Tonight around 6, as people gathered peacefully at Highway 1 and Linda Mar to protest the war in Gaza, an enraged motorist stopped in traffic and engaged in a shouting match with the demonstrators. Then he parked his car at the shopping center and returned to the scene, shouting and shoving demonstrators, slightly injuring one of them. When the agitated man ran through the parking lot, several demonstrators followed him to take his picture and hold him for police, who shortly came on the scene to question the man and several witnesses. No one pressed charges, so because police did not see the incident occur, they took down the man's information and released him. One bystander noted that as soon as the police detained him, his demeanor changed drastically, and he spoke calmly with police as if nothing had happened. But this reporter had heard the man shouting earlier and had seen him up close as he ran through the parking lot, his face and eyes full of hate and fear.
JOHN MAYBURY
EDITOR & PUBLISHER
"Pilgering" is a word used to describe journalism in a sensational way as a means of propaganda -- actually to just make false political points. It actually appeared as a word in the Oxford English Dictionary! (will we soon see "Fisking"?) If I attacked Pilger as just another raving anti-Semite (he is) you would accuse me of just spreading the 'ol Hasbara. so instead lets call him something else - a Holocaust denier -- Not THAT Holocaust, but the one in Yugoslavia. That's right, he's an apologist for Slobo - see: http://www.spectator.co.uk/stephenpollard/407771/pilger-exposed.thtml
He recently called Barack Obama an "Uncle Tom" and if attacking Dear Leader doesn't raise the hackles of our local cadre, nothing will. And by the way...why do we have to scroll theough these massive screeds, ever hear of "links"?
Posted by: Linty Marr | January 08, 2009 at 10:50 PM
Nice hasbara, Tom.
Posted by: Steve Sinai | January 08, 2009 at 08:40 PM
Holocaust Denied
Jan 08, 2009 By John Pilger
John Pilger's ZSpace Page / ZSpace
The lying silence of those who know.
"When the truth is replaced by silence," the Soviet dissident Yevgeny Yevtushenko said, "the silence is a lie." It may appear the silence is broken on Gaza. The cocoons of murdered children, wrapped in green, together with boxes containing their dismembered parents and the cries of grief and rage of everyone in that death camp by the sea, can be viewed on al-Jazeera and YouTube, even glimpsed on the BBC. But Russia's incorrigible poet was not referring to the ephemeral we call news; he was asking why those who knew the why never spoke it and so denied it. Among the Anglo-American intelligentsia, this is especially striking. It is they who hold the keys to the great storehouses of knowledge: the historiographies and archives that lead us to the why.
They know that the horror now raining on Gaza has little to do with Hamas or, absurdly, "Israel's right to exist." They know the opposite to be true: that Palestine's right to exist was canceled 61 years ago and the expulsion and, if necessary, extinction of the indigenous people was planned and executed by the founders of Israel. They know, for example, that the infamous "Plan D" resulted in the murderous depopulation of 369 Palestinian towns and villages by the Haganah (Jewish army) and that massacre upon massacre of Palestinian civilians in such places as Deir Yassin, al-Dawayima, Eilaboun, Jish, Ramle and Lydda are referred to in official records as "ethnic cleansing." Arriving at a scene of this carnage, David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, was asked by a general, Yigal Allon, "What shall we do with the Arabs?" Ben-Gurion, reported the Israeli historian Benny Morris, "made a dismissive, energetic gesture with his hand and said, 'Expel them'. The order to expel an entire population "without attention to age" was signed by Yitzhak Rabin, a future prime minister promoted by the world's most efficient propaganda as a peacemaker. The terrible irony of this was addressed only in passing, such as when the Mapan Party co-leader Meir Ya'ari noted "how easily" Israel's leaders spoke of how it was "possible and permissible to take women, children and old men and to fill the roads with them because such is the imperative of strategy ... who remembers who used this means against our people during the [Second World] war ... we are appalled."
Every subsequent "war" Israel has waged has had the same objective: the expulsion of the native people and the theft of more and more land. The lie of David and Goliath, of perennial victim, reached its apogee in 1967 when the propaganda became a righteous fury that claimed the Arab states had struck first. Since then, mostly Jewish truth-tellers such as Avi Schlaim, Noam Chomsky, the late Tanya Reinhart, Neve Gordon, Tom Segev, Yuri Avnery, Ilan Pappe and Norman Finklestein have dispatched this and other myths and revealed a state shorn of the humane traditions of Judaism, whose unrelenting militarism is the sum of an expansionist, lawless and racist ideology called zionism. "It seems," wrote the Israeli historian Ilan Pappe on 2 January, "that even the most horrendous crimes, such as the genocide in Gaza, are treated as desperate events, unconnected to anything that happened in the past and not associated with any ideology or system ... Very much as the apartheid ideology explained the oppressive policies of the South African government, this ideology - in its most consensual and simplistic variety - has allowed all the Israeli governments in the past and the present to dehumanize the Palestinians wherever they are and strive to destroy them. The means altered from period to period, from location to location, as did the narrative covering up these atrocities. But there is a clear pattern [of genocide]."
In Gaza, the enforced starvation and denial of humanitarian aid, the piracy of life-giving resources such as fuel and water, the denial of medicines and treatment, the systematic destruction of infrastructure and the killing and maiming of the civilian population, 50 per cent of whom are children, meet the international standard of the Genocide Convention. "Is it an irresponsible overstatement," asked Richard Falk, the United Nations Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and international law authority at Princeton University, "to associate the treatment of Palestinians with this criminalized Nazi record of collective atrocity? I think not."
In describing a "holocaust-in-the making," Falk was alluding to the Nazis' establishment of Jewish ghettos in Poland. For one month in 1943, the captive Polish Jews led by Mordechaj Anielewiz fought off the German army and the SS, but their resistance was finally crushed and the Nazis exacted their final revenge. Falk is also a Jew. Today's holocaust-in-the-making, which began with Ben-Gurion's Plan D, is in its final stages. The difference today is that it is a joint US-Israeli project. The F-16 jet fighters, the 250-pound "smart" GBU-39 bombs supplied on the eve of the attack on Gaza, having been approved by a Congress dominated by the Democratic Party, plus the annual $2.4 billion in war-making "aid," give Washington de facto control. It beggars belief that President-elect Obama was not informed. Outspoken on Russia's war in Georgia and the terrorism in Mumbai, Obama's silence on Palestine marks his approval, which is to be expected, given his obsequiousness to the Tel Aviv regime and its lobbyists during the presidential campaign and his appointment of Zionists as his secretary of state, chief of staff and principal Middle East advisers. When Aretha Franklin sings "Think," her wonderful 1960s anthem to freedom, at Obama's inauguration on 21 January, I trust someone with the brave heart of Muntadar al-Zaidi, the shoe-thrower, will shout: "Gaza!"
The asymmetry of conquest and terror is clear. Plan D is now "Operation Cast Lead," which is the unfinished "Operation Justified Vengeance." The latter was launched by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in 2001 when, with Bush's approval, he used F-16s against Palestinian towns and villages for the first time. In the same year, the authoritative Jane's Foreign Report disclosed that the Blair government had given Israel the "green light" to attack the West Bank after it was shown Israel's secret designs for a bloodbath. It was typical of New Labor Party's enduring, cringing complicity in Palestine's agony. However, the 2001 Israeli plan, reported Jane's, needed the "trigger" of a suicide bombing which would cause "numerous deaths and injuries [because] the 'revenge' factor is crucial." This would "motivate Israeli soldiers to demolish the Palestinians." What alarmed Sharon and the author of the plan, General Shaul Mofaz, the Israeli Chief of Staff, was a secret agreement between Yasser Arafat and Hamas to ban suicide attacks. On 23 November, 2001, Israeli agents assassinated the Hamas leader, Mahmud Abu Hunud, and got their "trigger"; the suicide attacks resumed in response to his killing.
Something uncannily similar happened on 5 November last, when Israeli special forces attacked Gaza, killing six people. Once again, they got their propaganda "trigger." A ceasefire initiated and sustained by the Hamas government - which had imprisoned its violators - was shattered by the Israeli attack and homemade rockets were fired into what used to be Palestine before its Arab occupants were "cleansed." Then on 23 December, Hamas offered to renew the ceasefire, but Israel's charade was such that its all-out assault on Gaza had been planned six months earlier, according to the Israeli daily Ha'aretz.
Behind this sordid game is the "Dagan Plan," named after General Meir Dagan, who served with Sharon in his bloody invasion of Lebanon in 1982. Now head of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence organization, Dagan is the author of a "solution" that has seen the imprisonment of Palestinians behind a ghetto wall snaking across the West Bank and in Gaza, effectively a concentration camp. The establishment of a quisling government in Ramallah under Mohammed Abbas is Dagan's achievement, together with a hasbara (propaganda) campaign relayed through a mostly supine, if intimidated western media, notably in America, that says Hamas is a terrorist organization devoted to Israel's destruction and to "blame" for the massacres and siege of its own people over two generations, long before its creation. "We have never had it so good," said the Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Gideon Meir in 2006. "The hasbara effort is a well-oiled machine." In fact, Hamas's real threat is its example as the Arab world's only democratically elected government, drawing its popularity from its resistance to the Palestinians' oppressor and tormentor. This was demonstrated when Hamas foiled a CIA coup in 2007, an event ordained in the western media as "Hamas's seizure of power." Likewise, Hamas is never described as a government, let alone democratic. Neither is its proposal of a ten-year truce as a historic recognition of the "reality" of Israel and support for a two-state solution with just one condition: that the Israelis obey international law and end their illegal occupation beyond the 1967 borders. As every annual vote in the UN General Assembly demonstrates, 99 per cent of humanity concurs. On 4 January, the president of the General Assembly, Miguel d'Escoto, described the Israeli attack on Gaza as a "monstrosity."
When the monstrosity is done and the people of Gaza are even more stricken, the Dagan Plan foresees what Sharon called a "1948-style solution" - the destruction of all Palestinian leadership and authority followed by mass expulsions into smaller and smaller "cantonments" and perhaps finally into Jordan. This demolition of institutional and educational life in Gaza is designed to produce, wrote Karma Nabulsi, a Palestinian exile in Britain, "a Hobbesian vision of an anarchic society: truncated, violent, powerless, destroyed, cowed ... Look to the Iraq of today: that is what [Sharon] had in store for us, and he has nearly achieved it."
Dr. Dahlia Wasfi is an American writer on Palestine. She has a Jewish mother and an Iraqi Muslim father. "Holocaust denial is anti-Semitic," she wrote on 31 December. "But I'm not talking about World War Two, Mahmoud Ahmedinijad (the president of Iran) or Ashkenazi Jews. What I'm referring to is the holocaust we are all witnessing and responsible for in Gaza today and in Palestine over the past 60 years ... Since Arabs are Semites, US-Israeli policy doesn't get more anti-Semitic than this." She quoted Rachel Corrie, the young American who went to Palestine to defend Palestinians and was crushed by an Israeli bulldozer. "I am in the midst of a genocide," wrote Corrie, "which I am also indirectly supporting and for which my government is largely responsible."
Reading the words of both, I am struck by the use of "responsibility." Breaking the lie of silence is not an esoteric abstraction but an urgent responsibility that falls to those with the privilege of a platform. With the BBC cowed, so too is much of journalism, merely allowing vigorous debate within unmovable invisible boundaries, ever fearful of the smear of anti-Semitism. The unreported news, meanwhile, is that the death toll in Gaza is the equivalent of 18,000 dead in Britain. Imagine, if you can.
Then there are the academics, the deans and teachers and researchers. Why are they silent as they watch a university bombed and hear the Association of University Teachers in Gaza plea for help? Are British universities now, as Terry Eagleton believes, no more than "intellectual Tescos, churning out a commodity known as graduates rather than greengroceries"?
Then there are the writers. In the dark year of 1939, the Third Writers' Congress was held at Carnegie Hall in New York and the likes of Thomas Mann and Albert Einstein sent messages and spoke up to ensure the lie of silence was broken. By one account, 3,500 jammed the auditorium and a thousand were turned away. Today, this mighty voice of realism and morality is said to be obsolete; the literary review pages affect an ironic hauteur of irrelevance; false symbolism is all. As for the readers, their moral and political imagination is to be pacified, not primed. The anti-Muslim Martin Amis expressed this well in Visiting Mrs. Nabokov: "The dominance of the self is not a flaw, it is an evolutionary characteristic; it is just how things are."
If that is how things are, we are diminished as a civilized society. For what happens in Gaza is the defining moment of our time, which either grants the impunity of war criminals the immunity of our silence, while we contort our own intellect and morality, or gives us the power to speak out. For the moment I prefer my own memory of Gaza: of the people's courage and resistance and their "luminous humanity," as Karma Nabulsi put it. On my last trip there, I was rewarded with a spectacle of Palestinian flags fluttering in unlikely places. It was dusk and children had done this. No one told them to do it. They made flagpoles out of sticks tied together, and a few of them climbed on to a wall and held the flag between them, some silently, others crying out. They do this every day when they know foreigners are leaving, believing the world will not forget them.
--------------------------------------------------
From: Z Net - The Spirit Of Resistance Lives
URL: http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/commentaries/3737
Posted by: Tom Edminster | January 08, 2009 at 06:38 PM
Exsqueeze me! Blog is my copilot!
Posted by: PACIFICA RIPTIDE | January 08, 2009 at 10:40 AM
I don't hate to agree with Steve Sinai or with you, Scotty.
You are both "spot on" as they say with regard to the "Us vs Them" mentality. We all (middle easterners, riptiders, human beings, life forms, proper and improper nouns & etc.) need to cut each other some slack.
Posted by: Dan Underhill | January 08, 2009 at 10:24 AM
Does anyone know if these maps tell a true story?
http://able2know.org/topic/127639-1
While I agree that both sides need to find more productive ways to find solutions, if these maps portray reality, I can see where finding a middle ground may be optimistic because these maps paint the picture of a nation extinguishing another one. Ironic.
Posted by: Lynn Schuette | January 08, 2009 at 10:24 AM
So intellectually lazy that we blather-- er I mean BLOG -- on riptide. Instead of just doing something useful to others' health.
Posted by: Summer Rhodes | January 08, 2009 at 10:18 AM
Yes, and I hate to yet again agree with Steve Sinai at every turn, but it is the unwillingness to look at things from another perspective and the intellectually lazy "us versus them" mentality that perpetuates these perspectives.
Posted by: Scotty | January 07, 2009 at 11:15 PM
look how much --i- this stirs up in a little town on the west coast of california. amazing how far a little hate will go.
Posted by: Summer Rhodes | January 07, 2009 at 10:15 PM
In reference to the statement by Mousa Abu Marzook posted below - a simple googling of his name finds he is a genocidal terrorist who not only believes the "two state solution" is unworkable, but even a one state solution with Jews (oops, Zionists) goes too far. The sooner Palestinians rid themselves of Marzook and his ilk, the better.
Posted by: Linty Marr | January 07, 2009 at 04:32 PM
Matthew, You say that during the (ceasefire) lull not a "single rocket" fell on Sderot - you are right - it was 215.
http://www.israelpolitik.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/rocket-graph.jpg
We can dance as many definitions of "hasbara" on the head of a pin as we like, but lets take this to some sort of logical conclusion and see where the truth may lie. If we accept that your translation is correct and that the primary meaning of hasbara is in fact "propaganda" then what does that tell us? The least obvious explanation is that the Israeli's are actually using the word "propaganda" but not one single person in their entire Ministry knows what it means or what it implies. Not likely? OK, they actually know the meaning of "propaganda" but felt that it was more appropriate to use then "information" or "public affairs" or "department of communications" and consciously chose to negates a multi-million dollar effort and simply called it the Dept. of Propaganda! Still doesn't ring true? OK, then we must conclude they brazenly and knowingly call it "propaganda" because they are so arrogant that they feel that we, the very client for this material, wouldn't know or care that we would be insulted to be the target of "propaganda". Again - likely or unlikely? So let's apply Occam's razor and seek the truth, my dear Dr. Watson, because whatever is left, no matter how improbable must be the truth.... Hasbara does not mean propaganda.
Posted by: Linty Marr | January 07, 2009 at 03:35 PM
below is offered WITHOUT endorsement: but FYI:
*******************************************
Hamas speaks
A Hamas official insists that a 'legacy of suffering' under Israel is what fuels Palestinian resistance.
By Mousa Abu Marzook
January 6, 2009
From Damascus -- While Americans may believe that the current violence in Gaza began Dec. 27, in fact Palestinians have been dying from bombardments for many weeks. On Nov. 4, when the Israeli-Palestinian truce was still in effect but global attention was turned to the U.S. elections, Israel launched a "preemptive" airstrike on Gaza, alleging intelligence about an imminent operation to capture Israeli soldiers; more assaults took place throughout the month.
The truce thus shattered, any incentive by Palestinian leaders to enforce the moratorium on rocket fire was gone. Any extension of the agreement or improvement of its implementation at that point would have required Israel to engage Hamas, to agree to additional trust-building measures and negotiation with our movement -- a political impossibility for Israel, with its own elections only weeks away.
Not that the truce had been easy on Palestinians. In the six-month period preceding this week's bombardment, one Israeli was killed, while dozens of Palestinians lost their lives to Israeli military and police actions, and numerous others died for want of medical care.
The war on Gaza should not be mistaken for an Israeli triumph. Rather, Israel's failure to make the truce work, and its inevitable resort to bloodshed, demonstrate again that it cannot permit a future built on Palestinian political self-determination. The truce failed because Israel will not open Gaza's borders, because Israel would rather be a jailer than a neighbor, and because its intransigent leadership forestalls Palestinian destiny and will not make peace with history.
This week's war is not an attack on the Izzidin al-Qassam units -- our movement's military wing -- but is simply aggression targeting the people, infrastructure and economic life of Gaza, designed to sow terror and loose anarchy; it aims to establish new "facts on the ground" -- that is, heaps of rubble with bodies trapped beneath -- in advance of the coming American administration.
Israel claims loudly that it had no other choice this week but to rain death on refugees in camps, killing dozens of women and children, while Defense Minister Ehud Barak (the once and would-be prime minister) -- his eye fixed on February elections -- employs mass murder as his party's latest vote-getting appeal, an electoral strategy fit to shame the most hardened Chicago political operative.
But, of course, options remained available. Israel might have relented months ago, for the sake of the truce, in its criminal determination to starve Gaza, cutting off much of its fuel and choking all commerce to a trickle, blocking relief organizations from delivering food and medicine, and consigning Gaza's citizens to famine rations. Only the most cynical observer would call this grinding attrition "good faith" adherence to the truce. Blockades, after all, are explicitly acts of war.
Palestinians everywhere mark the closing of the Bush era with relief; nevertheless, skepticism runs high that any justice for our people might come from a new president who remained ominously silent in the presence of the latest Israeli onslaught, and who has aligned himself so thoroughly with Israel's interests, so long in advance of taking power. Barack Obama's helicopter ride two years ago above the Holy Land was not unusual in the annals of American parliamentarians junketed on "fact finding" trips by Israel's lobbyists; yet his fond remarks on what he saw -- "houses and streets like ones you might find" in any American suburb -- were notable for their silence as to any troubling sights. Did he miss the security roads and checkpoints that riddle the West Bank, or the construction of the wall, or the illegal settlements? Perhaps his helicopter flew too high.
But now, amid Israel's latest attack on our people, as the death toll rises in the hundreds, with thousands wounded -- all victims of American taxpayers' largesse -- Palestinians wonder how Obama will react to the escalating crisis. They demand of the next White House a new paradigm of respect and accountability, because when Palestinians see an F-16 with the Star of David painted on its tail, they see America.
Palestinians are understandably guarded about the coming administration, noting its appointments with trepidation. The soon-to-be secretary of State is unforgettable for urging years ago U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's "undivided" capital, while the administration's chief of staff bears the stain of his father's service in the banned terrorist Irgun paramilitary, a Zionist group responsible for numerous atrocities.
Renewed calls today for our movement to "recognize the right of Israel to exist," in the face of murderous onslaught, ring as hollow as Israel's continuing claims to be acting in "self-defense" as her jets bomb civilians. Without debating here the Zionist state's fictive, existential "right," which of the many Israels, precisely, would the West have us recognize? Is it the Israel that militarily occupies land belonging to three of its neighbors, ignoring international law and scores of U.N. resolutions over decades? Is it the Israel that illegally settles its citizens on other people's land, seizes water sources and uproots olive trees? Is it the Israel that in 60 years has never acknowledged the forced expulsion of Palestinians from their farms and villages as the foundational act of its statehood and denies refugees their right to return?
Through bitter experience, when we hear demands for "recognition" of Israel as a precondition to dialogue, what we hear is a call for acquiescence in its crimes against us, validating the injustices that have been wrought in its name.
Our spirit to fight on is the legacy of collective suffering: With tens of thousands dead or wounded by decades of the "peace process," you cannot find a family in Palestine -- Muslim or Christian, Hamas, Fatah, PFLP or Islamic Jihad -- without a son or daughter killed, injured, jailed or tortured, or which does not count itself or its kin among the millions of refugees living in U.N. camps.
Hamas is not a handful of leaders. Israel may kill all of the current leadership in this round of violence, including me, and its organic, social infrastructure will not go away. We are, simply put, a homegrown national liberation resistance movement, with millions of people who support our struggle for freedom and justice.
President-elect Obama spoke courageously in his campaign for a policy of open dialogue, absent preconditions, with those deemed inimical to U.S. interests, and we were listening. One former U.S. president -- a true peacemaker -- has dared to visit with us and hear our side of this struggle, while offering us no shortage of criticism. It has been a refreshing exchange. Now is the time for the next U.S. president to do the same.
No American leader has ever visited a Palestinian refugee camp anywhere, much less in Gaza -- a startling fact, considering the central role America has played in our people's narrative. None has dared to look our refugees in their faces and experience their suffering directly.
In observance of the storied tradition of Arab hospitality to guests, and anticipating that day when an American president fulfills his promise of change, we extend the invitation now, and we will put the kettle on.
Mousa Abu Marzook is the deputy of the political bureau of Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement.
==================================================
Posted by: Tom Edminster | January 07, 2009 at 03:30 PM
Mr. Marr asks, "Can we hope this demonstration will also plead for Hamas to restrain it's rocket fire?" Absolutely. As one of the people at the Pacifica demonstration last night urging an immediate cease fire, I mean an end to hostilities on both sides. No exceptions.
The violence fuels more hatred, which leads to more violence, and the cycle just keeps going. The horrible suffering needs to end, for the benefit of both sides, right now.
Posted by: Janet Hathaway | January 07, 2009 at 03:29 PM
Linty,
During last year's cease-fire not a single rocket fell on Sderot.
And I am a Hebrew speaker, and I'm telling you it means "propaganda." Read your own Wikipedia cite, under "meaning of the term."
Or why not read the Hebrew wikipedia entry. It says:
The term hasbara (literally, "information") is a diplomatic tool whose objective is to obtain supporters as a result of giving information and claims. The meaning of the term is based on the concept of propaganda.
http://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%94%D7%A1%D7%91%D7%A8%D7%94
Posted by: Matthew Levie | January 07, 2009 at 12:13 PM
Yes, both sides need to find ways, other than war, to solve their differences.
As Americans we bear more responsibility for the actions of our allies which we are de-facto supporters of than we bear for those to whom we are not sending arms and money.
Posted by: Dan Underhill | January 07, 2009 at 11:37 AM
Was the agitated man Tod S.?
*************************
I'm sorry to see people here falling into the typical "good-guy, bad-guy" pattern of primarily blaming either Israel or the Palestinians for what's happening in Gaza, because I believe that those people actually prolong the problem. Both the Israelis and Palestinians need to change their behaviors, if not their attitudes, but blaming only one side implies that only one side has to change. The Palestinians need to recognize Israel's right to exist, and stop shooting rockets into Israel; and the Israelis need to stop treating the Palestinians like animals that can be beaten into submission.
Both sides act like frigging idiots, but both sides also have legitimate grievances and concerns. Until each side acknowledges the grievances and concerns of the other, nothing's going to get solved. When you point your finger accusingly at one side, you're saying their concerns don't matter.
Also, as to whether the protest was effective, I doubt it. I'm sure the people taking part in the protest felt good about themselves, but it won't make the slightest bit of difference in regards to what happens in Gaza.
Posted by: Steve Sinai | January 07, 2009 at 01:42 AM
..."our tax dollars go to Israel in the form of foreign aid and come back as campaign contributions to pro-Israel congress persons"... Is this true or just another anti-Israel trope? The basic facts are these: About 75% of funds are used to purchase U.S. defense equipment and thus directly supporting US industries and jobs by returning the money into our economy. Just about all the rest goes for immigration, migration and refugee assistance, and loan guarantee programs. Federal election law expressly forbids soliciting, accepting or receiving contributions or donations from foreign nationals, so if this massive amount of money is going into the pockets of Congress perhaps you should find a lawyer willing to put their reputation on the line and file an action with the FEC.
Posted by: Linty Marr | January 06, 2009 at 11:59 PM
Strange things I'm reading tonight: ..."Before Hamas was elected as the governing party of the Territories, Israel imposed a blockade on Gaza which effectively turned it into the largest prison camp in the world."... Aren't we missing some facts? In 2005 Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza, does that ring a bell? In 2006 Hamas raided Israel and killed some soldiers and kidnapped Gilad Shalit who is still a hostage. Then in 2007, Hamas launched a violent coup and murdered hundred of fellow Palestinians (you were at the demonstrations, right?) the PA civil authority in a bloody civil war, and took control by force and began firing rockets at Israel, which then imposed a partial blockade.
...."I think there is a larger goal of eliminating this population. That is now in progress. Hamas is an excuse for the real long-term plan.".... The only population of Gaza that Israel "eliminated" was the Jewish settlers back in 2005, making all of Gaza, except for Gilad Shalit, "Judenrein". As far as their "real long term plan", it seems they are going backwards, but that reality just doesn't fit into our preconceived notion of the facts.
I'm just not getting the peace vibe from some of these comments - the "cognitive dissonance" seems to reach back to another era when I read ..."If the Zionist agenda of violence persists, I'm afraid we will have to continue protesting like we did tonight." mmmm.....peace people!
Posted by: Linty Marr | January 06, 2009 at 11:44 PM
Someone just mailed me this- 2000 people showed up
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/01/04/18558603.php
Apparently the Gaza death toll is at 660 now-
I wonder if people even know about the raw sewage dumping story, as if the killing of children weren't enough-
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2008/02/200852518517936321.html
Comprehensive site that keeps track of the conflict-
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/cur_sit/dec08.html
Posted by: Tabitha Prynne | January 06, 2009 at 11:14 PM
"Hamas is an excuse for the real long-term plan."
And the other reason various protesters in this nation might criticize Israel more than Palestine is that our tax dollars go to Israel in the form of foreign aid and come back as campaign contributions to pro-Israel congresspersons thus perpetuating more of the same.
Nobody should be killing anyone, but our tax money isn't helping Palestine to do so while it is helping Israel to.
Here is a petition that might help... http://capwiz.com/peaceactionwest/issues/alert/?alertid=12389216&type=CO
Posted by: Dan Underhill | January 06, 2009 at 10:43 PM
I thought it was effective and had a surprisingly large turnout. Please post pictures when someone sends them. People want to believe what the fatcat neo-cons on TV tell them, it makes them feel all warm and snuggly about supporting things that are just plain evil,
http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/war_on_gaza/2009/01/20091585448204690.html as this story illustrates (graphic images)
and when someone challenges that 'I'm the good guy' feeling, it causes this cognitive dissonance that makes them flip out.
If the Zionist agenda of violence persists, I'm afraid we will have to continue protesting like we did tonight.
Posted by: Tabitha Prynne | January 06, 2009 at 10:00 PM
Per wikipedia, hasbara literally means "explanation", its exact import in its current usage is debated. It's easy to see how local or regional or general current usage might translate to 'propaganda'.
Posted by: Summer Rhodes | January 06, 2009 at 09:44 PM
My compliments to Matthew for using his real name.
Before Hamas was elected as the governing party of the Territories, Israel imposed a blockade on Gaza which effectively turned it into the largest prison camp in the world.
No border access, no air access, no sea access, despite being on the Mediterranean.
I think there is a larger goal of eliminating this population. That is now in progress.
Hamas is an excuse for the real long-term plan.
Posted by: Lionel Emde | January 06, 2009 at 09:43 PM
"Can we hope this demonstration will also plead for Hamas to restrain it's rocket fire? "
As one of the local peaceniks I can assure you that we are encouraging all sides of every conflict to find other ways than war of resolving their differences.
It was either extremely irresponsible of God to promise the same land to two different peoples or they are intended to learn to live there together in peace.
Posted by: Dan Underhill | January 06, 2009 at 09:31 PM
I couldn't agree more - Hamas should definitely come out and fight like men (there are men in Hamas, aren't there?) instead of exploiting their women and children as shields...
Posted by: tortillapete | January 06, 2009 at 08:22 PM