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| 7/15 |
| 2004/3/16 [Politics/Foreign/MiddleEast/Israel] UID:12708 Activity:nil |
3/16 A tribute to Rachel Corrie. God bless her soul.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110004796
And a big 'fuck you' to who ever has been erasing this. You hater!
\_ Pot. Kettle. Black.
\_ But the difference is, I'd take Jews over Palestinians any
day.
\_ I know you would because you are prejudiced SOB who
sees no value in Arab life. I would take a good person
of any religion or nationality. Too bad you are too
blinded by your hate to see that there is good and
bad on both sides.
\_ There is bad on both sides but I'd take a democracy that
provides full freedom to women over fascist dictatorship
that murders 'collaborators' on the stree in cold blood
with no trial and conducts mock elections when they bother
to pretend to have them, or sends their *children* out
on the street carrying *suicide bomb belts*! I'll respect
Arab life when they start to respect Arab life.
\_ It's not a Democracy when almost half of those under
its rule have no vote. The Isrealis have killed
more Palestinian civilians than visa versa. Your
worldview is seriously twisted by the lies you
have been fed.
\_ there are more dead palestinians that israelis. you
seriously believe every palestinian death was an
innocent civilian? no, the numbers all get lumped
into a "score board" with only 2 numbers. It's a
democracy and it's the only one in the entire
middle east. You have feelings for the palestinians?
Not even other Arabs give a shit about them. Get
real. They don't even care about their own children.
\_ There are at least four classes of citizen.
Only Jews have full rights:
http://csua.org/u/6gh
How do you call that a Democracy?
\_ Not so much. It's just the Jews have, and continue to
make, a large number of contributions to the world at
large. Not to meantion they haven't attempted large
scale genocide since about... oh... 5000BC.
\_ Your celebration of the death of a brave and
noble human being who selflessly tried to
save a few innocent's homes just shows how far
your hatred and depravity has lowered you to.
I honestly think you need psychological help.
\_ Did you even read the link? She was trying to save
'homes' that were being used to move weapons into
the Gaza strip so the Palestinians could make more
bombs belts to strap on 12 year olds. You honestly
need to learn to read before resorting to ad hominen.
\_ That is a lie. Your entire link is ad hominem.
She died trying to save the home of Dr. Samir
Nasrallah who has never been charged by the
IDF of any crime.
http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2003/09/ma_497_01.html
http://www.yesmagazine.org/26courage/halper.htm
\_ What's a lie? That 12 year olds are carrying bomb
belts? That weapons are flowing under tunnels from
the Sinai to Gaza? Give it up. I'm not even going
to waste the network bits to read the leftist trash
from links like mother jones. You might as well be
posting from the democraticunderground site.
\_ The claim that Rachel Corrie was protecting
a tunnel is a lie. And you are a lying and
twisted fuck who seriously needs help.
\_ Hmmm.. Maybe you're right. I was thinking that
supporting terrorists that kill civilians made
her enemy support personnel. Maybe all she
really deserves is a Darwin award.
\_ Because all Palestinians are terrorist scum and
must be cleansed, right?
\_ Ok, I admit it. There's wrong on both sides. But it's
going to continue until:
A) The Palestinians successfully kill all the Jews.
B) The Jews get tired of trying to put up with them and
finally kill all the Palestinians.
C) The Palestinians learn to police themselves and stop
encouraging their children to wear bomb belts.
THIS IS A WAR, and one side is totally fanatical about
killing the other, and will not settle for anything
less. Civilians die in wars too, it's a sad truth.
I'm sorry I'm the one who has to break it to you.
\_ The Israelis are willing to have peace. The other side
only wants pieces. Has the PLO taken that bit out of
their charter that says their goal is to eliminate
Israel and kill all the Jews?
\_ They removed the part that called for the
destruction of Isreal years ago. They never
called the death of all Jews. That is more
of your propaganda.
\_ It's not a war, it's an military occupation that has
lasted 40 years. Israel builds settlements and so forth
regardless of terrorist activity.
\_ Because IT IS WAR, in your words, it is okay to
celebrate the death of a non-violent innocent?
\_ Need I say, that this URL is pretty hateful? |
| 7/15 |
|
| www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110004796 IN MEMORIAM A Tribute to Rachel Corrie Thanks for showing us what peace really means. BY RUHAMA SHATTAN Tuesday, March 16, 2004 12:01 am EST Editors note: On March 16, 2003, 23-year-old Rachel Corrie died in a bulldozer accident in the Gaza town of Rafah. I want to thank Corrie for the explosives that flow freely from Egypt to Gaza, via the smuggling tunnels under the Gaza homes that she died defending. Perhaps her help in fanning the flames of violent anti-American sentiment led to the October 2003 bombing of the Fulbright delegation to Gaza to interview scholarship candidates, killing three. There will be no new crop of Palestinian Fulbright scholars this fall. On the first anniversary of her death, I wanted to thank Rachel Corrie for providing her organization, the Palestinian-sponsored International Solidarity Movement, with the opportunity to release a manipulated photo sequence showing an Israeli military bulldozer deliberately crushing her. I would also like to thank the Associated Press and the Christian Science Monitor for taking up the baton and immortalizing this cynical ISM stunt. On the first anniversary of her death, I want to thank Rachel Corrie for showing the way to all those who seek peace in the Middle East. Thank you, Rachel Corrie, of Evergreen State University, where the profs wear khakis and kaffiyehs at graduation ceremonies, for showing us what peace really means. Shattan is a translator, editor and writer who has lived in Israel since 1976. RESPOND TO THIS ARTICLE READ RESPONSES E-MAIL THIS TO A FRIEND PRINT FRIENDLY FORMAT HOME TOP OF PAGE ARCHIVE SUBSCRIBE TO THE WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINE OR TAKE A TOUR . |
| csua.org/u/6gh -> academic.udayton.edu/race/06hrights/VictimGroups/Palestinans/palestinans02.htm He also alleges that the comparison of Israel with South Africa is intellectually lazy, morally questionable, and possibly even mendacious, and that the call to boycott Israeli academic institutions tell us more about the boycotters than the subject of their rage. I am afraid, however, that the facts of the case do not corroborate Ian Burumas misguided argument. It is exactly the case that inside the State of Israel there IS apartheid. I hope Ian Buruma can accept the distinction between racism and racial discrimination versus apartheid. Apartheid is an exceptional form of racial discrimination predicated upon the enforcement of racism in law through Acts of Parliament. There is indeed no justification for singling out Israel as a state where racism is rife. Racism is rife in most or in all member states of the United Nations Organization, including the UK, let alone the US. There is, however, every reason to single out the Jewish state, not because it is a Jewish state, but because it is an apartheid state, namely a state that legislates racism through Acts of Parliament and enforces racialist behaviour upon its citizens by exercising the might of the law. In apartheid South Africa the apartheid divide was between people classified as whites versus people classified as non-whites. In apartheid Israel the apartheid divide is between people classified as Jews versus people classified as non-Jews, first and foremost the indigenous people of the country of Palestine, the Palestinian Arab people. By comparison, in apartheid South Africa some 87 per cent of the territory of the Republic of apartheid South Africa was designated in law for whites only and some 13 per cent was accessible to non-whites. In other words, the terms of apartheid legislation with regard to land tenure in apartheid Israel are not only comparable to, but are WORSE in this regard than the terms of South African apartheid, now happily dismantle since 1994. Ian Buruma refers to the indigenous Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel, a national minority representing some 20 per cent of the total population of the State of Israel, and alleges that they enjoy full citizens rights. I am afraid, however that this argument, like his argument above, is not borne by the facts of the case and is equally misguided. Citizenship is a certificate representing a legal relationship between the individual and the state. Like all rights, democratic citizenship as we know it today is a right won by the struggle of the people vis-a-vis the state. Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights stipulates that 1 Everyone has the right to a nationality and 2 No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality. Rather, informed by the dominant ideology of political Zionism, the Israeli legislator the Knesset legislated a schedule of FOUR classes of citizenship based on racial discrimination and representing blatant inequality in law, in other words, representing a new form of Apartheid. In the State of Israel the right of a citizen classified in law as a non-Jew namely, an Arab to partake in the political process is formally equal to the right of a citizen classified in law as a Jew. Likewise the standing of a citizen classified in law as a non-Jew before the courts of law is formally equal to the standing of citizen classified in law as a Jew. On the other hand the right of a citizen classified in law as a non-Jew to the social and welfare services and the material resources of the State are NOT equal to those of a citizen classified in law as a Jew. But subject to Class B citizenship above, there exists in the State of Israel by force of the Absentees Property Law of 1950 also Class C citizenship for such Arab citizens of the State of Israel as are present inside the state, yet classified in law as absent. Some 20 per cent of the constituency of the Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel, approximately 200,000 persons, are classified in Israeli law as Class C citizens, namely, as present-absentees. Also, subject to the said Absentees Property law of 1950, the Israeli legislator the Knesset determined in law a Class D citizenship, namely, the denied citizenship of some 750,000 1948 Palestine refugees and their descendants currently numbering according to UNRWA figures approximately 4 million persons. It had taken the UN by far too long to realize that political Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination representing a blatant violation of the norms of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the standards of international law. |
| www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2003/09/ma_497_01.html At two oclock on the afternoon of Sunday, March 16, Rachel Corrie received a cell-phone call from a comrade in the International Solidarity Movement. Samir Nasrallah was a Palestinian pharmacist who lived with his wife and three children a few hundred yards from the battle-scarred Egyptian border in the Gaza Strip town of Rafah. Corrie and other pro-Palestinian activists based in Rafah had frequently spent the night in Nasrallahs house, acting as human shields against the Israeli tanks and bulldozers clearing a security zone around the border. Almost every other structure in the area had been knocked down in recent months; Certain that the pharmacists house was about to be razed, Corrie caught a taxi to the Hai as-Salam neighborhood. The paved roads of downtown Rafah gave way to sandy tracks lined with scrabbly olive groves, mosques, modest houses, and dirt pitches where Corrie often played soccer - badly but enthusiastically - with local youths. At 2:30, a neighbor of Nasrallahs named Abu Ahmed caught sight of the activist hurrying past his house. Slight, hazel-eyed, with high cheekbones and dirty blond hair pulled back in a ponytail, she carried a megaphone in one hand and an orange fluorescent jacket in the other. But Corrie told him she didnt have time, and he watched as she disappeared around the corner of his house, heading toward the roar of machinery. This much has never been contested: Placing herself in the path of an Israeli bulldozer that she believed was about to flatten Nasrallahs house, Rachel Corrie was crushed to death - her skull fractured, her ribs shattered, her lungs punctured. But the bitter accusations and violent recriminations that followed obscured almost everything else about the incident. Several eyewitnesses charged that the bulldozer operator ran her down deliberately and called her killing a war crime. The Israeli government, which rarely acknowledges the deaths of Palestinian civilians killed during its military operations, went into damage-control mode. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon promised President Bush a thorough, credible, and transparent investigation. Later Israel declared the killing a regrettable accident and blamed it on overzealous Corrie and the other activists working as human shields. Charges and countercharges flew back and forth until, like Rashomon, the facts of Rachel Corries death dissolved into a half-dozen competing versions of the truth, none of them fully convincing. In the United States, the reaction to Corries death also reflected the deep divide over the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. But many others greeted Corries death with a distinct lack of sympathy. Americans preoccupation with the impending war in Iraq combined with the perception that Corrie was in league with Palestinian militants dampened any sense of outrage. She was ridiculed as roadkill on one website and excoriated on others for burning a makeshift American flag before Gaza schoolchildren, a photo of which prompted anti-war protesters and other likely allies to distance themselves from her. A university newspaper ran a scathing cartoon depicting a woman standing in front of a bulldozer along with dictionary definitions of the word stupidity and one addition: 3. Most Americans, if they thought about her at all, considered Corrie a naif who had chosen the wrong side and paid, tragically, with her life. If Corrie thought that a white, American, female college student putting her life on the line could somehow change hearts and minds, she would, in death, be little more than a news blip, convincing people of nothing more than what they already believed. What remained unclear were the precise circumstances of her death - and why a 23-year-old woman from Olympia, Washington, would have placed her body in front of Israeli military bulldozers in the first place. |
| www.yesmagazine.org/26courage/halper.htm On March 17, a 23-year-old American college student died in the southern Gaza city of Rafah after trying to stop an Israeli-driven bulldozer from tearing down a Palestinian physicians home. A few minutes after Rachel Corrie spoke with the driver to try to convince him to stop, and while she looked at him, he ran over her, then backed over her again. Rachel was not the first person killed as a result of Israels cruel policy of house demolitions. In March, Nuha Makadma Sweidan and her unborn child were also killed in Gaza when Israeli army sappers accidentally demolished their home when they blew up another home nearby. A few weeks before that, an elderly woman and a disabled man died under the rubble of their Gazan homes when the soldiers failed to notice them. Yet Rachel was the first American to be killed this way, and her death shocked the world as Palestinian deaths do not. Among the ironies of her death was the fact that the bulldozer was American-made. The United States has long been Israels primary ally, and increasingly pursues the same strategies in its quest for security. Yet Rachels death suggests that these intertwined policies are a dead-end for both countries. As an Israeli Jew who has traveled frequently to the United States, I believe that Israel and the United States share many features. They are both European-settler states that displaced an indigenous population. They both acted in their countries with a sense of Manifest Destiny, both motivated by the belief that their conquest and colonization were divinely blessed. They are both societies that believe themselves to have a special mission to the rest of humanity to be a light unto the nations, to bring democracy to benighted countries. As the strongest power in the Middle East, Israel places its ability to impose its exclusive claim to the entire Land of Israel including the Occupied Territories on its military superiority. The United States, the strongest power in the world, asserts its hegemony over the planet through military force. Especially since September 11, both perceive themselves as besieged fortressesFortresses of Fearalienated from a hostile outside world and threatened by it. Israelis often use the term Fortress Israel to describe our country. In the United States, the image of a fortress is embedded in The Star Spangled Banner. Samir Nasrallahs home, was demolished as part of Israels efforts to protect its fortress. Like dozens of other houses that have been bulldozed in that section of the dense refugee camp, Nasrallahs lay within a wide security strip that Israel wants to create along the border with Egypt. Nasrallah, no opportunity to appeal to any court, no alternative housing offered. Simply demolition that left his family homeless, impoverished, traumatized, ruined. Nasrallah had engaged in no hostile activities, had not been charged with anything. According to United Nations figures, less than 600 of the 10,000 houses demolished since the occupation began in 1967 involved security suspects. The rest94 percentwere simply houses of ordinary people who were in Israels way. So why does Israel pursue such a policy that seems tailor-made to generate hatred against it? In the years after the founding of the state when fedayun Palestinians displaced from their homes attacked Israeli settlements. In the 1970s, under the auspices of the PLO and other liberation organizations; Since the start of the second Intifada in September 2000, some 700 Israeli civilians have been killed in terrorist or, according to the Palestinians, resistance actions. On a common-sense level, measures taken against terrorism have a compelling logic. But when the fight against terrorism is divorced from its larger political context, when the causes of terrorism are left out of the equationas when terrorists are dismissed as merely evil peoplethen such measures are futile. They believe that if terrorism cannot be quelled completely, at least it can be brought down to manageable levels. Without any way to end the attacks, and with no political analysis or alternative, all that is left is to hunker down. People who believe there is no way out elect hard-liners like Sharon, who offer at least an iron fist against the terrorists, thus perpetuating the downward spiral of violence. While not every act of terrorism has its political reason and acts that are actually evil do occur, the broad solution that will reduce fear appreciably is knownbut dry, not capable of competing with the adrenaline rush of a war. In a multicultural world in which inequalities are growing ever more stark and even the smallest groups are acquiring access to weapons of mass destruction, international humanitarian law, in contrast to military operations, offers perhaps the only way out of the Fortress of Fear. Under the definition of crimes against humanity, the perpetrators of the September 11 attacks could have been apprehended, charged, prosecuted and sentenced without recourse to holy wars or the feeling that one part of the world is ganging up on another. Similarly, the Fourth Geneva Convention offers a blueprint for dismantling the Israeli occupation and granting Palestinians their independence while still ensuring Israel security and regional integration. International tribunals, working with the legal systems of individual countries, are capable of meting out justice and holding states accountable if only the international community supports them. Only a human rights approach that offers a level playing field to everyone will reduce our fears and allow us to leave our fortresses. It requires a type of engagement based on economic development and parity. But for many in power the fortresses are more important than freedom from fear. They house what Eisenhower called the military-industrial complex. Indeed, another major point of similarity between the United States and Israel is the tremendous resources they throw into armaments. Ending fear will require states and their industrial-military interests to give up power and the prospect of dominating and winning. As any child who plays video games will tell you, win-lose is much more exciting, understandable and compelling than win-win. Lacking a leadership willing to dismantle the matrix of fear, it is up to us, the international civil society, to dismantle our Fortresses of Fear. It is the need to dismantle our fortress that motivates me and my fellow members of the Israeli peace movement. We resist demolition as Rachel did, block the bulldozers with our bodies, and rebuild Palestinian homes when they are demolished. For by doing so we, as Israeli Jews, are saying to the Palestinians: We acknowledge your existence as a people and your right to be in this country. We want to share this country with you, based on the rights of both our peoples. As a member of the International Solidarity Movement, she was a member of the international civil society, as we all are. In her actions she affirmed her responsibility for upholding the inherent dignity and equal rights of all people, including their right to a nationality. She non-violently opposed the violence that occupation does to the Palestinians. |