Gaza Demo in Berlin without the Left - Embassy Clashes in Greece

Reason that you can't reach de.indymedia at the moment.

I´m a complete punter - watz a denial of service attack? After two hours ... I STILL CAN´T ACCESS IMC Germany... What the heck is going on there??
CAN SOME1 Xplane?

Not everyone like Indymedia as much as you do.

For a Europe all out class war!

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gg7WHx7duug

IMC Germany is online again. But users complain that "certain IP-adresses are blocked" for not being "on line" by "pro-Zionist IMC moderators".

I sense confusion in german left politics, a confusion that could of been solved a lot more easily with a long talk to the Israeli&palestinian left.

The first fact is, the holocust happened, it happened from Germany, led by an Austrian, it happened, it was worst in Poland, but was a symptom of anti-antisemitism all over Europe, its only incidental it happened there and then and not say in the UK, with that in mind, it happened, and it happened as it did, which leaves Germany in a spot now, they have a holocaust on their "national conscience", and thats a heavy weight to carry.

from this some deduct that they suppose to support the plea of the victims and their decedents, and support a jewish state on the land that was once called Palestina... it follows that they should support thier actions under the pretext of self defense, when Palestinians shout slogans along the lines of death to the jews, it obviously rings very different bells to them then it is to the Germans,confusion is added to this with the allegations of anti-semitism that comes out of every Israeli politician whenever criticism of Israel surface.
and yet, who in his right mind can support the oppression of the Palestinian people by the Israeli state? who can possibly support that which unfolds in Gaza in these very moments???
The solution again lays in the seperation of states from its citizens, you can blame hamas, you can blame the israeli government, and its army, but you must assume that any given citizen would say he wants peace, that every person just wants the best for himself and those that he cares about, that once again we are forced to choose sides, and are not simply given the option to "bail", to say that what ever the geo political solution will be, the real solution is when people stop dying like that, when there are no missiles shot from either direction. the holocust happened, but this does not justify this... madness, it does not allow for another group to be oppressed, and as germans, you cannot possibly support Israel's actions, even if you support the concept of a jewish state!

Its true, there has been a time when jews have been the most prosecuted group, and this time might come again, throughout the ages they have been of the most descriminated against, along with other "fringe" groups like gypsis.
But this cannot possibly justify what we are seing on our TV screens, this can not give legitimization for the genocide that is unfolding in these very moments, the solutions once again lays in the hands of the people, having their governments and their solutions rendered unworkable, no government with its actions can possibly solve this situation now, the peace will have to be signed person by person, the way forwards is to break out of the hegemony, its not enough anymore to say that there will be a Palestinian state, and it will be over there, out there somewhere, where we don't have to worry about them, it will have to take a pro active part from the greater sum of the Israeli and Palestinian societies, to be willing to make links and friendships on the "other side", regardless of the borders and military positions, and all of the other tools that the politicians use against us, the solution is within us!

A German who supports blindly the actions of Israel now might well be a Nazi, a German who will not criticize Israel for fear of being accused of being a nazi is a pussy, a German who seeks to blame the jews for this is a nazi, and a German who blames the state(s?), the politicians and their armies is an anarchist, if you can draw the lines and see the parallels, you will reach the conclusion that once again its the state, and that while this IS NOT THE HOLOCAUST, there are no people turned into soaps, this is of little consultation to the families who have just lost their loved onces, it might not be our holocaust, but whatever name you choose for it, it has to stop!

We are mired down in half-truths where til yesterday there could at least some semblance of information on what's going on down in the Strip. IMC Germany has been put to the test, and failed. This is foreboding; the radical Right in Germany has learned in the last 2 years or so that if they pay lip service to the pro-Israel stance, they can draw water. A lot.

The most vile and reactionary thoughts are raising their heads again - in the Web forum of one of our largest right-wing dailies, it was possible to openly discuss concentration camps (by any other name - and no, not Auschwitz, but the old-school "death by hard labour and time, not gas" camps like Dachau) as an option to weed out "undesirables" after the Athens riots. The Cons(ervatives) are newspeaking the country high and low with their think-tank fantasy of the supposed "jerk to the left" that German politics has undergone, as if a Commie revolution were to break out any day now. Truth is, me being in this game a bit longer than most, that I have only once seen the German Left so weak and unable to stand up for their values - and that was in the early 90s, when Neoliberalism ruled supreme, when "the (State-)boat was full (of sans papiers)" and "aliens" were burnt alive, to the cheer of a German mob.

2009 will be a year of decision for Germany, perhaps more than for any other cuntry; we have at least 4 crucial elections coming up, and the Left seems to be too shell-shocked to make themselves heard. Meanwhile, the reactionary and radical Right are putting up more and more pressure, and their influence is growing. Another example: telepolis (think of it as The Register in German, only more so) has been run over by the wingnuts; people who say that the "lazy poor" ought to be sent to work camps for their own good. I fear what will happen when the dam breaks, and if things continue at this pace it can't be more than 10 years.

This disgraceful infighting is the last thing we need now. We need to respect "the other side"'s right to an opinion. Criticize it all we may if we don't like it, but we will not be able to claim that it'll go away if we bury it.



"A German who supports blindly the actions of Israel now might well be a Nazi"

Anyone wo does might be. But so might be anyone who supports Hamas, who, faced with a veritable army well inside rocket range, have nothing better to do that to attack civilian targets, exclusively.

The refugees, meanwhile, are being ground to bits between two factions, of which one (Hamas) thrives on this neverending war and misery - it was what made them great, after all, and if it stops they will lose out to Fatah sooner or later -, and the other (various IL governments) are either unwilling or unable to do anything constructive either, and it may too well be that this flare-up is to them, too, a most welcome diversion from issues like precarisation, poverty and a political élite that seems headed anywhere but into a future with any semblance of livelihood.


And dwelling on Nazis, genocide and the Holocaust - it might be better if we'd refrain from such hyperbole. YMMV, but I have spent the last 10 years or so purposefully *not* looking away, and I have seen pictures of genocides and the Holocaust and Nazi atrocities, and these pictures show mountains of rotting corpses and hills of skulls and festering mass graces and dead by the thousand.

However bad this what is happening here is, it does not help to describe it in terms that are factually dubious, or outright wrong. Read a goddamn history book any day, willya?

To wit: if the Israelis continue at the present pace for the whole next year, they will still have racked up only one-fifth, or even less, of the civilian body cvount the Pakistani armed forces have racked up in 2008, under pretty damn similar circumstances (autonomous area, War Against Terror, blockade, starvation, abject poverty etc etc), in this lil game of theirs called the  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_North-West_Pakistan

So, if Gaza is the Second Holocaust, what is Waziristan? 5 times as bad as the Second Holocaust? We'd have to invent a word for that. And yet, this "5-times-as-bad-as-the -second-Holocaust" still killed one-thousandth of the civilians killled in the Holocaust.

And neither is the Hamas - nonwithstanding that they, or at least a large proportion of the Hamas leadership, would love nothing better than to slaughter each and every Jew in the Near East simply for being Jewish - able to pull off the "second Shoah". Really. Get some sense, folks. They are a bunch of armed thugs with a guerilla force.

So, a sense of proportion would do well here.


Also, noticing the uniformed dead in Gaza (which are still 85% of those killed), and the massive shedding of tears over the death of "civilian policemen" (which they may well have been, but just might not have been), I cannot happen but wondering:

Whatever happened to "He's the Universal Soldier, and he really is to blame"? And Are All Cops Bastards Except When They Wear A Hamas Uniform all of a sudden?


The state of the economy being what it is, the global Left is well advised not to callously institutionalize this killing and smother it in fatuous hyperbole just to prove the girth of their membrum virile in factional infighting.

In 2009, the global Left will be handed a one-in-a-lifetime chance to start doing away with Capitalist injustice, once and for all, on a silver platter.

If the Left remembers the values that made it great long ago - the disdain for authority, for organized power, for conservative political and social "values" that are nothing but thinly disguised reactionary backwardness; a willingness to fight for the faceless citizen - no matter what race or creed or colour or nationality -, and stand strong and in solidarity and take action and resist: then the result will be well worth the struggle.

But if we heed the sirens' song of intolerance and censorship, the Left will have managed the amazing and disturbiung feat to have lost its spine and heart at the same time, and sold out. WAY. And then, it will have failed its historical chance, and all for the better. Because it will NOT be in a position to force open the door to a better and brighter future for THE WHOLE of humankind, that the powers-that-be are ever more vainly trying to keep shut, and rip the shackles from the oppresseds' wrists and tear the hoods of stupendous disbelief from their heads and tell them: dare, at last, to walk with your head up high; you may stumble but you cannot fall, since we are with you. Instead, the darkest and most vile reactionaries will lead us into the dark like sheep, and cast us all down a dungeon of tyranny and war from which, this time, there will be no escape.

Long speech - much like a politicians it avoided the point and was mired in rhetoric instead. Does showing solidarity with Palestinians being bombed equate to support for Hamas? Does showing solidarity with Palestinians equate to not caring about what is going on elsewhere?

No clearly it doesn't.

Does living in a State that supports the Israeli state and not doing something when it is starving and bombing people equate to supporting the status quo.

Yes clearly it does.

Ok a few things... where did you get this 80% figure from?
The truth is, that there is very little difference in Israel and Palestine between a civilian and a fighter, when you fight a popular struggle like that then all civilians are potential fighters, and all homes are potential targets.
Now im going to be perfectly honest here, and this WILL PISS A LOT OF PEOPLE OFF!
I don't really want to kill cops, i think that by large they are bastards, that they have been in our way for bringing this to an end far too many times, and that they are the very thing that gives powers their power, but i don't want to them to die, or at least, i don't want a blanket death to all copers. saying kill all cops (and i probably said it more then once), still means killing a few millions around the world, if you add all soliders to this, you'll probably get a significant fraction of the world's population there, these statements for me say something more fundamental then just that, it is a challenge not a threat!

Now, HAMAS CANNOT BE HELD RESPONSIBLE FOR ACTIONS OF THE ISRAELI GOVERNMENT, no matter if its a reaction to something else, they can be blamed for provoking israel(as in govt.)... maybe, but they cannot be responsible for this. its true, the hamas, as well as israel have a lot to gain from conflict, and nothing to gain from peace, its true that no matter how many people die, if they appear to be resisting they will be more popular, (much like israel), its true that the hamas knows that the missile attacks are disproportionate to the reactions, they know that this is no way to "win" the war, a war like that is generally being won when you kill more of the other side then they do of you, and is actually won when one side simply surrender. now this cannot happen, because this is still a guerrilla war for a popular liberation versus an occupying force, and the only way this would happen is when EVERYONE agrees to not resist anymore! this could never happen.

With that in mind, almost everyone in power has an interest to keep the dreaded statues quo! While there is war, so called "peace makers" have jobs, the industries are pumping cash, the politicians get this enemy they need to rally their citizens against, the religious right gets their holy wars,business gets an underclass, etc.
everyone with any saying in the matter has an interest to keep the war going!

It depends on who you talk to, no, it is not useful to compare this to the holocaust, mostly because once you do, they will shut you out, and nothing more you'll say to them will mean much, but this is no excuse to abuse it, it is no excuse for saying that opposition to the occupation is antisemitism! for me the occupation brings the worst of us, and for what it did to the society in Israel, i can certainly see the parallels with other fascist states around the world, namely the militarization of society, racism, and the (very visible) enemy thing!

And yes, to stop this, israel will have to take a few hits, without responding!, (or not like that anyway), but as the obviously stronger side, it holds the responsibility to breaking out of the cycle of violence, not hamas!
it will just have to be a long period , (maybe generations) where israel simply refuses to "retaliate", this is the only way to make the attacks stop, when they are rendered irrelevant, "retaliation" only strengthen the resolute to fight, and as long as a palestinian and an israeli are enemies by default, they will continue to play the enemy role for each other whenever someone dies! and an enemy is the best thing a politician can have, especially if you can just demonise it endlessly, the worst enemy, that will kill you at night, can be anyone of them, etc...

Along with masses of hidden arguments

see:  http://www.de.indymedia.org/2008/12/237782.shtml?c=on#comments2

(Still don´t grasp the TECHNICAL details, but my worrying about counterproductive IMC censorhip during a perspective Eurowide insurrection next year seems futile if any secret service on the world can shut down indymedia by a DoS-attack.)

@13:11

What we have here is TWO parties to a war BOTH callously killing civilians. Either condemn both, or condemn none. Anything else is taking sides, and YOU DO NOT want to take sides with Hamas as a leftist. Hamas massacred more leftists among the Palsetinian refugees back on 2007 than the Israeli army could ever dream of.

And go stuff your verbatim "solidarity" elsewhere. One can make a publicity stunt like sailing right into an Israeli naval blockade with a few crates of medical goods and get rammed by a patrol boat. Gives you airtime on CNN. Great.

But you know who are the real heroes? The nameless, faceless lorry drivers that waited for days at the checkpoints. And when they were let in after all, each and every single one of them delivered more humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza than those "Free Gaza" media whores would have done, even if they had succeeded.


"Does showing solidarity with Palestinians equate to not caring about what is going on elsewhere?"

Yes, very obviously it does. A rough search for "Gaza" and "Waziristan" suggests that the average Indy.UK writer considers the life of a Pali refugee killed by the Israelis about 100 times as valuable as the life of a Pakistani tribeswoman killed by the Pak army.

We should leave the dividing-up of humankind into those Worthy and those Unworthy to the wingnuts. The simple fact is: the IDF killed far more civilians than the Hamas. But another simple fact is: the Hamas almost ALWAYS targets civilians FIRST.

Even the Iraqi Army in 2003 managed to bring down some helicopters. The Hamas could at least try. What these swine do is to leave those who sought their protection to be killed at will. And last year, they started killing each and every Palestinian refugee who dared oppose them or challenge their chokehold on power. And it is true: Ariel Sharon is more culpable of letting Hamas grow to a real force in the first place, and the policy of denying the Gazans basic supplies keeps them strong.


@14:11

"where did you get this 80% figure from?"

First 2 days of bombing. Decreasing, as the IDF runs out of "legitimate" (if anything is legitimate here) targets. By now, almost half of those killed are civilians.


"when you fight a popular struggle like that then all civilians are potential fighters, and all homes are potential targets."

This is George W. Bush-talk; it's a myth perpetrated both by the IDF and the Hamas.

"it will just have to be a long period , (maybe generations)"

I have researched the resource situation down there (especially potable water) and trust me: we have ONE more generation. After that, the land of milk and honey will have become the land of blood and misery for a very, very long time.

The only solution I can think of is destroying the nation-state down there forever. To hell with "Eretz Yisrael", to hell with "Palestinia from the sea to the desert". Muslims and Jews and all others down there, they either stand together or die together. Poverty in Israel, especially among the youth, is rising more rapidly than in any other Western country. Half of the *Israeli* population has no access anymore to tap water that under international standards qualifies as "potable" either. The fields of Israel are irrigated with pre-treated sewage.


The vicious cycle must be broken. But what is happening here and now, among the European Left, is not different from what I experienced back in the 1980s. The very same arguments, the very same finger-pointing. Did it help? Has it saved a single life in those 20+ years?

"If you realize your're riding a dead horse..."

You are very correct in pointing out that the change has to come from the streets. That the powers-that-be, on either side, are unwilling and incapable of any change for the better.


Again:

What would Emma Goldman do?

As you seem to believe that you cannot protest against war - because both sides are killing civilians - I assume you stand aside from taking a stand against any such conflict. Shame. Your obsession with Hamas is somewhat saddening. Maybe you have never been on a protest in solidarity with an oppressed group but in a block, or under a banner that might give an alternative. I guess you didn't oppose the Iraq invasion either because to do so would be supporting Saddam Hussain.

it seems still incomprehensible for many international leftists, that many radical leftists in germany do not support the palestinians against israel. its a reflex of many leftists to be solidary to the powerless people in the world, but this can't be the way to criticise this society. how could a radical leftist be solidary with a group of people, who where dominated of such antisemitic and racist organisations like the hamas? every state of the world would do it like israel or worse. it could not be the answer of this disturbing reality to criticise imperialistic states like usa or israel. the arguments, the passion and the rage must attack the capitalist system worldwide not just one or two single states. espacially not the only state that could be the only possibility for many jews to defend themselves from antisemitism. for sure, israel fights wars like every other state of the world, why not? jews are not better than other people! imperialism is a part of the capitalist society... from falkland to israel. war isn't funny but the antisemitic terror isn't it too. its not easy to find the truth between the frontlines, but one thing is clear: the radical left couln'd find the truth in the lines of the pro-palestinian protestlers in berlin. if you want to fight war, you have to fight capitalism! if you want to fight racism, you have to fight the idea of nations! it remains the hope of peace for both sides, but if i want to be sure of it, i have to fight more than israel! and as long the jews are threatened by antisemitism, israel is absolutly necessary.

gegen jeden antisemitismus, nieder mit deutschland und für den kommunismus!