Netanyahu and the unraveling of the British Jewish consensus

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

http://mondoweiss.net/2015/03/netanyahu-unraveling-consensus

Without considerable external pressure, both political and economic, Israel will not stop Settlement expansion, will not dismantle the separation wall, will not give up an inch of the Occupied Territories, will not end the siege of Gaza. It certainly will not sit down and negotiate a peace deal that looks remotely just to Palestinian eyes. Why should it while the rest of the world allows its behaviour to continue without cost or consequence? And God help the children of Gaza if Hamas dares to fire any more home-made rockets in the general direction of the most powerful army in the region.

But with Netanyahu finally putting the two-state solution six feet under, that necessary pressure is on the way.

It will come from European governments and it will come from grass roots activists. The pressure will undoubtedly include boycotts, divestment and sanctions. And those activists will increasingly include Jews. Not self-hating Jews but profoundly disillusioned Jews. It will come from Jews looking for a new kind of Jewish leadership and hoping to protect their democratic and ethical ideals and rescue what’s left of their Jewish heritage.

Mr. Netanyahu, thanks for showing us the way forward.

No amount of counterfeit hasbara can erase what Bibi has uttered.

No amount of counterfeit hasbara can pretend that it was all a joke.

No amount of counterfeit hasbara uttered in this group will be taken seriously.


The way forward is to send Israel an ultimatum.

The way forward is BDS.

[BillZBubb]

1. The only way to a just peace in the region is to severly pressure Israel.

They are as deserving of sanctions as Iran.

[TexasMommaWithAHat]

2. No way in hell will Israel allow a two state solution

Not when you see what is happening with the crazy, extremist Islamists in Egypt, Syria, and Iraq. They're gaining power and want to see Israel wiped off the map. Look at what they are doing to other Muslims. Can you imagine what they would do if they could get that close to Israel?

Not gonna' happen.

I don't see an equitable solution for many years to come.

[guillaumeb]

3. Israel has no right under law to NOT allow a two-state solution

What Israel has done since 1948 is illegal under International Law.

Theft of lands is a violation,
Building settlements on land seized during a conflict is a violation,
targeting an ethnic/religious group is a violation, a violation defined as genocide,
targeting schools and hospitals is a violation,
using white phosphorous ammunition is a violation,
collective punishment is a violation,

and nothing is done about these continuing violations because the US shields Israel at the UN from any consequences.

[Scootaloo]

4. That's a lot of gibberish

No way in hell will Israel allow a two state solution

Allow? Who needs their permission?

Not when you see what is happening with the crazy, extremist Islamists in Egypt, Syria, and Iraq

Well, first, there really aren't "crazy islamists" doing much in Egypt. In Syria and Iraq, it's mostly just IS... who Israel has been tacitly and indirectly aiding.

You realize that Palestine is not any of these three states, though - much less IS? Or are you just going with the typical Zionist theme of "muslims are ALL crazy and evil"?

They're gaining power and want to see Israel wiped off the map. Look at what they are doing to other Muslims. Can you imagine what they would do if they could get that close to Israel?

Which is why Golan has been under constant attack from those Syrian crazies? Wait... it hasn't been. Kind of the opposite, they cross into Golan so Israeli doctors can pull out bullets and stitch up their wounds.

And again, let us reflect on the fact that you are comparing apples to automobiles here.

I don't see an equitable solution for many years to come.

Well, given your very obvious prejudice and lack of knowledge, I'm not too worried about what you see.

[TexasMommaWithAHat]

5. Your condescension is considerable

Not doing much in Egypt? The unrest in Egypt caused by right wing Islamists is causing an economic upheaval. Tourism is way down. There's a nice BBC 4 news report you can listen to if you care to find it.

And the radical Islamists are not causing any problems in Syria? Really? What would you call the situation in Syria these last three or four years?

And IS is not killing in Iraq?

I get a lot of my news from BBC radio, and they are NOT pro-Israel.

I would like to see a two-state solution, but as long as Israel doesn't believe its neighbors support its right to exist, that will not happen.

And I'm done with you. You can put me on ignore for all I care. I don't care to deal with your condescension nor do I deal with conspiracy theory nuts.

[Scootaloo]

8. And clearly deserved.

Not doing much in Egypt? The unrest in Egypt caused by right wing Islamists is causing an economic upheaval. Tourism is way down. There's a nice BBC 4 news report you can listen to if you care to find it.

Or it could be the repressive murderous junta regime that staged a coup and is in the process of hunting down, imprisoning, and killing dissent against its rule. it labels such dissenters "islamist terrorists" because that sells really well to the US state department, who helps fund Egypt's military. There is an al-Qaeda-style islamist movement in the sinai, but it' small and relatively inconsequential. its presence is mainly due to the fact that Egypt is treaty-bound to not maneuver its military there.

And the radical Islamists are not causing any problems in Syria? Really? What would you call the situation in Syria these last three or four years?

And IS is not killing in Iraq?

Didn't I just say that it is IS doing the crazy shit in these states? Why yes, yes I did.

I would like to see a two-state solution, but as long as Israel doesn't believe its neighbors support its right to exist, that will not happen.

One, it's not up to Israel to detrmine what rights Palestinians do and do not have. Your insistence that this is somethign Israel is entitled to kind of paints your "support" of a palestinian state as a bald-faced lie. You don't want two states any more than Likud does, and you make the exact same excuses for why it shouldn't happen.

I notice you have completely evaded my questioning of what the fuck IS has to do with palestine's existence.

And I'm done with you. You can put me on ignore for all I care. I don't care to deal with your condescension nor do I deal with conspiracy theory nuts.

I don't ignore people. Most people worth ignoring don't last long enough to warrant it.

if you don't want to be condescended to, don't come inhere equating Palestine with IS and using that as justification for Israel's violation of Palestinian rights.

Also, it helps to learn about the region beyond what you can scrape off the beeb.

[oberliner]

6. "IS... who Israel has been tacitly and indirectly aiding."

Speaking of obvious prejudice and lack of knowledge...

Your ridiculous comment about Israel aiding IS is brimming with hearty helpings of both.

[Scootaloo]

7. Not at all, Oberliner

Israel has conducted strikes against both the Syrian government and Hezbollah acting in Syria. These maneuvers act in clear favor of IS. In south Syria, al-Nusra fighters can go into Golan to get patched up by Israeli doctors, before going back into the fight against the Syrian forces.

It's indirect aid, as I said, but it's still aid.

The reality is that Israel has cast its lot in with Sunni extremism. This is due to a quiet under-the-table alliance with Saudi Arabia, and Israel's partnership with the United States, which has historically favored repressive Sunni regimes and extremists (even now we're training "moderates" (lol) in Syria, who keep "defecting" (lol) to IS.) of recent, the US seems to be reconsiderign its position in this regard, but israel seems stuck in it. It's going to burn Israel, badly.

[shaayecanaan]

17. Sometimes those al Nusra guys even get a visit from the Israeli PM

I bet the guy in bed is thinking "I sure as shit didn't expect this when I joined al-Qaeda".

[azurnoir]

9. US and Israeli Military Advisors Arrested for Aiding ISIS

American and Israeli military advisors were arrested while aiding Islamic State terrorists in Iraq.

Iraqi counter-terrorism forces arrested four foreign military advisors from the United States and Israel who were aiding the Islamic State, Iranian Tasnim News Agency reports.

Three of the arrested military advisors are dual citizens of the United States and Israel, while the fourth advisor is from a Persian Gulf country, Iraq’s Sarma News Agency said.

The foreign military advisors were captured in a headquarters, from where the Islamic State organized its military operations in Iraq’s Northern Province of Nineveh.

http://macedoniaonline.eu/content/view/27116/53

[TexasMommaWithAHat]

10. You can find conspiracy theorists everywhere.

nt

[android fan]

11. Pro-Palestine propaganda...

and thinking that Israel is supporting IS is laughable... so hard it hurts just to think about it.

[oberliner]

12. It's a popular tactic in some corners to associate Israel with everything evil

Apartheid South Africa, Nazi Germany, and now the Islamic State.

They aren't even subtle about it.

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

14. It's a popular tactic by poor hasbarists to

throw strawmen arguments into a thread, vilify the messenger while not refuting the truth, and make fucking awful excuses for the Israeli apartheid state.

Israel is an open apartheid state.

It's time for BDS.

[Scootaloo]

18. "Everything evil"?

The evils inherent of racism, nationalism, conquest, violence, and denigration are hardly unique to Israel. But other instances of these crimes don't usually have a merry band of idiots marching around defending them. Israel, for whatever reason does, and so long as you guys keep demanding that everyone be perfectly okay with, even supportive of the carnage leveled against the Palestinians in the name of "supporting Israel" the rest of us are just going to have to keep calling out that no, it's really not okay.

I always find it interesting that persons such as yourself always have more of a problem with people noting what Israel does, than you have with Israel actually doing it. Why is that?

[Donald Ian Rankin]

21. The first of those comparisons is entirely fair.

Apartheid is a legitimate word to use for a government exercising control over two peoples but only allowing one of them to participate in government.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

19. Who needs their permission? The Palestinians, that's who.

It will not be possible to establish a Palestinian state without Israeli consent, because of Israeli military dominance.

That consent is not going to be forthcoming - Israel has carte blanche from America to continue to expand; Obama may make threatening noises but he won't actually force Israel to end the occupation, and almost certainly won't actually put more than symbolic pressure on them. And one way or another, his successor is likely to be even worse.

Israel is going to continue to expand, occupy and oppress; the Palestinians are screwed. Sometimes the bad guys just win.

[Ken Burch]

16. What's the alternative? The status quo in the West Bank is unsustainable

And positive change in the Palestinian leadership is impossible as long as the Occupation and the land confiscation go on.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

20. No, it's entirely sustainable.

I think your confusing "this would be a very bad thing" with "this is not going to happen".

[Jefferson23]

13. FYI: Apartheid, International Law, and the Occupied Palestinian Territory

2013

John Dugard* and
John Reynolds**

? * Emeritus Professor of International Law, University of Leiden; Honorary Professor in the Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria; member of the International Law Commission 1997–2011; Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory to the Commission on Human Rights/Human Rights Council 2001–2008; judge ad hoc International Court of Justice. Email: [email protected].
? ** EJ Phelan Fellow in International Law, National University of Ireland, Galway; Adjunct Lecturer, School of Law & Government, Dublin City University. Email: [email protected].

Abstract

Apartheid is a loaded term; saturated with history and emotion. It conjures up images and memories of discrimination, oppression, and brutality; indulgence, privilege, and pretension; racism, resistance, and, ultimately, emancipation. All of which come to us through the history of apartheid in South Africa. Although prohibited and criminalized by international law in response to the situation in southern Africa, the concept of apartheid was never given enormous attention by international lawyers. Following an awakening of interest in the international legal prohibition of apartheid as a potentially appropriate lens through which to view the situation of the Palestinians, this article examines the merits of such a claim in the context of Israeli law and practice in the occupied Palestinian territory.

snip*Today it is clear that security is at best a secondary justification for the wall. Its primary purpose is the annexation of land in the West Bank and East Jerusalem that accommodates Jewish settlements…. Israel’s wall and its associated infrastructure of gates and permanent checkpoints reveal an intention to impose a system of permanent enclaves in which residence and passage are determined by racial identities–within the context of the occupation while it persists, and ultimately facilitating the annexation of large swathes of the West Bank. This will leave for Palestinians, at best, the possibility of a Bantustan-type state in the remaining reserves. (p. 900)

The West Bank, for Palestinians, is…reduced to a series of dismembered enclaves. (p. 901)

The only inference that can be drawn from the institutionalized and systematic regime of inhuman acts and discrimination (unashamedly premised on an ideology of entitlement) towards the Palestinian people is that Israel intends to secure the domination of Jewish Israelis over Palestinians. (p. 911)

Israel leaves the welfare of the occupied people to international donors and has created a cycle of aid dependency. Israel’s lack of regard for the needs of the Palestinian people stands in contrast to the action taken by South Africa’s apartheid regime to improve material living conditions in the Bantustans it created. (p. 911)

A system of apartheid has developed in the occupied Palestinian territotry. Israel practices in the occupied territory are not only reminiscent of–and in, in some cases, worse than–apartheid as it existed in South Africa, but are in breach of the legal prohibition of apartheid. (p. 912)

in full: http://ejil.oxfordjournals.org/content/24/3/867.full.pdf+html

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

15. Damn fucking straight.

Perhaps you will get some lazy hasbarista to bemoan the article or claim hatred of Jews by its author.

It doesn't matter. Their goose us fucking cooked. They know it. We know it. The only thing that they deserve is revulsion for siding with a corrupt regime.

BDS.