Fallout continues

1.       It is now 4 days after the bloody massacre on the Mavi Marmara. Things have played itself out it seems, and on many points in the short-term, there have been a few successes and a few themes are generally coming to the fore.

2.       Egypt has reopened the Rafa border, the detainees have been released except for a few more, and Turkey seems to have developed a more prominent role amongst the muslim world. The latter isn’t a bad thing given Erdogan’s outspokenness, particularly after his walkout to the Israel-biased Davos forum a couple of years back. Erdogan, when compared to other Arab leaders silent on the world stage, is head and shoulders above them in terms of stature and diplomacy. Perhaps, given the constraints of the military-backed Kemalism in Turkey, Erbakan and Erdogan have both over time developed this ability of pinpointing and executing specific objectives that promotes the Islamist agenda while still appearing to play Western-style diplomacy. Other leaders, Najib, Anwar, Nik Nazmi(?), please take note.

3.       The themes which will recur and play itself out in the coming years are Turkish-Israel relations, US pressure on Iran, and European support for Israel. On a few of these, public opinion has successfully gravitated against Israel and exposed their inhumane treatment of Palestinian refugees in Gaza. And if they were to respond in the familiar playground bully defense, that this is necessary for their security and defense, it will be pointed out that they are the aggressors in hostilities when driving out Palestinians from their homes.

4.       Back to the key point though. These are all early days yet. Since An-Nakba, there have been many occasions such as these and each time, Israel has thwarted them all off in the long run using their manipulating media and coordinated diplomatic networks of support amongst the developed countries. There is no evidence yet that this will change. Palestinians will still have to wait a while to return home, unless public opinion on the fate of Gaza becomes central to elections in the developed countries.

5.       What will happen though is the loosening of support to Israel. They don’t deserve any, if the blood of the dead in Mavi Marmara, Rachel Corrie, Lord Moyne, the UN-appointed Swedish mediator in 1948, are added to the daily killings and massacres of Sabra, Shatilla, Rafah, Gaza and Palestine are totaled up. Europe is the first to wake up, in that they won’t owe Israel that much no matter how long the Holocaust will be raised as collateral by the conniving liars.

6.       Dear Allah, Please let us see curses rain down upon Israel and their conniving liars, let there be sufficient recompense for their brutality, let them be humiliated and destroyed for their arrogant actions, and destroy them in this earth while they still commit these injustices in Palestine while sowing discord and confusion in the rest of the world through their lies. Ya Allah, let me see the day when the Palestinians will return to their rightful homes.

 

Attack on Freedom Flotilla - sadness.. envious, rage..

1.       Freedom flotilla is organised by a Turkish NGO, a coalition of civilian activists internationally from all over the muslim world, including European countries. Its purpose was to bring in aid to Gaza, where the enforced blockade of Gaza by both Israel and Egypt has caused immense hardship to its populace. It brought aid in the form of cement and construction material, food, medicince and such, and from day one had announced that it brought no weapons with it.

2.       The eight (or so) ships knew the risks. They knew that Israel would resort to violent means to stop them. They still went, and some had written their last will to their family members knowing they could be detained indefinitely, or they could be killed for whatever reason.

3.       Today, about 90kms from Gaza, in pitch darkness, Israel navy and armed personnel hijacked the boats, and the numbers vary, but between 10 and 20 of these brave, civilian humanitarians died. Israel TV played out the story that their strikeforce was attacked and had to react in self-defence. How these Israeli combatants,  after they had boarded the ships from abseiling down from their sophisticated helis, attack ships and subs clad in their full combat gear, could have been attacked with “knives and other sharp weapons” (by itself, an admission there were no ordnance) is a farce. Shades of “parang in Aminurrasyid’s car”, but that’s a digression.

4.       Israeli aggression is uncalled for. But now they have to deal with the response from the international diplomatic community, the outpouring of anger and hate from the large (albeit quite powerless) muslim community, and pressure from their previously close partners in the US and Europe.

5.       The sacrifice of the shuhada’ and the brave souls on-board Mavi Marmara was calculated to provoke maximum publicity for the crass, violent, insolent, manipulating and uncivilized political leaders of Israel. Others, who follow this struggle of the Palestinians, will have to wake up and take heed.

 

=============================================================================================

http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2010/5/31/nation/20100531191843&sec=nation

 

No word on fate of Malaysians onboard attacked ship

By SHAUN HO

 

 

PETALING JAYA: The fate of Astro Awani journalist Ashwad Ismail, 26, and cameraman Samsulkamal Abdul Latip, 43, and nine other Malaysians believed aboard Turkish ship Mavi Marmara when Israeli commandos stormed it on Monday, remains unknown.

 

The other Malaysians are Noorazman Mohd Samsuddin (chief of the Malaysian delegation and a UIA lecturer), Dr Mohd Arba Ai Shawal (medical doctor), Dr Syed Muhamad Haleem Syed Hassan (medical doctor), Dr Selamat Aliman (businessman), Jamaluddin Elias (Klang councillor), Al Hilmi Husain Suhaimi (religious teacher), Mohd Nizam Mohamad Awang (engineer), Abd Halim Mohd Redzuan (Syabas executive) and Ustaz Hasanuddin Aqsi Assarip (non-governmental organisation personnel).

 

Astro Awani's last contact with its crew was at 7.45pm on Sunday, according to a statement from the TV channel.

 

A senior Astro Awani source said they were trying desperately to establish contact with the two.

 

The attack, which took place 65km off the Gaza coast in international waters early Monday, killed 16 people and injured many others.

 

The two-man Astro Awani crew had left Kuala Lumpur for Istanbul, Turkey, on May 23, before proceeding to Antalya Port to join the convoy, which departed for Gaza on Sunday.

 

Mavi Marmara was leading the international convoy, dubbed the Freedom Flotilla, with six other ships intending to deliver 10,00 tonnes of aid to the blockaded Gaza.

 

The cargo included building material, food and medical supplies.

 

According to a statement from Lifeline 4 Gaza, which coordinates the Malaysian delegation to the convoy, nine other Malaysians were aboard the ship.

 

Six other Malaysians on board another ship, the Rachel Corrie, which left from Cyprus, were safe, according to a statement by non-governmental organisation (NGO) Perdana Global Peace Organisation.

 

They were lawyer Matthias Chang, journalist Shamsul Akmar, Parit MP Nizar Zakaria, activist Ahmad Faizal Azumu and TV3 crew members Halim Mohamed and Jufri Junid.

 

Meru state assemblyman Dr Abdul Rani Osman, who was on board one of the ships, managed to send a message to some of his Selangor state assemblymen that he was safe.

 

PAS activist Jamaluddin has yet to get in touch, said PAS secretary-general Datuk Kamaruddin Jaafar.

 

It is learnt that the Israeli navy has diverted the convoy to the port of Ashdod where a special passport and detention centre has been set up.

 

An Israeli television reported Monday that Israeli forces attacked the flotilla carrying aid to besieged Gaza, killing up to 16 and wounding more than 30 others.

 

The clash occured after Israeli soldiers tried to stop the flotilla from reaching Gaza.

 

News agencies reported that Israeli forces opened fire after being attacked by a number of passengers.

 

Israeli commandos dropped from a helicopter onto the deck of the Mari Marmara around 4.30am local time, and immediately opened fire on unarmed civilians, said a tweet of human rights group Free Gaza Movement.

 

 

Why Israel's war is driven by fear

This was spotted on the guardian.co.uk site and I thought you should see it.

-------

Israel and Jews double speak. Who has control of the media controls issues and society's talking points of the day. Who undertands this better than the Jews?
-------

To see this story with its related links on the guardian.co.uk site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/11/gaza-israel-political-attitudes

Why Israel's war is driven by fear
Outrage at Israeli actions has mounted across the world as the Gaza conflict goes on. But as Israel expands its military action, support for the aggressive strategy is growing, while sympathy for Palestinians is receding. And, with an election looming, political attitudes are hardening
Chris McGreal at the Gaza border
Sunday January 11 2009
The Observer

Yeela Raanan says she would prefer not to know about the war in Gaza. She doesn't want to see the pictures of dead children cut down by Israeli shells or read of the allegations of war crimes by her country's army as it kills Palestinians by the hundreds.

But there is no escape. Raanan can hear the relentless Israeli bombardment by air, sea and land from her home, just three miles from the Gaza border. Hamas rockets keep hitting her community. And somewhere in the maelstrom of Gaza, her 20-year-old son is serving as an Israeli soldier.

"I'd rather not know. I can't do anything about it. We didn't see the pictures of the Palestinian kids who were killed. It's easier not to feel," she said. "I just turn on the news for five minutes a day and that's it, just to see if anybody says anything about my kid."

But when Raanan thinks about her son - whom she prefers not to name - she also thinks about Palestinian mothers and their sons in Gaza. And that's when she finds her herself out of sync with the neighbours. "I don't talk to the neighbours about it any more," she said. "Hamas is violent. Hamas is stupid. I don't like what they are. But I don't feel angry towards them. I understand why they were elected, I understand why they act as they do."

Attempting to understand has earned Raanan, a former operations officer in the Israeli air force, denunciations as a traitor and accusations of "selling her nation to the devil". Doesn't she love her son?, they ask.

The world has reeled in horror at revelations of Israeli atrocities as the Palestinian death toll has climbed toward 800. The International Red Cross was so outraged it broke its usual silence over an attack in which the Israeli army herded a Palestinian family into a building and then shelled it, killing 30 people and leaving the surviving children clinging to the bodies of their dead mothers. The army prevented rescuers from reaching the survivors for four days.

Israel's shelling of a UN school that had been turned into a refugee centre near Gaza city, killing 42 people who had fled the fighting, drew further accusations of indifference to civilian lives. And Israel has struggled to justify the eradication of entire families, including small children, in pursuit of Hamas officials.

But ordinary Israelis have been told little about this and when they are they generally brush it aside with assertions that it is sad but Hamas has brought it on the Palestinian people. Israel is the real victim, they say. The mainstream Israeli press has stuck firmly to the official line that it is a war of defence, a moral conflict forced on Israel by Hamas rocket fire.

The scale of Palestinian civilian casualties is played down. The dead are overwhelmingly described as terrorists. The accounts of entire Palestinian families being wiped out are buried beneath stories of the Israeli trauma at Hamas attacks.

"The news said the Israeli army had killed 100 'terrorists' and also a bomb fell and 40 lost their lives," said Raanan about the shelling of the UN school. "That was more or less the rhetoric that was used, so the focus was on the fact that we had managed to kill terrorists rather than we had also killed 40 other people. We weren't told who they were." There are alternative voices in the press, but they are mostly dismissed or shouted down. Israeli Arabs who protested against the war have been arrested for undermining national morale. Television anchormen berate critics of the onslaught on Gaza, questioning their patriotism.

The paradox of Israel is that most of its citizens tell the pollsters they agree with Raanan and the peace lobby that there should be a negotiated agreement of the establishment of a Palestinian state. But a significant number of Israelis now question whether this is possible. They view the continued conflict after Ariel Sharon pulled Jewish settlers and the military out of Gaza in 2005 as evidence that Arabs don't want peace; that giving up territory does not bring security.

Support for the vague notion of peace has been further buried under the rhetoric of the looming Israeli election, where the right in particular, led by a former prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, is playing on fear of a nuclear Iran in league with Hamas. Netanyahu, who is likely to win the 10 February ballot, has no intention of dismantling settlements or relinquishing the control that Israel exercises over the lives of Palestinians on the West Bank. He dances around the issue of a Palestinian state and has made clear in the past that what he wants to see amounts to a canton or bantustan (homeland) surrounded by Israeli control.

And so the vast number of mainstream Israelis, while saying they support peace, once again find themselves in bed with the settlers and on the side of oppression. "I hate to say we told you so," said Yisrael Medad, a prominent Jewish settler from Shilo, deep inside the West Bank. "Now you hear all the time that it was a mistake to pull out of Gaza. You hear it on the television when it was never discussed before. More of the anchors are willing to ask that question. They would never ask that a year or two ago. They used to say ours was the extreme view. Now I would say that it's the mainstream, that no matter what we have done territorially speaking it's not going to satisfy them [the Palestinians]. They are always going to attack us."

The settlers might be an extreme minority, but their views as to why Israeli soldiers are fighting in Gaza are not exceptional. Raanan lives in Ein Habsor, a moshav or cooperative agricultural community of about 1,000 people. It suffers regular hits from Hamas rockets. "In the last few days we've had two a day. In the vicinity. A couple inside. Close enough that it could have been your house," she said. No one was hurt but a student at the nearby Sapir college, where Raanan teaches public policy and administration, was killed by a Hamas rocket in February. Roni Yechiah, a 47-year-old father of four, died after the missile hit the car park.

About a quarter of the families in Ein Habsor have left. "They didn't so much go because of the rockets. It was because of the war and being really scared. They closed the schools. Those with little kids have mostly gone," said Raanan. It's not an atmosphere in which to question whether Israeli troops should be in Gaza. Most of the residents of Ein Habsor see the assault as a straightforward and necessary response to Hamas rockets, uncomplicated by issues such as occupation or the Israeli blockade of Gaza.

But Raanan does question. She wants to see a government willing to negotiate seriously with the Palestinians, and she takes the view that just because Israel is strong enough to get one over on the Palestinians, that does not mean that it is in its interests to do so. Raanan also wants other Israelis to understand what the Palestinians are suffering. "My moshav is quite right-wing," she said. "They believe in using power and they don't particularly like Arabs. I don't talk to my neighbours much about these things.

"If you do open your heart to the fact that 40 completely innocent people in a United Nations school were killed you have a very hard time. It's difficult to open your heart to that place and also hold on to wanting the soldiers to succeed. It's a very hard split in personality. I think it's necessary but it's a difficult thing to do." Raanan says Israelis have dehumanised Palestinians to such an extent that they are no longer sensitive about who they kill. "It's so difficult for them to put themselves in the place of someone who lives in Gaza. I guess you have to be able to dehumanise to be able to accept this type of war," she said.

"Israelis think of Hamas as a terrorist group and therefore anything we do to Hamas is OK. But the question is, why do we think it's OK also to kill civilians while we're killing or destroying Hamas? We rationalise; they do it to their own people. That's the rhetoric in Israel. It makes it OK to do what we're doing. In Israel we're brought up to be afraid of Arabs. It's a short step to hating them. It's unusual for people not to have hostile feelings toward Arabs, and it's racist feelings because it's a whole group."

In Shilo, Medad finds himself in agreement with Raanan on one thing. He sees Israeli public opinion as increasingly indifferent to Palestinian suffering. But he says it is because of foreign criticism of Israel's actions. "With the harshness of the criticism, they're slowly but surely turning off more Israelis to elements of humanity, consideration, so eventually they say: who the hell cares?" he said. "We don't see the human face. In that situation we can do anything we want. There's a lack of identity of who the enemy is. He's not human any more."

You might not know there was a war on while visiting Jerusalem's restaurants, Tel Aviv's frantic bars or the Azrieli shopping centre. The mall is one of the largest in Israel. Next door is the Kirya military headquarters, which houses Israel's defence ministry and the country's top military officers. The two buildings are linked by a bridge.

Through the Gaza war, Israel has accused Hamas of endangering civilians by establishing military installations in populated areas. It has been a central justification by the army for the killing of Palestinian civilians. The shoppers at the Azrieli mall see no contradiction between that claim and Israel building its defence headquarters next door to a shopping centre. "They might have a point if they attacked it," said Yoni Ahren, a computer engineer sipping coffee. "But they don't. Instead they send suicide bombers to blow us up in the mall. The Palestinians set out to kill any Jew. The Israeli army sets out to kill Hamas and, yes, innocent Palestinians get killed. But that is not why the army is in Gaza."

A soldier with Ahren, who declined to be identified because he was in uniform, said the Palestinians brought it on themselves. "They voted for Hamas and then Hamas attacked Israel so it's their problem," he said. "I don't know if this [attack on Gaza] will solve anything. Probably not. We cannot get rid of Hamas. But the lesson we've learnt is that we can't trust the Palestinians. We knew that with Arafat. Now we know it again."

That is the upside of the conflict in Gaza for Medad. He believes it could help assure the future of the West Bank settlements by reminding Israelis that control over what Israelis call Judea and Samaria is what keeps Hamas rockets from falling on Tel Aviv. "Things are changing. It's Gaza that's changed things," he said.

Shilo sits alongside the main road from Ramallah to Nablus, a long way from the "security barrier" Israel has built through the West Bank and Jerusalem. Shilo's residents are religious and mostly assert Israel's claim to all of the territory west of the Jordan river. A Palestinian presence is tolerated at best.

When Ariel Sharon pulled Jewish settlers out of Gaza in 2005, he called it a painful sacrifice for peace. Another view was that he had run out of political options and the pull-out was a way to stave off international pressure to talk to the Palestinians. What the dismantling of the Gaza settlements did not do was end the expansion of colonies on the West Bank. Shilo has grown by about 25% since 2005. The "outposts" around it, which are illegal even under Israeli law, have been expanding so fast that the "Shilo block", with about 10,000 residents, is now as large as the main settlement that was dismantled in Gaza.

Most Israelis tell the pollsters they would sacrifice Shilo for peace. But influential voices are against it, among them the man tipped to be Netanyahu's defence minister. Moshe "Bogie" Yaalon, the former military commander in the West Bank, pressed the government for months to attack Gaza, and is against a withdrawal from the West Bank.

Medad is confident that Yaalon's views will prevail. "If you don't have control over a population, you suffer. You want to call it occupation... fine. But there has to be some sort of control, supervision," he said. Yaalon recently asked: "What is the big difference between Gaza and Judea and Samaria - Judea and Samaria we can go in at night, we know where they are, and pick them up. In Gaza we can't do that."

It is a view largely shared by Netanyahu, who has called for the assault on Gaza to be carried through until it forces Hamas from power. Most Israelis may not want to go as far as Netanyahu, but he remains ahead in the polls. Even on the left, attitudes have hardened. Support for Ehud Barak, the Labour party leader and defence minister, has risen sharply because of the assault on Gaza.

Jeff Halper, a veteran peace campaigner, says this is further evidence that Israeli public opinion is principally shaped by fear. "The Israeli public is being held hostage by its own leadership," he said. "This whole idea there's no partner for peace has been internalised by Israelis. Everything has been reduced in Israel to terrorism because Israel has eliminated the political context of occupation and claims it only wants peace and has made generous offers and the Arabs always reject them."

"Seventy per cent of Israeli Jews say they don't want the occupation. They would be happy with the two-state solution. But what they say to us is: 'You don't have to talk to me about peace, I want peace. The Arabs won't let us because the Arabs are just terrorists.' There is in Israel a deeply held assumption that Arabs are our permanent enemies."

Raanan hopes not. She is counting the days until the Gaza assault is over and her son is pulled out. But the personal trauma will not be over if and when that happens. Her second son is due to be called up in six months. The way things are, he could be following his brother into Gaza.

Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited 2009

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Despicable human traits: Israel, Singapore and Karpal

There are some human traits that are so abhorrent to others, arrogance, bullying and oneupsmanship. It’s a trait that Israel displays since time immemorial, and allied with their incessant lies and hypocrisy of shouting “help, I’m victimized” even when they wallop other deprived, impoverished and destitute people into humiliation physically, after finding that doing so mentally isn’t sufficient through their proxy administration in the refugee camp they call Palestinian land in Gaza and the West Bank, it is no wonder how much despise they are despised. And this hatred extends to those who show a willingness to back them, and that includes the ever-present neo-cons in all US administrations, inadvertently exposed in the Bush administration due to his clumsy leadership and persona.

 

Singapore has imported this trait, evident in their ‘kiasu’-ness, give no quarter, expect no quarter attitude to their closest neighbours. Was Dr M right when he employed a particularly aggressive foreign policy relationchip with Singapore? Only time will tell. Singapore does not care for history and cordial relations, they care about the present, and their continuing dominating (and overbearing) presence in the future. If it’s to the detriment of their neighbours, so be it. This lack of charm can be attributed to their single-mindedness to achieve comfort and standing toe-to-toe with the rest of the developed world, a good virtue on its own, but when it comes with a disregard for others, you might as well leave them alone in their quest, but the simmering discontent can easily spill over to anger.

 

Karpal Singh from DAP is yet another. LGE has perhaps distanced himself with the old guards in DAP, perhaps with a greater appreciation of the sensitivities of the diversity we have in Malaysia. But Karpal continues to talk from his excreta when dealing with Malays. Perhaps, it was lost in the media translation. Perhaps it was just political positioning for his constituencies. But, it has been too consistently done for him to be excused. If you fail to recognize that you are now leading a multi-racial Malaysia, with a very sensitive Malay race as its majority, but continuously try to ignore the leanings of many highly educated Malay professionals who form thought leadership within the Malay community who wants Islam to play a major role in dictating their lives, ie to have hudud implemented in some form, then you are not fit to become a leader.

 

Sorry, Karpal, you will have to go. If you don’t understand this, please, I urge you as you have urged others before this, resign and let others who have greater appreciation of the multiple polarities of their various constituencies lead. You are just too old and useless.

How Israel brought Gaza to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe

Most Malays I met expressed sorrow at happenings in Gaza. Given our
continuing inertia and apathy at issues such as baby-killers, new year
orgies, Mat Rempits, to expect the emotions felt at an individual level
to be translated to collective action expected of a civil society may be
too much. The happenings in Gaza may not be sufficient 'shock therapy'
for M-A-L-A-Y-S-I-A-N-S, things are just too far away from KL's
'kedamaian abadi Al-Shafie'.

-------

To see this story with its related links on the guardian.co.uk site, go
to http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/07/gaza-israel-palestine

How Israel brought Gaza to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe
Oxford professor of international relations Avi Shlaim served in the
Israeli army and has never questioned the state's legitimacy. But its
merciless assault on Gaza has led him to devastating conclusions
Avi Shlaim
Wednesday January 7 2009
The Guardian

The only way to make sense of Israel's senseless war in Gaza is through
understanding the historical context. Establishing the state of Israel
in May 1948 involved a monumental injustice to the Palestinians. British
officials bitterly resented American partisanship on behalf of the
infant state. On 2 June 1948, Sir John Troutbeck wrote to the foreign
secretary, Ernest Bevin, that the Americans were responsible for the
creation of a gangster state headed by "an utterly unscrupulous set of
leaders". I used to think that this judgment was too harsh but Israel's
vicious assault on the people of Gaza, and the Bush administration's
complicity in this assault, have reopened the question.

I write as someone who served loyally in the Israeli army in the
mid-1960s and who has never questioned the legitimacy of the state of
Israel within its pre-1967 borders. What I utterly reject is the Zionist
colonial project beyond the Green Line. The Israeli occupation of the
West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the aftermath of the June 1967 war had
very little to do with security and everything to do with territorial
expansionism. The aim was to establish Greater Israel through permanent
political, economic and military control over the Palestinian
territories. And the result has been one of the most prolonged and
brutal military occupations of modern times.

Four decades of Israeli control did incalculable damage to the economy
of the Gaza Strip. With a large population of 1948 refugees crammed into
a tiny strip of land, with no infrastructure or natural resources,
Gaza's prospects were never bright. Gaza, however, is not simply a case
of economic under-development but a uniquely cruel case of deliberate
de-development. To use the Biblical phrase, Israel turned the people of
Gaza into the hewers of wood and the drawers of water, into a source of
cheap labour and a captive market for Israeli goods. The development of
local industry was actively impeded so as to make it impossible for the
Palestinians to end their subordination to Israel and to establish the
economic underpinnings essential for real political independence.

Gaza is a classic case of colonial exploitation in the post-colonial
era. Jewish settlements in occupied territories are immoral, illegal and
an insurmountable obstacle to peace. They are at once the instrument of
exploitation and the symbol of the hated occupation. In Gaza, the Jewish
settlers numbered only 8,000 in 2005 compared with 1.4 million local
residents. Yet the settlers controlled 25% of the territory, 40% of the
arable land and the lion's share of the scarce water resources. Cheek by
jowl with these foreign intruders, the majority of the local population
lived in abject poverty and unimaginable misery. Eighty per cent of them
still subsist on less than $2 a day. The living conditions in the strip
remain an affront to civilised values, a powerful precipitant to
resistance and a fertile breeding ground for political extremism.

In August 2005 a Likud government headed by Ariel Sharon staged a
unilateral Israeli pullout from Gaza, withdrawing all 8,000 settlers and
destroying the houses and farms they had left behind. Hamas, the Islamic
resistance movement, conducted an effective campaign to drive the
Israelis out of Gaza. The withdrawal was a humiliation for the Israeli
Defence Forces. To the world, Sharon presented the withdrawal from Gaza
as a contribution to peace based on a two-state solution. But in the
year after, another 12,000 Israelis settled on the West Bank, further
reducing the scope for an independent Palestinian state. Land-grabbing
and peace-making are simply incompatible. Israel had a choice and it
chose land over peace.

The real purpose behind the move was to redraw unilaterally the borders
of Greater Israel by incorporating the main settlement blocs on the West
Bank to the state of Israel. Withdrawal from Gaza was thus not a prelude
to a peace deal with the Palestinian Authority but a prelude to further
Zionist expansion on the West Bank. It was a unilateral Israeli move
undertaken in what was seen, mistakenly in my view, as an Israeli
national interest. Anchored in a fundamental rejection of the
Palestinian national identity, the withdrawal from Gaza was part of a
long-term effort to deny the Palestinian people any independent
political existence on their land.

Israel's settlers were withdrawn but Israeli soldiers continued to
control all access to the Gaza Strip by land, sea and air. Gaza was
converted overnight into an open-air prison. From this point on, the
Israeli air force enjoyed unrestricted freedom to drop bombs, to make
sonic booms by flying low and breaking the sound barrier, and to
terrorise the hapless inhabitants of this prison.

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. In January 2006, free and fair elections for the Legislative
Council of the Palestinian Authority brought to power a Hamas-led
government. Israel, however, refused to recognise the democratically
elected government, claiming that Hamas is purely and simply a terrorist
organisation.

America and the EU shamelessly joined Israel in ostracising and
demonising the Hamas government and in trying to bring it down by
withholding tax revenues and foreign aid. A surreal situation thus
developed with a significant part of the international community
imposing economic sanctions not against the occupier but against the
occupied, not against the oppressor but against the oppressed.

As so often in the tragic history of Palestine, the victims were blamed
for their own misfortunes. Israel's propaganda machine persistently
purveyed the notion that the Palestinians are terrorists, that they
reject coexistence with the Jewish state, that their nationalism is
little more than antisemitism, that Hamas is just a bunch of religious
fanatics and that Islam is incompatible with democracy. But the simple
truth is that the Palestinian people are a normal people with normal
aspirations. They are no better but they are no worse than any other
national group. What they aspire to, above all, is a piece of land to
call their own on which to live in freedom and dignity.

Like other radical movements, Hamas began to moderate its political
programme following its rise to power. From the ideological rejectionism
of its charter, it began to move towards pragmatic accommodation of a
two-state solution. In March 2007, Hamas and Fatah formed a national
unity government that was ready to negotiate a long-term ceasefire with
Israel. Israel, however, refused to negotiate with a government that
included Hamas.

It continued to play the old game of divide and rule between rival
Palestinian factions. In the late 1980s, Israel had supported the
nascent Hamas in order to weaken Fatah, the secular nationalist movement
led by Yasser Arafat. Now Israel began to encourage the corrupt and
pliant Fatah leaders to overthrow their religious political rivals and
recapture power. Aggressive American neoconservatives participated in
the sinister plot to instigate a Palestinian civil war. Their meddling
was a major factor in the collapse of the national unity government and
in driving Hamas to seize power in Gaza in June 2007 to pre-empt a Fatah
coup.

The war unleashed by Israel on Gaza on 27 December was the culmination
of a series of clashes and confrontations with the Hamas government. In
a broader sense, however, it is a war between Israel and the Palestinian
people, because the people had elected the party to power. The declared
aim of the war is to weaken Hamas and to intensify the pressure until
its leaders agree to a new ceasefire on Israel's terms. The undeclared
aim is to ensure that the Palestinians in Gaza are seen by the world
simply as a humanitarian problem and thus to derail their struggle for
independence and statehood.

The timing of the war was determined by political expediency. A general
election is scheduled for 10 February and, in the lead-up to the
election, all the main contenders are looking for an opportunity to
prove their toughness. The army top brass had been champing at the bit
to deliver a crushing blow to Hamas in order to remove the stain left on
their reputation by the failure of the war against Hezbollah in Lebanon
in July 2006. Israel's cynical leaders could also count on apathy and
impotence of the pro-western Arab regimes and on blind support from
President Bush in the twilight of his term in the White House. Bush
readily obliged by putting all the blame for the crisis on Hamas,
vetoing proposals at the UN Security Council for an immediate ceasefire
and issuing Israel with a free pass to mount a ground invasion of Gaza.

As always, mighty Israel claims to be the victim of Palestinian
aggression but the sheer asymmetry of power between the two sides leaves
little room for doubt as to who is the real victim. This is indeed a
conflict between David and Goliath but the Biblical image has been
inverted - a small and defenceless Palestinian David faces a heavily
armed, merciless and overbearing Israeli Goliath. The resort to brute
military force is accompanied, as always, by the shrill rhetoric of
victimhood and a farrago of self-pity overlaid with self-righteousness.
In Hebrew this is known as the syndrome of bokhim ve-yorim, "crying and
shooting".

To be sure, Hamas is not an entirely innocent party in this conflict.
Denied the fruit of its electoral victory and confronted with an
unscrupulous adversary, it has resorted to the weapon of the weak -
terror. Militants from Hamas and Islamic Jihad kept launching Qassam
rocket attacks against Israeli settlements near the border with Gaza
until Egypt brokered a six-month ceasefire last June. The damage caused
by these primitive rockets is minimal but the psychological impact is
immense, prompting the public to demand protection from its government.
Under the circumstances, Israel had the right to act in self-defence but
its response to the pinpricks of rocket attacks was totally
disproportionate. 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.

Whatever the numbers, killing civilians is wrong. This rule applies to
Israel as much as it does to Hamas, but Israel's entire record is one of
unbridled and unremitting brutality towards the inhabitants of Gaza.
Israel also maintained the blockade of Gaza after the ceasefire came
into force which, in the view of the Hamas leaders, amounted to a
violation of the agreement. During the ceasefire, 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. It is difficult to see how starving and freezing the
civilians of Gaza could protect the people on the Israeli side of the
border. But even if it did, it would still be immoral, a form of
collective punishment that is strictly forbidden by international
humanitarian law.

The brutality of Israel's soldiers is fully matched by the mendacity of
its spokesmen. Eight months before launching the current war on Gaza,
Israel established a National Information Directorate. The core messages
of this directorate to the media are that Hamas broke the ceasefire
agreements; that Israel's objective is the defence of its population;
and that Israel's forces are taking the utmost care not to hurt innocent
civilians. Israel's spin doctors have been remarkably successful in
getting this message across. But, in essence, their propaganda is a pack
of lies.

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 di d so by a raid into Gaza on 4 November that killed six Hamas men.
Israel's objective is not just the defence of its population but the
eventual overthrow of the Hamas government in Gaza by turning the people
against their rulers. And far from taking care to spare civilians,
Israel is guilty of indiscriminate bombing and of a three-year-old
blockade that has brought the inhabitants of Gaza, now 1.5 million, to
the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe.

The Biblical injunction of an eye for an eye is savage enough. But
Israel's insane offensive against Gaza seems to follow the logic of an
eye for an eyelash. After eight days of bombing, with a death toll of
more than 400 Palestinians and four Israelis, the gung-ho cabinet
ordered a land invasion of Gaza the consequences of which are
incalculable.

No amount of military escalation can buy Israel immunity from rocket
attacks from the military wing of Hamas. Despite all the death and
destruction that Israel has inflicted on them, they kept up their
resistance and they kept firing their rockets. This is a movement that
glorifies victimhood and martyrdom. There is simply no military solution
to the conflict between the two communities. The problem with Israel's
concept of security is that it denies even the most elementary security
to the other community. The only way for Israel to achieve security is
not through shooting but through talks with Hamas, which has repeatedly
declared its readiness to negotiate a long-term ceasefire with the
Jewish state within its pre-1967 borders for 20, 30, or even 50 years.
Israel has rejected this offer for the same reason it spurned the Arab
League peace plan of 2002, which is still on the table: it involves
concessions and compromises.

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. Israel's real aim is not peaceful coexistence
with its Palestinian neighbours but military domination. It keeps
compounding the mistakes of the past with new and more disastrous ones.
Politicians, like everyone else, are of course free to repeat the lies
and mistakes of the past. But it is not mandatory to do so.

? Avi Shlaim is a professor of international relations at the University
of Oxford and the author of The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World and
of Lion of Jordan: King Hussein's Life in War and Peace.

Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited 2009

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Curses on Israel and Bush!

Last Christmas I posted a somewhat admiring stance on the Jews money-making chicanery capability, even to their extent of swindling. Since then, there have been various happenings in Gaza, and I hold my hands up in utter embarrassment at having even a hint of admiration for such an abominable group of people. The Jews will always be a group of people who live by their own laws, outside of the global community, living by their own standards and waiting for their destiny to rule the world by decree from their God above.

It’s this mindset that has spawned the Zionist movement, which set in motion the political machinery of corrupt British Empire politicians to overrun land owned by domiciled Palestinians on the flimsiest of excuses, that this is their ancestral land of long ago. Having attained this objective by force, they then set out manipulating political lobbies of major powers able to offer them aircover, and idiotic unthinking US Presidents such as Bush winning electoral votes from idiotic unthinking electorates.

As their economic and military strength grows, and the Palestinians slowly strangled in a living hell by blocking all means of economic development, ignoring democratic processes which voted in Hamas into the Palestinian power, attempting to gain the upper hand in all negotiations - if it can be called that, the notion of kiasu-ness for Singaporeans have had their origins in the political thought of this Jewish state - they then justify their actions, again with the flimsiest of reasons.

Rockets fired into their cities by ill-equipped, and largely unproven by Hamas cells? Send in firepower, airstrikes, tanks, 10,000 infantry troops with night vision goggles. Swat a mosquito using a flamethrower. Why? So that a message can be sent to the 1.5m Gaza city population, women, children and civilians.

Little do they know what they are doing is to breed more suicide bombers amongst the Palestinians and further degrading reputation amongst the international community. Other muslims, while action from the surrounding international Muslim community remains that of quiet fear, wait for the emergence of Al-Ayyubi with an army of angels to annihilate this race of people.

Madoff, Jews, Judaism and Money

An interesting article relating the close proximity between Jews and money, and in Madoff’s case, the deception and betrayal of a Jew to his co-religionists.

For a muslim, Jews and Christians are taught as People of the Book, given enlightenment by God before they chose a path for their religion for themselves. In Islam, whilst the teachings are preserved through the pristine Quran and Sunnah, the transmission of teachings of which are historically and academically proven, and the choices of muslims is now down to their own control of their personal will and desires. But I digress.

In the Seerah, we find how the Prophet treated the Jews of Bany Qurayzah (tbc) with kindness, before the ultimate act of betrayal of abrogating a peace treaty at the darkest hour of a potential siege on the muslims in Madinah during the height of the Battle of the Ditch forced the Prophet’s hand to show how to deal firmly when an act of trust is betrayed. And being the confused being that I am, though I think the Jewish double-standard and hyprocritical business dealings being justified through their Rabbis is proof of the fact that they have strayed from the right path, I absolutely admire their ability to have a stranglehold on business and finances in any society since time immemorial.

There was a though a pretty senseless comment made at this site which reads as below,

I’m surprised that this article has not triggered the standard Jew-bashing vitriol yet. Come on, let’s hear it from the marauding masses!

Which seems to suggest that the commentator has been taken in by Israel’s Zionist agenda. Anyone with some sense of justice would be able to look beyond Israel’s continued surreptitious, merciless and underhanded colonizing war against defenceless, down-trodden Palestinians, while portraying themselves as the victims of terrorism with their control on the global media. And this is backed by the UN through UN resolutions ever since the illegal occupation in 1948. And the negotiations with the ‘wildmen of the Arab world’ is to create a legal Israel state, thereby conveniently leaving out the argument of forceful occupation 60 years ago to legitimately consider Israel as a legal nation on the basis of the might of Israels’ friends. Amidst all these political maneuverings, principles, justice and truth are ridden roughshod. In Madoff’s case, from the Judaism perspective, and I say this cognizant of others in Judaism who deplore the Israeli political machinery that brings with it many predictions of Armageddon contained in the Talmud, it would seem that if you live by the sword, you die by the sword. You can’t have double standards in life.

Although I suppose my comments here is proof that I am anti-semitic and vitriol?

===================================================

http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/index.php/world/14739-in-madoff-scandal-jews-feel-an-acute-betrayal

In Madoff scandal, Jews feel an acute betrayal

NEW YORK, Dec 24 — There is a teaching in the Talmud that says an individual who comes before God after death will be asked a series of questions, the first one of which is, “Were you honest in your business dealings?”

But it is the Ten Commandments that have weighed most heavily on the mind of Rabbi David Wolpe of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles in light of the sins for which Bernard Madoff is accused of.

”You shouldn’t steal,” Rabbi Wolpe said. “And this is theft on a global scale.”

The full scope of the misdeeds to which Madoff has confessed in swindling individuals and charitable groups has yet to be calculated, and he is far from being convicted.

But Jews all over the country are already sending up something of a communal cry over a cost they say goes beyond the financial to the theological and the personal.

Here is a Jew accused of cheating Jewish organizations trying to help other Jews, they say, and of betraying the trust of Jews and violating the basic tenets of Jewish law. A Jew, they say, who seemed to exemplify the worst anti-Semitic stereotypes of the thieving Jewish banker.

So in synagogues and community centres, on blogs and in countless conversations, many Jews are beating their chests — not out of contrition, as they do on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, but because they say Mr Madoff has brought shame on their people in addition to financial ruin and shaken the bonds of trust that bind Jewish communities.

“Jews have these familial ties,” Rabbi Wolpe said. “It’s not solely a shared belief; it’s a sense of close communal bonds, and in the same way that your family can embarrass you as no one else can, when a Jew does this, Jews feel ashamed by proxy. I’d like to believe someone raised in our community, imbued with Jewish values, would be better than this.”

Among the apparent victims of Madoff were many Jewish educational institutions and charitable causes that lost fortunes in his investments; they include Yeshiva University, Hadassah, the Jewish Community Centers Association of North America and the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity.

The Chais Family Foundation, which worked on educational projects in Israel, was recently forced to shut down because of losses in Madoff investments. Many of Mr Madoff’s individual investors were Jewish and supported Jewish causes, apparently drawn to him precisely because of his own communal involvement and because he radiated the comfortable sense of being one of them.

“The Jewish world is not going to be the same for a while," said Rabbi Jeremy Kalmanofsky of Congregation Ansche Chesed in New York.

Jews are also grappling with the implications of Madoff's deeds for their public image, what one rabbi referred to as the “shanda factor,” using the Yiddish term for an embarrassing shame or disgrace. As Bradley Burston, a columnist for haaretz.com, the English-language website of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, wrote on Dec 17: “The anti-Semite’s new Santa is Bernard Madoff. The answer to every Jew-hater’s wish list. The Aryan Nation at its most delusional couldn't have come up with anything to rival this.”

The Anti-Defamation League said in a statement that Madoff’s arrest had prompted an outpouring of anti-Semitic comments on websites around the world, most repeating familiar tropes about Jews and money.

Abraham H. Foxman, the group’s national director, said that canard went back hundreds of years, but he noted that anti-Semites did not need facts to be anti-Semitic.

“We’re not immune from having thieves and people who engage in fraud,” Foxman said in an interview, disputing any notion that Mr Madoff should be seen as emblematic. “Why, because he happens to be Jewish, he should have a conscience?”

He added that Madoff’s victims extended well beyond the Jewish community.

In addition to theft, the Torah discusses another kind of stealing, geneivat da'at, the Hebrew term for deception or stealing someone’s mind.

“In the rabbinic mind-set, he’s guilty of two sins: one is theft, and the other is deception,” said Burton L. Visotzky, a professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary.

“The fact that he stole from Jewish charities puts him in a special circle of hell,” Rabbi Visotzky added. “He really undermined the fabric of the Jewish community, because it’s built on trust. There is a wonderful rabbinic saying — often misapplied — that all Jews are sureties for one another, which means, for instance, that if a Jew takes a loan out, in

some ways the whole Jewish community guarantees it.”

Several rabbis said they were reminded of Esau, a figure of mistrust in the Bible. According to a rabbinic interpretation, Esau, upon embracing his brother Jacob after 20 years apart, was actually frisking him to see what he could steal. “The saying goes that, when Esau kisses you,” Rabbi Visotzky said, “check to make sure your teeth are still there.”

Rabbi Kalmanofsky said he was struck by reports that Madoff had tried to give bonus payments to his employees just before he was arrested, that he was moved to do something right even as he was about to be charged with doing so much wrong.

“The small-scale thought for people who work for him amidst this large-scale fraud — what is the dissonance between that sense of responsibility and the gross sense of irresponsibility? he said.

In a recent sermon, Rabbi Kalmanofsky described Madoff as the antithesis of true piety.

“I said, what it means to be a religious person is to be terrified of the possibility that you're going to harm someone else,” he said.

Rabbi Kalmanofsky said Judaism had highly developed mechanisms for not letting people control money without ample checks and balances. When tzedakah, or charity, is collected, it must be done so in pairs.

“These things are supposed to be done in the public eye,” Rabbi Kalmanofsky said, “so there is a high degree of confidence that people are behaving in honourable ways.”

While the Madoff affair has resonated powerfully among Jews, some say it actually stands for a broader dysfunction in the business world.

“The Bernie Madoff story has become a Jewish story,” said Rabbi Jennifer Krause, the author of “The Answer: Making Sense of Life, One Question at a Time,” “but I do see it in the much greater context of a human drama that is playing out in sensationally terrible ways in America right now.”

“The Talmud teaches that a person who only looks out for himself and his own interests will eventually be brought to poverty,” Rabbi Krause added.

“Unfortunately, this is the metadrama of what’s happening in our country right now. When you have too many people who are only looking out for themselves and they forget the other piece, which is to look out for others, we’re brought to poverty.”

According to Jewish tradition, the last question people are asked when they meet God after dying is, “Did you hope for redemption?”

Rabbi Wolpe said he did not believe Madoff could ever make amends.

“It is not possible for him to atone for all the damage he did,” the rabbi said, “and I don’t even think that there is a punishment that is commensurate with the crime, for the wreckage of lives that he’s left behind. The only thing he could do, for the rest of his life, is work for redemption that he would never achieve.” — NYT