Candlelit vigil in support of Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike

by Celia S Thu Sep 29, 2011 17:40

We should all make a special effort to get to this

CS

by Free Palestine Thu Sep 29, 2011 20:42

If you can,t make it , share the event with your friends .

by avram Sat Oct 01, 2011 20:40

interesting to see the use of the phrase zionist regime rather than Israel or Israeli government. This is a classic delegitimisation technique to undermine the very existence of an Israeli state.

by yeah yeah yeah Sat Oct 01, 2011 21:05

This is a classic delegitimisation technique to undermine the very existence of an Israeli state.

Through it's use of ethnic-cleansing, land stealing and murder of indigenous Palestinians, the Israeli State undermines and de-legitimises itself -

The obvious relish with which it indulges in such immoral unlawful and deplorable activities, demonstrates that it requires little help, from anyone else, in that department

by Avram Sun Oct 02, 2011 20:51

Yeah, yeah, yeah, and I suppose NO other country or non-state actor ever tried to steal land, carry out ethnic cleansing or commit murder. Just over the border, the Syrian government is slaughtering Arabs all year at a rate unmatched by Israel. Just one example. I could go on but why bother. You have obviously figured out Israel is the baddest bad guy in the region. No point confusing the issue with facts.

by Justin Morahan Sun Oct 02, 2011 21:15

that the Hamas government of Palestine was de-legitimised, at Israel's behest, after it had been elected in free and fair elections in January 2006.

The State of Palestine has been de-legitimised by the USA and Israel in a pre-emptive strike at the UN in September 2011

by Contrarian Thu Oct 06, 2011 00:31

The Palestinian Authority came into being and was recognised on the basis of its corresponding recognition of the State of Israel and its signing of the Oslo accords. When Hamas was elected, it refused to recognise Israel, refused to commit to peaceful means to resolve the conflict and refused to accept agreements previously entered into by the Palestinian Authority. By doing so, Hamas abandoned the legitimacy and recognition previously afforded to the PA.

Lobbing thousands of missiles and mortars at Israeli civilians didn't help their case either.

by opus diablos - the regressive hypocrite party Thu Oct 06, 2011 13:35

The Israeli state was parachuted in on top of the Palestinian people by a coalition of British and other European anti-semites who saw it as the logical finishing of the final solution to the two millennia long collective pogroms against the Jewish people led by the Christian priesthoodlums.
The US also refused entry to the post WW ll refugees because of the same WASP white supremicism.

Israel's creation, on the basis of a collection of folk-tales called the bible, suited the long brewing Zionist agenda, monozygotic twin of Aryan racism, an anthropological misreading of pre-genomic science interpretations of human tribal divisions to create a pseudo-validity for their racial superiority complexes. The movements emerged in parallel in German academic thought in the early nineteenth century and gathered traction slowly, and AGAINST general Jewish wishes.
The entity created is not there to serve the Jewish people, but Euro/American imperial ends of domination of the region, particularly for its oil resources. America came on board as steam gave way to oil as the basis of industrial domination.

All your sophistic and jesuitical shuffling of legalese and two-faced pretences of seeking peace(Israel's peace on Israel's terms) will not obliterate the well-documented historical records. Nor will they obliterate the legitimacy of the Palestinian claims to their own lands, no matter how long the plantations continue or how far Israel's drones pursue the eradication of objectors. There is a recognised right of resistance to invasion and repression, no matter how much contrary hasbara is pumped to smoke screen the agendas of the imperial 'players' in their antiquated and obsolete great games. The first requirment for a lasting peace is for israelis to get into the twenty-first century and recognise Jews are part of the one human race, not some special, fantasy chosen people above all common norms of collective responsibility. That will require they recognise the EQUAL rights of Palestinians, and then maybe we can get down to tackling common threats to human civilisation, before we sink the planet into total fucking ruin in pursuit of fundamentalist religious collisions of Manichaean counter-purities in search of their self-generated Armageddons.

by Contrarian Thu Oct 06, 2011 19:48

Nice collection of straw men there, Opus!

Zionism, is not the identical twin of Aryan racism. In fact, given the horrific consequences of Aryan racism, this could be regarded as a gross anti-semitic slur. Zionism emerged in the late nineteenth century as a response to (mostly Russian) pograms and anti-semitism. The Dreyfus affair in France also contributed to its growth. Jews didn't appear to be safe anywhere. The idea arose that the only way the Jewish people could escape persecution was to have their own Jewish state. They began to emigrate (legally) to Palestine (then part of the Ottoman empire) and (legally) purchase land there. Which was sold to them by Palestinian Arabs, of course! They didn't just waltz in and steal the land, you know! They joined a small indiginous Jewish community that had been there for centuries and gradually the Jewish community increased in size. With it came an increasing sense of nationhood, just like the nation-state building going on elsewhere at the time. It was not based on a sense of racial superiority but rather a desire to be safe from persecution.

Far from encouraging this, the British banned land sales to Jews and restricted Jewish immigration during the Mandate period. British Foreign policy was aimed at securing Arab support for its oil companies and later as a bulwark against German ambitions in the middle east. It did this by setting up puppet regimes in Iraq, Iran and Saudi Arabia. It didn't want to piss off the Arab regimes by supporting the establishment of a Jewish state. Why would it? This policy persisted until 1947 when the Brits washed their hands of the matter and turned the problem over to the UN. The establishment of the state of Israel was actually supported by the Soviet bloc, probably to embarrass the Brits. Israels existence is underpinned by UN resolution 181 and later resolutions (including the famous 242) as a matter of international law - not by the bible! (But nice try, Opus!)

This is not to deny Palestinians rights and claims. They must alos be resolved. And, yes there is a right to resist invasion and repression. It does not extend as far as suicide bombing of busloads of civilians. Or deliberately timing missile attacks when kids are on the way to school - a Hamas speciality, that. So perhaps BOTH sides need to recognise the equal rights of the other. Including the right to recognition of statehood and the right to be free from threat of violence. Which is precisely what Hamas was asked to do. And refused. Thereby sacrificing its legitimacy.

by opus diablos - the regressive hypocrite party Fri Oct 07, 2011 13:18

But partial, and selective.

Zionism did evolve simultaneously with the racial theorising of pseudo-scientific rationalisations of centuries of European racist presumptions of superiority, including the virulent antisemitism that culminated in the Nazi final solution horror chambers. Such racist presumptions are not unique to Europe, though the white man seems to associate his colour with some spurious accompanying moral precedence(it can be varied to include gradations within the white spectum when necessary or expedient). 'They began to emigrate legally...'. Indeed they did, but they proceeded to confiscate illegally and by displacing and claiming the lands of the resident indigenous people, the Palestinians, and have gone on to build a seperatist gerrymandered sectarian/racist exclusionist oasis of wealth on the foundation of that dispossession and imperial subvention from oil-hungry colonial interests.

The British promised both sides, as per program, what they figured would satisfy them, and yielded in the end to Israeli terrorism, withdrawing in dispair, as they often do when their monocular dreams blowback in their faces. They played expedient short term imperial gains off against the inbuilt losses for the least powerful element, again the Palestinian population. Balfour agreed to the project in return for Weizmann giving free access to his synthetic methods to produce, appropriately enough, war material constituents in WW l, which some reckon was critical to allied victory.

Israel's existence may well be underpinned by UN resolutions, but its behaviour in expanding its existence by trampling roughshod across Palestinians rights has been condemned in more resolutions that any other state has had levelled at it. Balance please. And that interpretation conveniently obliterates the preceding logic before, and since, 1948, where biblical endorsement is the self-justification for carte blanch in its actions to establish its pre-emptive facts on the ground.
As for the deplorable suicide bombings, its is symptomatic of the desperation of people who have a choice between passively accepting the dictated 'peace' of Tel Aviv and its corollary slow extermination as a nation, or a return of eye-for-an-eye reciprocation in face of the most modern armed services at the disposal of any state on the planet, including the unprecedented might of the US, whose 'democratic' machinery it appears to have totally captured throught the lobbying of AIPAC. Both sides recognising the right of the other will require that Tel Aviv desist from dictating who can or cannot represent the Palestinians, unless of course you are prepared to allow Hamas(democratically elected, and verified) dictate who may represent Israel. Free from the threat of violence?Such as the daily violence inflicted on the West Bank by a state program of aggressive settlement and ethnic cleansing?BOTH sides must mean both sides in the land-claims, not both sides of the mouth, as with the original British imposition.