Israel's crimes of war. The IDF an [im]moral force

Crimes of war rarely go unnoticed and undocumented. Two Israeli broadsheets 'Haaretz' and 'Maariv' provided accounts of riveting testimony
by IDF [Israeli Defence Force] 'grunts' testimony about unprovoked killing of civilian Gazans and deliberate and wanton destruction of private and public property during Israel 22 day war in the Gaza strip. Jerusalem's war minister Ehud Barak immediately discounted these eyewitness and on the ground accounts by saying they were the 'racontars' of a disgruntled minority, and what's more the Israeli military is a force of high moral standing. Well, what else can you expect from General Barak?
Much like US Vietnam vets who testified of similar crimes that the US military committed in Vietnam or US Iraqi vets publicly exposing similar crimes against the Iraqi civilian population, the IDF soldiers' revelation has sent tremours through Israeli society. How deep and how profound is open to question now. But make no doubt of it, the shock waves will resonate deep and wide and for longer than the Israeli government or elite can veil them in pious words and thin veils. And there is an element of religion to the war. Israel is crying from any bully pulpit that it can mount that Hamas is a terrorist organisation, burning with religious fervour, to carry out a holy war against Israel. Now what do we find from the soldiers' confessions? Extremist rabbis whipping up the troops frenzy to engage in a righteous and yes 'holy war' against Palestinian civilians. How moral then are the military chaplains? We are seeing the same old story since the dawn of the Torah...of the self proclaimed prophets of blood and gore urging destruction of the enemies of the Jewish people.
Jerusalem has a lot to explain. With an extreme right wing government in formation under Benjamin Netenyahu, it will be the same old same old and worse to come. Israel is fast slipping down the slope of many nations before it as it enters a dark age and decadent and immoral and inhuman policies.

Has Communisam a future?

In today's topsy turvy world of failed high finance, it would seem so. During the heady days of China's 'Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution', it was fashionable to quote the Great Helmsman Mao that everything was not alright under the heavens, and think the man had to key to great change. He did, but at the same time, he sent his country in great crisis and turmoi. A decade later Deng Xiao ping found his saviour not in Marxism Leninsim MaoTsetung Thought but in the gospel preached at the University of Chicago Milton Freedman. Freedman was the patron saint of Ronald Reagan, and the course to capitalism's cultural economic revolution took off till the two crises of the early 21 century killed the goose that laid the golden eggs. Suddenly the much neglected John Lord Maynard Keyes has come back into prominence as the man to lead a world economic crisis out of the desert back to the promised land of prosperity. In the land of the home of the free and land of the brave--the US--as the bottom falls out of the market, Americans remain quiet and patient as the standard of living sinking into sea; overseas workers have come out into the streets to demand something be done, and not to leave the big banks and corporation who got us into financial calamity at the helm, which is certainly the case in America. With failed bankers and high living and flying ceo's how does anyone expect change?
At times like these people look elsewhere for solutions. The rabid American Republican right wing has tarred the Obama administration with the label of socialism and we might well expect soon enough to call it fascist or social fascist. Shades of Joseph Stalin!
Japan which has been hard hit by the deepening global recession, suddenly finds its Communist Party doing good business. [An historical note: under the American military government headed by the very conservative General Douglas MacArthur, new life was breathed into the Communist party as part of Japan's democratic woof and warf.] Of course 'une hirondelle ne fait pas le printemps', yet it is reasonable to suggest that the current economic crisis will revivify the left...the socialists and the communists alike. Don't expect Beijing to take the lead. They've become dyed in the wool capitalists even though they represent a very weak tea cup of Communism.
So yes Socialism and Communism do have a future. Will the future smile on them? That remains to be seen. For the moment capitalism seems on the ropes, flayling and looking towards the heaven for some of that pie in the sky that they've been peddling like snake oil to the masses for years, will fall on them like the manna from on high that Jehovah rained upon the wandering Hebrews in the desert.

Rebuilding Gaza? America's dilemma

US secretary of state Hillary Clinton has had encouraging words about reconstruction aid to Gaza. She spoke warmly of the Palestinian Authority which is a weak reed and has no real authority in Gaza. She is very careful to point out that the aid which will more or less end up in UN relief organisations hand, will not go to the wrong parties. Translation, Hamas is out of the picture. How can that be when the legitimate governing authority in Gaza is Hamas? So is Mrs Clinton playing a game of pass pass and mystification? Maybe. It is quite clear that Mr Obama's policy towards the Palestine/Israeli question is either at 'point mort' or in transition or in utter confusion. It is quite clear even to the legally blind that in order to untangle the question, Hamas has to and ought to be a party to any settlement. But that doesn't seem to be on Washington's table. And so the saga of Jerusalem's subordination of Palestinians aspirations remains paramount, the more especially since it has announced the illegal settlement of 70.000 Jews on the west bank. The US once again is acting with a coward's courage, and is banging another nail into the two states solutions coffin. Jerusalem as Guamdiary continually sings, is sealing the fate of Zionism and putting it ultimately into the cemetary [sic] of colonial history, along side of Britain and France, Spain and Portugal, and a US failure in Vietnam. And that remains America's dilemma which is of its own making and short sightedness and stupidity.

Tennis player Shahar Peer victim of Israel's Gaza war

Shahar Peer is an Israeli; she also is a promising tennis player with dreams of attaining international star status as one of the world's best 10 players. She had hoped to play in Barclays Dubai Tennis Championship but won't. Dubai considers her 'persona non grata' as a citizen of Israel. A flurry of stories hit papers around the world which made the Dubai emirate appear not only anti Israeli but anti Semitic. The eye had to mine deep into say the 'New York Times' account to learn through suggestion that Peer was denied a visa as the emirate's protest against Israel's aggression against the helpless civilian population of the Gaza strip. In story after story, the reader would be hard pressed to learn that Dubai has mainted cordial and commercial ties with the Zionist state. Jerusalem's lightning and brutal attacks against Gaza, resulting in a high number of civilian deaths, moved Dubai to break off relations with Israel. And for that reason alone Peer was denied a chance to play in Barclays' tournament. So Shahar Peer is a victim of her own country's senseless 21 day war in Gaza.
Peer has confronted protests in other tournaments that she has played in. However she was never denied entry to a country where they were being held. She was hooted and jeered because of her country's military adventure in Gaza, but not as Peer the tennis player. Jeers and cat calls never stopped her game. However the denial of a visa did. How naive did she and Barclays think that she could slip into Dubai unnoticed. Do they think no one reads newspapers or follows the ways of the world?
This attitude is the height of arrogance. Will the lesson sink in? Probably not.
If Peer thinks that she is being singled out, let her fight it out with Jerusalem. For she is but another victim of her government's eternal war against Hammas.

Decadence of Israeli politics--the rise of Avigdor Lieberman

Tomorrow Israeli go to the polls [10Feb2009]. It is a no brainer to predict that the right wing will win. However the kingmaker, it seems, has become Avigdor Lieberman of the Yisroel Beitanu party [Israel, our country]. Fractious has been the fate of Israel's political life. It is the sorry tale of smaller parties, usually on the right and extreme right, who get a pound of flesh for their support. This time around it Lieberman who's going to call the shots. Lieberman it is bruited belong to Kach the outlawed racist party founded by the late Meir Kahane of Brooklyn's Borough Park. He hates Arabs, and were he king, he would expel Israeli Arabs whom he considers as fifth columnists and Jew haters. Lieberman believes in the purity of the Jewish race, although he makes exceptions for Jews from the old Soviet Union whose mothers weren't Jews. Avigdor wants an Arabrein Israel...or if Arabs do remain as servants and second class citizens, he wants them to swear allegience to all and everything Jewish. Why not call for a mass conversion? What we are witnessing in Israel's 60 year as a state is the decadence of a state which has fallen back on support of Fascist like parties. Likud, Kadmina, and Labour the 3 larger parties are bankrupt. On an eternal warfooting, Israelis see no solution but eternal war, and the gods of war are pushing Israel to the edge of the abyss and the death of the Zionist ideal which 'au fond' has its roots in 19 century Sturm und Drang and inspired by the philosophy among others of Georg Herder.

Cheers for South Africa's dock workers!

South Africa's dock workers have taken industrial action against Israeli ships. In solidarity with the people of Gaza, they are refusing to unload ships carrying Israeli goods. South Africa's dock workers did the same thing when they refused to unload ships carrying arms to the Zimbabwe Mugabe's regime. They are acting out of human deceny and solidarity with a people who have just suffered a 21 day agression, and whose civilian population took the brunt of a mad Israeli policy against Hamas, which even the Israeli leadership--military and political--thought it could destroy. In brief, Israel broke international law through the use of collective punishment. Yesterday [05Feb2009], Israel's navy stopped on high seas a Lebanese ship from bringing supplies to the beleaguered Gazans. If Israel thinks that it can escape the world's sanction, it is wrong. It should be salt poured on the open sore of Israel's arrogance that it is workers at South African ports who are thumbing their noses at Jerusalem. South Africans recognise a racist regime having emerged from the dark years of apartheid, and they are not fooled by Israel's honeyed words trying to put a sweet taste to its own apartheid policy towards the Palestinians. Oh would other countries and other workers be as brave as the South African dock works, and boycott Israel till it changes its colonial policies towards the people of Palestine.

Israel is going crazy

It has been obvious that Jerusalem is suffering from serious mental instability. It is obsessed by Hamas. Benjamin Nethanyahu boasts that if elected, he is going to smash Hamas into fine particules of dust. Now, today, the Israeli navy has sequested on open seas a Lebanese ship, Al Ikhwa [Brotherhood], carrying 60 tonnes of humanitarian supplies to the beleaguered civilian population of the Gaza Strip. Israel has long violated the terms of a truce accord brokered by its ally Egypt to allow much needed supplies for daily survival to Palestinians in Gaza. It never has. It is a law unto itself. It has blockaded tightly the Gaza strip, and has kept the people there on the edge of starvation. Israel is practising at one and the same time a pogram against Hamas and the people of Gaza who voted for it as the legitimate government of the Strip and a Warsaw like ghetto. Israel has learnt lessons well from two former oppressors of the Jews--Tsarist Russia and Nazi Germany.
It is clear that when it comes to Hamas, Israel is waging a war which echos the mad Kurtz in Joseph Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness'--'exterminate the beasts!'
The recent spat at Davos between the Turkish prime minister Erdogan and the Israeli president Peres has deep strategic repercussions for Israel. Erdogan spoke up for the helpless and hapless civilians of Gaza who have borne the brunt of Israeli's 21 day Blitzkrieg against Hamas. Peres went ballistic, and only later apologised to Erdogan for he realised the damage that he has caused the steadfast Muslim ally of 60year friendship. Now the single minded Israeli political and military establishment are rethinking its ties to Turkey. A friend's criticism of Israel's mad military pursuit of Hamas, now has turned Ankara into a less trustworthy ally, and Jerusalem is going to disengage slowly but surely.
Here's another indication of Israel's madness. It is isolating itself from the only true friend it has in the Middle East; it displays the maniacal pursuit of a military policy which itself admits that it can never eradicate Hamas. It can but the price is too high...it's called genocide...but one is beginning to wonder if the extremists like Netanyahu and the secret Kach Liebermann get into government if the mad flies of insanity won't push them to the ultimate tragedy and destruction of the Jewish state?