APARTHEID EXISTS NO MATTER HOW MUCH YOU LOT DENY IT..........

Nick Mason and Roger Waters, the founding members of Pink Floyd, have called for the Rolling Stones to cancel their Israel tour date, currently scheduled for June 4 in Tel Aviv as part of their 14 “On Fire” tour. It will be the first time the band has ever played Israel.

In a statement published Thursday by Salon, Mason and Waters declared their support for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS), which they call “a growing, nonviolent global human rights movement initiated by Palestinian civil society in 2005 to end Israel’s occupation, racial discrimination and denial of basic Palestinian rights.” In an entreaty to the Stones and other bands, they wrote:

So, to the bands that intend to play Israel in 2014, we urge you to reconsider. Playing Israel now is the moral equivalent of playing Sun City at the height of South African apartheid; regardless of your intentions, crossing the picket line provides propaganda that the Israeli government will use in its attempts to whitewash the policies of its unjust and racist regime.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/05/02/pink-floyd-to-rolling-stones-boycott-israel/

On Thursday, the last day of the conference, the podium was dominated by the CEOs of the world’s technology and communications giants, who all unanimously crowned Israel as the most innovative hi-tech nation on earth.
The star-studded turn-out at the conference was seen locally as a major defeat for the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which aims to put pressure on Israel to surrender to Arab demands by getting a-listers like De Niro to shun the Jewish state.

Robert DeNiro, Left, Israeli President Shimon Peres, Right
IsraellyCool Obviously, this should put to rest the slanderous rumor the Left has put out about DeNiro’s alleged disdain for the Jewish state. Israel haters have claimed the following for a while, yet no-one has ever been able to find this supposed interview.
According to the Left, ‘There was an interview on Fox News with Robert De Niro as the guest. The host asked Robert about events related to Gaza. Robert replied: “Why do we blame Israel or the Israelis for what they do?” The host was shocked because he knows that De Niro is always declaring his sympathy with Palestine.

De Niro looked at the host and saw his confusion…..…so he continued: “Ok let me explain, if you were bitten by a mad infected dog, who will you blame? the dog or its owner? Definitely the owner, so, all the blame is on the USA Government’s shoulders for adopting and supporting a state like Israel”



SAYS IT ALL.....

Sorry to claim Apartheid in Israel is not only disgusting but absurd, especially, where nations like Saudi and other surrounding it have the worst human rights records and treatment of minorities.

I find it appalling that the center of the argument is on Israel the only true democracy within the whole of the Middle East, buthey lets ignore the plight of countless minorities who face persecution every day at the hands of Islamic Theocracies and so called democracies

Phildidge wrote:Sorry to claim Apartheid in Israel is not only disgusting but absurd, especially, where nations like Saudi and other surrounding it have the worst human rights records and treatment of minorities.

I find it appalling that the center of the argument is on Israel the only true democracy within the whole of the Middle East, buthey lets ignore the plight of countless minorities who face persecution every day at the hands of Islamic Theocracies and so called democracies

I did explain this to you on another thread and as ALWAYS you ignored it.

What other country is at war? Yes WAR HAVING BOMBS BLASTED ON THEM? Children being MURDERED every single day?

So shut the fuck up with your pathetic robotic responses Didge

SEXY MAMA wrote:

Phildidge wrote:Sorry to claim Apartheid in Israel is not only disgusting but absurd, especially, where nations like Saudi and other surrounding it have the worst human rights records and treatment of minorities.

I find it appalling that the center of the argument is on Israel the only true democracy within the whole of the Middle East, buthey lets ignore the plight of countless minorities who face persecution every day at the hands of Islamic Theocracies and so called democracies

I did explain this to you on another thread and as ALWAYS you ignored it.

What other country is at war? Yes WAR HAVING BOMBS BLASTED ON THEM? Children being MURDERED every single day?

So shut the fuck up with your pathetic robotic responses Didge

Wow how infantile and from some one I have always defended can speak to me in such a very appalling manner:


Learn:



I have been writing about your conflict for more than three decades. Invariably, I find myself delving into the same themes time and again. The nature of the conflict remains the same. You coexist, and short of self-inflicted catastrophe, you are destined to coexist until the end of time. You must now choose to live in harmony and peace, or in self-consuming enmity and hate.

No Israeli or Palestinian child should ever die for a cause that defies reality and reason. Taking teens hostage and horrifically killing them in cold blood, or abducting a child and grisly burning him alive defies your religious beliefs and the basic tenets of your humanity.

Like beasts, the militant madmen among you creep in the shadows for their prey, to satisfy their lust for revenge and retribution. They disgrace you as a people and a nation, while poisoning the next generations with hostility and disdain, robbing them of their future and destroying the little hope left to live in harmony and peace.

A majority of you Israelis and Palestinians are crying out for peace, yearning still for that elusive day when you can retire to bed without fear and face tomorrow excited about what lies ahead. Every day that exacts blood and torments so many is a day when your graves are dug ever deeper, burying innocent children and any hope for a better future.

The gap between you grows ever wider, feeding the vicious cycle of death and destruction. Instead of reaching out compassionately, you obliterate the last traces of empathy toward one another, knowing that there is no place to go but together.

You, the so-called leaders, are the culprits behind this miserable state of being. Immersed in blind ideology or misguided religious dogmas and possessed by a messianic mission, you incite your people and fan the flames of acrimony and violence.

Shame on you Naftali Bennett, you are a zealous madman. You want to annex much of the West Bank and openly preach the invasion of Gaza. You proclaim that war with Hamas is inevitable and that “It’s preferable that we’re [the Israelis] the ones who initiate it.”

You are a menace to the people of Israel whom you presumably wish to protect. It is alright that hundreds of Israelis and Palestinians die as long as you continue to amass fortunes and enjoy the opulence that life can offer.

And what about you, Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’ misguided leader? You are a fanatic fool who refuses to see the light. You extolled the kidnapping of the three Israeli youth, you call for another Intifada and encourage “the escalation of the resistance,” only to watch thousands of Palestinians die as sacrificial lambs to satisfy your twisted ego and hollow religious convictions.

And Israel’s Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon, you have long since lost your moral bearings; unabashedly you advocate collective punishment of the Palestinians, proudly announcing: “If terrorists find refuge among Palestinians, then Palestinians will pay the price.”

Khaled Meshal, Hamas’ brazen political leader, you encourage more abduction of Israelis and with venom you “congratulate” the abductors as if this is the recipe to be “[free] from the prisons of the occupation.” You invite more misery on so many innocent Palestinians, who simply want to live a normal life devoid of constant anguish and pain.

Prime Minister Netanyahu, you cannot hide behind your tempered reaction to the abduction of the three Israeli teenagers and your expressions of sympathy to the family of the young Palestinian boy who was beaten and set on fire. You are now reaping the fruits of your relentless expansionism and blind ideological bent.

You have created this untenable situation between you and the Palestinians a nd largely contributed to the impasse and the hopelessness of ever reaching a peace agreement.

This is your plight, Israelis and Palestinians alike; you are led by inept, self-centered leaders with no vision and no courage. Have you ever paused and asked the simple question: where do we go from here? None of you – Bennett, Haniyeh, Netanyahu, Meshal, and Abbas – know what will be the fate of Israel and Palestine in five or ten years should you continue to pursue your bankrupt policy.

You, Israelis and Palestinian leaders and people, must come to terms with the harsh reality you refuse to face. You are stuck; there is no escape and no future without the other.

You radical Palestinians who seek the destruction of Israel will do so at your peril. Israel is here to stay and will never die alone. And you Israeli zealots who conspire to thwart the Palestinians’ aspiration for a state of their own will irreparably erode Israel as a Jewish state. Israel will become a garrison state, isolated and loathed by the community of nations.

Paradoxically, Netanyahu and Abbas, you can still change the current perilous path. If you truly desire to achieve peace based on a two-state solution, then prove it by rising to the call of the hour and reverse the tragedies of recent days into a triumph over the evil of extremism.

This is the time when you must stand tall together and proclaim your unshakable commitment to realize peace now, in our time. You have the moral responsibility to make the sacrifice of innocent Israeli and Palestinian children whose lives were cut short the catalyst for peace and not the cause of more violence and death.

Netanyahu, you can no longer use the potential fall of your coalition government as an excuse for making gratuitous concessions to the Palestinians. Do not listen to the hawks and invade Gaza time and again.

Once the calm is restored, you must muster the courage, dissolve your government and form a new coalition dedicated to the path of peace.

In spite of your past mistakes, you still possess the leadership qualities needed now to prevent the looming disaster. This could be your long career’s finest hour, or the hour of infamy and shame for failing to rise above the fray.

Abbas, you too must make the hard choice. Whereas your unity government is preferred for peace negotiations, you must demand that Hamas adhere to the rules of engagement and no longer permit Hamas to have it both ways.

You must insist that Hamas’s leaders forsake violence once and for all, or dump them to wallow in their own morass. They will pay dearly for betraying their fellow Palestinians in Gaza, who are despairing for a taste of freedom and a glimmer of hope.

You, Israelis and Palestinians of conscience, must now raise your voices and be heard loud and clear: enough is enough, no more bloodshed, no more waste of precious lives, no more tears, and heartbroken mothers and fathers.

The time has come for you to strive for peace as the continuation of conflict will never yield a winner but mutual death and destruction. There is no glory, no heroism, no dignity and no martyrdom in death, when peace is within your grasp.

*****

*****

Dr. Alon Ben-Meir is a professor of international relations at the Center for Global Affairs at NYU. He teaches courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies.  




http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alon-benmeir/an-open-letter-to-the-isr_b_5578303.html

Listen here Didge

You dont DEFEND me you are your own person i have never asked you to do anything for me so cut the BS ok

I can see through your hypocrisy so spare me that crap.

As for your post above

Has it got through your head that IFONE NATION WANTS TO WIPE OUT ANOTHER there cant be peace???????

SEXY MAMA wrote:Listen here Didge

You dont DEFEND me you are your own person i have never asked you to do anything for me so cut the BS ok

I can see through your hypocrisy so spare me that crap.

As for your post above

Has it got through your head that IFONE NATION WANTS TO WIPE OUT ANOTHER there cant be peace???????

Wow you really have turned into something quite horrible and clearly have not appreciated the help people give you and clearly do not understand not everyone is going to agree with you.

Most people want peace on each side, not the lame propaganda bullshit you promote, with again I find it appalling you speak very little out against the regimes in Muslim countries where women are treated like dirt, maybe this is along the lines of this new judgement you are preaching. Israel has by far the better humane rights than any of these nations and where they target military sites, Hamas are indiscriminate in their targets, but again both sides are wrong in that they care little for people dying and again spouting shit about Israel is not going to resolve the problem, people uniting together against the violence will

Seriously what you now preach on Israel is extremism

SEXY MAMA wrote:Listen here Didge

You dont DEFEND me you are your own person i have never asked you to do anything for me so cut the BS ok

I can see through your hypocrisy so spare me that crap.

As for your post above

Has it got through your head that IFONE NATION WANTS TO WIPE OUT ANOTHER there cant be peace???????

Max Blumenthal - Award Winning Journalist


Award-winning journalist and best-selling author Max Blumenthal says the Israeli Prime MinisterNetanyahu and Israel's intelligence services knew the day after the three Israeli students were abducted that they had been killed. Yet he kept this information from the parents of the kidnapped students, the Israeli public and the world. Why?

FROM THE MOMENT three Israeli teens were reported missing last month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the country’s military-intelligence apparatus suppressed the flow of information to the general public. Through a toxic blend of propaganda, subterfuge and incitement, they inflamed a precarious situation, manipulating Israelis into supporting their agenda until they made an utterly avoidable nightmare inevitable.

Israeli police, intelligence officials and Netanyahu knew within hours of the kidnapping and murder of the three teens that they had been killed. And they knew who the prime suspects were less than a day after the kidnapping was reported.

Rather than reveal these details to the public, Israel’s Shin Bet intelligence agency imposed a gag order on the national media, barring news outlets from reporting that the teens had almost certainly been killed, and forbidding them from revealing the identities of their suspected killers. The Shin Bet even lied to the parents of the kidnapped teens, deceiving them into believing their sons were alive.

Instead of mounting a limited action to capture the suspected perpetrators and retrieve the teens’ bodies, Netanyahu staged an aggressive international public relations campaign, demanding sympathy and outrage from world leaders, who were also given the impression that the missing teens were still alive.

Meanwhile, Israel’s armed forces rampaged throughout the occupied West Bank and bombarded the Gaza Strip in a campaign of collective punishment deceptively marketed to Israelis and the world as a rescue mission.

Critical details that were known all along by Netanyahu and the military-intelligence apparatus were relayed to the Israeli public only after the abduction of more than 560 Palestinians, including at least 200 still held without charges; after the raiding of Palestinian universities and ransacking of countless homes; after six Palestinian civilians were killed by Israeli forces; after American-trained Palestinian Authority police assisted Israeli soldiers attacking Palestinian youths in the center of Ramallah; after the alleged theft by Israeli troops of $3 million in US dollars; and after Israel’s international public relations extravaganza had run its course.

The assault on the West Bank arrived on the heels of the collapse of the US-led framework negotiations, for which the US blamed Netanyahu, and immediately after Hamas’ ratification of a unity deal with the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority. Netanyahu was still smarting from the US recognition of the unity government when news of the kidnapping reached him. Never one to miss an opportunity to undermine the Palestinians, he and his inner circle resolved to milk the kidnapping for maximum propaganda value.

Weeks after the incident, it is now clear that the Israeli government, intelligence services and army engaged in a cover-up to provide themselves with the political space they required for a military campaign that had little to do with rescuing any kidnapped teens.

The disinformation campaign they waged sent a heavily indoctrinated, comprehensively militarized population into a tribalistic frenzy, provoking a wave of high-level incitement, the shocking revenge killing of an innocent Palestinian teen and rioting across East Jerusalem.

Where the chaos will end and how far it will spread is unknown. But its origins are increasingly clear.

Gagging the media, lying to teens’ parents

On 12 June, three Jewish Israeli youths, Naftali Frenkel, Gilad Shaar and Eyal Yifrach, went missing while hitchhiking from Kfar Etzion, an illegal settlement in the occupied West Bank. At 10:25pm, Shaar placed a panicked call to Israeli police.

During the eerie call lasting two minutes and nine seconds, the supposed kidnappers can be heard ordering the youths to keep their heads down. Israel Radio plays in the background as Shaar repeatedly appeals for help. Then several gunshots can be heard followed by celebratory singing as the kidnappers remark, “We got three.” The teens had been killed.

It took until the next morning for the police to connect the call to a missing persons report filed by the youths’ parents. In a meeting with Shin Bet officials that day, the teens’ parents listened to a recording of the phone call.

Bat Galim Shaar, the mother of Gilad Shaar, demanded investigators explain to her why gunshots can be heard in the background, and if this meant that her son was dead.

According to Bat Galim Shaar, police claimed the bullets were “blanks.” When the car used by the alleged kidnappers was discovered burned by a roadside, the Shin Bet told her no DNA was found. In fact, bullets and blood were present throughout the interior of the car. The Shin Bet had lied to the parents of the missing teens in order to stoke false hopes that their sons were alive.

“When [the Shin Bet] told me finally at 6:00am Friday that the army was on the job, I felt better — as if we were in good hands,” Bat Galim Shaar told Israel’s Channel 10. “I was naïve, I told everyone Gilad would be home before Shabbat.”

Having deceived the victims’ parents, Israel’s military-intelligence apparatus moved to conceal the truth from the general public, imposing a gag order that barred the country’s media from reporting on the sound of gunshots in the recorded call to police.

According to the text of the gag order, which was first published in English at Mondoweiss, the military had forbidden Israeli reporters from publicizing “All the details of the investigation” and “All details that might identify the suspect.”

Not only did all involved in the investigation — Netanyahu, the Shin Bet, the military — know right away that the three missing teens were almost certainly dead, they had identified the two men they believed were responsible for the crime little more than a day after it occurred.

To legitimize the military’s wider goals, they withheld this information as well.

Hiding the suspects

On 17 June, Arabic-language news site Rai Al Youm reported that Israeli police and Shin Bet agents had raided the homes of Marwan Qawasmeh and Amer Abu Eishe, the main suspects, near the southern West Bank city of Hebron. As a Palestinian news outlet based in London, Rai Al Youm was not subject to the Israeli military’s gag order and was therefore free to publish the names of the two accused kidnappers.

Citing a report in the Israeli online news outlet Walla! which was either scrubbed due to the gag order or otherwise rendered inaccessible, Rai Al Youm summarized an account by the father of Abu Eishe as follows: “On Saturday at dawn [two days after the alleged kidnapping was reported], special forces of the Israeli army stormed into the house and interrogated sons of the family trying to find any information that could lead them to his whereabouts but they were unsuccessful.”

Abu Eishe’s father added that the Shin Bet had also arrested his son’s wife to interrogate her about his whereabouts. An uncle of Qawasmeh remarked that four of his nephew’s brothers and his wife were arrested the day after the alleged kidnapping and interrogated.

Rai Al Youm added: “several of the military correspondents in the Hebrew media have reported last Friday on a statement attributed to a Palestinian security official in which he said that the PA [Palestinian Authority] is tracking two Hamas personnel who disappeared last Thursday [the day of the kidnapping] and that the security forces of the PA have given the information they have to Israel. And now it’s clear that this story was true and that Israel is looking for them and has charged them with being behind the kidnapping.”

Allison Deger, a correspondent for Mondoweiss, visited the Qawasmeh home and confirmed that the army and Shin Bet brought several male members of the families in for interrogation on 14 June.

In a normal high-profile criminal investigation, the names of fugitive suspects are widely publicized. Investigators prominently display posters of the wanted criminals in public spaces while police officials stage press conferences appealing for help from the public. In this case, however, Israel’s intelligence services chose to keep their suspects’ identities a closely-held secret for two weeks.

While Netanyahu and his top deputies blamed the entire membership of Hamas for the kidnapping, the Shin Bet gag order suppressed all information relating to the identities of the suspects until 26 June. As far as the Israeli public knew, the kidnappers could have been anywhere in the West Bank, in any schoolhouse or coffee house or hen house where anyone remotely affiliated with Hamas congregated.

Having manipulated an exceptionally suggestible population through the careful management of information, the military had all the political latitude it needed to rampage through cities far from the scene of the crime.

During a raid of Birzeit University near Ramallah, Israeli troops seized hundreds of Hamas flags, carting them away in trucks as though they had obtained valuable evidence. When the army bombarded the Gaza Strip, the only justification it needed was that the besieged coastal territory was governed by Hamas.

A poll released on 2 July revealed that 76 percent of Jewish Israelis approved of the army’s actions and expressed overwhelming support for the Shin Bet.

In the near term, the gag order had produced its intended result.

Rogue element

Though Qawasmeh and Abu Eishe were widely identified as veteran members of Hamas’ military wing, they comprised a rogue element that likely acted without the knowledge and against the wishes of Hamas leadership.

According to Israeli journalist Shlomi Eldar, members of the Qawasmeh clan of Hebron have earned a reputation for attacking Israeli civilian targets during ceasefires between Hamas and Israel.

While an extended family of over 10,000 can hardly be blamed for the actions of some of its members, it is notable that attacks carried out by fighters from the family were privately criticized by top Hamas leaders, as Eldar explains. Hamas leadership regarded the operations as self-destructive acts of freebooting and often paid for them in the form of Israeli assassinations. In each case, the violence shattered ceasefires and inspired renewed bouts of bloodshed.

“The same is true now,” Eldar writes. “Marwan Qawasmeh and Amer Abu Eishe have taken Hamas to a place where its leadership never intended to go.”

Hamas leadership has yet to take responsibility for the kidnapping and likely had no knowledge of its planning. As Haaretz military correspondent Amos Harel notes, “So far, there is no evidence that Hamas’ leadership either in Gaza or abroad was involved in the kidnapping.” Harel adds that the fallout of the kidnapping “effectively froze the Fatah-Hamas reconciliation.”

Why would Hamas leadership have authorized an operation that so clearly threatened to unravel the movement’s political achievements, wrecking the vaunted unity deal and leaving Abbas without rival in the West Bank?

The Israeli government’s propaganda blitz drowned out sobering questions like these. In turn, the gag order obstructed the flow of information that would have complicated the propaganda.

Determined to reframe the international media’s narrative around Israel’s plight at the hands of Palestinian terrorism, Netanyahu went on the offensive.

#BringBackOurBoys

On 17 June, the same day the Israeli army forcibly confiscated CCTV cameras in Beitunia that captured footage of its soldiers killing two unarmed Palestinian boys during a Nakba Day protest, Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Ron Prosor appeared behind a lectern at the UN Mission SaveFrom.net in New York City.

“It has been five days since our boys went missing,” Prosor thundered, “and I ask the international community, where are you? Where are you?!”

Referring to the Fatah-Hamas unity government, Prosor added: “All those in the international community who rushed to bless this marriage should look into the eyes of the heartbroken parents and have the courage to take responsibility by condemning the kidnapping. The international community bought in to a bad deal and Israel is paying for it.”

Beside Prosor stood a large placard displaying the smiling faces of the three missing teens beneath a hashtag reading #BringBackOurBoys. Israel’s propaganda blitz was approaching its apex.

For days, leaders of Israel’s trained online propaganda brigades — from the Israeli army spokesperson’s unit, to the Jewish Agency, to the Prime Minister’s Office — flooded social media with the #BringBackOurBoys hashtag. Mimicking Michelle Obama’s promotion of the #BringBackOurGirls hashtag that aimed to raise awareness of the kidnapping of Nigerian schoolgirls by Islamist militants, the Israeli prime minister’s frowning wife, Sara, posted a portrait of herself on Facebook holding a card that read, #BringBackOurBoys.

The social media campaign reverberated throughout Jewish communities across the US, as synagogues around the country displayed yellow ribbons in a carefully coordinated show of solidarity with the missing teens. In New York City, local politicians appeared at pro-Israel rallies, while American diplomats from US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power to Ambassador Susan Rice competed with one another to deliver the most emotional tribute to the kidnapped teens.

Rachel Frenkel, the mother of the kidnapped Naftali Frenkel, was junketed by the Israeli government to the UN Human Rights Committee in Geneva, Switzerland to plead for international help in rescuing her son.

The entire propaganda campaign was set into high gear despite Netanyahu and his inner circle’s knowledge that the teens were almost certainly dead. And it was enabled by the Shin Bet’s gag order, which even foreign correspondents like The New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief Jodi Rudoren honored. The Israeli government refused to allow the facts from interfering with what seemed like a political opportunity.

Behind the pitiable image it affected before the world, Israeli society seethed with bloodlust. A spontaneously-created Facebook page calling for the execution of one Palestinian prisoner for each day the teens remained missing garnered more than 35,000 “likes” from mostly young Israelis in just a few days. It was called “The People of Israel Demand Revenge.”

Manipulated by a high-level campaign of deception and disinformation into believing that “their boys” were still alive, the Israeli public was about to receive shocking news.

A shallow grave

At 6am on 30 June, the bodies of Frenkel, Shaar and Yifrach were found in Halhoul at the northern entrance to Hebron in the occupied West Bank. They lay in a shallow grave on property owned by Marwan Qawasmeh, one of the two men suspected in their kidnapping and killing.

The bodies were discovered not by the Shin Bet, but by a team of volunteers from the Kfar Etzion Field School who led soldiers to the location. For its part, the army had been too busy invading Palestinian homes in areas as far away as Nablus to effectively comb the property of a suspect less than 10 kilometers from the site of the kidnapping.

Hours after the discovery, Israeli forces detonated explosive charges inside the Qawasmeh and Abu Eishe family homes. The destruction followed an announcement that the army was re-instituting its policy of punitive home demolitions against the families of Palestinians accused of terrorism.

That afternoon, Netanyahu set the tone for the national response, publishing remarks on his personal Twitter account that he had just delivered in a cabinet meeting:

With heavy grief we found 3 bodies. All signs indicate they are of our abducted youths Eyal, Gilad and Naftali.

They were abducted & murdered in cold blood by human animals. On behalf of the entire Jewish People, I would like to tell the dear families - the mothers, fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers, and brothers and sisters – we are deeply saddened, the entire nation weeps with you.

Vengeance for the blood of a small child, Satan has not yet created. Neither has vengeance for the blood of 3 pure youths who were on their way home to their parents who will not see them anymore. Hamas is responsible and Hamas will pay. May the memories of the 3 boys be blessed.

Netanyahu’s comments perplexed outsiders, but for those embedded inside the tight confines of Jewish Israeli life, they carried a familiar resonance.

From Kishinev to Jerusalem

Netanyahu’s statement alludes to the final stanza of a poem by the Hebrew writer Chaim Bialik titled “On The Slaughter”:

Cursed be he who says: “Avenge!”
Vengeance such as this, vengeance for the blood of a small boy,
Satan himself has not devised-
Let that blood pierce the abyss!
Let that blood pierce the depths of darkness,
Let it eat away the darkness and there undermine
All the rotted foundations of the earth.

In Bialik’s verse, a searing lament anchored in Biblical language, the poet dramatized a brutal 1903 pogrom incited by the Russian Tsar that left scores of Jews dead in the town of Kishinev.

Bialik followed his first account of Kishinev with “The City of Slaughter,” an incendiary work admonishing the victims of the pogrom for their supposed passivity in the face of armed marauders. (Reports of ferocious resistance by the locals was conveniently overlooked.) The poem helped radicalize thousands of young Jews across Eastern Europe, inspiring the formation of self-defense committees and winning waves of adherents to the militant philosophy of Zionism. Among those most influenced by Bialik was Vladimir Jabotinsky, the right-wing Zionist activist who would later become a political benefactor to Netanyahu’s father, Benzion.

In his crude appropriation of Bialik’s verse, Benjamin Netanyahu recast the Russian pogromist as a Palestinian militant, drawing a seamless line between the Jewish nightmare of pre-war Europe and the present-day Israeli experience. In Netanyahu’s view, the “human animals” of Palestine had inherited the genocidal spirit of the Tsar’s mobs and would repeat their crimes unless Jews were prepared to fight.

Of course, Israeli Jews are the exact opposite of turn-of-the-century shtetl dwellers girding themselves against pogroms and ethnic cleansing. Unlike the persecuted outclass of Eastern Europe, Israeli Jews comprise a nuclearized, high-powered military that lord over an outcasted, largely defenseless Palestinian population with full support from the world’s lone superpower.

For his part, Netanyahu shares more in common with the Russian Tsar who incited against religious minorities to deflect from his political problems than he does with Bialik, the itinerant scribe who channeled the pain of his society’s weakest members.

The exploitation of historical Jewish persecution has been a constant feature of Netanyahu’s rhetoric, on bold display during a nationally televised speech last October when he baselessly accused the Palestinian national movement of a direct role in the Holocaust.

This time, amidst a dangerously pressurized atmosphere, his demagogy helped set in motion a wave of vigilante violence that threatened to engulf the whole of Israeli society. Then he shrank from public view, maintaining a conspicuous silence for several days while the extremist elements he emboldened took control of the streets.

“Murder, riots, incitement, vigilantism”

As mobs of Jewish youths fanned out across central Jerusalem to chant “Death to Arabs!” and search for Palestinians to assault, active duty Israeli soldiers took to Facebook to demand revenge, posting photos of themselves with the weapons they were aching to use.

With an Israeli public opinion poll taken after the Israeli teens’ funeral showing the far-right Jewish Home party gaining ground on the right-wing Likud, Israeli political upstarts rushed to issue calls for blood vengeance and the “annihilation” of Hamas. Ayelet Shaked, a rising star of the right-wing Jewish Home party, published a call for the genocide of Palestinians on Facebook that earned thousands of “likes” from Israelis.

Rabbi Noam Perel, the secretary general of Bnei Akiva, the world’s largest religious Zionist youth movement, upped the ante on fanaticism when he called for turning the Israeli military into an army of avengers “which will not stop at 300 Philistine foreskins.” Akiva’s appeal alludes to the first book of Samuel, in which the biblical character David kills two hundred Philistines and brings back their foreskins as evidence that he had done so.

Against the backdrop of fever-pitched incitement, a small car entered the back streets of Shuafat, a Palestinian neighborhood in East Jerusalem, on 2 July. Behind its darkened windows were angry young men hunting for Arab boys.

Following a botched kidnapping of a ten-year-old boy in the same neighborhood the day before, a group of men grabbed a 16-year-old named Muhammad Abu Khudair, threw him in their car and sped away. Abu Khudair was found dead the next morning in the woods of Givat Shaul just west of Jerusalem with burns over 90 percent of his body.

As they did after the kidnapping of the three Israeli teens, the Shin Bet imposed a gag order on the investigation, seemingly hoping to delay the news that Abu Khudair was the victim of Jewish extremism. And as before, the police flooded Israeli media with disinformation, this time by insinuating the murdered teen had been killed by members of his own family for being gay.

The Electronic Intifada has obtained CCTV footage showing the faces of the alleged killers of Abu Khudair just as they abducted him. The video was concealed for several days from the Israeli public under a new Shin Bet gag order. When the police finally arrested the suspected killers of Abu Khudair, they curiously staged a simultaneous press conference about an unrelated killing a young Jewish woman, suggesting without any clear evidence that she had been the victim of a Palestinian terrorist.

On 4 July, an autopsy revealed that Abu Khudair’s killers had burned him alive. Protest and rioting spread from Shuafat across East Jerusalem and into areas of northern Israel. Meanwhile, Jewish nationalists took to Facebook to organize more lynch mobs.

Netanyahu surfaced briefly the day before at an Independence Day ceremony at the US consulate in Jerusalem. With US Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro seated by his side, the Prime Minister was forced to confront the binge of racism that he helped inspire.

Speaking in English for the consumption of his American hosts, Netanyahu declared, “Murder, riots, incitement, vigilantism — they have no place in our democracy. And it is these democratic values that differentiate us from our neighbors and unite us with the United States.”

Outside, the chaos showed no sign of ebbing.

http://www.stopwar.org.uk/news/did-netanyahu-s-government-know-the-three-kidnapped-israelis-were-dead-as-it-whipped-up-racist-frenzy#.U8JXZEBvrhc

Of course there is apartheid. Arabs in Israel are even schooled in separate schools, it's policy.

Again complete bullshit, why is there mixed schools as I proved?

Phildidge wrote:Sorry to claim Apartheid in Israel is not only disgusting but absurd, especially, where nations like Saudi and other surrounding it have the worst human rights records and treatment of minorities.

I find it appalling that the center of the argument is on Israel the only true democracy within the whole of the Middle East, buthey lets ignore the plight of countless minorities who face persecution every day at the hands of Islamic Theocracies and so called democracies

You've become rather adept at denial, Israel needs to take some responsibility over the matter, it is a powerful nuclear state, with access to the most modern WMDs, its reach is deep into the very fabric of finance, arms and exploitation, it's human rights record is disgusting and it often plays the victim card of history in order to pursue it's own form of belligerence.

Everyone is telling Israel to stop behaving like the school yard bully, and Israel will not listen.

Phildidge wrote:

SEXY MAMA wrote:Listen here Didge

You dont DEFEND me you are your own person i have never asked you to do anything for me so cut the BS ok

I can see through your hypocrisy so spare me that crap.

As for your post above

Has it got through your head that IFONE NATION WANTS TO WIPE OUT ANOTHER there cant be peace???????

Wow you really have turned into something quite horrible and clearly have not appreciated the help people give you and clearly do not understand not everyone is going to agree with you.

Most people want peace on each side, not the lame propaganda bullshit you promote, with again I find it appalling you speak very little out against the regimes in Muslim countries where women are treated like dirt, maybe this is along the lines of this new judgement you are preaching. Israel has by far the better humane rights than any of these nations and where they target military sites, Hamas are indiscriminate in their targets, but again both sides are wrong in that they care little for people dying and again spouting shit about Israel is not going to resolve the problem, people uniting together against the violence will

Seriously what you now preach on Israel is extremism

Nope what i have done is see CLEARLY what you are Didge.

This isnt about you not agreeing with me lol how childish are you?

I dont agree with Smelly on many things yet we have never been nasty to each other why?

Because he isnt a hypocrite.

scrat wrote:

Phildidge wrote:Sorry to claim Apartheid in Israel is not only disgusting but absurd, especially, where nations like Saudi and other surrounding it have the worst human rights records and treatment of minorities.

I find it appalling that the center of the argument is on Israel the only true democracy within the whole of the Middle East, buthey lets ignore the plight of countless minorities who face persecution every day at the hands of Islamic Theocracies and so called democracies

You've become rather adept at denial, Israel needs to take some responsibility over the matter, it is a powerful nuclear state, with access to the most modern WMDs, its reach is deep into the very fabric of finance, arms and exploitation, it's human rights record is disgusting and it often plays the victim card of history in order to pursue it's own form of belligerence.

Everyone is telling Israel to stop behaving like the school yard bully, and Israel will not listen.

What did you fail to understand about the letter I posted?

It will take both side to stop being idiots, that means both sides, not one, which means again uniting the people together, not casting blame onto one all the time, showing how you clearly fail to understand many things Scrat.
maybe you want to tell the Israeli people under attack as well to just say, hey fire rockets at us, its okay.
That is absurd, your views are biased and unfounded beyond belief, I want peace for both sides, which means both sides stopping the madness, but to claim apartheid of Israel is disgusting, especially when you compare the nations surrounding them

Phildidge wrote:Again complete bullshit, why is there mixed schools as I proved?

The only thing you have PROVED is you are an idiot

101
DISCRIMINATION AGAINST PALESTINIAN ARAB
CHILDREN IN THE ISRAELI EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM
ZAMA COURSEN-NEFF
*
I. INTRODUCTION
The Israeli government operates two separate school systems for
its 1.8 million school children: a Jewish system and an Arab system.
1
The students in the latter are Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel,


http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/related_material/JILPfinal.pdf


Might be a bit long for you 62 pages by Children's Rights Division, Human Watch

SEXY MAMA wrote:

Phildidge wrote:


Wow you really have turned into something quite horrible and clearly have not appreciated the help people give you and clearly do not understand not everyone is going to agree with you.

Most people want peace on each side, not the lame propaganda bullshit you promote, with again I find it appalling you speak very little out against the regimes in Muslim countries where women are treated like dirt, maybe this is along the lines of this new judgement you are preaching. Israel has by far the better humane rights than any of these nations and where they target military sites, Hamas are indiscriminate in their targets, but again both sides are wrong in that they care little for people dying and again spouting shit about Israel is not going to resolve the problem, people uniting together against the violence will

Seriously what you now preach on Israel is extremism

Nope what i have done is see CLEARLY what you are Didge.

This isnt about you not agreeing with me lol how childish are you?

I dont agree with Smelly on many things yet we have never been nasty to each other why?

Because he isnt a hypocrite.

Hilarious and a complete lie as you have both been very nasty to each other, so please do not tell me any bullshit, sorry I now see how you have been indoctrinated as badly as he has, this is what hate does, it make people badly fall under a spell of revenge and retribution, this is how people are drawn to terrorism.

You are acting like a child, from your first response to me.
Talk about making me turn my beliefs on the perception of Muslims, luckily I am not that way to one individuals poor views

SM, have put the idiot back on ignore now, could only see him because of the name change. He will deny anything, but we knew that anyway.

SEXY MAMA wrote:

Phildidge wrote:Again complete bullshit, why is there mixed schools as I proved?

The only thing you have PROVED is you are an idiot

Yet another childish reply.

So what are you doing about the human rights abuses in Saudi?
How about the plight of the 1 million Lebanese refugees?
How about the plight of women in Afghanistan and Pakistan?

Sassy wrote:SM, have put the idiot back on ignore now, could only see him because of the name change.   He will deny anything, but we knew that anyway.

You see Cass, this is what I am talking about.

As some one who has seen the effects of war up close and personally,Both sides are guilty of "tit for tat" .Some one who is respected by both sides needs to act as a mediator, although who that could be I have no idea. When some one holds the body of their child who has been mangled by bomb or bullet the thought of peace goes out of the window!! there is only one thought, REVENGE,on who ever is responsibe.Can any one say "who started it"?

Did the concert go ahead? I notice it was scheduled for June 4th

yes i agree mama and its a crying shame that the savage Muslim barbarians are such a threat that the Jews are once again forced to live in segregated ghettos in order to survive

Good to see you back so soon Didge -ignore Fatmama and Sassy, they're just out to shit stir - and SM's continued refusal to condemn theocracies like Saudi speaks volumes. Not a moderate Muslim at all.

Gig, fuck off.

Sassy wrote:Gig, fuck off.

Who the fuck is Gig?