This may be the best piece on the barbarity in Gaza. The author is an Oxford professor who once served in the Israeli army. Schlaim does not offer an explicit argument that Israel's descent in barbarity stems from the inherently racist concept of a Jewish state. But he comes very near to that conclusion. A few excerpts:
Israel likes to portray itself as an island of democracy in a sea of authoritarianism. Yet Israel has never in its entire history done anything to promote democracy on the Arab side and has done a great deal to undermine it. Israel has a long history of secret collaboration with reactionary Arab regimes to suppress Palestinian nationalism. Despite all the handicaps, the Palestinian people succeeded in building the only genuine democracy in the Arab world with the possible exception of Lebanon.
The figures speak for themselves. In the three years after the withdrawal from Gaza, 11 Israelis were killed by rocket fire. On the other hand, in 2005-7 alone, the IDF killed 1,290 Palestinians in Gaza, including 222 children.
A wide gap separates the reality of Israel's actions from the rhetoric of its spokesmen. It was not Hamas but the IDF that broke the ceasefire. It did so by a raid into Gaza on 4 November that killed six Hamas men.
This brief review of Israel's record over the past four decades makes it difficult to resist the conclusion that it has become a rogue state with "an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders". A rogue state habitually violates international law, possesses weapons of mass destruction and practises terrorism - the use of violence against civilians for political purposes. Israel fulfils all of these three criteria; the cap fits and it must wear it.
3 comments:
I'm sick and tired of being called an Anti-Semite by Israel apologists because I criticize Israel actions in the Middle-East. People who call others racists just to shut them up when they disagree are in fact the real racist bigots. It's only because of the Shoah that they can get away with this. Imagine if the white South African called us "RACIST WHITE HATERS !" when we campaigned to stop Apartheid, or if Germans accused us of being anti-German when we opposed the Nazis.
Otherwise, it seems the only way to not be called a racist Jewish hater is to cheer every time a kid is slaughter in the caged prison camp of Gaza.
By chance, there's people of Jewish origin who are not blinded by a weird paranoid patriotism to Israel and can say it like it is. It's at least a little bit harder to call them Anti-Semite, but don't worry, they always find a way to guilt them into silence.
Naomi Klein wrote a very interesting article about her first experience at being called a "self hating Jew". They didn't knew what she looked like after she published her first article in University denouncing Israel colonial attitude in the Middle-East in the 90's. She went to the meeting of the Jewish student association anonymously to hear what they were going to say after they called a meeting about her. After a hysterical Jewish lady said in the meeting : "I would kill her if I met her!!" she rose up and said "My name is Naomi Klein and I am as Jewish as you people" (something like that, I'm too lazy to find the article!). She said the following silence encouraged her to keep on going.
'Oxford professor claims the Earth orbits the Sun' :-)
Ah, Britain's second-best university (or is it third?) strikes again. (joke). (Pay special attention to the first column in the table).
b
I referred to this article in the comments section of your blog on January 7 ("This is what is happening").
So many in this country simply cannot understand what fuels Palestinian anger because the facts about what Israel has done are not known. To me, one of the most important points in the Schlaim article is this one:
"Israel prevented any exports from leaving the strip in clear violation of a 2005 accord, leading to a sharp drop in employment opportunities. Officially, 49.1% of the population is unemployed. At the same time, Israel restricted drastically the number of trucks carrying food, fuel, cooking-gas canisters, spare parts for water and sanitation plants, and medical supplies to Gaza."
As for Naomi, her courage never ceases to amaze me.
old dem
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