Massacre in Gaza: Israeli strikes kill more than 200

Funny, this was not the main focus on CBC news. Nope. The main focus was on how kind Israel was being in allowing food and water to be sent to Gaza. The press only mentioned rockets being launched at Israel.

 

 

That was a horribly biased and slanted article.

 

Israel = Good Hammas = Bad

 

One of Israel's worst political crimes is to have sidelined and crushed the left and progressive forces among Palestinians which were active, even dominant, in the 60s and 70s, and directed Palestinians into the Islamic dead ends of Hamas, Jihad and the like - capturing a soldier here and there, shooting some rockets, and presiding over Israel's genocidal destruction of the Palestinian people, their dreams and aspirations. That's when Hamas and Fatah are not waging their murderous internecine battles.

Yes, the world must continue to denounce and isolate the Israeli war criminals. But sooner or later, a leadership must arise in that region to unite all inhabitants, regardless of religion or ethnicity, in common struggle to expel all foreign influence and live together in peace.

As you can probably tell by the fog on the screen, I'm not holding my breath.

Through occupation and the subsequent land, sea and air blockade, military repression has been the main instrument through which Israel provokes its enemies, by suffocating the Palestinian people, young and old alike.  Israel maintains the status quo through violence because it purposefully avoids peace, because real peace requires significant concessions and a return of gains acquired through aggression.  Something they are incapable of doing because of internal political considerations.  The oppressed are left with no choice but to struggle against overwhelming odds.

That is pretty simplistic.

 One of the fundamental aspects missing from this analysis is the fact that the left allowed itself to be corrupted, and worse, it also failed partly because it too, more often than not, was not free of associations with imperial designs of the Soviet Union. The left, where it has achieved government in the Arab world has also used brutal means of oppression, in the name of leftist principles. On the brighter side of the spectrum of Arab socialists one can say that Nasser had substantive political legitimacy, but then we have Assad in Syria, and worse Hussien in Iraq.

The track record of "the left" in the Arab world is hardly very progressive, and not very inspiring. Blaming the failure of the left on western agression, and Israeli Malfeasance is a cop-out.

Cueball, you are blackening the Left in the Arab world with a pretty broad brush there. There is truth in all you say, but there are leftists in the Arab world who have not fallen victims to corruption, and nowadays the Soviet influence is a memory. I know progressives in the territories; suppose that historically at least they were associated with PFLP. Not perfect by any means, but not the extreme corruption - and now, collaboration, to be found in Fateh or the extreme social reaction of religious fundie Hamas. Sure, they are in solidarity with Hamas against Israeli aggression, but are none the less critical of its agenda against women and against personal freedoms. Israel DID do a lot to destroy the Left in Palestine, thinking that it would be better to deal with religious parties. This makes the combat of Palestinian progressives - and in particular of Palestinian feminists - all the more arduous. The real burial shrouds of families destroyed by Israeli shelling are far worse than the symbolic shrouds women are forced to don, but that does not excuse the symbolic shroud.

"I'm listening to Radio-Canada and the coverage is very factual - not Israel-apologetic at all"(Lagatta)

Whaaaat?!!!

I just listened to the radio news on Première chaîne and it featured, as usual, Sionist mouthpiece Danielle Kriegel mouthing the official line from Jerusalem - including the announcement of more Israeli strikes!!!!!!!!! -  with analysis limited to the predictable speculation by unnamed Israeli sources about "fear of reprisals".

ETA: Last sentence of the 1 p.m. broadcast: "President Ehud Barak warned that reprisals would continue and intensify as long as it would be necessary." (my translation)

If you really believe that this perspective is factual, lagatta and Le T, I suggest you record one of her reports and transcribe it by hand, including her white-washing word choices, e.g. describing exchanges of gunfire "between soldiers and Palestinians". Kriegel is an Israeli government flunky who probably would have described the Sabra and Chatila massacre as agitation in Palestinian strongholds! The fact that Radio-Canada seems unwilling to give voice to a more objective journalist about the war on Palestine is a bloody shame and probably a direct reflection of Canadian and Israeli govt censorship.

For a more realistic perpsective, check out Al-Jazeera's treatment of this horrible renewed assault by a terrorist State, surfing on Canada's uncritical support.

Or don't you trust Arabs?

Martin, it wasn't Danielle Kriegel, who is indeed as you say; it was just a file story. You were listening to a later version of the news. Calm down; I'm not one to swallow the Israeli government lie or "distrust Arabs". Don't you follow babblers' posting histories? I took part in the PAJU vigils for many years, and was involved in Palestine solidarity decades before that. Sometimes you just seem pissed-off at everybody.

Palestine Remembered -

http://www.palestineremembered.com/index.html

in order to create Israel, 400 Palestinian villages were destroyed and their occupants killed or forced to find new housing. Yet the Western media - including, unfortunately, Canada's - commemorates Israel's "60th anniversary" and talks about their "war of independence" without saying a word about the other half of the story - what the Palestinians call Al Nakba.

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http://LASIK-Flap.com ~ Health Warning about LASIK Eye Surgery

Emergency demo in Montréal: Demonstration to commemorate Palestinian victims of Israeli massacre in Gaza ------------------------------ SUNDAY, DECEMBER 28th, 13h00 Norman Bethune Square corner: Guy & de Maisonneuve (metro Guy-Concordia) ------------------------------ In response to the latest massacre of Palestinians executed by the Israeli apartheid regime. At least 200 Palestinians have been killed in the latest Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip, while the threat for further bloodshed still hands heavily over the skies in Palestine as the current Israeli assault over Gaza continues. This is the single largest massacre in Gaza since Israel illegally occupied Gaza in 1967, many among the dead are civilians and the numbers keeps mounting. Israel's military operation "Cast Lead" has echoes of previous Israeli raids into Gaza that have been characterized by indiscriminate attacks on civilian population centers, mass detentions, violent house demolitions and other forms of collective punishment against the Palestinian people. Additionally this demonstration will address the Canadian government's total support towards Israel, best exemplified increased bilateral military, political and economic links. Israel's latest massacre in Gaza occurs with official Canadian complicity towards Israel's illegal siege and ongoing sanctions over the civilian population in Gaza. Over the past two years the Gaza Strip has been undergoing the daily violence of a wide-ranging humanitarian catastrophe triggered by severely reduced access to energy, food, and medicines. In effect, Gaza is the world's largest open air prison. At this moment, we can only reaffirm our commitment in the strongest possible terms to continue mobilizing friends and allies in other progressive social movements to respond to the call by over 170 Palestinian civil society organizations for a comprehensive campaign of boycott, sanctions and divestment (BDS). As H.E. Father Miguel D'Escoto Brockman, President of the United Nations General Assembly state in a recent speech: "More than twenty years ago we in the United Nations took the lead from civil society when we agreed that sanctions were required to provide a nonviolent means of pressuring South Africa to end its violations. Today, perhaps we in the United Nations should consider following the lead of a new generation of civil society, who are calling for a similar non-violent campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions to pressure Israel to end its violations." Join us on the streets tomorrow as people of conscience to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people of Gaza and an end to Israeli apartheid. Organized by: Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR) and Tadamon! Montreal I got it from someone in Palestinians and Jews United (Paju) so assume they are attending as well.

 

Yadda yadda. My point is that it is simplistic to simply blame Israel and the west for the demise of the left in the Arab world, or among Palestinians. Certainly, neither have been supportive of it but the left has much to answer for, and failure has been its lasting legacy. Preaching about some possible "never never land" alternate reality, where if it were not for the bad guys, everything would be peachy keen in the Middle East is intellectually dishonest. As is attempting to disassociate Stalin, and Stalinism, from the left, simply because such associations are embarrassing. The fact is that the main line of left wing political organizations among Arabs were for many generations associated with Stalin and his heirs, as was the case throughout the world, both out of conviction, and for the sake of political expedience. These are facts. Trying to reshuffle the historical deck because its a convenient way of not taking a position supportive of the non-leftist Arab resistance to the Israeli occupation (of which Hamas is most definitely a legitimate representative), and not engaging in a fulsome critique of the "left" legacy in the Arab world is only to make ones position irrelevant to the actual process as it unfolds. Sure, I would prefer that it was the PFLP that was calling the shots in the Gaza Strip. But that is not the way it is, and so, in the balance, and in context, one necessarily has to take a firm position supporting the legitimate resistance to the Israeli occupation, and clearly there is no other effective organization defending Palestinian interests, as all others, even the late Yasser Arafat's Fatah, are hopelessly corrupt, if not in fact direct tools of the occupation. This corruption of the left, in particular, the corruption of Fatah, (nominally a social democratic left organization, and a member of the Socialist International) is precisely the cause of the advances made by other organizations, such as Hamas and Hexboallah, which operate under the banner of an ideology of indigenous origins, and not tainted by past failure and betrayal, often enabled by the paternalistic attitudes of all-knowing western "leftist". Perhaps its time we westerners stopped lecturing Arabs about what kind of resistance is best for them, and let them determine the form of their own destiny.

 

     Collective punishment is a war crime.  The question is, how does the civilized world (or whats left of it) enforce international law?  How can we make a difference when our government endorses American imperialism?  Is it so hard just to stop killing people?

North Americans? Not precisely that. Sorry to say it but I include Soviet Socialism as a European ("Western") ideological formula, derived from the same body of ideas, complete with the overweaning, "we know better" attitude born in the so-called "enlightenment", that was enforced by the raw power of the Soviet state, and cynically manipulated toward supporting the "percieved" interests of the Soviet state, regardless of the consequences to those directly involved.

Of course this is a two way street, and just saying that Nasser, for example, was a merely a puppet of the Soviet State would be absurd, but, it is a fact that the "left-socialist" cause has largely been discredited as an effective mode of achieving the national aims of most Arab peoples, and also (often) seen as direct agent of their opression, along with those icons of the era who are associated with it, or used those associations to further their political goals.

Really, of those only the family of Assad remains, and the speed with which these political movements withered and died, after the collapse of the Soviet Union is a testement to how chimeric was their hold on popular opinion.

Well, aside from the fact that I just wrote a whole paragraph outlining that I thought saying that the Pan-Arabist socialist movement was "merely a puppet (proxy) of the Soviet State would be absurd", and that your question is based on a patented distortions of what I said, I will point out, that if you bothered to read about the history of the PLO, you would know that the PLO begins life as a "proxy" (to use your word) force of the major players in the Arab League, in particular Egypt and Syria, and was generally concieved of not as "liberation movement" for Palestinians per se, but as a military force comprised of displaced Palestinians that would be organizationally subservient to the interests of the major players in the Arab League and in particular the Pan-Arabist vision of Nasser.

In fact, asserting "independence" from the Arab league, and the various political ambitions of its members, and becoming truly a "Palestinian" organization that put Palestinian interests above those of its sponsors was an important political power struggle within the PLO that was an major political concern for Yasser Arafat, and primary to his rise and control over the organization. Black September comes to mind.

But that is just history, so who cares?

Cueball, you're angry with someone or something. Why not forget about this ideological debate, which is out of place in this thread, and let people here be united in the face of this barbaric attack. I will continue to wish well to the Palestinian people and hope, from afar, that they develop their own leadership (currently non-existent) to lead them to the realization of their aspirations. Meanwhile, I will support all forces that work for unity of all peoples in the region against the enemy (Israel and its backers), and I will work for that same cause here in Canada.