Israel's (the far-right government counter-parts to the Bush-Cheney cabal) continued immoral actions in Gaza put in jeopardy not just Israel, but Jews all over the world and not just to growing anti-Semitism and condemnation, but also to violence and retaliation. Here is a sampling:
UK:
Businessman Sir Alan Sugar and record producer Mark Ronson (right) feature on a list of high-profile British Jews who could be targeted after their names were published on an extremist website following Israel's assault on Gaza.Other names listed include David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, and Lord Levy, the long-time friend of Tony Blair and former chief fundraiser for the Labour Party.
Brondesbury Park Synagogue was the target of an attempted arson attack this week as the Community Security Trust continued to warn Anglo-Jewry to be on its guard in the wake of Israel's anti-terror operation.
ANSA) - Rome, January 8 - A proposed consumer boycott of Israeli products, as a protest against the Israeli offensive in Gaza, has sparked outrage among politicians on both the right and left in the Italian capital who saw it as targeting the city's Jewish community.The proposal came from the Rome chapter of a small left-wing union in the retail services and food sector, Flaica CUB, which denied on Thursday that their initiative was in any way anti-Semitic.
''There does not exist nor will there ever be compiled any list of shops belonging to members of the Israeli community where shopping should be avoided,'' the union's local secretary Giancarlo Desiderati said.
''We have never singled out the Rome Jewish community, to which we express our support for their past suffering and whom we consider to be made up of honest and hard-working citizens,'' Desiderati said.
and:
Pope Benedict today condemned the use of violence by both Israel and Hamas in his annual speech to diplomats accredited to the Holy See. "Once again I would repeat that military options are no solution and that violence, wherever it comes from and whatever form it takes, must be firmly condemned," he said in an even handed address.He rejected "hatred, acts of provocation and the use of arms" and deplored the renewed outbreak of violence in Gaza which was "provoking immense damage and suffering for the civilian population".
To express solidarity with the Palestinian people, Venezuela expelled Israel's ambassador, is organizing humanitarian aid, and has called on the international community to protest. In response, the Israeli government called Venezuela a terrorist state.
US:
CAMARILLO -- A Jewish preschool in Camarillo has been vandalized with swastikas and anti-Semitic phrases for the second time in a week and the fourth time in a year.A parent discovered the hate messages Monday morning at the Gan Camarillo Preschool.
Last Wednesday, vandals etched black swastikas on the sidewalk in front of the school along with the words "white power."
The National Bureau of Vigilance Against Anti-Semitism (BNVCA) reported that in Paris and several other French cities, Jews have been targeted since the beginning of Israel's military operation.Attackers launched two cars packed with petrol bombs at a synagogue in south-western city of Toulouse, Monday night, causing damage but no casualties. One car was set on fire and pushed by the other until it hit the door of the synagogue, at a time when about a dozen people were attending a class with a rabbi. The building caught fire but all those inside escaped unharmed.
Rostock, Germany - Stone-throwing vandals broke windows at a synagogue in the German city of Rostock overnight, police said Thursday, adding they had not yet identified the attackers. Several windows were broken, including a fanlight with a Star of David painted on it over the front door of the community centre. Police stepped up patrols near the centre. The port city of Rostock is part of eastern Germany, where neo-Nazi violence has been the most prevalent in recent years.
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That is just a small sampling, but you get the idea. Anyone openly defending this extreme and immoral attack by Israel's right-wing does not support Israel in particular or Jews in general. One cannot argue that the losing the moral position on the question of self-defense; losing allies all over the world; and seeing a spike in hate-crimes and open displays of anti-Semitism is a good thing.
Maybe if one is getting paid to argue such a anti-Jewish position - and it is an anti-Jewish position, then such an argument (as immoral as it is) makes some sense. But anyone else arguing in favor of Israel's suicide politics, is either themselves hoping for the destruction of Israel or is so steeped in American empire dreaming, that they have no idea the consequences that such violent arrogance produces.
As a Jew I am ashamed of what Israel is doing under the banner of my heritage. As an American, I am ashamed that the US has and continues to support this attack. As a person with a conscience, I am outraged. As a journalist, I am alarmed at the media censorship. As a human rights advocate, I demand that Israel stop.
Right now, the reserves, and the money belong to the Palestinian people.
This is not a war in reaction to rockets. This is a war over billions of dollars in natural resources.
Sam Smith, at Progressive Review, provides some links.
http://www.prorev.com
This is just one more "oil and gas" war. Sad, isn't it?
It's especially important for people in the American Jewish community to speak up on this.
Your words remind us that despite AIPAC's efforts, many Jews are horrified by the actions of a nation that claims to represent them. Their claim is as invalid as the excuses Christians used to offer for American slavery.
The geopolitical picture changes and gets more complicated...the coming conflict is between Shiites and Sunni (Al Qaeda has been clear that 'heretics' are even worse than 'infidels'), between Persians and Arabs...Israelis should be firmly on the Sunni/Arab side of that, and most of the Arab world would welcome them. But not now, not this way.
When your brother sets fire to his own house to eliminate some mice, before long the house, the family, will be gone but the mice will stay. So what do you say to the brother after the match is lit?
tm
The Gazans are trapped, there is no safe place. Israel can claim every death and bombing as 'trying to kill Hamas militants'. 'Hamas is using civilians as human shields' is the excuse I keep hearing but in such a small area this kind of military response against Hamas is guaranteed to kill mostly civilians.
Friday I heard a story reported on NPR and sourced from the Red Cross that the Israeli army told a group of Palestinian civilians to hide out in a building. It was shelled the next day. The few children they found were starved to the point they could not stand up, were lying next to the bodies of their dead mothers. The report also said that aid can't get in even during so-called cease-fires because Israeli soldiers are firing up on them.
Israel may have the right to defend itself but there are bounds of reason. They are in essence bombing a prison. Israel controls the movement, access to supplies like food and water, access to health care etc of the Palestinian people. Israel blockaded Gaza, Hamas responds by firing a few pissant rockets. Israel decides that gives it the right to carpet bomb and invade Gaza killing hundreds if not thousands of civilians. That's outside the bounds of reason.
Larisa is right, it's time Israel recognizes their hardline policy is doing them more harm than good.
While I am not Jewish...I am a lifelong supporter of the state of Israel..and count many Jews among my dearest friends (and family).
Support for Israel has been eroding for some time.
The virtual complete destruction of Lebannon's infrastructure in 2006, the slaughter of more than 1,000 Lebanese citizens (with many thousands more maimed and terrorized) accelerated this process dramatically, and ...in the end,...
served only to STRENGTHEN Hezzbolla, to radicalize legions of Arab youth, to erode support for Israel, and ultimately render her much LESS secure, not more.
The specter of a modern military (substantially funded and armed with U.S. tax dollars I might add) attacking targets surrounded by thousands of helpless civillians with nowhere to run has been simply appalling....... and is very likely the "last straw" for myself and people like me.
Israeli apologists are quick to assert Israel's right to "defend itself".
By my lights... the phrase does not apply. This dramatic overkill (quite literally) is not defensive...it is out of all proportion and is designed to punish and to "send a message".
Unfortunately, the message is this...
Plainly Israel believes the rights of the Palestinians, indeed their LIVES....man/woman or child are simply WORTH LESS than those of Israeli citizens.
This slaughter is BEYOND mistaken and counterproductive...Only one word accurately describes it.
That word is "EVIL"
An article in today's NYT: LINK..
Hamas does not recognize Israel's existence and is dedicated to its destruction. It attacks Israel. Israel is within its rights to seek to destroy Hamas.
If you can think of a military response that will destroy Hamas, without killing lots of non-combatants, I am sure the Israelis would be all ears.
It is pretty obvious that they have no conception of what it must be like for the Israelies to have put up with dozens of rockets being lobbed into their country daily, FOR YEARS. (The only target of these rockets is Civilians, including babies.) They also don't seem to be able to understand that if we allow either faction to succeed in destroying Israel, that they will NOT stop there.
I have to wonder where they were when these same people were kicked out of Syria, Jordan and Egypt, by their fellow Arabs?? Or the utter squalor they lived in, in those same Countries while they were still welcome in them.
You were once solidly in Israel's corner? The people of Gaza are crying about the Checkpoints. Well, they are the direct result of YEARS of suicide bombers going into Israel from Gaza. From the PLO to Hamas, there has been the constant refrain from their leaders that the nation of Israel must be pushed into the sea.
Please tell me what it is that YOU think Israel could have done differently???
First of all, Israel must begin for perhaps the first time ever to negotiate in good faith. The ulterior strategy institutionalized by David Ben-Gurion, wherein Israel presents a positive public face but sabotages negotiations by making unrealistic territorial and political demands of the Palestinians, beyond their reasonable security interests, or uses negotiations to stall for time, or carries out false-flag and black-ops of provocation must stop.
The heavy handed use of the full force and lethal variety of Israel's conventional military might, in disregard of the Geneva Conventions and international law, against the entire Palestinian population without distinction between civilian and soldier must stop once and for all time.
The ulterior continuation of "Plan Dalet" which includes continued encroachment, expansion by Palestinian attrition and forced exile must stop. This is an essential, ongoing tactic of the original Ben-Gurion/Haganah strategy laid down in 1948 -- it has never ended and continues to be Israel's basic strategy, a strategy that amounts to genocide.
Israel must lift the blockade of the Gaza and allow Gazans the room to develop into an economically viable state.
Israel must cease the apartheid policies that have led to the economic isolation of Palestine, including the use of its own version of the Iron Curtain.
Israel must renounce torture. (The first advisers at Abu Ghraib were from Israeli Shin Bet)
Israel must grant full civil rights to non-Jewish citizens of Israel.
That's just for starters.
America is supplying weapons and diplomatic cover for Israel's actions: America is responsible.
(Why should this posting be deleted?)
I would really like to know what it is you would have Israel do about the daily missile strikes on their population, and maybe you can tell us how else they can stop the frequent suicide bombers???
You say they are making enemies??? You are Jewish and care about the people??? I'm not Jewish, but I am a firm believer in the fact that the Jewish people turned the other cheek far too long as it was, and since Hamas is determined to wipe Israel off the map, and broke the 'cease-fire' Israel should do anything in their power to put Hamas out of business permanently. BTW, I have read everything I could find on the entire history of the Jewish people, and really resent your idiotic attempt to insult anyone who disagrees with you.
You are aware that no Arab state wants anything to do with Hamas??? Why do you think that is? Do you think that if Hamas should be victorious in destroying Israel that would be the end of it??? The other Arab states know better.
Maybe you could read this?
http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20090107_hamas_and_arab_states
Nobody likes a bully.