44 thoughts on “Israeli Brown-Shirts “Celebrate” Jerusalem Day – Tikun Olam תיקון עולם إصلاح العالم
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  1. ‘Last year, there was a Knife Intifada in which over 200 Palestinians were killed, many murdered by Israeli vigilantes and police. That commenced when Israel restricted Muslim worship at the Haram al Sharif. ‘

    Well, it was pretty evident most of the ‘knife intifada’ was simply Israeli soldiers murdering innocent Palestinians after getting the green light from the government. It was a kind of festival of homicide.

    Look at what happened when that soldier was videotaped murdering a wounded Palestinian. All of a sudden the ‘knife attacks’ fell by about 90%. Obviously, Palestinian behavior hadn’t changed; the IDF had been told to quit with the wanton homicides.

    1. [comment deleted: I’ve warned you before that simply inserting a link to an article is not a proper comment. Comments must contain an argument you’re advancing. If you can’t be bothered to do this then I can’t be bothered to publish it.]

      1. We know from where he is pulling it out of…

        As we speak, Gazans, with the encouragement of their Hamas leaders are throwing themselves and their children in harms way trying to break down the border fence. Under the cover of these civilians are also Hamas operatives planting explosives. Of course Colin will count these suicidal Palestinians as “murders”

        Imagine if 50000 rioting Mexicans did the same thing at the American border what would happen. Every country has a legitimate right to defend its borders. Unless you are Colin of course, because the country isn’t legitimate in the first place, so it has no right to defend itself either.

        1. It is more like a native American reservation, surrounded by barbed wire, and troops at the ready to shoot any Indian trying to escape.

          Proud of yourselves?

          Congratulations with that country, which in its arrogance wanted to be a MORAL example to us all. Congratulations with your cherry tomatoes, and the drip irrigation with stolen West Bank water. Enjoy, because it will not last that ‘eternity’ Israeli’s are always so fond of claiming.

          What a cruel, silly and shameless disaster the Zionist project has turned out to be. You will go the way of Apartheid South Africa and ‘Greater Serbia’. And it will be completely deserved. Don’t let your second passports expire.

          1. ‘…What a cruel, silly and shameless disaster the Zionist project has turned out to be…’

            That about sums it up. At least you’re not American; you don’t have to take a big, helping serving of the guilt.

          2. Colin, my country is Irael’s lap dog as much as your country is. A combination of deluded Christians and Holocaust guilt can do the trick, even without a Sheldon Adelson.

          3. ‘It is more like a native American reservation, surrounded by barbed wire, and troops at the ready to shoot any Indian trying to escape.’

            Please. Indians were rarely physically confined to reservations. They began to acquire the right to leave at will with the Standing Bear case in 1879. The Palestinians of Gaza would think they’d died and gone to heaven if they were allowed to have an Indian reservation. This isn’t to say Indian Reservations are wonderful — merely that there’s no comparison between them and the kind of regime the Zionists impose upon the Palestinians.

            …generally, comparisons between Israel and other national and colonial projects tend to be insulting to those other projects. For example, Israel has no intention of permitting anything resembling the ‘Bantustans’ Apartheid South Africa tried to set up. Palestinians would never be permitted that much freedom. Again, this isn’t to somehow condone South Africa — it’s merely to insist that the legitimate parallels to Zionism are rather limited. Israel is more or less sui generis.

          4. Hello there AGAIN Colin.

            I KNOW that reservations were not surrounded by barbed wire etc. “It is more like” is an expression that gives you the freedom to paint a dystopian picture. It does not mean you have to describe a historical condition or event.

            If I would write: “Israel is more like a Ship of Fools than a country led by a rational government” you would no doubt.counter by writing that Plato didn’t know shit about the shipping of his period.

            May I venture that “you are like” someone who suffers from verbal diarrhoea in your quest to score points?

        2. @ DrS: There is no “border” with Gaza. There is a fence which Israel place there arbitrarily. That is not the way borders are made. And as for Palestinians, they are marching for their rights, the land stolen from them by Israel. That is an entirely legitimate enterprise. And murdering 60 Palestinians including six children today is an act of criminals. You support a criminal regime and should be (but won’t) be ashamed.

          Mexicans don’t riot at the border because, although we did steal massive amounts of territory from the Mexicans, there was a treaty that negotiated the border between our countries. Israel has refused to do this. Hence your analogy falls flat on its face.

          As for defending Israel’s “borders,” it’s not. Once again, no borders. Until it does have agreed borders it isn’t legitimate in the eyes of international law.

          This comment repeats the substance of previous comments of those defending Israeli massacre at the fence. I don’t permit repetition of arguments. Read the arguments of previous commenters on this subject & don’t repeat them.

          1. The fence separating Gaza from Israel is based on the 1949 Armistice line.

            If you are a ‘two-State’ supporter, than you would support the creation of a Palestinian Arab State, whose borders with Israel would be based on, the 1967 Armistice (Green) Line in the West Bank, and the 1949 Armistice line in Gaza.

            So Richard, ‘if what’s good for the goose, is good for the gander’, the Gaza fence should be the international border if and when there is a peace agreement.

          2. @ Elena: An “armistice” line is not a border. It’s a ceasefire line. That means Israel has never agreed on a border, never recognized a state, never recognized a Palestinian interlocutor (in Gaza).

            I am not a 2 state supporter, though I’m not opposed to that outcome if the parties agree to it. But I can’t support a 2 state solution when Israel rejects it flat-out.

            As for the Gaza fence being a border, there is no peace agreement. There can’t be a peace agreement because Israel refuses one and will continue to do so indefinitely. So there can’t be a border. At least not one Israel recognizes in the traditional form accepted by international law.

      2. ‘Really, Colin. Where are you pulling your information out of?’

        You can look it up. Elor Azaria was filmed committing his murder — and IDF killings of ‘knife attackers’ immediately fell by about 90%.

        Yes, there were some actual knife attacks. The vast majority, however, were clearly simply a matter of the IDF committing unprovoked murders. How else would you explain the immediate decline in the rate of killings? The Palestinians were intimidated by the video?

        Obviously, the word went out. Murderin’ times are over — for the nonce, anyway.

        But no fear: they’re back today, aren’t they?

  2. Partay!

    ‘Gaza clashes: 52 Palestinians killed on deadliest day since 2014’

    All unarmed, I imagine. And we’re just getting started; the scoring’s not over yet!

  3. ‘Israel has lit a powder keg of provocation and deliberately so.’

    This has long been a flaw with the Zionists as Herrenvolk.

    Their instinct is to bait, and provoke. Not to intimidate with prompt and truly overwhelming brutality, as with Nazi Germany, nor to ‘divide and conquer,’ respect sensibilities, etc, as with the British in India. Still less to assimilate, as with Spanish colonists the world over.

    No; the Zionists bait, and infuriate, and provoke. They can never kill in sufficient quantity to truly intimidate — today, they’ll wind up killing — what? — maybe two hundred. Out of two hundred thousand protestors? That’s one out of a thousand. The Palestinians are too pissed for that to discourage them.

    Nor will the Zionists reconcile. You don’t see them respecting al Aqsa. On the contrary, they parade across it, and openly threaten to tear it down. It is the opposite of — say — the British in Iraq in 1941, and their scrupulous care to avoid holy places at all costs.

    Finally, the Zionists certainly aren’t going to conduct mass conversions ala the Spanish, etc.

    As rulers, they’re hopeless.

  4. There’s another aspect to it as well. EVERY successful government offers some more or less plausible rationale for its impositions.

    Richard presumably pays several thousand dollars each year in property tax to King County or wherever he lives. In its rawest form, this is simply extortion: Richard pays or the County will take his house. Yet Richard presumably willingly pays the County where he would be outraged if the Mafia made the same demand: give us money or you’ll lose your house.

    That’s because — ultimately — Richard accords legitimacy to the county. Every successful national or colonial project has always offered some more or less convincing claim for its own legitimacy to its subjects. Discussing this would go well beyond any reasonable limits to this post, but trust me: all significant elements in the population are always offered some argument for why they should accept the rule of Britain, or the United States, or Spain, or whatever.

    Israel doesn’t do that with the Palestinians; they are given nothing. There is no palatable role for them to play; no way to become ‘a citizen of the Empire,’ as the young Gandhi professed to see himself, for example.

    So Israel — like the Mafia demanding money from Richard — attempts to rule with simple naked force, without any argument that the Palestinians could conceivably accept to justify its authority.

    It’s a recipe to ensure resistance and rebellion forever. You can’t run things like this; it won’t work.

    1. The UN has it’s own power dynamic and politics. Since countries know that the US will veto they feel free to pay lip service to the Palestinian cause and it costs nothing.

      The real scorecard is what countries actually do, beyond lip service to the loss of human life etc.

      In this regard Israel is ahead:
      Solidly supportive– The US (the only country that really matters), the UK, Australia, Germany, some E European countries
      Silent or silently supportive (I put them both in the same category because they do nothing and continue to cooperate with Israel) — Canada, most of Europe, much of central and South America, most of Africa, most Arab countries, Russia, China, India, Japan…
      Solidly against– Iran, Turkey, South Africa, Venezuala (all leading beacons of good governance, democracy and moral guidance).
      A few other countries, like Pakistan, Malaysia, Indonesia I’m sure are against but have no leverage (and quietly do business with israel)

      And even those solidly against aren’t really in a position to do anything significant.

      1. @ DrS: SUre go blithely on your merry way, cynically believing Israel will never have any price to pay for its crimes. There will come a reckoning. When it comes you will be jolted out of your [im]moral slumber.

        East Germans too thought they could go blithely on their way and the situation would never change. Pol Pot thought that too. And Hitler. And Milosevic. Soviet Communists as well. They believed they could continue indefinitely with their crimes and disastrous policies. Until things came crashing down upon them. That will happen to Israel as well.

        You are done in this thread.

  5. ‘Colin, my country is Irael’s lap dog as much as your country is. A combination of deluded Christians and Holocaust guilt can do the trick, even without a Sheldon Adelson.’

    Hey: don’t take my guilt.

    Seriously. Modern Israel coming into being is improbable absent the actions of three powers: Great Britain, Nazi Germany, and the United States.

    Pull any of those out of the mix, and it’s hard to see how Israel — at least in its current form — could have come to pass. Conversely, while as with many evils, the guilt is widespread, most other individual nations could have taken almost any position and Israel would likely still be there.

  6. ‘May I venture that “you are like” someone who suffers from verbal diarrhoea in your quest to score points?’

    And you seem to find it impossible to tolerate the least dissension from your views.

    In this case, you objected to my point that drawing parallels between Israel and some of the various other historical injustices that have occurred tends to both exaggerate the evil of those other injustices and to normalize Israel’s own crimes. Zionism is not just another form of colonialism; and few peoples have been subjected to the kind of concerted, calculated, and remorseless abuse that the Zionists have subjected the Palestinians to.

    1. @colin: knock it off. Colin, you are an acquired taste. Some never acquire it. You also like the sound of your own voice. Rein it in and do not alienate regular commenters like Elisabeth. She was here long before you. If I have to step in to stop this I will, by moderating you.

        1. I was some years ago in the board of one company. One of the members was famous having always something to complain, lecturing of irrelevant details and opposing always the majority’s opinion. In one meeting he himself suggested a solution to a problem and after a short discussion we others agreed that it was an excellent solution. Guess who opposed our almost unanimous decision which was what was suggested?

          A to active commenting strategy leads always to the situation where eventually the commentator has nothing new or relevant in his/hers comments. The readers notice very fast this and simply pass the comments of this mass producer. Some years ago on Syrian Comment blog’s comment section I had debates with a lady from California, who informed in her Twitter profile that she is Christian and could not speak or understand Arabic. I dared to criticise her aggressive and constant opinions of “destroying Assad” and asking her that does she really believe the ISIS “characters” will arrange free secular elections and give up their western weapons when the old order is literally killed. I also made “the mistake” by asking her how can a person like her produce hundreds of thousands tweets about Syrian situation without understanding Arabic and knowing the sources whose tweets she retweets? Today this lady has produced 412,000 tweets and 175,000 likes mainly about Syria (=Assad) and recently Russia (=Putin). It is clear that in these amounts the context of the tweets is purely irrelevant repeated propaganda. This person punished me by blocking me so that when logged i can not see her tweets. A real punishment. 🙂

        2. @ Colin: You provoked that reaction, my friend. Face it, you like provocation. I don’t mind a little provocation especially when it’s directed at our Friends from Hasbara (FFH). But not when it’s directed at an ally.

    2. You tire me out, but I will try to explain to you one last time: I did not object to your point that “drawing parallels between Israel and some of the various other historical injustices that have occurred tends to both exaggerate the evil of those other injustices and to normalize Israel’s own crimes.”

      I simply did not address that statement of yours in my answer. (Read more carefully, please.)

      Why did I not address that in my answer?

      Because I did not draw a parallel between the real life treatment of Indians in reservations with what happens in Gaza in the first place. (If there really had been cases where American troops surrounded an Indian reservation and shot everyone that tried to get out, maybe I would have.) I wrote that the Gaza situation could not be compared to the border between the US and Mexico, but was more like… (insert literal or metaphorical comparison of choice).

      Your lecturing me on the history of Indian reservations was therefore silly, and the result of careless reading on your part. I guess that I’d better take my comparisons from Lord of the Rings in the future, to avoid confusing you.

      (Richard, I apologize for engaging in these fruitless exchanges. It won’t happen again.)

  7. [comment deleted: No Islamophobia permitted here. And if you don’t know or understand why your comment is Islamophobic that’s part of the problem. Consider this a last warning before moderation.]

    1. I had tried–albiet unsuccessfully — to present a way of looking at the conflict as an alternative to the lens of conflicting narratives or directing blame in either direction (which you obviously do).

      You get provoked very easily so I see I must tread carefully, I had no intention to denigrate anybody.

      Anyway I am glad that both the Israelis and the Palestinians came to their senses and seemed to have agreed to some accomodation to stop the violence at gaza (at least temporarily) . The deaths profited nobody.

      1. I wrote a reaction to your Orientalist nonsense about a Jewish culture based on values and an Arab culture based on honor, but it got lost.

          1. It was, but in a way it was also insightful to see these arrogant and baseless prejudices out into the open.

      2. @ DrS: No way you get away with that s(&t here. You posted bilge about Palestinians coming from an “honor” culture, which is completely Islamophobic and racist. You may think you’re doing one thing, but you’re really doing another. THe fact that you don’t even understand the racist views you hold is a perfect illustration of the values inherent in whatever Jewish, Zionist or Israeli ethos you come from.

        Of course the deaths profited someone. They profit the Israelis or they wouldn’t engage in the behavior.

        There is no accomodation. There is no end to the violence. There will not be until Israel perpetrates a truly horrific incident which forces the world to come to its senses and impose a solution on Israel. It may take a month, a year or a decade. But that time will come as it did for the Rwandans and the Serbians. We sadly can only await the slaughter…

        There is no way of looking at the conflict without seeing conflicting narratives and directing blame. Any other approach is ridiculous and delusional.

          1. And what did honor killings have to do with the oppression and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people again, Elena?

          2. Well Elena do Western countries have men in front of busses and women in the back? Do men in those busses hit women in their face if they are in the wrong part of the bus? Do men in Western planes get a religious hysterical fit if a women happens to sit besides them? ETC

            Elena as an “Israeli” you are the last entitled to criticise others for their strange cultural and religious customs. I assume you will answer that not all “Israelis” are like “those” with beards and strange hats. Well only a tiny fragment of the 1.5 billion Muslims support honor killings. By the way also Israeli “Israelis” make and have made honour killings. Honor killings have a long tradition in Mediterranean Europe.

  8. Israel’s ambassador to the U.N. Danny Danon attempts to justify the slaughter by simply talking over the Channel 4 interviewer. If this was supposed to be a charm offensive they picked the wrong man.
    Also, I see Danon has written a book called ISRAEL: THE WILL TO PREVAIL. Someone else was once associated with the Triumph of the Will…. I wonder who that could be? Danny Danon; utterly tone deaf.

    https://www.channel4.com/news/ambassador-danny-danon-on-gaza-deaths-hamas-orchestrated-this-act-of-violence

  9. A sad day.

    I transcribed this from NPR in 2000:

    The Hebrew Canaanite name of the holy city means “city of peace”. Names are symbols, expressions of hope, wishes for brilliant future and good omen. Alas, the hope for a city where peace prevails has not been fulfilled. Indeed it turned out that the city has known only brief periods of peace during it’s four millennia of recorded history. Thirty-seven times it has been besieged, stormed and conquered, destroyed and rebuilt by a multitude of nations. All of them sought not material prizes, for they are not to be found in that remote arid hilltop, but symbolic edification: their savior, eternity.

    Symbolic assets are by their very nature unique indivisible and cannot be shared. The quest for exclusive possession of the holy city has turned Jerusalem into a battleground of all seekers of absolute truths: sons of light determined to massacre the sons of darkness in the name of universal love, fanatics set to realize the right come what may.

    In the last half century a more bitter strife has begun. It is not anymore waged by foreign conquerors who have fought over the City of Peace for the sake of distant empires or bands of believers seeking redemption, but rather between two communities for whom Jerusalem is home: Israelis and Palestinians. This conflict has caused much bloodshed and endless suffering. Yet is not necessarily a violent encounter. It finds expression in all spheres of life and activity, even those of a civilian nature.

    Inter-communal conflicts are chronic because they are caused by daily friction of competing collectives. They are twilight wars in which every person must constantly swing between the perception of the other as an enemy who must be destroyed and the perception that he is a neighbor, a living breathing human being.

    I was born in Jerusalem and have conflicts and contradictions on my own internal landscape. I share my people’s aspirations and I participate in the struggle for our eternal city. Yet my intimate contact with my neighbor as enemies has taught me to understand their own aspirations and listen to their grievances. I am tired of the conflict and seek reconciliation.

    I think that we are all exhausted. Both sides begin to realize that in the struggle for Jerusalem there will be no victors and no vanquished. The impasse led what is called the peace process which is actually a long maybe an indefinite process of communal reconciliation. The Oslo accords have created the precondition for the beginning of the process, mutual recognition of the legitimacy of the other and maybe an understanding of his claim and sensitivities. One should not lose hope that indeed Jerusalem will finally become a city of peace.

    -Meron Benvenisti, writer, former deputy Mayor of Jerusalem
    June 28, 2000 National Public Radio

    1. Thank you for what you wrote above and publishing this from me Richard.

      Since then the West Bank barrier wall began and I believe was completed and we have had several “mowings of the lawn”, devastations to rubble in Gaza and all that goes with military occupation and ‘the siege”.

      Since then Netanyahu has managed to convince (deflect) his public and our leaders that the Iran threat is paramount, THIS is the problem. Many on one side in Israel do not have to see what goes on beyond the wall. They just want “normal life” and quiet, whatever has to be done for that. So it’s much easier for the ‘truth tellers” to weave their hate and promote their myths, with little mitigating evidence that the other is actually human and suffering and maybe wants normality and, okay, sovereignty too, or their rights at least.They are the “eternal enemy”, as my father writes to the Jewish paper here, reading a saved copy from years ago. We are still there. They,these evil ones, must not be trusted and must be fought to the finish. People who think this way seem to have won. They bribe us with talk of a fiction peace. Even the New York Times in it’s editorial yesterday criticizing this Jerusalem embassy move faults Palestinians: “the Palestinians have failed and failed again to make their own best efforts toward peace.” What??? Where have the Israeli’s been since Olmert’s move and then then kick in the pants?

      I have not read Meron Benvenisiti recently. Still alive, his voice has been drowned out. I miss it.
      Thank you for yours.

  10. This is a great source for information. Thank you all for your input and viewpoints. .I don’t want to labor the Native American comparison or get off subject. Native American history is wide and varied. In the South such as Florida I visited the commemorated genocide site where ‘we’ ran the tribes literally into the oceans to their extinction. ( like Jews of Holocaust ) Native Americans could not leave their Reservations without the threat of being shot till 1924. That is where the racist slang “ wandered off the Reservation’ comes from. Most were internment camps because you would starve on these lands without government assistance and you could not leave. What is Palestine apple to apple comparison is how and what happens when one people want someone else’s land. When “ They want the land, but not the people.” Washington State is even mentioned in this documentary so it hits home. Here is a plethora of column ideas/ information for you Richard. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvM4SJN76Yg

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