| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
nico
Joined: 12 Dec 2006
|
 Posted: Mon Jul 07, 2014 10:27 pm Post subject: |
 |
|
|
|
There is no future for apartheid Israel
John Wight is a writer and commentator specializing in geopolitics, UK domestic politics, culture and sport.
Get short URL
Published time: July 07, 2014 12:24
Palestinian protesters burn an Israeli flag during clashes with Israeli troops near Israel's Ofer Prison, near the West Bank city of Ramallah May 16, 2014. (Reuters/Mohamad Torokman)
Palestinian protesters burn an Israeli flag during clashes with Israeli troops near Israel's Ofer Prison, near the West Bank city of Ramallah May 16, 2014. (Reuters/Mohamad Torokman)
The latest round of repression against a relatively defenseless subject population of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza by the state of Israel has by now assumed the air of tired routine.
But for those on the receiving end what a largely desensitized world considers “tired” and “routine” bespeaks terror and brutality. Given the lack of intervention on the part of the international community whenever an Israeli security crackdown occurs, it is evident by now that a tacit acceptance has taken root to the effect that massacring Palestinians has been elevated to the level of bloodsport within Israeli society.
"No one people has a monopoly on human suffering and every ethnic tragedy stands on its own.
If I were a Jew or Gypsy, Nazi barbarity would be the most atrocious event in history. If I were a Black African, it would be slavery and apartheid. If I were a Native American, it would be the discovery of the New World by European explorers and settlers that resulted in near-total extermination. If I were an Armenian, it would be the Ottoman massacres.
I happen to be a Palestinian, and for me it is the Nakba.
Humanity should consider all the above repugnant. I do not consider it advisable to debate hierarchies of suffering. I do not know how to quantify pain or measure suffering. I do know that we are not children of a lesser God."
Afif Safieh – Palestinian diplomat
For those of us who still care about the plight of a people whose only crime is that they exist on land coveted by a settler colonial state, the latest manifestation of Israel’s disregard for international law and human rights is as good a reason as any for closer examination. In so doing, we must call upon the greatest teacher of them all: history.
Most empires and colonial projects fall under the weight of their own contradictions, but usually over a protracted period of resistance, both passive and active, on the part of its victims. At the same time the material privileges gained from the exploitation and expropriation of a colonized people acts as a slow-acting corrosive on the society of the colonizing state, poisoning it with racism and hatred for those it has colonized as it seeks to justify the material privileges and psychological sense of supremacy and national pride that accrues from that colonization. This moral decay is commonly reflected in the degeneration that takes place in the armed forces of the state in question, where the emphasis of the troops shifts from self-sacrifice and heroism in support of a just and galvanizing cause to personal survival as demoralization sets in.
In other words, the day-to-day reality of perpetuating oppression and injustice overcomes any amount of national propaganda in support of that oppression. In this, the case of American troops in Vietnam is a prime example.
There, the reality on the ground of killing and being killed in a country thousands of miles from home in an ignoble war eventually proved stronger than the propaganda the troops had been fed that they were fighting in the cause of freedom. This resulted in a widespread and growing breakdown in discipline, almost to the point where the US military effort in Vietnam was in danger of complete collapse. It might even be argued that on a certain level atrocities like My Lai were informed by a projection of the self-loathing experienced by more and more American troops in the field as the reality of the injustices they were committing took hold.
Another and contemporary example of this moral degeneration is the case of the Orwellian-named Israel Defense Forces. More than any other, the IDF is a product of the constructed mythology that has sustained Israel since its creation in 1948. It is a mythology which combines both a biblical and political justification for the state’s existence. On the one hand it constitutes the realization of an ancient covenant in which the land of historic Palestine was promised by God to the Israelites, the descendants of Abraham, over 2,000 years ago, while on the other hand it is the fulfillment of the Zionist postulate that in a world that is irredeemably anti-Semitic the Jewish people, hitherto stateless, would never find peace and security until they had a state of their own.
While the former can instantly be dismissed as obscurantist poppycock, it must be said that the second of the aforementioned philosophical arguments in support of Israel’s existence reflects a concrete historical reality in the shape of the wave of anti-Semitism that swept across Europe in the latter part of the 19th century, and which gave rise to the emergence of Zionism.
Israeli Defense Force soldiers set off on a tracking drill near Tze'elim in southern Israel June 9, 2014. (Reuters)
Israeli Defense Force soldiers set off on a tracking drill near Tze'elim in southern Israel June 9, 2014. (Reuters)
If anyone was still in any doubt as to the power behind the early proponents of calls for a Jewish state, as the vast majority of Jews around the world were for decades, the inimitable horrors of the Holocaust in the Second World War instantly dispelled them. Indeed, the psychological impact of the Holocaust on the Jewish people cannot be underestimated even today, despite it proving fertile ground for the extreme nationalism that has taken root within a significant section of Israeli society.
No matter the impact of the Holocaust on Israel, however, it can never justify the decades of injustice suffered by the Palestinian people as a consequence, else we describe a world in which the only answer to oppression is oppression. Moreover, the victims of the Nazi Holocaust share a bond of humanity with victims of every other genocide and state sanctioned crimes against humanity throughout history. It is a bond that transcends ethnicity, religion and/or nationality, and which embraces the many thousands of Palestinian victims of the Nakba and the millions more subsequently rendered stateless and refugees as a consequence.
Desperate propaganda
The romantic ideals attached to the pioneering spirit of the founders of Israel, along with international sympathy for a people who’d suffered such grotesque brutality at the hands of the Nazis, imbued the nascent state with a sense of purpose and destiny that helped mask the atrocities being carried out in its name.
A mythology of heroism and bravery was already well on the way to being constructed in 1948 when it came to Zionist militia organizations like the Haganah and Irgun. It was a mythology that continued on into the ranks of IDF when Israel was founded in 1948, embodied in the adoption of the state’s guiding “purity of arms” ethos, one designed to give romantic flavor to the militarism that sits at its heart. Yet in truth the ranks of the Haganah, Irgun and various other militia groups were filled with racist killers massacring men, women and children in order to fulfill the biblical and national destinies previously mentioned.
This toxic mix of racism and exceptionalism has led to the existence of a state that since its formation has viewed its repeated violations of international law and its crimes against humanity entirely justified. So deeply ingrained is the biblical and historical justification for Israel’s continued depredations against the Palestinians that when it comes to international condemnation of its crimes, rather than a cause for reflection and introspection within Israeli society, for many it merely serves to reaffirm Israel’s view of itself as the last bastion of defense of the Jewish people in a hostile world.
The day-to-day reality of this corrosive outlook involves young Israeli soldiers, mostly conscripts, humiliating, intimidating and brutalizing civilians at checkpoints, or killing Palestinians and Arabs in general in the knowledge they are able to do so with relative impunity.
Israeli soldiers take part in an operation to locate three Israeli teens near the West Bank City of Hebron June 21, 2014. (Reuters)
Israeli soldiers take part in an operation to locate three Israeli teens near the West Bank City of Hebron June 21, 2014. (Reuters)
But when those same soldiers come up against a determined and dogged resistance on the ground, such as they did in 2006 during the brief war against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, their resolve crumbles and they are defeated. This is key to understanding why Israel, just like its chief sponsor the US when it comes to its own military operations, has come to rely on an advanced arsenal of missiles, aircraft, helicopter gunships, drones and tanks in its continuing conflict with the entire population of Gaza for the crime of exercising its right to elect a government of its own choosing.
Such would be the demoralizing effect not only on the troops but also and more importantly on Israeli society at large. Israel knows it cannot afford to sustain heavy casualties during its repeated military operations against a largely unarmed population.
To put it another way, while Israeli troops are more than willing to kill to maintain the material privileges attached to living in a settler colonial state, one in which their consumer lifestyles are subsidized by the West, they have consistently demonstrated a reluctance to die for those privileges. Evidence of the increased pressure that Israel is under is reflected in the growing desperation of its propaganda in painting the motivation of its growing number of critics and opponents as being founded in anti-Semitism. But where previously such calumniation would have been suffice to silence dissenting voices, now it merely discredits Israel’s supporters and apologists further.
Throughout history, humanity has been locked in struggle between oppressor and oppressed. It is a struggle that has posed the same question to each succeeding generation: Whose side are you on?
Israel as an apartheid state has no future. Only as a state which embraces the concept of universal human rights, justice and dignity for all who share the same land can it ensure the peace and security of its people. More than any other this is the abiding lesson of history.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT. |
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
MegaChairmanMao
Joined: 09 Jan 2012
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
MegaChairmanMao
Joined: 09 Jan 2012
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
luke
Joined: 11 Feb 2007
Location: by the sea
|
| Posted: Sun Aug 10, 2014 8:29 pm Post subject: |
|
|
|
|
| thanks for posting, i only remember to check his sputnik show when i see you've posted them |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
nico
Joined: 12 Dec 2006
|
| Posted: Thu Aug 21, 2014 4:40 am Post subject: |
|
|
|
|
It’s Money, Not Blood
Is Israel’s Operation Protective Edge Really About Natural Gas?
by TASCHA SHAHRIARI-PARSA
While many articles have debunked the myth that Israel is acting out of “self-defense,” very few have attempted to establish why Israel is continuing its assault on Palestine through Operation Protective Edge, aside from the supposition that Zionists have a fanatic penchant for drawing Palestinian blood. Behind the operation, behind the mass Israeli and U.S. propaganda attempting to justify the massacre, and behind the death of every child in Gaza is a conflict rarely discussed, an imperialist conflict and a contradiction that rests on Israel’s ambitions to appropriate and profit from Gaza’s natural gas resources.
To provide some background, the natural gas issue arose in the year 2000 when British Gas (BG) discovered what they claimed to be $4 billion worth of natural gas reserves off the coast of Gaza. The Palestinian Investment Fund (PIF) and British Gas (BG) both invested in the project, with BG holding 60% of the rights. Since then, more gas has been found in the region. Michel Chossudovsky, a Canadian economist, has estimated that the amount of gas in Palestine is so grand that it could make Palestine as rich as Kuwait. In due reaction, since 2000, Israel has strengthened its maritime blockade on Gaza, denying Palestine basic rights over its territorial waters, driving away Palestinian fishing boats, and contaminating the waters so heavily from its naval attacks that the fishing industry essentially collapsed. “On its coastal littoral,” reported Peter Beaumont from Gaza several years ago, “Gaza’s limitations are marked by a different fence where the bars are Israeli gunboats with their huge wakes, scurrying beyond the Palestinian fishing boats and preventing them from going outside a zone imposed by the warships.” It is discernible that this is directly due to Israel’s appetite for Palestinian gas.
In recent years, Israel’s energy crisis has deepened, as marked by a letter by two Israeli scientists. “We believe Israel should increase its [domestic] use of natural gas by 2020 and should not export gas,” the letter reads. “The Natural Gas Authority’s estimates are lacking. There’s a gap of 100 to 150 billion cubic meters between the demand projections that were presented to the committee and the most recent projections. The gas reserves are likely to last even less than 40 years!” As the need for energy has grown in Israel, so have their ruthless attempts to seek it.
After the election of Hamas in 2006, Israel began negotiating with BG since, according to the former chief of staff of the IDF Moshe Ya’alon, the previously negotiated investment meant that a portion of the revenue could fall into the hands of Hamas and ‘threaten’ Israel. In other words, Israel wanted the gas, but they did not want part of the revenue to go to Hamas. Their solution, therefore, was to get rid of Hamas. More accurately, it is safe to affirm that Israel both desires a financially and militarily weaker opposition as well as a more subservient entity that may agree to willingly hand over its natural gas to Israeli profiteers.
Operation Cast Lead began in June 2008, at the exact same time that Israel contacted BG to discuss critical negotiations around Gaza’s natural gas. As these negotiations continued, Israel was killing 1,417 Palestinians, displacing over 50,000 Gazans and destroying over 4,000 homes through air strikes and a deadly ground invasion with the declared purpose of securing areas within the Gaza strip that rockets were fired from. In reality, it had nothing to do with the rockets, or a notion of “self defense”, considering how disproportionate the casualties were—just as they are now under operation protective edge. It was merely a means as part of Israel’s overall goal of appropriating Palestinian natural gas, both through territorial control and the failed attempt to defeat Hamas.
While Israel was fighting to get rid of Hamas, they were simultaneously supporting and negotiating with Fatah. In 2011, a new round of negotiations with Fatah completely excluded Hamas from the process; in turn, Hamas declared these talks as illegitimate. Even more shocking, wikileaks cables from December 2010 confirmed that Fatah had asked Israel to attack Hamas. Yuval Diskin, the head of Israel’s security agency Shin Bet, made comments on Israel’s desire to strengthen Fatah. “Fatah is in a very bad shape in Gaza. We have received requests to train their forces in Egypt and Yemen. We would like to get them to get the training they need, and to be more powerful, but they do not have anyone to lead them”. Before that, in 2006 after the election of Hamas, Israel authorized the delivery of “light weapons and ammunition” to armed forces loyal to Fatah.
All in all, it is clear that Fatah, heavily criticized by the People’s Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and other liberation-seeking groups in Palestine, has at least to a great extent sold itself out to Israel. It is also evident that Israel would much prefer Fatah over Hamas in negotiations on natural gas. Operation Protective Edge, very much like Operation Cast Lead, has neither anything to do with self-defense (as the right may tell us), nor is it a meaningless slaughter motivated principally by a hatred for Palestinians (as the confused left may believe). It is very clear what it is: a war driven by the hankering yet callous lust of the imperialist capital of a colonial state to expand its appropriation of Palestinian natural resources and profit at the severe expense of the Palestinian people.
While Palestine must receive the full support of people around the world in its struggle for national liberation, Israel must be unequivocally condemned for its indefensible war crimes and occupation of Palestine. It is clear that Israel’s Operation Protective Edge is a misnomer, as it should be renamed to something along the lines of Operation Capital-driven Genocide. The truth is, Israel’s brutality will continue and Palestine will never be free until the Zionist apparatuses of colonialism and occupation are dismantled once and for all.
Tascha Shahriari-Parsa is a student from Vancouver, British Columbia, who has recently found himself unable to allow an hour to pass by without seeking updates on the situation in Palestine. Angered and frustrated by the horrors of Israeli war crimes and occupation, he has been involved in Palestine-solidarity activism and does what he can to spread the truth about Palestine in his community. More generally, he is interested in the liberation of the oppressed from their oppressors across the globe and in the contradictions that necessitate such liberation. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
luke
Joined: 11 Feb 2007
Location: by the sea
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
MegaChairmanMao
Joined: 09 Jan 2012
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Kurisu
Joined: 06 Jan 2012
Location: Tokyo
|
| Posted: Sun Aug 16, 2015 12:41 am Post subject: |
|
|
|
|
Did anyone catch GG on LBC Saturday morning, he was billed as stand-in for Ken & David.
Any link would be appreciated. Thanks. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
luke
Joined: 11 Feb 2007
Location: by the sea
|
| Posted: Sun Aug 16, 2015 1:11 am Post subject: |
|
|
|
|
yeah, it was pretty good - and nice to hear him after all this time, and karl from plaistow even phoned in!
but i didn't record it - sorry - i kinda guessed someone would upload it youtube - maybe it'll turn up later
he's on lbc all next week from 10 in the morning until 1 |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Kurisu
Joined: 06 Jan 2012
Location: Tokyo
|
| Posted: Mon Aug 17, 2015 2:07 am Post subject: |
|
|
|
|
| Hi Luke, Thanks , no luck on youtube yet. Look forward to this week,will definitely catch it and record it this time. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
faceless
admin
Joined: 25 Apr 2006
|
| Posted: Tue Aug 18, 2015 3:20 pm Post subject: |
|
|
|
|
Here's today's show - 126mb mp3. The stream dropped for the occasional 10-15 seconds, but only a few times...
http://filecloud.io/4noiycw9 |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
luke
Joined: 11 Feb 2007
Location: by the sea
|
| Posted: Wed Aug 19, 2015 12:43 pm Post subject: |
|
|
|
|
| thanks face, nice one - i keep forgetting its on - i caught about the last half hour today |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
faceless
admin
Joined: 25 Apr 2006
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
faceless
admin
Joined: 25 Apr 2006
|
| Posted: Thu Aug 20, 2015 12:06 am Post subject: |
|
|
|
|
| I've replaced the link for Tuesday's show as I'd missed half an hour somehow. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
luke
Joined: 11 Feb 2007
Location: by the sea
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
|
|
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
You cannot attach files in this forum
You can download files in this forum
|
Couchtripper - 2005-2015
|
