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Video: Desmond Tutu condemns Gaza blockade
(BBC. May 29) Nobel peace laureate Desmond Tutu has called Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip an “abomination.” (CLICK HERE for video)
He strongly condemned what he called international “silence and complicity” on the blockade, which he compared to the actions of Burma’s leaders.
Speaking at the end of a two day mission to the area, the former archbishop said the humanitarian situation there could not be justified.
Earlier, 60 Palestinians were detained in an Israeli raid on northern Gaza.
Residents in the Beit Hanoun area were summoned to a local square by Israeli troops with loudhailers before dozens were taken away, witnesses said.
‘International complicity’
Mr Tutu was in Gaza on a United Nations fact-finding mission into the killing of 19 Palestinians by Israeli shellfire in November 2006. The former archbishop of Cape Town said the international community’s “silence and complicity, especially on the situation in Gaza, shames us all”.
Mr Tutu said conflicts were resolved through talking to enemies not friends.
He said his meeting with the deposed prime minister, Ismail Haniya, was an opportunity to tell the Hamas leader the firing of rockets into Israel was also a violation of human rights.
During his two-day visit, Mr Tutu met relatives of 19 civilians killed in the Israeli shelling of two houses in Beit Hanoun and is due to report his findings to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
He condemned the incident as a “massacre”.
Israel says the Beit Hanoun deaths in November 2006 were a mistake during action to target areas used by Palestinian militants.
The Israeli military confirmed its pre-dawn incursion into Gaza on Thursday and said about 60 “wanted Palestinians” were being interrogated.
Armoured military bulldozers destroyed farmland during the incursion, witnesses told AFP news agency.
Israeli forces launch frequent attacks into Gaza which they say are aimed at combating Palestinian militants who fire rockets into Israel.
Matthew Brett is the Canadian Dimension weblog manager. The views expressed on this blog do not necessarily represent his own. Read more by Matthew Brett.
Hugh, you are deluded.
The world is gradually, unstoppably realising the crimes the Israelis are perpetrating. “By their actions you shall know them”.
#1. Posted by Stuart on June 2nd 2008 at 6:21am
It really is about Palestinian militants who fire rockets into Israel.
The Gazans quit attacking, and like can become normal.
Terror-sucking Antisemites like Matthew Brett and Tutu just don’t want to accept the continued existence of Israel.
#2. Posted by Hugh on June 2nd 2008 at 2:06pm
I think that the biggest hoax being claimed by Israel is that the Arabs refuse to recognize Israel’s right to exist. This is not true .... They refuse to recognize Israel as a “Jewish State” because if they did, they would lose the right of return which is guaranteed under international law. Also, A “Jewish State” would mean that Non-Jews living inside Israel would have less rights then the Jews have.
When you hear Israel pundits on TV talk, they always intertwine the words “Israel” and “Jewish State” .... but they do not mean the same thing.
When Olmert and Livni talk about Israel as a “Jewish state”, they mean essentially that it is a state that is for Jewish people, even if they don’t reside or have citizenship there. It would be very handy for them if they could force the Palestinians to accept this definition, because then they could go into final status talks with some of the more intractable issues - like how to resolve the Right of Return - pre-emptively swept off the table. After all, how can Palestinians have a right to return to their homes in a “Jewish state” when they’re not even Jewish, and non-Jews shouldn’t expect to be allowed to live in a “Jewish state” in the first place…
http://lawrenceofcyberia.blogs.com/news/2007/11/a-jewish-state.html
It is useful to recall that during the “good old years” of negotiations and agreements between Israel and the PLO this was never an issue. Even during the negotiations on “mutual recognition”, Israel never demanded to be recognized as anything other than Israel. Nor was the Jewish nature of the state an issue in later peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan.
At best, the Zionist claim that Jews around the world constitute one people, rather than constituting a religious community of different peoples, is controversial even among Jews. In addition, the concept of a “Jewish state” contradicts the principles of secularism. Secularists, including Jews, find it difficult to accept basing nationalism on religion. The modern concept of statehood is not compatible with a religious state, at least among seculars. In the same way, there has to be strong resistance to the idea of a state for the Muslim people or a state for the Christian people, especially when such states include non-Muslim or non-Christian minorities.
http://www.bitterlemons-international.org
It’s Not Just The Palestinians Who Won’t Recognize A “Jewish State”
May 14, 1948. The context is that the Zionist government has proclaimed a “Jewish state” in Palestine, and is seeking U.S. recognition of that state. The document is President Harry S. Truman’s response to that request.
The interesting thing is that the original text of the document is edited with hand-written corrections, to produce the wording finally approved by Truman. And the purpose of the editing is specifically to remove the suggestion that the U.S. recognizes a “Jewish state”, and to clarify that it recognizes instead the “state of Israel”.
How about that: the United States was asked in 1948 to recognize the “Jewish state”, but offered recognition instead to the “state of Israel”. Just as the PLO does today.
So why exactly is it uncontroversial when we do it, but an obstacle to peace when they do it?
Here is a picture of the document mentioned above.
http://tinyurl.com/5chgac
At the Arab Summit in 2007, the Arab leaders offered Israel a peace proposal of “Land For Peace” and even offered negotiate away the Palestinian Right Of Return and all Arab countries would immediately recognize the “State of Israel” (Not the “Jewish State Of Israel”) .... all Israel had to do was move back to the pre-67 borders.
In 2006, the leadership of Hamas stated “If Israel withdrew to the 1967 borders, including Jerusalem, acknowledges the right of return, lifts its siege, dismantles the settlements and the wall and releases the prisoners, then it is possible for us as Palestinians and Arabs to make a serious step to match the Zionist step”.
Is Israel Unique
By Mazin Qumsiyeh
June 09, 2005
To get papers of citizenship all they have to do is show up in the state and claim their automatic citizenship. The closest to this in the last 100 years of world history is Nazi Germany which instituted laws that recognized that all Aryan people whose mother tongue is German are nationals of the third Reich even if they happen to be then citizens of say Poland or Serbia. To my knowledge there is no Christian or Muslim majority country (not even US-backed dictatorial regimes with religious laws like Saudi Arabia) today that recognized that anybody who is Muslim or Christian or convert to those religions could get automatic citizenship. Israel is simply not “Jewish” like there are “Christian” states. No “Christian state” has a national anthem that even comes close to the Israeli one that sings of Jewish hearts yearning for Eretz Yisrael, the land of Israel. How would one feel if the US national anthem was about Christians yearning for our manifest destiny of ruling this Christian nation?
Israel is unique among the nations in not being a country of its citizens but of “Jewish people everywhere”. No other country defines itself as a country for members of a particular religion (including converts) regardless of where they live. No other country has supranational entities that have authority superceding state authority and native people rights. For example, the JNF is not a state agency but it has on its own website the amazing statement that “The Jewish National Fund is the custodian of the land of Israel on behalf of its owners Jewish people everywhere.” 91% of the land (most taken from the 530 Palestinian towns and villages depopulated between 1947-1949) is not privately owned but turned over from the custodian of “absentee property” to the JNF (Jewish Agency before) for lease by Jews. More recently some of this land was turned over for “management” by the Israel Lands authority. I am very familiar with the latter group’s “work” with the Israeli government in reclassifying Palestinian lands (including near my own village) to “Green areas” (or taking over areas classified as military Zones) and then reclassifying them as “residential” and then building Jewish only settlements/colonies on them.
Another basic law denies refugees the right to return to their lands and confiscates land without compensation (so called “absentee property law”). So far 2/3rds of the native Palestinians are refugees and displaced people (all simply for being of the wrong religion). I say so far because this is a continuing process. Just in the past 4 years alone 35,000 more Palestinians were made homeless by home demolitions and land confiscations.
Other basic laws define Israel as Jewish-dominated in more hidden ways and result in lack of equality to non-Jews in the state. After the expulsion of 3/4th of the native Palestinians the 1/4th who managed to stay were subjected to Marshal law between 1948-1966. Even after 1966, they were not integrated in the society and remain as foreigners in their own lands. Since they do not get drafted into the army like other Israeli citizens, a number of laws do not specifically give preference to Jews but to those who serve in the army. Further Israeli law considers one fourth of those people (about 300,000 of the 1.3 million Palestinians with Israeli citizenship) as “present absentees”. This means that their land and/or homes were confiscated from them and turned to the Jewish Agency/JNF. By international law they are considered internally displaced people (refugees).
Israel uniqueness extends to hundreds of other ways that other countries do not have access to. For example, countries are divided into those who declared themselves nuclear powers and those that did not and signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. Israel is well known to have nuclear weapons (hundreds) but never signed this treaty or agreed to non-proliferation let alone international inspections.
http://qumsiyeh.org/isisraelunique
#3. Posted by Calm on June 3rd 2008 at 11:22am
Why I Despise Israel Supporters
Here we are 60 years after the Hitler-Trip and Jewish Folks are still entering courthouses across this universe and insisting on justice and the “Right-Of-Return” of stolen artifacts, property and jewels confiscated by Hitler and The Clowns.
I think that the Palestinian people deserve the same “Right-Of-Return” and the same sense of justice that the Jewish Folks insisted upon in every courthouse in the land.
Never once did I hear any Jewish Person suggest that the “Facts Had Changed On The Ground” and thus the Jews we’re not entitled to compensation for losses incurred under Hitler ... but this is the claim that the Jewish Folks make with the Palestinian People and their “Right-Of-Return”.
With the recent discovery of mass graves in the Sinai as a result Israeli atrocities carried out during the ‘67 war against Egyptian soldiers, .... the Israelis have refused to put any officers on trial, saying it was all too long ago.
http://edition.cnn.com/WORLD/9509/mass_graves
This is not what the Jewish folks claim as they themselves still enter courtrooms across this universe and demand accountability for Hitler’s crimes.
“If I were to be put on trial for what I did, then it would be necessary to put on trial at least one-half the Israeli army which, in similar circumstances, did what I did.”
—Israeli Brig. Gen. Aryeh Biro, who admitted to killing hundereds of unresisting Egyptians—
http://www.washington-report.org/backissues/0296/9602017.html
What really puts me over the edge is that at the same time (1948-1949) when the world was parading pictures of holocaust survivors within the media, the Prime Minister of the newly formed government of Israel was promoting and encouraging a holocaust against the Palestinian’s.
David Ben-Gurion, once said to his General Staff ....
“We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation, and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population.”
—David Ben-Gurion, May 1948, to the General Staff. From Ben-Gurion, A Biography, by Michael Ben-Zohar, Delacorte, New York 1978—
http://www.peoplejudgebush.org/Accountability/ZionistQuotes.shtml
That is almost exactly what Hitler said when speaking about the Jewish Folks!
And worse ..... Ben-Gurion said this at the same time that our media was parading holocaust victims across the universe and showing Jewish Folks crying and screaming “Never Again”.
In 1948, with Hitler dead less then 2 years, .... At the very heart of the newly formed country of Israel, .... at the highest levels of government, .... within the Israeli cabinet, the Jewish folks were actually talking about committing a holocaust or committing the exact same crimes as Hitler was being chastised for.
I think the folks of Israel should hang their heads in shame and quit giving us the daily dose of holocaust guilt because they themselves are found to have been committing a holocaust against the Arab People.
During the Hitler-Trip, Jews were seen behind electric fences and barbed wire and today the Israeli’s have done exactly the same thing to the Palestinan People and with the building of the wall or barrier.
These despicable Israeli activities are an exact replication of its past sorrowful and sordid history during Hitler’s reign! What gruesome and loathing hypocrites they are!
[For an Israeli] to talk about peace is like a Whorehouse holding a convention about love.
—JohD, November 15, 2003—
http://houston.indymedia.org/news/2003/11/18544_comment.php
#4. Posted by Calm on June 3rd 2008 at 2:25pm
“Neither Jewish morality nor Jewish tradition can be used to disallow terror as a means of war… We are very far from any moral hesitations when concerned with the national struggle. First and foremost, terror is for us a part of the political war appropriate for the circumstances of today…”
—Yitzhak shamir—
Israel’s Long-Term Ethnic Cleansing and Institutionalized Racism
1800: 2.5% Jews, 89% Arabs
1890: 8% Jews, 81% Arabs
1914: 14% Jews, 76% Arabs
1922: 11% Jews, 78% Arabs
1931: 17% Jews, 74% Arabs
1945: 31% Jews, 60% Arabs
2006: 76% Jews, 20% Arabs
http://tinyurl.com/6q4zg2
#5. Posted by Calm on June 3rd 2008 at 3:36pm
It’s Not Just The Palestinians Who Won’t Recognize A “Jewish State”
May 14, 1948. The context is that the Zionist government has proclaimed a “Jewish state” in Palestine, and is seeking U.S. recognition of that state. The document is President Harry S. Truman’s response to that request.
The interesting thing is that the original text of the document is edited with hand-written corrections, to produce the wording finally approved by Truman. And the purpose of the editing is specifically to remove the suggestion that the U.S. recognizes a “Jewish state”, and to clarify that it recognizes instead the “state of Israel”.
How about that: the United States was asked in 1948 to recognize the “Jewish state”, but offered recognition instead to the “state of Israel”. Just as the PLO does today.
So why exactly is it uncontroversial when we do it, but an obstacle to peace when they do it?
Here is a picture of the document mentioned above.
http://tinyurl.com/5chgac
#6. Posted by Calm on June 3rd 2008 at 5:41pm
I think that the biggest hoax being claimed by Israel is that the Arabs refuse to recognize Israel’s right to exist. This is not true .... They refuse to recognize Israel as a “Jewish State” because if they did, they would lose the right of return which is guaranteed under international law. Also, A “Jewish State” would mean that Non-Jews living inside Israel would have less rights then the Jews have.
When you hear Israel pundits on TV talk, they always intertwine the words “Israel” and “Jewish State” .... but they do not mean the same thing.
When Olmert and Livni talk about Israel as a “Jewish state”, they mean essentially that it is a state that is for Jewish people, even if they don’t reside or have citizenship there. It would be very handy for them if they could force the Palestinians to accept this definition, because then they could go into final status talks with some of the more intractable issues - like how to resolve the Right of Return - pre-emptively swept off the table. After all, how can Palestinians have a right to return to their homes in a “Jewish state” when they’re not even Jewish, and non-Jews shouldn’t expect to be allowed to live in a “Jewish state” in the first place…
http://lawrenceofcyberia.blogs.com/news/2007/11/a-jewish-state.html
It is useful to recall that during the “good old years” of negotiations and agreements between Israel and the PLO this was never an issue. Even during the negotiations on “mutual recognition”, Israel never demanded to be recognized as anything other than Israel. Nor was the Jewish nature of the state an issue in later peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan.
At best, the Zionist claim that Jews around the world constitute one people, rather than constituting a religious community of different peoples, is controversial even among Jews. In addition, the concept of a “Jewish state” contradicts the principles of secularism. Secularists, including Jews, find it difficult to accept basing nationalism on religion. The modern concept of statehood is not compatible with a religious state, at least among seculars. In the same way, there has to be strong resistance to the idea of a state for the Muslim people or a state for the Christian people, especially when such states include non-Muslim or non-Christian minorities.
http://www.bitterlemons-international.org
#7. Posted by Calm on June 3rd 2008 at 6:29pm
At the Arab Summit in 2007, the Arab leaders offered Israel a peace proposal of “Land For Peace” and even offered negotiate away the Palestinian Right Of Return and all Arab countries would immediately recognize the “State of Israel” (Not the “Jewish State Of Israel”) .... all Israel had to do was move back to the pre-67 borders.
In 2006, the leadership of Hamas stated “If Israel withdrew to the 1967 borders, including Jerusalem, acknowledges the right of return, lifts its siege, dismantles the settlements and the wall and releases the prisoners, then it is possible for us as Palestinians and Arabs to make a serious step to match the Zionist step”.
Is Israel Unique
To get papers of citizenship all they have to do is show up in the state and claim their automatic citizenship. The closest to this in the last 100 years of world history is Nazi Germany which instituted laws that recognized that all Aryan people whose mother tongue is German are nationals of the third Reich even if they happen to be then citizens of say Poland or Serbia. To my knowledge there is no Christian or Muslim majority country (not even US-backed dictatorial regimes with religious laws like Saudi Arabia) today that recognized that anybody who is Muslim or Christian or convert to those religions could get automatic citizenship. Israel is simply not “Jewish” like there are “Christian” states. No “Christian state” has a national anthem that even comes close to the Israeli one that sings of Jewish hearts yearning for Eretz Yisrael, the land of Israel. How would one feel if the US national anthem was about Christians yearning for our manifest destiny of ruling this Christian nation?
By Mazin Qumsiyeh
June 09, 2005
http://qumsiyeh.org/isisraelunique
#8. Posted by Calm on June 3rd 2008 at 7:49pm
The war in Iraq was conceived by 25 neoconservative intellectuals, most of them Jewish, and who are pushing President Bush to change the course of history.
Compare this with The Cradle Of Christianity which is Jerusalem and where 10% of the Israeli population are christians and yet none hold senior positions within the Israeli government. In fact it is illegal for christians to proselytize in Israel and many christians inside Israel are being spat upon and just recently orthodox Jews were found burning New Testament bibles.
Calm
#9. Posted by Calm on June 3rd 2008 at 9:12pm
Oh! Sorry ....
I thought the reason my comment did not appear was because of it being too long, and not because of moderation, so I re-posted in shorter parts.
Calm
#10. Posted by Calm on June 3rd 2008 at 10:57pm
For what ever happen during ther Holocust Era it look as if the Hews living now have already forget, because if you remember you should have not athink of threating another human being the way you threat the Palestania they give place to live and you take advantage of it. God is watching you people Hope your new generation will not pay for what you are doing to Palestania know.
#11. Posted by Bola on June 4th 2008 at 2:14am
For what ever happen during ther Holocust Era it look as if the Jews living now have already forget, because if you remember you should have not athink of threating another human being the way you threat the Palestania they give place to live and you take advantage of it. God is watching you people Hope your new generation will not pay for what you are doing to Palestania know.
#12. Posted by Bola on June 4th 2008 at 3:02am
Thank you for your comments, which had absolutely nothing to do with Tutu’s visit to Gaza or the fact of Gazans continuing to terrorize their neighbors by attacking across an international border.
Obviously editorial management approve of attacks against civilians as long as they are Jews, and as Jews should not be allowed to take defensive actions to protect themselves.
The so-called peace offer by the Hamas was only illusory, as their leaders still insist upon define themselves as existing to kill all Jews both in Israel and elsewhere. And no amount of agitation propaganda boilerplate negates that fact to date.
#13. Posted by Hugh on June 7th 2008 at 6:12am
[...] Further comments on this article on Canadian Dimension [...]
#14. Posted by Desmond Tutu condemns Gaza blockade | Radical Dail on July 28th 2008 at 1:22am