Security_and_Co-operation_in_Europe
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commission_on_Security_and_Cooperation_in_Europe
Wikileaks on TPP http://wikileaks.org/tpp/
and Wikipedia on TTIP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_Trade_and_Investment_Partnership
Remember the last acronym.
I’m surprised (well not really) that we haven’t heard even a pipsqueak of protest from those who have shown such an interest in defending the freedom of the internet in the past to Putin’s statement about the internet being a CIA project or to the founder of the Russian Facebook being forced out so that it could be taken over by the KGB
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/24/vladimir-putin-web-breakup-internet-cia
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/apr/02/founder-pavel-durov-leaves-russian-social-network-site-vkontakte
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-27113292
Well at least the Putinistas might be a little quieter since they wouldn’t want to be seem participating in a CIA project would they?
I might have guessed some prat would chirp in with denigrating nonsense, and who was it, Resident Dissident. Now there’s a surprise. OK watch US Senator Cardin’s speech for yourself. You’ll agree with every word I have no doubt. But it proves my point about there being no impartiality in the US led OCSE. Keep getting your nonsense from Wikipedia and you’ll end up like the other sheep. Baa. Baa. Baa. WTF has it got to do with Europe, or for that matter Iraq, or Afghanistan and all the other countries it thinks it has an inalienable right to which to dictate?
Forgot the link.
http://www.senate.gov/isvp/?type=live&comm=csce&filename=csce040914
I saw that too Brian. Very droll but see that the Guardian are promoting it without any irony. They promoted BLiar to perpetrate his war crimes and still promote him to this day. Remember Nick Cohen’s stuff in 2003?
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/video/2014/apr/25/tony-blair-cassetteboy-video-mashup-bloomberg-speech
http://www.blogistan.co.uk/blog/mt.php/2013/03/03/ten-years-on-nick-cohen-celebrates-the-iraq-invasion-with-an-irrelevant-question
Thanks Mary for the links. But I do not need those. Senator Cardin speaks for himself and the rest of the Yankee-Doodle-Dandies trying to tell Europe what is or is not right for us.
Robert Fisk in tomorrow’s Independent.
Yet another betrayal of the Palestinians
‘Barack Obama becomes the latest US President effectively to give up on the peace process’
Dead in the water. Just as the entire world predicted – with the exception of Messrs Barack Obama and John Kerry and, I suppose, our favourite “peace” envoy Tony Blair – the whole fandango of an Israeli-Palestinian “peace” has collapsed again. US President Obama, walking away from the car crash for which his own political cowardice is entirely to blame, says it’s time for a “pause”. Could there be a more chilling word for America’s impotence in the Middle East?
Of course – lock-stepping with Israel as usual – Obama condemned Mahmoud Abbas for the “unhelpful” step of trying to form a unity government with Hamas, a skewed version of events that entirely chimes with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s predictable claim that the Palestinian President “formed an alliance with a murderous terrorist organisation that calls for Israel’s destruction”.
Forget that Mr Abbas insists that this Palestinian unity would be founded on recognition of Israel, renunciation of violence and acceptance of previous agreements.
/..
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-yet-another-betrayal-of-the-palestinians-9290402.html
The OCSE is not US led
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organization_for_Security_and_Co-operation_in_Europe
No I don’t agree with every word of Senator Cardin’s speech.
Boy do you old Soviets hate the old Helsinki Accord don’t you – biggest mistake you ever made to sign up and allow all those foreigners (and not a few dissidents) to ask awkward questions about human rights and try and enforce all those articles in the UN Charter (remember the one you were praising a few weeks back) that the good old USSR had been avoiding until then. And now they are trying to stop your latest hero going back to the good old days.
Still no boycott of the CIA internet project by the faithful?
The BBC’s main news last night: “The decades old conflict between these two sides threatens to reignite – that’s why the US want to restart the peace talks.”
Yeah, they’re just an honest broker, like the BBC is an impartial news-gathering organisation. Hopefully, the Palestinians have had enough of the charade of peace talks. The alternative is a very one-sided slaughter, so I understand why they stayed with the charade for so long.
Israel might give up a few West Bank towns – that will be the state of Palestine – and of course they’ll control the borders, trade, water and electricity just like Gaza. That might be Palestine, in 10 years time or so, once Israel has stolen all the land it needs – a few tightly-controlled ghettos will constitute a nation. And the BBC will hail the person who fills John Kerry’s shoes as a hero of our times.
Mary 25 Apr, 2014 – 10:37 pm
Palestine is another failed state, like Iraq, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan etc, etc. It is what the west does. Ukraine will end up the same if the Yanks get their way. Thay are out to destroy the world.
Come on spellcheck. There’s no such word as ‘Thay’ is thay?
Resident Dissident (22h42)
Well said – and spot on. The Soviets made a big, big boo-boo – they thought it was one of those agreements which they could sign up to and then speedily ignore. BIG mistake!
BTW, I love the Insolent Squatter’s haughty tone : “In case there are any detractors to my view that the OCSE is a spin-off of NATO,…”. He is really convinced it’s “his” blog, isn’t he.
From the tone of his last few intemperate posts today he seems to be feeling the pressure. Off to the Gulag with the trolls!
“No I don’t agree with every word of Senator Cardin’s speech.”
That surprises me. What do you not agree with?
From a Continental French language newspaper today (my translation):
“Israel suspends the peace process.
………..Finally, a Fatah heavyweight Jibril Rajoub declared that he was “confident that the peace talks would continue because Hamas has changed and accepts the existence of Israel within its pre-Six Day War borders (June 1967). An affirmation denied by the Hamas spokesman in Gaza, Issam El Bardawil, according to whom his organization “will never accept the Zionist entity, will not deal with it and will not be part of a government which will accept it.”……..”
*********************
A bon entendeur!
That surprises me. What do you not agree with?
I don’t think he says enough to support those in Russia who are prepared to stand up the aggressive nationalism and corruption of the Putin regime – and recognise that the problem is that we wants to replicate the same within the Ukraine . There are a lot of shared interests between Russians and Ukrainians and these need to be acknowledged – they both share a need to deal with the same problems whoich come from the same source. There needs to be more direct dialogue with and support for the progressive forces within Russia – and recognition that Putin is using this dispute to beat the old nationalist drum within Russia .
Mary; “Mods There is a nasty mixture of dog dirt and ad hominems being left at the end of the previous threads going back to ‘UK Moves to Block US Senate Report to Protect Blair”
Thanks for the heads-up on the latest communication attempt from the Angry Aussie (aka The Germanic “Somebody”) !
“Atheism, the religious belief in the certainty of the unknowable.”
“That surprises me. What do you not agree with?
I don’t think he says enough to support those in Russia who are prepared to stand up the aggressive nationalism and corruption of the Putin regime – and recognise that the problem is that we wants to replicate the same within the Ukraine . There are a lot of shared interests between Russians and Ukrainians and these need to be acknowledged – they both share a need to deal with the same problems whoich come from the same source. There needs to be more direct dialogue with and support for the progressive forces within Russia – and recognition that Putin is using this dispute to beat the old nationalist drum within Russia .”
Other than that then do you think his analysis of the situation in the Ukraine was unbiased? Because I don’t. It reminded me of the BBC, or NBC, and shows exactly where the US-led OCSE is coming from: America.
One of the reasons I have to watch alternatives to MSM is because you get the same old shit Cardin is spouting.
Re Cardin, Mr Goss says “Other than that…”
But that was exactly Resident Dissident’s point, wasn’t it.
Other than that then do you think his analysis of the situation in the Ukraine was unbiased?
I don’t think his view on the Ukraine was unbiased – just like I don’t think yours or mine own are unbiased. There is nothing wrong with being biased against an injustice – the real question is whether the bias is supported by something other than prejudice.
As an additional point I would also council the Senator to be more careful in distinguishing between Russia and the Russian Government – the distinction may not be so important for his domestic audience but it certainly is to most Russians.
Habba
I think he should stick to singing!
Squonk; l feel certain our resident adolescents
can fool the censors and browse online peep shows with sufficient maturity to display a teenaged pov. They reach that higher frequently.
‘They reach that high bar frequently.’
“There is nothing wrong with being biased against an injustice – the real question is whether the bias is supported by something other than prejudice. ”
I agree that we are all biased. But that is not the real question. The real question is, and was when I put it, that the OCSE is a spin-off of NATO and US-led interference in Europe. To try and put the question for the third time:
Has the United States any right to interfere in European affairs through in your eyes a neutral organisation, OCSE, and through my eyes an American quango?
Macky –
Mary; “Mods There is a nasty mixture of dog dirt and ad hominems being left at the end of the previous threads going back to ‘UK Moves to Block US Senate Report to Protect Blair”
Thanks for the heads-up on the latest communication attempt from the Angry Aussie (aka The Germanic “Somebody”) !
“Atheism, the religious belief in the certainty of the unknowable.”
– – – – x – – – – x – – – – x – – – – x – – – –
The Illiterati
Two uneducated phlegm buckets, one a mad chicken-breeding anti-semite who dispenses imperious instructions to the moderator with a click of her heels, the other a barely functional simpleton who fancies himself as a political scientist, together taking on the world of injustice one delusion at a time.
*slow clap*
Habbabkuk and Resident Dissident,
Why don’t you both get a room so you can deeply examine your inner tag-team trollishness?
A great commentary on both the cynicism of the U.S. in promoting “peace talks” when all parties know they are nothing of the kind, and the tragedy of the never-ending Nakba in Palestine since 1947.
Man’s inhumanity to man, where holocaust victim becomes genocide perpetrator.
LOL I do not ‘breed; chickens. I have two hens, now pets. I am not an anti semite (that old saw again!). There have been many explanations here as to the exact meaning of semite. I am pro truth and justice for the Palestinians and against support of the Zionist entity, spoken or unspoken. Also I am not racist unlike some who comment on this blog who seem to be more concerned about a person’s skin colour than who the person is.
You can only weep.
A wonderful human is murdered. His life was completely opposite to that of Cameron, Netanyahu and Obama for example.
He said ‘I mean, they are in the hypocrisy of speaking for the spirit with which they have lost touch.’ Exactly Father Frans. With you in every thought you expressed. The picture with the slow learners with the flowers in the small holding is very touching. ‘Consider the lilies of the field ……………….’ comes to mind.
‘Frans, though, stayed true to his life’s work. Through the appalling siege of Homs, his devotion to the Syrian people never faltered. To the end he spoke not of Christians or Muslims but of fellow human beings struggling to survive.
“There is nothing more painful than watching mothers searching for food for their children in the streets,” he said in a video clip released in February. “We love life, we want to live. And we do not want to sink in a sea of pain and suffering.”‘
Frans van der Lugt: A Dutch priest in Homs
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-27155474
A beautiful obituary produced by the BBC and written by Daniel Silas Adamson in Bethlehem.