The absurdity of Israeli propaganda is too much to bear.

[Jay_Esbe]

Notice the overtness of the media in reporting the so-called "*conflict" (more on *that later)?

When Palestinians get a uniformed Israeli soldier, it's a "kidnapping".
But when Israelis get an uniniformed teenage Palestinian, it's an "arrest".

EVERYTHING is subject to the dark filter for the Palestinians, and all is worded to sound "lawful" when done by Israel.

Was it only three or four weeks ago that the democratically elected new government of Palestine stated that they (HAMAS) were willing to finally recognize Israel? Yes it was. How quickly you all can be made to forget in the presence of so-called "kidnappings and terror".

Israel does not, nor has it ever, wanted a "two state solution". The pattern of self-serving claims, followed by Mossad facilitated "terror" every time the olive branch is accepted by the Palestinians has been going on decade after decade. No, what Israel wants, and has always wanted, is cover for the genocide required to ethnically cleanse their unholy encampment in the blood of the "Goyim". Only a fool, or worse, believes Israel "just wants to exist" when we have a 21st century nuclear armed super power using F-16's and smart weapons on people who's only defenses are stone throwing and suicide missions.

You got a problem with "suicide missions" Mr. Christian? I suggest you examine the ethic of the one you purport to follow:
"There can be no finer deed than that a man lay down his life for his friends". There's the ethic, naked, exposed, and unless held by un-chosen untouchables, beautiful.

All your claims of "honoring sacrifice" when a US soldier dies in battle, ring hollow when the pretensions of identity are stripped away; you honor the tribe, not the ethic, for the ethic is the same and always has been; to be willing to die to free your people. Tell me what the difference is you filthy hypocrites, I want to hear it. No, no difference. No difference but the propaganda that claims the sacrifice of one is to be honored, and the other spit on and met with overwhelming force.

Is this really a conflict? No. A conflict implies some measure of capacity on the other side to prevail. The Palestinians can never prevail militarily. The best they can hope to achieve is to sacrifice themselves to inflict a penalty of the occupiers. Israel engages in the dance, decade after decade, held back by the only power the Palestinians actually have; public opinion. That they can possibly win, and Israel knows it. That's why we have the insane disparity in acts of parity; self-defense becomes terrorism, arrest becomes kidnapping, and olive branches are eclipsed by pretense to escalation as quickly as possible, lest anyone take too much notice.

In a perfect world, with a people less pragmatic about resisting their own deaths, the Palestinians would take a clue from the Ghandi handbook, and simply march en-mass, unarmed into Israel and die the death of unarmed civil disobedience in front of Israeli machine guns. Maybe some day someone will emerge to lead them to this, and Israel can finally be placed in the circle and exposed as what it is with no escape. It's hardly something to hope for is it.

All I know is this; Israel can win any battle, but it's already lost the greater war among people able to think freely.

[a-Citisen]

Magical

Its the magic of word structure, then toss in some "forensic stuff" and its a full packaged done deal. The magical words will resonate in ones mind and "recreated" images make it so.

[Bubba2]

You forgot RELIGION Jay. Oh, and Israel's "Right to Exist", supposedly derived from "Religion".

Good rant.

[Jay_Esbe]

And now the complicity to silence the truth tellers manifests itself right here in the forum.

[william p. homans]

And now the complicity to silence the truth tellers manifests itself right here in the forum.

I don' feel suppressed. I'll say whatever the fuck I care to say in here, and there's not a poster, nor a moderator, who has any problem with that, far as I know. But maybe it's a good thing that this particular area of interest is set aside. Otherwise the main board might be more filled with anti-Semitic (and anti-HAMItIC (see the story of Shem, Ham and Japheth-- the Palestinians--and the Egyptians, Morroccans, and others-- are HAMItIC peoples) hate rants than it is.

Israel has a couple of real threats on its borders. But their response, in Palestine, and promised in Lebanon, to destroy civiliam infrastructure, is beyond the bounds of civilized conduct. Is it genocide? With no electricity in Gaza, some weak ones will undoubtedly starve, or fall prey to disease caused by lack of access to fresh water. Israel, by any description of their situation, is entitled to self-defense. Just like we are. But like the US military adventure in the Near East, they are going about it in an unrestrained manner, and not looking to the future. Hamas can not govern, and they are terrorists, as are Hezbollah. But what do you call the Israeli military moves against a people (not against the terrorists hiding among them, willy-nilly) with no truly viable means of self-defense?

WPH from OKC

[Neurobürger]

In a perfect world, with a people less pragmatic about resisting their own deaths, the Palestinians would take a clue from the Ghandi handbook, and simply march en-mass, unarmed into Israel and die the death of unarmed civil disobedience in front of Israeli machine guns. Maybe some day someone will emerge to lead them to this, and Israel can finally be placed in the circle and exposed as what it is with no escape. It's hardly something to hope for is it.




maybe you should lead them

it's shit like that statement that makes me wonder if you really give a tinker's damn about palestinians, or if they're just a cool peg to hang your pointy hat on

as opposed to the irrational martyrdom of an entire People, Marxists espouse the liberation of palestine and the entire middle east based on a program of internationalist class solidarity between the israeli and arab proletariat, which is the only possible means out of the religious/sectarian/ethnic violence





We defend the Palestinians in their just struggle against the Zionist occupation. However, as long as the conflict remains one of nation against nation, the Palestinians can only lose out to the far wealthier, heavily armed (including with nukes) and more technologically advanced Zionist state. This realization has led to growing despair among the Palestinian population. Particularly since Oslo, as Palestinians have increasingly come to see the PLO as politically bankrupt, increasing numbers, including youth and even women, are turning to the reactionary Islamic fundamentalist Hamas and Islamic Jihad movements. On the other hand, some Palestinian spokesmen are abandoning even talk of Palestinian self-determination. In an op-ed piece printed in the New York Times (4 October), PLO legal adviser Michael Tarazi wrote:

“After years of negotiations, coupled with incessant building of settlements and now the construction of the wall, Palestinians finally understand that Israel is offering ‘independence’ on a reservation stripped of water and arable soil, economically dependent on Israel and even lacking the right to self-defense. As a result, many Palestinians are contemplating whether the quest for equal statehood should now be superseded by a struggle for equal citizenship. In other words, a one-state solution in which citizens of all faiths and ethnicities live together as equals.”

Such is the logical outcome of the political bankruptcy of Palestinian nationalism. In 1964, the Palestinian National Covenant declared that only “Jews who were living permanently in Palestine until the beginning of the Zionist invasion will be considered Palestinians.” Following the 1967 Arab-Israeli War and Israel’s conquest of the West Bank and Gaza, the PLO adopted the “democratic secular state” line—a Palestinian state in which Jews would presumably have equal rights. This was not only utopian; it also denied the national rights of the Hebrew population, treating them instead as a religious minority. Then in the mid 1970s, the PLO adopted the call for a “mini-state” in the Occupied Territories. In the early 1990s came Oslo, where Arafat’s PLO and the Palestinian Authority would get to police isolated Palestinian cantons for Israel’s rulers. Now Tarazi is renouncing the national rights of the Palestinians outright.

Tarazi is calling for what amounts to a “Greater Israel” in which the 3.5 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza would join the “Israeli Arabs” who are currently third-class citizens of Israel. Tarazi paints this as a struggle for equality akin to the black struggle in South Africa and asserts, “The struggle against South African apartheid proves the battle can be won.”

The fall of apartheid was an important victory for the oppressed black masses of South Africa, as it provided formal equality and the right to vote. But it is hardly liberation; what exists in South Africa today is neo-apartheid, where a black government lords it over the black population—whose standard of living has not changed in the last decade—for a tiny white capitalist class. But even that can never happen in Israel—no way will a predominantly Arab Palestinian government rule for a Zionist capitalist class. Similarities between South Africa and Israel/Palestine are purely superficial; the differences between them are far greater.

Tarazi writes that Israel “wants Palestinian land but not the Palestinians who live on that land.” Despite the hideous injustices, oppression and subjugation suffered by the black masses in South Africa, the white rulers could not even conceive of driving them off the land because it would mean driving off their labor force: the enormously higher standard of living experienced by most of the white population was based on the superexploitation of black labor. The opposite is the case in Israel/Palestine. From the beginning of their colonial enterprise, the Zionist rulers have made it a point not to rely on Arab labor, and to instead build up a Hebrew proletariat.

For decades after the 1967 war, Israel used Palestinian laborers from the Occupied Territories for the most unskilled and lowest-paid work. But as noted in a compellingarticle in New Left Review (September-October 2004) by Tel Aviv University professor Yoav Peled: “With the outbreak of the first intifada in 1987, however, the economic benefits of the Occupation—a cheap and reliable labour force and captive market—began to be outweighed by its costs.” The hundreds of thousands of Palestinian laborers who used to find work in Israel have for the most part been replaced by over 250,000 foreign workers imported into the country from Asia and East Europe. Whereas South African apartheid was premised on the exploitation of black labor by the white minority, the Zionist state was founded on the expulsion of the Palestinians, not the exploitation of their labor.

The Palestinian nationalists have tried nearly everything to beat back the Israeli garrison state: from fighting to negotiating to appealing to the UN and Western imperialists,to now pathetically begging to simply be allowed to exist—and it has all been and will all be futile. So long as the national axis is emphasized, the situation will always be bleak and hopeless. But if the class axis is emphasized, there is at least a realistic chance at an equitable resolution.

Like all capitalist societies, Israel is divided along class lines and rent by political fissures: the same ruling class that sends tanks into Gaza also sends out its police to attack Israeli strikers and political demonstrators; court-martials the growing numbers of young people in the draft army who are refusing to serve in the Occupied Territories; and shoots Israeli youth who protest the building of the wall.

The Peled article makes vividly clear that the Israeli bourgeoisie’s war against the Palestinians is being carried out simultaneously with a war against the Hebrew working class. A powerful nationwide general strike on September 21—the third general strike since April 2003—paralyzed the country for 30 hours as the Histadrut, Israel’s labor federation, demanded payment for municipal workers, many of them Arab, who had not been paid for months. On October 1 Arabs called a strike to commemorate the police massacre of 13 people in an Arab village in Israel during the protests that erupted in October 2000 in solidarity with the uprising in the Occupied Territories. And now another general strike is posed, as many workers are still not paid their wages.

It is the task of socialists in the Near East to use every fissure, every strike, every opportunity to widen the gap between Israel’s workers and rulers, to convince the Israeli proletariat that it is in its interests to defend the Palestinians and to oppose the Zionist ruling class. We have no illusions that this will be an easy task; it will likely take some historic event, like the victory of social revolution in another country in the Near East extending a hand of proletarian internationalism to the Israeli working class, to jolt the Hebrew proletariat from its ties with the Zionist rulers. Indeed, the Israeli proletariat is largely made up of Sephardic (Near Eastern and North African) Jews who are on the one hand treated as second-class citizens while on the other expressing the most chauvinist attitudes toward Palestinian Arabs. But to write off the Israeli working class as potential allies of the struggle for Palestinian national rights is to write off the struggle for Palestinian national rights.

National self-determination for the Palestinian people—who also constitute the majority of Jordan’s population—cannot be resolved within the borders of Israel/Palestine. Nor can there be justice for the Palestinians within the framework of capitalist rule. On the contrary, the system of private property and private ownership of the means of production necessarily contains within it the components of nationalism and religion, which make impossible the settlement of the conflicting national claims of the Palestinian Arab and Hebrew populations. Only through a socialist federation of the Near East can the right of national self-determination for these peoples and the many other peoples of the region—including the Kurds, the largest nation without a state—be equitably realized. This necessarily calls for the leadership of internationalistMarxist workers parties, sections of a reforged Fourth International. There is no other way.


Defend the Palestinian People!
Zionist Butchers Strike Gaza

Excerpted from Workers Vanguard No. 834, 15 October 2004.
http://www.icl-fi.org/english/wv/archives/oldsite/2004/Gaza-834.htm

[donni]

And now the complicity to silence the truth tellers manifests itself right here in the forum.

yep.

[donni]

maybe you should lead them

it's shit like that statement that makes me wonder if you really give a tinker's damn about palestinians, or if they're just a cool peg to hang your pointy hat on

as opposed to the irrational martyrdom of an entire People, Marxists espouse the liberation of palestine and the entire middle east based on a program of internationalist class solidarity between the israeli and arab proletariat, which is the only possible means out of the religious/sectarian/ethnic violence

i think it was just a sentiment that jay was speaking of- not something he would really like to see happen- i think.

ghandi did show the world who the real aggressors were. who was the weak and who the strong. it was BEAUTIFUL.

[Lib]

yep.
What an utter crock of shit. No one is silencing anyone you lying, whining jerks.

[donni]

not that it stopped the creeps for long. india is as bad as it ever was.

[donni]

What an utter crock of shit. No one is silencing anyone you lying, whining jerks.

yea ok you are right i haven't been totally silenced but i have been sent to the bad boys room and i don't like it 'cause i ain't a bad boy!