Actually, that star of david/dollar bill thing is the first thing I've seen on this board that actually approaches anti-semitism. The image of the rich or usurious jew goes back hundreds of years...think shylock from merchant of venice, etc.
badbrains, NOT calling you anti-semitic by any stretch. but that tweet is toeing the line.
Actually, that star of david/dollar bill thing is the first thing I've seen on this board that actually approaches anti-semitism. The image of the rich or usurious jew goes back hundreds of years...think shylock from merchant of venice, etc.
badbrains, NOT calling you anti-semitic by any stretch. but that tweet is toeing the line.
Oh ya, little old me toeing the line of anti-semitism. Awesome post bro. And sure you are. But that's ok, my Jewish friends in the real world can speak for me.
I backed you in the other thread that guy just started. Any blanket statements... "Jews do this, Muslims do this" are bad news and help nobody.
Let me repeat. I am 100% not accusing you of anti-semitism. The tweet you posted has a graphic that's anti-Semitic. Huge difference.
Maybe you think that. If it is, then why are the stars on the dollar in the shape of the Star of David? The US didn't think that was anti-Semitic, so why do you? I didn't post that pic to be anti-Semitic. I read the post and thought it was info people should know.
I guess ultimately what you guys are saying is that Israel, with US backing, is so repressive that the only way Palestine will ever become a reality is through constant violent resistance.
So you've read nothing that I've posted then?
Violent resistance is one thing - the Palestinians have the right under international law to resist occupation. They've also tried peace and negotiations, but that hasn't worked either, as it's difficult to negotiate when the mediator is the U.S, which has been rubber stamping Israel's crimes for the past 47 years. The only way forward now is for for mass boycotts, sanctions, and divestment, and for an international chorus of condemnation like that which helped overthrow the Apartheid regime in South Africa.
I don't think you posted it to be anti-Semitic, and respect your right and desire to share that info.
I don't think the stars on the US dollar bill have anything to do with the Star of David.
My point is that that graphic encourages people to associate Jews with money. That's a dangerous stereotype that has caused a lot of pain and hurt for a long time. Everybody on this board is better than that. It's a cheap shot, just like the godfather's subject heading was a cheap shot. We can do better than that, even if we violently disagree with each other.
I guess ultimately what you guys are saying is that Israel, with US backing, is so repressive that the only way Palestine will ever become a reality is through constant violent resistance.
So you've read nothing that I've posted then?
Violent resistance is one thing - the Palestinians have the right under international law to resist occupation. They've also tried peace and negotiations, but that hasn't worked either, as it's difficult to negotiate when the mediator is the U.S, which has been rubber stamping Israel's crimes for the past 47 years. The only way forward now is for for mass boycotts, sanctions, and divestment, and for an international chorus of condemnation like that which helped overthrow the Apartheid regime in South Africa.
I see the way forward as through negotiation like what was occurring in Oslo in the early 90s.
Really? So you see the way forward as being a tripling of illegal settlements and a further cementing of the occupation?
Alright we're getting somewhere again. Let me clarify: as I've said elsewhere, the settlements - all of them - are the first thing that have to go. I cited Oslo because I believe Rabin was trying to move Israel in that direction at that time before he was picked off by a total psycho.
Stephen Hawking's support for the boycott of Israel is a turning point
Boycotting Israel as a stance for justice is going mainstream – Israelis can no longer pretend theirs is in an enlightened country
Ali Abunimah The Guardian, Thursday 9 May 2013
A standard objection to the Palestinian campaign for the boycott of Israel is that it would cut off "dialogue" and hurt the chances of peace. We've heard this again in the wake of Professor Stephen Hawking's laudable decision to withdraw from Israel's Presidential Conference in response to requests from Palestinian academics – but it would be hard to think of a more unconvincing position as far as Palestinians are concerned.
One of the most deceptive aspects of the so-called peace process is the pretence that Palestinians and Israelis are two equal sides, equally at fault, equally responsible – thus erasing from view the brutal reality that Palestinians are an occupied, colonised people, dispossessed at the hands of one of the most powerful militaries on earth.
For more than two decades, under the cover of this fiction, Palestinians have engaged in internationally-sponsored "peace talks" and other forms of dialogue, only to watch as Israel has continued to occupy, steal and settle their land, and to kill and maim thousands of people with impunity.
While there are a handful of courageous dissenting Israeli voices, major Israeli institutions, especially the universities, have been complicit in this oppression by, for example, engaging in research and training partnerships with the Israeli army. Israel's government has actively engaged academics, artists and other cultural figures in international "Brand Israel" campaigns to prettify the country's image and distract attention from the oppression of Palestinians.
The vast majority of Palestinians, meanwhile, have been disenfranchised by the official peace process as their fate has been placed in the hands of venal and comprised envoys such as Tony Blair, and US and EU governments that only seem to find the courage to implement international law and protect human rights when it comes to the transgressions of African or Arab states.
When it comes to Israel's abuses, governments around the world have offered nothing but lip service; while dozens of countries face US, EU or UN sanctions for far lesser transgressions, it has taken years for EU governments to even discuss timid steps such as labelling goods from illegal Israeli settlements, let alone actually banning them. Yet the peace process train trundles on – now with a new conductor in the form of John Kerry, the US secretary of state – but with no greater prospects of ever reaching its destination. So, enough talk already.
The Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS) aims to change this dynamic. It puts the initiative back in the hands of Palestinians. The goal is to build pressure on Israel to respect the rights of all Palestinians by ending its occupation and blockade of the West Bank and Gaza Strip; respecting the rights of Palestinian refugees who are currently excluded from returning to their homes just because they are not Jews; and abolishing all forms of discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel.
These demands are in line with universal human rights principles and would be unremarkable and uncontroversial in any other context, which is precisely why support for them is growing.
BDS builds on a long tradition of popular resistance around the world: from within Palestine itself to the Montgomery bus boycott in Alabama to the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. Historically, boycotts work.
During the 1980s opponents of sanctions against apartheid South Africa – including, notoriously, the late Margaret Thatcher – argued instead for "constructive engagement". They were on the wrong side of history. Today, Palestinians are lectured to drop BDS and return to empty talks that are the present-day equivalent of constructive engagement.
But there can be no going back to the days when Palestinians were silenced and only the strong were given a voice. There can be no going back to endless "dialogue" and fuzzy and toothless talk about "peace" that provides a cover for Israel to entrench its colonisation.
When we look back in a few years, Hawking's decision to respect BDS may be seen as a turning point – the moment when boycotting Israel as a stance for justice went mainstream.
What is clear today is that his action has forced Israelis – and the rest of the world – to understand that the status quo has a price. Israel cannot continue to pretend that it is a country of culture, technology and enlightenment while millions of Palestinians live invisibly under the brutal rule of bullets, bulldozers and armed settlers.
Actually, that star of david/dollar bill thing is the first thing I've seen on this board that actually approaches anti-semitism. The image of the rich or usurious jew goes back hundreds of years...think shylock from merchant of venice, etc.
badbrains, NOT calling you anti-semitic by any stretch. but that tweet is toeing the line.
Israel opted to put a star of David on their flag, with the assumption that Jews around the world would be proud to call it their home. Any allusions to anti-Jewish sentiment is a direct byproduct of that, and furthers the notion that Israel itself is partially responsible for blurring the lines between anti-Jewish, anti-Israeli, anti-Zionist, anti-Semitic, pro-Palestinian, pro-Hamas sentiment, in an effort to justify using the racism card to silence debate. Which I find absolutely deplorable.
I have personally lost friends over the propagation of this false equivalence: Jews who buy into the rhetoric that the previously mentioned terms are one and the same, are the ones who make all points of sharing articles which don't tell the story (or share facts which conveniently omit context), and then when you question them, they say that it's wrong to engage in discussion with irrational supporters of terrorism.
This is the reason I get so heated about the term 'anti-Semitism': first, when used in debate or any form of media, it is a term that ends discussions and education, and therefore promotes ignorance. The fallacies are then extended to include the opposite: if you're not anti-Jewish, anti-Israeli, anti-Zionist, anti-Semitic, pro-Palestinian, or pro-Hamas - in other words, if you are one of either Jewish, pro-Israeli, pro-Zionism, pro-Semitic (whatever that would mean), anti-Palestinian, or anti-Hamas - you must be, in the eyes of some, all of those. This is not true, and it is an offensive way of attempting to speak on the behalf of a larger people, when they did not give you their consent to speak for them.
While in democratic government, when you vote, you surrender your voice to one or some people for a definite length of time. Religion doesn't contain democracy: I did not opt in to Judaism (I was born to a man and a woman, who brought this weirdo in when I was eight days old and snipped the end of my dick. I objected with screams and cries, but they proceeded regardless). I certainly didn't opt into Zionism. So I reject the notion that the voice of Israel represents mine because I'm Jewish (as all Jews should, regardless of whether they call themselves Zionists or not), and I truly do wish this could return to the secular issue that it appears to be: of illegitimate land claims attained year after year, stripped rights, the illegitimacy of collective punishment, the legitimacy of resistance based on occupied existence, and the right to seek self-determination.
But I've tried really hard to be clear here that I don't think people who I'm arguing with here are anti-Semitic. Benjs, I hear and respect your issue with the word anti-semitism, but i don't agree with your argument to remove the term from use.
But it's not totally a secular issue...it never has been. You can't totally disassociate Israel and Jews no more than they should totally overlap
It may not be totally a secular issue, but the things being fought for by Palestinians (and responded to by Israelis) are entirely secular: they are in favour of the same freedoms being afforded to the rest of the citizens within the political boundaries of modern Israel. It is a resistance not in favour of religious domination, rather human equality.
But I've tried really hard to be clear here that I don't think people who I'm arguing with here are anti-Semitic. Benjs, I hear and respect your issue with the word anti-semitism, but i don't agree with your argument to remove the term from use.
No worries - you've been fair, and I know you're not pointing accusations at the speakers here!
As for removing the term - all I'm saying is that it has become a term associated with fallacious propaganda, and if something is anti-Jewish - just call it anti-Jewish, not anti-Semitic. That's all. I would say the same thing about anti-Islamic sentiment, when technically, anti-Semitic would include Islamic nations within its umbrella.
'05 - TO, '06 - TO 1, '08 - NYC 1 & 2, '09 - TO, Chi 1 & 2, '10 - Buffalo, NYC 1 & 2, '11 - TO 1 & 2, Hamilton, '13 - Buffalo, Brooklyn 1 & 2, '15 - Global Citizen, '16 - TO 1 & 2, Chi 2
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But it's not totally a secular issue...it never has been. You can't totally disassociate Israel and Jews no more than they should totally overlap
It may not be totally a secular issue, but the things being fought for by Palestinians (and responded to by Israelis) are entirely secular: they are in favour of the same freedoms being afforded to the rest of the citizens within the political boundaries of modern Israel. It is a resistance not in favour of religious domination, rather human equality.
But I've tried really hard to be clear here that I don't think people who I'm arguing with here are anti-Semitic. Benjs, I hear and respect your issue with the word anti-semitism, but i don't agree with your argument to remove the term from use.
No worries - you've been fair, and I know you're not pointing accusations at the speakers here!
As for removing the term - all I'm saying is that it has become a term associated with fallacious propaganda, and if something is anti-Jewish - just call it anti-Jewish, not anti-Semitic. That's all. I would say the same thing about anti-Islamic sentiment, when technically, anti-Semitic would include Islamic nations within its umbrella.
I guess ultimately what you guys are saying is that Israel, with US backing, is so repressive that the only way Palestine will ever become a reality is through constant violent resistance.
I see the way forward as through negotiation like what was occurring in Oslo in the early 90s.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/may/09/stephen-hawking-palestinian-boycott-israel-history 'During the 1980s opponents of sanctions against apartheid South Africa – including, notoriously, the late Margaret Thatcher – argued instead for "constructive engagement". They were on the wrong side of history. Today, Palestinians are lectured to drop BDS and return to empty talks that are the present-day equivalent of constructive engagement.
But there can be no going back to the days when Palestinians were silenced and only the strong were given a voice. There can be no going back to endless "dialogue" and fuzzy and toothless talk about "peace" that provides a cover for Israel to entrench its colonisation.'
Hamas declares support for Palestinian bid to join international criminal court
Hamas says it will support proposal that could expose both the Islamist group and Israel to war crimes investigations Saturday 23 August 2014
Hamas has signed a pledge to back any Palestinian bid to join the international criminal court, a move which could expose both the Islamist group and Israel to war crimes investigations.
The decision revealed by two senior Hamas officials on Saturday would help a bid led by the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, to join the court, a step that would transform his relations with Israel from tense to openly hostile and could also strain his ties with the United States.
Abbas has said he will not make any decision on a bid without the written backing of all Palestinian factions. Last month, he obtained such support from all factions in the Palestine Liberation Organisation.
The move by Hamas, which is not a PLO member, came after almost seven weeks of a cross-border war with Israel and several failed ceasefire efforts.
More than 2,090 Palestinians have been killed since fighting began on 8 July, including around 500 children, and about 100,000 Gazans have been left homeless, according to United Nations figures and Palestinian officials. Israel has lost 64 soldiers and four civilians, including a four-year-old boy killed by a mortar shell on Friday.
...If Abbas were to turn to the court, Hamas could be investigated for indiscriminate rocket fire at Israel since 2000. Israel could come under scrutiny for its actions in the current Gaza war as well as decades of settlement building on war-won lands the Palestinians seek for a state.
Izzat Rishq, a senior Hamas official, said on Saturday that Hamas was not concerned about becoming a target of a war crimes investigation and urged Abbas to act "as soon as possible".
"We are under occupation, under daily attack and our fighters are defending their people," he said in a phone interview from Qatar. "These rockets are meant to stop Israeli attacks and it is well known that Israel initiated this war and previous wars."
But it is uncertain whether such arguments would hold up in court. After the last major round of Israel-Hamas fighting more than five years ago, a UN fact-finding team said both Israel and Hamas violated the rules of war by targeting civilians.
The Hamas decision to back a court bid came after meetings on Thursday and Friday in Qatar between Abbas and the top Hamas leader in exile, Khaled Mashaal.
Moussa Abu Marzouk, a senior Hamas leader who participated in the meetings, wrote on his Facebook page early on Saturday that "Hamas has signed the paper" of support that Abbas had requested. Abu Marzouk's post was also reported on Hamas news websites.
There was no comment from Abbas aides.
A senior Palestinian official has said Abbas was expected to wait for the findings of a UN-appointed commission of inquiry into possible Gaza war crimes due by March before turning to the court.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss internal deliberations with reporters.
The office of Israeli prime minister, BinyaminNetanyahu, declined to comment. Israel opposes involving the court, arguing that Israel and the Palestinians should deal with any issues directly.
Auschwitz survivor: "I can identify with Palestinian youth"
Adri Nieuwhof The Electronic Intifada 1 June 2009
Hajo Meyer, author of the book The End of Judaism, was born in Bielefeld, in Germany, in 1924. In 1939, he fled on his own at age 14 to the Netherlands to escape the Nazi regime, and was unable to attend school. A year later, when the Germans occupied the Netherlands he lived in hiding with a poorly forged ID. Meyer was captured by the Gestapo in March 1944 and deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp a week later. He is one of the last survivors of Auschwitz.
HM: In the past, the European media have written extensively about extreme right-wing politicians like Joerg Haider in Austria and Jean-Marie Le Pen in France. But when Ariel Sharon was elected [prime minister] in Israel in 2001, the media remained silent. But in the 1980s I understood the deeply fascist thinking of these politicians. With the book I wanted to distance myself from this. I was raised in Judaism with the equality of relationships among human beings as a core value. I only learned about nationalist Judaism when I heard settlers defend their harassment of Palestinians in interviews. When a publisher asked me to write about my past, I decided to write this book, in a way, to deal with my past. People of one group who dehumanize people who belong to another group can do this, because they either have learned to do so from their parents, or they have been brainwashed by their political leaders. This has happened for decades in Israel in that they manipulate the Holocaust for their political aims. In the long-run the country is destructing itself this way by inducing their Jewish citizens to become paranoid. In 2005 [then Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon illustrated this by saying in the Knesset [the Israeli parliament], we know we cannot trust anyone, we only can trust ourselves. This is the shortest possible definition of somebody who suffers from clinical paranoia. One of the major annoyances in my life is that Israel by means of trickery calls itself a Jewish state, while in fact it is Zionist. It wants the maximum territory with a minimum number of Palestinians. I have four Jewish grandparents. I am an atheist. I share the Jewish socio-cultural inheritance and I have learned about Jewish ethics. I don’t wish to be represented by a Zionist state. They have no idea about the Holocaust. They use the Holocaust to implant paranoia in their children.
AN: In your book you write about the lessons you have learned from your past. Can you explain how your past influenced your perception of Israel and Palestine?
HM: I have never been a Zionist. After the war, Zionist Jews spoke about the miracle of having “our own country.” As a confirmed atheist I thought, if this is a miracle by God, I wished that he had performed the smallest miracle imaginable by creating the state 15 years earlier. Then my parents would not have been dead.
I can write up an endless list of similarities between Nazi Germany and Israel. The capturing of land and property, denying people access to educational opportunities and restricting access to earn a living to destroy their hope, all with the aim to chase people away from their land. And what I personally find more appalling then dirtying one’s hands by killing people, is creating circumstances where people start to kill each other. Then the distinction between victims and perpetrators becomes faint. By sowing discord in a situation where there is no unity, by enlarging the gap between people — like Israel is doing in Gaza.
AN: In your book you write about the role of Jews in the peace movement in and outside Israel, and Israeli army refuseniks. How do you value their contribution?
HM: Of course it is positive that parts of the Jewish population of Israel try to see Palestinians as human beings and as their equals. However, it disturbs me how paper-thin the number is that protests and is truly anti-Zionist. We get worked up by what happened in Hitler’s Germany. If you expressed only the slightest hint of criticism at that time, you ended up in the Dachau concentration camp. If you expressed criticism, you were dead. Jews in Israel have democratic rights. They can protest in the streets, but they don’t.
AN: Can you comment on the news that Israeli ministers approved a draft law banning commemoration of the Nakba, or the dispossession of historic Palestine? The law proposes punishment of up to three years in prison.
HM: It is so racist, so dreadful. I am at a loss for words. It is an expression of what we already know. [The Israeli Nakba commemoration organization] Zochrot was founded to counteract Israeli efforts to wipe out the marks that are a reminder of Palestinian life. To forbid Palestinians to publicly commemorate the Nakba. … they cannot act in a more Nazi-like, fascist way. Maybe it will help to awaken the world.
AN: What are your plans for the future?
HM: [Laughs] Do you know how old I am? I am almost 85 years old. I always say cynically and with self-mockery that I have a choice: either I am always tired because I want to do so much, or I am going to sit still waiting for the time to go by. Well, I plan to be tired, because I have still so much to say.
Auschwitz survivor: "I can identify with Palestinian youth"
Adri Nieuwhof The Electronic Intifada 1 June 2009
Hajo Meyer, author of the book The End of Judaism, was born in Bielefeld, in Germany, in 1924. In 1939, he fled on his own at age 14 to the Netherlands to escape the Nazi regime, and was unable to attend school. A year later, when the Germans occupied the Netherlands he lived in hiding with a poorly forged ID. Meyer was captured by the Gestapo in March 1944 and deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp a week later. He is one of the last survivors of Auschwitz.
HM: In the past, the European media have written extensively about extreme right-wing politicians like Joerg Haider in Austria and Jean-Marie Le Pen in France. But when Ariel Sharon was elected [prime minister] in Israel in 2001, the media remained silent. But in the 1980s I understood the deeply fascist thinking of these politicians. With the book I wanted to distance myself from this. I was raised in Judaism with the equality of relationships among human beings as a core value. I only learned about nationalist Judaism when I heard settlers defend their harassment of Palestinians in interviews. When a publisher asked me to write about my past, I decided to write this book, in a way, to deal with my past. People of one group who dehumanize people who belong to another group can do this, because they either have learned to do so from their parents, or they have been brainwashed by their political leaders. This has happened for decades in Israel in that they manipulate the Holocaust for their political aims. In the long-run the country is destructing itself this way by inducing their Jewish citizens to become paranoid. In 2005 [then Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon illustrated this by saying in the Knesset [the Israeli parliament], we know we cannot trust anyone, we only can trust ourselves. This is the shortest possible definition of somebody who suffers from clinical paranoia. One of the major annoyances in my life is that Israel by means of trickery calls itself a Jewish state, while in fact it is Zionist. It wants the maximum territory with a minimum number of Palestinians. I have four Jewish grandparents. I am an atheist. I share the Jewish socio-cultural inheritance and I have learned about Jewish ethics. I don’t wish to be represented by a Zionist state. They have no idea about the Holocaust. They use the Holocaust to implant paranoia in their children.
AN: In your book you write about the lessons you have learned from your past. Can you explain how your past influenced your perception of Israel and Palestine?
HM: I have never been a Zionist. After the war, Zionist Jews spoke about the miracle of having “our own country.” As a confirmed atheist I thought, if this is a miracle by God, I wished that he had performed the smallest miracle imaginable by creating the state 15 years earlier. Then my parents would not have been dead.
I can write up an endless list of similarities between Nazi Germany and Israel. The capturing of land and property, denying people access to educational opportunities and restricting access to earn a living to destroy their hope, all with the aim to chase people away from their land. And what I personally find more appalling then dirtying one’s hands by killing people, is creating circumstances where people start to kill each other. Then the distinction between victims and perpetrators becomes faint. By sowing discord in a situation where there is no unity, by enlarging the gap between people — like Israel is doing in Gaza.
AN: In your book you write about the role of Jews in the peace movement in and outside Israel, and Israeli army refuseniks. How do you value their contribution?
HM: Of course it is positive that parts of the Jewish population of Israel try to see Palestinians as human beings and as their equals. However, it disturbs me how paper-thin the number is that protests and is truly anti-Zionist. We get worked up by what happened in Hitler’s Germany. If you expressed only the slightest hint of criticism at that time, you ended up in the Dachau concentration camp. If you expressed criticism, you were dead. Jews in Israel have democratic rights. They can protest in the streets, but they don’t.
AN: Can you comment on the news that Israeli ministers approved a draft law banning commemoration of the Nakba, or the dispossession of historic Palestine? The law proposes punishment of up to three years in prison.
HM: It is so racist, so dreadful. I am at a loss for words. It is an expression of what we already know. [The Israeli Nakba commemoration organization] Zochrot was founded to counteract Israeli efforts to wipe out the marks that are a reminder of Palestinian life. To forbid Palestinians to publicly commemorate the Nakba. … they cannot act in a more Nazi-like, fascist way. Maybe it will help to awaken the world.
AN: What are your plans for the future?
HM: [Laughs] Do you know how old I am? I am almost 85 years old. I always say cynically and with self-mockery that I have a choice: either I am always tired because I want to do so much, or I am going to sit still waiting for the time to go by. Well, I plan to be tired, because I have still so much to say.
Chile Files Lawsuit against Israeli Prime Minister 23 August 2014
Chile has accused Israel of crimes against humanity.
On Friday, Chilean congressman Hugo Gutierrez (Communist Party) filed a lawsuit against the Israeli Prime Minister for “crimes against humanity”. He was accompanied by the Palestinian Federation of Chile.
The congressman noted that various international organizations, such as the United Nations, have already described the Israeli attacks as "crimes against humanity".
No one should be able to commit crimes against humanity without believing that they could be judged for them, he argued. "That's why I find myself invoking the principle of universal jurisdiction in regard with these crimes,” he explained.
The principle of universal jurisdiction was used by Spain in the case of Augusto Pinochet, while the dictator was in London, and according to Gutierrez, by Israel for detaining and judging the Nazi Adolf Eichmann.
According to international humanitarian law, a military strike is illegal if it kills civilians, except if the death toll is judged proportionate to the concrete and direct military advantage the strike provided.
Yesterday, Venezuela's president Nicolas Maduro also criticized Israel, calling the PM, Benjamin Netanyahu, a "Herod of today", citing the number of children in Palestine who have been killed.
Comments
I can tell you from first hand experience not all Jews are rich.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=722250&utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=twitterfeed
badbrains, NOT calling you anti-semitic by any stretch. but that tweet is toeing the line.
I backed you in the other thread that guy just started. Any blanket statements... "Jews do this, Muslims do this" are bad news and help nobody.
Let me repeat. I am 100% not accusing you of anti-semitism. The tweet you posted has a graphic that's anti-Semitic. Huge difference.
Violent resistance is one thing - the Palestinians have the right under international law to resist occupation. They've also tried peace and negotiations, but that hasn't worked either, as it's difficult to negotiate when the mediator is the U.S, which has been rubber stamping Israel's crimes for the past 47 years.
The only way forward now is for for mass boycotts, sanctions, and divestment, and for an international chorus of condemnation like that which helped overthrow the Apartheid regime in South Africa. Really? So you see the way forward as being a tripling of illegal settlements and a further cementing of the occupation?
I don't think the stars on the US dollar bill have anything to do with the Star of David.
My point is that that graphic encourages people to associate Jews with money. That's a dangerous stereotype that has caused a lot of pain and hurt for a long time. Everybody on this board is better than that. It's a cheap shot, just like the godfather's subject heading was a cheap shot. We can do better than that, even if we violently disagree with each other.
Stephen Hawking's support for the boycott of Israel is a turning point
Boycotting Israel as a stance for justice is going mainstream – Israelis can no longer pretend theirs is in an enlightened country
Ali Abunimah
The Guardian, Thursday 9 May 2013
A standard objection to the Palestinian campaign for the boycott of Israel is that it would cut off "dialogue" and hurt the chances of peace. We've heard this again in the wake of Professor Stephen Hawking's laudable decision to withdraw from Israel's Presidential Conference in response to requests from Palestinian academics – but it would be hard to think of a more unconvincing position as far as Palestinians are concerned.
One of the most deceptive aspects of the so-called peace process is the pretence that Palestinians and Israelis are two equal sides, equally at fault, equally responsible – thus erasing from view the brutal reality that Palestinians are an occupied, colonised people, dispossessed at the hands of one of the most powerful militaries on earth.
For more than two decades, under the cover of this fiction, Palestinians have engaged in internationally-sponsored "peace talks" and other forms of dialogue, only to watch as Israel has continued to occupy, steal and settle their land, and to kill and maim thousands of people with impunity.
While there are a handful of courageous dissenting Israeli voices, major Israeli institutions, especially the universities, have been complicit in this oppression by, for example, engaging in research and training partnerships with the Israeli army. Israel's government has actively engaged academics, artists and other cultural figures in international "Brand Israel" campaigns to prettify the country's image and distract attention from the oppression of Palestinians.
The vast majority of Palestinians, meanwhile, have been disenfranchised by the official peace process as their fate has been placed in the hands of venal and comprised envoys such as Tony Blair, and US and EU governments that only seem to find the courage to implement international law and protect human rights when it comes to the transgressions of African or Arab states.
When it comes to Israel's abuses, governments around the world have offered nothing but lip service; while dozens of countries face US, EU or UN sanctions for far lesser transgressions, it has taken years for EU governments to even discuss timid steps such as labelling goods from illegal Israeli settlements, let alone actually banning them. Yet the peace process train trundles on – now with a new conductor in the form of John Kerry, the US secretary of state – but with no greater prospects of ever reaching its destination. So, enough talk already.
The Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS) aims to change this dynamic. It puts the initiative back in the hands of Palestinians. The goal is to build pressure on Israel to respect the rights of all Palestinians by ending its occupation and blockade of the West Bank and Gaza Strip; respecting the rights of Palestinian refugees who are currently excluded from returning to their homes just because they are not Jews; and abolishing all forms of discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel.
These demands are in line with universal human rights principles and would be unremarkable and uncontroversial in any other context, which is precisely why support for them is growing.
BDS builds on a long tradition of popular resistance around the world: from within Palestine itself to the Montgomery bus boycott in Alabama to the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. Historically, boycotts work.
During the 1980s opponents of sanctions against apartheid South Africa – including, notoriously, the late Margaret Thatcher – argued instead for "constructive engagement". They were on the wrong side of history. Today, Palestinians are lectured to drop BDS and return to empty talks that are the present-day equivalent of constructive engagement.
But there can be no going back to the days when Palestinians were silenced and only the strong were given a voice. There can be no going back to endless "dialogue" and fuzzy and toothless talk about "peace" that provides a cover for Israel to entrench its colonisation.
When we look back in a few years, Hawking's decision to respect BDS may be seen as a turning point – the moment when boycotting Israel as a stance for justice went mainstream.
What is clear today is that his action has forced Israelis – and the rest of the world – to understand that the status quo has a price. Israel cannot continue to pretend that it is a country of culture, technology and enlightenment while millions of Palestinians live invisibly under the brutal rule of bullets, bulldozers and armed settlers.
Israel opted to put a star of David on their flag, with the assumption that Jews around the world would be proud to call it their home. Any allusions to anti-Jewish sentiment is a direct byproduct of that, and furthers the notion that Israel itself is partially responsible for blurring the lines between anti-Jewish, anti-Israeli, anti-Zionist, anti-Semitic, pro-Palestinian, pro-Hamas sentiment, in an effort to justify using the racism card to silence debate. Which I find absolutely deplorable.
I have personally lost friends over the propagation of this false equivalence: Jews who buy into the rhetoric that the previously mentioned terms are one and the same, are the ones who make all points of sharing articles which don't tell the story (or share facts which conveniently omit context), and then when you question them, they say that it's wrong to engage in discussion with irrational supporters of terrorism.
This is the reason I get so heated about the term 'anti-Semitism': first, when used in debate or any form of media, it is a term that ends discussions and education, and therefore promotes ignorance. The fallacies are then extended to include the opposite: if you're not anti-Jewish, anti-Israeli, anti-Zionist, anti-Semitic, pro-Palestinian, or pro-Hamas - in other words, if you are one of either Jewish, pro-Israeli, pro-Zionism, pro-Semitic (whatever that would mean), anti-Palestinian, or anti-Hamas - you must be, in the eyes of some, all of those. This is not true, and it is an offensive way of attempting to speak on the behalf of a larger people, when they did not give you their consent to speak for them.
While in democratic government, when you vote, you surrender your voice to one or some people for a definite length of time. Religion doesn't contain democracy: I did not opt in to Judaism (I was born to a man and a woman, who brought this weirdo in when I was eight days old and snipped the end of my dick. I objected with screams and cries, but they proceeded regardless). I certainly didn't opt into Zionism. So I reject the notion that the voice of Israel represents mine because I'm Jewish (as all Jews should, regardless of whether they call themselves Zionists or not), and I truly do wish this could return to the secular issue that it appears to be: of illegitimate land claims attained year after year, stripped rights, the illegitimacy of collective punishment, the legitimacy of resistance based on occupied existence, and the right to seek self-determination.
PS, Pick your fallacy. I spotted several based on the scenario I've presented. https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/pdf/FallaciesPoster16x24.pdf
EV
Toronto Film Festival 9/11/2007, '08 - Toronto 1 & 2, '09 - Albany 1, '11 - Chicago 1
As for removing the term - all I'm saying is that it has become a term associated with fallacious propaganda, and if something is anti-Jewish - just call it anti-Jewish, not anti-Semitic. That's all. I would say the same thing about anti-Islamic sentiment, when technically, anti-Semitic would include Islamic nations within its umbrella.
EV
Toronto Film Festival 9/11/2007, '08 - Toronto 1 & 2, '09 - Albany 1, '11 - Chicago 1
'During the 1980s opponents of sanctions against apartheid South Africa – including, notoriously, the late Margaret Thatcher – argued instead for "constructive engagement". They were on the wrong side of history. Today, Palestinians are lectured to drop BDS and return to empty talks that are the present-day equivalent of constructive engagement.
But there can be no going back to the days when Palestinians were silenced and only the strong were given a voice. There can be no going back to endless "dialogue" and fuzzy and toothless talk about "peace" that provides a cover for Israel to entrench its colonisation.'
Hamas declares support for Palestinian bid to join international criminal court
Hamas says it will support proposal that could expose both the Islamist group and Israel to war crimes investigations
Saturday 23 August 2014
Hamas has signed a pledge to back any Palestinian bid to join the international criminal court, a move which could expose both the Islamist group and Israel to war crimes investigations.
The decision revealed by two senior Hamas officials on Saturday would help a bid led by the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, to join the court, a step that would transform his relations with Israel from tense to openly hostile and could also strain his ties with the United States.
Abbas has said he will not make any decision on a bid without the written backing of all Palestinian factions. Last month, he obtained such support from all factions in the Palestine Liberation Organisation.
The move by Hamas, which is not a PLO member, came after almost seven weeks of a cross-border war with Israel and several failed ceasefire efforts.
More than 2,090 Palestinians have been killed since fighting began on 8 July, including around 500 children, and about 100,000 Gazans have been left homeless, according to United Nations figures and Palestinian officials. Israel has lost 64 soldiers and four civilians, including a four-year-old boy killed by a mortar shell on Friday.
...If Abbas were to turn to the court, Hamas could be investigated for indiscriminate rocket fire at Israel since 2000. Israel could come under scrutiny for its actions in the current Gaza war as well as decades of settlement building on war-won lands the Palestinians seek for a state.
Izzat Rishq, a senior Hamas official, said on Saturday that Hamas was not concerned about becoming a target of a war crimes investigation and urged Abbas to act "as soon as possible".
"We are under occupation, under daily attack and our fighters are defending their people," he said in a phone interview from Qatar. "These rockets are meant to stop Israeli attacks and it is well known that Israel initiated this war and previous wars."
But it is uncertain whether such arguments would hold up in court. After the last major round of Israel-Hamas fighting more than five years ago, a UN fact-finding team said both Israel and Hamas violated the rules of war by targeting civilians.
The Hamas decision to back a court bid came after meetings on Thursday and Friday in Qatar between Abbas and the top Hamas leader in exile, Khaled Mashaal.
Moussa Abu Marzouk, a senior Hamas leader who participated in the meetings, wrote on his Facebook page early on Saturday that "Hamas has signed the paper" of support that Abbas had requested. Abu Marzouk's post was also reported on Hamas news websites.
There was no comment from Abbas aides.
A senior Palestinian official has said Abbas was expected to wait for the findings of a UN-appointed commission of inquiry into possible Gaza war crimes due by March before turning to the court.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss internal deliberations with reporters.
The office of Israeli prime minister, BinyaminNetanyahu, declined to comment. Israel opposes involving the court, arguing that Israel and the Palestinians should deal with any issues directly.
Auschwitz survivor: "I can identify with Palestinian youth"
Adri Nieuwhof
The Electronic Intifada
1 June 2009
Hajo Meyer, author of the book The End of Judaism, was born in Bielefeld, in Germany, in 1924. In 1939, he fled on his own at age 14 to the Netherlands to escape the Nazi regime, and was unable to attend school. A year later, when the Germans occupied the Netherlands he lived in hiding with a poorly forged ID. Meyer was captured by the Gestapo in March 1944 and deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp a week later. He is one of the last survivors of Auschwitz.
HM: In the past, the European media have written extensively about extreme right-wing politicians like Joerg Haider in Austria and Jean-Marie Le Pen in France. But when Ariel Sharon was elected [prime minister] in Israel in 2001, the media remained silent. But in the 1980s I understood the deeply fascist thinking of these politicians. With the book I wanted to distance myself from this. I was raised in Judaism with the equality of relationships among human beings as a core value. I only learned about nationalist Judaism when I heard settlers defend their harassment of Palestinians in interviews. When a publisher asked me to write about my past, I decided to write this book, in a way, to deal with my past. People of one group who dehumanize people who belong to another group can do this, because they either have learned to do so from their parents, or they have been brainwashed by their political leaders. This has happened for decades in Israel in that they manipulate the Holocaust for their political aims. In the long-run the country is destructing itself this way by inducing their Jewish citizens to become paranoid. In 2005 [then Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon illustrated this by saying in the Knesset [the Israeli parliament], we know we cannot trust anyone, we only can trust ourselves. This is the shortest possible definition of somebody who suffers from clinical paranoia. One of the major annoyances in my life is that Israel by means of trickery calls itself a Jewish state, while in fact it is Zionist. It wants the maximum territory with a minimum number of Palestinians. I have four Jewish grandparents. I am an atheist. I share the Jewish socio-cultural inheritance and I have learned about Jewish ethics. I don’t wish to be represented by a Zionist state. They have no idea about the Holocaust. They use the Holocaust to implant paranoia in their children.
AN: In your book you write about the lessons you have learned from your past. Can you explain how your past influenced your perception of Israel and Palestine?
HM: I have never been a Zionist. After the war, Zionist Jews spoke about the miracle of having “our own country.” As a confirmed atheist I thought, if this is a miracle by God, I wished that he had performed the smallest miracle imaginable by creating the state 15 years earlier. Then my parents would not have been dead.
I can write up an endless list of similarities between Nazi Germany and Israel. The capturing of land and property, denying people access to educational opportunities and restricting access to earn a living to destroy their hope, all with the aim to chase people away from their land. And what I personally find more appalling then dirtying one’s hands by killing people, is creating circumstances where people start to kill each other. Then the distinction between victims and perpetrators becomes faint. By sowing discord in a situation where there is no unity, by enlarging the gap between people — like Israel is doing in Gaza.
AN: In your book you write about the role of Jews in the peace movement in and outside Israel, and Israeli army refuseniks. How do you value their contribution?
HM: Of course it is positive that parts of the Jewish population of Israel try to see Palestinians as human beings and as their equals. However, it disturbs me how paper-thin the number is that protests and is truly anti-Zionist. We get worked up by what happened in Hitler’s Germany. If you expressed only the slightest hint of criticism at that time, you ended up in the Dachau concentration camp. If you expressed criticism, you were dead. Jews in Israel have democratic rights. They can protest in the streets, but they don’t.
AN: Can you comment on the news that Israeli ministers approved a draft law banning commemoration of the Nakba, or the dispossession of historic Palestine? The law proposes punishment of up to three years in prison.
HM: It is so racist, so dreadful. I am at a loss for words. It is an expression of what we already know. [The Israeli Nakba commemoration organization] Zochrot was founded to counteract Israeli efforts to wipe out the marks that are a reminder of Palestinian life. To forbid Palestinians to publicly commemorate the Nakba. … they cannot act in a more Nazi-like, fascist way. Maybe it will help to awaken the world.
AN: What are your plans for the future?
HM: [Laughs] Do you know how old I am? I am almost 85 years old. I always say cynically and with self-mockery that I have a choice: either I am always tired because I want to do so much, or I am going to sit still waiting for the time to go by. Well, I plan to be tired, because I have still so much to say.
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Chile-Files-Lawsuit-against-Israeli-Prime-Minister-20140823-0029.html
Chile Files Lawsuit against Israeli Prime Minister
23 August 2014
Chile has accused Israel of crimes against humanity.
On Friday, Chilean congressman Hugo Gutierrez (Communist Party) filed a lawsuit against the Israeli Prime Minister for “crimes against humanity”. He was accompanied by the Palestinian Federation of Chile.
The congressman noted that various international organizations, such as the United Nations, have already described the Israeli attacks as "crimes against humanity".
No one should be able to commit crimes against humanity without believing that they could be judged for them, he argued. "That's why I find myself invoking the principle of universal jurisdiction in regard with these crimes,” he explained.
The principle of universal jurisdiction was used by Spain in the case of Augusto Pinochet, while the dictator was in London, and according to Gutierrez, by Israel for detaining and judging the Nazi Adolf Eichmann.
According to international humanitarian law, a military strike is illegal if it kills civilians, except if the death toll is judged proportionate to the concrete and direct military advantage the strike provided.
Yesterday, Venezuela's president Nicolas Maduro also criticized Israel, calling the PM, Benjamin Netanyahu, a "Herod of today", citing the number of children in Palestine who have been killed.