I laughed at Max Blumenthal's expose of Jewish nuts at the pro-Israel rally. Well Adalah says that this atmosphere is promoting violence in the U.S. Press release:
Adam Shapiro, a human rights activist and documentary filmmaker,
who is scheduled to speak tonight at a public Town Hall Meeting hosted by
Revolution Books [7 pm, Society for Ethical Culture], has had death threats issued against him by the Jewish Defense
Organization. In the threats, which
were pasted to the Revolution Books window, Shapiro is named specifically as an
enemy who should be eliminated.
When I lived in Manhattan, which I did for half my life, every single one of my friends, all Jewish except for two, called the JDL "terrorists."
So who are the terrorists that Jews need to worry about most again?
Is JDO the newly reconstituted JDL?
If a Jewish critic of Israeli policy is killed in New York by other Jews who consider him a "traitor" and an "enemy", would that wake anyone up as to who the real terrorists are?
the great, inimitable, norman finkelstein speaks out…
http://counterpunch.com/
The Facts About Hamas and the War on Gaza
By NORMAN FINKELSTEIN
The record is fairly clear. You can find it on the Israeli website, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs website. Israel broke the ceasefire by going into the Gaza and killing six or seven Palestinian militants. At that point—and now I’m quoting the official Israeli website—Hamas retaliated or, in retaliation for the Israeli attack, then launched the missiles.
Now, as to the reason why, the record is fairly clear as well. According to Ha’aretz, Defense Minister Barak began plans for this invasion before the ceasefire even began. In fact, according to yesterday’s Ha’aretz, the plans for the invasion began in March. And the main reasons for the invasion, I think, are twofold. Number one; to enhance what Israel calls its deterrence capacity, which in layman’s language basically means Israel’s capacity to terrorize the region into submission. After their defeat in July 2006 in Lebanon, they felt it important to transmit the message that Israel is still a fighting force, still capable of terrorizing those who dare defy its word.
And the second main reason for the attack is because Hamas was signaling that it wanted a diplomatic settlement of the conflict along the June 1967 border. That is to say, Hamas was signaling they had joined the international consensus, they had joined most of the international community, overwhelmingly the international community, in seeking a diplomatic settlement. And at that point, Israel was faced with what Israelis call a Palestinian peace offensive. And in order to defeat the peace offensive, they sought to dismantle Hamas.
As was documented in the April 2008 issue of Vanity Fair by the writer David Rose, basing himself on internal US documents, it was the United States in cahoots with the Palestinian Authority and Israel which were attempting a putsch on Hamas, and Hamas preempted the putsch. That, too, is no longer debatable or no longer a controversial claim.
Finkelstein's analysis is wrong.
After the incident Finkelstein referred, the cease-fire was restored.
The cease-fire broke down on the day before the agreed cessation when Hamas stated publicly that it considered it acceptable for other factions to resume shelling.
For two days thereafter, whether intentionally or just innaccurately, rockets were fired into the desert.
Israel did not respond military.
On the third day and every day since, Hamas has shelled civilian centers.
Hamas signaled that it "might" consider the 67 borders.
Finkelstein engages in either wishful thinking or intentional deception.
Many have received death threats, some from the right and the left at the same time.
Its definitely chilling and should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
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FROM WIKIPEDIA:
Mark "Mordechai" Levy is the founder and current leader of the JDO, and the only JDO member to receive substantial notice in the press. He spends much of his time promoting the JDO's Camp Jabotinsky, which provides self-defense and gun training for young Jews at a facility in the Catskills…..
JDO = Jewish Defense Organization
The defenders of Likud-Kadima atrocities (the terrorist nuts) project their own violent lusts onto the Palestinian people. For proof, read:
'This is not about rockets" by Stuart Littlewood
He makes the heart-rending point that if the wanton IDF destruction of people and civil society in Gaza were about the Hamas rockets, then what about the West Bank? No rockets are being fired at Israel there.
If the Zionists cared about peace and truly wished to respond to it peacefully, Israel would have dismantled its enormous Wall, given back Palestinian land, and opened the Jews-only roads to their rightful owners, the Palestinians.
The rockets are only an (Israeli-incited) excuse for more killing and ethnic cleansing: more territory for a Greater Israel and hang the cost to people who aren't Israeli.
'There are no rockets coming out of the West Bank. Yet the illegal Israeli occupation there continues and so does the ethnic cleansing, the land theft, the illegal settlements, the colonization, the demolition of Palestinian homes, the throttling of the economy, the abduction and 'administrative detention' of civilians and the massive interference with freedom of movement. Nothing has changed for West Bank Palestinians who DO NOT fire rockets. There is no sign of an end to their misery.
The bloody assault on Gaza therefore has much more to do with Israel's ambition to expand racial dominance in the Holy Land than crude and erratic rocket-fire. Hamas and the Palestinians holed up in Gaza are simply in the way of the Grand Plan and have to be removed or totally subdued.
The international community needs to keep their eye on the ball – the big issue – which is the ending of the occupation and Israel's withdrawal to recognized pre-67 borders as required by international law. In short, they need to stop wringing their hands and start delivering justice, which is long overdue.
Palestinians in Gaza will hardly wish to give up armed resistance until they receive copper-bottomed guarantees of a normal life unmolested by Israel… and see concrete evidence of it.'
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/articles/39/This_is_not_about_rockets.html
FROM WIKIPEDIA:
Mark "Mordechai" Levy is the founder and current leader of the JDO [Jewish Defense Organization]…..
…..According to the Anti-Defamation League, Levy has had an antagonistic relationship with Irv Rubin of the Jewish Defense League. The two of them nearly came to blows during a Los Angeles press conference in 1989, and later that year, Levy was charged with four counts of attempted murder, one count of first-degree assault, and one count of criminal possession of a deadly weapon after shooting at Rubin from a rooftop in New York City [hitting an innocent bystander]. Rubin was attempting to serve Levy with a subpoena in a slander suit.[24]
Levy was acquitted of all charges except one count of felony assault with a deadly weapon, for which he served 18 months of a 4 1/2 year sentence.[25][26] Levy pleaded guilty in 2000 to charges that he assaulted a 12 year-old boy in New York State.[27]
Finkelstein here engages in precisely the sort of faux history that his colleagues exposed at DePaul. He's a liar, plain and simple.
He had a tendency to lose all historical perspective and engage in hysterical polemic whenever the subject was Israel. As a result, his writing on that topic was deemed "unscholarly" and, since he has no other credentials, he was denied tenure.
How's the job-search going Norm?
This sort of thing makes me think of the Special Night Squads, which I discuss in Zionism, Penisism, and Joseph Massad.
Phil may be happy to see that the Guardian is running 3 op-eds on the change in public opinion in both the Jewish & non-Jewish, and both British and American, communities.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/commentisfree+world/gaza
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Alex Odeh
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Alex Odeh was an Arab-American anti-discrimination activist who was killed in a October 11, 1985 bombing as he opened the door of his office at 1905 East 17th Street, Santa Ana, California. Odeh was west-coast regional director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC)……
…Four weeks after Odeh's death, FBI spokesperson Lane Bonner stated the FBI attributed the bombing and two others to the JDL….
….Immediately after the 1985 assassination the FBI identified three suspects, all of them believed to be affiliated with the JDL, who fled to Israel. In 1987 it was revealed that Israel was hindering the FBI investigation. Floyd Clarke, then assistant director of the FBI, claimed in an internal memo that key suspects had fled to Israel and were living in the West Bank town of Kiryat Arba. In 1988, the FBI arrested Rochelle Manning as a suspect in a mail bombing which killed a secretary in Manhattan Beach, California. It also charged her husband, Robert Manning, who they considered a prime suspect in the Odeh bombing. Both were members of the JDL. Rochelle's jury deadlocked, and after the mistrial she left for Israel to join her husband. Robert Manning was extradited from Israel to the U.S. in 1993.[4] He is serving a life sentence on that charge.[11]
…..In 2007, the FBI revealed they had received information from a deceased informant, believed to be former Jewish Defense League member Earl Krugel who had been sentenced to 20 years in federal prison for 2001 plots to bomb a Southern California mosque and office of an Arab American congressman. It is believed that Irv Rubin, who died in prison while awaiting trial on the same charges, revealed to Krugel the names of those responsible for Odeh’s death and Krugel shared those with the FBI before he, too, died in prison. The bombers are believed to be Manning and two individuals now living in Israel.[15]
Richard, I do not agree with your analysis. Your second sentence "After the incident…" completely neglects Israel's fundamental complicity in breaking the ceasefire on 4 November. Then you go on to claim that it was 'restored'. In whose eyes? Even if your subsequent chronology is correct, and I do not think that it is, you are making a critical and completely unsupported assumption: that Hamas did not view, and RIGHTLY view, the 4 Nov killing of their people as Israel's definitive answer to their proposal for an extension of the ceasefire.
I can easily imagine Hamas thinking (apologies to former President Reagan) "Well, there they go again! I guess we have their answer … back to the barricades." These people have been fighting Zionist COLONIZATION and occupation for forty one years. I think they have some small clue about interpreting Israeli political behavior. Deliberate stimulation and cultivation of tit-for-tat killing is generally considered a less effective tool for negotiating a cessation of hostilities than using language. And in response to the very next thought many Zionists will have …. I don't buy for a second the facile talking point that 'Arabs only understand force'. I do not believe that is true of either side.
Standard disclaimer: Do not assume that my, or anyone else's, information or analysis is correct. If you care enough to spend a little time, check for yourself.
Here's one of the more "polite" incarnations of the Kahanists in the U.S.–
link to jtf.org
The forums are a hoot.
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FROM talkingpointsmemo.com (by Todd Gitlin)
…Grievously, Hamas is not the only repository of holy war rhetoric in the Middle East. Consider this letter from the parents of an IDF soldier killed by friendly fire to the members of the tank crew who fired on the building where he was taking refuge:
"It was not you who hit Yoni!
"Yoni died for the Sanctification of G-d's Name at the time that G-d decided his time on earth had reached its end. You were the pure angels who had to carry this out."
RED MAFIYA: HOW THE RUSSIAN MOB HAS INVADED AMERICA
by Robert Friedman
Little, Brown and Company, © 2000
"Of all the nations where the Russian mob has established a presence, none has been more deeply compromised than the State of Israel…" - p. 276
"There is not a major Russian organized crime figure who we are tracking who does not also carry an Israeli passport," (Jonathan Winer, a senior State Department official) – p. 277
"He put the number at seventy-five, …" - p. 277
"Russia's criminal aristocracy covets Israeli citizenship 'because they know that Israel is a safe haven for them,' said Leder. 'We do not extradite citizens.'" (Israeli Brigadier General Hezi Leder) p. 277
"The Russians then use the safe haven to travel around the world and rape and pillage" (James Moody, former chief of the FBI's organized crime section) p. 277
"The country has also remained attractive to gangsters because 'Israel is good for money laundering' explained Leder" (Israeli Brigadier General Hezi Leder) p. 278
"Under Israeli law banks can accept large cash deposits with no questions asked." - p. 278
"Israeli police officials estimate that Russian mobsters have poured more than $4 billion of dirty money into Israel's economy , though some estimates range as high as $20 billion." - p. 278
"One politician already ensnared in the web of organized crime is Russian-born Natan Sharansky…" - p. 279
"…Sharansky has publicly admitted that his party has accepted campaign contributions from NORDEX president Grigori Loutchansky." – p. 280
"…Sharansky introduced Loutchansky to Benjamin Netanyahu…" – p. 281
" 'The Likud is corrupt, and Bibi [Netanyahu] is disgusting,' said Winer." – p. 281
"… Russian gangsters hand picked several candidates to run for local and national offices…" – p. 279
" … a high-ranking Interior Ministry official…was taking payoffs…to issue passports to dozens of Russian gangsters…" – p. 277
"With two decades of unimpeded growth the Russian Mafiya has succeded in turning Israel into it's own 'mini-state,' in which it operates with virtual impunity."- p. 281
"They have purchased factories, insurance companies, and a bank." – p. 278
" … its government, inexplicably, has done almost nothing to combat the problem." - p. 282
"Meanwhile Russian mobsters move easily in and out of the United States on visas 'that they get in Israel to dance through our clearance process,' says Blum." – p. 284
"In North America alone there are now thirty Russian crime syndicates operating in at least seventeen U.S. cities, … The Russians have already pulled off the largest jewelry heist and insurance and Medicare frauds in American history with a net haul exceeding $1 billion." – p. xix
"But in the United States, according to several top law enforcement officials, Jewish organizations continued to lobby the Justice Department to downplay the threat posed by the Russian mob. 'The Russian Mafia has the lowest priority on the criminal pecking order,' admitted FBI spokesman Joe Valiquette . . . " – p. 84
"They make tons of money, they kill people, they are international, they are moving into drugs–but we don't have a single unit of the FBI that's devoted to going after them. We've got a Bonanno squad, we've got a Lucchese squad, but we don't have a Russian squad …" (Justice Department prosecutor Patrick J. Cotter, a member of the team that convicted John Gotti) - p. 85
"A large part of the problem was political: the Russian mob was predominantly Jewish." – p. 83-84
"It was for that reason, asserted Campanella and other New York State and federal law enforcement officials, that seven years after Campanella's two-man Russian mob unit in the NYPD was inaugurated, it was shut down in a highly politicized, characteristically New York City type of reaction." – p. 84
"The effort had come under considerable criticism from the Jewish establishment, which complained that the adverse publicity generated in the hunt for Russian Jewish criminals would foster anti-Semitism and jeopardize the continued emigration of Russian Jews to Israel and the West." – p. 84
Nothing new about the zionist terrorist gangs.
They operated that way in Britain and they operated that way here…always have.
[8.44] January 1946, British Consul, New York reporting a mass demonstration for Jewish freedom put on by the New Zionist Organization of America. "It was constantly patrolled by the Betarim, the new Jewish Youth Army, attired in a Hebrew version of the old Nazi Bund uniform." "Great Britain was public enemy no. 1 of the Jewish people, more dangerous and shrewder than the Nazis…"
[8.65] February 1946, formation of B´rith Trumpeldor of America or Betar, affiliated with the NZO. "there is noticeable similarity in the organisation´s character, structure and aims to those of the Hitler Youth…", reported by British Embassy, Washington
http://www.archiveeditions.co.uk/titledetails.asp?tid=124
I can certainly relate having been harassed and threatened with violence from a number of sayan wannabes.
They generally back off when they see that their tactics are inneffective. Yet on the whole, they are effective in retarding the discussion overall. At DailyKos, before I was banned, many who support justice for Palestinians said they don't bother with the I/P diaries at all because of the flack they receive.
As far as I'm concerned, if the Gazans can weather tanks, air assault, shelling, and their horrific ghetto conditions, I can put up with whiny little inetrnet trolls who would soil their shorts if they were put in a comparible situation.
Any death threat should be taken seriously, but I have to admit that when I think of Jewish extremists, I think of goofball losers going on about Desert Eagles that they don't have and wouldn't know how to use. Maybe I'm wong.
Come on; if you aren't already on Kach's shit list, you just haven't arrived yet.
Wasn't part of the reason for Hamas' ambivalence to renewed ceasefire the fact that Gaza remained sealed for all intents and purposes? Did Israel ever live up to it's part of the bargain?
Colin,
The chronology is correct.
As far as what Hamas thought, I am not privy to that, are you?
On objective terms, there the shelling quieted significantly, indicating that the two parties were committed to retaining the cease-fire, each recognizing that "we pushed the envelope a bit, and we're stepping back."
After two days following the cease-fire ending, that no longer controlled.
On the part of Hamas, "We are pushing the envelope, its our right, and screw you, good judgement or not".
For the week following the official completion of the first cease-fire agreement, Israel did NOT respond militarily. Instead issuing verbal warnings.
Whether they were prepared for a larger escalation or not, even hoping for it, is outside of the question of whether Hamas exercised POOR JUDGEMENT (at the most gracious interpretation).
A cease-fire is appropriate, but LIKE LEBANON, if the cease-fire does not include cessation of assault from Hamas or Hezbollah, then its false.