The following scenario (see article below) should make people seriously think about why we insist on normalising Israel’s behaviour without even thinking about why those rockets are being fired at all. And why indeed are our governments all too ready to back away from the Durban Review Conference on anti-racism in Geneva this coming week, if Israel is NOT the racist state everyone knows it is?
Only last Friday, yet another Palestinian was shot down in cold-blood while taking part in a non-violent protest that is held weekly in the village of Bil’in (north of Ramallah) against the tearing apart of Bil’in’s rural community and lands to make way for Israel’s Apartheid Wall. He was shot in the chest by a new type of high velocity tear gas canister while shouting “this is a peaceful demonstration, there are lots of internationals with us”. Now he is dead like so many other Palestinians, not because he was shooting rockets at Israel, but because he was exercising his human right to protest terrible state-perpetrated injustices against himself and his people. An international community that is always so quick to condemn the rocket attacks on Israel remains disgracefully silent whenever Israel’s army kills with impunity the very people it is imprisoning and oppressing.
Shame on our Australian Government for refusing to take part in the Durban Review conference. Shame on our Foreign Minister Stephen Smith for his reasoning “Regrettably, we cannot be confident that the review conference will not again be used as a platform to air offensive views, including anti-Semitic views. Of additional concern are the suggestions of some delegations in the Durban process to limit the universal right to free speech."
Since when is criticising Israel’s racist agenda, anti-Semitic? Those who are interfering with the right to free speech are the very countries refusing to participate – Australia, the US, Canada, Israel and Italy. Please write to our Foreign Minister Stephen.Smith.MP@aph.gov.auand register your protest.
- SK
When Israel expelled Palestinians: What if it was San Diego and Tijuana instead? by Randall Kuhn
Washington Post 14 April 2009
UN school in Shati refugee camp, Gaza where Israeli air strike killed three people on 6 January 2009.
In the wake of Israel's invasion of Gaza, Israel's Defense Minister Ehud Barak made this analogy: "Think about what would happen if for seven years rockets had been fired at San Diego, California from Tijuana, Mexico."
Within hours scores of American pundits and politicians had mimicked Barak's comparisons almost verbatim. In fact, in this very paper on January 9 House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and House Minority Whip Eric Cantor ended an opinion piece by saying "America would never sit still if terrorists were lobbing missiles across our border into Texas or Montana." But let's see if our political and pundit class can parrot this analogy.
Think about what would happen if San Diego expelled most of its Hispanic, African American, Asian American, and Native American population, about 48 percent of the total, and forcibly relocated them to Tijuana? Not just immigrants, but even those who have lived in this country for many generations. Not just the unemployed or the criminals or the America haters, but the school teachers, the small business owners, the soldiers, even the baseball players.
What if we established government and faith-based agencies to help move white people into their former homes? And what if we razed hundreds of their homes in rural areas and, with the aid of charitable donations from people in the United States and abroad, planted forests on their former towns, creating nature preserves for whites to enjoy? Sounds pretty awful, huh? I may be called anti-Semitic for speaking this truth. Well, I'm Jewish and the scenario above is what many prominent Israeli scholars say happened when Israel expelled Palestinians from southern Israel and forced them into Gaza. But this analogy is just getting started.
What if the United Nations kept San Diego's discarded minorities in crowded, festering camps in Tijuana for 19 years? Then, the United States invaded Mexico, occupied Tijuana and began to build large housing developments in Tijuana where only whites could live.
And what if the United States built a network of highways connecting American citizens of Tijuana to the United States? And checkpoints, not just between Mexico and the United States but also around every neighborhood of Tijuana? What if we required every Tijuana resident, refugee or native, to show an ID card to the U.S. military on demand? What if thousands of Tijuana residents lost their homes, their jobs, their businesses, their children, their sense of self worth to this occupation? Would you be surprised to hear of a protest movement in Tijuana that sometimes became violent and hateful? Okay, now for the unbelievable part.
Think about what would happen if, after expelling all of the minorities from San Diego to Tijuana and subjecting them to 40 years of brutal military occupation, we just left Tijuana, removing all the white settlers and the soldiers? Only instead of giving them their freedom, we built a 20-foot tall electrified wall around Tijuana? Not just on the sides bordering San Diego, but on all the Mexico crossings as well. What if we set up 50-foot high watchtowers with machine gun batteries, and told them that if they stood within 100 yards of this wall we would shoot them dead on sight? And four out of every five days we kept every single one of those border crossings closed, not even allowing food, clothing, or medicine to arrive. And we patrolled their air space with our state-of-the-art fighter jets but didn't allow them so much as a crop duster. And we patrolled their waters with destroyers and submarines, but didn't even allow them to fish.
Would you be at all surprised to hear that these resistance groups in Tijuana, even after having been "freed" from their occupation but starved half to death, kept on firing rockets at the United States? Probably not. But you may be surprised to learn that the majority of people in Tijuana never picked up a rocket, or a gun, or a weapon of any kind.
The majority, instead, supported against all hope negotiations toward a peaceful solution that would provide security, freedom and equal rights to both people in two independent states living side by side as neighbors. This is the sound analogy to Israel's military onslaught in Gaza today. Maybe some day soon, common sense will prevail and no corpus of misleading analogies abut Tijuana or the crazy guy across the hall who wants to murder your daughter will be able to obscure the truth. And at that moment, in a country whose people shouted We Shall Overcome, Ich bin ein Berliner, End Apartheid, Free Tibet and Save Darfur, we will all join together and shout "Free Gaza. Free Palestine." And because we are Americans, the world will take notice and they will be free, and perhaps peace will prevail for all the residents of the Holy Land.
Randall Kuhn is an assistant professor and Director of the Global Health Affairs Program at the University of Denver Josef Korbel School of International Studies. He just returned from a trip to Israel and the West Bank.
Maar Engeland gaat wel! Naftaniel vind zijn makker in het kwaad Verhagen een dappere man. De geschiedenis zal het uitwijzen.
Haaretz
Lieberman: Ahmadinejad invite shows true character of Durban II
Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said Sunday that the invitation Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak at the upcoming summit Geneva proves the "goal and character" of the controversial event.
"An international convention that invites a racist such as Ahmadinejad, - who preaches the extermination of the State of Israel day and night - and which allows him to make a central speech, demonstrates both its goal and its character," Lieberman said of the so-called Durban II convention.
Ahmadinejad - who has repeatedly called for the destruction of Israel and denied the Holocaust - is slated to speak on the first day of the conference. He is also due to meet UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, officials of various international organizations in Geneva, and Swiss officials and business executives.
Lieberman added that Israel could not ignore that a Holocaust-denier has been invited to take part in a convention taking place on the very same day that the Jewish people commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day to remember the six million Jews murdered in Europe by Nazi Germany and its accomplices.
In Teheran on Sunday, Ahmedinejad in a televised speech commented on the controversy, saying "it is clear that the Zionists [Israel] and their backers will undertake everything possible so that the voices of those people suppressed [by Israel] will be silenced."
The Iranian leader also charged that the "Zionists control an important part of the politics in the U.S. and Europe and used this influence, especially in the media, to force their demands, which are nothing more than the plundering of nations, onto the world."
2009: Verklaring van minister Verhagen namens het Koningrijk der Nederlanden aan de VN: The Netherlands supports the ICC. International justice and lasting peace go hand in hand. The Netherlands would emphasise the ICC’s independence; it believes that the Court should be able to take decisions free from outside pressure or interference. The international community is bound to respect those decisions, whatever they may be. This decision is an important step forward for the cause of international justice. It stands as a clear warning, to every country in the world, that no one is above the law.Maar ja, dat ging niet over Israël, maar over Soedan.
Maar Engeland gaat wel! Naftaniel vind zijn makker in het kwaad Verhagen een dappere man. De geschiedenis zal het uitwijzen.
BeantwoordenVerwijderenHaaretz
Lieberman: Ahmadinejad invite shows true character of Durban II
Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said Sunday that the invitation Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak at the upcoming summit Geneva proves the "goal and character" of the controversial event.
"An international convention that invites a racist such as Ahmadinejad, - who preaches the extermination of the State of Israel day and night - and which allows him to make a central speech, demonstrates both its goal and its character," Lieberman said of the so-called Durban II convention.
Ahmadinejad - who has repeatedly called for the destruction of Israel and denied the Holocaust - is slated to speak on the first day of the conference. He is also due to meet UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, officials of various international organizations in Geneva, and Swiss officials and business executives.
Lieberman added that Israel could not ignore that a Holocaust-denier has been invited to take part in a convention taking place on the very same day that the Jewish people commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day to remember the six million Jews murdered in Europe by Nazi Germany and its accomplices.
In Teheran on Sunday, Ahmedinejad in a televised speech commented
on the controversy, saying "it is clear that the Zionists [Israel]
and their backers will undertake everything possible so that the
voices of those people suppressed [by Israel] will be silenced."
The Iranian leader also charged that the "Zionists control an important
part of the politics in the U.S. and Europe and used this influence,
especially in the media, to force their demands, which are nothing
more than the plundering of nations, onto the world."
anzi
2009: Verklaring van minister Verhagen namens het Koningrijk der Nederlanden aan de VN:
BeantwoordenVerwijderenThe Netherlands supports the ICC. International justice and lasting peace go hand in hand. The Netherlands would emphasise the ICC’s independence; it believes that the Court should be able to take decisions free from outside pressure or interference. The international community is bound to respect those decisions, whatever they may be.
This decision is an important step forward for the cause of international justice. It stands as a clear warning, to every country in the world, that no one is above the law.Maar ja, dat ging niet over Israël, maar over Soedan.