I was born without a passport
I grew up
and saw my country
become prisons
without a passport
— Without a Passport by Rasheed Hussein
In Washington, D.C. in 2010, an expert at a seminar said of the 2009
Israeli attack on Gaza ” It’s unfortunate, but every once in a while you have to mow the lawn.“
FOREIGN MINISTER (AUSTRALIA): “Well the starting point is an absolute unequivocal condemnation of the firing of rockets into Israel by Hamas and associated terrorist entities. Israel, like any country in a position where rockets are raining down on it, raining down on civilian areas, has a right to defend itself. “
VOICE OF REASON: But Foreign Minister, in its 2009 assault against Gaza alone, Israel killed nine hundred sixty Palestinian civilians, including two hundred eighty-eight children and a hundred and twenty-one women.
FOREIGN MINISTER (AUSTRALIA): The prospect of serious casualties, of (Israeli) soldiers being killed, wounded, kidnapped, is very real for them …
VOICE OF REASON: You forget that the total of Israelis killed by these rockets since 2004 is twenty-six. Dissecting IDF propaganda: The numbers behind the rocket attacks outlines how Israel spreads lies about the rockets. By assassinating elected leaders in Gaza, Netanyahu has sacrificed the lives of 26 Israelis to win his own election – how evil and cynical is that? See Support the People of Gaza
FOREIGN MINISTER (AUSTRALIA): I don’t think the president (Obama) can be criticised for keeping a commitment that Australia wanted him to keep and that is attending to South East Asia (despite the escalating Gaza-Israel conflict)…
VOICE OF REASON: Gaza is the largest open-air prison in the world with a population density of four thousand five hundred humans per square kilometer.
Its 1.6 million inhabitants have been subjected to a brutal blockade by Israel and its military for three years now.
One million of Gaza’s inhabitants are refugees from 1948 and 1967 (after al Nakba and the Six Day War by Israeli military).
Gaza is not an American suburb … Refugee camps, and there are eight of them in Gaza, do not usually come with lawns and spacious yards.
According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in the occupied Palestinian Territories, ninety percent of Gaza’s drinking water is unsafe to drink, forty-four percent of Gazans are food insecure and about eighty percent are aid recipients.
This is the result of sixty four years of Israeli military occupation and continued wars and a blockade.
Ian Curr
20 Nov 2012
References
Bob Carr’s comments were made on Monday 19 Nov ABC Radio National AM program.
The Facts come from Mowing the Lawn in Gaza and from Israeli Aggression in the Gaza Strip: In Pictures
PROTEST THE PRESENCE OF ISRAELI COSMETIC PRODUCTS MADE FROM STOLEN PALESTINIAN RESOURCES IN AUSTRALIAN SHOPPING CENTRES
Join this protest as part of a National Week of Action around Australia to highlight the plight of the Palestinians under illegal Israeli occupation and help distribute information about the campaign to boycott Israeli cosmetic products.
Saturday Dec 15
Garden City Shopping Centre
Gather outside cinema at 11am
http://www.justiceforpalestinebrisbane.org
I am not by the way some right wing loony.
I was raised in a Communist home. Both my parents were ardent Communists. I recently helped the CP of Great Britain with information for their archives. I will say however that Communism in England was nothing like that we see/saw here or the US.
My father was an elected member of Government in London for 25 years as a Communist. I grew up with protests, marches, elections etc. I was speaking on the back of a truck with a loudspeaker at 8 years of age.
He proudly fought Mosely and the Fascists. I can still clearly see ‘the Blackshirt’ newspaper sitting on the kitchen table, showing a photo of my father with the words “We have to put an end permanently to this man, not only is he a Communist, he is a Jew”.
My father never hid, he never cowered. He refused police protection. He stood proud and tall. It was instilled into me not to be afraid even whilst the death threats were current, and I wasn’t allowed out without Police protection.
Shirl in Oz,
I am not surprised that your family came from the Left and your father was a communist. One of the major setbacks for the Palestinian people was when the Soviet Union supported the setting up of the state of Israel in 1948 on Palestinian land. Such was the European guilt at the holocaust. A section of the Zionist movement claimed to be socialist – the kibbutz movement pursued socialist ideals but they have long since been destroyed by capitalism. You should not be surprised by the Five star hotels in Gaza or in Sharm el Sheikh. That is capitalism – it is the dominant paradigm in the region supported by the US, Israel, and gulf states like Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait. Don’t you find it strange that Qatar, where US forward command resides, supports Hamas. The US does not care while Israel maintains instability, long term strategic objectives by the US can still be met. Oil and gas supplies are assured.
But you have missed my main point yet again, perhaps i did not explain it sufficiently. The Western media portray the violence of the Hamas rockets and are outraged by them. But western media rarely portrays the violence of the occupation of Palestine and the blockade and siege of Gaza. The media shows little of the real violence of the occupation – the constant harassment of Palestinians at check-points, the refusal to allow families to visit each other, the constant economic deprivation and lack of goods. The surveillance and encouragement of settlements in the West Bank is a provocation – Australian TV and radio don’t show this. They don’t show that Israelis are allowed dual citizenship in their home countries (in Europe, Australia and US) and in Israel. Palestinians are permitted no passport in their own land, they are refused building permits, bulldozers grind their homes into dust, men and women are badgered at checkpoints by insolent young Israeli conscripts who threaten them with guns. Palestinian men are routinely picked up by israeli soldiers and jailed, youths are tear gassed and shot for throwing stones.
So when the rockets are fired the western media are full of moral outrage, they can’t see what is before their own eyes.
You went to Israel, did you see the provocation at checkpoints? Or did you miss it cos you are a westerner and are immune from such treatment at the hands of Israeli soldiers? This intimidation and provocation now crosses generations since 1948, 60 years of repression, it cannot last – it breeds violence. If we turn a blind eye to it, can’t you see that we attempt to perpetuate the impossible. I’ll put in terms you may understand – when the allies rocketed and bombed the beaches of Normandy they were a liberating army – France was occupied by German military in the same way Israeli military occupies Palestinian villages. The allies rocketed the occupiers and casualties were the result along the french coast – can you see with your western etes is that the rockets from Gaza are the same, they are simply not taken very seriously because they are not backed by allied power, but if they were and the Israeli occupation would be broken, remember that the Israeli constitution insists on a jewish state with jewish settlements. This is the greatest provocation of all – imagine you being asked to accept Australia as a Muslim state? To liberate Gaza can only bring about real freedom – not just for Palestinians, but for all, Christians, Jews and Palestinians.
Hello ‘Shirl in Oz’,
I note the only reference you give in your previous comment is taken from the Israeli Defence Force.
Nevertheless I will try to deal with each of your claims.
You claim:
Sderot [spelt variously as Siderot and Sederot] is an Isareli settlement just outside the Gaza strip and the subject of many media reports of rocketing.
The media reports never say that Sderot is an Israeli settlement established in 1951 after the catastrophe (al-Nakba) on the Palestinian village of Najd, historic lands that date back many centuries.
The Lemon Tree speaks of many such villages, Al Ramla became Ramle in Israeli hands, Lydda became Lod, and so on.
Yitzhak Rabin, Noble Prize winner, wrote in his diary soon after Lydda’s and Ramla’s occupation:
You say:
Gaza is not Tel Aviv or an American city or suburb … Refugee camps, and there are eight of them in Gaza, do not usually come with lawns and spacious yards. Drones fly overhead constantly and bombing by Israel has been going on uninterrupted for years. See Mowing the Lawn in Gaza
You claim:
This is contradicted by reports on the ground from nurses dealing with the casualties day by day – seeWomen, children main victims of attack, says Gaza hospital
You can see for yourself the refugees created by the terrorist militia, the Hagannah and the Stern Gang, in the documentary movie about the destroyed and ethnically cleansed village of Lubya, Tiberias – Palestine. The movie was produced by Danish TV with the cooperation of Dr. Mahmoud Issa فيلم لوبية الذي بثه التلفزيون الدنمركي عام 1995
[youtube=http://youtu.be/LQCKHIYmvMk]
A list and videos of the Palestinian towns ethnically cleansed during al-Nakba can be found at Palestine Remembered.
Ian
Nov 2012
Just thinking here and I have things to do.
Any Arabs names in the region are relatively new ones. The only old names are Hebrew/Jewish.
Israel pulled out of Gaza for peace. Repeatedly they tried to return it to Egypt, who didn’t want it and likewise with Judea and Samaria. Though in the second instance, it looks as if Jordan will take it now. No one wants the Arabs from the region. Their own brethren their own flesh and blood. Maybe you should check out how they are treated in other Arab/Muslim lands.
I feel for the Gazan Arabs but until they can stand up to Hamas, who control everything, they will be ill treated, abused and more. When I stood between two separation barriers at Rachel’s tomb, I felt bad. I felt bad for people living on the other side. Unfortunately though those walls are there for a very good reason. They are there to stop the constant sniper attacks.
Israel pulled out of Gaza leaving behind flourishing businesses and farms and what did they do to them? You can answer that one.
Read this http://www.think-israel.org/goldreich.palestina.html
Hello ‘Shirl in Oz’,
I note that you have not commented on any of the references that I have given you.
You suggested I look up Palaestina, ex monumentis veteribus illustrata as support for your claim that:
Orientalism
Cover of ‘Palestina’ by Redland – an example of early ‘Orientalism’[/caption]
It should be noted that Adriaan Reland was an ‘Orientalist’. In his book ‘Orientalism’ Edward Said explains how orientalists like Reland divided the world in to two parts by using the concept of ‘ours’ and ‘theirs’. An imaginary geographical line was drawn between what was ‘ours’ and what was ‘theirs’. The orients were regarded as uncivilized people; and the westerns said that since they were the refined race it was their duty to civilize these people and in order to achieve their goal, they had to colonize and rule the orients. It is essentially a racist construct.[caption id="attachment_16910" align="alignright" width="190"]
Of course the city state of Rome conquered Palestine and subjugated Arabs, Christians and Jews. So did the Crusaders from Britain. It is true that the ancient region described by Reland was not a nation state — not surprising as this was a construct developed by Europeans in the 19th century. It is interesting to note that pogroms against the Jews occurred most strongly in nation states like Germany, Lithuania, Poland and Italy.
Palestinians like other Arabs place an allegiance to the village before the nation state – one reason why Israelis need not fear another holocaust in Palestine.
Holocaust contradiction
The nazi holocaust came from the German notion of the ‘Volk’ which made Hitler’s ‘national socialism’ such a strong force for anti-semitism. The holocaust was a European project by those that call themselves cultured and civilised but still cling to ‘orientalism’. Zionism, the ideological basis for modern day Israel, came from Europe and shares some of the same characteristics of Nazism. Zionism is a nationalist movement that pushed for a Jewish state in Palestine from the 19th century. It won the ear of the British ruling class in the Balfour declaration and never looked back. Zionism is a strange contradiction where European Jews were pushed out of their homes by Nazis (aided by collaborators); but now it is Zionists who use the holocaust as justification for kicking Palestinians out of their homes. For example, the town of al-Ramla (now Ramle) as described in the Lemon Tree. Here is a review. One of the protagonists in the Lemon Tree, Dahlia, describes how she waited for years in a house in Ramle that her family had taken from the original Palestinian family that lived there before 1948.
Should you be interested here is testimony from a Palestinian woman, Samah Sabawi, about the Israeli assaults on her people, her village. Her dad tried to build a hotel in Gaza — her family were driven out – the hotel is a shell. So your reference to five star hotels in Gaza reads as pretty lame propaganda if you ever bother to listen to people like Samah.
Samah Sabawi: Gaza and the responsibility of the international community on 3CR Radio.
Ian Curr
Samah Sabawi is one of the last people on this earth I would believe. I’ve heard her speak and to get paid for the privilege. I have first hand information from Arab friends of my family, who didn’t flee in 1948 and have their versions of events. I have pages and pages of information from various media outlets of the day. Plus copies of documentation. I can’t C & P everything
Refugee – Arab states told Arabs to leave Israel in 1948 war
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuGqpFxogRg&list=FLRjSAgzAZGBNafbhc-zzs2g&index=18&feature=plpp_video
PA Chief Mahmoud Abbas: We left Galilee on our own in 1948
http://smoothstoneblog.com/pa-chief-abbas-we-left-galilee-on-our-own-in-1948
Here are a few hotels for you
Aldeira Hotel, Gaza
Slow loading today
http://www.aldeira.ps/
Al Mashtal Hotel, Gaza
Grand Palace Hotel, Gaza
http://www.grandpalace.ps/
Commodore Hotel, Gaza
http://www.gazatoday.com/hotels/commodore-gaza-hotel
EL-helou international hotel, Gaza
https://www.facebook.com/ElHelouIntelHotel
AlQuds International Hotel. Gaza
http://www.gazatoday.com/hotels/alquds-international-hotel
Adam Hotel. Gaza
http://www.adamhotelgaza.com/
Al Mathaf Hotel. Gaza
http://www.almathaf.ps/hotel/
Gaza Directory Hotels
http://www.gazatoday.com/hotels/
http://www.palestinehotels.com/city.php?cid=9
Roots night club
http://www.rootsclub.ps/index.php
I have plenty more including from many Arab sites
‘Shirl in Oz’,
You say: “Seems to me that in effect here you are saying “So what if Hamas is firing rockets into Israel, only 26 people have been killed”
You missed my hyperlink in the article above and you missed my point.
Dissecting IDF propaganda: The numbers behind the rocket attacks outlines how Israel spreads lies about the rockets. By assassinating elected leaders in Gaza, Netanyahu has sacrificed the lives of 26 Israelis to win his own election – how evil and cynical is that? See Support the People of Gaza
You say “So far this year, until a tank was attacked, over 800 rockets have been fired into Israel without provocation”
The people of Gaza are confined to an open air prison by an Israeli blockade – they have been the subject of genocide for 60 years.
Their elected leaders in Gaza have been assassinated by precision weapons and drones. The Israelis have the most sophisticated and expensive weaponry to kill at will. Israli military have killed many civilians including children by sending missiles indiscriminately into this prison ghetto.
You also say: “Your misinformation in regards to Gaza is quite amazing. For starters the number of refugees is no were near what you claim.”
Even the US senate acknowledges the number of Palestinian refugees as a result of al Nakba (1948) and the Six Day war (1967).
Ian Curr
20 Nov 2012
Israel aims to get Hamas leaders in the hope that the rockets will stop.
The people of Gaza, I know are scared stupid by the dreadful tactics of Hamas and daren’t speak up. Until someone can rise up an mount a counter attack they will suffer.
Gaza is not an open air prison anything but. The abundance of 5 star hotels, nightclubs, sports centres, water parks, shopping complexes, spas etc is amazing. They even have an Olympic size swimming pool, something Israel doesn’t have. By the same token Israel only as one 5 star hotel compared to 4 or 5 In Gaza.
The United States is in the process of righting the wrong caused by the UN in regards to the status of refugees from part of the former region of Palestine. A refugee is a person displaced by war from their country of origin, not their issue. There is a double problem here in that they were not displaced from a country. There never was a country, not for a few thousand years anyhow, in that region. In fact the onus is on Jordan to take these people, after all Jordan is 79% of the region of Palestine
Israel is doing all it can with precision bombing to minimise civilian casualties. In fact one strike was called off when people were seen in the vicinity. You obviously haven’t see the videos put out by Hamas which clearly show them using residential areas as launching pads. I had information which said that text messages were sent to all mobile phones urging people to stay away from specific areas. They were also leafleted.
This has nothing to do with an election. It was a bi-partisan decision. Enough is enough
I was in Sderot on a private tour by the Director of the Sderot Media Centre, in February. It was a tour reserved for visiting journalists. I just happened to meet him at Tel Aviv University. Where by the way I saw countless of Arab girls complete with hijabs.
I was very mindful of what could happen at any time and I was aware of the number of bomb shelters everywhere, when siren sounded. We ran like lunatics to a bomb shelter.
In Sderot people don’t wear seat belts as it lessens the time to get out of a car.
This is a link to the shelling of the building that housed international journalists. Who by the way were alerted by Israel to clear the building
http://www.idfblog.com/2012/11/20/senior-terrorists-in-gaza-disguises-himself-as-journalist/
Seems to me that in effect here you are saying “So what if Hamas is firing rockets into Israel, only 26 people have been killed”
Like BIG DEAL
Since Israel unilaterally withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005, terrorists have fired more than 12,800 rockets and mortars into Israel, putting nearly one million Israeli citizens under direct, physical threat everyday.
That doesn’t count. It doesn’t count that NO OTHER country in the world would have let that go on year in and year out without retaliating.
So far this year, until a tank was attacked , over 800 rockets have been fired into Israel without provocation
Your misinformation in regards to Gaza is quite amazing.
For starters the number of refugees is no were near what you claim. In 1948 approximately 600,000 Arabs left Israel of their own accord, as asked to by their leaders. You don’t have t take my word for it, it’s all well documented, even in the Arab Press. Israel urged them to stay. That too is well documented.
Of those 600,000 not too many would still be alive today. Ergo your figure is up the creek.
Hamas is ideologically committed to the destruction of Israel. Its charter starts with: ”Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it”. It persists in shooting rockets at civilian targets in Israel provoking a response and uses its own citizens as shields against that response by embedding its launch sites in civilian areas – a double ”crime against humanity”.