According to the Halacha [the collective body of Jewish religious laws derived from the Written and Oral Torah], “the killing by a Jew of a non-Jew under any circumstances is not regarded as murder. It may be prohibited for other reasons, especially when it causes danger for Jews.” When asked if he was sorry about the Arabs [murdered by Baruch Goldstein in 1994], militant Rabbi Moshe Levenger declared: “I am sorry not only about dead Arabs but about dead flies.”
American-Israeli Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburgh: "If every simple cell in a Jewish body entails divinity, is a part of God, then every strand of DNA is part of God. Therefore, something is special about Jewish DNA…If a Jew needs a liver, can you take the liver of an innocent non-Jew passing by to save him? The Torah would probably permit that. Jewish life has an infinite value."
Rabbi Kook the Elder: “The difference between a Jewish soul and souls of non-Jews—all of them in all different levels—is greater and deeper than the difference between a human soul and the souls of cattle.”
Having grown up in a thoroughly observant household I can tell you that the vast majority of observant Jews not only do not subscribe to these sentiments but would tell you that they are actually contrary to what the Halacha dictates. These are, it goes without saying, repulsive sentiments. Equally repulsive, and a prime example of what I've been talking about, is that you seem to be attributing the views of these particular individuals to all observant Jews.
you couldn't swing if you were hangin' from a palm tree in a hurricane
Having grown up in a thoroughly observant household I can tell you that the vast majority of observant Jews not only do not subscribe to these sentiments but would tell you that they are actually contrary to what the Halacha dictates. These are, it goes without saying, repulsive sentiments. Equally repulsive, and a prime example of what I've been talking about, is that you seem to be attributing the views of these particular individuals to all observant Jews.
Though as you're fully aware, these extremist sentiments are exactly those trumpeted by the settlers, and the settlers are protected, encouraged, and funded by the state.
This film is heartbreaking...I had seen footage of Bassem Abu-Rahmeh (Phil) 's death prior to the release of the documentary, but didn't put 2+2 together when watching, and didn't expect him to be murdered on camera....
It is kind of amazing that in this day and age people can get away with the cold-blooded murder of unarmed protestors, even when that murder is caught on camera. It's almost guaranteed that the soldier who shot that fella at the end would have suffered no reprisals, and in fact, as in the case of the IDF Captain who emptied his entire clip into the body of a 13 year old schoolgirl http://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/nov/16/israel2, he'll probably even get promoted.
Not guilty. The Israeli captain who emptied his rifle into a Palestinian schoolgirl 'The military court cleared the soldier of illegal use of his weapon, conduct unbecoming an officer and perverting the course of justice by asking soldiers under his command to alter their accounts of the incident.
...A recording of radio exchanges between Capt R and his troops obtained by Israeli television revealed that from the beginning soldiers identified Iman as a child.
In the recording, a soldier in a watchtower radioed a colleague in the army post's operations room and describes Iman as "a little girl" who was "scared to death". After soldiers first opened fire, she dropped her schoolbag which was then hit by several bullets establishing that it did not contain explosive. At that point she was no longer carrying the bag and, the tape revealed, was heading away from the army post when she was shot.
...Palestinian witnesses said they saw the captain shoot Iman twice in the head, walk away, turn back and fire a stream of bullets into her body.'
'The killer of 13-year old Iman Al Hams, a girl who was cowering behind a stone and positively identified as a child before she was shot, and then was shot multiple times to 'confirm the kill', according to the Israeli military transcript of the incident, has received 80,000 NIS (about $15,000) compensation for the 'trouble' of having gone to court.
...The 13-year-old school girl was on her way to school when she was killed on October 5, 2004. Although she is just one of 850 children killed by the Israeli army since the start of the current stage of conflict in 2000, her death became one of the few that was widely publicized, due to the leak of a tape of the incident.
...The soldier [...] recently received a promotion to the rank of major.
Yosi, what are your opinions on this? Do you think it's right that the IDF are held unaccountable in the large majority of such cases? (approx 95% of cases). And if not, can you enlighten me as to what people like yourself, who profess to be 'moderates', are doing about it?
Having grown up in a thoroughly observant household I can tell you that the vast majority of observant Jews not only do not subscribe to these sentiments but would tell you that they are actually contrary to what the Halacha dictates. These are, it goes without saying, repulsive sentiments. Equally repulsive, and a prime example of what I've been talking about, is that you seem to be attributing the views of these particular individuals to all observant Jews.
Though as you're fully aware, these extremist sentiments are exactly those trumpeted by the settlers, and the settlers are protected, encouraged, and funded by the state.
Which settlers? They're not a monolithic group. The people that believe these things are a distinct but vocal minority. The vast majority live in the settlements for the same reason people in America live in the suburbs; better housing for less money. Again, your penchant for lumping Jews together rears its head.
you couldn't swing if you were hangin' from a palm tree in a hurricane
This film is heartbreaking...I had seen footage of Bassem Abu-Rahmeh (Phil) 's death prior to the release of the documentary, but didn't put 2+2 together when watching, and didn't expect him to be murdered on camera....
It is kind of amazing that in this day and age people can get away with the cold-blooded murder of unarmed protestors, even when that murder is caught on camera. It's almost guaranteed that the soldier who shot that fella at the end would have suffered no reprisals, and in fact, as in the case of the IDF Captain who emptied his entire clip into the body of a 13 year old schoolgirl http://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/nov/16/israel2, he'll probably even get promoted.
Not guilty. The Israeli captain who emptied his rifle into a Palestinian schoolgirl 'The military court cleared the soldier of illegal use of his weapon, conduct unbecoming an officer and perverting the course of justice by asking soldiers under his command to alter their accounts of the incident.
...A recording of radio exchanges between Capt R and his troops obtained by Israeli television revealed that from the beginning soldiers identified Iman as a child.
In the recording, a soldier in a watchtower radioed a colleague in the army post's operations room and describes Iman as "a little girl" who was "scared to death". After soldiers first opened fire, she dropped her schoolbag which was then hit by several bullets establishing that it did not contain explosive. At that point she was no longer carrying the bag and, the tape revealed, was heading away from the army post when she was shot.
...Palestinian witnesses said they saw the captain shoot Iman twice in the head, walk away, turn back and fire a stream of bullets into her body.'
'The killer of 13-year old Iman Al Hams, a girl who was cowering behind a stone and positively identified as a child before she was shot, and then was shot multiple times to 'confirm the kill', according to the Israeli military transcript of the incident, has received 80,000 NIS (about $15,000) compensation for the 'trouble' of having gone to court.
...The 13-year-old school girl was on her way to school when she was killed on October 5, 2004. Although she is just one of 850 children killed by the Israeli army since the start of the current stage of conflict in 2000, her death became one of the few that was widely publicized, due to the leak of a tape of the incident.
...The soldier [...] recently received a promotion to the rank of major.
Yosi, what are your opinions on this? Do you think it's right that the IDF are held unaccountable in the large majority of such cases? (approx 95% of cases). And if not, can you enlighten me as to what people like yourself, who profess to be 'moderates', are doing about it?
What do you think my opinion is? I'm not going to dignify that with a response. As for what I'm doing about it; nothing, because I'm not in a position to do anything at the moment other than speak to other people in my community and try to change minds. Wish I could do more.
you couldn't swing if you were hangin' from a palm tree in a hurricane
Which settlers? They're not a monolithic group. The people that believe these things are a distinct but vocal minority. The vast majority live in the settlements for the same reason people in America live in the suburbs; better housing for less money.
There you go again, attempting to muddy the waters. There are good illegal settlers, and bad illegal settlers, right? There's not one Zionism, there are many Zionisms, right?
Again, are you hoping that some morons will read what you type and be convinced?
As for your claim that the vast majority live in the settlements for financial reasons, this is pure guff. The vast majority of settlers move there for ideological reasons.
Again, your penchant for lumping Jews together rears its head.
I didn't lump Jews together. We're talking about the settlers. But I know you feel the need to play your filthy anti-Semitism card at every available opportunity, because it's all you have.
Again, your penchant for lumping Jews together rears its head.
I didn't lump all Jews together, I was talking about the settlers, as you know full well. But you hope that some morons are reading what you post and will come to the conclusion that I'm a racist anti-Semite who hates Jews. Either way, let's assume that you're right, and that you're not simply trying to deflect attention from Israel's oppression and terrorizing of the Palestinians.
So what if I did 'lump all Jews together?...
http://www.counterpunch.org/2002/06/04/what-is-antisemitism/ What Is Antisemitism? by Michael Neumann '..Do we want to say it is antisemitic to accuse, not just the Israelis, but Jews generally of complicity in these crimes against humanity? Again, maybe not, because there is a quite reasonable case for such assertions. Compare them, for example, to the claim that Germans generally were complicit in such crimes. This never meant that every last German, man, woman, idiot and child, were guilty. It meant that most Germans were. Their guilt, of course, did not consist in shoving naked prisoners into gas chambers. It consisted in support for the people who planned such acts, or–as many overwrought, moralistic Jewish texts will tell you–for denying the horror unfolding around them, for failing to speak out and resist, for passive consent. Note that the extreme danger of any kind of active resistance is not supposed to be an excuse here.
Well, virtually no Jew is in any kind of danger from speaking out. And speaking out is the only sort of resistance required. If many Jews spoke out, it would have an enormous effect. But the overwhelming majority of Jews do not, and in the vast majority of cases, this is because they support Israel. Now perhaps the whole notion of collective responsibility should be discarded; perhaps some clever person will convince us that we have to do this. But at present, the case for Jewish complicity seems much stronger than the case for German complicity. So if it is not racist, and reasonable, to say that the Germans were complicit in crimes against humanity, then it is not racist, and reasonable, to say the same of the Jews. And should the notion of collective responsibility be discarded, it would still be reasonable to say that many, perhaps most adult Jewish individuals support a state that commits war crimes, because that’s just true. So if saying these things is antisemitic, than it can be reasonable to be antisemitic.'
Which settlers? They're not a monolithic group. The people that believe these things are a distinct but vocal minority. The vast majority live in the settlements for the same reason people in America live in the suburbs; better housing for less money.
There you go again, attempting to muddy the waters. There are good illegal settlers, and bad illegal settlers, right? There's not one Zionism, there are many Zionisms, right?
Again, are you hoping that some morons will read what you type and be convinced?
As for your claim that the vast majority live in the settlements for financial reasons, this is pure guff. The vast majority of settlers move there for ideological reasons.
Again, your penchant for lumping Jews together rears its head.
I didn't lump Jews together. We're talking about the settlers. But I know you feel the need to play your filthy anti-Semitism card at every available opportunity, because it's all you have.
Your inability to grasp nuance is really shocking. Saying that most settlers live in the settlements for financial reasons isn't the same as saying that they or any of the settlements are good. It is simply stating the truth. And it is the truth. The fact that you claim otherwise just shows how little you really understand this issue. It's so much easier to believe that the settlers are all raving ideologues out to oppress the Palestinians. So you believe it whether it's true or not. Seriously, you really don't know the first thing about Israel. Sure, you can cut and paste articles about Israeli atrocities with the best of them, but when it comes right down to it you don't seem to have allowed yourself to be exposed to any information about the country that doesn't confirm your hatred.
I really don't know why I keep responding to you.
you couldn't swing if you were hangin' from a palm tree in a hurricane
Again, your penchant for lumping Jews together rears its head.
I didn't lump all Jews together, I was talking about the settlers, as you know full well. But you hope that some morons are reading what you post and will come to the conclusion that I'm a racist anti-Semite who hates Jews. Either way, let's assume that you're right, and that you're not simply trying to deflect attention from Israel's oppression and terrorizing of the Palestinians.
So what if I did 'lump all Jews together?...
http://www.counterpunch.org/2002/06/04/what-is-antisemitism/ What Is Antisemitism? by Michael Neumann '..Do we want to say it is antisemitic to accuse, not just the Israelis, but Jews generally of complicity in these crimes against humanity? Again, maybe not, because there is a quite reasonable case for such assertions. Compare them, for example, to the claim that Germans generally were complicit in such crimes. This never meant that every last German, man, woman, idiot and child, were guilty. It meant that most Germans were. Their guilt, of course, did not consist in shoving naked prisoners into gas chambers. It consisted in support for the people who planned such acts, or–as many overwrought, moralistic Jewish texts will tell you–for denying the horror unfolding around them, for failing to speak out and resist, for passive consent. Note that the extreme danger of any kind of active resistance is not supposed to be an excuse here.
Well, virtually no Jew is in any kind of danger from speaking out. And speaking out is the only sort of resistance required. If many Jews spoke out, it would have an enormous effect. But the overwhelming majority of Jews do not, and in the vast majority of cases, this is because they support Israel. Now perhaps the whole notion of collective responsibility should be discarded; perhaps some clever person will convince us that we have to do this. But at present, the case for Jewish complicity seems much stronger than the case for German complicity. So if it is not racist, and reasonable, to say that the Germans were complicit in crimes against humanity, then it is not racist, and reasonable, to say the same of the Jews. And should the notion of collective responsibility be discarded, it would still be reasonable to say that many, perhaps most adult Jewish individuals support a state that commits war crimes, because that’s just true. So if saying these things is antisemitic, than it can be reasonable to be antisemitic.'
If you did lump all Jews together, as your repeated approving quotation from MN suggests, you would be confirming that you are an antisemite. Look back at the EU definition. It's right there, plain as day. So yeah, sorry to burst your bubble, but you're kind of a bigot, even if you don't realize it yourself.
you couldn't swing if you were hangin' from a palm tree in a hurricane
Your inability to grasp nuance is really shocking. Saying that most settlers live in the settlements for financial reasons isn't the same as saying that they or any of the settlements are good. It is simply stating the truth. And it is the truth. The fact that you claim otherwise just shows how little you really understand this issue. It's so much easier to believe that the settlers are all raving ideologues out to oppress the Palestinians. So you believe it whether it's true or not. Seriously, you really don't know the first thing about Israel. Sure, you can cut and paste articles about Israeli atrocities with the best of them, but when it comes right down to it you don't seem to have allowed yourself to be exposed to any information about the country that doesn't confirm your hatred.
I really don't know why I keep responding to you.
Ah, 'nuance'. That word. A favourite word of those who have a problem with facts, and who choose to muddy water so it becomes cloudy enough so as to fit their own self-serving ends.
You say the majority of the settlers move into illegal settlements, which are located in the front line of the conflict, and which see the majority of the violence in this conflict, for financial ends?
That's funny, because every single report I've read on the subject points to the settlers being driven by ideological motives.
But because it's suits you to say otherwise, in your desperate attempt to win a debate, you'll say otherwise.
If you did lump all Jews together, as your repeated approving quotation from MN suggests, you would be confirming that you are an antisemite. Look back at the EU definition. It's right there, plain as day. So yeah, sorry to burst your bubble, but you're kind of a bigot, even if you don't realize it yourself.
That's cute. Resorting to name calling now are we?
Explain to me how my quoting that piece by MN makes me an anti-semite.
The Immigrant Absorption Ministry announced on Sunday it was setting up an "army of bloggers," to be made up of Israelis who speak a second language, to represent Israel in "anti-Zionist blogs" in English, French, Spanish and German.
...Halfon said volunteers who send the Absorption Ministry their contact details by e-mail, at media@moia.gov.il, will be registered according to language, and then passed on to the Foreign Ministry's media department, whose personnel will direct the volunteers to Web sites deemed "problematic."
"Israel hires Internet soldiers," Israeli students and demobilized soldiers get paid to pretend they are just regular folks and leave pro-Israel comments online. Israeli Foreign Ministry Deputy Elan Shturman is quoted from the Israeli Occupation Magazine saying:
“Our people will not say: ‘Hello, I am from the hasbara department of the Israeli foreign ministry and I want to tell you the following.’ Nor will they necessarily identify themselves as Israelis,” he said. “They will speak as net-surfers and as citizens, and will write responses that will look personal but will be based on a prepared list of messages that the foreign ministry developed.”
Counterpunch's Jonathan Cooke in "Israel's Internet Wars" describes:
"a special undercover team of paid workers whose job it will be to surf the internet 24 hours a day spreading positive news about Israel. Internet-savvy Israeli youngsters, mainly recent graduates and demobilised soldiers with language skills, are being recruited to pose as ordinary surfers while they provide the government’s line on the Middle East conflict...About $150,000 has been set aside for the first stage of development, with increased funding expected next year."
Occupation Magazine states in "The Foreign Ministry presents: talkbackers in the service of the State":
"paid Internet talkbackers are being mobilized in the service of the State. The Foreign Ministry is in the process of setting up a team of students and demobilized soldiers who will work around the clock writing pro-Israeli responses on Internet websites all over the world,"
The team will fall under the authority of a large department already dealing with what Israelis term “hasbara”, officially translated as “public explanation” but more usually meaning propaganda. That includes not only government public relations work but more secretive dealings the ministry has with a battery of private organisations and initiatives that promote Israel’s image in print, on TV and online.
They will speak as net-surfers and as citizens, and will write responses that will look personal but will be based on a prepared list of messages that the foreign ministry developed.”
Yosi, I notice that you've spouted a lot of the standard talking points that flood the blogosphere at around the same time. Talking points that you see everywhere for a time, before they dissipate and a new one emerges. Such talking points as the 'Hamas threw some Fatah prisoners from the roof of a building and this terror is one reason why they gained power in Gaza' (The truth is that those prisoners were thrown from the roof at least one year after the elections, as they took place during the battle that occurred due to a joint U.S-Israeli sponsored coup attempt), and the talking point that Jews were ethnically cleansed from Arab countries (They weren't. It's a lie), e.t.c.
Just out of interest, can you direct me to the source of such bullshit? I'd like to keep updated too on all the latest Hasbara talking points as and when they're released for dissemination by your masters in Tel Aviv. Where do you go to read this shit? Is it on IDF.com, or can I access the Israeli foreign ministries webpage and find all this self-serving nonsense there?
Ok, we've moved into the realm of the conspiratorial and crazy (if we weren't there already). I don't know why I'm at all surprised.
As for me being a racist, feel free to think that if you like. I really could not care less. I trust that fair-minded people who read what I write here will see it differently, though.
you couldn't swing if you were hangin' from a palm tree in a hurricane
Ok, we've moved into the realm of the conspiratorial and crazy (if we weren't there already). I don't know why I'm at all surprised.
As for me being a racist, feel free to think that if you like. I really could not care less. I trust that fair-minded people who read what I write here will see it differently, though.
Nothing crazy about it at all. Hasbara is a fact. These people scrape the bottom of every barrel to try and paint Israel in a good light, and when all of their lies and deceit have reached their limit and been exposed for what they are, they resort to accusing you of being a racist and a holocaust denier.
This film is heartbreaking...I had seen footage of Bassem Abu-Rahmeh (Phil) 's death prior to the release of the documentary, but didn't put 2+2 together when watching, and didn't expect him to be murdered on camera....
It is kind of amazing that in this day and age people can get away with the cold-blooded murder of unarmed protestors, even when that murder is caught on camera. It's almost guaranteed that the soldier who shot that fella at the end would have suffered no reprisals, and in fact, as in the case of the IDF Captain who emptied his entire clip into the body of a 13 year old schoolgirl http://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/nov/16/israel2, he'll probably even get promoted.
Not guilty. The Israeli captain who emptied his rifle into a Palestinian schoolgirl 'The military court cleared the soldier of illegal use of his weapon, conduct unbecoming an officer and perverting the course of justice by asking soldiers under his command to alter their accounts of the incident.
...A recording of radio exchanges between Capt R and his troops obtained by Israeli television revealed that from the beginning soldiers identified Iman as a child.
In the recording, a soldier in a watchtower radioed a colleague in the army post's operations room and describes Iman as "a little girl" who was "scared to death". After soldiers first opened fire, she dropped her schoolbag which was then hit by several bullets establishing that it did not contain explosive. At that point she was no longer carrying the bag and, the tape revealed, was heading away from the army post when she was shot.
...Palestinian witnesses said they saw the captain shoot Iman twice in the head, walk away, turn back and fire a stream of bullets into her body.'
'The killer of 13-year old Iman Al Hams, a girl who was cowering behind a stone and positively identified as a child before she was shot, and then was shot multiple times to 'confirm the kill', according to the Israeli military transcript of the incident, has received 80,000 NIS (about $15,000) compensation for the 'trouble' of having gone to court.
...The 13-year-old school girl was on her way to school when she was killed on October 5, 2004. Although she is just one of 850 children killed by the Israeli army since the start of the current stage of conflict in 2000, her death became one of the few that was widely publicized, due to the leak of a tape of the incident.
...The soldier [...] recently received a promotion to the rank of major.
Crickets chirping......chirp chirp chirp chirp. Dead silence, UNREAL. Didn't anybody read the post??? Where you at Matt? GF? Atrocities are happening to the Palestinians! Where's your holy water? Where's your freedom spreading soldiers??? Ritoricle question, dnt answer....your silence already answered for you.
What do you mean Badbrains? The life of a Palestinian isn't worth the toenail of a Jew. They're just vermin that need to be erased from the face of the Earth in order to make way for the fulfilment of the Zionists dream of racial supremacy in their imaginary Biblical homeland.
And if you criticise Israel's crimes against the Palestinians, including the murder of schoolgirls, then apparently you're a racist.
'The message they give us is the exact opposite of the reality, they're acting like they're part of our community,' he said
Thursday 14 August 2014
Russell Brand has gone one step further in his condemnation of the Israel-Gaza conflict than simply critiquing the way various media outlets have approached coverage.
Now, the comedian is urging banks, pension funds and other big businesses to sever investment ties with Israel, or any deals that he feels “facilitate the oppression of people in Gaza”.
Using Barclays as an example, he said the bank manages “the portfolios of an Israeli defence company called Elbit, which makes the drones that bomb Gaza.”
"The message they give us is the exact opposite of the reality, they're acting like they're part of our community," he said during his new episode of The Trews, which you can watch below.
"But if we're aware of the reality of what they do, then we have the power to influence them."
He went on to encourage his viewers to sign a petition on the Avaaz campaign website, to put pressure on companies such as Barclays, computer company HP, security giants G4S, pension fund ABP and heavy machinery Caterpillar brand to rethink their investments.
So far, it has amassed almost 1.7million signatures of support.
"In the wake of the terrible violence unfolding in Israel-Palestine, we, citizens from around the world, are deeply concerned about your companies’ continued investment in companies and projects that finance illegal settlements and the oppressive occupation of the Palestinian people," the mission statement on the petition reads.
"17 EU countries recently issued warnings to their citizens against doing business or investing in illegal Israeli settlements. Given those legal considerations, you now have the opportunity to withdraw investments and respect international law. This is a chance to be on the right side of history."
Some of the firms listed in the petition had previously spoken of their decision to maintain financial ties in Israel.
HP claimed that "respecting human rights is a core value" of their business and said that they used Israeli checkpoints to allow people to "get to their place of work or to carry out their business in a faster and safer way".
Meanwhile, Caterpillar said that while it "shares the world's concern over unrest in the Middle East", it doesn’t believe it has “neither the legal right nor the means to police individual use of its equipment”.
Brand’s comments come after the business secretary Vince Cable threatened to halt 12 export licences to Israel if the violence in Gaza resumes, including components for combat aircraft, tanks and radar systems.
The government have, however, exported £42million of military equipment to Israel since 2010.
As a new round of violence kicks off in Israel-Palestine and more children are killed, it's not enough just to call for another ceasefire. It’s time to take definitive non-violent action to end this decades long nightmare.
Our governments have failed -- while they have talked peace and passed UN resolutions, they and our companies have continued to aid, trade and invest in the violence. The only way to stop this hellish cycle of Israel confiscating Palestinian lands, daily collective punishment of innocent Palestinian families, Hamas firing rockets, and Israel bombing Gaza is to make the economic cost of this conflict too high to bear.
We know it works -- when EU countries issued guidelines not to fund the illegal Israeli settlements it caused an earthquake in the cabinet, and when citizens successfully persuaded a Dutch pension fund, PGGM, to withdraw, it created a political storm.
This may not feel like a direct way to stop the current killing, but history tells us that raising the financial cost of oppression can pave a path to peace. Sign the petition on the right and call on 6 key banks, pension funds and businesses to pull out -- If we all take smart action now and turn up the heat, they could withdraw, the Israeli economy will take a hit, and we can turn the calculation of the extremists politically profiting from this hell upside down.
In the last six weeks three Israeli teenagers were murdered in the West Bank, a Palestinian boy was burnt alive, an American kid was brutally beaten up by Israeli police, and now almost 100 Gazan kids have died in Israeli air strikes. This is not the "Middle East conflict", it's becoming a war on children. And we are becoming numb to this global shame.
The media makes out like this is an intractable conflict between two equal warring parties, but it is not. Palestinian extremists' attacks on innocent civilians are never justified and Hamas’ anti-semitism is disgusting. But these extremists claim legitimacy by fighting the grotesque, decades-long oppression by the Israeli state. Israel currently occupies, colonises, bombs, raids, and controls the water, trade and the borders of a legally free nation that has been recognised by the United Nations. In Gaza, Israel has created the largest open-air prison in the world, and then blockaded it. Now as bombs fall, the families literally have no way to get out.
These are war crimes and we wouldn't accept that anywhere else: why accept it in Palestine? Half a century ago Israel and its Arab neighbours went to war and Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza. Occupying territory after war happens all the time. But no military occupation should turn into a decades-long tyranny which only fuels and benefits extremists who use terror to target the innocent. And who suffers? The majority of loving families on both sides that just want freedom and peace.
To many, particularly in Europe and North America, calling for companies to withdraw investments from financing or taking part in Israel's occupation of Palestine sounds completely biased. But this campaign is not anti-Israel -- this is the most potent non-violent strategy to end the ritual violence, ensure Israelis' security and achieve Palestinian freedom. Although Hamas deserves much pressure too, it is already under crippling sanctions and facing every kind of pressure. Israel's power and wealth dwarfs Palestine, and if it refuses to end its illegal occupation, the world must act to make the cost unbearable.
Dutch pension fund ABP invests in Israeli banks that help fund the colonisation of Palestine. Massive banks like Barclays invest in suppliers of Israeli arms and other occupation businesses. British G4S provides extensive security equipment used by the Israeli Defence Force in the occupation. France's Veolia operates transport for Israeli settlers illegally living on Palestinian lands. Computer giant Hewlett-Packard supplies sophisticated surveillance to control the movement of Palestinians. And Caterpillar provides bulldozers that are used to demolish Palestinian homes and farms.
If we can create the biggest global call ever to get these companies to pull out, we will show clearly that the world will no longer be complicit in this bloodshed. The Palestinian people are calling on the world to support this path and progressive Israelis support it too. Let’s join them.
Our community has worked to bring peace, hope, and change to some of the world’s toughest conflicts, and often that means taking difficult positions to address the root cause. For years our community has looked for a political solution to this nightmare, but with this new round of horror unfolding in Gaza, the time has come to turn to sanctions and disinvestment to finally help end the horror for Israelis and Palestinians.
Comments
American-Israeli Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburgh: "If every simple cell in a Jewish body entails divinity, is a part of God, then every strand of DNA is part of God. Therefore, something is special about Jewish DNA…If a Jew needs a liver, can you take the liver of an innocent non-Jew passing by to save him? The Torah would probably permit that. Jewish life has an infinite value."
Rabbi Kook the Elder: “The difference between a Jewish soul and souls of non-Jews—all of them in all different levels—is greater and deeper than the difference between a human soul and the souls of cattle.”
Again, are you hoping that some morons will read what you type and be convinced?
As for your claim that the vast majority live in the settlements for financial reasons, this is pure guff. The vast majority of settlers move there for ideological reasons. I didn't lump Jews together. We're talking about the settlers. But I know you feel the need to play your filthy anti-Semitism card at every available opportunity, because it's all you have.
Either way, let's assume that you're right, and that you're not simply trying to deflect attention from Israel's oppression and terrorizing of the Palestinians.
So what if I did 'lump all Jews together?...
http://www.counterpunch.org/2002/06/04/what-is-antisemitism/
What Is Antisemitism?
by Michael Neumann
'..Do we want to say it is antisemitic to accuse, not just the Israelis, but Jews generally of complicity in these crimes against humanity? Again, maybe not, because there is a quite reasonable case for such assertions. Compare them, for example, to the claim that Germans generally were complicit in such crimes. This never meant that every last German, man, woman, idiot and child, were guilty. It meant that most Germans were. Their guilt, of course, did not consist in shoving naked prisoners into gas chambers. It consisted in support for the people who planned such acts, or–as many overwrought, moralistic Jewish texts will tell you–for denying the horror unfolding around them, for failing to speak out and resist, for passive consent. Note that the extreme danger of any kind of active resistance is not supposed to be an excuse here.
Well, virtually no Jew is in any kind of danger from speaking out. And speaking out is the only sort of resistance required. If many Jews spoke out, it would have an enormous effect. But the overwhelming majority of Jews do not, and in the vast majority of cases, this is because they support Israel. Now perhaps the whole notion of collective responsibility should be discarded; perhaps some clever person will convince us that we have to do this. But at present, the case for Jewish complicity seems much stronger than the case for German complicity. So if it is not racist, and reasonable, to say that the Germans were complicit in crimes against humanity, then it is not racist, and reasonable, to say the same of the Jews. And should the notion of collective responsibility be discarded, it would still be reasonable to say that many, perhaps most adult Jewish individuals support a state that commits war crimes, because that’s just true. So if saying these things is antisemitic, than it can be reasonable to be antisemitic.'
I really don't know why I keep responding to you.
You say the majority of the settlers move into illegal settlements, which are located in the front line of the conflict, and which see the majority of the violence in this conflict, for financial ends?
That's funny, because every single report I've read on the subject points to the settlers being driven by ideological motives.
But because it's suits you to say otherwise, in your desperate attempt to win a debate, you'll say otherwise.
Explain to me how my quoting that piece by MN makes me an anti-semite.
Meanwhile, Palestinians are being beaten and murdered today as we speak, and the illegal racist settlements continue being built.
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/israel-recruits-army-of-bloggers-to-combat-anti-zionist-web-sites-1.268393
Israel recruits 'army of bloggers' to combat anti-Zionist Web sites
Israelis who speak a second language to represent Israel on 'problematic' Websites in new Absorption Ministry program.
By Cnaan Liphshiz | Jan. 19, 2009
The Immigrant Absorption Ministry announced on Sunday it was setting up an "army of bloggers," to be made up of Israelis who speak a second language, to represent Israel in "anti-Zionist blogs" in English, French, Spanish and German.
...Halfon said volunteers who send the Absorption Ministry their contact details by e-mail, at media@moia.gov.il, will be registered according to language, and then passed on to the Foreign Ministry's media department, whose personnel will direct the volunteers to Web sites deemed "problematic."
http://www.dailypaul.com/171416/israel-hires-internet-soldiers-to-penetrate-american-forums-chatrooms
Israel Hires Internet Soldiers to Penetrate American Forums, Chatrooms
07/20/2011
"Israel hires Internet soldiers," Israeli students and demobilized soldiers get paid to pretend they are just regular folks and leave pro-Israel comments online. Israeli Foreign Ministry Deputy Elan Shturman is quoted from the Israeli Occupation Magazine saying:
“Our people will not say: ‘Hello, I am from the hasbara department of the Israeli foreign ministry and I want to tell you the following.’ Nor will they necessarily identify themselves as Israelis,” he said. “They will speak as net-surfers and as citizens, and will write responses that will look personal but will be based on a prepared list of messages that the foreign ministry developed.”
Counterpunch's Jonathan Cooke in "Israel's Internet Wars" describes:
"a special undercover team of paid workers whose job it will be to surf the internet 24 hours a day spreading positive news about Israel. Internet-savvy Israeli youngsters, mainly recent graduates and demobilised soldiers with language skills, are being recruited to pose as ordinary surfers while they provide the government’s line on the Middle East conflict...About $150,000 has been set aside for the first stage of development, with increased funding expected next year."
Occupation Magazine states in "The Foreign Ministry presents: talkbackers in the service of the State":
"paid Internet talkbackers are being mobilized in the service of the State. The Foreign Ministry is in the process of setting up a team of students and demobilized soldiers who will work around the clock writing pro-Israeli responses on Internet websites all over the world,"
The team will fall under the authority of a large department already dealing with what Israelis term “hasbara”, officially translated as “public explanation” but more usually meaning propaganda. That includes not only government public relations work but more secretive dealings the ministry has with a battery of private organisations and initiatives that promote Israel’s image in print, on TV and online.
Yosi, I notice that you've spouted a lot of the standard talking points that flood the blogosphere at around the same time. Talking points that you see everywhere for a time, before they dissipate and a new one emerges. Such talking points as the 'Hamas threw some Fatah prisoners from the roof of a building and this terror is one reason why they gained power in Gaza' (The truth is that those prisoners were thrown from the roof at least one year after the elections, as they took place during the battle that occurred due to a joint U.S-Israeli sponsored coup attempt), and the talking point that Jews were ethnically cleansed from Arab countries (They weren't. It's a lie), e.t.c.
Just out of interest, can you direct me to the source of such bullshit? I'd like to keep updated too on all the latest Hasbara talking points as and when they're released for dissemination by your masters in Tel Aviv. Where do you go to read this shit? Is it on IDF.com, or can I access the Israeli foreign ministries webpage and find all this self-serving nonsense there?
As for me being a racist, feel free to think that if you like. I really could not care less. I trust that fair-minded people who read what I write here will see it differently, though.
Totally shameless.
They're just vermin that need to be erased from the face of the Earth in order to make way for the fulfilment of the Zionists dream of racial supremacy in their imaginary Biblical homeland.
And if you criticise Israel's crimes against the Palestinians, including the murder of schoolgirls, then apparently you're a racist.
And why are you pretending to be reasonable, when you're clearly nothing of the sort?
Have you watched this documentary yet? No?
Russell Brand calls for Israel boycott: Comedian urges big businesses that 'facilitate the oppression of people in Gaza' to pull funding
Youtube:
'The message they give us is the exact opposite of the reality, they're acting like they're part of our community,' he said
Thursday 14 August 2014
Russell Brand has gone one step further in his condemnation of the Israel-Gaza conflict than simply critiquing the way various media outlets have approached coverage.
Now, the comedian is urging banks, pension funds and other big businesses to sever investment ties with Israel, or any deals that he feels “facilitate the oppression of people in Gaza”.
Using Barclays as an example, he said the bank manages “the portfolios of an Israeli defence company called Elbit, which makes the drones that bomb Gaza.”
"The message they give us is the exact opposite of the reality, they're acting like they're part of our community," he said during his new episode of The Trews, which you can watch below.
"But if we're aware of the reality of what they do, then we have the power to influence them."
He went on to encourage his viewers to sign a petition on the Avaaz campaign website, to put pressure on companies such as Barclays, computer company HP, security giants G4S, pension fund ABP and heavy machinery Caterpillar brand to rethink their investments.
So far, it has amassed almost 1.7million signatures of support.
"In the wake of the terrible violence unfolding in Israel-Palestine, we, citizens from around the world, are deeply concerned about your companies’ continued investment in companies and projects that finance illegal settlements and the oppressive occupation of the Palestinian people," the mission statement on the petition reads.
"17 EU countries recently issued warnings to their citizens against doing business or investing in illegal Israeli settlements. Given those legal considerations, you now have the opportunity to withdraw investments and respect international law. This is a chance to be on the right side of history."
Some of the firms listed in the petition had previously spoken of their decision to maintain financial ties in Israel.
HP claimed that "respecting human rights is a core value" of their business and said that they used Israeli checkpoints to allow people to "get to their place of work or to carry out their business in a faster and safer way".
Meanwhile, Caterpillar said that while it "shares the world's concern over unrest in the Middle East", it doesn’t believe it has “neither the legal right nor the means to police individual use of its equipment”.
Brand’s comments come after the business secretary Vince Cable threatened to halt 12 export licences to Israel if the violence in Gaza resumes, including components for combat aircraft, tanks and radar systems.
The government have, however, exported £42million of military equipment to Israel since 2010.
As a new round of violence kicks off in Israel-Palestine and more children are killed, it's not enough just to call for another ceasefire. It’s time to take definitive non-violent action to end this decades long nightmare.
Our governments have failed -- while they have talked peace and passed UN resolutions, they and our companies have continued to aid, trade and invest in the violence. The only way to stop this hellish cycle of Israel confiscating Palestinian lands, daily collective punishment of innocent Palestinian families, Hamas firing rockets, and Israel bombing Gaza is to make the economic cost of this conflict too high to bear.
We know it works -- when EU countries issued guidelines not to fund the illegal Israeli settlements it caused an earthquake in the cabinet, and when citizens successfully persuaded a Dutch pension fund, PGGM, to withdraw, it created a political storm.
This may not feel like a direct way to stop the current killing, but history tells us that raising the financial cost of oppression can pave a path to peace. Sign the petition on the right and call on 6 key banks, pension funds and businesses to pull out -- If we all take smart action now and turn up the heat, they could withdraw, the Israeli economy will take a hit, and we can turn the calculation of the extremists politically profiting from this hell upside down.
In the last six weeks three Israeli teenagers were murdered in the West Bank, a Palestinian boy was burnt alive, an American kid was brutally beaten up by Israeli police, and now almost 100 Gazan kids have died in Israeli air strikes. This is not the "Middle East conflict", it's becoming a war on children. And we are becoming numb to this global shame.
The media makes out like this is an intractable conflict between two equal warring parties, but it is not. Palestinian extremists' attacks on innocent civilians are never justified and Hamas’ anti-semitism is disgusting. But these extremists claim legitimacy by fighting the grotesque, decades-long oppression by the Israeli state. Israel currently occupies, colonises, bombs, raids, and controls the water, trade and the borders of a legally free nation that has been recognised by the United Nations. In Gaza, Israel has created the largest open-air prison in the world, and then blockaded it. Now as bombs fall, the families literally have no way to get out.
These are war crimes and we wouldn't accept that anywhere else: why accept it in Palestine? Half a century ago Israel and its Arab neighbours went to war and Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza. Occupying territory after war happens all the time. But no military occupation should turn into a decades-long tyranny which only fuels and benefits extremists who use terror to target the innocent. And who suffers? The majority of loving families on both sides that just want freedom and peace.
To many, particularly in Europe and North America, calling for companies to withdraw investments from financing or taking part in Israel's occupation of Palestine sounds completely biased. But this campaign is not anti-Israel -- this is the most potent non-violent strategy to end the ritual violence, ensure Israelis' security and achieve Palestinian freedom. Although Hamas deserves much pressure too, it is already under crippling sanctions and facing every kind of pressure. Israel's power and wealth dwarfs Palestine, and if it refuses to end its illegal occupation, the world must act to make the cost unbearable.
Dutch pension fund ABP invests in Israeli banks that help fund the colonisation of Palestine. Massive banks like Barclays invest in suppliers of Israeli arms and other occupation businesses. British G4S provides extensive security equipment used by the Israeli Defence Force in the occupation. France's Veolia operates transport for Israeli settlers illegally living on Palestinian lands. Computer giant Hewlett-Packard supplies sophisticated surveillance to control the movement of Palestinians. And Caterpillar provides bulldozers that are used to demolish Palestinian homes and farms.
If we can create the biggest global call ever to get these companies to pull out, we will show clearly that the world will no longer be complicit in this bloodshed. The Palestinian people are calling on the world to support this path and progressive Israelis support it too. Let’s join them.
Our community has worked to bring peace, hope, and change to some of the world’s toughest conflicts, and often that means taking difficult positions to address the root cause. For years our community has looked for a political solution to this nightmare, but with this new round of horror unfolding in Gaza, the time has come to turn to sanctions and disinvestment to finally help end the horror for Israelis and Palestinians.