Alaa Al Aswany on today's Times Op-Ed page:
We saw Mr. Obama as a symbol of this justice. We welcomed him with almost total enthusiasm until he underwent his first real test: Gaza. Even before he officially took office, we expected him to take a stand against Israel’s war on Gaza. We still hope that he will condemn, if only with simple words, this massacre that killed more than 1,300 Palestinians, many of them civilians. (I don’t know what you call it in other languages, but in Egypt we call this a massacre.) We expected him to address the reports that the Israeli military illegally used white phosphorus against the people of Gaza. We also wanted Mr. Obama, who studied law and political science at the greatest American universities, to recognize what we see as a simple, essential truth: the right of people in an occupied territory to resist military occupation.
But Mr. Obama has been silent.
A simple, essential truth: the right of people in an occupied territory to resist military occupation.
Let's see how much "balance" the NY Times gives this incredibly important truism. The next few days will undoubtedly see a flurry of apologists for Israeli barbarity seeking to keep the standard meme of "Israeli defense" in order, while not allowing the truth of the horrific occupation to see the light of day.
NY Times prints an anti-Israel editorial. STOP THE PRESSES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(I don’t know what you call it in other languages, but in Egypt we call this a massacre.)
Yes, in Egypt, the slaughter of 1300 Jews is a day to praise Allah and to dance in the streets. In the meantime, the death of 1300 Arabs, many who were actively engaged in terrorism, the rest being used as human shields by Hamas, is considered to be equivelent to the Holocaust.
Shut the fuck up. Don't you freaks have JPost/Haaretz/YNet to spew your garbage? Why do it on Phil's blog? Fucking retards.
Nothing can ever be considered equivalent to the Holocaust because during the Holocaust, Jews died.
Ana, Poles died, Romany died, Russians died, Greeks died, Italians died, Slavs died, many died. But Jews and Romany died because of who they were.
They attacked no one. They killed no one. At best, they wrote letters to the editor.
The slaughter of 1300 Palestinians, including over 400 woman and babies by F-16s, Apache attack helicopters, tanks, etc is a massacre
and the respective death and casualty rate shows it clearly. An SS general implementing collective punishment on a town's civilians because an occupation resister managed to shoot some officer would approve of what Israel has done. SOP. Lesson learned.
Next we need a Goldhagen to describe how all Jews are willing executioners.
The USA congress is an aider and abettor all the way. Except for
Dennis K & Ron Paul, and maybe three others tops.
Americans have died and spent their wages so this Israel can live?
Israel's POV and activity dishonors the star-spangled banner.
We need to boot this crazed puppy to the curb.
Shorter chris berel:
Only the Jews were innocent victims. Everyone else was responsible for their own deaths. Jews are never responsible for anyone's death, not even for the ones they kill.
Actually berel, the Jewish War Veterans and others mobilized a hugely effective boycott that threathened to bring down the Nazis in the early 1930s.
German Zionists, with their less than grass roots and much smaller group of international backers intervened and instead signed the "Transfer Agreement" in favor of a state in Palestine. (read Edwin Black)
If they had not shut down the letter writers, Germany would not have been able to build itself up through free trade with the Middle East and the profits of that sick (but Herzl approved) agreement.
But if there is one commonality of the Zionist cause that stretches down to this very day it is this: Zionists have always been rather badly led.
berel: "Jews and Romany died because of who they were."
They died because Hitler was able to tar them with the same brush as Jewish Bolsheviks, who had only a few years earlier killed so many Christians, Kulaks and Ukranians and who even now were pushing for a communist revolution in Weimar Germany.
Chris,
What about Herschel Grynszpan? link to en.wikipedia.org
"Actually berel, the Jewish War Veterans and others mobilized a hugely effective boycott that threathened to bring down the Nazis in the early 1930s."
So a non-violent means of protest by Jews living in other countries resulted in the Germans removing the citizenship of people who lived in Germany for centuries and then started to exterminate them.
And it seems that you approved.
So sad.
Don't forget Bela Kuhn in Hungary, if memory serves. Bavaria was really vulnerable…
Last week was the 59th anniversary of a murder. An assassination committed by a 17-year-old Jewish boy in Paris, by the name of Herschel Grynszpan.
You probably know something about Herschel Grynszpan, or at least about his act. You probably know that in late October, 1938, Herschel, then a stateless fugitive sought by the police, learned about the horrific fate of his parents. They were Polish Jews living in Hanover, Germany, unwanted by both Poland's and Germany's anti-Semitic regimes. They'd been rousted from their home by squads of Gestapo thugs wielding bullwhips; they'd been forced to abandon their lives and possessions, and were driven across the border to Poland, where they shivered, hungry and unwanted, in primitive detention, slowly starving to death.
You probably know that, driven to distraction by rage, grief and his own fugitive state, Herschel bought a gun, walked into the German Embassy in Paris, seeking the Ambassador, and shot the first official he saw, a relatively minor functionary named Ernst vom Rath.
You probably know about the consequences of the shooting: Vom Rath hovered between life and death from the bullets Herschel put into him for a couple of days; the news of his death reached Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels in Munich as they were celebrating the anniversary of the failed beer-hall putsch of 1923 and the Nazi "martyrs" who fell while Hitler slipped away from the line of fire.
You probably know that Hitler let slip the order that the S.A. should "have its fling"; that within hours Goebbels and Reinhard Heydrich saw to it that all over Germany, howling mobs were burning synagogues, shattering the windows of Jewish-owned shops, beating and murdering Jews while police rounded up and dragged some 25,000 innocents off to concentration-camp detention. You probably know that because of the spectacle of the streets full of shattered glass, the murderous, nationwide pogrom acquired the name Kristallnacht , the Night of Broken Glass.
It was the moment when the mask, or what was left of the mask, came off the Third Reich. But what about the boy whose act ripped the mask off; what are we to think of him, what became of him? These are questions that are still shrouded in ambiguity and uncertainty.
http://www.observer.com/node/39875
You're right, Chris, it definitely sounds like Mr. Ernst vom Rath deserved what he got. He was indeed personally responsible and deserved to pay the capital penalty, no judge nor jury allowed.
…but wait a sec, are you justifying Palestinian violence??
er…maybe we should rethink this one…
Certainly not. Rath in no way contributed to the suffering of Grynszpan's parents.
But for Hitler to use this incident as he did was in the best tradition of people like you.
"So a non-violent means of protest by Jews living in other countries resulted in the Germans removing the citizenship of people who lived in Germany for centuries and then started to exterminate them.
And it seems that you approved.
So sad."
Wow, what noxious garbage. What I said was that the Jewish War Veterans, who had the motivation, means, and method to bring down the Nazis were thwarted by Zionists, who wanted Palestinian land and were more than willing to deal with Fascists of various stripes to get it.
Some day, this sad moment will be known as "appeasement".
Those armed with knowlege of this history, certainly cannot condone either the collaboration or its sad result. The Jewish War Veterans were right, and would have won the day for all of us….
..if the Zionists had only let them…
"But for Hitler to use this incident as he did was in the best tradition of people like you."
People like me? I've tried to curtail anyone's rights, let alone killed anyone. What about you, Chris?
Of course they did. Anymore happy horse shit to put out?
LD's cyber screaming is cracking me up.
Is it because of what happened in Gaza or what's yet to come?
Apparently the only way Palestinians are going to accept a state with definitive border– and enduring peace– is by getting the stuffing knocked out of them.
In the meantime, the death of 1300 Arabs, many who were actively engaged in terrorism, the rest being used as human shields by Hamas,
Chris,
Again, like a sea sponge, you drift in a fact-free universe. There has been no evidence that Hamas used citizens as human shields. At least none that you have presented. Rather, you come here and simply assert things, with no supporting evidence at all. It seems to you that assertions are enough.
I appreciate you are only trying to be disruptive here, and that you are not trying to contribute to any sort of meaningful debate, but for your own sake, you could be far more disruptive if you sourced some of your assertions. Make us work to make you look like a fool, rather than making it ridiculously self-evident.
I will now show you how sourcing assertions can be effective. Israel regularly uses Palestinians as human shields when conducting searches and what not. Consider, for example, the following:
Here is another example of Israel using Palestinians as human shields:
And another:
See how easy that is?
Sam, how dare you bring in facts into a discussion with berel? That's not how brainwashed Zionist propagadists function.
You want him to understand something, make up a lie with no factual base, and repeat it a few times.
For example, Shimon Peres in Davos:
"There was never a day of starvation in Gaza!"
"There was not any siege against Gaza. All the passages were open."
"Hamas broke the ceasefire"
BEREL: you are the cause of this HTML mess. go back and fix it.
Berel: "So a non-violent means of protest by Jews living in other countries resulted in the Germans removing the citizenship of people who lived in Germany for centuries and then started to exterminate them."
No. The boycott was working. Working so well that the Zionist desire to move the Jews out of Germany to Palestine was threatened.
So the Zionists broke the boycott, and paid $6,000,000 to get 60,000 able-bodied Jews to Palestine to work the orange groves. (Source: The Transfer Agreement, Edwin Black, MacMillan, 1984 not the later Abe Foxman revised version with the female co-writer.]
What is this Zionist obsession with '6's? They even claimed in 1919 that 6 million Jews were killed in WWI. link to d.scribd.com
P.S.
With that $6,000,000 the Zionists paid HItler, Hitler now had the funds to start his war. Without it, he could have done nothing.
There is ample evidence that Hamas used the civillian population of Gaza as human shields. But, Sam, you must open your eyes. Until then, you are blind.
As for Phil, he was always a lost cause. Now he's blaming the Jews for starting WWII.
why are you suddenly all upset about shaheeds being used as shields? I'd like to know how many of these folks actually get killed in that kind of scenario…
…as opposed to self imploding with a bomb belt.
One honest criticism of Israel is this: they were dumb as hell to bar the media instead of relying on Arab stringers to shape the news. They are agonizing over this themselves.
War is war…time for them to stop attempting to prettify it and look like nice guys.
It's pretty clear to me that this has reached a head…I think it's over for the Pals. Netanyahu is not really concerned about world opinion.
I'll be glad when it's over but I think it's pretty ridiculous of the Arabs to cut off their noses to spite their faces. They're going to end up with nothing.
Why do they prefer that? *shrug*
People really need to think long and hard about what the allies did to Germany and Japan in order to win WW2. We did some really nasty, nasty things.
Just do it and win. Agonize later. sheesh!
What we did to beat the Germans and Japanese was not admirable. But like the Israelis, we did not deliberately kill women and children, even though we knew, without a doubt, that women and children would die as a result of our actions.
Israel banned the media because they knew that some damned fool cameraman or reports would manage to get himself killed and Israel would get blamed for it.
Also they might get Israelis killed. From a distance, with the light in your eyes, is that thing on that guy's shoulder a camera or an anti-tank weapon? Want to bet your life and the lives of your fellow soldiers that it is a camera? If you don't then you may kill a cameraman. If you do, then because everyone knows that Jews are superhumans who never hit anything when it isn't deliberate, and who have bullets and tank shells that avoid civilians except when the Jews are deliberately shooting them, the world will say that you killed the cameraman deliberately to cover something up.
The mistake the Israelis made was in not developing a 360 degree field of view camera for its soldiers to wear that can't be switched off so they can document everything.
It would also make it easy to prosecute any soldier who disobeys orders and does target a civilian. Win-win.
What the Allies did to German and Japanese civilians both during and after WW2
is nothing to be proud of. As an American I sure am not to the extent of American hypocrisy, duplicity, complicity and otherwise aiding and abetting
those events, including those mentioned above.
There is much less excuse today for going along with status quo manipulation of opinion considering the internet tool for
gathering information shut out by the MSM.
Unless Never Again applies only to jewish victims, it certainly applies to denizens of Gaza. Otherwise, Hitler is your mentor.
And Goering was right at Nuremberg when he laughed, saying might makes right, I see we all agree.
Many, many Americans voted in Obama in recognition of just how evil the eight year neocon regime was, both as to internal and foreign affairs. To the extent Chaney 's POV is like Israel's, neither should stand.
Sam, the Israeli Supreme Court has accepted incontrovertible evidence of the long standing practice of the IDF using Palestinian civilians, women and children included, as human shields during military operations. On the basis of such evidence, the Court entered an injunction prohibiting the policy. As a consequence of the injunction, the IDF, engaged in a bit of legal sociopathy, re-crafted its policy to permit the use of human shields only if the person assented to being used as a shield, and if the IDF field commander determined that it was unlikely that the shield would be at risk of harm. This policy shift befuddled the Court for a bit, which eventually saw past this nonsense and entered a judgment in 2005 outlawing the practice completely. Despite the Court's decision, the IDF continues its policy of using human shields in violation of the Israeli Supreme Court's decision. The Court's decision and the pleadings filed by the petitioners are available online in English for anyone interested in the facts.