Israel

[Torurot]

Israel is out of control and will become an international pariah state like Nth Korea. It's well past time when the USA forced Israel to pull it's head in and abide by ALL UN resolution. After all that's what the USA demands of other nations.
Israel must end its illegal blockade of Gaza, which constitutes unlawful aggression under General Assembly Resolution 3314 (1974). When the Security Council convenes, it should order Israel to cease its acts of aggression.

[Torurot]

Murder on the High Seas
Worse Than North Korea
http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/76
By DAVE LINDORFF June 2, 2010

Like the cop who batters someone senseless at a demonstration and then accuses the victim of €œbanging his head against my baton,€ Israel€™s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has accused the victims of Israel€™s brutal military assault on a peace convoy to Gaza of attacking Israeli soldiers. An Israeli deputy ambassador to the UN went further, saying, €œWhat kind of peace activists use knives, clubs and other weapons to attack soldiers who board a ship in accordance with international law?''

Let€™s straighten this out. The question to be asked is: what kind of country
sends troops armed with automatic weapons to assault a boat filled with unarmed, peaceful civilians, and slaughters nine (or maybe 19) of them as if they were enemy troops in a war zone?

Even Israel admits the boarded ship, the Turkish Mavi Marmara, and five smaller vessels, were in international waters. According to witness reports, including those of respected mainstream journalists who were on board the ship, IDF naval commandos, acting on the highest authority from the Israeli government, but behaving more like Somali pirates, boarded the Turkish ship with Uzi€™s blazing, and continued to fire even as the activists on board had raised a white flag. The boarding, according to Marjorie Cohn, former president of the National Lawyers Guild, and other legal authorities, was illegal under international maritime law. In any event, given the fact that the ships were civilian, and the passengers non-military, even had they been in Israeli waters, the boarding could have been negotiated peacefully, had Israel wanted to do this.

There was no urgency about it. The ships were more than 60 miles from shore, and the Israeli Navy had the power to prevent the ships from landing without firing a shot. It admits it had nets that could have halted five of the vessels, and it has larger naval vessels that could have halted the Mavi Marmara, either by forcibly towing it, by disabling its rudder, or by physically blocking its way.

NPR, in a particularly repulsive report on the bloody assault, referred to it as a €œbungled raid.€ The New York Times, on Tuesday, in a news article, reported as fact, with no attribution, that €œthe operation seems to have gone badly wrong.€ But this was no €œbungled€ action, or an action that had €œgone badly wrong. €œ The Israeli attack, and the deadly methods it employed, were both clearly deliberate, and had to have been intended to send a message to those who would assist the imprisoned population of Gaza, who for four years and through an Israeli invasion of that territory almost a year and a half ago, has been kept on a starvation diet by an illegal Israeli blockade.

Israel clearly wanted a violent confrontation, as it didn€™t need to initiate one to stop the ships from delivering their cargo. The Israeli claim that the violence was justified because some on the boarded ship offered resistance to the IDF attackers, using metal pipes, is absurd. Israel has been fighting an unfair, uneven battle of tanks and Uzis against stone-throwing Palestinians for so long that it apparently no longer even recognizes that the rest of the world sees it for the homicidal bully that it is. Israeli special forces clearly have the training to disarm untrained attackers wielding pipes, sticks or even knives (my own 16-year-old, 130 lb., 5€™7€ son, with his karate training, could handle that).

The reality is that we are dealing with a pariah state, no better at this point in its respect for international law and basic human rights (where non-Israelis are concerned), than North Korea. And maybe worse. At least the North Koreans fired their weapon at a South Korean military vessel. The Israeli Defense Force attacked a vessel filled with civilian peace activists, including elderly Holocaust survivors, members of foreign parliaments, and young children.

While the captured peace activists are being held incommunicado in Israel on a military base that is closed to reporters, Israel has been gushing propaganda like a wild BP oil well, trying to make the fraudulent case that the boats were carrying contraband (ball bearings and sling-shots in one account). Such ludicrous assertions, silly even if true , hardly justify Israeli actions in the assault. Moreover, the speed with which such alleged €œcontraband€ was €œfound€ on a ship carrying thousands of tons of relief supplies, suggests either disinformation, or that something was planted, either by the IDF boarding party, or by Mossad agents before the ships had even set sail (the Turkish government says it carefully inspected the cargo during loading to make certain there were no weapons).

This Israeli raid confirms the total bankruptcy of Israel€™s position in the world. By killing Turkish nationals and seamen and by violating the rights of a Turkish vessel, Israel has permanently poisoned its relations with the only real ally it has had in the Muslim world--a country that only recently actually allowed Israel to use its airspace to attack a suspected nuclear reactor site in Syria. It has also done enormous damage to relations with the US, where public support for Israeli policy towards the Palestinians was already tanking, following the brutal invasion of Gaza last year.

American political leaders are still scurrying around trying to avoid alienating the powerful pro-Israeli lobby in the US, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). President Obama, the recent Nobel Peace Prize winner, when confronted with the assault, could only work himself up to the point of expressing €œdeep regret€ at the loss of life, and calling for in investigation (by Israel!) into €œall the facts and circumstances€ of the incident. Such limp and even-handed comments are unacceptable, and are becoming increasingly out of touch with public sentiment. Even given the shamelessly pro-Israeli slant to most US media coverage of this and other Israeli actions, many Americans, including many American Jews, are finding it harder and harder to support Israeli policy.

Yesterday my wife and I had dinner at the home of a some close friends who are Jewish. Three other Jewish couples were also present, two of whom, frequent visitors to Israel, mentioned that they were planning a trip to the country this summer. During the whole evening, there was no mention at all of the Israeli raid. It was as if we were all at the zoo looking at the tiger exhibit, and everyone was talking about rabbits. The other three couples who were guests, none of whom were familiar to me, my politics, or even the fact that I am not Jewish, said nothing. Our friends said nothing. And I clearly knew that if I said anything at all, all hell would break out. Clearly though, all the Jewish Americans present realized that the attack would be an explosive issue even amongst themselves, about which there would be irreconcilable differences of opinion.

It needs to be mentioned that those helicopters that lowered the Israeli commandos onto the ship were American-built. Most of Israel€™s formidable military is either made in USA or paid for by the USA. Indeed as attorney Cohn notes, Israel is the largest recipient of US military aid since WWII. If public support in the US for Israel continues to erode, pressures to end that kind of military support will mount. Already, many in the senior ranks of the US military are criticizing America€™s unquestioning backing of Israeli military and foreign policy, saying that it is leading to the needless deaths of American soldiers. Americans, even many Jewish Americans, are becoming increasingly critical of the Jewish state.

The irredentist, apartheid religious state of Israel is heading down a dead-end road.

Dave Lindorff is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist at www.thiscantbehappening.net. His latest book is €œThe Case for Impeachment€ (St. Martin€™s Press, 2006 and now available in paperback). He can be reached at [email protected]

[Bumpa STIKKA]

(Lefty @ Jun. 02 2010,19:47) Anyone who advocates Israel nuking anyone, or anyone else nuking them for that matter, is a complete idiot...

I'm a complete idiot...

[f0xxee]

I can't condone Israels aggression and god driven right to piracy any more than North Korea's actions against Sth Korea or for that matter Somalian Pirates.
I can't see that Isreal could exist without the US backing.
I can't see how the USA can detach from Israel given the Jewish monopoly on US banking and financial interests.
In other words Isreal will continue to prosper as long as the USA does. Once the US goes to the shitter so will Israel, and Israel will no doubt feel Yahweh wants them to pants the lot of us along with them.
Fuck 'em.
I would love to think Obama would tell them that all support will stop until they leave occupied territories and learn to share their desolate, good for nothing, rock stewn goat infested piece of insignificant shit-scape with others, but it will never happen.
I happen to like the few Palestinians I have met, same with lebanese. The Israeli's I've met have been ..... fucked up.

They are the ginger nerd in your class with a snotty nose that richly deserve a flogging who only continued to breath because they have a bigger ginger brother to look after them and commit dire retribution should you make them lick toads.

[kahuna]

(f0xxee @ Jun. 03 2010,13:34) ...and learn to share their desolate, good for nothing, rock stewn goat infested piece of insignificant shit-scape with others,

Well, one thing for certain...They don't have pig farms...

[pacman]

I can't see how the USA can detach from Israel given the Jewish monopoly on US banking and financial interests.

What happened to your post about the Jewish owners of the major banks & their role in the GFC?

I waited for some of our semitic members to comment before I posted my $0.02 cents but the post went AWOL. Never mind, here's a little of what I had in mind.

I have dealt with many Jews over the years & I can say their word is their bond. And their self-deprecating humour is second to none.

If you want to hear seriously politically incorrect jokes about Israel & Jews, sit around with a bunch of 'em, they are hilarious.

I learnt early on not to complain about price disparities when comparing what I paid with what a Jewish client paid (best not to ask how I found out) - it was explained to me in the simplest terms - "you are not in the club" as spoken by a wise Yiddish friend as he tapped the side of his nose.

This chap & I had lunch every Thursday for over 10 years. A cheap Asian restaurant where I learnt so much about their struggle.

One Thursday, we were joined by his Rabbi. He was a very astute, very smart guy who was so relaxed I would have never known of his exalted role if I hadn't been told.

As I always ask awkward questions & as neither of them were the least bit shy about talking straight with me, I raised the prickly Palestinian question & the support of the US government.

I won't rattle on too much about a long-ago conversation but I remember distinctly their response when I asked what happens if the US decides to withdraw their support.

One looked at the other & said "do you want to tell him or shall I?"

The short answer is that as the Jewish bankers have a cast iron grip over the world's banking system, they could bring the US economy to its knees whenever they felt like.

I don't know how that helps their cause, I guess they can hold it over their head as a permanent threat not to change policy.

Things are real interesting now that the GFC is doing so much damage anyway, that Obama may decide he would be happy to rid the country of the big banks & start again without the role played by the Jewish bankers thus freeing up American policy.

[Tomcat]

(pacman @ Jun. 03 2010,13:58) The short answer is that as the Jewish bankers have a cast iron grip over the world's banking system,

I doubt if thats the case now , especially in Europe. I doubt if there will be any independant banks by the end of the year other than HSBC. The post 1945 world is changing every day and the USA / Europe themselves are losing there top place in the world to China and India bit by bit , day by day. China is the next superpower and there aint many Jews there Paccers and i doubt if they will be worried anyway.

As for the Jews in Israel , time and demography are not on there side as the Arabs are breeding like Rabbits and in time they will be overun just like many states in Europe/Russia will also be overun in 50 year time.

If you think 50 years is along time then think how old you are and how quick that happened .

Strangley enough i was reading an article in the economist about the influx of Soviet Jews and it is pretty obvious that around 25% of them are not even Jewish but just lied to get out of Communist Russia. It makes sense to me

Its a funny old world isnt it.

[guydesavoy]

(f0xxee @ Jun. 03 2010,13:34) ... Israel will no doubt feel Y h wants them to pants the lot of us along with them.

He whose name cannot be spoken    

[f0xxee]

(pacman @ Jun. 03 2010,13:58) I won't rattle on too much about a long-ago conversation but I remember distinctly their response when I asked what happens if the US decides to withdraw their support.

One looked at the other & said "do you want to tell him or shall I?"

The short answer is that as the Jewish bankers have a cast iron grip over the world's banking system, they could bring the US economy to its knees whenever they felt like.

Hi Paccers,

This is what I have long suspected. I could see no other reason for the US to kowtow to the Chosen People.
Does anyone know where the money to support the Zionists terrorists (and I use "terrorists" without reservation) to throw the Poms out of Israel came from?
I have always wondered.... How come by '45 6 million are incinerated and yet they have the power to remove a force such as the British from Palestine? I realise the British were war weary and going through a massive recession, but still.

[f0xxee]

(guydesavoy @ Jun. 03 2010,16:17)

(f0xxee @ Jun. 03 2010,13:34) ... Israel will no doubt feel Y h wants them to pants the lot of us along with them.

He whose name cannot be spoken    

I didn't spoke it. I wrote it.

[guydesavoy]

Sorry, sometimes I read out loud.... My bad...I'm going to Hell

[Tomcat]

(f0xxee @ Jun. 03 2010,16:20) Zionists terrorists

How can a sovereign Power be Terrorists in their own Country.

Like many others who use the word Fascist you have lost the plot and actually debase the meaning of the word and the language .

[Torurot]

From the Washington Post (another right wing rag. )

If you don€™t recognize that Israel€™s continuous displacement of Palestinians, bulldozer destruction of their hundreds of years old markets and villages, occupation of Palestinian€™s hundreds of years old lands, and blockade of even humanitarian bare sustenance relief for Gaza is INDEED Nazi behavior, then you are an ANTI-HUMANTITARIANS

Please don€™t hand me the crap about Jews being there back in ancient history. If you do that YOU are obligated to give up your house to American Indians, and move back to . . . . Where?
And please don€™t hand me the crap of God€™s chosen people! That smacks of Pat Robertson level ignorance.

------------------------------------

What's the difference between Somali pirates and Israeli anti-flotilla commandos? Somali pirates aren't trained to rappel from helicopters bought from American defense contractors with American taxpayer money.

What's the Israeli security claim in attacking ships of foreign registry carrying foreign nationals sailing to the Port of Gaza in international waters? Cover for a last-minute sneak attack on Haifa with sticks and stones? The attack was so stupid and obviously illegal, that you have to wonder whether there's a new category in Mosaic Law for goring one's own ox.

And good grief. Equating criticism of belligerent and illegal actions and violations of minimal human rights standards by the Israeli government with Anti-Semitism has really got to be the very last refuge of a scoundrel. It's bizarre, but this canard seems to come more readily from the mouths of Falwell-inebriate fundamentalists than from Jews in either the US or Israel.



and MANY more here

http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archiv...gal_posit.html

[Guest]

(guydesavoy @ Jun. 02 2010,08:56)

(travis bickle @ Jun. 02 2010,02:43)

(guydesavoy @ Jun. 02 2010,00:23) As for 'pearls before swine'...there is another quote form a similar source that is more appropriate here :

'Forgive them, for they know not what they do'  

How on earth is that a more appropriate comment?

Could you explain how "forgive them for they know not what they do " is apertaining to this thread?

Forgive who?The Israelis?The Palestinians?

Please explain...

I was referring to people who think they are casting pearls when in fact they are merely tossing pebbles  

"and those of you without blame cast the first stone"-eh?

pretty lame retort guy de savoy-I did expect something more than that lameass reply

from you.

As for the question of whether Jewish money power controls the world economy-is there any real doubt?

Remember last year when george dumbass Bush was giving a press conference,and he was called from the conference mid-sentence by the Israeli prime minister,and given a telling off because he hadn't "cleared" his speech with them beforehand!-check it out if you dont believe me.....Its all on you tube

Also check out Schwartzenneger almost sprinting to kiss the arse of Sharon when he was in u.s.a-it's embarrassing.....

[guydesavoy]

It wasn't a retort as such. Merely a reply to your question as to the meaning of that quote.

I'm sorry you were expecting more TB