I'm no longer much of a demo kind of guy but I went to the pro-Palestinian demonstration in Times Square today to express my solidarity with the battered people of Gaza. On the way there I saw a billboard with Sean Penn's name on it, and the thought came to me, Where is Sean Penn? Where is Tim Robbins? Susan Sarandon? Meryl Streep? Where is the fleet of political celebrities who could be so influential right now. Oh I know, we have performance artist Jack Fertig, known as Sister Boom-Boom, a descendant of Holocaust survivors in San Francisco. But George Clooney? Pardon my career.
The rally was set up on 7th Avenue, south of 42d Street, in pens at the side of the road, taking up a lane or two. As one pen filled, another was opened. I think we filled three or four pens going south. Felt like 1500 people, maybe 2000. The organizers spoke from the back of a truck.
The crowd was mostly Arab and it was an interesting feeling to be an Anglo among them. It felt a little privileged. The main thing I sensed was enormous grief and rage and impotence. In a word, anguish. Many of the people in the crowd have relatives at risk in the slaughter. There was a palpable terror and sense of being alone and hunted in the mood of the crowd. I don't blame them, but many of the posters people held up were grisly and horrifying. Pictures of children, pictures of surviving children with their dead mothers. Pictures of burnt babies. At the end of my day the sun came out and two youths walked by with scores of white helium balloons with red handprints on each balloon, a symbol of civilian slaughter, but that poppy feeling was missing generally. The most affecting placards were handmade. "Might don't make right." With images of F-16s and the dead.
Or, best of all, a woman walking around with a page torn from a legal pad, on which she'd written three words, 850 to 13.
I saw a few friends. Rashid and Mona Khalidi. Saif Ammous. David Judd. He'd been in D.C. yesterday. I heard a lot of rage directed at the Times story this morning describing Hamas's use of civilians. It seemed opaquely one-sided when Israel is bombing schools. That was the impotence I felt. Then too, many of the signs said Free Palestine, from the River to the Sea. That also seemed impotent.
There were a number of counterdemonstrations from Israel supporters walking by with their flags. One pro-Israel woman became absolutely hysterical screaming. A guy in our pen did a Heil Hitler to their flags as they went by. There was plenty of Nazi analogizing going on. Warsaw ghetto posters. I had Jewish feelings of my own, memories of when we talked about the 6 million in the 60s and marveled at the world's silence.
But I thought the most effective Holocaust analogy came from the other side. A man across 7th Avenue had a big orange poster that he taunted us with: Israel won't stop till it finishes the job. That struck me as purely genocidal. Israel won't stop till it finishes the job. And who can stop them?
I deplore the 'protest pen' nonsense in Bloomberg-era New York. Same b.s. as in the Feb. 2003 pre-Iraq demo, which attracted around 400,000.
Whose streets? OUR STREETS!
In my opinion, Israel has now blundered into an implicit war with Islam.
Babak Makkenijad on Gaza and the Mulims
Even though there is no central authority that speaks for Islam, there are times and places when an authoritative Doctor of Religious Sciences (of Islam) speaks for Islam; i.e. his legal opinion becomes the de facto position of Muslims everywhere.
Ayatollah Khamenei's statement of 12/28/2008 is one such case. You can find the text @ [here] His statement characterizes the Israel-Hamas War as the analogue of the wars of the Prophet against the idol-worshippers of Mecca. With a few words, Mr. Khamenei has shaped the Muslim view of the Israel-Hamas War for years, if not decades, to come.
No Muslim political leader can challenge his statement , for doing so now will be tantamount to going against Islam. No religious leader – Shia or Sunni – will dispute his statement.
Here is Prince Turki al-Faisal of Saudi Arabia (a moderate according to the common US-EU usage of that term) in a speech at the opening of the 6-th (Persian) Gulf Forum on January 6th, “The Bush administration has left you (with) a disgusting legacy and a reckless position towards the massacres and bloodshed of innocents in Gaza…Enough is enough, today we are all Palestinians and we seek martyrdom for God and for Palestine, following those who died in Gaza.”
In my opinion, Israel has now blundered into an implicit war with Islam. Mr. Khamenei’s statement has closed the door to any peace plan along the lines of Oslo, Taba, the Quartet, Tony Blair, etc. All that is now even theoretically possible is a Hudna – a long cease-fire. A separate Syria-Israel peace track is no longer possible since the Alawite Elders will not go against the rest of Islam by having Syria conclude a separate peace treaty with Israel.
Which brings me to my final opinion: even a Hudna will presently require the formation of a Concert of Middle East or some such.
Babak Makkenijad
Phil, did you see this footage from Bil'in? I saw film of it on Al-Jazeera yesterday, and seeing Palestinians protestors wearing the striped uniform concentration camp inmates was beyond jarring:
Here's a link to an article with stills:
And as a little contrast let me copy a comment from Pat Lang's site:
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Col.
The full name as reported in Arutz Sheva is "Operation Cast-Lead Draydels". Draydels, dreidels, are special 4-sided tops given to children to play with at Chanukah. One of Arutz Sheva's columnists cut to the chase and called it the Chanukah War.
Posted by: lalla | 11 January 2009 at 10:07 AM
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I saw in the Israeli online newapaper Haaretz that "Cast Lead" has something to do with a nursery rhyme.
on googling:
Yosefa Loshitzky explains that,
"I am not sure that most people understand the meaning of the name "Operation Cast Lead" chosen by Israel for its …. attack on Gaza. The name is borrowed from a Hebrew nursery rhyme which was (and may still be) very popular among Israeli children in the 1950s. In this song, a father promises to his child a special Hannukah gift: "a cast lead sevivon." Sevivon, in Hebrew (A dreidel in Yiddish) is a four-sided spinning top, played with during the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah. …"
It must be an inside joke?
[the honor cherishing "Arab mind" - cynic alert]
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This is deja vu, I had occasionally, the "clash of cultures" surely can be created. Poor Huntington (I trust Walt's expertise here, who wrote an exquisite article on the topic)
"Israel won't stop till it finishes the job. And who can stop them?"
Not you and your slimy, jihadist buddies, that's for sure.
Oh, and by the way, those not taunting you were at the pro-Israel demo across town. About 40,000
I think I speak for many fellow Americans when I say that frankly I am disgusted with both Israel and Hamas. I know Fatah is shamelesslessly corrupt, so they don't escape my anger either, but they are not the central characters in this current tragedy. The horrific deaths of so many civillians is clearly at the feet of both the IDF AND Hamas. These two cynical bastards are placing a lower value on the lives of the civillians than they are on their own soldiers. Both of them are doing this. Hamas in cynically using them as human shields (I've seen enough objective reports of this know it's not just IDF propoganda), and the IDF is not letting it get in the way of them killing Hamas soldiers. You've got people like this Israel supporter screaming "FINISH THE JOB", which I HOPE just means finish off Hamas's military ability, and then you've got this Muslim woman screaming to put the Jews back in the oven.
Frankly I'm appalled and disgusted by players on both sides of the conflict and I cry for the innocent families that are going through hell right now.
Israel will not stop until it finishes its job–The USA makes this possible. Goy Americans will pay in the blowback; they just don't know it–yet; hell, they have yet to figure out what motivated 9/11.
We need lots of Americans to die yet b4 they get the connection. It's like the US economy–we need more Madoff in the news.
UScitizen – I sense that you are not far from the same mindset as Hamas as the fanatics in Israel. Just as I want the Israelis to shout down their extremists, and the Palestinians their extremists, I feel obliged to ask you to step down and shut up. Your rhetoric only adds to the problems. It does not help.
Phil, good to see you today. On reflection, I think I should correct what I said about the DC demo yesterday – it had about the same composition as today's, though it was bigger. Here's some footage of the ISO contingent (to which a number of unaffiliated people were agglomerated, probably thanks to our bullhorns & chants).
The most expressive sign I saw a Zionist carry today was one which read "End the Arab Occupation of Gaza". Pretty much captures their dream, I think.
Lastly, you might be interested in the AP story on the rallies today, which includes the laughable, if unsurprising, claim that the pro-Palestine one totalled 150 people.
Dale Simmons (GREAT name, btw): "I've seen enough objective reports of this know it's not just IDF propoganda)."
Please share just one of these reports with us.
I/P conflict internet vandals:
http://www.wakeupfromyourslumber.com/node/792
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9474.shtml
Britain's Board of Deputies didn't quite get the 40,000 they were hoping for, but a significant crowd turned out to support Israel's policies–
Thousands of Jews rally against Hamas
Echoing the American Jews' boast of "finishing the job," their British cousins crowed, "Now you know what it is like to be squeezed into a small piece of land and pushed by an oppressor."
Fascinating look into the arab mind. they were the ones that were allied with Hitler. And Mein Kampfh is a huge seller in the arab world. And are big proponnents of holocaust denial. Yet now they are the Jews and the Jews are the Germnans. It's truly a bizzarro world.
The Palestinians turned to the Germans after they were betrayed by the British. BTW British Mandate Palestine officially began with the swearing in oaths of the High Commissioner and Commander in Chief on September 11, 1922.
German neo-Nazis: We're pro-Israel, condemn anti-Semitism
By Ofer Aderet, Haaretz Correspondent
Nazis against anti-Semitism? As bizarre as that sounds, a group of Germans which calls itself "National Socialists For Israel" launched its Web site in support of Israel.
The organization – whose members have yet to reveal themselves to the public – claims that Israel's right to exist is anchored in the principles of social Darwinism, the same principles which the Nazis adopted prior to the Second World War.
"Israel earned the right to live among the nations from unending wars," the group writes on the site. "Israel also has a right to exist. This nation also has culture… The nation of Israel is appreciated… It is our duty, as neo-Nazis, to defend this supreme success. Not just for the German people and the European cultural sphere, but also, especially, for Israel."
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/990228.html
Public service html end italic.
SOG, which Arab countries were allied with Hitler? Thinking off the top of my head, ALL of them were allied with the …. Allies, either as sovereign (albeit puppet) governments, e.g. Saudi Arabia, or colonial territories, e.g. Syria, under European control.
Do you have any evidence that the per capita ownership of Mein Kampf is higher in Arab countries than in other countries?
Standard disclaimer to readers: don't take anyone's word for anything, look it up for yourselves. If God didn't want you to use that noggin of yours, you wouldn't have gotten it.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/01/09/hamas.sketch/index.html
Israel, Hamas using civilians as human shields – Amnesty
Amnesty International today accused both Israel and Hamas of using civilians as human shields in the current Gaza conflict.
Malcolm Smart of Amnesty said: “Israeli soldiers have entered and taken up positions in a number of Palestinian homes, forcing families to stay in a ground floor room while they use the rest of their house as a military base and sniper position.
“This clearly increases the risk to the Palestinian families concerned and means they are effectively being used as human shields.”
Amnesty said this use of civilians is unlawful and prohibited under Article 51(7) of the Geneva Conventions.
Mr Smart also criticised Israel's bombing of civilian homes formally used as cover by Palestinian gunmen.
He said: “The Israeli army is well-aware that Palestinian gunmen usually leave the area after having fired and that any reprisal attack against these homes will in most cases cause harm to civilians – not gunmen.
“Fighters on both sides must not carry out attacks from civilian areas but when they do take cover behind a civilian house or building to fire it does not make that building and its civilian inhabitants a legitimate military target”.
© 2009 irishtimes.com
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/k7Xe6hFoDj7jJFTApR
For the Palestinian people, death has become an industry
In which excel the women and all the people of this land:
The older people excel, the jihadists excel
And the children excel
Consequently, [the Palestinians] created a human shield of women, children
Older people and jihadists
Against the Zionist bombing machine
That is telling the Zionist enemy
We want death just as much as you desire life.
http://www.nypost.com/seven/01092009/news/worldnews/hamas_evil_map_149364.htm
Looks like we are gonna have to have a war right here between Americans and US zionist to ever settle the Israel-Palestine conflict.
These celebrities do not like arabs and Obama does not like arabs because he knows that they are racist against Africans. Arabs are not tnhe victims of European colonialism they are the oppressors of genocide and enslavement of Africans.