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Benefit Gig for Palestine: The most oppressed people on earth (Brum)

SUBVERT SOUNDSYSTEM | 22.09.2009 13:57 | Palestine | Birmingham

Don't believe the hype. Israel continues to steal Palestinian land. Interpal are an organisation dedicated to relieving some of the misery caused by the Israelis illegal and brutal occupation of their lands. Please come along and support them.

Please support this benefit. All proceeds to Interpal
Please support this benefit. All proceeds to Interpal


Israel continues to steal Arab land
Direct Action Issue 15: September 2009
 http://directaction.org.au/issue15/israel_continues_to_steal_arab_land

By Kim Bullimore

On August 26, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu offered to freeze the building of new Israeli settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank for nine months. Netanyahu’s announcement has been presented in the Western corporate media as a “victory” for US President Barack Obama, who has been pressing Israel to halt its illegal settlement activity in the Occupied Palestinian Territories in order to be able to get the Israeli-Palestinian “peace process” restarted.

Obama’s Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, had been pressing for a 12-month freeze on illegal settlement activity in both the West Bank and East Jerusalem, both illegally occupied by Israel since June 1967. Netanyahu, however, has ruled out any halt to the Israeli takeover of Palestinian land in East Jerusalem, which Israel formally annexed in 1980 through its “Jerusalem Law”. This declared that “Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel”. This Israeli law was declared “null and void” and a violation of international law by UN Security Council Resolution 478, approved by 14-0 votes (with the US abstaining) in August 1980. A July 2004 statement of the International Court of Justice expressed the view that all countries are under an obligation not to recognise Israel’s illegal annexation of East Jerusalem.



According to the August 27 Tel Aviv Haaretz daily, Netanyahu’s settlement “freeze” offer excludes some 2500 housing units on which construction has already started and allows the erection of new “public buildings”, mainly schools, in existing settlements. Following the meeting with Mitchell, at which Netanyahu made his phony “freeze” settlement offer, the two issued a joint statement saying that “good progress” had been made in their discussions.

Writing in the August 12 Jordan Times, Hasan Abu Nimah, a former Jordanian ambassador to the UN, observed that “by demanding a temporary freeze [on Israel’s illegal settlements], the US is indirectly accepting what has been built so far, as well as the idea that Israel is entitled at the end of the agreed period to resume construction if its ever-escalating demands are not met”. He went on to argue that the notion of a “temporary freeze” allows Israel to shift the debate “from the illegality, under international law, of Israel’s settlements towards something totally superficial: the pace of construction”.


SUBVERT SOUNDSYSTEM

Comments

Hide the following 6 comments

most oppressed?

22.09.2009 18:02

why dont you ask the people of burma or north korea if they can help out the most oppressed people on earth

john


Realistic

22.09.2009 18:49

I agree that the Palastinian people are hugely oppressed and am fully behind this fundraiser... but surely calling them 'the most repressed people in the world' is a publiciity stunt? Oppression is not something you can neccessarily measure, it is subjective and while Israel's regime is brutal, illegal and disgusting to suggest that one group of people repressed under any particular regime is any better or worse off than another is unrealistic, niave and quite frankly betraying to other groups of the oppressed

Solidarity


Are you really quibberling?

23.09.2009 09:42

Are you really that concerned about the wording of the flyer that you have to come here and actively poor cold water on this event, rather than give your support - as you would like us to believe you are doing?

Or are you just a pair (even?) of internet warriors assuming the guise of the natives?

That such a question even arises should show how divisive your comments are, and how, in all probability this was your design.

I'm going.

Jackslucid


Nitpicking Trolls

23.09.2009 10:34

Have nothing better to do. Any well balanced human being wouldn't even bother reaching for the keyboard.

SUBVERT SOUNDSYSTEM


.

24.09.2009 19:31

I think the point is more a criticism of the lefts fetishism of the Palestinian struggle, that often blinds it to the brutal reality of other communities in equally as horrific situation, rather than a critique of the gig or its cause.

Miserablist


Making assumptions

24.09.2009 22:45

I wouldn't dream of 'pouring cold water' on such an event... I think its a wonderful idea and am in fact going to be attending too. I wouldn't for a moment do anything to undermine a fundraiser/ act of solidarity such as this, to suggest that I would do so simply by reading my last comment is making a huge and untrue assumption. I simply wish to show my support to all oppressed people by highlighting that ultimately what oppresses all people is the same... a corrupted system of so leadership recognised world wide as 'democracy', and to call one peoplemore or less oppressed than another is isolating the problem rather than admitting that all oppression and other evils are interlinked and addressing the cause head on.

Solidarity