Massacre in Gaza: Israeli strikes kill more than 200

That was a horribly biased and slanted article.

Israel = Good Hammas = Bad

Winnifred wrote:

It is as though Hamas was trying to provoke a confrontation. This is terrible.

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.

Unionist wrote:

Stargazer wrote:

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.

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.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

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.

Hoodeet wrote:

Cueball: Saddam Hussein was only as "left" as Stalin. A journalist who visited Hussein saw the complete works of Stalin in Hussein was surprised and asked the Iraqi president "You're not really a communist, are you?" to which Hussein reportedly answered "Neither was Stalin". (Lost the source, but it was a British or a US journalist.) I'd leave him off the list.

It's easy to blame corruption of the left parties for their own demise. It's a little more complicated than that, of course. Israel favoured Hamas in the beginning to divide Palestinians and weaken the PLO. They also worked systematically to destroy the PFLP and other left groups, with the tacit or even active cooperation of monarchical Arab states (Jordan, Saudi Arabia...) who feared the rise of a socialist secular state in the region. ("The enemy of my enemy is my friend" - we've seen it many times in history.)

Israel is an unholy mess, its economy tied in and beholden to militarism and arms production (as one of the top developers and exporters of military systems). The extremists will play the Palestinian threat as a card with which to distract the people from the real domestic issues.

 

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?

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?

Unionist wrote:

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.

What a clown. 

Sure, I am angry at your idiotic and contradictory and stupid statments, and your flat distortions of what I have said.

And here we go again, starting with "forget the ideological debate" and then following with the hope that they "develop their own leadershp", which is (according to you) is "currently non-existent", expressed in the most cloying and maudlin tones. What could be more ideological than denying the very existance of the Hamas leadership that was duly elected to office by popular vote? What is your problem? Is it that you can't reconcile your own need to preach socialism to the heathen Muslims, with the principles you are preaching, one of which is no doubt the "right of self-determination."

I would say that the Palestinian people expressed their "aspirations" when 46 percent of them voted to elect Hamas as their government. Your problem is that you just can't swallow it. But Unionist will work for "their cause" here in Canada by denying the validity of their votes.

Emergency demo in Vancouver on Monday, against Israeli War Crimes.

************ *********

PROTEST ISRAELI WAR CRIMES
Monday December 29th @ Noon
US Consulate (1075 West Pender)
Gather on HASTINGS side (corner Thurlow)

Organized by various Palestinian solidarity groups.
Endorsed by:
Al-Awda - Vancouver
Boycott Israeli Apartheid Campaign
Canada Palestine Association - Vancouver
Voice of Palestine - Vancouver
The Canadian Arab Federation - National
Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights - University of British Columbia
StopWar Coalition.
Canadians Against War
Adala - Arab Justice Committee

For more information or to add your endorsement: vancouver.gazaprote st@gmail. com.

************ *********

Please come out rain, snow or shine to demonstrate your outrage and our collective humanity in response to the latest massacre of Palestinians.

At least 200 Palestinians have been killed and over 800 injured in the latest Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip, while the threat for further bloodshed still hands heavily as air strikes continue. 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 latest massacre in Gaza occurs with official US and 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.

Demonstrations are planned all over the world in the next few days including in the Canadian cities of Toronto, Montreal, and Ottawa. Join us in Vancouver as people of conscience to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people of Gaza and to demand an end to the siege of Gaza and Israeli apartheid.

jrose wrote:

I've been asked to pass this along by rabble's publisher:

Did rabble's publisher also ask you to post that slimy press release from the Minister of Foreign Affairs? 

 [IMG]http://i38.tinypic.com/1r9lpy.gif[/IMG]

Is there a demonstration in Ottawa, opposite the Israeli Embassy? With the number of people from the Middle East (and Maghreb) in Ottawa and Gatineau, and others, that should be doeable.

Cueball, not all "Arabs" think alike. My cues as a socialist on this matter are from socialists and feminists IN THOSE COUNTRIES.

lagatta wrote:

Cueball, not all "Arabs" think alike. My cues as a socialist on this matter are from socialists and feminists IN THOSE COUNTRIES.

I guess that's why 44 percent of Palestinians voted for "Change and reform" (aka the Hamas list). Who brought that up? Oh yeah, it was me. You might infer from such a statement that I was aware that 56 percent voted for others. What did the collective "Alternative" of the leftist parties and the PFLP get in the last election... 6%... or something?

I have no idea why I am being favoured with this lecture about the diversity of views in the Arab world, but be that as it may, if you think that getting 5% of the popular vote qualifies an organization as being a legitimate voice of leadership and opinion on Palestinian issues, you might agree that getting 7 times that amount does not disqualify Hamas from similar respect even if people here don't like their world view.

I feel that the goal of understanding a complex situation, such as the one faced by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, is best served not by turning off what we don't like in favour of listening to voices that we approve.

Speaking of diversity, and avoiding blanket distortions, lets also not forget, that "Change and Reform" was not just a Hamas list, but also a list comprised of many independents, and one that also ran women and Christians on their slate.

Not recognizing the legitimacy of Hamas as a leadership movement among the Palestinians people, as Unionist is doing, is by extentsion deligitimizing its right to govern as the duly elected and responsible government of the PA, as chosen by the Palestinian people, and is therefore not defending "the Gazan people" or the right of the Palestinian people to determine their own destiny, but rather, playing into propaganda tropes (such as the one about "terrorist infrastructure" -- really Palestinian police facilities -- that we see in the quote from the IDF in the OP) that aid the forces of occupation. 

And I think Hamas won its election victory largely on the basis that more women voted  for it than Fatah (60 percent from the reports I have read), and as far as I can tell they elected as many female MP's as Fatah. So, when the cards are down, I don't see where your assertion that Hamas generally views you as "shit by virtue of being a women" comes from, since of course, if they did, they would make no effort to include women in their political process, at all. At least this seems to be true from the relative standpoint of Palestinian culture in general, in terms of forces both secular and Islamic, which is to say that from the hard evidence, as opposed the abstraced "theoreticals", Hamas is no more sexist than the rest of the society at large.

Quote:

"We need to make men aware of the real importance of women. Women didn't come into life only to be man's servant."

--Gulf Daily News, February 2006

 To me, your view comes off as more simplistic western anti-Islamic prejudiced half-baked in western war on terror stereotyping, and not in accord with the facts.

Quote:

Seventeen of the 132 new legislators, or nearly 13 percent, are women. That's twice as many female legislators as in the outgoing parliament — ostensibly a breakthrough in the male-run Palestinian society.

However, with Hamas commanding a majority parliament and women lawmakers divided over their agenda, change is unlikely. Some women's rights campaigners even fear a backlash against efforts to curtail polygamy, raise the age of marriage for girls or get tougher on men who kill wives or daughters over "family honor."

"It's not just a question of numbers," said liberal legislator Hanan Ashrawi. "There will be more women (in parliament) who are conscious of women's rights ... There will also be women who are not committed to equality."

Hamas' campaign among women helped victory

I think you're "essentializing" Hamas in terms of a cheap western stereotype about Muslims, the majority religion of the Arab people. 

When speaking of feminism, the voice of Palestinian women should count for something don't you think? Or can we just dismiss that because the vehicle they chose to express their disatisfaction with the status quo is unappealing from the standpoint of our own idealized, but hardly realized western conceptions?

Here's an idea... they know something we don't. Possible, or no?

Cueball wrote:

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".

But remember that Hamas was nothing before Israel backed it - not today, but in the days when pan-arabism was the big bogeyman. Although you are right to say that today's Fatah is a near direct instrument of Israel's occupation, Hamas is as much a creation of the state of Israel. So there is really no easy way of saying 'this faction is a legitimate popular expression', and 'this faction is just a puppet', because the cards that the Palestinians are allowed to play have been selected for them a while ago. It is not clear if Hamas can fulfill the role as this elusive source of legitimate, grassroots, and "indigenous", as you describe it, popular opinion in Palestine because there has not been a vacuum for long enough to hear what that expression would be.

Thanks Unionist. I hate when threads like this get ugly when we need to take action of some kind. 

Winnipeg:

Quote:

 ===================

SATURDAY, JANUARY 3, 2009
2 PM * MANITOBA LEGISLATURE
WINNIPEG, MANITOBA
PROGRAM/SPEAKERS: TBA

===================

As of this writing, more than 200 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s latest assault on the Gaza Strip and its peoples, together with lasting threats of bloodshed hanging heavily over the skies in Palestine as Israel vows further, violent actions.

Indeed, Israel’s December 27, 2008 attacks represent the single largest slaughter in Gaza since Israel illegally occupied the area in 1967 — this, as the numbers of dead innocents and civilians (including children) continue to mount following today's (Dec. 28/08) massacre.

Israel's military operation, entitled “Cast Lead,” echoes previous Israeli raids into Gaza, which have been characterized by indiscriminate attacks on civilian population centres, mass detentions, violent house demolitions and other forms of collective punishment against the Palestinian people.

*** Please note that Saturday’s rally will additionally address the Provincial and Federal governments’ total support towards illegally occupying Israel — best exemplified by way of increased bilateral military, political and nation-to-nation 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 undergone the daily violence of a wide-ranging humanitarian catastrophe triggered by severely reduced access to energy, food, and medicines. 

IN EFFECT, GAZA REMAINS THE WORLD’S LARGEST OPEN-AIR PRISON.

At this moment, we MUST reaffirm our commitment in the strongest possible terms in support of 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).

http://www.bdsmovement.net/