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Thursday, February 19, 2009

Tell Me Who Your Friends Are...

A few days ago Juan Cole had this to say:
Outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has ruled out allowing needed goods into Gaza, which Israel has virtually surrounded from land and sea, until Hamas releases captured Israeli soldier Sgt. Gilad Shalit. Olmert is thereby committing a war crime. You can't collectively punish the general Gaza population if you are the occupying authority. It is not allowed to torture that wailing child in the video above by keeping out painkillers, just because some adult somewhere from the same territory captured an Israeli soldier. But Olmert will get a pass on his war crimes. Apparently you only get punished for them if you are weak or lose; it isn't the crime but the power of the criminal that matters.
This is more or less what the Palestinian representative at the UN says, too (and keep in mind that he's a PA, i.e. Fatah person, not a Hamas appointee)
The Palestinian UN observer, Riyad Mansour, stressed the importance of achieving a long-lasting cease-fire so that Israel does not go and attack our people as they want but said Shalit's release should not be linked to the opening of border crossings.

"These are two separate issues," he told reporters. "To connect them in this manner, it means that the Israeli government is not interested in a long-lasting cease-fire now, and not interested in opening the crossings and lifting the siege."
Not everyone, however, agrees. Among the dissenting voices one can find - mildly astonishingly - Robert Serry, the UN's top Mideast envoy (same link as Mansour):
Serry told council members that a durable cease-fire can only be achieved if there is broad progress including an exchange of Palestinian prisoners for Shalit, who was captured in a 2006 cross-border raid, action to prevent the smuggling of weapons into Gaza, the opening of borders, and unity among rival Palestinian factions.

These steps, he said, would also pave the way for the longer term recovery and reconstruction of Gaza.

"I emphasize these points...because one month since unilateral cease-fires were declared, a proper cease-fire is still not in place, and there is an ever present danger of a return to the unsustainable conditions of last year, or even for renewed and more devastating violence," Serry warned.

Asked afterward about Israel's decision to link the border openings with
Shalit's release, the UN's special coordinator for the Middle East peace process said, "If you want to improve the situation in Gaza, you have to look at the other issues as well, and Shalit is a very important one."
So, on one side we've got Cole and the Palestinians, while on the other side we've got an important UN fellow and Israel. How very peculiar.

6 comments:

  1. "ALL OF THE PALESTINIANS MUST BE KILLED;
    MEN, WOMEN, INFANTS and EVEN THEIR BEASTS"
    Rabbi Yisrael Rosen
    Here is Rabbi Yisrael Rosen's Website
    http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3266113,00.html

    "All of the Palestinians must be killed; men, women, infants, and even their beasts" cries the religious opinion of Rabbi Yisrael Rosen, the director of the long-established Tsomet Religious Institute. He wrote that Palestinians are like the nation of Amalekites, who attacked the Israelite tribes led by Moses on their way to Jerusalem. He stated that the Lord sent down in the Torah a ruling that allowed the Jews to kill the Amalekites, and that this ruling is known in Jewish jurisprudence (That's exactly what the Israeli Offensive Forces did in Ghaza.)

    The Torah states: "Annihilate the Amalekites from the beginning to the end. Kill them and wrest them from their possessions. Show them no mercy. Kill continuously, one after the other.. Leave no child, plant, or tree. Kill their beasts, from camels to donkeys.." Rosen stated that Amalekites are not a particular race, but rather all those who hate and oppose the Jews; Christians and Muslims.

    Many leading Israeli Rabbis support Rosen's views. Israel's former Sephardic Chief Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu advocated carpet bombing of Gaza stating that "there is absolutely no moral prohibition against the indiscriminate killing of civilians during massive military offensive on Gaza" (The Jerusalem Post, 30 May, 2007). His son Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu amplified his father's genocidal call stating: "if they don't stop after we kill 100, then we must kill a thousand, then we must kill 10,000 and even a million"

    Many Rabbis had argued that Palestinians in Gaza are not innocent civilians and that during war time it is not individuals but nations the Israelis are fighting. (It seems that Hitler had adopted this Telmudic teaching when he persecuted all European Jews)

    Israeli educators, scholars, and politicians, openly, advocate the annihilation of all Palestinians. Dr. Nachum Rakover, a legal scholar, opined "They voted for killers and sent them to kill us. To call them (civilians) innocent is a tragic comedy… civilians are partners of the killers" Eli Yeshai, Israeli official in the Orthodox Shas party argued that "extermination of the enemy is sanctioned by the Torah" Many other politicians called for the need for "wiping off Gaza from the face of earth", and "annihilating of every moving thing there." The right-wing Israeli politician Avigdor Lieberman proposed nuking Gaza following the US example when it dropped the atomic bomb on Japan during WWII.

    This "ideology of annihilation" is by no means a minority opinion in Israel, but represents a mainstream in the Jews of Israel as well as Jews in the West (US). The popular attitude is "if it was right by God to order us to commit genocide during Biblical time, why can't it be right to commit genocide now. Has God changed his mind?" Indeed Judaic god is a racist genocidal god.
    Watch and listen here to an example of how Israeli Jews are brainwashed and indoctrinated into the ideology of annihilation by their rabbis and scholars through Israeli media. Watch Max Blumenthal's videotape of a group of messianic Orthodox Jewish Chabad-Lubavitch exhibit this ideology in NYC in January 11, 2009.

    The Israeli spokesman, Nachman Abramovic demonized Palestinian children stating "They may look young to you, but these people are terrorists at heart. Don't look at their deceptively innocent faces, try to think of the demons inside each of them … I am absolutely certain these people would grow to be evil terrorists if we allowed them to grow… would you allow them to grow to kill your children or finish them off right now? … honost and moral people ought to differentiate between true humans and human animals. We do kill human animals and we do so unapologetically. Besides who in the West is in a position to lecture us on killing human animals. After all, whose hands are clean?"

    Human animal mentioned by Abramovic refers to the Judaic religious belief that Jews are Gods chosen people; the elite and the pure-blooded, while all others (non-Jews, Goyims, gentiles) are animal souls incarnated into human bodies to serve the Jews. Killing a human animal is just a sport like hunting deer or birds.
    More here: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=m42961&hd=&size=1&l=e

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  2. exactly where is the quote written in the aforemntioned article?!

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  3. Someone has a problem in quoting, or cannot read...what a poor guy, anonymous 1.Good to have an enemy for you muslims,to have a nice typically grim face, or what? So now I understand you have to blow uo the world, for you cannot argue!

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  4. Anonymous 3 is vile and hate-filled...They must be a Zionist.

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  5. @1 is spamming us with blood libel based on the uruknet propaganda piece listed at the bottom of his post and based on other (often virulently anti-Semitic) fabrications. The uruknet piece is fabricated, anti-Semitic claptrap from beginning to end. So is post @1.

    The comment is also pretty much irrelevant to the blog post. I suspect that this troll went looking for somewhere to post his blood libel - some blog that hadn't banned him yet.

    @2 your answer is that the rabbi never said it. The uruknet piece is simply lying when it "quotes" the article.

    Here is an ACTUAL quotation from the end of Rabbi Rosen's YNET article: "Of course, we must warn people and allow them to escape, in accordance with halacha (Jewish law), derived from verses in the Torah. "

    @3 It's not clear that @1 was written by a Muslim. Whoever it was states that "Indeed Judaic god is a racist genocidal god", which at least to my understanding would be considered blasphemy toward Allah. @1 might just as easily be a leftist lunatic who has been brainwashed by the deluge of Jew-hating filth poured out by the "anti-Semitism industry" flourishing in the Arab world.


    One thing that must be understood about many anti-Semites is that while your identity, and mine, are heavily invested in intellectual honesty, rational conversation and productive problem-solving in an imperfect world, a hard-core anti-Semite is a person whose identity is heavily invested in hating Jews and "taking revenge" on us for real and imaginary wrongs. These priorities are far more important to a hard-core Jew-hater than learning the truth about us (Jews and Israelis), rationally talking to us, or trying to find ways to repair a badly broken world.

    In hard-core anti-Semites, this hate-driven mindset exists below the level of conscious thought, down at the level of subconscious reaction ("habits of thought"). For some people, any discussion of Jews or of Israel automatically brings up feelings of rage and hatred and the desire to hurt us, regardless of the actual topic, venue or participants in the discussion. Such a person cannot even conceive that you or I might have a very different reaction.

    As with other well-entrenched habits, such a subconscious pattern is comfortable to repeat and difficult to break without a concerted and conscious effort. And unfortunately, because the hatred is so heavily rationalized and reinforced, and is such an important part of their identity, such a person rarely wants to tear off the shackles.

    I'm not talking about all anti-Semites. There are plenty of casual haters who are just ignorant, and there are plenty of opportunists who use anti-Semitism as a tool to get what they want. I'm talking about hard-core types. The hard-core haters are probably over-represented online, and that the majority of any population - even the population of anti-Semites - probably fall into the other categories.

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  6. The last comment was by me, by the way.

    -Zvi

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