The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #117493   Message #2544895
Posted By: GUEST,ifor
21-Jan-09 - 06:54 AM
Thread Name: BS: Israel Moves in.
Subject: RE: BS: Israel Moves in.
To Joe
You are wrong to claim that
"it is now proper ideology to be anti Israel and to extend that attitude to all Jews".

There are many Jewish people across the world [including in Israel ] who are opposed to the attacks on the Palestinian people.They have been warmly welcomed by those who are opposed to the oppression of Palestinians in Gaza,the West Bank and in East Jerusalem.

These Jewish anti Zionists include religious and secular Jews.

I am thinking of those young Israelis who have refused to serve in Gaza and the organisation "Jews For Justice For Palestine". Or again someone like the late Tony Cliff [ founder of the Socialist Workers Party in the UK ] who was born into a Zionist family in Palestine, but as a teenager became a staunch defender of Palestinian rights.

The root cause of the conflict has been the wholesale theft of Palestinan land and the exiling of hundreds of thousands of Palestinans and their descendents who have been barred from returning to their homeland.

As one Palestinian MK said in the Israeli Knesset [parliament ] last week ,and I paraphrase, it is galling to be told by the son of an [Israeli ] immigrant to get out of the country when my forefathers have lived on this land for many generations.

Joe, you are wrong to say that there has been no ethnic cleansing. The Palestinans call the events of 1948 "The Nakba" or the catastrophe and it came about because of the massacres or threats of massacres at places like Deir Yassin and Tantura.

Yitzhak Rabin,later prime minister of Israel, was in charge of military operations in the towns of Ramla and Lydd in July 1948 .He estimated that his troops drove around 50000 Palestinians from the area, forcing them to march to the West Bank without food or water.
The United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution calling on Israel to allow the refugees to return 60 years later they and their descendents are still waiting.

Of course there are two sides to the conflict.

But if anyone were to visit Israel they would find it very difficult to go to the West Bank or Gaza because of Israeli
lockdowns ,roadblocks etc.

The Israelis are NOT nazis or fascists and it would be a profound mistake to claim they are. It is a mistake the right wing Zionists would be quick to exploit!

However, Israel bears a remarkable resemblance to a colonial settler
society characterised by periodic genocidal outbursts aginst the Palestinians.

The nazis sought to exterminate their enemies on an industrial scale ;the Israelis seek their "transfer" [what a polite word ] from Israeli territory.

However, the Israeli leaders have commited war horrific crimes in Gaza just as their predecessors did in Beirut in 1982 and again in Lebanon two years ago. They to answer for their crimes in an international court of law.How else are their victims to receive justice?

Until the problem of the Palestinian diaspora is addressed I cannot see an end to the conflict or the carnage.
ifor