Archive for the ‘PATRICK MARTIN’ Tag
JOHN CHUCKMAN
POSTED RESPONSES TO A COLUMN BY PATRICK MARTIN IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL
“Hamas does not maintain an independent judiciary with rule of law.
“Homosexuality is a crime in Gaza, punishable by up to 10 years imprisonment. Gays are lucky to make it to prison, they are frequently murdered if exposed.
“There have been no free elections in Gaza since Hamas overthrew the Presidential Authority.”
Oh, please, spare us the highly selective statistics.
A Palestinian who marries an Israeli and the children of such a marriage are punished under Israeli law in a number of ways.
A Christian, under Israeli law, who goes to Israel to do the same proselytizing he or she does anywhere else is to be deported.
Israel is 19% Arabic – not by choice but because those people are the descendents of Palestinians who refused to run from Irgun and Stern Terror in the 1940s – but under Israeli law these Israeli passport holders are second-class citizens.
Israel has an elaborate set of discriminatory rules against non-Jewish citizens. Just holding a passport is not enough for what anyone anywhere else would call equal treatment. You must be part of the class of “the Jewish nation” which Israeli law and courts recognize as something higher and more exclusive than mere citizenship by birth.
Indeed, a senior minister of Netanyahu’s government, Lieberman, favors the deportation of Arabs with Israeli citizenship, and his is a view with a good deal of support in Israel. There are many quotes from prominent Israelis, even rabbis, calling the Palestinians, vermin. How would you like to try making a life with that hanging over your head?
Those are just some of the unfair laws against Arabs and others living as part of Israel proper. The other 4 million or so Palestinians who live under Israeli occupation – Gaza, the West Bank, and Jerusalem – are treated terribly as is plain to the whole world.
Any backward law in Gaza, as against homosexuality, rather pales in comparison to the endless abuse of 4 million people with check points, arrests, assassinations, torture, stealing more land, stealing more water, and a set of regulations against these people designed to make them frustrated enough to leave.
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“And now, it would appear that some believe the Israelis will be defeated by obtuse and willfully- ignorant remarks.”
No thoughtful person wants Israel “defeated,” whatever that means anyway.
That is a classic straw-man argument, against the rules of logic.
What honest critics want is an Israel which returns to its borders and treats its neighbors as human beings.
What critics want is the end of Israel’s string of atrocities.
And what Israel’s critics want is an end of the ghastly lies and misrepresentations which stream like Noah’s flood from Israeli apologists with every incident of Israel’s behaving the bloody bully.
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“Israel will get through this, alone as in the past.”
Another Israeli apologists’ myth.
Alone? When has Israel ever got through anything alone?
With $3 billion assistance per year from America?
Plus a great power’s guarantee of defence?
With billions in gifts and loans from the Jewish people of North America?
With billions in reparations from Germany – deserved, of course, but hardly standing-alone stuff?
With a free-trade treaty with the United States that many countries would give a great deal to have?
With a constant flow of technical and intelligence assistance from the United States, something no other place on earth receives?
With favorable treatment for its products in Europe?
So bent in Israel’s favor are international arrangements that Israel exports farm produce which is the most subsidized on the planet, using precious water in a dry region whose actual economic cost is many times the value of exported produce.
And, of course, when you can just take someone else’s land and water for your economy, you do have a remarkable advantage, don’t you?
And even more, when everyone is afraid to criticize your most brutal actions, you have still another special advantage.
Stand alone is the last thing Israel does: it’s rather like claiming bravery for what is basically cowardice.
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“Funny how those who stole land from the Jews 1200 years ago are complaining how those people stole land from them 70 years ago.”
No one stole land from Israelis 1200 years ago.
The Roman conquered the region in the first century of the Common Era.
There is no record of the Roman’s turning out the inhabitants, and, indeed, expelling the natives was not the practice of Rome.
One Israeli professor eloquently argues that the Palestinians are the true descendants of the ancient Israelis.
Now, as for the “70 years ago,” that is precisely the point of Israel’s critics.
The whole world, including Arab states like Saudi Arabia, accepts or is willing to accept Israel’s existence, despite the rather bloody and unfair events of 70 years ago.
But do we see Israel within the borders of 70 years ago?
No, we see it spreading constantly, its borders always changing, more land and more homes seized from others. Land taken, farms taken, people turned out with nothing.
We see a suppurating wound of abuse to approximately 4 million people (Gaza and the West Bank) who do not live inside the recognized borders of Israel.
We see Israel not permitting even a democratic government (Gaza) to exist without arrests, assassinations, and a horrible blockade.
There would be no problem were Israel to return to its proper borders and to begin treating its neighbors with respect and decency.
Saying anything else just is just ignoring reality.
And saying anything else supports the efforts of an imperial apartheid power imposing its will on everyone a thousand miles around its ever expanding borders.
Which all means insisting that Israel is a democracy only makes one glad there are not more such democracies
JOHN CHUCKMAN
POSTED RESPONSES TO A COLUMN BY PATRICK MARTIN IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL
“No mention here of the fact that the Israelis tried to negotiate a peaceful boarding, were refused”
And would you or anyone in their right mind permit scores of heavily armed soldiers aboard your boat on the high seas, at night moreover?
Of course not.
But I say that assuming the correctness of the writer’s assertion.
We already have many reports that the Israelis muscled their way on board, indeed started shooting while some people slept in their bunks. And anyone who knows how commandos or SWAT teams work knows which version is more likely.
We have several hundred eye witnesses. Let’s see what they say.
I would be surprised if one word agrees with the assertions of Netanyahu or the Israeli Ministry of Truth or Israel’s apologists writing here.
The history of Israel’s dissimulation is so vast – from the truth about the Six Day War and Israel’s attack on the USS Liberty spy ship, at the time, to the work of spies like Jonathon Pollard against its chief benefactor or Israel’s current president’s agreeing to sell nuclear weapons to apartheid South Africa – that no one can ever believe the official word on anything.
You earn your reputation in this world, and Israel has certainly worked hard to earn hers.
Attacking every neighbor, abusing millions, assassinations, illegal mass arrests, blockades, regular theft of the property of others, building atomic weapons, lying, spying on friends, etc, etc.
Just look at Netanyahu’s words on cutting short his trip to Ottawa: the man slurred the humanitarians by asserting reports of gunfire when there were absolutely no guns on that ship, a fact ascertained in Turkey.
You work hard for a reputation the way Israel has, it seems to me you should enjoy what you’ve earned.
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“Israel can not give Hamas what it wants; the total destruction of Israel.”
Surely, those qualify as the most ridiculous words written here, but they are not just here, they are repeated mindlessly everywhere.
But they are utterly false, pure rhetoric.
Hamas has never attempted to destroy Israel, nor would it even be remotely capable of doing so if that were its desire. Yes, it has anti-Israel propaganda, but what else does it have, other than abuse and frustration?
Hamas has the military capacity of a mid-sized town’s police force, at best.
Facing it is a garrison state equipped with sophisticated jet fighters, sophisticated guided missiles, sophisticated tanks and artillery, advanced radars, access to spy satellites, a vast spy network, poison gas supplies, even nuclear weapons, plus a guarantee from the world’s superpower.
To get just a notion of Israel’s overwhelming position, see this image of one of the radar-controlled Gatling gun towers which surround Gaza, ready to riddle anything that moves:
http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/photos/uncategorized/2008/12/04/e2ca3bc6713642d99f3d33082d3d7072lar.jpg
Except for those pathetic homemade rockets fired out of frustration and hopelessness, Hamas has no record of in any way attacking Israel.
To see just how pathetic those homemade rockets are, see this:
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_NtgXlrcvXZA/SWfEpYDqzwI/AAAAAAAAZm0/v8qp2yKvyVo/s1600-h/ROCKET+qassam37.jpg
Now, what is Israel’s record by comparison? It has assassinated many leaders of Hamas, often wiping out families and neighbors in the process. It illegally arrested a major part of an elected government. It refuses even to talk with reasonable men, for many of the leaders of Hamas are genuinely professional people, not guerilla fighters.
Indeed, the measure of Hamas is Israel’s own past treatment of it. Israel’s secret services helped nurture it as a potential opposition to Fatah, Arafat’s party. You don’t subsidize what you are afraid of.
Well, the policy worked in achieving destructive in-fighting between Fatah and Hamas, and Israel just stands back and says look what bad people they are.
Hamas was elected for clean government. Palestinians were tired of Fatah’s corruption, but Israel never gave it so much as an opportunity to talk. Does that sound like an honest desire for peace?
Israel’s extreme response to the election actually caused Hamas to enter into a national unity government with two other parties in 2007. All Israel has done is impose an inhumane and illegal blockade, always yapping about “terrorists.” You never get peace that way, as Northern Ireland and many other examples prove.
But Israel does not want peace as most people understand that word. Israel wants more of other people’s property, minus the people. There is no other rational explanation for its whole set of behaviors.
They don’t deal with Hamas in the West Bank, do they? But do we see peace, or even decent treatment there? No, we see homes and farms seized week after week.
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“Didn’t the author say that Olmert had negotiated to lift the blockade very quickly, in return for a cessation of hostilities, but was refused when he asked for Hamas to return a kidnapped soldier as part of the deal???”
That is a perfect example of the kind of poor information and deliberately incomplete information which Israel’s apologists repeat and repeat.
The Palestinians agreed to a ceasefire: Israel broke the agreement.
No, the Palestinians would not include the return the one valuable asset they hold, the Israeli soldier. But they are perfectly ready to release him for reciprocal Israeli action as is widely known.
Remember, Israel holds somewhere in the neighborhood of 9 to 10 thousand Palestinian prisoners, most improperly arrested, some held in secret facilities, and many tortured. Even members of the cleanly-elected Hamas government were arrested shortly after the election.
The soldier is the only possession the Palestinians hold valued enough by Israel to trade for the release of a small portion of its illegal prisoners. There is nothing irrational or improper about that desire.
JOHN CHUCKMAN
POSTED RESPONSES TO A COLUMN BY PATRICK MARTIN IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL
Such brave soldiers of Israel, killing more innocent people, these for the crime of attempting to deliver humanitarian assistance.
I’m afraid Israel has degenerated into nothing more than a criminal enterprise.
What distinguishes Israel from Cosa Nostra or the Russian Mafia?
Israel kills more people.
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“I thought Israel had unilaterally withdrawn from Gaza? Did they or didn’t they?”
The only thing withdrawn from Gaza was the small tribe of insane “settlers” – immigrants looking for free land at someone else’s expense – walking around with machine guns and the razor wire and troops which protected them.
That was a perfect example of Israeli duplicity.
They removed their violent idiots from an unsustainable position and instead turned all of Gaza into a giant concentration camp.
Gaza is surrounded by high-tech fences and there are towers with automated gun emplacements in a “killing zone.” The guns are radar controlled and are the similar to the Gatling guns used to protect American Navy capital ships.
Anything which moves within 1500 yards or so of one of these robot sentry towers is riddled with tons of lead. For a picture see:
http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/dangerroom/images/2008/12/04/e2ca3bc6713642d99f3d33082d3d7072lar.jpg
Israel controls all access by air and sea also. The monetary aid sent from Europe is taken by Israel and doled out in only the most dire of situations.
Israel also controls to a considerable extent the small border with Egypt, because President Mubarak – an undemocratic dictator in effect – loves his big aid/bribe cheques from Washington.
If that doesn’t describe a concentration camp (for a million and a half people, many of whom were refugees from Israel’s original wave of terror inflicted at its “founding”) I don’t know what does.
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Meanwhile, that excellent man, Harper who represents only 1/3 of voters, was glad-handing the criminal responsible for this, assuring himself of a generous flow of campaign contributions for the next election.
Ontario’s Political Weasel-in-Chief, McGuinty, was wandering around on a “trade mission” in a country whose trade for Ontario is less than the amount spent on security for the G20/G8.
Again, undoubtedly assuring himself of a heavy campaign-finance chest.
Now, the importance of money in politics is immensely greater in the U.S.
The Israel Lobby has money and lobbying down to an art, and so America not only supports Israel’s brutality and spurning of peace, it actually subsidizes them heavily.
That’s democracy for sure.
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Post script: The cowardly Netanyahu hurriedly flew home to Israel after news broke of Israel’s atrocity on the high seas against people trying to bring humanitarian aid to Gaza.
JOHN CHUCKMAN
POSTED RESPONSES TO A COLUMN BY PATRICK MARTIN IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL
Yes, and Harper will be shaking hands with a dark and blood-stained criminal.
Harper’s intense support for Israel, frequently leading to his blurting outrageous statements not at all in keeping with the balanced views of most Canadians, and taking into account his position as a party leader only supported by one-third of voters, is one more evidence of Harper’s essentially anti-democratic mindset.
Birds of a feather….
Israel’s maintaining its three-year blockade of one and half million people combined with frequent forays of murder with high-tech hardware is nothing short of a crime against humanity.
It is a lineal descendent of the filthy work of the Irgun and Stern Gang at the time of Israel’s founding.
Those good old boys assaulted peaceful villages, shooting civilians, including women and children, to terrorize the Palestinians into running away and leaving their land for Israelis to occupy.
They succeeded, but the Palestinians often did not run far enough. Ever since, Gaza has been a giant refugee camp and a hated nightmare by every Israeli leader.
Well, the current Israeli politicians have found the solution: starve and abuse those refugees, including women and children, until they leave or abase themselves into utterly docile inferiors in an apartheid state.
There is no other explanation for what is happening.
Harper’s handshake will be one of dark shame, much as when the late Prince of Wales shook Hitler’s hand and smiled broadly.
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“Of course, Harper is looking forward to a reciprocal visit to Israel.”
Yes, and plenty of campaign contributions from the Israel Lobby.
In almost everything he does, Harper emulates the worst of the Republican Party, bringing divisive policies and hateful actions into our largely fair-minded politics in Canada.
It’s called winning at any cost, and it just happens to be Israel’s official policy in Gaza, the West Bank, and Jerusalem.
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“Why all this hate for the only democracy in the Middle east. Why must everything be political? What do you suggest Israel do then?”
Those sad words sum up the lack of logical thinking and the implicit vicious attitude of apologists for Israel.
First, no one hates Israel, but people hate blatant injustice and savage behavior and dishonesty.
Only democracy in the Middle East? God, what a tiresome and meaningless slogan.
The people who repeat that seem never to have thought that democracies are just as capable of evil as other forms of government.
There are many examples, stretching from the American Confederacy – a democracy if you weren’t black – to Apartheid South Africa – again, a democracy if you weren’t black and apparently Israel’s model in its approach to policy.
If Israel’s behavior is that of a democracy, it’s likely just as well there are no other “democracies” in the region.
What do people suggest Israel do then?
How about starting with treating Palestinians as humans and neighbors?
How about stopping the continuous stealing of the property of others?
How about opening the jails with an estimated 10,000 illegally held prisoners?
How about making the bloodbath in Gaza the last such atrocity Israel commits?
How about working honestly for genuine peace, instead of this decades old dishonesty covering a slow ethnic cleansing?
How about simply behaving as that word democracy is supposed to imply?
Believe me, Israel’s critics will quickly perceive and welcome genuine honesty and decency, qualities utterly missing in every word uttered and action taken by Israel’s leaders today.
Post script: The cowardly Netanyahu hurriedly flew home to Israel after news broke of Israel’s atrocity on the high seas against people trying to bring humanitarian aid to Gaza.
JOHN CHUCKMAN
POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY PATRICK MARTIN IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL
Contrary to the assumptions of Patrick Martin, Israel may, before long, have no choice.
How in God’s name can we accept all the noise and pressure over Iran and North Korea when Israel keeps a nuclear arsenal, threatening others with its potential, including sometimes blackmailing the United States?
The sensational, just-announced publication of secret papers from apartheid South Africa, something Israel has fought hugely against, proves definitively Israel’s role as the world’s most dangerous nuclear proliferator.
See the immensely important article:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/23/israel-south-africa-nuclear-weapons
I do think the day is fast approaching when Israel’s arrogance and brutality will tip the international political balance which has protected its excesses. People and governments everywhere are tiring of Israel’s utterly unethical and savage behavior and its endless demands.
Of course, on the same news day as the story of the publication of secret South African papers, we have news of two countries – Australia and the UK – removing Israeli diplomats in response to Israel’s abuse of their passports in committing its political murders. Israel has done this many times, including abusing Canadian passports in the past.
It is simply a fact that Israel has behaved over the last half century as one of the most peace-threatening nations on earth.
With its black-ops, its creation of the circumstances for the 1967 war it desired (because it would win), its never-explained attack on an American spy ship, its unparalleled spying inside the United States (including documented spies who were hot on the trail of the 9/11 terrorists and did nothing to alert U.S. officials), its illegal creation of nuclear weapons, its playing with proliferation with South Africa, and its ghastly brutality in Gaza and Lebanon, Israel is straining the patience of all its supporters.
John Kennedy knew that Israel was working on nuclear weapons, and we know he completely opposed it. More than a few suspect that that fact represented the real motive for his death.
Israel is very vulnerable to revelations of the many bodies it has buried, and that is what is remarkable about the publican of the South African papers. The publication clearly points to the United States tiring of all the dirty games. It could easily have suppressed this.
POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY PATRICK MARTIN IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL
Patrick Martin, it is difficult to believe that you are that naive, so are you being dishonest?
The evidence for Israel’s nuclear weapons is overwhelming.
First, a short while back, Jimmy Carter flatly stated that Israel has about 150 nuclear warheads.
As a former president, former commander of an American missile submarine, and a nuclear engineer, I think it fair to say his testimony is as solid as it gets.
Two, Mordechai Vanunu’s strange odyssey surely was another piece of solid gold evidence.
His photographs of the interior of Israel’s bomb factory were published in the Sunday Times (they even included the mold for the hollow implosion-sphere), and they were never impeached by any scientist. Quite the opposite, they were confirmed.
Since Israel afterward sent a team of agents who drugged and kidnapped Vanunu, sent him for many years to prison, and keeps him still under heavy restrictions, surely to any analyst’s mind, his claims were only confirmed further.
Again, we have the public assertions of Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld who has gone on record saying Israel’s nuclear missiles were able to reach the major capitals of Europe.
We also have the testimony of Mohamed El Baradei, a scientist and nuclear expert and former head of the IAEA, that Israel has nuclear weapons.
The New York Times Magazine, many years ago, did a feature story of how Israel came to build nuclear weapons. The French were a key part of the effort, at that time France playing a role for Israel a little like the U. S. today as a key weapons supplier and guarantor.
We know today, too, that Israel stole nuclear materials and secrets from the American weapons establishment to assist its efforts.
Israel not only illegally built weapons but was the world’s first dangerous proliferator. It had a secret pact with South Africa to assist their building nuclear weapons in exchange for secure access to important resources and other considerations.
A spy satellite actually captured the flash of what was almost certainly a joint Israeli-South African nuclear test in the Indian Ocean. A very limited number of reports, all fine-type stuff, after the fall of the apartheid regime in South Africa, mentioned America’s removing the nuclear material from South Africa.
We know that President Kennedy became aware that Israel was working on nuclear weapons through the CIA. He was totally opposed to Israel’s becoming a nuclear power, but he did not live to alter the course of history. More than a few have speculated that Israel’s secret services were behind the assassination for just this very powerful motive.
Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon Johnson, proved one of Israel’s best friends in the White House. The weapons program continued, and when Israel attacked the USS Liberty, a spy ship in the Mediterranean, killing a great many of the crew and likely hoping to embroil the U.S. in the Six Day War, Johnson suppressed the story which only gradually came out afterwards.
There is much other evidence – in total, rarely would even a major intelligence agency ever have collected such an overwhelming case.
JOHN CHUCKMAN
POSTED RESPONSE TO A COMMENT IN PATRICK MARTIN’S COLUMN IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL
Israel was indeed created by force.
And a good deal of that force was the purest form of terror from gangs like Stern and Irgun.
Innocent villagers were murdered to terrify the Arab population into running.
And they did run, but not far enough for Israel.
Later, Israel engineered the Six Day War to grab still more of the Palestinians’ land, and it was a black operation that was hugely successful.
Ever since, despite countless UN Resolutions, Israel has continued a program of slow-motion ethnic-cleansing in those occupied lands.
Gaza, essentially a giant refugee camp from Israel’s terrors and wars, by the testimony of at least one former prime minister, has always been an Israeli nightmare. Israel seems now to have discovered the solution: starve and bomb them till they leave, using the pathetic excuse that a democratically elected government, many of them professional men of high repute, is nothing but a gang of terrorists.
Israel’s intentions are clearly to take over virtually all of the land that was Palestine, minus the Palestinians.
Israel also coveted Southern Lebanon, and made every effort to hold on to it for years after invading until the Hezbollah drove them away.
Neither Hezbollah in Lebanon nor Hamas in Gaza has ever invaded Israel (nor are they even capable of doing so), but as we all know Israel has invaded them repeatedly, murdered thousands and seems ready to do so again.
And we are all supposed just to watch quietly while violent crimes are committed over and over again, and our illustrious prime minister actually threatens us with treating criticism of Israel as anti-Semitism.
It is simply a human-rights nightmare.
JOHN CHUCKMAN
POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY PATRICK MARTIN IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL
Murder Incorporated has been making all kinds of threatening noises lately.
Threats towards Iran.
Threats towards Syria.
Threats towards Southern Lebanon.
And there’s the effort to starve the Palestinians out of Gaza while daily stealing more of the property of others in Jerusalem and the West Bank.
We have a very ugly and threatening situation developing.
Syria is absolutely right to say that if a war starts, Israeli cities would be targets. It is the only way for Israel’s savage leaders to reconsider whatever it is they appear to be planning.
After all, Israel and the U.S. have never hesitated to bomb and shell cities.
Israel used an artillery siege on Beirut in the 1980s. In recent years it has bombed Beirut and dropped ghastly cluster bombs.
Israel caused the deaths of thousands in just the city of Beirut in the 1980s. The U.S. slaughtered civilians in cities all over Iraq, especially in Baghdad. And it regularly bombs civilians in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Its holocaust of Hanoi was one of the most bloodthirsty events of the second half of the 20th century.
The U.S. is the only power capable of restraining Israel’s aggression, but it refuses to do so. Policy under Obama, just as under Bush, seems virtually set in Tel Aviv.
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