Video above shot in Gaza in June 2009, six months after the onslaught.
Michael Ratner, speaking on Law and Disorder radio last week about Cindy and Craig Corrie’s civil action against Israel, denied, for the killing of their daughter Rachel in Gaza in 2003:
As they [the Corries] traveled around Israel talking about Rachel Corrie, they always carried with them not a picture of Rachel Corrie, but a picture of a 6-year-old boy who was in the house that Rachel Corrie was trying to protect. They also wanted the trial to focus on the fact of the number of Palestinians killed in roughly the same period when Rachel Corrie was protesting house demolitions. The lawyer for Rachel Corrie during the trial asked the Israeli brigade commander, how many Palestinians had been killed between August 2002 and march 2003? This is the brigade commander for the southern command which is Gaza. Of course the state of Israel objected, saying what’s the relevance of that, this is about supposed negligence in killing Rachel Corrie, etc.
And then the lawyer for Rachel Corrie replied, and this is a statistic that’s important to remember, that in the Rafah area alone, that’s where Rachel Corrie was engaging in her protest, 101 people were killed, Palestinians, including 42 children, age 10-18. Those are the people Rachel Corrie was trying to protect, those were the people in the violence Rachel Corrie sacrificed her life for, putting her body between the oppressors, the Israelis, and the oppressed, the Palestinians
From Breaking the Silence’s recent report, titled “Children and Youth, Soldiers’ Testimonies, 2005-2011. Testimony 2, from a first sergeant posted to Hebron in 2010:
On your first arrest mission, you’re sure it’s a big deal, and it’s actually bullshit. You enter the Abu Sneina (Hebron) neighborhood and pick up three children. After that whole briefing, you’re there with your bulletproof vest and helmet and stuck with that ridiculous mission of separating women and children. It’s all taken so seriously and then what you end up with is a bunch of kids, you blindfold and shackle them and
drive them to the police station at Givat Ha’avot. That’s it, it goes on for months and you eventually stop thinking there are any terrorists out there, you stop believing there’s an enemy, it’s always some children or adolescents or some doctor we took out. You never know their names, you never talk with them, they always cry, shit in their pants.
Was there a case of someone shitting in his pants?
I remember once. Always that crying. There are those annoying moments when you’re on an arrest mission, and there’s no room in the police station, so you just take the kid back with you to the army post, blindfold him, put him in a room and wait for the police to come pick him up in the morning. He sits there like a dog…
Ali Abunimah, speaking at the Penn BDS conference last February:
How can Israel’s right to be a Jewish state be violated? One of the things Israelis fret about all the time is babies. Babies just like the beautiful Rafeef who I had the pleasure of playing with a few minutes earlier [a girl in the audience]. In Rafeef I see a beautiful child who has hopefully an incredible future in front of her. Israel sees a demographic threat. To Israel, Rafeef is the mortal enemy. Too many babies of the wrong type threaten Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. So Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state is under mortal threat from– babies. Too many of the wrong type of babies. What’s the remedy for too many babies? Can anyone think of a legitimate remedy for too many babies? Well, one approach would be to stop the creation of wrong babies…
Again, from Breaking the Silence’s report on “Children and Youth…” Testimony 46, from a first sergeant performing an arrest in Beit Ur village in 2007 after a Jewish settler complained that boys in the occupied village had thrown stones at her. The sergeant describes the suspects as being 13 years old.
We picked up three kids there. The mother was crying, the women were all in tears, the kids were shackled, taken into the jeep, scared. I just try to think what they must have felt, what it’s like to be taken in an army jeep. I was sitting in back with one of those kids and the jeep bumps along the road, those roads out there… I took the driver’s helmet because he doesn’t need it in front, and placed it on the kid’s head. The driver turned around, saw the kid with his helmet, and said: “What are you doing?! I can’t wear it after this!” I got annoyed, I mean, what? If he wears your helmet then it’s filthy? “You’ll wash it out for me,” he said. What a buddy… When he got to company HQ, first he washed out his helmet in soap and water, and only then put it on his head, because it had been on the kid’s head for a few minutes. And this is a guy who votes for the Labour party, claims he is a leftie, but this disgusts him. How has this happened to us?
“The driver turned around, saw the kid with his helmet, and said: “What are you doing?! I can’t wear it after this!”"
Evil driver!
I read “The conversion of Joel Kovel (Part 1)” and i was wondering why no one commented on the hatred. Almost all comments was about religion and culture and this and that. And nothing about teaching minority children to hate.
“Growing up, Christians were just the Irish and the Italians in the next neighborhood over and we were taught to hate and fear them.”
link to mondoweiss.net
By whom? Parents, teachers, rabbis or friends, or all of them?
Who teaches their children to hate and fear other people? Fear i can understand that a minority teach their children, or to be careful, but hate, no.
Is that a good strategy for a minority to survive? Going around hating everybody else? How common is this among minorities?
Is it a good strategy for a tiny minority in the middle east to hate everybody, christians and muslims alike? Can a minority expect to live in peace when they hate the majority?
“How the Jews Treat Christians in Israel?”:
link to youtube.com
link to youtube.com
(We all know how they treat Muslims).
How can this minority be so successful of accusing the majority of the world that it is the majority that teach their children to hate?
Rafeef Ziadah – ‘We teach life, sir’, London, 12.11.11:
link to youtube.com
How many of those children raised to hate and fear are now masking those feelings as leading zio-cons in positions of great power? Or have they shed that fear and hatred?
“how has this happened to us?”
the one about a land without a people for a people without a land, that’s how, occupiers!
Along with “We matter and you don’t”.
Heartbreaking.
Very interesting 2009 c-pan interview with Zippy Livni on how bombing Gaza helps the peace process and strengthens the “moderates” in the region
link to youtube.com
How did the the “moderates” do afterwards?
How did this happen to them?
It will be explained by holocaust trauma, centuries of enemies, enemies and so on.
But in the end no one will care about why and how. It happened period.
What is so, so, so pathetic is that after WWII when Jews had a 99.999% world guarentee of freedom from ever being persecuted and murdered by anti semitism again………zionism took it right f’ing backwards.
Yea,yea, hindsight and all that I know.
But the irony of this is just so something….I don’t know what to call it.
Arrogance
Lack of prior experience of power
The post 1967 Messianism
US geopolitical shenanigans
the collective Jewish amygdala
Why does Zionism need hasbara?
Why does it need an army ?
Why does it need enemies?
Why does it need more land ?
Why are Jewish Israelis so insecure?
nice answers I hope in gentle manner so that it meets the netiquette standards of Mondoweiss
Q1: Why does Zionism need hasbara?
If Hasbarians only talk garbage then it would be an easy thing to rip their arguments into parts.
So where is the problem?
Q2: Why does it need an army ?
A: We could bet how long I. would have existed if the Zionists consisted only of flower power hippies.
One..? Two…? …seconds??
Q3: Why does it need enemies?
A: YES. I. doesn’t need enemies, but it gets them freehouse for free anyways.
Q4: Why does it need more land ?
A: I. has the seize of Massachusetts, the occupied territories around Delaware.
To talk about more or less land is even seing this scale very absurd.
Beside that, if I. would settle a peace treaty with the P., I. would be at risk because simply in its main land I. has an extension of about 10 miles. Don’t misunderstand me, I’m in favour of a peace treaty but who would guarantee that the future P.State wouldn’t cancel its obligations of the treaty anywhen aftere independence?
Q5: Why are Jewish Israelis so insecure?
A: If someone hates I. only because it exists then it’s the problem of the hater not of the hated.
So what are you complaining?
“hates…” “hate”
Keep rolling the vulgar word out, pin it onto to the world.
The primitive use of language says it all.
During “cast lead” that room could have been bombed with white phosphorous.
They told me the Palestinians are my enemy. The Palestinians are not my enemy
link to vimeo.com
Jewish fear is the enemy.
RE: “When he got to company HQ, first he washed out his helmet in soap and water, and only then put it on his head, because it had been on the kid’s head for a few minutes. And this is a guy who votes for the Labour party, claims he is a leftie, but this disgusts him. How has this happened to us?” ~ Breaking the Silence’s report
FOR STARTERS SEE: “Academic claims Israeli school textbooks contain bias” ~ By Harriet Sherwood, guardian.co.uk, 8/07/11
Nurit Peled-Elhanan of Hebrew University says textbooks depict Palestinians as “terrorists, refugees and primitive farmers”
ENTIRE ARTICLE – link to guardian.co.uk
• VIDEO of interview with Peled-Elhanan (08:48) – link to youtube.com
P.S. ALSO SEE: Is Change possible in Israel? (VIDEO, 07:49) – link to youtube.com
Prof. Haim Bresheeth tries to answer this question – why can some Israelis change, and support the Palestinian cause, but change seems elusive in Israel? Should we wait and hope for such change?
Why doesn’t she criticise Palestinian schoolbooks as well than? There she would have work for a decade!
mthunlan:
Because that has studied a time ago, and there is no longer nothing to criticize for ?
RE: “Why doesn’t she criticise Palestinian schoolbooks as well than? There she would have work for a decade!” ~ mthunlan
MY REPLY: I have tried to find recent examples of Palestinian schoolbooks that describe Israelis/Jews as “vile and deviant and criminal, people who don’t pay taxes, people who live off the state, [and] people who don’t want to develop”, or in some other racist terms. I have been unable to find any such egregious examples.
The only example of “Arabs” who use such racism in their schoolbooks involves the Saudis. And ironically, Saudi Arabia now seems to be one of Israel’s best allies in the Middle East! What are we to make of that?
• HERE IS THE SAUDI EXAMPLE: “We do use books that call Jews ‘apes’ admits head of Islamic school”, thisislondon.co.uk, 07/02/07
SOURCE – link to thisislondon.co.uk
• ALSO SEE ADAM HOROWITZ’S ARTICLE ON MONDOWEISS FROM 9/28/11 - link to mondoweiss.net
• AND SEE: “Arab winter: Israel has urged US to intervene to prop up Saudi monarchy”, by Philip Weiss, Mondoweiss, 05/01/11:
SOURCE – link to mondoweiss.net
• AND SEE: “With Egypt, Turkey Lost as Israeli Allies, Where to Turn?”, By Richard Silverstein, 9/12/11:
SOURCE – link to richardsilverstein.com
“The Israeli government is so concerned that America’s adversaries may miscalculate U.S. intentions that it is privately urging Washington to make it clear that the U.S. would intervene in Saudi Arabia should the survival of that government be threatened. . .”
Oh God.
It’s interesting. I’ve always been kind of averse to criticism of Saudi Arabia. Let them do what they want…
But I certainly don’t want to go there and defend their system. That’s right out. It’s ridiculous.
“…To Saudi Arabia, perhaps? That’s right, the birthplace of most of the 9/11 hijackers and ancient birthplace of Islam. A religion that Bibi, his followers, and more importantly, his father detest…”
So what do you imagine they think of Christianity? This is one advantage the Zionists have over their opponents. They have no scruples whatsoever about marriages of convenience.
The numbers of Palestinians killed by Israel in that district during that time period. As Rachel’s mother Cindy said “we should have all been standing with her”
“always the crying”
“I can’t wear it after this” Such horrific racism.
And in the U.S. news all of this is not even whispered about. Well Chris Hayes went in that direction the other day. But O’Donnell, Sharpton, Ed, Rachel Maddow, Chris Matthews, Diane Rehm, Neil Conan, Scott Simon etc all yellow bellied cowards or racist themselves. Or both
Breaking The Silence is here in America too. What happens to a young US Army volunteer who does not realize until after her tour in Iraq what she was actually doing there? What happens when someone brought up on macho patriotism returns home from Iraq–and begins to realize what she actually did “over there?” Becomes increasingly more aware that she stood there with her machine gun pointed at mothers and children, babies, even, and “took away their humanity”? What happens (eventually) when she fully realizes innocent families were murdered in their beds? And when she comes to realize by more such flashbacks that she had thereby taken away her own humanity, the wholesome person she once once? In this case, it’s an eighteen year old cheerleader from small town America (where else?) who enlists: link to postergirlthemovie.com
Citizen says: “…Breaking The Silence is here in America too. What happens to a young US Army volunteer who does not realize until after her tour in Iraq…”
This happens in milder forms as well. Another one of my non-Mondoweiss associates is a extreme libertarian gunsmith in Arizona who did a tour as a scout in Iraq. There was a definite shift after he came back. No, he doesn’t feel bad about what he did, but (a) he’s decided Muslims are actually pretty good people, and (b) he realized they had a point about Israel.
What is this long repetitious video showing kids in Gaza having a good time meant to prove? Make your selection:
1. Life in Gaza is pretty good
2. Kids need time out from hating Israelis
3. Palestinian kids are all innocent angels
4. Mondoweiss is soft selling a propaganda message
Please send your votes to Mooser who I’m sure will be more than happy to collate the results for us.
Here, maybe this will help you understand what the video is all about: link to youtube.com
“Please send your votes to Mooser who I’m sure will be more than happy to collate the results for us.”
Mayhem, I don’t need anybody else’s votes to declare you the loser, one of the biggest I’ve ever had the unfortunate experience of reading.
The “Mayhem” comment archive can be accessed by clicking on his name above a comment. Collate that, sucker.
Mayhem :
1. Life in Gaza is pretty good : We rock
2. Kids need time out from hating Israelis : They suck
3. Palestinian kids are all innocent angels : You suck
4. Mondoweiss is soft selling a propaganda message : Everything sucks
“4. Mondoweiss is soft selling a propaganda message : Everything sucks”
You got them all except the last one. Good work. But I think the “please send your votes to Mooser” was supposed to be the “everything sucks” part.
The Breaking the Silence stuff is awful and demonstrates how simply vile so many of these israelis are.
Mig
Standards are slipping
I guess all this non stop post is exhausting
Cut and paste on steroids
Nothing new not even some good info
Soft sell is good because it reminds me of icecream
I dreamed i organized a camel race in the gaza buffer zone. Guys came all over the berbers the druze the marsh arabs. Participants had to come by camel. Huge tents setup with markets belly dancers good lebanese hash water pipes. A week long festival.the gaza camel races.people walked from all over no transport allowed.flags blowing in the wind. Carpets layed out on the ground.dates from the sahara.figs from iran.jews selling oranges from haifa.circuses for the kids
The gaza camel races
Next year in march
wes , this ones for you:
link to urbandictionary.com