Some random thoughts and questions in response to "righttolive":
Does rightolive call existence in Gaza under collective punishment "living"?
Did he/she by any chance benefit from a scholarship from the Heseg Foundation as a foreign volunteer in the IDF --a practice that Canada and other countries need to question very seriously as a breach of loyalty-- or is she/he an Israeli who after serving in the IDF couldn't stand to live there any more and moved to Canada?
Is he/she aware of the huge increase in fundamentalism among IDF officers and soldiers and how it influences their attitude toward Arabs? And does he/she think Israel is free of the threat that Turkey is facing, of the rise of fundamentalism?
Does he/she think that the continued illegal occupation of Palestinian lands and the influx of growing numbers of fanatical settlers who want to expel Arabs and claim for Israel the lands up to the Jordan (and perhaps beyond) won't encourage the rise of fundamentalism in countries like Turkey? If in fact Israel is genuinely interested in fighting fundamentalism, its actions are counterintuitive.
The rise of Hamas was encouraged by the Israelis as a counterweight and rival to the secular Fatah.in the 1980s. Now they're demonized.
Hamas won the elections in Gaza and Israel & the US conspired to encourage armed Fatah resistance to Hamas taking power, and since then the MSM, Israel's echo chamber, have kept on repeating that Hamas took power in a bloody coup.
Israel is still holding between 8000 and 9000 Palestinian prisoners, including minors, women and older people with health problems. And it has prevented the 1.5 million inhabitants of Gaza from being independent, productive, or healthy.
Israel tortures and blackmails Palestinians (e.g., denying access to health care unless they agree to work for Israeli intelligence) in order to turn them into spies against their own communities.
Israel has 200-300 nukes.
"right to live" is what Palestinians, like any other nation on earth, should have, but the crazy Zionists are denying them.
the point is not what Turkey did to the Armenians or what they have done and are doing to the Kurds. NATO turns a blind eye, as it always has, to Turkey's domestic human rights violations and it also turns a blind eye to Israel's human rights violations.
And no, "we all" don't support Hamas and Turkey, but those of us who value Palestinian lives and independence are grateful that they speak and act on behalf of the population of Gaza, whom much of the world has conveniently forgotten or ignored.
The US and Canada, Israel's chief apologists, need to rethink their position, which is only emboldening Israel to continue on a path that is leading to terrible consequences, one way or another.
If "righttolive" thinks that all this is anti-semitism, then pro-Zionist rhetoricians need to re-examine the logic of the favourite epithet they've chosen for their critics. Bandying about the Shoah (and exploiting the blessed memory of the victims of Naziism and of Western indifference) just won't work any more. Revisionist historians in Israel, France and Britain --all Jews-- have published evidence of the cynical transactions of the Zionists in the 1930's and the brutality of the neo-fascists who were instrumental in setting up the state of Israel. Therefore all the great things that Israeli scientists and humanitarians have done could be seen as the fruit of the poisoned tree.
Some Jews question the very foundations on which the State of Israel was established. Others simply are horrified by the conduct of extremists recently. Challenging the political entity called Israel does not make us anti-semites any more than a decree by an orthodox rabbi can deny us our Jewish identity because we don't conform to orthodox rules.
And I'm not asking for a reply from "righttolive". Just asking her/him to reflect a little about the indefensible position of Israel, its Zionist shills and western imperialist supporters.
