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Israel keeps its promise of a 'Holocaust' in Gaza

imc-uk-features | 05.03.2008 21:05 | Palestine | Repression | World

After months of inhuman siege and daily attacks, Israel last week mounted a massive offensive against the Gaza Strip, which has claimed the lives of over 100 Palestinians, including many civilians and children. Israeli officials had threatened the Palestinians with "a holocaust" if home-made rockets fired at nearby Israeli towns did not stop. As the aggression continues, so do solidarity protests throughout the world.

From the Newswire: Children gassed and shot in Gaza solidarity protests | Blockade on Gaza: Crime against humanity | The Gaza Strip's People are dying, Help us! | Palestine in darkness | Israel's policy in Gaza: at least as evil as it is self-defeating | Still no justice for October 2000 killings | Palestine society not allowed in Birmingham
Audio: Indy Global Report from Bethlehem | Palestine Today & This Week in Palestine | Flashpoints

Recent solidarity protests: London: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | Manchester | Sheffield: 1 | 2 | Wales

Links: International Middle East Media Centre | Palestine News Network | Electronic Intifada | End Gaza Siege | Indymedia UK's Palestine topic page

Israel's plans for Gaza: Holocaust upon the Palestinians!
Israel's plans for Gaza: Holocaust upon the Palestinians!


'Barbarous' siege

The Gaza Strip, with a population of some 1.5 million, has been placed under a total siege by the Israeli army since June 2007, shortly after Hamas took control over the strip from Fatah. Later that year, in September, the Israeli government declared Gaza a "hostile entity" and stepped up its military attacks. In January 2008, Israel decided to further reduce the amount of fuel, electricity, food and water supplies into Gaza, justifying the collective punishment as a 'response' to the Palestinian resistance firing home-made shells at the nearby Israeli town of Sderot (see this report about the humanitarian implications of the siege).

The decision by the Israeli government to reduce electricity supplies to the Gaza Strip came after the Israeli Supreme Court rejected a petition against the plan filed by ten Palestinian and Israeli human rights groups. The human rights groups said the measures "violate international laws" as they deliberately cause harm to the civilians and deprive them from the basic energy they need to run vital services. The cut of diesel supplies had already contributed to 20% electricity deficit in Gaza, with power outages of over eight hours a day and directly affecting hospitals, medical centres, water pumps, public transportation and other vital services.

On February 17th, the ambulance service in Gaza announced a complete halt of work due to what the Health Ministry described as "severe shortage of fuel." Many patients have also been denied necessary medical treatment outside due to the siege, in what some described as "a matter of revenge". According to Palestinian medical sources, well over a hundred Palestinian patients, including many children, have so far died because of the siege [ 1 | 2 | 3 ].

As Gazans scrambled for supplies, Palestinian resistance fighters blew open the Israeli-built steel walls that make the borders between the Gaza Strip and Egypt on January 23rd. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians poured into Egypt's Sinai peninsula, breathing a collective sigh of relief following a half-year of total closure of all Gaza border crossings. However, the Egyptian border guards soon started sealing off the iron border again. The Rafah crossing, south of Gaza, is the sole outlet to the outside world for Gaza's 1.5 million residents since June last year.

On February 20th, several European Union lawmakers urged Israel to refrain from inflicting "collective punishment" on the Palestinian residents in the Gaza Strip. In a press conference titled "Coming back from Gaza and Sderot", with the participation of members from different political groups of the European Parliament who took part to the fact-finding mission to Israel and Palestine between 2 and 7 February, 2008, Jill Evans MEP (Green) affirmed that "the situation in Palestine is reaching breaking point. The siege is an inhuman and illegal collective punishment of the people in Gaza and is causing huge suffering. It has to be stopped. There has to be international action to lift the siege, end the occupation and resume peace negotiations."

Concluding a visit to Palestine and Israel, the United Nations' Undersecretary General for humanitarian affairs John Holmes made similar remarks and called for reopening the borders of the Gaza Strip in order to relief the suffering of the residents.

Earlier that year, a report authored by the UN Special Rapporteur John Dugard concluded that "Palestinian terrorism" is the "inevitable consequence" of Israeli occupation. While "Palestinian terrorist acts are deplorable," it added, "they must be understood as being a painful but inevitable consequence of colonialism, apartheid or occupation."

On February 26th, just before the escalation started, the report was briefly flagged up by Associated Press. Israel was quick to reject the 'claims' as "inflammatory" and the report has since been ignored by the Western corporate media in a continuation of their biased reporting on the Israeli aggression against Palestinians (see this MediaLens alert).

'Holocaust' in Gaza

On February 29th, the Israeli deputy Defense Minister provoked outrage after threatening Palestinians with a "holocaust". Matan Vilnai told the Israeli army radio that "the more [rocket] fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, they [the Palestinians] will bring upon themselves a bigger holocaust because we will use all our might to defend ourselves." The same twisted logic is used by the far-right and Holocaust deniers to blame Jewish people for the Nazi Holocaust.

However, preparations for a large-scale invasion of the Gaza Strip seem to have been under way long before that provocative comment. The Israeli government had reportedly already approved a military plan, similar to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. According to the Jewish Press website, Israeli sources said that a plan, drafted by the Israeli military's general staff, had been endorsed by the Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak.

On February 7th, during a visit to an Israeli military base in the south of Israel, Barak said the Israeli army will "intensify its military operations" in the Gaza Strip, allegedly to stop Palestinian home-made Qassam rockets that continue to be launched from Gaza at Israeli targets. He added that Israel will eventually "put an end" to the attacks by continuing its military operation and imposing punishments and fortifying the nearby Israeli communities surrounding the Gaza Strip. On February 10th, the Defense Minister confirmed that his army will carry out more strikes on Gaza.

Meanwhile, another Israeli minister called for the "total annihilation" of some Gaza neighbourhoods. Me'air Shetrit called for responding to what he termed "sabotaging operations" by "totally annihilating some Gaza neighbourhoods" so that "the residents of the Gaza Strip will understand how serious the Israeli threats are." Other Israeli politicians have made similar comments.

On February 11th, Barak stated that he had ordered the Israeli army to start preparing for the wide-scale offensive in Gaza. He told the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Security Committee that his troops are "attacking the Palestinian coastal region day and night, with a high chance for those attacks to expand." On February 17th, he again vowed to strike back heavily against Palestinians, particularly the ruling Hamas in Gaza, as home-made shells continue to hit Israeli areas adjacent to Gaza. At the same time, Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert, while giving a speech at a conference of Jewish agencies leaders, granted the Israeli army the "upper hand" in deciding how to strike what he called "perpetrators of terror", first and foremost those who belong to Hamas.

Since coming to power after the 2006 democratic elections, the Islamist group has repeatedly proposed a long-term truce with Israel. Israel, however, has repeatedly shunned such offers, branding Hamas a "terrorist group". In June 2007, Israel imposed a total siege on Gaza after Hamas took over the coastal territory, amidst a power struggle with Fatah, president Mahmud Abbas's party, which has been committed to 'peace negotiations' with Israel (see this interesting Vanity Fair article).

Last year, after killing more than 300 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip in air strikes and ground offensives, Israel still failed to stop the home-made shells fired by Palestinian fighters into adjacent Israeli towns.

'Full-scale war'

Since the siege started in June 2007, Israeli air strikes and ground incursions, allegedly targeting Palestinian militants, have become an almost daily occurrence, often killing civilians and destroying residential buildings.

For example, on February 7th, Palestinian medical sources reported that six Palestinians, including one teacher, were killed and several residents were injured in three separate Israeli air strikes that were supposed to target groups of Palestinian militants in different areas in the Gaza Strip. On February 15th, eight Palestinians, mainly members of one family, were killed and nearly eighty others injured when the Israeli air force fired missiles at the house of one of the leaders of the Islamic Jihad in Al-Boreij refugee camp in central Gaza. (Many more incidents can be found on the IMEMC, PNN and IE websites.)

On February 14th, an undercover Israeli force attacked several Palestinian homes in the eastern side of Rafah, southern Gaza, and rounded up 30 men, aged between 15 and 50, and took them to a nearby military base at the Rafah-Israel border. The area located near the Gaza International Airport has suffered frequent Israeli attacks since the beginning of the Palestinian Intifada (uprising) in September 2000.

On Wednesday, 27 February, 2008, the Israeli army stepped up its air strikes and ground 'incursions' in what many observers described as a "full-scale, one-sided war". According to the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories (B’Tselem), 106 Palestinians were killed in the Gaza Strip between February 27th and March 3rd, and at least 54 of them, including 25 children, did not take part in any fighting. Al-Mezan Center For Human Rights put the number at 107, including 55 civilians, of whom 27 were children and 6 women. The Israeli Chief of Staff had claimed that 90 percent of those killed were "armed".

On Wednesday evening, an Israeli strike on the northern part of Gaza killed three Palestinian children, bringing the death toll within 24 hours to 12. Palestinian medical sources confirmed that the three children's bodies reached hospital dismembered, while at least 17 others were wounded, including 6 children. By Friday, the Israeli government announced that its army has completed preparations for a wide-scale offensive against Gaza (more).

Around 1am on Saturday, at least 30 tanks and bulldozers, supported by a battalion of infantry troops attacked the Jabalyia refugee camp in the northern part of the Gaza Strip. Palestinian medical sources reported that at least 26 Palestinians killed and 62 injured, bringing the death toll since Wednesday to 56. Eyewitnesses said Israeli troops and tanks invaded Jabalyia and opened fire at resident homes, while Israeli helicopters were firing missiles at civilians homes and cars (more).

Even civilian facilities, such as medical centres, were not spared. On February 28th, for example, an Israeli air strike aimed at the Ministry of the Interior building in Gaza also destroyed the nearby Palestinian Medical Relief Society (PMRS) head office. PMRS is one of the largest non-governmental health service providers in Palestine, reaching 1.4 million Palestinians in over 490 cities, towns and villages. The attack also hit a nearby residential building, killing a five-month-old baby. The The disability rehabilitation sector in Palestine, part of the Network of the Non-governmental Organizations, also reported that the Israeli army had targeted several facilities that deal with rehabilitation and killed Hammad Mirshid, 47, who suffered a hearing impairment. The army also broke into a rehabilitation facility, causing a lot of damage, and used it as a military post.

By now, the war in Gaza had attracted the international community and media's attention. The Palestinian Ministry of Health announced that some hospitals in Gaza could no longer provide medical care because they have no electricity or medical supplies. Medical crews reported that they came under fire as they tried to evacuate the injured from Jabalyia refugee camp. The Al-Jazeera Arabic correspondent in the Gaza Strip, Hiba Abu Shamalih, also reported that she came under fire along with her camera crew as they were covering the events in Gaza. The Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Saturday that the ongoing Israeli attacks on Gaza were "more than a holocaust."

Meanwhile, the Israeli army announced that Palestinian militants killed two Israeli soldiers and destroyed a military vehicle on Saturday. Palestinian resistance groups also fired 13 home-made shells at nearby Israeli areas, injuring three civilians in the southern Israeli town of Sderot that borders the Gaza Strip. The Al-Qassam brigades, the armed wing of the Hamas movement, said that 8 of its fighters were killed on Saturday during armed clashes with the Israeli army. The Al-Quds brigades of the Islamic Jihad also said that three of their fighters were killed in clashes on that same day.

'Not over'

Israeli forces pulled out on Sunday-Monday overnight after five days of bloodshed. But Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert warned that the withdrawal of troops from Gaza does not mean Israel's military operation there is over, adding that "what happened in recent days was not a one-off event."

Indeed, just after the Israeli army announced ending its offensive in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian medical sources reported that 8 Palestinians, said to be Hamas fighters, were killed by Israeli shells on different parts of Gaza on Monday dawn (more).

Later on, a senior Israeli official, quoted by Reuters, said Israel had called a "two-day interval" while US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visits Jerusalem and the West Bank on Tuesday and Wednesday, which is meant to move Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations forward. Rice, however, has already told reporters in Egypt that Hamas is "trying to destroy the peace talks." Hamas's spokesperson, Sami Abu Zuhri, said Rice's statement was part of her intention to "give the green light" to the ongoing war on the Hamas movement and the Palestinian resistance. Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas had formally suspended contacts with Israel in protest at its attacks on Gaza.

Protests and solidarity

Since the start of the siege in June 2007, there have been many mass protests inside Palestine and Gaza itself. A massive demonstration was held at the Erez Checkpoint in Beit Hanoun, north Gaza, on January 26th, where people assembled on both sides of the fence to protest against the siege and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. On February 11th, flower farmers in the city of Beit Lahiya, north Gaza, decided to destroy about 500,000 square meters of flower plants in protest at their inability to export their produce due to ongoing Israeli blockade on Gaza. On February 14th, a large number of Gaza vehicles stopped engines for half an hour in protest at the continued Israel cut of fuel supplies to the region. On February 25th, thousands of women, children and men formed a human chain around the Gaza Strip in protest at the Israeli siege (more). Peaceful demonstrations also took place in Bethlehem, Nazareth and other places in Palestine and Israel.

Many defiant actions by Israeli activists have also been reported. For example, a convoy of food supplies, provided by a group of Israeli peace activists, entered Gaza on February 19th through the Israeli-controlled commercial crossing of Sufa in southern Gaza.

More recently, the entirety of the West Bank was on strike on Sunday, February 2nd, in solidarity with the mourners and lost souls of the Gaza Strip. The streets of Jenin and Nablus were filled with protesters, while in Ramallah Hamas and Fateh called a joint demonstration. Kids were seen at the Wall in Ramallah throwing stones, and the same happened in Bethlehem at Rachel's Tomb. The air was said to have been full of acrid smoke as children set tires on fire and dumped out garbage cans and set them ablaze (report).

Palestinian protests were often violently attacked by Israeli forces. Seven Palestinian teenagers were injured on February 2nd when Israeli troops attacked a demonstration organised by the villagers of Bil'in, a village near Ramallah known internationally for its non-violent protests (more). On the same day, one Palestinian boy was killed and at least 45 were injured when the Israeli army attacked protests standing in Hebron, south West Bank, in solidarity with the people of Gaza. On February 3rd, Israeli forces imposed a curfew on a western Jenin village, which saw a non-violent demonstration against the Israeli aggression in Gaza. A Palestinian teenager was killed and several others injured on the same day when Israeli army troops attacked a protest organised by school students in the village of Al-Mazra'a Al-Sarqiya, near Ramallah.

Since the start of the siege, there have also been numerous solidarity demonstrations and actions throughout the world. To list only a few of those reported on Indymedia sites worldwide, the past few months have seen protests in Israel, Portland, Washington DC, St. Petersburg (FL), Seattle, Berkeley, Dublin [2], The Hague, Berlin, London [2 | 3 | 4 | 5] , Manchester, Sheffield [2], Wales and elsewhere.

Called by the Popular Committee Against the Siege (PCAS), February 23rd saw a global day of action against the Israeli blockade on Gaza. Mass demonstrations and protests took place in around 30 countries across Europe, Asia, Africa and the two Americas. In many cities, lights also went off for half an hour in solidarity with the people of Gaza (see also the End Gaza Siege website). As the chairman of the Gaza Committee Jamal al-Khudari put it: "The demonstrations we saw on TV screens in many countries indicate a genuine support for the Palestinian people."

imc-uk-features

Comments

Hide the following 26 comments

Holocaust

07.03.2008 07:26

Sir, you write...

"Israeli officials had threatened the Palestinians with "a holocaust" if home-made rockets fired at nearby Israeli towns did not stop."

What is your source?

J


never command what you can not enforce

07.03.2008 10:15

How's this:

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/feb/29/israelandthepalestinians1

"Universal brotherhood is not even a beautiful dream. Antagonism is essential to man's greatest efforts"

Theodor Herzl "The Jewish State" 1896 page 42

We can not command the zionist maniachs to stop killing and stealing until we can enforce it.

jackslucid
mail e-mail: jackslucid@hotmail.com


The new Shoah

07.03.2008 10:39

"In response to Palestinian Resistance to Israel’s terror, Matan Vilnai, Israel's deputy defence minister, threatened Palestinian with a holocaust. Vilnai told Israeli Army Radio: “[the Palestinians] will bring upon themselves a bigger shoah (holocaust) because we will use all our might to defend ourselves". An occupying power (aggressor) has no right to self-defence. The deliberate killing of innocent and defenceless Palestinians is not self-defence; it is terrorism."

That is from Countercurrents but the same story has been buried in newspapers from the Jewish Chronicle to the Scotsman. Today is the first day that the BBC reported that over 120 people have been murdered in Gaza by the IDF since the weekend - and that was only mentioned in passing during a headline report on the eight Israelis recently killed.

120 deaths mentioned as a footnote.

Danny


'Holocaust'

07.03.2008 10:43

A day after an Israeli official warned Gazans of a "shoah" -- which typically means holocaust -- Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, a sworn enemy of Gaza's Hamas rulers, called it "more than a holocaust".

 http://uk.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUKL2868601720080301

Israeli minister vows Palestinian 'holocaust'
By Tim Butcher in Jerusalem
Last Updated: 2:18am GMT 01/03/2008

A senior Israeli politician provoked controversy today when he warned that Palestinians firing rockets from Gaza would be punished with a "bigger holocaust" from Israeli armed forces.

The use of the Hebrew word for holocaust, "shoah", tends to be used exclusively in Israel to describe the Nazi persecution of Jews.

 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/02/29/wholo129.xml

An Israeli minister today warned of increasingly bitter conflict in the Gaza Strip, saying the Palestinians could bring on themselves what he called a "holocaust".

"The more Qassam [rocket] fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, they will bring upon themselves a bigger shoah because we will use all our might to defend ourselves," Matan Vilnai, Israel's deputy defence minister, told army radio.

Shoah is the Hebrew word normally reserved to refer to the Jewish Holocaust. It is rarely used in Israel outside discussions of the Nazi extermination of Jews during the second world war, and many Israelis are loath to countenance its use to describe other events.

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/feb/29/israelandthepalestinians1

the mainstream media


!

07.03.2008 11:28

I'm disgusted but in no way surprised that an IMC UK Features article seems to uncritically use the term holocaust to describe Israeli military incursions into Gaza. 300 Palestinians were killed last year, the article explains. 300 deaths is surely 300 too many. But 300 deaths last year (or the total number of deaths since, say, the beginning of the most recent Intifada) does not make a parallel with the industrial extermination of 6,000,000 Jews justifiable!

This is in no way to belittle the tragedy of 300 Palestinian deaths (last year alone). But to compare 6,000,000 deaths and the Nazi project (see the cartoon at the top of the page) to the deaths of Palestinians over the last few years and the neoconservative agenda of Israel is most certainly to do the opposite: belittling the lives of those lost under National Socialism in Germany.

The fact that an Israeli politician made this absurd comparison is neither here nor there and is a pretty lame excuse for somehow justifiably repeating this crap.

k


uncritical?

07.03.2008 11:53

'On February 29th, the Israeli deputy Defense Minister provoked outrage after threatening Palestinians with a "holocaust". Matan Vilnai told the Israeli army radio that "the more [rocket] fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, they [the Palestinians] will bring upon themselves a bigger holocaust because we will use all our might to defend ourselves." The same twisted logic is used by the far-right and Holocaust deniers to blame Jewish people for the Nazi Holocaust.'

actually read the article


I did read the article

07.03.2008 12:53

I don't see how saying that a similar twisted logic was used to justify the Holocaust against the Jews in Nazi Germany is not doing EXACTLY what I said the article was doing! i.e. Drawing an inappropriate parallel which neither shows a recognition of what took place in the Third Reich, nor what is happening in the Middle East today.

Beyond the sentence you mention, the article then goes on in the very next paragraph to say that this "holocaust" was already in the planning anyway. The title of the article also says that Israel has kept it promise of a holocaust. And the cartoon explicitly draws a parallel between the suffering of many Palestinians with that of Jews in concentration camps.

K


Special K

07.03.2008 13:06

"I'm disgusted but in no way surprised that an IMC UK Features article seems to uncritically use the term holocaust to describe Israeli military incursions into Gaza."

They are only quoting the deputy Israeli defence minister as any moron can see. So is 'k' just as disgusted at the Israeli minister who was quoted or is his outrage discriminatory ? You know the word Shoah stopped meaning 'disaater' a long time ago. Now it means genocide.

I imagine a lot of the Jewish diaspora are still in shock hearing an Israeli minister promising more genocide. So come on K, condemn that.

Danny


...

07.03.2008 15:07

"They are only quoting the deputy Israeli defence minister as any moron can see."

No, they're not!

As I said in the last post, the article does NOT just say that's what the deputy Israeli defence minister said.

1) The author says in the title that Israel has followed through on the promise of a holocaust.
2) The cartoon at the top of the page makes a direct comparison between Palestinian suffering and that of Jews in a concentration camps.
3) The article claims that a holocaust was in the planning before the minister made this sentence.

(Errr... And why would I need to condemn the deputy Israeli defence minister? I suppose the assumption is that flagging up how inappropriate a comparison like this is could only come from a blinkered supporter of Israeli military opperations. I find this absurd! But, hey, here you go if it helps: The use of the term holocaust to describe Israeli opperations against Palestinians is inappropriate and should be condemned, even if it is made by the deputy Israeli defence minister. Happy?)

k


"with intent to destroy, in whole or in part"

08.03.2008 01:41

"The use of the term holocaust to describe Israeli opperations against Palestinians is inappropriate and should be condemned, even if it is made by the deputy Israeli defence minister."

Do you mean it is inappropriate for him to threaten a genocide, or that he should've just called it a genocide and not used the word 'Shoah' ? Gaza could be viewed as histories biggest concentration-camp. The facts prove that Israelis kill far more than they are killed. That amounts to two thirds of a million Palestinian deaths since 1950. - so is this genocide ? Well, far fewer East Timorese died in their slaughter and that is recognised as a genocide. Here is the best legal definition of genocide:


Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide
Article 2

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.




Post-1950 avoidable mortality/2005 population ratio: 0.095 million/6.685 million = 1.4% (Israel) & 0.677 million/3.815 million = 17.7% (Occupied Palestinian Territories)

Post-1950 under-5 infant mortality/2005 population ratio: 0.091 million/6.685 million = 1.4% (Israel) & 0.295 million/3.815 million = 7.7% (Occupied Palestinian Territories)

Post-1967 avoidable mortality: 0.082 million (Israel) & 0.319 million (Occupied Palestinian Territories)

Post-1967 under-5 infant mortality: 0.053 million (Israel) & 0.166 million (Occupied Palestinian Territories)

2003 avoidable mortality/2003 population ratio: 0/6.364 million = 0.0% (Israel) & 1,000/3.503 million = 0.03% (Occupied Palestinian Territories)

2003 under-5 infant mortality/2003 population ratio: 760/6.364 million = 0.012% (Israel) & 3,100 /3.503 million = 0.089% (Occupied Palestinian Territories)

2003 under-5 infant mortality/2003 under-5 infant population ratio: 760/0.644 million = 0.12% (Israel) & 3,100/0.617 million = 0.50% (Occupied Palestinian Territories)

Danny


you are all playing with horse dung

09.03.2008 15:17

The word Shoah in Hebrew existed long before the Holocaust. It means cataclysm, or a big disaster. Therefore, the minister only said that the Palestinians are going to bring a big disaster upon themselves. And he is quite right. After every piece of land that Israel has left became a base for terror against her, very few Israelis can be convinced that compromise is the way to go.

avvv


You are the 'big disaster'

09.03.2008 16:53

I'm sure everyone on the thread knows what the word shoah originally meant. Since the 1940's it has only meant the Nazi genocide and to pretend otherwise is shamfeul.

But fair enough, if supporters of th Israeli state support the trivialisation of that word, then the Nazi genocide can be viewed as just a 'big disaster'. Big disaters are everyday events. What about the shoah that tsunami created then eh ? Or the shoah of heart disease in the US ? Or the shoah that I lost my wallet last week ? That was a big disaster for me. Maybe I should be given my own country and permitted to starve and shoot my neighbours when I feel like it.

Danny


who's the disaster

09.03.2008 19:47

I'm sure you, as everyone in this thread, are expert in modern Hebrew.
In Hebrew, the word Shoah without "the Shoah" means simply a big disaster. And yes, in common slang, it is a Shoah that I lost my wallet yesterday.

But it is indeed rarely used. So while Vilnai didn't mean that Israel is going to make a genocide, he is right that if the Palestinians continue to harass Israel from Gaza, they will suffer something much worse than last weekend strikes.

Despite your slandering, Israel will keep fighting for its security, and will do it in a much more humane way than the Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan, NATO in Kosovo the Russians in Chechnya and any other military faces terrorists in an urban zone.

avvv


Erm....

09.03.2008 21:11

"So while Vilnai didn't mean that Israel is going to make a genocide, he is right that if the Palestinians continue to harass Israel from Gaza, they will suffer something much worse than last weekend strikes."

All 1.5 millions Gazans are responsible for the rockets, are they?

What would be the appropriate way to treat people who stole your land and forced you in to refugee camps for 6 decades, while they were still stealing the land of your cousins?

The Palestinians didn't come looking for this one pal.

Zionism is Racism


I'm guesssing you don't have relatives to beat you up for this slur

09.03.2008 21:50

"I'm sure you, as everyone in this thread, are expert in modern Hebrew."
No, but I do know what the word shoah means.

"In Hebrew, the word Shoah without "the Shoah" means simply a big disaster. And yes, in common slang, it is a Shoah that I lost my wallet yesterday."

Funny, I know a lot of Jewish people, most of whom have suffered the same disasters that befall me, and I've never heard anyone so crass as to belittle that word with any other meaning - genocide. You have started out by lying - name one slander I've stated that is untrue ?

"But it is indeed rarely used."
Yeah. In fact if I google that word you can't find any other meaning to that word since Hitler to the modern day Hitler you are defending at all costs. Still, in a way it is entirely appropriariate and if you want to use the word that way, fair enough. The jewish people suffered one shoah and now the Israeli state is trying to inflict one on everyone else.

Even in Israel noone supports this comment by the deputy defence minister. So why are you propogating fascist propoganda on left-wing website ? Is it your job to run down the shoah ?


"So while Vilnai didn't mean that Israel is going to make a genocide, he is right that if the Palestinians continue to harass Israel from Gaza, they will suffer something much worse than last weekend strikes."

Like gas chambers and numbers tattooed on their wrists ? I mean what else can be much worse than a people without an airforce constantly being bombarded by one of the world's best equipped armies ?

"Despite your slandering, Israel will keep fighting for its security, and will do it in a much more humane way than the Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan, NATO in Kosovo the Russians in Chechnya and any other military faces terrorists in an urban zone."

I'd agree with that even though I am loathed to agree with anything any holocaust-revisionist states. The fact you are a Jew diminishing the shoah makes no fucking difference. If it cheeers you up to state 'we are commiting genocide but we aren't as bad as the Americansin Iraq or the Russians in Chechnya' then okay, I accept that.

But Israel is in that league, in the top three genocidal states in the wold today. And for you to accept that, to the point where youi dim9ish the experience of Levi and Greenman and a whole host of others - well, I am an athiest and I wouldn;t sink to that level.

There is an english word I have used that you may not be familiar with :


Main Entry:
1shame Listen to the pronunciation of 1shame
Pronunciation:
\ˈshām\
Function:
noun
Etymology:
Middle English, from Old English scamu; akin to Old High German scama shame
Date:
before 12th century

1 a: a painful emotion caused by consciousness of guilt, shortcoming, or impropriety b: the susceptibility to such emotion 2: a condition of humiliating disgrace or disrepute : ignominy 3 a: something that brings censure or reproach; also : something to be regretted : pity b: a cause of feeling shame

Daniel


Englishman pretending to be an expert on Middle Eastern affairs

09.03.2008 22:54

"No, but I do know what the word shoah means."

You know what it means in English. Of course when you use the Hebrew word "Shoah" you mean only the Jewish Holocaust. But in Hebrew, it's just a regular word for any kind of holocaust.

". The jewish people suffered one shoah and now the Israeli state is trying to inflict one on everyone else."

It still escapes my mind how could people like you compare the conquering of a whole continent, and systematically destroying a whole people to some bloody war.
You try to educate me about the Holocaust? Do you realize that even in a parallel universe, where Israel now rounds up 100,000 Palestinians and slaughters them, it is still not the tip of the Holocaust iceberg? The Holocaust should get out of the Israeli/Palestinian debate, because it's irrelevant to the events.


"Even in Israel noone supports this comment by the deputy defence minister. So why are you propogating fascist propoganda on left-wing website ? Is it your job to run down the shoah ?"

Not a job, but a hobby of educating ignorants.


"Like gas chambers and numbers tattooed on their wrists ? I mean what else can be much worse than a people without an airforce constantly being bombarded by one of the world's best equipped armies ?"

The way you depict it... One can think that the Palestinians haven't been using terrorism for 80 years and haven't chose to go to war against the Jews.


"I'd agree with that even though I am loathed to agree with anything any holocaust-revisionist states. The fact you are a Jew diminishing the shoah makes no fucking difference. If it cheeers you up to state 'we are commiting genocide but we aren't as bad as the Americansin Iraq or the Russians in Chechnya' then okay, I accept that."

No, I don't see the world in black and white. I think that most of the world is gray. The Shoah, for example, is black. But I think that even if Israel isn't white, it's much lighter than the Americans in Iraq, who are much lighter than the Russians, who are much lighter than Hitler. There is a difference between a war, a brutal war, a genocide and the Holocaust. Neglecting that different is being ignorant, is diminishing the Holocaust, and is what you are doing.

"But Israel is in that league, in the top three genocidal states in the wold today. And for you to accept that, to the point where youi dim9ish the experience of Levi and Greenman and a whole host of others - well, I am an athiest and I wouldn;t sink to that level."

Who ranked those genocidal states? The almighty god Daniallah?

I can also come up with a list:
Sudan is probably the only place in the world were something like or close to a full scale genocide takes place, but shit happens in a lot of African states.
If we talk about human rights, and not trying to scream "genocide" and any injustice we see, then Israel will be much lower in the list than any Arab and Muslim state, so you are looking in the wrong direction.

avvv


An Aye for an Ay

10.03.2008 00:39

"But in Hebrew, it's just a regular word for any kind of holocaust. "

You just said the word only meant a big disaster - now you are admitting that it means a holocaust. And holocaust certainly means genocide so you admit the deputy Israeli defence minister threatened a genocide.

"It still escapes my mind how could people like you compare the conquering of a whole continent, and systematically destroying a whole people to some bloody war."

People like me and the Israeli deputy defence minister ? I'm sorry, was the holocaust only terrible because of the territory the nazis conquered , or was it more about their behaviour towards the peoples that they conquered ? See, someone like K can disagree with my interpretation of modern events and still condemn the use of that word.

"Do you realize that even in a parallel universe, where Israel now rounds up 100,000 Palestinians and slaughters them, it is still not the tip of the Holocaust iceberg?"

Do you realiSe that if the Nazis had stopped at slaughtering 100,000 thousand Jews then they would have slaughtered half a million less innocents than the Israeli state ?

"But I think that even if Israel isn't white, it's much lighter than the Americans in Iraq, who are much lighter than the Russians, who are much lighter than Hitler."

I already agreed with that - it is certainly wrong for any British or American person to condemn the Israeli state with acknowledging that truth. My state has killed more innocents than your state - so far. The difference between us is I wouldn't defend that or rationalise that. And I have enough respect for the victims of the Nazi genoocide to refer to our slaughter of Iraqis and Afghanis as genocide, not a 'shoah'.

"There is a difference between a war, a brutal war, a genocide and the Holocaust."

Nope. All wars are brutal. All genocides are equally reprehensible.

"Who ranked those genocidal states? The almighty god Daniallah?"

No, you rated the first two, I added Israel to the bunch. Same White Phosphorus, different city.

"If we talk about human rights, and not trying to scream "genocide" and any injustice we see, then Israel will be much lower in the list than any Arab and Muslim state, so you are looking in the wrong direction."

Israel has murdered 2/3rds of a million in their genocide. Saddam Hussiens Iraq had a higher death toll of innocents than that, but you'd need to remind me of other arab countries that have surpassed that total.

I'm a Scotsman not english by the way. The Scots actually suffered from a genocidal form of ethnic cleansing ourselves once. I'm not Jewish so I find it dispiriting to be the only person here defending the sanctity of the word shoah. My favourite artists are Jewish though - at one point I was ready to move there to work on a kibbutz, back when I believed in the moral superiority of the IDF. That is gone forever now you are trying to compete morally with the Sudanese state. A friend of my family was killed by a palestinian suicide bomber , not someone I knew personally but still I'm not a big fan of suicide bombers. I'm not a big fan of F-15 pilots who murder even more 'in retaliation'. I do know the term 'an eye for an eye' and I do know that was originally a moderate law, to stop extremely disproportionate vengence. It obviously cuts no ice nowadays in Israel and the body counts prove that.

In summary, I think there are many people who oppose the Israeli state who are happy that their own government has threatened a shoah, as a simple recognition of the facts on the ground. Then there are people like me who oppose Israeli state slaughter and still don't want to see that genocide referred to as a shoah. Then there are people like K who are happy with Israeli state policy but agree the word should not be devalued.

And then there is you who says the shoah was just a big disaster and shouldn't be allowed to influence the Israelis away from committing their own genocide.

Dan


The meaning of Gaza’s ‘shoah’: Israel plots another Palestinian exodus

10.03.2008 08:54

Israeli Deputy Defence Minister Matan Vilnai’s much publicised remark last week about Gaza facing a “shoah” -- the Hebrew word for the Holocaust -- was widely assumed to be unpleasant hyperbole about the army’s plans for an imminent full-scale invasion of the Strip.

More significantly, however, his comment offers a disturbing indication of the Israeli army’s longer-term strategy towards the Palestinians in the occupied territories.

Vilnai, a former general, was interviewed by Army Radio as Israel was in the midst of unleashing a series of air and ground strikes on populated areas of Gaza that killed more than 100 Palestinians, at least half of whom were civilians and 25 of whom were children, according to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem.

The interview also took place in the wake of a rocket fired from Gaza that killed a student in Sderot and other rockets that hit the centre of the southern city of Ashkelon. Vilnai stated: “The more Qassam fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, they [the Palestinians of Gaza] will bring upon themselves a bigger shoah because we will use all our might to defend ourselves.”

His comment, picked up by the Reuters wire service, was soon making headlines around the world. Presumably uncomfortable with a senior public figure in Israel comparing his government’s policies to the Nazi plan to exterminate European Jewry, many news services referred to Vilnai’s clearly articulated threat as a “warning”, as though he was prophesying a cataclysmic natural event over which he and the Israeli army had no control.

Nonetheless, officials understood the damage that the translation from Hebrew of Vilnai’s remark could do to Israel’s image abroad. And sure enough, Palestinian leaders were soon exploiting the comparison, with both the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, and the exiled Hamas leader, Khaled Meshaal, stating that a “holocaust” was unfolding in Gaza.

Within hours the Israeli Foreign Ministry was launching a large “hasbara” (propaganda) campaign through its diplomats, as the Jerusalem Post reported. In a related move, a spokesman for Vilnai explained that the word “shoah” also meant “disaster”; this, rather than a holocaust, was what the minister had been referring to. Clarifications were issued by many media outlets.

However, no one in Israel was fooled. “Shoah” -- which literally means “burnt offering” -- was long ago reserved for the Holocaust, much as the Arabic word “nakba” (or “catastrophe”) is nowadays used only to refer to the Palestinians’ dispossession by Israel in 1948. Certainly, the Israeli media in English translated Vilnai’s use of “shoah” as “holocaust”.

But this is not the first time that Vilnai has expressed extreme views about Gaza’s future.

Last summer he began quietly preparing a plan on behalf of his boss, the Defence Minister Ehud Barak, to declare Gaza a “hostile entity” and dramatically reduce the essential services supplied by Israel -- as long-time occupier -- to its inhabitants, including electricity and fuel. The cuts were finally implemented late last year after the Israeli courts gave their blessing.

Vilnai and Barak, both former military men like so many other Israeli politicians, have been “selling” this policy -- of choking off basic services to Gaza -- to Western public opinion ever since.

Under international law, Israel as the occupying power has an obligation to guarantee the welfare of the civilian population in Gaza, a fact forgotten when the media reported Israel’s decision to declare Gaza a hostile entity. The pair have therefore claimed tendentiously that the humanitarian needs of Gazans are still being safeguarded by the limited supplies being allowed through, and that therefore the measures do not constitute collective punishment.

Last October, after a meeting of defence officials, Vilnai said of Gaza: "Because this is an entity that is hostile to us, there is no reason for us to supply them with electricity beyond the minimum required to prevent a crisis.”

Three months later Vilnai went further, arguing that Israel should cut off “all responsibility” for Gaza, though, in line with the advice of Israel’s attorney general, he has been careful not to suggest that this would punish ordinary Gazans excessively.

Instead he said disengagement should be taken to its logical conclusion: “We want to stop supplying electricity to them, stop supplying them with water and medicine, so that it would come from another place”. He suggested that Egypt might be forced to take over responsibility.

Vilnai’s various comments are a reflection of the new thinking inside the defence and political establishments about where next to move Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians.

After the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, a consensus in the Israeli military quickly emerged in favour of maintaining control through a colonial policy of divide and rule, by factionalising the Palestinians and then keeping them feuding.

As long as the Palestinians were too divided to resist the occupation effectively, Israel could carry on with its settlement programme and “creeping annexation” of the occupied territories, as the Defence Minister of the time, Moshe Dayan, called it.

Israel experimented with various methods of undermining the secular Palestinian nationalism of the PLO, which threatened to galvanise a general resistance to the occupation. In particular Israel established local anti-PLO militias known as the Village Leagues and later backed the Islamic fundamentalism of the Muslim Brotherhood, which would morph into Hamas.

Rivalry between Hamas and the PLO, controlled by Fatah, has been the backdrop to Palestinian politics in the occupied territories ever since, and has moved centre stage since Israel’s disengagement from Gaza in 2005. Growing antagonism fuelled by Israel and the US, as an article in Vanity Fair confirmed this week, culminated in the physical separation of a Fatah-run West Bank from a Hamas-ruled Gaza last summer.

The leaderships of Fatah and Hamas are now divided not only geographically but also by their diametrically opposed strategies for dealing with Israel’s occupation.

Fatah’s control of the West Bank is being shored up by Israel because its leaders, including President Mahmoud Abbas, have made it clear that they are prepared to cooperate with an interminable peace process that will give Israel the time it needs to annex yet more of the territory.

Hamas, on the other hand, is under no illusions about the peace process, having seen the Jewish settlers leave but Israel’s military control and its economic siege only tighten from arm’s length.

In charge of an open-air prison, Hamas has refused to surrender to Israeli diktats and has proven invulnerable to Israeli and US machinations to topple it. Instead it has begun advancing the only two feasible forms of resistance available: rocket attacks over the fence surrounding Gaza, and popular mass action.

And this is where the concerns of Vilnai and others emanate from. Both forms of resistance, if Hamas remains in charge of Gaza and improves its level of organisation and the clarity of its vision, could over the long term unravel Israel’s plans to annex the occupied territories -- once their Palestinian inhabitants have been removed.

First, Hamas’ development of more sophisticated and longer-range rockets threatens to move Hamas’ resistance to a much larger canvas than the backwater of the small development town of Sderot. The rockets that landed last week in Ashkelon, one of the country’s largest cities, could be the harbingers of political change in Israel.

Hizbullah proved in the 2006 Lebanon war that Israeli domestic opinion quickly crumbled in the face of sustained rocket attacks. Hamas hopes to achieve the same outcome.

After the strikes on Ashkelon, the Israeli media was filled with reports of angry mobs taking to the city’s streets and burning tyres in protest at their government’s failure to protect them. That is their initial response. But in Sderot, where the attacks have been going on for years, the mayor, Eli Moyal, recently called for talks with Hamas. A poll published in the Haaretz daily showed that 64 per cent of Israelis now agree with him. That figure may increase further if the rocket threat grows.

The fear among Israel’s leaders is that “creeping annexation” of the occupied territories cannot be achieved if the Israeli public starts demanding that Hamas be brought to the negotiating table.

Second, Hamas’ mobilisation last month of Gazans to break through the wall at Rafah and pour into Egypt has demonstrated to Israel’s politician-generals like Barak and Vilnai that the Islamic movement has the potential, as yet unrealised, to launch a focused mass peaceful protest against the military siege of Gaza.

Meron Benvenisti, a former deputy mayor of Jersualem, noted that this scenario “frightens the army more than a violent conflict with armed Palestinians”. Israel fears that the sight of unarmed women and children being executed for the crime of trying to free themselves from the prison Israel has built for them may give the lie to the idea that the disengagement ended the occupation.

When several thousand Palestinians held a demonstration a fortnight ago in which they created a human chain along part of Gaza’s fence with Israel, the Israeli army could hardly contain its panic. Heavy artillery batteries were brought to the perimeter and snipers were ordered to shoot protesters’ legs if they approached the fence.

As Amira Hass, Haaretz’s veteran reporter in the occupied territories, observed, Israel has so far managed to terrorise most ordinary Gazans into a paralysed inactivity on this front. In the main Palestinians have refused to take the “suicidal” course of directly challenging their imprisonment by Israel, even peacefully: “The Palestinians do not need warnings or reports to know the Israeli soldiers shoot the unarmed as well, and they also kill women and children.”

But that may change as the siege brings ever greater misery to Gaza.

As a result, Israel’s immediate priorities are: to provoke Hamas regularly into violence to deflect it from the path of organising mass peaceful protest; to weaken the Hamas leadership through regular executions; and to ensure that an effective defence against the rockets is developed, including technology like Barak’s pet project, Iron Dome, to shield the country from attacks.

In line with these policies, Israel broke the latest period of “relative calm” in Gaza by initiating the executions of five Hamas members last Wednesday. Predictably, Hamas responded by firing into Israel a barrage of rockets that killed the student in Sderot, in turn justifying the bloodbath in Gaza.

But a longer-term strategy is also required, and is being devised by Vilnai and others. Aware both that the Gaza prison is tiny and its resources scarce and that the Palestinian population is growing at a rapid rate, Israel needs a more permanent solution. It must find a way to stop the growing threat posed by Hamas’ organised resistance, and the social explosion that will come sooner or later from the Strip’s overcrowding and inhuman conditions.

Vilnai’s remark hints at that solution, as do a series of comments from cabinet ministers over the past few weeks proposing war crimes to stop the rockets. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, for example, has said that Gazans cannot be allowed “to live normal lives”; Internal Security Minister, Avi Dichter, believes Israel should take action “irrespective of the cost to the Palestinians”; and the Interior Minister, Meir Sheetrit, suggests the Israeli army should “decide on a neighborhood in Gaza and level it” after each attack.

This week Barak revealed that his officials were working on the last idea, finding a way to make it lawful for the army to direct artillery fire and air strikes at civilian neighbourhoods of Gaza in response to rocket fire. They are already doing this covertly, of course, but now they want their hands freed by making it official policy, sanctioned by the international community.

At the same time Vilnai proposed a related idea, of declaring areas of Gaza “combat zones” in which the army would have free rein and from which residents would have little choice but to flee. In practice, this would allow Israel to expel civilians from wide areas of the Strip, herding them into ever smaller spaces, as has been happening in the West Bank for some time.

All these measures – from the intensification of the siege to prevent electricity, fuel and medicines from reaching Gaza to the concentration of the population into even more confined spaces, as well as new ways of stepping up the violence inflicted on the Strip – are thinly veiled excuses for targeting and punishing the civilian population. They necessarily preclude negotiation and dialogue with Gaza’s political leaders.

Until now, it had appeared, Israel’s plan was eventually to persuade Egypt to take over the policing of Gaza, a return to its status before the 1967 war. The view was that Cairo would be even more ruthless in cracking down on the Islamic militants than Israel. But increasingly Vilnai and Barak look set on a different course.

Their ultimate goal appears to be related to Vilnai’s “shoah” comment: Gaza’s depopulation, with the Strip squeezed on three sides until the pressure forces Palestinians to break out again into Egypt. This time, it may be assumed, there will be no chance of return.



* Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His new book, “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East”, is published by Pluto Press. His website is www.jkcook.net



Jonathan Cook
Homepage:  http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8274

repost
- Homepage: http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/03/393386.html


Straw-man's comparisons

10.03.2008 09:33

"You just said the word only meant a big disaster - now you are admitting that it means a holocaust. And holocaust certainly means genocide so you admit the deputy Israeli defence minister threatened a genocide."

Any kind of holocaust = any kind of big disaster.


"People like me and the Israeli deputy defence minister ? I'm sorry, was the holocaust only terrible because of the territory the nazis conquered , or was it more about their behaviour towards the peoples that they conquered ? See, someone like K can disagree with my interpretation of modern events and still condemn the use of that word."

What makes the Holocaust so terrible, is the combination of the territory that they conquered and their behavior. In your method, a Palestinian suicide attack is like the Holocaust, because they target and kills them indiscriminately. I say no, it's different, because it's not a systematic genocide. That's exactly what makes the Holocaust special, and different from 99.99% of all other conflicts.


"Do you realiSe that if the Nazis had stopped at slaughtering 100,000 thousand Jews then they would have slaughtered half a million less innocents than the Israeli state ?"

Even if we assume that this sentence has any relevance to the discussion, in which fantasy if yours Israel killed 600,000 people? And don't compare death rates. European Jews had much better health status than Arabs 200 years ago, so the foundation of Israel changed nothing. You should compare the Palestinians to the Jordanians, not to the Jews.


"I already agreed with that - it is certainly wrong for any British or American person to condemn the Israeli state with acknowledging that truth. My state has killed more innocents than your state - so far. The difference between us is I wouldn't defend that or rationalise that. And I have enough respect for the victims of the Nazi genoocide to refer to our slaughter of Iraqis and Afghanis as genocide, not a 'shoah'."

You have no respect and no wisdom and no accuracy if you call the Iraq and Afghanistan war a 'genocide'. No one is trying to exterminate those populations.
And while the Iraq war can be controversial, the Afghanistan war, like Israel's war, is totally self defense from terrorists.


"Nope. All wars are brutal. All genocides are equally reprehensible. "

All wars have death, including innocents, but I'd call a war not what makes a war brutal is when a side tries to kill more innocents, and not to limit the number of innocents killed. And even if you fight brutally and kill a bit more people than necessary, it's still not a genocide.


"No, you rated the first two, I added Israel to the bunch. Same White Phosphorus, different city. "

I rated them because they are rare example of democracies in current wars. I'd agree that fighting cleaner than the Sudanese is not worth a medal, but it just proves that no country engages an urban war and do it better than Israel (in terms of killing less innocents).


"And then there is you who says the shoah was just a big disaster and shouldn't be allowed to influence the Israelis away from committing their own genocide."

You still haven't got it. When you hear "Shoah" in English, you think about the Jewish Holocaust. When one say shoah in Hebrew, he simply means a big disaster. It's a regular Hebrew word. I'd agree that it would have been easier to everyone if Vilnai just said 'big disaster' instead of shoah, but those who devaluate the word Shoah are those who compare Israel's war to it.

avvv


lost in translation

10.03.2008 11:23

"Even if we assume that this sentence has any relevance to the discussion, in which fantasy if yours Israel killed 600,000 people? And don't compare death rates."

It's actually 667000 avoidable Palestinian deaths since 1950 to the date that the UN report was released. The Palestinians regard that as a big disaster.

"You have no respect and no wisdom and no accuracy if you call the Iraq and Afghanistan war a 'genocide'. No one is trying to exterminate those populations."

Over a million dead in Iraq, and this death toll was forecast by charities like MedAct in advance. In the lead up to war, another million and half Iraqis killed by sanctions. The deliberate use of Depeleted Uranium shells, and other morally repugnant weapons like white phosphorus, in civilian areas. The failure as an occupying power to provide security - a legal and moral requirement that was never met. For me that adds up to genocide as defined above. Bush and Blairs sole defence would be 'we never intended or expected that' as you state, but that is a lie, it was expected but those two just didn't care. I don't think a defence of incompetence really sticks when so many are dead. That is why both in the US and the UK both leaders tried retrospectively to blame their intelligence when in fact they had been manipulating the intelligence from the start.

"And even if you fight brutally and kill a bit more people than necessary, it's still not a genocide. "
It can be according to the convention.
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
For me that applies to Iraq, Chechnya and Palestine. You don't even need to fight a war to commit genocide, the Irish Potato famine was a British genocide and certain similar genocides happened throughout the British Empire.

"no country engages an urban war and do it better than Israel (in terms of killing less innocents). "
That's a qualitative statement and most British or American army supporters would claim the same thing, again with no supporting evidence. I lost all respect for the IDF after the Sabra and Shatilla massacre.

"When you hear "Shoah" in English, you think about the Jewish Holocaust."
Or the film about that event. I've never heard anyone use the word in any other respect except in the phrase 'nuclear shoah' which I found appropriate as I regard nuclear weapons as weapons of genocide. I've been told many jews find the word 'holocaust' offensive because of it's derivation. Still, it your word and you can do what you want with it. I wonder if you'd be so sanguine if it had been a German defence minister threatening people with a shoah ? Or if the Syrian defence minister used that term ?
Do you realise it is a war-crime to even threaten a war-crime ?

Danny


OMG, Kenny commited a genocide!

10.03.2008 15:17

"It's actually 667000 avoidable Palestinian deaths since 1950 to the date that the UN report was released. The Palestinians regard that as a big disaster."

Avoidable how? By granting Palestinians a Norwegian healthcare and forcing them to ban marriage of relatives? This death ratio propaganda is ridicules.


"Over a million dead in Iraq, and this death toll was forecast by charities like MedAct in advance. In the lead up to war, another million and half Iraqis killed by sanctions. The deliberate use of Depeleted Uranium shells, and other morally repugnant weapons like white phosphorus, in civilian areas."

Killed by sanctions? Setting Saddam free would not have helped his people, I assure you.


"The failure as an occupying power to provide security - a legal and moral requirement that was never met. For me that adds up to genocide as defined above."

Now it's Bush's and Blair's fault even when a Sunni kills a Shia.


"It can be according to the convention.
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
For me that applies to Iraq, Chechnya and Palestine. You don't even need to fight a war to commit genocide, the Irish Potato famine was a British genocide and certain similar genocides happened throughout the British Empire."

According to this definition, wouldn't suicide attacks be a genocide? Actually, if Hamas threaten to destroy Israel, and send a single knife wielder to kill Israel, is that not a genocide?


"That's a qualitative statement and most British or American army supporters would claim the same thing, again with no supporting evidence. I lost all respect for the IDF after the Sabra and Shatilla massacre."

I made a claim and you can't refute it. Unless you can find an army that engages urban combat and does it more morally than the IDF, IDF will remain the most moral army in my opinion.

As for Sabrah and Shatillah, isn't it's funny that the most famous massacre that is used to condemn Israel, was committed by Arabs? Isn't it's funny that Palestinians slaughter of Lebanese Christians was completely forgotten by left leaning humanists?

"I wonder if you'd be so sanguine if it had been a German defence minister threatening people with a shoah ? Or if the Syrian defence minister used that term ?
Do you realise it is a war-crime to even threaten a war-crime ?"

It's my word. I wouldn't mind an Arab use the word Nakbah, but when others choose to use the Hebrew term Shoah, they must mean more than a big disaster.

avvv


The drowned & the saved

10.03.2008 17:05

I appreciate keeping such a heated discussion polite so I think you should avoid any attempts at humour such as South Park references in case they insult. It is probably in your interest too so as not to seem heartless as your ability to judge any moral matter may be called into question. I'm sure we would be both offended if someone started cracking wise about the 'Jewish Holocaust' as you call it.

"Avoidable how? By granting Palestinians a Norwegian healthcare"

Not killing people is a good way to minimise avoidable mortality, but yes, Israel did have a legal obligation to provide healthcare too.

Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War (Article 55). To the fullest extent of the means available to it the Occupying Power has the duty of ensuring the food and medical supplies of the population; it should, in particular, bring in the necessary foodstuffs, medical stores and other articles if the resources of the occupied territory are inadequate.

"This death ratio propaganda is ridicules."
Why would the UN propagandise against Israel - isn't that rather paranoid ? Why is killing 120 Gazans any less of a crime than the 8 dead Israelis ? That is 15:1. I can see why you don't like ratios as the ratios show a continuous and increasingly dispreportionate slaughter. 0.095 million Israelis compared to 0.677 million Palestinians over the same time period, that is 7:1. Looking at it in terms of total populations simply makes this more disproportionate, more like genocide.

"Killed by sanctions? Setting Saddam free would not have helped his people, I assure you."
Saddam offered to leave Iraq before the last invasion for safe exile, that would have saved over a million lives. Not many people would have protested if Mossad or whoever had then killed him anyway. It was an illegal invasion and occupation, a shoah for the Iraqi people.

"Now it's Bush's and Blair's fault even when a Sunni kills a Shia."
Yes. Primarily for launching an illegal war on false propaganda, and again for failing to provide security.

"According to this definition, wouldn't suicide attacks be a genocide? Actually, if Hamas threaten to destroy Israel, and send a single knife wielder to kill Israel, is that not a genocide?"

An individual attack wouldn't be but a prolonged and successful campaign would.

"I made a claim and you can't refute it."
Yes, but it like claiming Israeli girls are prettier than all others. I couldn't refute that either even if I didn't believe it. I am hardly about to get all nationalistic and claim 'my army is better than your army'. Collectively punishing a captive population isn't moral. Indiscriminate bombardment of civilian areas has been a war crime since the Congress of Vienna. I can't think of another army that has killed so many unarmed peace activists in recent years. Maybe you think that is moral behaviour.

"Unless you can find an army that engages urban combat and does it more morally than the IDF, IDF will remain the most moral army in my opinion."

"As for Sabrah and Shatillah, isn't it's funny that the most famous massacre that is used to condemn Israel, was committed by Arabs? Isn't it's funny that Palestinians slaughter of Lebanese Christians was completely forgotten by left leaning humanists?"

I don't find much humour in Sabra and Shatilla. The IDF surrounded the camps and orchestrated the slaughter of innocents. The fact that they got someone else to commit the slaughter is no less shameful and no less of a war-crime. So much for the most moral army in the world. The worst recognised army massacre in the UK in recent times was Bloody Sunday, and far fewer innocents died there.

"It's my word. I wouldn't mind an Arab use the word Nakbah, but when others choose to use the Hebrew term Shoah, they must mean more than a big disaster."
So it is wrong for anyone except Israelis to threaten a shoh - why is that if it is just an ordinary word ?

Danny


Good night

10.03.2008 20:57

My vacation has ended, so I won't contribute to this discussion anymore. I might be able to read the comments, but not participate. It's been wonderful.

avvv


holocaust

31.03.2008 22:36

Stop crying about the holocaust. We all know how terrible it was, but at the same time, none of us alive today are responsible for it. Don't expect pity or solidarity for history. The holocaust is history. It should also be noted that the Nazis only started with the Jews. Anyone who wasn't Aryan would have met the same fate eventually.

If you're saying that holocaust means big disaster, why are you against using it to describe the situation in Palestine? Oh that's right, suddenly it means THE holocaust, and we shouldn't compare them because Hebrew lives are more valuable than Palestinian ones. The only reason the IDF isn't tagging and gassing Palestinians is because of fear of backlash from the international community and even its own citizens- something Hitler didn't care about.

As for the "self-defense" comments, as the attacks are only intensifying with every dead Palestinian, it doesn't look like a very good defensive strategy. Maybe if they stopped oppressing the Palestinians, there could be hope for peace. If you kick a man while he's down, he's only going to throw more rocks at you.

am


khalas to European anaylsis

03.04.2008 22:04

your britsh created the terror and the circumstance for this to happen and know you try to position yrselves as the solvers and the key holders to peace? onkly you know what destruction and terro is for you created in yr colonies. you hate on the jews but you let the shoah happen. I wish peace and justice to the palestineans but stop inserting yrself...it never seems to help. peace will only come to those who think with love and not hate. love even yr enemy. cant say I am there either.

khalas
mail e-mail: yrterror@nopeace.com


Someone's Holiday, Another's Nakba, Our Shame!

06.04.2008 21:34

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