Curbing Israel's reign of terror

[IndianaGreen]

Curbing Israel's reign of terror

Thursday 13 August 2009
Richard Bagley

The video clip says it all. A wild-eyed white middle-aged man hurls racist abuse across the room. His Arab target attempts to reply. He is shouted down. As the clip ends, the slogan appears. "No loyalty - no citizenship. Only Lieberman understands Arabic."

Unbelievably, the setting for this one-sided exchange was the Israeli parliament, the Knesset. The clip was part of far-rightwinger Avigdor Lieberman's election campaign. And it worked.

Running on a ticket of openly racist policies including the forced transfer of Arabs to "solve" the Jewish state's so-called "demographic problem," Lieberman's Yisrael Beteinu gained around 12 per cent of the vote and did enough within Israel's electoral system to muscle in on post-election coalition-building.

Lieberman is now deputy prime minister and foreign minister in Ehud Barak's government.

The rabid video image of Israel's leading far-right figure couldn't stand in starker contrast to Aymen Odeh. This articulate and softly spoken man in his mid-thirties is the general secretary of a party which could fairly claim to be the direct opposite of everything that Lieberman stands for.

The Democratic Front for Peace and Equality (Hadash) is unique in being the only non-zionist Arab-Jewish party with seats in the Knesset.

http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/features/curbing_israel_s_reign_of_terror

[Lakrosse]

1. too bad Lenin is dead

maybe you could complain about his Red Terror. Not to mentios this is extremely old news.

[IndianaGreen]

3. You are a fine product of our educational system

which is designed to mass produce unthinking and obedient consumers.

Congrats!

[proteus_lives]

8. Don't waste your time.

IG refuses to even acknowledge the Ukrainian Holodomor.

Stalin, Lenin and the rest of the gang of merry butchers are stainless saints in her eyes.

[Lakrosse]

11. its really something how those who hate Israel

are usually on the wrong side of history, if not always. Israel's enemies, like the leader of the Palestinian Arabs(as Ed Said even says), Haj Amin Al-Husseini collaborated on the Final Solution as well as the pro-Nazi coups that happened in the Arab world, in the Cold War Egypt and Syria were Soviet allies militarily and politically, and Egypt only left when they made peace with Israel, and today Israel's enemies many times, like Finkelstein, think OBL is just a swell guy.

[IndianaGreen]

20. And only an idiot would confuse opposition to Occupation with anti-Semitism

or hatred of apartheid in Israel with hatred for the whole of Israel and its people.

:puke:

[Alamuti Lotus]

9. really can't get over that avatar, eh?

[Violet_Crumble]

10. I guess I should keep my Lenin screensaver a secret?

Like, I don't want to get called a radical like that bunch of liberal elitist radicals over at Daily Kos! ;)

[izquierdista]

2. They have problems to solve?

Do tell, what kind of "Final Solution" do they have in mind?

[IndianaGreen]

4. ' fascists in the government, a militarised society and an established and growing underclass'

A good description of Israeli society!

[LeftishBrit]

5. A good description of most societies, unfortunately.

[IndianaGreen]

6. Particularly in the UK under New Labour

Can Cameron be worse than Blair or Brown? What's your opinion of your future Prime Minister?

[LeftishBrit]

7. It was worse under Thatcher!

Cameron would be worse than Blair and Brown. Perhaps not so much as an individual (though he's a bit of an upper class twit), as because he would not be able to stand up to the serious RW-ers in the party.

[Lakrosse]

12. such one that

the Palestinian population has multiplied a lot, whereas in the real and ONLY Final Solution, 6 million Jews were murdered. Some "holocaust" Palestinians experience where their population has grown.

[subsuelo]

13. no excuse for stolen land and mass slaughter

[Lakrosse]

14. what are you talking about

what "mass slaughter?" Have 6 million Palestinian Arabs been thrown into ovens? The Palestinian Arab civilians who die die because terrorists hide behind them.

[subsuelo]

15. 6 million people have to be thrown into ovens before the phrase "mass slaughter" can be used?

:crazy:

Face it, that's a *really* stupid argument.

[Lakrosse]

16. no I want to know what "mass slaughter"

are you talking about? Not to mention, people like you throw in bullshit Holocaust analogies all the time, when there is none.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

17. Israel has killed hundreds of innocent Palestinian civilians in the last few years alone.

Does that not count as a "mass slaughter"?

[oberliner]

18. Would you say that the US is guilty of a "mass slaughter" in Afghanistan?

Certainly no one can deny that US airstrikes have killed hundreds, perhaps thousands of Afghani civilians in the last few years.

Does that constitute a mass slaughter?

Did Sri Lanka engage in a "mass slaughter" of its own people?

Several thousand civilians were reported killed in a six month period.

I am not sure that term is appropriate in either case.

One can oppose and condemn the above mentioned actions and the actions of the IDF vis-a-vis the Palestinians without engaging in hyperbolic and (to my mind) inaccurate characterizations in order to ramp up the rhetoric.

If one uses terms like "mass slaughter" in these situations, it seems to drain the meaning of the term as it has been rightly implied in other, truly massive cases of slaughter - i.e Rwanda, Congo, etc.

[Vegasaurus]

19. I agree with this post

There is "mass slaughter" occurring in the world today, but it isn't happening to the Palestinians by Israelis.

There are more suicide bombings by Muslims on other Muslims in Iraq on a daily basis that Israel has perpetrated outside of one of the wars.

There are mass slaughters elsewhere in the world, in Sri Lanka and Africa, but no one blinks at those.

The question is...why?

[Violet_Crumble]

21. What is it with you and this thing of yrs about Muslims?

No-one was talking about Muslims, and I find yr determination to turn just about every thread you appear in into a negative thing about Muslims to be a bit ickky. It reminds me of antisemites I've seen on other forums who are so obsessed with Jews that they pop up in threads where no-one's mentioned Jews and bring them into the conversation in a negative way....

Also, Sri Lanka was discussed a lot even here in the I/P forum. I don't think there's any conflict that hasn't been discussed at DU...

[IndianaGreen]

23. It is called Islamophobia

A mental disease if not treated promptly.

[Violet_Crumble]

22. And what if someone does agree that it is?

I think it's far more consistent for someone who thinks what the US did to be mass-slaughter to also view what's been done to the Palestinians as the same. If they see it that way, I can't really take all that much issue with it, but I definately would if someone thought one was and the other wasn't. If yr merely 'not sure', then calling it hyperbole and reacting rather strongly to its use seems to be a bit over the top.

btw, Rwanda was not merely a mass-slaughter. It was genocide, and yr claim that using the term 'mass-slaughter' where you don't personally agree with it is diluting the term is a bit on the hyperbolic side. Tabloid journalists around the globe tend to use that term a lot, and their mass use of mass slaughter isn't going to make the genocide in Rwanda vanish just because its use isn't conforming with yr personal interpretation of it...

[oberliner]

24. Then I would disagree with them

Mass slaughter is the kind of thing that went on during genocides and violent conflicts such as the ones in Rwanda or Cambodia or Congo. In each case we are talking about deaths numbering in the hundreds of thousands or millions.

[Violet_Crumble]

25. Well, so would I, but at least I acknowledge they're consistent...

See, I think yr disagreement with what the US did in Afghanistan and Iraq as being termed by others 'mass slaughter' is motivated by yr desire not to see what Israel did in Gaza being described by anyone as 'mass slaughter'. btw, since when have the I/P conflict, Iraq or Afghanistan not been considered to be violent conflicts? Of course they are. Mass slaughter isn't something that only happens during a genocide and there's no quota for the number of victims to make something a mass slaughter. I've seen the killing of as few as five people referred to as a mass slaughter only recently, and I'd say that was an acceptable use of the term, and I've yet to see anyone object to it....

[oberliner]

26. In response to your theories about my motivations

You assert that my motivation has to do with my desire not to see what Israel did in Gaza being described by anyone as 'mass slaughter'. I would say that you are correct to some extent for the following reason.

My belief is that people deliberately refer to what Israel did in Gaza as 'mass slaughter' so that they can associate Israel with some of the most awful regimes in history that did (by anyone's definition) engage in mass slaughter. I think it's a rhetorical trick meant to forward the overinflated demonization of Israel rather than an attempt to describe accurately what took place during that conflict.

[Violet_Crumble]

27. I think yr belief about why other people use the term is wrong...

In some cases that may well be true, but not for those people who also use that term when it comes to Iraq etc. That's why I said that I didn't really have a problem with it if people also considered what the US did in Iraq and Afghanistan to be mass slaughter, because then they're clearly using the term in a consistent way, and there's no rhetorical trick involved at all.

How would you describe accurately what took place in Gaza?

[oberliner]

28. We're just going to have to disagree on that one

I would call what took place in Gaza a military attack or invasion.

[Violet_Crumble]

29. Yeah, let's agree to disagree n/t