I meant to post this up on the AFR thread about this in response to a couple of the utter cunts of posters, but it turns out Iâve been banned so Iâll throw it up here instead.
Can one of the apologists for the vile terrorist state of Israel please explain the following to me.
What right do immigrants from Poland, Russia, Germany, the USA etc have to land that they or their ancestors going back nearly two thousand years have never even set foot on, over people who were ethnically cleansed off their own land after 1948?
The Israelis have indeed abused history. They are not some brave little state, upholding democracy. They are a totalitarian bully who donât care what anybody else thinks.
And as for the anti-semite card: donât make me laugh. One of the people travelling with the flotilla is Hedy Epstein, an 85 year old holocaust survivor. She has been a tireless campaigner for the rights of the people of Gaza. Is she an anti-semite? Is Ilan Pape, who wrote âThe Ethnic Cleansing of Palestineâ, an anti-semite? In this country we liked to say, correctly in my view, that the Unionist notion of the six counties as âa Protestant state for a Protestant peopleâ was sectarian. Is the notion of âa Jewish state for a Jewish peopleâ not at least equally sectarian?
The Israeli ambassador to Ireland today said that âIsrael has to defend itselfâ. From a ship carrying humanitarian aid? Which incidentally was sailing in international waters. But itâs not as if Israel has ever given a shit about international law. The strength of the Israeli lobby in the US and UK is such that they can get away with anything. Their spin merchants and big business connections stretch through the whole of Western society like a cancer. The spin even stretches to internet discussion forums on politics and the likes. Outright lying is what they specialise in. How about the whopper from Tom Carew of the Ireland âIsrael Friendship League on the Pat Kenny show this morning claiming that the flotilla âhad links to Al-Qaedaâ?
Who has killed the most civilians in the conflict? Israel. By a mile. Between the start of the second intifada in September 2000 and the start of the Gaza invasion in December 2008 there were 4860 Palestinians killed by the IDF. 527 civilians and 90 IDF members were killed by Palestinians in the same period. This doesnât include the stats from the Gaza invasion of 08/09 btw. Link to stats: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:cpiq2Hfgl5EJ:www.btselem.org/english/statistics/casualties.asp+israel+civilians+killed+number&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk
And yet itâs the Palestinians who are always painted as the aggressors because the Western media tend to swallow the Israeli propaganda. Palestinian violence was the inevitable reaction of the systematic oppression and brutalisation of a people. If you brutalise a people, donât be surprised when they fight back.
I donât advocate suicide bombs, far from it. But what do you expect? Rockets and suicide bombs became the last refuge of a youth that have known nothing other than brutal oppression. Israel has no problem brutalising the people of Gaza after a few rockets. So tell me, who are the real terrorists? In one way it would nearly make you think the British Army werenât so bad after all. If they had applied Israeli standards, the whole of South Armagh and West Belfast would have been wiped out. I wonder does anybody here think that would have been justified.
The economy of the West Bank and Gaza has been systematically crippled. Israel currently blocks such dangerous items as pencils and chocolate from Gaza. The vast majority of people have no hope of ever getting a job. For many years the people of the West Bank have effectively been prisoners. They canât go anywhere without being held for hours on end at one of the hundreds of road blocks throughout a piece of land the same size as County Antrim. Their homes are bulldozed to make way for âsettlementsâ, roads and shopping centres that only Israelis can travel on and shop in. The already armed settlers are protected by armed IDF soldiers and huge fences. The shit from the settlements is literally dumped on the Palestinians. Check it out: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-israel-is-suppressing-a-secret-it-must-face-816661.html
The Jewish settler leader Daniella Weiss is quite clear about the aim of the settlements â it is to ultimately drive the Palestinians out of the West Bank entirely. Israel pays lip service to the notion of two states. Its actions suggest entirely the opposite. This is ethnic cleansing. The Israelis are quite good at it. Theyâve had practice.
Those people in Gaza and the West Bank, their parents and grandparents , they were the natives of what is now Israel. They too were burned and bulldozed out of their homes. Thatâs if they were lucky enough not to get shot. Israel talks about the âright of returnâ for Jews, people who have no connection whatsoever with that part of the world. What about the right of return for people who are the actual natives. They donât count I guess.
If you want the real story, why not have a read of some of the work of writers like Gideon Levy, Amira Hass, Ilan Pape or Robert Fisk instead of relying on the Murdoch press from whom you presumably get most of your information. You might learn something.
