Just recently there were people going full out to attack the pro-Tibet protests as being a CIA/MIwhatever orcrestated plot to distract attention from Israel/Palestine and/or Iraq. Well there is a big bad world outside of the Middle East, which is not the only place where nasty things happen to people without any power.

Now it's a case of Israel/Palestine being a distraction from Iraq! Now, the opening paragraph of the OP was:

"Iraq is big and under USUK occupation. Palestine is small and under Israeli occupation. Hmm. Which one shall we protest against... the one that our country is not occupying of course!"

Now, since Israel is supported though funding and the supply of armaments by the US, and to a lesser extent (in comparison with the US), the UK, the US/UK have just as much responsiblity for the occupation of Palestine as Israel do, after all, if we were to pull the plug on funding of the Israeli regime, they would soon be forced to find ways of dealing with the attacks by Hamas/Islamic Jihad/etc which DON'T involve blowing up anyone and anything that surrounds them while collectively punishing the Palestinans as a whole.

Oh, and incidentally, a lot of the movement has been happily protesting about social injustices in Iraq, Palestine, Tibet, and anywhere else where the powerless have been suffering, and will continue to do so until that suffering is no more.

could you try to be a little bit more divisive?

most iraq protests have included palestine and vice versa anyway, something to do with protestors being aware i think.

also what have we got to do with it? well let's start at the  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balfour_Declaration_of_1917 and work from there.

How many times does this need to be said?


THE CAUSES ARE NOT MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE.

YOUR CAMPAIGN DOES NOT LOSE OUT BECAUSE CAMPAIGNS EXIST FOR OTHER ISSUES.

HUMAN RIGHTS PROTESTS ARE NOT A FUCKING ZERO-SUM GAME.

...we should protest about Israel and Tibet for the same reasons - broadly - we protest about Iraq; a hatred of injustice and oppression

It's the UK govt. that's occupying Iraq. Our involvement in Israel since 1948 has basically consisted of peacekeeping missions.

I'm uncomfortable with the relentless focus on Israel and the promotion of antisemitic conspiracy theories, i.e. "Zionists" are responsible for 9/11, the Iraq war, and so forth. It is really quite creepy.

The "protests" against Israel are a disturbing development, and I for one am not happy to identify with Hezbollah and Hamas, whether their cause is just or not they are against every I stand for as a human being - equality, democracy, women's rights. Also I have heard of Jews being put right off the Iraq war protests because of this. Is this really the direction we want to go down, or should the anti-war movemnt be more inclusive?

Also, isn't it a bit racist to single out a particular country for protest and demonisation? This newswire seems to feature far more Israel stuff than anything else, and this is a conflict we are not directly involved in, unlike Iraq. Why is there such a focus on Israel? We've caused suffering and harm on an order of magnitude greater than anythign Israel has done, and Iraq never attacked us.

I hope there's a real debate about this. The anti-war movement seems to be commidifying protest and the peopel who are buying seem to be anti-semitic racists.