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Dave Coull
Independentista
Joined: 07 Nov 2006
Posts: 2809
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 Posted: Sat Jan 10, 2009 9:11 am Post subject: |
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My stepson, Sam, spent Christmas and New Year with us. Although I played a big part in bringing him up, Sam isn't genetically related to me. He is in fact Jewish on both his mother's side and on his natural father's side. According to the Law of The Return, Sam could become a citizen of Israel if he wanted to. He has visited Israel several times. Yet a Palestinian who was actually born in Israel, and who ended up as a refugee in Gaza, not only can't become a citizen, he can't even visit Israel. Sam is keenly aware of how un-just that situation is, and he has played an active part in demonstrating for peace and justice, in Israel, in Palestine (the West Bank), and elsewhere. | Holebender wrote: | | The whole of Israel was once Palestinian territory but the UN mandated the creation of the State of Israel within that territory |
Okay, this is history, but it is history which is highly relevant to what is happening now, to the campaigns and events of today, in fact to demonstrations which will be taking place in Scotland and elsewhere quite literally "today".
David Ben-Gurion has been described as the "chief architect" of the state of Israel, and he certainly played a very significant role in that. But there were others who also played a part. Another "architect" was Menachem Begin, leader of the Irgun terrorist group which planted a bomb in the King David Hotel that killed 91 people, and who later went on to become prime minister of Israel. But while we are acknowledging the "architects" of Israel, let's not forget the role played by Adolf Hitler and his colleagues. It was their Holocaust against the Jews of Europe, supported or connived in at the time by at least some of the people of all of the countries under Nazi rule, which convinced many Jews that Europe was never going to be a safe place for Jews, and that a Zionist "homeland" was necessary.
When Zionist political ideology first appeared amongst the Jews of Europe, during the late 19th Century, Palestine had a smaller Jewish population than dozens of other countries. It hadn't been a Jewish country for the best part of two thousand years. The choice of Palestine for a "homeland" was based on it being the "promised land" of the Old Testament. Many Christians supported the choice of Palestine as a homeland for three reasons: (1) because it wasn't in Europe or north america and what did the Palestinians matter after all; (2) because the Old Testament and its "promise" forms part of the Christian bible; (3) and, last but by no means least so far as some Christians, including prominent American and British politicians, are concerned, because of the prophesies in the Book of Revelations, the final book of the New Testament.
Israel is in some ways as much a Christian creation as a Jewish one. Strange, but true.
Since the Zionist project was the creation of an exclusively Jewish state, that meant, as David Ben-Gurion advocated, using "terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation, and the cutting of all social services" to drive out the native population.
Now, the native peoples of North America were forced to the margins and to reservations, yet, even though terrible crimes were committed against them, nobody nowadays advocates sending all the Europeans in North America back where they came from. Although the large Jewish presence in Palestine is more recent, nevertheless, generations of Israeli Jews have grown up who are NOT immigrants to the place. So, in that sense, Palestinians have to accept Israel as a fact.
HOWEVER, accepting Israel as a fact should NOT mean they have to accept that they can't return home. For instance, amongst the Palestinian refugees crowded into the Gaza strip by Israeli policy are many who were born in Israel, or whose parents or grandparents were born in Israel. They should be allowed to return to the ancestral land from which they were forced out. If that should mean that Israel ceases to be a sectarian state, that would be good thing.
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parkhead_rfb
Collecting my 'Our Scotland' Pension!
Joined: 13 Oct 2005
Posts: 2003
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| Posted: Sat Jan 10, 2009 5:12 pm Post subject: |
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[quote="Dave Coull"] | mairead wrote: | The British ambassador lodged an official protest with the Israeli government about them celebrating terrorism.
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i agree with you but you have to wonder if the british ambassador did that with a straight face. if he did someone ought to explain the process of collusion to him.
it will be a cold day in hell before the british government does anything to help palestinians. Lets just hope that the public dont forget about this and iraq come the next general election.
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"our revenge will be the laughter of our children" bobby sands MP
"there is no equality in a society that stands upon the political and economic bog, if only the strongest make it good or survive" bobby sands MP |
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Dave Coull
Independentista
Joined: 07 Nov 2006
Posts: 2809
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| Posted: Sat Jan 10, 2009 5:14 pm Post subject: |
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| I wrote: | | My stepson, Sam, spent Christmas and New Year with us. Although I played a big part in bringing him up, Sam isn't genetically related to me. He is in fact Jewish on both his mother's side and on his natural father's side. According to the Law of The Return, Sam could become a citizen of Israel if he wanted to. |
Having mentioned Sam, I might as well make reference to some things he has written. He's an economist, and has published works on, amongst other things, the opportunity cost of Trident replacement, the private military services industry, military expenditure in developing countries, etc. But there are also things he has written which are relevant to what actions are happening internationally with regard to Palestine. Here is one of them
http://www.ecaar.org/Newsletter/Nov04/perlo.htm |
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agentmancuso
Ready For Afterlife!
Joined: 06 Sep 2006
Posts: 2910
Location: Gone to the forest
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| Posted: Sat Jan 10, 2009 5:15 pm Post subject: |
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| parkhead_rfb wrote: | | Quote: | The British ambassador lodged an official protest with the Israeli government about them celebrating terrorism.
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i agree with you |
Have you given up celebrating terrorism then?
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It's murder every week at Firhill. |
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Dave Coull
Independentista
Joined: 07 Nov 2006
Posts: 2809
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| Posted: Sat Jan 10, 2009 5:32 pm Post subject: |
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| parkhead_rfb wrote: | | i agree with you but you have to wonder if the british ambassador did that with a straight face. |
British ambassadors always pursue British interests with a straight face. If they couldn't pursue British interests with a straight face, then they wouldn't get to be British ambassadors. He wasn't protesting on behalf of the Palestinians, he was protesting on behalf of Britain. Out of the 91 people killed in the bombing of the King David Hotel, the great majority were, by anybody's standards, "innocent civilians". As the bomb was planted in the hotel kitchens, a lot of them were cooks, kitchen hands, waiters, cleaners, barmen, etc, etc, some of them were hotel guests of various nationalities, and some were folk who just had the misfortune to be passing by out in the street next to the hotel. But a few were in fact British military personnel who were (unofficially) using the Hotel as their HQ in Jerusalem. The British ambassador protested at the Israeli government celebrating a terrorist attack whose chief target was the British armed forces. |
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mairead
'Our Scotland' Fossil
Joined: 08 Mar 2006
Posts: 4295
Location: Argyll, Alba
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| Posted: Sat Jan 10, 2009 5:39 pm Post subject: |
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Sorry Holebender,
but I must admit to being very very wary re Syria. We in this part of the world cannot really know what they would or wouldn't do. Broken promises are a normal course of events among world leaders, and always have been. Remember how we believed Hitler would not invade Poland because he said so. Bush and Blair said there was WMD's in Iraq, there wasn't. Hmmm.
I think we would be wise to be suspicious of anything re. that part of the world.one and
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I fear not hell, nor English strife,
For Scotland, I will give my life |
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Holebender
Ready For Afterlife!
Joined: 04 Apr 2007
Posts: 2752
Location: Here or There
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| Posted: Sat Jan 10, 2009 6:59 pm Post subject: |
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For over forty years now Israel has illegally occupied a portion of Syria's territory and yet you are wary of Syria, not Israel. For over forty years Israel has disregarded all international norms of behaviour in its dealings with Syria, and yet you are wary of Syria.
If a neighbouring country had occupied a strategic part of our country for over forty years I'm not at all sure we wouldn't be making belicose noises about pushing them back into the sea, etc. Syria was like that in the early days but now they recognise reality and their position is if Israel returns what it stole Syria will recognise the pre-1967 border and we'll say no more about it.
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"My instinct is to agree with your opinion of his verse, but I've never so much as glanced at it." - agentmancuso |
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Holebender
Ready For Afterlife!
Joined: 04 Apr 2007
Posts: 2752
Location: Here or There
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| Posted: Sun Jan 11, 2009 9:05 am Post subject: |
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Muriel Gray has an essay in today's Sunday Herald which is worth a read. You can read the full article here. It ends | Quote: | A human shield of civilians is dishonourable and disgusting, but it does what it says. It's a shield. If you knowingly breach that shield by firing and killing then you are a murderer. And if a people and its government have calloused their hearts to the extent that the images of roaring grief, slaughtered children, screaming, maimed and soul-torn people, leave them with a shrug and a pat political response, then that surely is the very definition of a failed state.
Regardless of provocation, and ulterior motives of their wider enemies, this truth is inescapable. If a wealthy, healthy, highly educated secular democracy, connected to the outside world and weighty with military might, can only respond with inappropriate extremes of violence against an enemy, real enough but outpaced at every level and enfeebled by depravation, then it is not only moribund and uncivilised, but also guilty of the most profound stupidity.
The hardliners conjure the dead of The Holocaust to validate their hostility, claiming it's upon the memory of their suffering that the state of Israel has its obligation to defend itself at all costs, even by aggression and subjugation. Speaking as a Jew, by familial line though not by religion, I beg to differ, finding myself shamed, enraged and heart-broken. The unspeakable graves of The Holocaust dead are too numerous for the mind to contemplate, but there is space in them yet for the victims to turn. |
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"My instinct is to agree with your opinion of his verse, but I've never so much as glanced at it." - agentmancuso |
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