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Syndicate
Martin, what exactly is the purpose of citing this ultra-right pro-Israeli aggressor organization's release? Are you going to treat us to Government of Israel releases next? Are you trying to expose the CIC as being pro-Israeli?
sometimes greed, inhumanity, injustice, power, are just that.
i'm reacting here to lagatta's framing of the Earth and Indigenous Peoples as topics of anti-capitalist literature.
and unionists' critique of martin dufresne's posting of various statements.
what is this, primarily about socialist strategic presentation?
calculated politicking. never ceases to amaze me.
Martin,
You are a white, Canadian, male. Are you the enemy of all First Nations? Are you the oppressor of all women? Are you the occupier of Afghanistan? For that matter, are you the oppressor of all non-Western humanity? Or should we differentiate your views, your beliefs, and your values from that of the predominant culture of which you are a part?
Do Arab-Israelis, for example, share equal responsibility as they are Israeli?
At the heart of the oppression is Zionism.
"Or should we differentiate your views, your beliefs, and your values from that of the predominant culture of which you are a part"
The only way to make such differentiation substantive is by acknowledging that yes, as a White, I am the factual enemy of non-Whites as long as racism isn't abolished; as a Man, I am the factual enemy of women (and often children) as long as Patriarchy isn't abolished, etc., and by taking action to differentiate myself factually, through action.
Any lesser differentiation is idealist obfuscation, protecting those who benefit from the oppression from identification and sanction, as if only ideas could be held responsible and countered...
__________________
Nuke the Knesset
Well, first, I will say that some of the bravest and most vocal opponents of Israeli oppression are Israelis.
Next, racism and patriarchy are abstract concepts. They have no substantive characteristics in the sense that there is no council, body, institution, constitution, nor ideology that represnt them or that can be torn down to eliminate them. Rather racism and misogyny are omniprescent and are represented by all Western and most non-Western councils, bodies, institutions, constitutions, and most ideologies.
So you are and will always be the Enemy of all non-Whites and all women. Of course you excuse yourself with "action" as though there is no anti-Zionist Israeli taking similar and perhaps riskier action in the name of justice and peace for Palestinians.
possible truce? demand for end of aggression and blockade
http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/559559
Some photos from recent protests:
What is this, a joke?
This is an improvement on Fisk's previous piece in which he went on about how "Israel deserves security" and Hamas wants Muslim martyrs.
I don't have any strong objection to the Bloc's statement. They obviously opted for a middle of the road position, but they are echoing the calls of Palestinians for a humanitarian aid corridor and foreign peacekeepers. They are also emphasizing that the Palestinian people are being held hostage.
They haven't pointed out that Hamas is legitimate thanks to a transparent, democratic election, but that's not immediately pertinent.
Sorry. I can't lump the Bloc with the other three mealy-mouthed parties.
here's the thing with self-determination; you don't have an occupying force ringing you with navy, and army, and putting you under seige, and preventing you from, you know, doing your own development, maybe getting a bit of gas from your offshore reserves (not having them stolen) to pay for food. stuff like that.
and when people don't get to do these things for themselves, and watch their kids get bombed, they get mad. and everyone gets mad. and some say stupid things (like nuke the knesset) which should not be said.
so the thing is, what else can we do now? it's frustrating to see the 'Middle East Quartet' big boys pretend to dictate peace and harmony to the peoples they're strangulating. and it must be said. the humanitarian aid corridor will end up being the gas shipment corridor, likely sans any real self-determination. this being what a big part of what the early planning and consulting was about. now just watching the game flower to fruition.
of course we have to keep saying, self-determination, rights, and tell the quartet and friends to work on cleaning up their own shops, developing energy alternatives and conservation, Limits to Growth. Let the Gazans Out of Prison. STOP THE MASSACRE.
Truce is what happens between two sides that are actually fighting. This is a slaughter, pure and simple. Imagine a group of hunters slaughtering a herd of caribou, and in the process a few caribou charged their assailants, causing negligible harm. If the hunters stopped shooting the caribou would it be a truce?
Hardly.
It wasn't a comment directed at you personally, but one emphasizing the point. I am so frustrated and appalled by all this that there is really not more that I can add to this conversation, since the rest is more or less obvious. This is a slaughter. This is not an armed conflict, not a war. None of those words can be applied. Truce is not applicable.
As if the Germans who were laying waste to the Warsaw Ghetto took an afternoon off and called it a "truce".
I agree. The Israelis call a massacre a war and the world media jumps all over the word "truce" as though Palestinians really matter in the equation other than as victims.
---------------------
Saturday Jan 3 @ 1 pm
Vancouver Art Gallery (Robson side - (corner Hornby)
---------------------
Hundreds came out in the rain, sleet and snow on Monday Dec 29th to show our solidarity with the people of Gaza. We're mobilizing again for Saturday Jan 3rd, 1pm at the Vancouver Art Gallery. Please come out rain, snow or shine to demonstrate your outrage and our collective humanity in response to the latest massacre of Palestinians.
*** Article (including 34 photos) from Dec 29th protest:
http://www.straight.com/article-177783/protesters-rally-vancouver-agains...
*** Mainstream news from the Province:
http://www.canada.com/theprovince/news/story.html?id=7832a374-dc9e-4079-...
*** Video from Dec 29th protest:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TATYHJiLOL4
*** Press TV coverage of Dec 29th:
mms://217.218.67.244/presstv/20081230/OUTPUT_10-03-00-FTP-ZAHRA-VANCOUVER.wmv
At least 300 Palestinians have been killed and over 1400 injured in the latest Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip, while the threat for further bloodshed still hangs 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. The Israeli state shows no sign of halting its assault anytime soon as they have begun to amass tanks and ground assault military vehicles on the border with Gaza. Israeli Defense Minister, Ehud Barak, has stated that, "the operation will last as long as necessary".
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.
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.
==> TAKE ACTION!!!
1) Email the prime minister, foreign affairs minister, and leaders of the opposition. Visit:
http://www.cjpme.ca/action_gaza_2008_12.shtml
2) Respond to biased media coverage. Visit http://letgazabeheard.wordpress.com to send sample emails to the BBC, CNN, and Fox News regarding their biased coverage and use those template letters to send to Canadian media outlets.
==> LINKS ON CURRENT SITUATION:
* Photos from Gaza:
http://thephilistine.org/2008/12/27/the-latest-pictures-from-the-bombing...
http://ingaza.wordpress.com/
* Live from Palestine diaries
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/diaries.shtml
* The Gaza Crisis Talking Points by Phyllis Bennis
http://www.zmag.org/zspace/commentaries/3727
* Democracy Now interviews:
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/12/29/israeli_attacks_kill_over_310_in
* Gaza: the logic of colonial power in The Guardian
http://tinyurl.com/8sp9bf
* Israeli Slaughter, International Culpability
http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/20075
* Gaza massacres must spur us to action by Ali Abunimah:
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10055.shtml
* Israel's Wanton Aggression On Gaza
http://countercurrents.org/lendman291208.htm
* Current Humanitarian Crisis in Gaza:
http://www.freegaza.ps/english/index.php?scid=100&id=555&extra=news&type=55
==> TALKING POINTS ABOUT GAZA FROM COALITION AGAINST ISRAELI APARTHEID
* Gaza is the world's largest open-air prison. 1.5 million residents are packed into an area 45 km long x 10 km wide, while Israel controls Gaza's air space and borders. Over 80% of the population are refugees denied their legal Right to Return to the homes and lands from which they were expelled in 1948. Israel also illegally restricts Palestinian freedom of movement into and out of Gaza. For example, in August 2008, Israel denied three Gazan Fulbright Scholars their basic right to education by having their American entry visas revoked.
* Gaza has been under complete siege since June 2007, during which time the 1.5 million people of Gaza have been cut off from sufficient fuel, food, and medicine. Two weeks ago, the UN reported that Gazans were living without power for up to 16 hours each day; half of Gaza's population was receiving water only once a week for a few hours; 80% of the water in Gaza did not meet World Health Organization standards for drinking; the unemployment rate had risen to almost 50%; only 23 of 3,900 industrial enterprises were operational; more than 79% were living below the poverty line; more than 56% were food insecure; and patients with chronic illnesses such as cancer or diabetes could not be adequately treated or cared for. (See:
http://www.ochaopt.org/documents/ocha_opt_gaza_situation_report_2008_12_...)
* Since 2001, fewer than twenty Israelis have been killed by Qassam rockets. In three days, nearly 400 Gazans have been killed by Israeli state violence. This is a ratio of 20 Gazan lives for each Israeli life, with the death toll in Gaza certain to increase. In January 2008, UN Special Rapporteur John Dugard stated, "a distinction must be drawn between acts of mindless terror, such as acts committed by Al Qaeda, and acts committed in the course of a war of national liberation against colonialism, apartheid or military occupation. While such acts cannot be justified, they must be understood as being a painful but inevitable consequence of colonialism, apartheid or occupation." Israeli and Palestinian violence can in no way be viewed as symmetrical -- individual Palestinians have chosen to resist their occupiers with largely ineffective home-made rockets, while the Israeli state, which boasts the fourth most powerful military in the world, has responded by collectively punishing the captive population that it illegally occupies. Under the Fourth Geneva Convention, collective punishment is a war crime. As the occupier, the burden is on Israel to end its state violence.
* Israel is an apartheid state. Canada must sever diplomatic ties with Israel and implement sanctions against it until Israel complies with international law. UN General Assembly President Father Miguel D'Escoto Brockmann recently called for a campaign of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions against Israel, similar to the one that ended apartheid in South Africa.
==> Organized by various Palestine solidarity groups.
For more information email vancouver.gazaprotest@gmail.com
** ENDORSED BY:
Adala - Arab Justice Committee
Al-Awda - Vancouver
Boycott Israeli Apartheid Campaign
Canadian Arab Federation - National
Canada Palestine Association - Vancouver
Canadians Against War
Canadian Islamic Congress BC
Canadian Muslim Union
Canpalnet
Code Pink Women for Peace (local chapter)
Independent Jewish Voices (Canada)
Indigenous Action Movement
Jews for a Just Peace - Vancouver
Muslim Canadian Federation - Vancouver
No One Is Illegal-Vancouver
Palestinian Islamic League - Canada
Salaam -Vancouver
Siraat Collective
Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights - University of British Columbia
StopWar Coalition
Students for a Democratic Society (UBC)
The Organizing Centre for Social and Economic Justice
Vancouver Socialist Forum
Voice of Palestine - Vancouver
Barack O'Bush
Click here
The Turkey Shoot
There really are no words to describe this disgusting butchery.
thanks for all the updates here, esp. the take action links. very helpful.
particularly the sample letter confronting some of the media lies,
"I am writing to express my deep disappointment in your coverage of the ongoing massacre in the Gaza Strip. The media have been focusing on Palestinian rocket fire into Israel as the immediate context for the deadly attacks, diverting attention away from the fact that it was Israel that broke the ceasefire many times during the last six months, particularly on November 4th, 2008, when Israeli forces killed six Palestinians.
What is missing in current media reports is the fact that the truce between Hamas and Israel was holding until Israel broke it on November 4, 2008. The Guardian reported this on November 5th. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/05/israelandthepalestinians). Even Fox News reported on the attack, although it characterized it as a “clash” that was “the first battle since a June truce mostly quieted violence in the volatile territory.” (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,446805,00.html).
Why, then, are the media forgetting their own reporting? It is evident that Israel broke the ceasefire, irrespective of whether it thought the Rafah tunnels were a threat (since the tunnels were the targets in the attack). Israel knew full well that its attack would provoke Hamas’s retaliation.
Indiscriminate fire into a heavily populated civilian area—Gaza is the most densely populated area in the world—is the equivalent of a willful intent to kill civilians, and constitutes a war crime under international law, particularly under the Fourth Geneva convention. None of the Western media outlets dared raise this issue, or to interview international law experts.
In a news report on December 28th, 2008, the BBC aired interviews with Israeli officials who stressed the notion that Israel’s citizens were in danger. The BBC report emphasized the Palestinian rockets, how Hamas has acquired rockets with a longer range that can reach more Israelis, while showing footage of Israeli civilians scurrying towards their homes in anticipation of a missile launch. Israeli Foreign Minister Livni was shown dismissing the high death toll in Gaza, saying that the question was not to count numbers here and there, not of how many people had died, but that Hamas is a “terrorist organization” and a dangerous threat to Israel’s civilians. Sadly, however, it is a question of numbers, especially when so many of the 350 killed and over 1600 injured (so far) are women and children. As stated, this act violates international law.
This form of biased journalism has to stop. Misinformation hurts the cause of peace, and insults the memory of the Palestinians massacred during this dark event. Demonizing Palestinians encourages further Israeli aggression. Raising awareness about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the unacceptable massacre that took place on December 27th is essential to achieving justice for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and beyond."
One of the things I appreciate about Robert Fisk is that he simply calls it how he sees it; no fear, no favour.
And Martin that tagline is disgusting and wrong.
Pacifying Gaza
I was at the Mosque in London last night. There were approximately 300 people gathered. It was an intense crowd. The people then carpooled to Victoria park for a candlelight vigil.
Khalil Ramal, Lib MPP London-Fanshawe and NDP for L-F Irene Mathyssen were the only pols present.
Mathyssen was singled out by one of the speakers for her work with the Arab\Muslim community in London.
No other provincial MPPs showed, no Con MPs, and the area's lone Liberal, Glen Pearson, was in Sudan.
Apparently there was a press conference for media earlier in the day. But there was (almost) no local coverage that I noticed.
aljazeera is reporting that iran is making statements now, and the ongoing bombing slaughter seems to be much more than an electoral tactic. i know you know this, but i'm wondering if we can get that list of UN embassies circulating again, maybe it is already, i'm not on lists at present. all out writing and phoning to all country contacts. even if i found the old list i couldn't post it all here. does someone have it on a website somewhere? united for peace and justice? i'll check around too.
PEJ has the content re: call for Emergency UN Gen'l Assembly/ International Court of Justice . now we just need the list of contacts posted somewhere easy from you folks in BC. appreciate any help.
http://www.pej.org/html/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=7562&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0and we could add in letters the explosion of indiscriminate civilian attacks elsewhere.
AS citizens of the world we demand our rights to peace, justice, absence of war crimes and the rule of international law in all countries.