Hat tip: Humanize Palestine
A Song for Palestine
-
-
Black Girls Rock!
Flickr Photos
-
Potus Takes Oath of Office
Flotus & Daughters at Great Wall of China
My Brothers Keeper
-
-
-
-
-
AFRO PUFFS
Most Adorable Shoe Stealer
Six Little Babies
Fatherhood
-
-
Even though 3Chics Politico is written and curated by three women: Ametia, Rikyrah, and SouthernGirl2, I must nominate this as one of the most engaging blogs I've found. Devoted to politics and culture, these three shine a light on contemporary life with humor and spirit.
-
3Chics Action Alert
Lets Make It Happen
3 Chics Trio
-
REALITY Blog Award
Recent Comments
Top Posts
Guard The Change
Vote 4 Democrats
-
-
-
Go to the polls
President Barack Obama
First Lady Michelle Obama
Obama Love
Your Vote Matters
President Obama & Bo
The Obama Family
-
-
-
-
Presidential hug
-
The MSM has moved back to Chris Christie and other Americans jokers in the card game of propoganda. They don’t care to report on the little brown children who are being SLAUGHTERED.
Gaza: Why a ‘Cease-Fire’ is Not enough
By Juan Cole | Jul. 27, 2014 |
When ordinary countries fight wars they have war aims. In World War II, the US wanted to defeat Germany militarily, but then to help it return to democracy and to economic health. By 1947 the US would actually be spending a lot of money on Germany’s well-being via the Marshall Plan.
Israel has no strategic war aims in Gaza because it has no large scale, long term strategy concerning the Strip. Its war is all about tactics and minutiae. How many tunnels and rockets can it destroy? How much damage can it inflict on the Hamas leadership? But tunnels and rockets can be rebuilt and the dead leaders’ cousins will take over after them.
It is frankly stupid to think the Israelis can, in Mitt Romney’s words, kick the can down the road forever on making peace with the Palestinians. It hasn’t tried because Israel wants Palestinian land and resources and won’t give them up.
The United Nations has raised the specter that because of the Israeli blockade and the consequent inability of Palestinians in Gaza to build their infrastructure, it may well not be habitable by 2020. Its only native source of water, an aquifer, is 90% polluted. If Gaza fails, where will its by-then 2 million people go? Will Israel just let them thirst to death? Renal failure typically sets in in about 3 days if people don’t have water. That is genocide. Israel gives no evidence of doing any planning to avert that outcome in a territory for which it is responsible in international law.
The one strategy Israel has is to use collective punishment and a blockade on children and other non-combatants in an attempt to weaken Hamas. But even if they could succeed (so far they haven’t), the Israelis don’t seem to realize that the hellhole that is Gaza will always throw up radical groups intent on breaking the 1.7 million Palestinians there out of their large open-air jail, in which Israel is keeping them.
That is, Israel’s only real strategy is causing war, not ending war.
Gaza is not a country, that Israel can be at war with it. It is a tiny strip of land surrounded by Israel from land, sea and air, which is kept from exporting its made goods for the most part, faces severe restrictions on imports, and therefore has had imposed on it a 40% or so unemployment rate. Some 56% of Palestinians in Gaza are food insecure. Gaza is recognized by the international community as an occupied territory, with Israel being the occupying power. If being occupied by Israel were so great, by the way, why is Gaza so badly off?
Hamas keeps rejecting any ceasefire that does not include a provision for the lifting of the siege of the civilian population.
I heard the French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, speaking after the meeting of diplomats in Paris, and he spoke about a settlement that allowed for the social and economic development of the Palestinians.
What a joke! France is has done nothing practical to end the blockade or allow Palestinians to develop.
So a cease-fire that does not include an end to the blockade on Gaza by Israel is not a cease-fire, it is a pause in the war.
http://www.juancole.com/2014/07/gaza-cease-enough.html
Thank you for this, Liza!
YW, SG2. Juan Cole is good.
Professor Ilan Pappé: Israel Has Chosen to be a “Racist Apartheid State” with U.S. Support
2014-07-28
AMY GOODMAN: As we continue our coverage of the crisis in Gaza, we go to Haifa, Israel, to speak with Ilan Pappé, a professor of history and the director of the European Centre for Palestine Studies at the University of Exeter in Britain. He’s the author of a number of books, including, most recently, The Idea of Israel: A History of Power and Knowledge, joining us by Democracy Now!
Welcome to Democracy Now!, Professor Pappé. At this point, over a thousand Palestinians have been killed, as well, I believe the number is 45 Israeli soldiers, and three civilians have been killed in Israel. Can you talk about the latest negotiations over a ceasefire and what you think needs to happen?
ILAN PAPPÉ: It’s good to be on your show, Amy. There is no sign for a ceasefire on the ground itself. And there are sort of two competing initiatives still going on: The Egyptian-Israeli initiative that actually wants to dictate to the Hamas a return to the status quo and sort of marginalize and disregard everything that Hamas was fighting for, and there is a more serious effort that the secretary of state was trying to push forward, John Kerry, with the help of the Qataris and the Turks, to try and address at least some of the issues that are at the heart of this present wave of violence. But so far, none of the two has affected the reality on the ground, apart from a certain lull in the last few hours compared to the last 20 days.
AMY GOODMAN: There were protests in Tel Aviv. How many people came out at those protests, as well as Haifa this weekend? Were you there at the protest in Haifa, Professor Pappé?
ILAN PAPPÉ: Yes, yes, I was. Haifa, there were about 700 people. In Tel Aviv, there were 3,000. I should say that, of course, a large number of the protesters are Palestinian citizens of Israel. So the number of Israeli Jews who are courageous enough to come out and demonstrate is even smaller than these numbers indicate. And they were met by a very vicious reaction both from right-wing demonstrators and very harsh—and were harshly treated by the police.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you think it’s most important for people to understand about the conflict?
ILAN PAPPÉ: I think the most important thing is the historical context. When you listen to mainstream media coverage of the situation in Gaza, you get the impression that it all starts with an unreasonable launching of rockets into Israel by the Hamas. And two very basic historical kind of backgrounds are being missed. The very immediate one goes back to June this year, when Israel decided, by force, to try and demolish the Hamas politically in the West Bank and foil the attempts of the unity government of Palestine to push forward an international campaign to bring Israel to justice on the basis of the agenda of human rights and civil rights.
And the deeper historical context is the fact that ever since 2005, the Gaza Strip is being—or people in the Gaza Strip are being incarcerated as criminals, and their only crime is that they are Palestinians in a geopolitical location that Israel doesn’t know how to deal with. And when they elected democratically someone who was vowed to struggle against this ghettoizing or this siege, Israel reacted with all its force. So, this sort of wider historical context, that would explain to people that it is a desperate attempt to get out of the situation that your previous interviewee was talking about, is at the heart of the issue, and therefore it is soluble. One can solve this situation by lifting the siege, by allowing the people of Gaza to be connected with their brothers and sisters in the West Bank, and by allowing them to be connected to the world and not to live under circumstances that no one else in the world seems to experience at this moment in time.
AMY GOODMAN: Professor Pappé, over the weekend, BBC correspondent Jon Donnison reported on what was called an Israeli admission that Hamas was not responsible for the killing of the three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank in June. On Twitter, Donnison said Israeli police spokesperson Micky Rosenfeld told him the suspects who killed the three teenagers were a lone cell affiliated with Hamas but not operating under its leadership. What is the significance of this?
ILAN PAPPÉ: It’s very significant, because this was, of course, known to the Israelis the moment they heard about this abduction and the killing of the three young settlers. It was very clear that Israel was looking for a pretext to try and launch both a military operation in the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip in order to try and bring back the situation in Palestine to what it was during the failed peace process, with a sort of good domicile, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, in a way that they could forget about it and continue with the colonization of the West Bank without the need to change anything in their attitude or policies. And the depression in the West Bank, the frustration, the anger, especially in May 2014, of the killing of five young Palestinians by the Israeli army, burst out in this local action, this local initiative, that had nothing to do with the strategy of the Hamas, that was willing to try and give Abu Mazen leeway to create a unity government and to try the new initiative—going to the United Nations, going to international bodies, in order to make Israel accountable for more than 46 years of colonization and occupation. So it really highlights the connection between a pretext and a policy and a strategy which has wreaked such carnage in Gaza today.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Professor Pappé, you worked in Israel for years as a professor. You left Israel and now teach at the University of Exeter in Britain. You’ve returned to Haifa. Do you see a change in your country?
ILAN PAPPÉ: Yes, unfortunately, a change for the worse. I think the Israel is at a crossroad, but it has already made its decision which way it is going from this junction. It was in a junction where it had to decide finally whether it wants to be a democracy or to be a racist and apartheid state, given the realities on the ground. I think Israel, in 2014, made a decision that it prefers to be a racist apartheid state and not a democracy, and it still hopes that the United States would license this decision and provide it with the immunity to continue with the necessary implication of such a policy vis-à-vis the Palestinians, wherever they are.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you think the U.S. should do?
ILAN PAPPÉ: Well, the U.S. should apply the basic definitions of democracy to Israel and recognize that it is giving, it’s providing an unconditional support for a regime that systematically abuses the human rights and the civil rights of anyone who is not a Jew between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean. If America wants clearly to support such regimes—it had done it in the past—that’s OK. But if it feels that it wants to send a different message to the Middle East, then it really has a different agenda of human rights and civil rights in Palestine.
http://www.democracynow.org/2014/7/28/professor_ilan_pappe_israel_has_chosen
America has a problem identifying who oppressors are. When one invade another’s land, you are not the damn victim. **looks@Carol Costello of CNN**
The world has to know what the Palestinian people have suffered. I have tears. It’s the saddest thing you’ve ever seen. They had no one to help them.
Shujayea: Massacre at Dawn
So heartbreaking……
Hi Yahtzee! I’m glad to see you.
My heart is grieved about this. Netanyahu is a cold deceptive mofo. He is filled with so much hate for the Palestinians. He has no conscience.
Haaretz.com ✔ @haaretzcom
Follow
Israel’s war of deception 2014 http://dlvr.it/6RK0Fy
9:58 PM – 26 Jul 2014
I think that the MSM are shook by all the expanding protests for the Palestinians all over the globe. Folks not buying the propaganda.
Social media is killing them. Americans have generally paid very little attention when Israel decides it’s time for some collective punishment in Lebanon or Gaza. MSM tells people Israel was attacked and everyone recites the mantra, “Israel has the right to defend itself.” But it slowly changes when younger people worldwide get their news elsewhere and see the carnage.
The US, whether it’s John Kerry or whoever is SoS will never solve this problem because the US is major part of the problem, the enabler.
Faces of the slaughter. Such an ugly mess.
So heartbreaking. It crushes the soul. All gunned down because of power and greed. Shameful.
You have to heartless not to be effected. I wrote this poem the other day. http://wp.me/p28tjX-1fp
Wow! That’s deep! But so true.
And very painful.
The victims faces always look like these in Israel’s collective punishment massacres. They are so young, so of course they are beautiful, especially the children. Looked at in these photos, they are ordinary folk, just wanting to live their lives, which is their right.
Beautiful photos, SG2.
Gaza’s demographics are interesting. Over 767,000 people are 14 or under, just children, almost 44% of the population. Someone who is 8 years old or under has grown up under the blockade, living in an open air prison, knows no other life.
Population 1,763,387 (July 2013 est.)
Age structure
0-14 years: 43.5% (male 394,108/female 372,897)
15-24 years: 20.9% (male 188,626/female 179,529)
25-54 years: 29.6% (male 268,122/female 254,630)
55-64 years: 3.4% (male 29,682/female 29,933)
65 years and over: 2.6% (male 18,701/female 27,159) (2013 est.)
http://www.indexmundi.com/gaza_strip/demographics_profile.html