Israel/Palestine
Related: About this forumTo the Fake “Human Rights” Activists
Since the start of Operation Protective Edge, I have seen you waving your Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) flags chanting, “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free.” I have seen you throwing blood libel at my friends and colleagues. I have seen you comparing Israel to Nazi Germany. I have heard you personally charge me with eating Arab babies and with committing “genocide.” I heard about you physically assaulting my friends and verbally harassing us with vitriolic Jew-hatred. Even worse, I saw my own people, the Jewish people, perpetuating such anti-Semitism in a way I have never seen before. While I see or hear about all of the above, you then proceed to claim that you’re standing up for human rights. You claim that you are fighting “oppression” against the Palestinian-Arabs face on a daily basis. You claim to fight for freedom. You claim that you seek peace in the region. For some of you, you claim that you are upholding Jewish values by supporting these actions. Most importantly, you claim that you are standing up for the Palestinian-Arabs themselves. Here is the reality: You lie, and you have always lied.
True human rights activists do not spew Jew-hatred like it is second nature. They do not compare Jewish self-determination to racism. They do not hold double-standards against a people undergoing rocket fire at a rate unprecedented in the modern era. They do not stand in DEFENSE of a group of people who use their own citizens as human shields while firing rockets into another civilian population. They do not support diabolical terrorism bent on destroying the self-determination and the existence of another people. They do not stand by while propagandists emit vitriolic anti-Semitism against a state that has not only demonstrated peaceful intentions, but restraint against additional civilian casualties.
Israel is far from perfect. Like every other nation, it possesses faults that often need pointing out and change. However, Israel does not deserve such double-standards and demonization. Israel does not need more people claiming that “Hitler was right” when he rationalized systematically murdering the Jewish people en masse. Israel does not need to bury its dead civilians and soldiers because terrorists CONTINUE to wreak havoc on its existence. If you truly cared for human rights, you would target the true cause of the current escalation: Hamas. Hamas broke two ceasefires. Hamas launched rockets into civilian populations. Hamas hid behind human shields. Hamas infiltrated Israel, from tunnels and from the sea. Hamas operatives kidnapped and brutally murdered Eyal Yifrach, Gil’ad Shaar, and Naftali Fraenkel in cold blood. Hamas stole money and aid from the people in Gaza. Hamas leaders hide in Qatar while simultaneously calling for its people to die as martyrs. Hamas does not care for the Palestinian-Arabs in Gaza; it cares about its glory and its fight to delegitimize and to destroy Israel. When 70% of the Gaza population wanted to end hostilities, Hamas kept fighting and escalating the situation. Now, the Israel DEFENSE Forces operate within the Gaza Strip to hit Hamas harder than ever before.
If you want to refer to yourself as a “human rights activist,” then you must target the true source of this ongoing conflict. You must condemn those responsible for putting innocent civilians, both Israeli and Palestinian-Arab, in danger of tragic demise. You must encourage the population of Gaza that does want a ceasefire to overthrow Hamas and to replace it with leadership that wants the violence to end. Neither of those things have been accomplished. Therefore, you must change your words and your attitudes. You must stop your double-standards against the only country that cares about Palestinian-Arab civilians. You must stop excusing Hamas for hiding rockets in UNRWA SCHOOLS. You must condemn Hamas leaders for cowering in fear while the people it rules over dies ruthlessly as human shields. You must start holding these governments responsible for the abuses against their own people. Hillel Neuer made an outstanding point that you so-called “human rights” activists need to understand. If you do not call out such travesties committed by Hamas, as well as the thousands of human rights abuses committed in Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and many other countries, but instead you target Israel, then the following conclusion must be made: You are not a human rights activist, you are simply anti-Israel. Therefore, according to the US State Department, you are anti-Semitic.
Read more: To the Fake "Human Rights" Activists | Elliott Hamilton | Ops & Blogs | The Times of Israel http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/to-the-fake-human-rights-activists/#ixzz381Jeo3ap
Follow us: @timesofisrael on Twitter | timesofisrael on Facebook
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R. Daneel Olivaw
(12,606 posts)We do. It's called...
Occupation
Land theft
Colonization
Blockade
Intimidation
Torture
Murder
Apartheid
...all brought to the Palestinians by Israel.
Deal with it.
shira
(30,109 posts)Those who want to help Palestinians need to come down hard on Hamas and oppose them, STRONGLY.
Those who don't give a shit & want total war, whose hate is so strong they want as many dead on both sides as possible... are supporters and defenders of Hamas, working on their behalf. They are the true enemy of the Palestinian people, and humanity as well.
R. Daneel Olivaw
(12,606 posts)So nothing new for you.
shira
(30,109 posts)R. Daneel Olivaw
(12,606 posts)But please cheer on Israel as it kills more civilians.
Israel and its flunkies are screwed if they believe that murder is a way forward.
shira
(30,109 posts)Hamas and its cheerleaders like Mondoweiss and friends actually want more civilians killed. The reason being that it looks bad for Israel and eventually gains Hamas some concessions when Israel is pressured to stand down. Win-Win for Hamas. Lose-Lose for both Palestinians and Israelis. Hamas cannot go to war with Israel w/o their Western supporters. They depend on it. And they know they can get away with it too as the "pro-Palestinian" contingent is happy to help Hamas out. With friends like these, the Palestinians don't need enemies.
And once again, you have nothing substantive in reply to the OP.
R. Daneel Olivaw
(12,606 posts)
BDS
shira
(30,109 posts)BDS is on the wrong side of history too, as history will judge. The OP applies perfectly to BDS'ers.
R. Daneel Olivaw
(12,606 posts)on your face when the sanctions start to bite.
Who is Israel going to cry to then? The UN?
Sweet dreams in your delusion.
shira
(30,109 posts)When boycotts, divestments, and sanctions are taking their bite, Israel will............?
R. Daneel Olivaw
(12,606 posts)The inevitable us on its way, shira.
Israel ca no longer take what does not belong to it by force.
The world has woken up to Israeli atrocities, and it has lost patience.
BDS.
shira
(30,109 posts)R. Daneel Olivaw
(12,606 posts)There are many different type of people involved in Boycott Divestment and Sanctions from the Presbyterians, who wish to divest themselves from companies dealing with what they see as a repressive regime (that's Israel), To European institutions (banks, and governments) that see the writing on the wall as they saw it during apartheid in South Africa. There are also many others that are just fed to the gills with Israeli hegemony, Israeli oppression, Israeli occupation, Israeli colonization of lands it does not legally own as a state in the modern world, Israeli murder of Palestinians, Israeli torture of Palestinians, Israeli detention of Palestinians without recourse to the law.
And on and on.
So there are a lot of things that BDS wishes to accomplish. Take your pick from the above if you want.
Regardless if you want to believe it, eventually BDS will be the reality that Israel will face. There is no debating it. The world is fed up, and all the detractors have to say about the chorus of BDS support is that they are anti-Semites, self-hating Jews, or love Hamas.
I hope that you realize that there were people like you grasping at straws when sanctions were leveled at South Africa.
SA made it through, and I hope Israel does, but if it decides to take the wroing path the world will not be kind to it.
shira
(30,109 posts)….lead to Israel doing ____________ what exactly? This is your baby. It's BDS this, BDS that, in nearly every post of yours. You're leading the cheers. But you're not answering the question:
What are YOU hoping Israel will be forced do if BDS is successful?
shira
(30,109 posts)...Yes, Israel is typically a hard sell to the mainstream media and a pointless pitch to anti-Semites looking for something new to hate about Jews. Still, that doesn’t explain how little effort is required to bathe Palestinians in a purifying light—regardless of their actions. Call it the Palestinian Pass: the lack of accountability and low expectations expected of Palestinians—the behavior easily ignored or quickly forgiven—when compared with the high standards of moral perfection demanded of Israelis.
In no other context have liberation movements received such uncritical sympathy. Nearly without exception, the Baader-Meinhof Gang of West Germany, the Basque separatists of Spain, the Weathermen, Black Panthers and Branch Davidians of the United States, and the Irish Republican Army of the United Kingdom, regardless of the merits of their causes, never had their terrorizing actions sugarcoated in order to maintain their popular appeal. And, frankly, these groups were B-team benchwarmers next to the murderous intentions and deeds of Hamas.
Hamas, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, has far more in common with al-Qaeda and ISIS than with any of these far tamer practitioners of domestic terror. And, yet, nobody weeps for the collateral damage killed among the carnage of al-Qaeda—indeed, those figures never even get reported. Shouldn’t all civilians be equally mourned? Moreover, Hamas’ brand of Islamic fundamentalism is no friend of women, homosexuals, Christians, all infidels and, of course, Jews. Why then would its actions be deserving of a pass? Why would the press resist referring to them as a terrorist organization?
Israel has had a long history with terror. Indeed, what Israel took on the chin for decades ended up as a knockout blow against the United States on 9/11—albeit from a different terrorist source yet with a similar jihadist agenda. Israel’s Olympic team was massacred at Munich, global jets and cruise ships were high-jacked, an invalid tossed overboard; Jewish children were killed, sometimes in their cribs, and, most recently, kidnapped and executed. (And, yes, an Arab teenager was burned alive in a vulgar and aberrational act of vengeance that the Jewish state condemned and for which his killers will be punished severely.)
Israel’s response to terrorism is judged harshly; the provocation giving rise to its retaliation conveniently ignored. Death should always elicit scrutiny—even in the context of a war. But Israel is being overly scrutinized while Hamas’ behavior is bizarrely excused as an externality of a righteous cause.
This is nothing short of suspending moral judgment and critical reasoning in favor of abject lunacy. It betrays the human rights movement that Israel’s critics purportedly embrace. The very same people who wouldn’t be caught dead protesting the genocidal slaughter of Congolese, Sudanese and Syrians somehow find themselves on the front lines of activism in a convulsive rage over a killing in Gaza committed by Israel in self-defense.
Israel may be succeeding in Operation Protective Edge, but it can’t compete in the PR war. It lost its media mojo long ago—and, yes, there was a time when rooting for Israel was not social suicide. Before the Occupation, surrounded by Arab armies and avowed enemies, Israel was once the darling underdog.
Read more: The Palestinian pass | Thane Rosenbaum | Ops & Blogs | The Times of Israel http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-palestinian-pass/#ixzz381T6YZQ6
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Response to shira (Reply #2)
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leftynyc
(26,060 posts)are the mindless drones that call those rockets "firecrackers". They have no idea how pathetically stupid they sound.
shira
(30,109 posts)Bingo.
I have just started paying attention to the situation since the most recent tensions, but it does seem to me that Hamas is the aggressor and will not stop until Israel no longer exists. I really don't understand why so many are coming down so hard on Israel when it seems to me that they are being judged unfairly harshly and Hamas is seen as somewhat "righteous".
Hamas is a terrorist organization. How would this be any different from any other sovereign nation defending themselves from Islamic terrorists in any other part of the world?
shira
(30,109 posts)They're pro-Hamas (anti-West, anti-US, anti-Israel) to the end. If that end means to the last drop of Palestinian blood, they're all for it. Such is their hate for both Palestinians and the Jews.
Hamas cannot do this without their support.
wellst0nev0ter
(7,509 posts)Since they recognized and supported Hamas's precursor as a counterbalance to Fatah?
Indefensible.
shira
(30,109 posts)Hamas is responsible for nothing. They are but mere pawns of Israel.
Gazans voted for Hamas in free elections. Did the Zionists do some voodoo on Palestinian brains during that election?
wellst0nev0ter
(7,509 posts)Indefensible.
shira
(30,109 posts)....condemned Hamas for using hospitals, schools, mosques, and homes for terrorist purposes?
No?
Well neither do I.
shira
(30,109 posts)I know that sounds cynical, but that’s because it really is. Islamic terror is absolutely cynical, it always was and always will be, and its greatest speciality is taking advantage of every democracy’s main weakness – the fact that we sanctify life.
The average Western viewer sees both sides of the conflict on television. One side is dying and the other side insists on continuing with daily life. One can understand them for taking the side of the injured party, and let’s be absolutely clear – to us, the death of any child, Israeli or Palestinian, is a tragedy. On the other hand, that does not release us from answering the question of who is truly to blame for this tragedy?
The power of these images is the reason that Hamas intentionally builds its missile factories and bunkers underneath civilian homes, stores its ammunition in schools and kindergartens (including United Nations schools), launches its rockets surrounded by civilian families, despite knowing beyond any doubt that it will lead to innocent casualties. Hamas rests its conscience – if it even has one – by announcing that the dead children are “Shahids” who will make it to heaven.
..........
But Hamas forbade civilians to leave their homes, put them on rocket factory rooftops, forced the children – its own children – to remain in areas that would clearly become harsh door-to-door combat zones.
For Hamas, it is a win-win situation: either the attack is cancelled and it can go on launching missiles at Israel or the attack succeeds and it can go on launching images of dead children at media outlets around the world.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/10987095/Gaza-conflict-Hamas-chooses-to-let-children-die-for-its-own-crazy-ends.html
Meanwhile, those wringing their hands about Palestinian casualties accept what Hamas is doing.
#Phonies.
Maedhros
(10,007 posts)shira
(30,109 posts)shira
(30,109 posts)Hamas used children to help them dig numerous tunnels into Israel and Egypt, a 2012 paper written for the Journal of Palestine Studies reported.
The paper, titled Gaza's Tunnel Phenomenon: The Unintended Dynamics of Israel's Siege says that little had been done to stop the phenomenon of child labor during the digging of the tunnels by Hamas in Gaza.
In December 2011, the paper's author Nicolas Pelham accompanied a police patrol in Gaza and reported that "nothing was done to impede the use of children in the tunnels, where, much as in Victorian coal mines, they are prized for their nimble bodies."
He continued and said that "at least 160 children have been killed in the tunnels, according to Hamas officials."
shira
(30,109 posts)...In response to a question of how she, and the entire UN Gaza staff, remained “neutral” in the face of Gaza children’s and civilian hardships, Ms. Ironside stated that, “There have been attempts to instrumentalize the UN in Gaza in this conflict. Including, there have been attempts (by Israel) to try to facilitate military operations against the (Palestinian) civilian population by facilitating the clearance of certain neighborhoods. The UN has refused to be a party to that.”
