"suck on this."

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOF6ZeUvgXs

New Wog update

link at sig

to a rocket attack against civilian Israeli citizens within Israeli territory by an enemy that has as its stated goal the destruction of Israel (which was never the case with European Jews vis-a-vis the Nazis, for those who have tried to draw that analogy). Are they entitled to respond, and what achievable goal should they be permitted to set for their response? What portion of Hamas' military capacity should they be required to leave intact, knowing that it will be used in future attacks against them?

I once witnessed a near fatal fist fight between a New Orleans Saints fan and A Pittsburg Steelers fan.

In American movies most essentials are neatly reduced to a side of wrong, a side of right, a side of black, a side of white...no complex gradations in this most infantile of all modern and industrial nations.

Israel removed its military from Gaza because keeping it there was too dangerous and too expensive. Israel never ended the occupation of Gaza. The bogus "withdrawal was also meant to make it easier for Israel to focus on the much coveted West Bank, where Israel hasn't stopped stealing Arab land and expanding settlement. Israel decides who can leave or enter Gaza, Israel controls the Gaza air-space, controls access to the Gaza port and has implemented a suffocating and devastating blockade (in itself an act of war under international law) on Gaza. This is an occupation no matter how one looks at it. The notion that one nation can occupy another but the occupied should be prohibited from resisting is particularly hypocritical and offensive.

"Stick to facts.

Like the fact Israel placed a phone call trying to get the family of the Hamas leader out before they bombed"

Do you think we are all bloody idiots? Do you really expect us to believe that down right lie? Of course no attempt was made by Israel to make a warning phone call. It would have warned the Hamas guy as well wouldn't it?

No, they WANTED to kill his family as an act of terror and as a lesson to others. Well it wont work.

"I rarely see that effort at all being made when it comes to Israel/Palestine, which is why -- so much more often than not, by far -- the hard-core partisans on each side have a deeply ingrained, long-term emotional attachment to the side they relentlessly defend and justify.

But here you are proposing a false equivalency, which is one of the big problems in coverage of the Middle East. To be sure, there are those with deep attachments to Israel, that take an Israel Right or Wrong position, that are, like AIPAC, essentially wedded to the Likkud point of view. But there is not an equal and opposite set of people that support Hamas (though there are a few batshit actual anti-semites and conspiracy theorists).

I take it that most of us that have been debating the passionately attached crowd here on these threads these past few days essentially have the same position I do: a good deal of sympathy for the Palestinians, but no attachment whatsoever to Hamas, and no emotional or otherwise endorsement of their strategies and actions.

So I would take it as a debate between emotional partisans deeply attached to one particular country, and those of us deeply concerned about a humanitarian crisis, human rights, and simple justice. Oh, and about the actions, commitments, and moral responsibilities of our own country.

Oh, and personally, one of the reasons I get distressed about the whole situation is precisely because I do have an emotional attachment to Israel; I am deeply saddened that a movement and a people that was supposed to stand for some of the very best of human behaviour and thinking, has morphed into a very distorted, warped, and frankly, almost insane entity. That is determinedly pursuing a course of action profoundly detrimental to its own long-term interests, because it is internally politically gridlocked into near helplessness and held hostage by an extreme and blinkered minority.

Right now it's live, but when the show is archived later today (it's a two or three hour live show), Phyllis Bennis (the Transnational Institute, Institute for Policy Studies, and author of Challenging Empire: How People, Governments and the UN Defy US Power among others) discussed in great detail the ideological rigidity of the U.S. discourse system, including the foreign policy establishment and the mass news producers and punditocracy.

KPFA is a non-profit, listener-sponsored liberal / left / alternative radio station out of Berkeley, CA, launched by a man who wouldn't put up with the McCarthyite House Un-American Activities Committee's attempted lockdown on U.S. thought.

Live streaming links:

http://www.kpfa.org/listen/

Sunday Sedition archives, today's show likely to be available later today:

http://www.kpfa.org/archives/index.php?show=128

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More from Helen Suzman on Israel

SUZMAN: When he [Desmon Tutu] used to compare the treatment of blacks by the government here with the Holocaust, that used to irritate me very much indeed. ...

SIFRIN: Do you think it is possible, or useful, to compare such things as apartheid and the Holocaust?

SUZMAN: I don’t think it is possible, or useful. I think it is harmful. Because although there is no doubt that blacks were persecuted and oppressed and denied equal opportunities, there was never an actual attempt at genocide. And that is the real big difference.

It is true that a lot of babies die of malnutrition and a lot of people who were forcibly removed were starving in the rural areas... but they are not comparable situations, because the intention was not to wipe out the blacks.

http://undercoverblackman.blogspot.com/2009/01/helen-suzman-1917-2009.html

generalisation like that reveals profound ignorance. The Iberian navigators were inspired by the sail-structure Of the Arabian dhows plying off the east coast of Africa to build the caravels which eventually brought Christopher Columbus and his crewmen to the New World.

Let those "dumkopfs" who regard Arabs as barbarians visit Grenada in Andalucia, Spain, and see The Court of the Lions, testament to the beautiful architecture of the Moorish people who held sway in Southern Spain until their overthrow by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella (lose reyes catolicos). It was they who financed Columbus' exploration in 1492. Islamic art is very beautiful and a friend of mine has been to the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, as a tourist, and was amazed by its magnificence. Asa woman, I would not be attracted to the Islamic faith but I'm grateful to the despised Arabs that it was they who taught the Europeans the secret of perfume-making. This acquired knowledge of distillation found its way northward. Some of the most famous alcoholic liquors in the world came from the monasteries of Champagne and Chartres.

The British politician, George Galloway, broke away from Tony Blair's New Labour Party at the time of the invasion of Iraq, starting a splinter-group called "Respect". It's perfectly clear that the Iraqi people, among the first in the world to far, write and domesticate animals, didn't have the respect of most Americans whose own achievements in world culture are not quite so dazzling. Now any commentator that decides Palestinians (aka Arabs) are lesser people than others is merely displaying his own pig-ignorance. In my opinion, religion has been used by too many psychopaths to foment hate just as psychos of the secular kind do exactly the same. RESPECT!