5.04.2005
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5/04/2005
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5.03.2005
Occupation Corrupts: What The Times Strives to Hide
Short on time? Skip my thoughts and head straight here, an easy read that will open your eyes and set your mind to wondering.
Being an Occupying force circumstantially corrupts the people serving under arms. The Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank highlight this. Coincidently, the US military has been, as Time Magazine headlines it "Learning the Art of Occupation from Israel"
For residents of the Sunni Triangle, who have spent years watching TV images of the residents of the West Bank and Gaza living under siege, surrounded by checkpoints and suffering periodic air strikes and military sweeps, the Palestinian experience offers a ready template for understanding the turn taken by their own lives over the past six months. Whole villages have been surrounded by razor wire, their residents forced to pass through checkpoints; U.S. aircraft and artillery have blasted buildings suspected of being used by insurgents; there have even been instances of family members of suspected insurgents being taken into custody when their wanted relatives can't be found. As one Iraqi waiting on line at a checkpoint last week told the New York Times, "I see no difference between us and the Palestinians."
The echoes of the Israel control of the Occupied Territories are sadly apparent. Sadder still- the possibility that like the Israeli's, our soldiers may be killing children routinely.
According to UNRWA, between August 1989 and August 1993, 1085 persons treated in its clinics had been shot in the head, 545 of whom were under sixteen, and 97 of whom were under the age of six[2]. A study by the Association of Israeli and Palestinian Physicians for Human Rights (PHR-Israel) reveals that during the five years of the Al-Aqsa Intifada, a child under the age of six was shot in the head every two weeks[3].
From The British Medical Journal, October 2004
Two thirds of the 621 children (two thirds under 15 years) killed at checkpoints, in the street, on the way to school, in their homes, died from small arms fire, directed in over half of cases to the head, neck and chest—the sniper's wound. Clearly, soldiers are routinely authorised to shoot to kill children in situations of minimal or no threat.
"Routinely" is a pretty strong claim. Very strong given the subject matter, soldiers shooting children. Kids heads are small, my guess is the chances of regularly accidentally shooting youngsters in the head are slim. But the realities we don't hear about in the media paint a stark picture of the reality of war, of the reality facing people deployed under the circumstances of occupation.
Ft. Stewart, GA -- Yesterday [April 27] at Ft. Stewart Georgia, U.S. Army Sergeant Kevin Benderman was dealt a setback in his battle with the U.S. Army when his application for Conscientious Objector status was denied by his command.
Benderman applied for CO status after having already served one combat tour in Iraq during which his Captain ordered personnel in the unit to fire on Iraqi children throwing rocks. This was one of many incidents during his deployment that Benderman said convinced him that war is immoral and it is his duty to refuse to kill.
The "bad guys" kill children, civilians, indiscrimately, we all know that- not Americans, and, according to what the New York Times reports not Israelis.
War is an ugly persuit which has death as it's overarching theme and control as it's aim. Occupation subjugates as a stalemate, not quite winning but in control, dominating overtly power-wise while the occupied people's wish for freedom roils as a subtext to their manifestly inferior status. Violence and fear are the tools of the occupier,constant wielder of military might. Violence and fear are the tools of the occupied, in lesser, intermittent doses. Violence and fear is what corrupts the personalities of an occupying military power. The supporters of occupation are similarly corrupted.
The case of The New York Times is instructive in that " the paper of record" offers less than honest reportage on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. "Off the Charts: Accuracy in Reporting of Israel/Palestine -The New York Times" shows us how news may be slanted "to make friends and influence people"; winning the average American media consumer over so as to lead her/him to support a cause which, when reality is is revealed, is unconscionable. The Times deftly sweeps the realities of the the Israeli occupation, illegal under international law, under the carpet. The owners and editors of the Times know "Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government" as Thomas Jefferson said; the US taxpayer subsidizes the Israeli occupation of Palestine- and actually will be funding Israeli
"disengagement" in Gaza- that is, paying Israel to leave stolen land to conform to international law.
Here are some illustrative samples from the statistical report, complete with graphs "Off the Charts: Accuracy in Reporting of Israel/Palestine -The New York Times". The killing of children, non-combatants, seems to me to highlight the barbarity of the Occupation of Palestine.
In 2000-2001:
While at least 82 Palestinian children were killed before the first Israeli child’s death, only 9 of these Palestinian children’s deaths were reported in The Times headlines or first paragraphs.
It is significant to compare the curves of The Times’ coverage of deaths. In doing this, we discover the newspaper reported both death rates almost identically. In fact, as the year went on, the number of prominent mentions of Israeli children’s deaths exceeded the actual number of deaths (due to repetitions in coverage), while The Times reported fewer Palestinian children’s deaths than Israeli deaths – despite the fact that almost five times more Palestinian children were actually being killed than Israeli children.
Finally, we see that while the death of an Israeli child was prioritized above the killing of an adult (125% of Israeli children’s deaths were reported compared to 119% of Israeli deaths in general), the killing of a Palestinian child was de-prioritized (18% of children’s deaths compared to 42% of deaths in general). This occurred despite the abnormally high proportion that Palestinian children made up of Palestinian casualties. One might expect the fact that Palestinian children constituted such a high percentage of deaths to have been considered newsworthy in itself, not the reverse.
In 2004
In 2004, we find the disparity of reporting on Israeli and Palestinian children’s deaths even greater than in the coverage of the first year. In 2004, 4 out of 8 Israeli children’s deaths were reported. During the same period only 12 out of 176 Palestinian children’s deaths were reported.
Again, Palestinian children were making up a much greater part of the total number of Palestinians killed than Israeli children were of Israeli conflict casualties. Children’s deaths accounted for 21.5% of the Palestinians killed, while children’s deaths accounted for only 7.5% of Israelis killed during this period.
During 2004, 22 times more Palestinian children were killed than Israeli children.
The truth about the Palestinian/Israeli conflict is both unsettelling and illuminating. The fact that The New York Times has obviously taken sides is clearly shown through the record of it's reportage. Unsavory aspects of the Israeli Occupation are revealed when the truth is shown. That children are targets in war belies the John Wayne image we have of our own forces and those we support in armed conflict; war is about killing- "purity of arms" is a PR dream, a myth sullied by reported fact.
By the way, 32 Palestinian youngsters have been killed this year, 1 Israeli. This years senselessness, as of April 9...
5/03/2005
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5.01.2005
Zionism= Racism and Religious Discrimination
"We're involved here, in a struggle for the existence of the State of Israel as the state of the Jews, as opposed to those who want to force us to be a state of all its citizens." "We are not just a state of all its citizens."-- Limor Livnat, Education Minister, Israel
A state grounded in racism is wrong, obviously. Using religion as the intellectual basis for racism is absurd. Yet while decrying the spectre of Islamic democracies the American religious right is stealthily working to realize it's vision of our nation as a Christian state. This same dangerous faction, known as Dominionists/Christian Reconstructionists supports the state of Israel, an state which supports discrimination based on religion in Israel proper as well as in the territories it illegaly occupies.
Three decades ago Winston Churchill's grandson asked Ariel Sharon how Israel should deal with the Palestinians. "We'll make a pastrami sandwich out of them," he replied. "We'll insert a strip of Jewish settlements in between the Palestinians, and then another strip of Jewish settlements right across the West Bank, so that in twenty-five years' time, neither the United Nations nor the United States, nobody, will be able to tear it apart."
3.5 million Palestinian people in the territory Israel controls cannot vote, yet the Israeli people colonizing and occupying Gaza and the West Bank can vote. living beside them can.
It's a unitary state controlled by one dominant national group, which leaves the other national group disenfranchised and subject to laws "for natives only", which for the purposes of respectability and international law are known as laws of "belligerent occupation". The convenience of this model of binationalism is that it can be applied over a long period of time, meanwhile debating the threat of the "one state" and the advantages of the "two states", without doing a thing.
Finding the actions of a state repellent and criminal is different from painting individuals with a wide brush, typing them in one way or another. When the subject of Israel comes up it is a common technique for the nation's proponents to claim anti-semitism; thereby shifting the debate from the state's historical record of actions which is roundly indefensible to charges of racism against Jewish people, an easy technique to change the tack of a conversation. "Anti-Semitism vs. Anti-Zionism - A Practical Manual" by Uri Avnery offers some perspective on this. As will "No, anti-Zionism is not anti-semitism" by Brian Klug.
"Fear of being slandered as "anti-Semites" means we are abetting terrible deeds in the Middle East"
I came across the following about Orthodox Jews protesting the very state of Israel:
If you happened to be passing by the Israeli Consulate yesterday afternoon you most surely would have been shocked by the unusual sight that greeted your eyes: a group of over 10,000 Orthodox Jews who were protesting against the actual existence of the state of Israel. Behind them hung large posters showing the beating of Orthodox Jews by Israeli police while they were protesting the desecration of antiquated Jewish cemeteries which are in the path of a planned highway expansion.
The shocking sight didn't stop there. When you studied their signs and looked at the picture posters a shocking new world was revealed. Tens of thousands of religious Jews are protesting in the streets of Jerusalem against the state of Israel stating that the state of Israel, according to the Torah (that is the Jewish teachings) is illegitimate. They state that since the time that God sent the Jews into exile with the destruction of the temple two thousand years ago the Jews were forbidden to have their own state and that the whole concept of Zionism and the creation of the state of Israel was formed by irreligious Jews contrary to the Torah and the opinion of almost all of the Rabbinical leaders of Judaism worldwide.
Read more...
More Information:
True Torah Jews Against Zionism
Jews not Zionism
Neturei Karta- Orthodox Jews against Zionism
I am not a psychologist, but I think that everyone who lives with the contradictions of Zionism condemns himself to protracted madness. It's impossible to live like this. It's impossible to live with such a tremendous wrong. It's impossible to live with such conflicting moral criteria. When I see not only the settlements and the occupation and the suppression, but now also the insane wall that the Israelis are trying to hide behind, I have to conclude that there is something very deep here in our attitude to the indigenous people of this land that drives us out of our minds.
There is something gigantic here that doesn't allow us truly to recognize the Palestinians, that doesn't allow us to make peace with them. And that something has to do with the fact that even before the return of the land and the houses and the money, the settlers' first act of expiation toward the natives of this land must be to restore to them their dignity, their memory, their justness.
An Islamic state marginalizing and occupying a non-Muslim people would be vilified. A Christain state that seeks to convert or marginalize non-Christians is a frightening prospect. But the state of Israel can marginalize non-Jews within it's borders while occupying the West Bank and Gaza with impunity, defying the UN for 38 years. And it is OK.
"Our sufferings have granted us immunity papers, as it were . . . After what all those dirty goyim have done to us, none of them is entitled to preach morality to us. We, on the other hand, have carte blanche, because we were victims and have suffered so much. Once a victim, always a victim, and victimhood entitles its owners to a moral exemption."-- satire by the novelist Amos Oz
All discrimination is wrong. People are people. There are no moral exceptions. Welcome to the twenty-first century; the last hundred years showed us the full measure of our species inhumanity. Shouldn't we have learned by now?
I'll leave you with a quote from Desmond Tutu.
My heart aches. I say, why are our memories so short? Have our Jewish sisters and brothers forgotten their humiliation? Have they forgotten the collective punishment, the home demolitions, in their own history so soon? Have they turned their backs on their profound and noble religious traditions? Have they forgotten that God cares deeply about the downtrodden? Israel will never get true security and safety through oppressing another people. A true peace can ultimately be built only on justice.
further on
But you know as well as I do that, somehow, the Israeli government is placed on a pedestal, and to criticise it is to be immediately dubbed anti-semitic, as if the Palestinians were not semitic. I am not even anti-white, despite the madness of that group. And how did it come about that Israel was collaborating with the South African apartheid government on security measures? People are scared in this country, to say wrong is wrong because the Jewish lobby is powerful--very powerful. Well, so what? For goodness sake, this is God's world! We live in a moral universe. The apartheid government was very powerful, but today it no longer exists.
Injustice and oppression will never prevail. Those who are powerful have to remember the litmus test that God gives to the powerful: what is your treatment of the poor, the hungry, the voiceless? And on the basis of that, God passes judgment.
This piece was first posted, in a shorter form, at American Samizdat
5/01/2005
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