Jenin youth orchestra disbanded after playing a concert for Holocaust survivors....what the hell?
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3693859,00.html
I normally don't use "ynet" as a source, but this one was pretty straightforward and I can't see any justification for the actions of the Palestinian officials that did this.
And the one who said the Holocaust was "a political issue" is a raving idiot. The Holocaust happened. Palestinians do not have to deny it in order to fight for their cause.
This, it seems to me, was a simple case of young people trying to show solidarity with the suffering of others, and it should be encouraged. Indeed, any effort on the part of Palestinians to fight Holocaust denial is to be encouraged
These were elderly people, these survivors. They are not personally responsible for what was done to the Palestinians in 1948 or after, and in attending this concert, they could be said to be showing sympathy FOR Palestinians.
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I could understand the response if the kids had been forced to perform at the Likud Party election night celebration, but this?
_________________________________________________________________________________________________ Our Demands Most Moderate are/ We Only Want The World! -James Connolly
There was a further quote by the Jenin camp official quoted in the ynet article
"The Holocaust happened, but we are facing a similar massacre by the Jews themselves," Hindi said. "We lost our land, and we were forced to flee and we've lived in refugee camps for the past 50 years."
That's better that that was quoted in the ynet article(an article that would of course be intended to make the Jenin officials look as bad as possible), but it still doesn't justify the treatment of those kids and the orchestra leader. It's absurd to act as if this concert was in some way a betrayal of the Palestinian cause.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________ Our Demands Most Moderate are/ We Only Want The World! -James Connolly
Tch! Ridiculous. This is exactly the kind of expression of solidarity that the region needs. These people should be getting medals.
Yes, well perhaps the massacre of 1300 Palestinians a couple of months back put some people in a non-reconciliatory mood. There is a time and a place for everything, and perhaps now was not the time for demonstrations of cultural solidarity.
Looking forward to seeing the reaction of the Israeli government were an Israeli band play a memorial concert or some such for those recently killed in Gaza. Very easy to moralize from over here, but how come its always the Palestinians who are expected to turn the other cheek and extend the hand of friendship.
I have not seen any reports of similar acts by Israelis in some time. Hear of any?
Here is how Israeli's extend the hand of reconciliation in tough times:
Israel to strip Hamas prisoners' rights as pressure over Shalit
In addition to sanctions on entertainment media, the prisoners will be subject to stricter guidelines regarding the transfer of money for use at the prison canteen.
I can see why Palestinian officials might take a dim view of such un-authorized diplomatic gestures at this time.
Yes, well perhaps the massacre of 1300 Palestinians a couple of months back put some people in a non-reconciliatory mood. There is a time and a place for everything, and perhaps now was not the time for demonstrations of cultural solidarity.
I haven't forgotten those recent(and continuing events). But the old folks at this concert didn't lead the Gaza war.
And Palestinians should not bear that as an expectation, of course.
I've never said otherwise
Well, there's the joint Israeli/Palestinian orchestra that Danien Barenboim(with support from Edward Said) put together. Clearly there should be more.
Here is how Israeli's extend the hand of reconciliation in tough times:
Israel to strip Hamas prisoners' rights as pressure over Shalit
In addition to sanctions on entertainment media, the prisoners will be subject to stricter guidelines regarding the transfer of money for use at the prison canteen.
I can see why Palestinian officials might take a dim view of such un-authorized diplomatic gestures at this time.
Well, what the Israeli government has done has continued to be loathesome. You get no argument from me on that.
Nonetheless, what these kids did does not deserve to be treated as a betrayal of the cause.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________ Our Demands Most Moderate are/ We Only Want The World! -James Connolly
I love debates where no one knows the facts.
Ken, do you have a Palestinian version of what happened here - other than the snippet of quote in your link?
Could this have played any role:
Hmmmmm?
Reuters.
Same question addressed to Cueball, who appears to be defending a decision whose context and rationale he isn't fully aware of - nor am I.
Just thought I'd interject before this thread goes down in flames.
I'm also amused by the idea put forward by Ken in the opening post that fighting Holocaust denial should be any sort of priority right now among a people who has just had hundreds upon hundreds of their people, the vast majority civilians and a third of them children, slaughtered recently, thousands of their people injured, and their infrastructure completely destroyed, causing a humanitarian disaster that is being compounded daily by the victorious slaughterers who are only letting a tenth of the food and medical supplies they need into the region they just destroyed.
Hmm, they just butchered thousands of us (including the killed AND injured), completely destroyed our city, and are now starving us inside it and letting us die for lack of medical supplies to treat the thousands of us they injured. Hey, I know! Let's start some Holocaust education initiatives in order to show our oppressors how much we care! That's what's really important right now.
Maybe it IS irrational for them to disband this orchestra when they haven't really done anything wrong. But I don't know, I'd be feeling pretty irrational too if your country slaughtered a bunch of my friends and family and then continued to deliberately starve and deny us medical attention afterwards. I likely wouldn't be feeling like we should be making any effort to play in your country's old folks' homes either, even if those elderly people weren't personally responsible for what happened to us. I would assume that you have enough of your own kids to entertain your elderly citizens, and that our kids' energy could be better spent elsewhere.
Expecting superhuman efforts at reconciliation by a brutalized, oppressed population towards their oppressors is kind of unreasonable, don't you think? Sure, it would be commendable if it happened, but demanding it, or condemning them or expressing shock at them for not being able to do so, is kind of inching into the realm of blaming the victim, don't you think?
Michelle, your logic is difficult to understand.
No one is suggesting that Palestinians should start outreach programs to the Israeli murderers who are occupying, imprisoning, and slaughtering them. You don't need to convince anyone that such outreach programs are kind of untimely.
This is a story (massively carried by the U.S. and pro-Israel media, from what I see) alleging that a small individual gesture was crushed by draconian evil probably antisemitic and Holocaust-denying Arab types.
When you read a bit further, you find out:
1. There was apparently some rule that this orchestra was supposed to be non-political, purely "recreational", and it appears the authorities consider that this rule was violated.
2. The head of the orchestra was an Israeli citizen - a visitor - and she seems to have been bucking the authorities on the role of the orchestra.
3. There is also an allegation that she took the kids to a "free Gilbert Shalit" rally.
If any or all of these are true, one can understand (without agreeing) why the authorities would wind up this little operation, without even having to start thumping the Holocaust industry drums, as the pro-U.S.-Israeli media is doing. We have situations in Canada all the time where organizations which are supposed to be "non-political" get chastised or even de-registered for engaging in political activities. In Canada, we can oppose such things. In Palestine, it's frankly speaking none of our friggin' business - especially for a people that is imprisoned and denied.
In short, the Holocaust thing is a welcome straw man and diversion for those who wish to find a way to attack the victim. But for us to debate whether or not Palestinians should be reaching out to Holocaust victims is pretty lame. They can if they want to, they don't have to if they don't. It's totally irrelevant to the prime issue, which is for us to unconditionally support the struggle of the Palestinian people for freedom.
From a Palestinian pov:
It is at least as insulting and humiliating as some Jews were forced or duped to play music to SS, Gestapo and Wehrmacht soldiers during the Second World War. In both cases, the act was meant to humiliate the victims and rob them of the last visages of human dignity.
http://desertpeace.wordpress.com/2009/03/29/shame-on-us/
thanks drtx
understood.
In fact, being thoroughly tormented and killed by the children, grand-children and great grandchildren of the holocaust has always been and continues to be “the” Palestinians’ way of life.
I think it is relevant, unionist. It seems the orchestra leader made it so, part of the unapproved 'learning experience' for the kids.
If any or all of these are true, one can understand (without agreeing) why the authorities would wind up this little operation, without even having to start thumping the Holocaust industry drums, as the pro-U.S.-Israeli media is doing.
True.
True.
And it was child abuse to put those kids in that propaganda-laden situation, without consent.
It would be nice if the media focused more on the kids rights.
If the orchestra leader DID make the kids play at a "Free Gilad Shalit" rally, that was inappropriate and the leader herself should be punished. Disbanding the orchestrat, on the other hand, punishes the kids.
My understanding was that they'd played a song about Shalit in the regular concert, which was probably pushing it, but I hadn't heard about the rally. Has Al-Jazeera or Palestine News Network had a story on this yet?
When I spoke about Holocaust denial as an issue that Palestinians need to deal with, I never meant that it was more important than the issues involving their own oppression.
And in many online forums I have stated that it is WRONG to use the Holocaust to justify what Israel has done to the Palestinians, because no
Palestinian had anything to do with it (The Shoah was a solely European crime).
But it is clearly in the self-interest of the Palestinian cause that those who fight for it must make sure to denounce instances where the Shoah is denied or even minimized, because tolerating denial or minimization of that event gives the Israeli hardliners propaganda gold. Anytime they can make the(always unjustified) claim that any Palestinian has a kind or even a dismissive word about the effect of the Reich, the Likudniks(and I include Ehud Barak as a Likudnik and most of his party as well, since they no longer disagree with Likud on anything, as demonstrated by their support of the new Likud government) will use it to squeeze even more money and elicit more silent obedience from the U.S. Congress.
Basically, I think the camp officials did more harm than good to the Palestinian cause by being hardassed about this.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________ Our Demands Most Moderate are/ We Only Want The World! -James Connolly
But who needs Israeli hardliners when we have you around to do the condemnations for them?
What I've done in starting this thread has nothing whatsoever in common with what the Israeli hardliners do. And we've long-since established that you don't have to abstain from all public criticism of the Palestinian leadership in order to prove your loyalty to the cause ot Palestinian self-determination.
Likening me to the Israeli right was a cheap shot.
You can't honestly argue that we should ignore it when someone on the Palestinian side does something stupid like this.
You know as well as I that this was a bonehead move and that all it does is help the Likudniks. Why would saying nothing be the better choice?
It would have been enough to chastise the orchestra leader. There was no reason to punish the kids by taking their chance to play music away.
What else can they do with their lives now?
_________________________________________________________________________________________________ Our Demands Most Moderate are/ We Only Want The World! -James Connolly
So now your complaint is not political, but merely, "think of the children"?
Your OP wasn't about that. It was about how there was no "justification" for the actions of the Palestinians. Now you claim your position is different from the standard knee-jerk Zionist one. I'm not buying it.
And in many online forums I have stated that it is WRONG to use the Holocaust to justify what Israel has done to the Palestinians, because no
Palestinian had anything to do with it (The Shoah was a solely European crime).
True, but one seems to have wanted to help in the effort. From the Jerusalem Post of March 17,2009:
During World War II, Husseini (the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem) allied himself with Nazi Germany and lent his support to the "Final Solution," the extermination of the Jews of Europe.
Husseini contributed to the German war effort by setting up Bosnian Muslim battalions that were attached to the Waffen SS, whose soldiers fought partisans in Bosnia and massacred civilians there.
The mufti also sought to convince Germany and its allies to bomb Tel Aviv and to expand the Final Solution to the Jews of North Africa and Palestine.
When he was informed of various Nazi proposals to exchange Jewish lives for goods or money, he strenuously campaigned against them.
And from Wikipedia:
In his memoirs after the war, Husayni (sic) noted that
"Our fundamental condition for cooperating with Germany was a free hand to eradicate every last Jew from Palestine and the Arab world. I asked Hitler for an explicit undertaking to allow us to solve the Jewish problem in a manner befitting our national and racial aspirations and according to the scientific methods innovated by Germany in the handling of its Jews. The answer I got was: 'The Jews are yours'."[132]
Recent Nazi documents uncovered in the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Military Archive Service in Freiburg [2] by two researchers, Klaus Michael Mallmann and Martin Cüppers indicated that in the event of the British being defeated in Egypt by Generalfeldmarschall Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps the Nazis had planned to deploy a special unit called Einsatzkommando Ägypten to exterminate Palestinian Jews and that they wanted Arab support to prevent the emergence of a Jewish state. In their book the researchers concluded that, "the most important collaborator with the Nazis and an absolute Arab anti-Semite was Haj Amin al-Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem.'[135]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amin_al-Husayni
Then perhaps you should have dropped the Jewish state in Hungary where people were all opposed to anti-semetism, fascism and Hitler.
The bloody Duke of Windsor was a Hitler sympathizer, and so what? Does that say anything specifically about Great Britain today? Chandra Bose was an Indian Nationalist who actually formed a huge army to fight on the side of the Axis in WWII. He is still a national hero today in India, with statues and everything. In the light of this fact do you think that Israel should invade India?
Statue of Chandra Bose.
Your complaint is entirely biased, and hypocrticial in the light of the strong ties between Israeli intelligence and the Indian government.
Chandra Bose Wiki
I don't think either of the above matched the Grand mufti in apparent intent. From the same wikipedia article:
Among the acts of sabotage al-Husayni attempted to implement, Michael Bar Zohar reports a chemical warfare assault on the second largest and predominantly Jewish city in Palestine, Tel Aviv. According to him, five parachutists were sent with a toxin to dump into the water system. The police caught the infiltrators in a cave near Jericho, and according to Jericho district police commander Fayiz Bey Idrissi, "The laboratory report stated that each container held enough poison to kill 25,000 people, and there were at least ten containers.".[129] Medoff concludes,
Under Husseini's direction, teams of Arab saboteurs were parachuted into Iraq, Transjordan and Palestine, where they attacked Allied facilities such as telephone lines, pipelines, bridges and railways. One such sabotage team was armed with a substantial quantity of poison that they were supposed to dump into the Tel Aviv water system. (In a separate but related matter, the Mufti repeatedly urged the Germans to bomb Tel Aviv and Jerusalem "in order to injure Palestinian Jewry and for propaganda purposes in the Arab world," as his Nazi interlocutors put it. The proposals were rejected as militarily unfeasible.[130]
LOL. Bose raises an army of 50,000 soldiers to fight against the British aided by the Nazis, and supported by their Japanese allies, and you want to chatter about someone who went on Nazi sponsored tours, telling them precisely the things they wanted to hear because he sought a similar support.
Your priorities are screwed.
Friggin Anwar Sadat was a Nazi sympathizer -- no trouble dealing with that guy, eh? Almost any nationalist that was relevant in their opposition to the British or French during WWII tried to garner support from the Axis.
Probably the only one who did not is Ho Chi Minh. Get real, and stop your foolish and prejudiced muckraking.
Almost any nationalist that was relevant in their opposition to the British or French during WWII tried to garner support from the Axis.
How nice...
...including some prominent Zionist leaders.
Just let me know the next time some band from India is considered to be morally obliged to perform Holocaust memorial services because of the political alignment of some Indian nationals during the war.
And we mustn't leave out WLMK, who was himself a great admirer of Hitler. Maybe the Jewish State should have been set up in the Etobikoke or Mississauga areas to pay back those dastardy Canadians for the opinions of their democratically-elected leaders.
Certainly, he posited Hitler as a kind of "Joan de'Arc" of his people.
I read about this. There may be some merit to the story. But this will rate barely a footnote in history and probably only then in relation to effective propaganda when one considers the amount of time devoted to such a trivial matter within the context of so much blood and Western complicity with an emerging fascism.
I learned to hate Nazism when I saw pictures of Aushwitz. What will the next generation learn to hate when they see pictures of Gaza? Think about it.
What will the next generation learn to hate when they see pictures of women being stoned to death in Iran? Think about it.
You mean the Iranians have a captive population of 1.5 million women trapped somewhere in an open air urban prison and are stoning them to death at a rate of 300 per week? That is commitment, the Israelis just drop 500 lb bombs on a building and let the building do the stoning for them.
You think he would be ashamed of making such obvious efforts to divert attention from fascist and racist violent repression, but no ...
Or will they also see how Israel treats women:
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/2009/04/03/8988441-ap.html
Newspapers aimed at ultra-Orthodox Jewish readers tampered with the inaugural photograph of the Cabinet, erasing ministers Limor Livnat and Sofa Landver. Ultra-Orthodox newspapers consider it immodest to print images of women.
The daily Yated Neeman digitally changed the photo, moving two male ministers into the places formerly occupied by the women.
The weekly Shaa Tova simply blacked the women out, in a photo reprinted Friday by the mainstream daily Maariv.
No response was available from the two papers.
During the election, campaign posters featuring female candidate Tzipi Livni were defaced near ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods.
I usually don't post much on the Middle East but this really shouldn't be an issue for people not close to the ground to discuss. The bigger issues, sure, but there's way too much missing here. (edit - i.e. - This youth group and their usage.)
You're comparing the views of fringe group in Israel that make up about 2% of the population and who are regarded as a joke by the Israeli mainstream. There had to be women in the Israeli cabinet in the first place for these crackpots to try to cover up. In a fascist dictatorship like Saudi Arabia a woman would never be allowed to have any government position in the first place. If you are a woman, all of Saudi Arabia and Iran and Afghanistan (to name a few) are giant prison camps and its government policy - not just a few people from the lunatic fringe.
"You think he would be ashamed of making such obvious efforts to divert attention from fascist and racist violent repression"
You're right, hundreds of millions of women, sexual minorities, political dissidents and non-Muslims are horribly repressed throughout the Arab/Muslim world - and you keep trying to divert attention away from it by going on and on about a skirmish in Gaza. Why don't we spend more time talking about the most fascistic country of all - Saudi Arabia.
No we are not. You are comparing to a handful of inhumane state sanctioned executions to the state sanctioned massacre of 1400 people without even a trial.
And doodley pops, if you are going to spend a lot of time twisting and distorting things to make your case, at least get your basic facts straight: Iran is not in the Arab world. But hey! They all look the same eh?
Something like 600 Israelis were killed by Palestinian suicide bombers between 2000 and 2007 - what about those "inhumane state sanctioned executions with no trial" or maybe we should call it "genocide"?
If you want to classify every person who is killed in a war as a "state sanctioned execution" I guess that means that during the Iran-Iraq War - those two countries "executed" over two million of each others citizens with no trial. For that matter, I wonder how many "inhumane state executions" were committed by Castro's forces when they fought a civil war in Cuba?
But, this is classic. When the people you side with kill people - you brush it off as "collateral damage". When the people you are against kill people its "murder". Where you sit depends on where you stand.
Something like 600 Israelis were killed by Palestinian suicide bombers between 2000 and 2007 - what about those "inhumane state sanctioned executions with no trial" or maybe we should call it "genocide"
Dude there is no palestinian state to sanction any murders. Sorry. You also managed to skip the part about the Palestin Authority having little or nothing to do with any of those acts, which were mostly carried out by non-government organizations. But hell, what's a few facts to someone who thinks that Iran is in the Arab world. Noticed you also skipped the part about the 2400 Palestinians killed in the same period. But, you kill enough and it just becomes a statistic, as old Joe used to say.
But this latest tally pails in comparison, 9 human beings to 1400 statistics.
Fine, if you want to be picky substitute "state sanctioned" with "Palestinian authority sanctioned". Hamas governs Gaza and they sanction firing missiles that are aimed at killing Israeli civilians. I don't recall them offering to randomly arrest Israeli passerby, put fly them to Gaza City them on trial in a kangaroo court and have them sentenced to death.
In war, both sides commit atrocities - its horrible but its true. Our task should be encourage peaceful negotiations to end the violence - as opposed to pouring gasoline on the fire.
"You also managed to skip the part about the Palestine Authority having little or nothing to do with any of those acts"
Lol, if you believe that - why don't you buy a swamp in Florida. I don't believe for one second that all those terrorist acts were not done without complete cooperation and planning and funding by the leadership of Hamas. They obviously think that its in their strategic interest to commit atrocities and so they get their henchment to do it. I'm not saying Israel is any better - its clear that extremists have taken control of both sides and the ordinary Israelis and Palestinians are paying the consequences.
On the bright side there is a lot of talk that behind the scenes negotiations are happening between Israel and Syria that could involve giving back the Golan Heights in exchange for a peace treaty with Syria and an end to any Iranian influence in Syria and an end to all Syrian support for Hamas and Hezbollah - that could actually jump start the larger peace process.
Sometimes its darkest before dawn. In the mid 90s it seemed like things were insoluble in Northern Ireland as Protestants were shifting more and more towards the extremist Democratic Unionist Party and Catholics were voting more and more for Sinn Fein - and yet those two adversaries ended up going along with the Good Friday Accords and now for the most part - peace reigns supreme in Northern Ireland.
Fine, if you want to be picky substitute "state sanctioned" with "Palestinian authority sanctioned". Hamas governs Gaza and they sanction firing missiles that are aimed at killing Israeli civilians. I don't recall them offering to randomly arrest Israeli passerby, put fly them to Gaza City them on trial in a kangaroo court and have them sentenced to death.
In war, both sides commit atrocities - its horrible but its true. Our task should be encourage peaceful negotiations to end the violence - as opposed to pouring gasoline on the fire.
Were you not one of the ones clinging to the idea that "individuals", such as sports figures and intellectuals, represent themselves, regardless of the fact that they might hold Israeli citizenship, and so should not even be considered as targets of sanctions against Israel? How quickly this fine point on personal responsibility, human rights, citizenship and the state disappears when you are attributing the acts of individuals Palestinians to their government, and by extension the whole population so that you can justify their massacre by phosphorus bombs, clusterbombs and just plain old fashioned sniper bullets.
WE'll just have to agree to disagree. I personally don't think there is the slightest chance that all the suicide bombings and missiles being directed at Israel are all the independent acts of individuals with no guidance or orders from the top. Its not as if Hamas even tries to dissociate itself from terrorist attacks - they brag about them when they succeed.
How many years have passed since the last suicide attack by Hamas? Did any of those half-dozen or so Hamas missiles fired in the six months before Israel butchered the Innocents of Gaza actually do any damage?
How many years have passed that Stockholm is entertained at the price of justice?
Absolutely true, Hamas took responsibility for those suicide bombings, and not Fatah and the PA. But you were trying to parlay the idea that these 600 Israeli deaths that happened before Hamas was elected were acts of state. They were not. And what do we see? We see that by entering the political process, and instituting various ceasefires, repeatedly broken by the IDF that the reward is more carnage, and now Palestinians deaths are not 4 times that of Israeli deaths, but 100 times the number of Israeli deaths.
Truly disgusting, and I am more than happy not sully myself with agreeing with the kind of craven double think and misinformation, which you are parlaying here.
Iran part of the Arab World. Your self-deceptions and lies are so complex, and you shift goal posts so often you can't even keep your geography and ethnic groups straight. Its not suprising you don't know who was the government, and when among Palestinians.
They have had a tough time doing any suicide bombings lately because of the wall around the occupied territories. I can just imagine the leaders of Hamas looking up at the walls around Israel shaking their fists and saying to themselves "curses we've been foiled from doing any more suicide bombings".
The thing is we condemn Israel for building the wall (I actually don't have a problem with having a wall per se - as long as it follows the "green line") - but within Israel there is almost universal support for it because after years of having hundreds die every year due to suicide bombings - after the wall went up - those bombings were almost eliminated. But, I'm sure that Hamas would be more than happy to go back to more suicide bombings if they thought they could get away with it.
So there it is. The wall has solved the problem. Now Israel can wipe out as many Palestinians as it pleases without any threat of real reprisal. Good for you.
I don't doubt that you imagine Arabs in such a cartoonish fashion. Everything you've written on babble over the years demonstrates that you see Arabs as comic-book evil doers and not as real human beings.
Anyways, it never ceases to amuse me how the moment I try to inject the slightest bit of balance to the discussion (and make no mistake about it - anywhere outside of babble my views on the Middle East would be considering rabidly anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian) - the same two or three people start to hyperventilate - like how dare I rain on their parade and cast the slightest aspersion of their litle fantasy world were all Palestinians are paragons or moral virtue and all Israelis are the devil incarnate.
Sorry - but the world is just not that simple.
You must lead a tragically stunted life in the meat world.
"Everything you've written on babble over the years demonstrates that you see Arabs as comic-book evil doers and not as real human beings."
What a coincidence, I was just thinking that all we have to do is replace the word "Arab" with "Israeli" and that would more or less sum up everything you've written on babble.
Plus ca change...
You evidently don't know the difference between balance and bullshit. They both begin with "B" but that is about it.
You are comparing to a handful of inhumane state sanctioned executions to the state sanctioned massacre of 1400 people without even a trial.
And that is pure bullshit.What a coincidence, I was just thinking that all we have to do is replace the word "Arab" with "Israeli" and that would more or less sum up everything you've written on babble.
Plus ca change...
You apparently don't really understand the meaning of "the more things change, the more they remain the same," although your use of the "I know you are but what am I? " argument is quite edifying.
What does having a "trial" have to do with anything? Did the allies have a trial for every German man woman and child living in Cologne before it was bombed?
Maybe we should see if the Marquess of Queensberry wrote any rules of etiquette about having a jury trial for each and every combatant in a war. I wonder whether in the trenches in WW1 - the Germans or the French or the English would yell "freeze" before firing a fatal shot at an enemy soldier saying "wait, let's fly in a judge and jury and a team of lawyers as we have to have a trial first".
You know what's scary? The fact that "Fascist" isn't a strong enough word to describe someone's worldview.
So being Arab automatically makes one a legitimate target (or as you say, "combatant") for the Israeli military? How many innocent women, children and other unarmed civillians were killed in the Gaza Ghetto massacre? What colour is the blood on the floor of your moral universe?
(I actually don't have a problem with having a wall per se - as long as it follows the "green line") -
Is this really allowed?
So being Israeli automatically makes one a legitimate target for the Palestinian militia? How many innocent women, children and other unarmed civillians were killed by missiles and suicide bombers? What colour is the blood on the floor of your moral universe?
What, again with the "I know you are but what am I?" argument.
If you have nothing, admit it and shut the hell up.
1) I can't believe Joel Goldenberg actually brought up the freaking GRAND MUFTI again. Joel knows as well as anyone else that the Mufti(all the Muftis before Al-Husayni had just been called "the Mufti", the "Grand" part was something Herbert Samuel added to his title just to puff up the guy's already bloated ego even further)was IMPOSED in his position by the British(he'd finished a weak fourth place in the voting among Palestinian Muslims(the position of Mufti was a religious one)and that Palestinians, as a group, are thus NOT to blame for him. The Mufti does NOT justify the Nakba, Joel, and you should be ashamed of yourself for implying that.
2) If the orchestra did play at a "free Gilad Shalit" rally, the orchestra leader should have been chastized, but there was still no justification for disbanding the orchestra.
3) Nobody here is really arguing that, in order to prove one is pro-Palestinian, a person has to agree with every decision made by anyone in authority in the Palestinian leadership, are they? That is hopelessly lame. What matters is supporting Palestinian self-determination as the goal, not every decision and every tactic. The disbanding of the youth orchestra was stupid. The characterizaton of the Holocaust as "political" by the Jenin camp official was a gift to the Israeli propaganda apparatus. A sensible leadership would have responded to this situation by saying "see, this proves we DO get it about the Shoah. It proves we can relate decently to Israelis ona human and individual level, which is more than anyone who voted for the current Israeli government can say in regards to how they treat us".
Why would anybody argue that there has to be a "no criticism" position on something like this? How could not criticizing it and not at least seeking clarification of what the Jenin camp officials' intentions on this were actually HELP the Palestinian cause? When a bad choice is made, especially when no possible argument can be made that that choice was essential to victory in the struggle, how can silence help?
Finally, I'm just as pro-Palestinian as you are, Spector. Once again, you are NOT the official arbiter of who is "truly on their side".
You can't make any case whatsoever that what I've said here is a betrayal of the Palestinian cause.
And, though I shouldn't HAVE to say this(people should be assuming it from all I've said on the Palestinian issue so far)no, I'm NOT, repeat NOT, saying that disbanding the orchestra was just as bad as the Gaza War, or the Occupation, or Deir Yassin or Plan Dalet.
It was a small-scale, avoidable, indeed reversible mistake that did far more harm than the event that prompted it.
I'm with Al-Qa'bong on the injustice of collectively punising Palestinians. I'm with Cueball on pretty much everything he's said about the arrogance of the Israeli state.
It's ridiculous that anyone, at this late date, should still be questioning my loyalties or my intentions.
1) I can't believe Joel Goldenberg actually brought up the freaking GRAND MUFTI again. Joel knows as well as anyone else that the Mufti(all the Muftis before Al-Husayni had just been called "the Mufti", the "Grand" part was something Herbert Samuel added to his title just to puff up the guy's already bloated ego even further)was IMPOSED in his position by the British(he'd finished a weak fourth place in the voting among Palestinian Muslims(the position of Mufti was a religious one)and that Palestinians, as a group, are thus NOT to blame for him. The Mufti does NOT justify the Nakba, Joel, and you should be ashamed of yourself for implying that.
Who's implying or justifying anything? Just pointing out something factual, in relation to something you wrote. I agreed with you that the Palestinians were in no way responsible for the Holocaust. But it's also valid to point out that one of their leaders reportedly had genocidal thoughts and perhaps intentions. Basically, and it's all too common a method used in political debate, you're putting words in my mouth.
You're talking about a leader that's been dead for thirty-five years and was politically irrelevant in Palestine after 1951. AL-Husanyi's views were never the views of the Palestinian Muslim community as a whole, and your introduction of him in this thread was about guilt by association. No one BUT Al-Husanyi is responsible for them and no one else deserved to suffer for them. They died With Al-Husanyi, that miserable schmuck.
And this is a really touchy subject, as you KNOW, Joel, because groups like CAMERA and FLAME in the U.S. and people like Bernie Farber in your country keep bringing the Grand Mufti up in an effort to smear the Palestinian community of today.
I could bring up, with moral equivalency, Yitzak Shamir and LEHI's support of Hitler.
And there is this quote about Al-Husanyi by the historian Peter Novick, a man who has the distinction both of criticizing Norman FInkelstein and being criticized by Alan Dershowitz(from the Wikipedia entry on the Grand Mufti):
'The claims of Palestinian complicity in the murder of the European Jews were to some extent a defensive strategy, a preemptive response to the Palestinian complaint that if Israel was recompensed for the Holocaust, it was unjust that Palestinian Muslims should pick up the bill for the crimes of European Christians. The assertion that Palestinians were complicit in the Holocaust was mostly based on the case of the Mufti of Jerusalem, a pre-World War II Palestinian nationalist leader who, to escape imprisonment by the British, sought refuge during the war in Germany. The Mufti was in many ways a disreputable character, but post-war claims that he played any significant part in the Holocaust have never been sustained. This did not prevent the editors of the four-volume Encyclopedia of the Holocaust from giving him a starring role. The article on the Mufti is more than twice as long as the articles on Goebbels and Goering, longer than the articles on Himmler and Heydrich combined, longer than the article on Eichmann--of all the biographical articles, it is exceeded in length, but only slightly, by the entry for Hitler.'[158]
You're right, hundreds of millions of women, sexual minorities, political dissidents and non-Muslims are horribly repressed throughout the Arab/Muslim world - and you keep trying to divert attention away from it by going on and on about a skirmish in Gaza. Why don't we spend more time talking about the most fascistic country of all - Saudi Arabia.
Why don't you defend Saudi Arabia? You seem to have no qualms about defending a racist ideology and ethnic cleansing. Why should you have any difficulty with Saudi Arabia? And really you don't except to divert attention from the fascist, supremacist ideology you pretend not to support.