Israel and Peace – mutually exclusive terms
Bombs are raining down on Gaza. In that tiny, densely populated strip of land on the Mediterranean, under merciless siege for the past 18 months, there is nowhere to hide, no sophisticated air raid shelters or safe zones. When the chilling phone call comes from the Israeli psyops that one’s home is near a target, there is nowhere safe to go. The initial Israeli attack however was reportedly a surprise.
It is well worth considering that 55% of the 1.5 million Gazan population are under the age of 18. Israel has killed 31 children and wounded 140 thus far in the past 4 days of its pogrom from a total 360 375 people killed and counting.
Israeli politicians and their complicit foreign muppets coldly bleat about how Hamas must stop its barrage of homemade rockets which have killed 4 people during Operation Cast Lead.
During the last seven years, 14 Israelis have been killed by mostly homemade rockets fired from the Gaza Strip, while more than 5,000 Palestinians were killed by Israel with some of the most advanced US-supplied armaments in the world. And while no rockets are fired from the West Bank, 45 Palestinians have died there at Israel’s hands this year alone.
Yet Israel refuses to seek a truce – they have more killing in mind and a powerful military funded gratuitously with yankee dollars with which to accomplish their goals.
Are they are enjoying this slaughter, this reenactment of the Shoah which was visited upon them long ago and with which they have threatened the people of Gaza this year? Will they stretch out their criminal collective punishment of the Gazan people until that mindless fool Bush is out of office?
How does Israel benefit from its vile acts of genocide? As Johann Hari accurately comments (the whole story is essential background to the current disaster):
Before it falls down the memory hole, we should remember that last week, Hamas offered a ceasefire in return for basic and achievable compromises. Don’t take my word for it. According to the Israeli press, Yuval Diskin, the current head of the Israeli security service Shin Bet, “told the Israeli cabinet [on 23 December] that Hamas is interested in continuing the truce, but wants to improve its terms.” Diskin explained that Hamas was requesting two things: an end to the blockade, and an Israeli ceasefire on the West Bank. The cabinet – high with election fever and eager to appear tough – rejected these terms.
The core of the situation has been starkly laid out by Ephraim Halevy, the former head of Mossad. He says that while Hamas militants – like much of the Israeli right-wing – dream of driving their opponents away, “they have recognised this ideological goal is not attainable and will not be in the foreseeable future.” Instead, “they are ready and willing to see the establishment of a Palestinian state in the temporary borders of 1967.” They are aware that this means they “will have to adopt a path that could lead them far from their original goals” – and towards a long-term peace based on compromise.
The rejectionists on both sides – from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran to Bibi Netanyahu of Israel – would then be marginalised. It is the only path that could yet end in peace but it is the Israeli government that refuses to choose it. Halevy explains: “Israel, for reasons of its own, did not want to turn the ceasefire into the start of a diplomatic process with Hamas.”
Why would Israel act this way? The Israeli government wants peace, but only one imposed on its own terms, based on the acceptance of defeat by the Palestinians. It means the Israelis can keep the slabs of the West Bank on “their” side of the wall. It means they keep the largest settlements and control the water supply. And it means a divided Palestine, with responsibility for Gaza hived off to Egypt, and the broken-up West Bank standing alone. Negotiations threaten this vision: they would require Israel to give up more than it wants to. But an imposed peace will be no peace at all: it will not stop the rockets or the rage. For real safety, Israel will have to talk to the people it is blockading and bombing today, and compromise with them.
The sound of Gaza burning should be drowned out by the words of the Israeli writer Larry Derfner. He says: “Israel’s war with Gaza has to be the most one-sided on earth… If the point is to end it, or at least begin to end it, the ball is not in Hamas’s court – it is in ours.”
The last thing Israel has ever wanted in its blighted, ugly existence is peace – it has proved this time and time again. Until it has expropriated all it wants from the Palestinians, it is in the interests of the Zionist enterprise to divide and conquer using Hamas and Fatah as pawns, manipulate international opinion, run a concentration camp in Gaza and get away as it usually does with endless bloody murder.
Happiness chemicals
Muso extraordinaire Darren Hanlon, bringing in 2009 on the Fringe!
Imagine there’s no heaven, I wonder if you can …
“A man who takes away another man’s freedom is a prisoner of hatred, he is locked behind the bars of prejudice and narrow-mindedness. I am not truly free if I am taking away someone else’s freedom, just as surely as I am not free when my freedom is taken from me. The oppressed and the oppressor alike are robbed of their humanity.” – Nelson Mandela
Ghazza bombed again … military might against the occupied and oppressed in a blockaded prison camp, Israel getting away with murder for the past 60 years. As Shalom Rav says:
How on earth will squeezing the life out of Gaza, not to mention bombing the living hell out of it, ensure the safety of Israeli citizens?
We good liberal Jews are ready to protest oppression and human-rights abuse anywhere in the world, but are all too willing to give Israel a pass. It’s a fascinating double-standard, and one I understand all too well. I understand it because I’ve been just as responsible as anyone else for perpetrating it.
So no more rationalizations. What Israel has been doing to the people of Gaza is an outrage. It has has brought neither safety nor security to the people of Israel and it has wrought nothing but misery and tragedy upon the people of Gaza.
Jewish Voice for Peace pleads for an end to the insanity:
Jewish Voice for Peace joins millions around the world, including the 1,000 Israelis who protested in the streets of Tel Aviv this weekend, in condemning ongoing Israeli attacks on Gaza. We call for an immediate end to attacks on all civilians, whether Palestinian or Israeli.
Israel’s slow strangulation of Gaza through blockade has caused widespread suffering to the 1.5 million people of Gaza due to lack of food, electricity, water treatment supplies and medical equipment. It is a violation of humanitarian law and has been widely condemned around the world.
In resisting these humiliations, Hamas resumed launching rockets and mortars from Gaza into southern Israel, directly targeting civilians, which is also a war crime. Over the years, these poorly made rockets have been responsible for the deaths of 15 Israelis since 2004.
Every country, Israel included, has the right and obligation to protect its citizens. The recent ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza shows that diplomatic agreements are the best protection for civilian life.
Moreover, massive Israeli air strikes have proven an indiscriminate and brutal weapon. In just two days, the known death toll is close to 300, and the attacks are continuing. By targeting the infrastructure of a poor and densely populated area, Israel has ensured widespread civilian casualties among this already suffering and vulnerable population.
This massive destruction of Palestinian life will not protect the citizens of Israel. It is illegal and immoral and should be condemned in the strongest possible terms. And it threatens to ignite the West Bank and add flames to the other fires burning in the Middle East and beyond for years to come.
The timing of this attack, during the waning days of a US administration that has undertaken a catastrophic policy toward the Middle East and during the run-up to an Israeli election, suggests an opportunistic agenda for short-term political gain at an immense cost in Palestinian lives. In the long run this policy will benefit no-one except those who always profit from war and exploitation. Only a just and lasting peace, achieved through a negotiated agreement, can provide both Palestinians and Israelis the security they want and deserve.
While the eve of destruction incorporating stock market crashes exhaled in the last panicky gasps of the print media is ever-present, over in the corner governments are getting busy with plans clamp down on our internet access as if our connections weren’t slow enough already. And now there’s shallow pontifications from UK “Culture” Secretaries … the pestilent, sanctimonious drive for control spreads fast.
The only thing worse than filthy web sites, are the filthy politicians who assure you that they are not launching their campaign to restrict free speech as a campaign to restrict free speech.
The Fringe is preparing a list of the best of the lists of whatever it was about 2008 that got you going. Meanwhile, we’re listening to our collection of live-streaming Darren Hanlon gems.
A Chorus of Logical Discontent
Clive Hamilton stirred an orchestra of disdain this week at Crikey with an amazing flakey rant, bragging about his fathering of Conroy’s proposed net censorship bastard. Such a polyphony of fallacious sour notes is peculiar from a Professor of Ethics with University maths training who regrets not studying philosophy, as Jon Seymour reveals in the foot of his superb dissection of Clive’s fuzzy thinking – and it shows.
Again in contrast, many of the comments following Clive’s disastrous diatribe, Colin Jacob from the EFA’s excellent article and Stilgherrian’s wittily scathing remonstrations, display cogent, honest reasoning.
For a very readable overview of the Australian net censorship issue, Raena Lea-Shannon’s piece “Conroy’s Web” is highly recommended. In the UK, Conroy is shamed as well, with the Guardian publishing a feature on Australia’s past and present antipodean obsessions with censorship.
And last but by no means least, Matthew Thompson over at ABC Unleashed makes the Fringe’s annoyance with the shallow populist prudery and technological blinkerdom of Rudd and team seem positively milquetoast.
Is debate between moral absolutism and moral relativism a red herring when the primary criticism of Conroy’s scheming is its technical unfeasibility? or should we watch carefully regardless, since as Oz moves toward a republic, tussles between cognitivists, noncognitivists and other philosophical camps will be germane to the formation (or not) of an Australian Bill of Rights.
NB To follow up – current HREOC Discussion paper and Louis Brandeis’ famous judgment.
Fear of serious injury cannot alone justify suppression of free speech and assembly. Men feared witches and burnt women. It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears. . . . Those who won our independence by revolution were not cowards. They did not fear political change. They did not exalt order at the cost of liberty. To courageous, self-reliant men, with confidence in the power of free and fearless reasoning applied through the processes of popular government, no danger flowing from speech can be deemed clear and present, unless the incidence of the evil apprehended is so imminent that it may befall before there is opportunity for full discussion. If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.
TWITFLASH!
@michaelmeloni
Clive Hamilton responds ( http://is.gd/8Drp ) to Jon Seymour’s article on STotC ( http://is.gd/8xz8 ) #nocleanfeed
MORE NEWS
Glenn Milne weighs into the debate, examining some of the unintended consequences of existing net filters.
Jon Seymour has now rejoindered to Hamilton’s response to him, aptly pointing out the false dichotomy presented in Clive’s ‘argument’ and maintaining “unless Clive admits he made a mistake and that his dichotomy was actually false, the charge of intellectual dishonesty still stands”.
Mark Newton comments on the impact of filters on net speeds.
Somebody Think of the Children notes that Logipik, a php image filter, interprets pictures of Conroy as porn.
More comment on the unworkability and undesirability of Conroy’s net filters from internet security expert, James Turner.
NEWS UPDATE
Senator Nick Minchin encapsulates the current debate on net censorship (Fringe can’t believe she’s commending a Lib for principled common sense – are they returning to their ‘liberal’ origins?):
“The Opposition firmly believes that adult supervision, supported by optional user-end filters, effective law enforcement and education should be front and centre of any efforts to keep children safe online,” he said.
“In relation to criminal conduct online, our nation’s law enforcement bodies must be adequately resourced to monitor and investigate unlawful activity.
“There is no technical substitute for appropriate adult supervision when it comes to keeping our children safe online and most parents and teachers take that responsibility very seriously and any suggestions to the contrary are patronising and offensive,” Senator Minchin said.
“Labor’s plan to implement a mandatory Internet filter at ISP level has been roundly attacked with valid concerns raised about its likely effectiveness, the adverse impact it would have on Internet speeds and performance and also the precise nature of the content the Government plans to filter.
“The Communications Minister Stephen Conroy has further fuelled concerns with his talk of filtering not only illegal content, but also unwanted and inappropriate content. This policy proposal is also causing Australia embarrassment internationally, with comparisons to the world’s most repressive regimes,” Senator Minchin said.
“The Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.” – John Gilmore
UPDATE 30 Nov
Chris Berg from the Institute of Public Affairs points out the obvious:
There is a certain element of Australian political culture that sees censorship and banning as the panacea to almost every social and policy question. But wowserism dressed up in concerned rhetoric about the sanctity of childhood is still wowserism.
UPDATE 1 Dec
Even children’s welfare groups see the filter is deeply flawed.
@KevinRuddPM Tweetwatch Cockatoo
Our Kevvie’s recent incoming and associated twitbites make for fun reading … here’s some favs to date – the characteristic laconic, down-to-earth verging on shameless Aussie lingo is alive and twittering.
rogers: @KevinRuddPM Frosty handshake? Why didn’t you sock that arsehole in the guts…?
hortovanyi: @fang mate, I’m always well behaved on here .. the only person I’m not sure about is @KevinRuddPM
grodscorp: @KevinRuddPM Would’ve thought you wouldn’t need to do dishes at White House dinner, Kevvie.
ninjamoeba: I love @KevinRuddPM ‘s bio: “PM.” Surprisingly succinct.
After Kev’s first, very muted, ‘vpod’ offering:
jimbiosis: @KevinRuddPM Sir, “growing the cake” is a mixed metaphor.
owenhodda: What is this vpod @KevinRuddPM speaks of? I am not down with the cool kid lingo
jamesfehon: @KevinRuddPM you mean a vlog?
lenier: @KevinRuddPM Re: “vpod”. You may have developed a term where many already exist. Welcome to Web 2.0! You’re fitting right in.
chrissylvester: just watched @KevinRuddPM’s vpod about the G20 and wanted to let you know he wished we’d sent @TurnbullMalcolm instead – chrissylvester team
Several commentators express concern about correct twitgrammar:
calvinccc: @KevinRuddPM My first thought was: wow the PM’s twittering in the 3rd person
danupoyner: Shock! @KevinRuddPM has changed from 1st to 3rd person. I like to think that it is actually still Kevin, just talking in 3rd person 🙂
iusebiro: am pretty disappointed that @kevinruddpm isn’t even pretending that it’s my beloved KevOhSev tweeting 🙁
cinema_monster: do you think @KevinRuddPM is actually the one updating his twitter? i’m kind of getting the image of my dad trying to work the dvd remote…
Digs at Conroy’s profoundly idiotic attempts to censor the Australian internet:
alexrzem: @KevinRuddPM That’s nice that you recorded a message for us. But how do you know that in the future it wouldn’t be blocked by your Firewall?
SilkCharm: @KevinRuddPm Hi Kev, thanks for your video G20 email http://twurl.nl/hon8lp – Please enjoy our #nocleanfeed video http://twurl.nl/06dsl3 🙂
Other tweets are disappointed with Kev’s autistic twitter demeanour, particularly in comparison to the more experienced twitterer @TurnbullMalcolm:
Mediamum: Gee, @KevinRuddPM has over 2000 followers and hasn’t had a conversation with anyone yet! FAIL
perkler: @KevinRuddPM just emailed me to say he looked forward to ‘our continuing dialogue’. I didn’t know we were having one. I got the email tho
jedwhite: @TurnbullMalcolm Great to see your genuine engagement through twitter. Very positive contrast to @KevinRuddPM. Hope u r finding useful.
@KevinRuddPM is now Number 8 on the Aussietwit list, yet it seems some followers are dissillusioned.
a_lil_spaz: The novelty has worn off now. Defollowing @KevinRuddPM & others people of political note. Sick of big shots not using Twitter appropriately.
caitabee: @KevinRuddPM I just unfollowed you. Fuck yes.
TWITFLASH!
We have liftoff! @KevinRuddPM is responding – and the cat is cool 🙂
