The Palestine thread

[Mike Sheehy]

Agreed.

We should start by getting Seafoid to quit working for an Israeli company. Charity begins at home, as they say.

Barking up the wrong tree I'm afraid.
Fail again. Fail better.

Making a living off the Israelies and then spending every waking minute talking about boycotts and sanctions and economic pressure.

Its a terrible contradictory position to take Seafoid. You really should quit.

but, first, Moyshe called and said the Zionist photocopier on the second floor is on the blink so hop to it like a good lad.

Prove it. I mean really prove it. Prove that last month I was paid by an Israeli company.
Otherwise keep on embarrassing yourself.

calm down habibi. Jesus , you will burst a blood vessel if you keep losing the rag like this.

Obviously I can't "prove" that you work for an Israeli company. Perhaps you could just clarify who the Israeli work colleagues are so ? and what business brings you to Israel so often. No need for any revealing details of course , just something, general along the lines of "I work for a multinational that works in the area of  risk assessment and happens to have an office in Israel but its not an actual Israeli company"

you know, just something like that. If you were to do that then I'd have no problem with not saying you work for an Israeli company.

However, it still leaves you in a bind. Whatever way you spin it you are making a living off Israel which should be a big no-no for someone that puts your level of effort into hating the place.

I can say that you post in a negligee.
Why do you post in a negligee ?

Obsessing about S&M clubs in Tel Aviv, fantasizing about other posters in negligee's.

Bloody hell Seafoid, this jew hating has had some strange side effects on you !

[Mike Sheehy]

http://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2014/jul/31/gaza-crisis-israel-calls-up-reservists-as-it-maintains-offensive-live-coverage

I just spoke to Dr Medhat Abbas, director general of the ministry of health in Gaza, who said the health system will collapse if things continue as they are.
He said:
Yesterday, after the massacre of Shujai'iya, where 16 people were killed and 200 were wounded, the victims were taken to Shifa hospital, which is the biggest hospital of the Gaza strip. I don't know how to describe ...the health professionals in the hospital were not enough to deal with this large number of victims at once.
All of the operating rooms were full of patients, some operating rooms were receiving two patients at once ...some other patients had surgery in the corridors and if you go to the departments of this hospital, Shifa hospital, you will find that two patients are sleeping in one bed and some other patients are sleeping in corridors. Also, 30 patients are supposed to be discharged from the hospital to go home but because they have been displaced from their homes, they have nowhere to go. We can't discharge them.
Abbas called for an immediate lifting of the blockade of Gaza and international intervention to bring about the end of the offensive, warning that otherwise the health system would definitely collapse.


So the health system will collapse. and together with the water system people will start dying of infectious disease.
And 95% of Israeli Jews say this is justified.

God help Israel.
And this is going to be remembered for a very, very long time, as will the complicity of the leaders of the major Jewish organisations in the US.
And what is really sad is that Zionism is not Judaism at all. It just took the right to speak on behalf of all Jews.

Glad to see you have accepted what I have been saying.

There is hope for you yet.

[Arthur_Friend]

Just watching the channel 4 news now and an interview with 2 mothers, one a Palestinian and one an Israeli. Two things struck me about the interview. Only one of them was wearing body armour and the Israeli was actually an American.

Oh and the yank said that 80% of casualties were actually Hamas fighers. And that while the pictures of dead women and children were terrible, there was a need to 'counter' this.

[Eamonnca1]

Social media may be breaking that filter, but if the average middle aged american isn't on twitter or some other type medium and reliant on the TV and print media they'll not have a clue.

I've unfriended about 4 people on FB over this. They just keep repeating the same old zionist talking points.

I've come to realise that there's a list of things that's acceptable to say in America:

• I believe in God
• I am a Christian
• I support our troops
• Thank you for your military service
• I stand with Israel
• Israel has a right to exist
• Israel has a right to defend itself

Anything that strays from that is viewed like breaking wind in company. 

In the last few weeks another few talking points have been repeated over and over until they have become accepted wisdom, and people feel very smug and clever when they repeat them:

• Israel uses its weapons to defend its people, Hamas uses its people to defend its weapons
• Israel tries to avoid civilian casualties, unlike Hamas

The shocking thing about such half-baked lies is how quickly they've become accepted as fact. It's a classic case of "repeat a lie over and over again until it becomes accepted as true."

[foxcommander]

Has Peter Robinson mentioned this association recently?

http://www.newsletter.co.uk/news/regional/stormont-meeting-launches-dup-friends-of-israel-group-1-6114099

[give her dixie]

What an amazing evening in Dungannon where my friend from Gaza Yousef Al Helou spoke to a crowd of 300+

Yousef spoke about the reality on the ground now back home, and how his 3 children and wife are living a nightmare not knowing if they will survive the next hour. Just before we left to go out, he got a message from his wife to say the house next to where they are staying was hit by an airstrike. Thankfully no one was there. It was so humbling to hear him speak from the heart.

Earlier in the day I contacted Roger Waters (founding member of Pink Floyd)  through a mutal friend. I told him Bernadette McAliskey was going to speak and we were going to play his recording of "We Shall Overcome". He put together a poem that Bernadette read out, and said he was honored to have her speak on his behalf. Following the poem, the crowd sang "We Shall Overcome" in the same spot where it was sang over 40 years ago when the Civil Rights Movement was formed.

We had a collection to raise money that Yousef will put to work immediatley through a charity on the ground in Gaza. £1,500 was raised, and he was humbled beyond words. And so was I.

A Message From Roger Waters:

ONE RIVER

When the wind scythes through the crop
And good men fall
And children
Soft in mothers arms
Cringe unbelieving
From the desperados casual blade
My Father, distant now
But live and warm and strong
In uniform tobacco haze
Speaks out.

My son, he says.
Stay not the passion of your loss
But rather keen and hone its edge
That, You may never turn away
Numb, brute, from bets too difficult to hedge.

What price the child?
Which?
Yours or mine?
This one at home?
The baby bird,
in whistling bowls of pasta worms.
Or
That one on TV

Limp and bloodied on the Gazan shore
To fail to feel that other fathers loss
Denies connections forged in filial blood
And handed banner bright from man to boy
In pride of place, loin strong, bereft of pettiness and rancour.

So
Cup your tears, my father says
Cup that salt badge of strife
It flows from but one river
It was on that my son
I bet my life.

So!
We shall not stand by Silent and indifferent.
We will not be still
We will gather on street corners
We will chain ourselves to railings
We will throw ourselves in front of kings horses
We will speak the truth
We will not be cowed by the bully boys who pose and fiddle on the hill.

Shoulder to shoulder, man, woman and child
Arms linked, we will remember our dead
And the words of our teachers,

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you  win."

Will ring in our ears.

We shall overcome
We shall overcome
We shall overcome one day
Deep in my heart
I do believe
That we shall overcome one day.

[seafoid]

What an amazing evening in Dungannon where my friend from Gaza Yousef Al Helou spoke to a crowd of 300+

Yousef spoke about the reality on the ground now back home, and how his 3 children and wife are living a nightmare not knowing if they will survive the next hour. Just before we left to go out, he got a message from his wife to say the house next to where they are staying was hit by an airstrike. Thankfully no one was there. It was so humbling to hear him speak from the heart.

Earlier in the day I contacted Roger Waters (founding member of Pink Floyd)  through a mutal friend. I told him Bernadette McAliskey was going to speak and we were going to play his recording of "We Shall Overcome". He put together a poem that Bernadette read out, and said he was honored to have her speak on his behalf. Following the poem, the crowd sang "We Shall Overcome" in the same spot where it was sang over 40 years ago when the Civil Rights Movement was formed.

We had a collection to raise money that Yousef will put to work immediatley through a charity on the ground in Gaza. £1,500 was raised, and he was humbled beyond words. And so was I.

A Message From Roger Waters:

ONE RIVER

When the wind scythes through the crop
And good men fall
And children
Soft in mothers arms
Cringe unbelieving
From the desperados casual blade
My Father, distant now
But live and warm and strong
In uniform tobacco haze
Speaks out.

My son, he says.
Stay not the passion of your loss
But rather keen and hone its edge
That, You may never turn away
Numb, brute, from bets too difficult to hedge.

What price the child?
Which?
Yours or mine?
This one at home?
The baby bird,
in whistling bowls of pasta worms.
Or
That one on TV

Limp and bloodied on the Gazan shore
To fail to feel that other fathers loss
Denies connections forged in filial blood
And handed banner bright from man to boy
In pride of place, loin strong, bereft of pettiness and rancour.

So
Cup your tears, my father says
Cup that salt badge of strife
It flows from but one river
It was on that my son
I bet my life.

So!
We shall not stand by Silent and indifferent.
We will not be still
We will gather on street corners
We will chain ourselves to railings
We will throw ourselves in front of kings horses
We will speak the truth
We will not be cowed by the bully boys who pose and fiddle on the hill.

Shoulder to shoulder, man, woman and child
Arms linked, we will remember our dead
And the words of our teachers,

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you  win."

Will ring in our ears.

We shall overcome
We shall overcome
We shall overcome one day
Deep in my heart
I do believe
That we shall overcome one day.

GHD

Nar laga Dia sibh. Roger Waters is very impressive- off the scale compared to Bono.


Very interesting stats here

http://viableopposition.blogspot.ca/2014/07/gaza-daily-major-incidents-report.html

[muppet]

Social media may be breaking that filter, but if the average middle aged american isn't on twitter or some other type medium and reliant on the TV and print media they'll not have a clue.

I've unfriended about 4 people on FB over this. They just keep repeating the same old zionist talking points.

I've come to realise that there's a list of things that's acceptable to say in America:

• I believe in God
• I am a Christian
• I support our troops
• Thank you for your military service
• I stand with Israel
• Israel has a right to exist
• Israel has a right to defend itself

Anything that strays from that is viewed like breaking wind in company. 

In the last few weeks another few talking points have been repeated over and over until they have become accepted wisdom, and people feel very smug and clever when they repeat them:

• Israel uses its weapons to defend its people, Hamas uses its people to defend its weapons
• Israel tries to avoid civilian casualties, unlike Hamas

The shocking thing about such half-baked lies is how quickly they've become accepted as fact. It's a classic case of "repeat a lie over and over again until it becomes accepted as true."

It's none of my business but I think the last thing you should do is unfriend them. You can't blame people for believing the only angle they are presented with. FaceBook and Twitter allow them to see around the US media spin and you are ideally placed to open their minds. The Jon Snow videos are ideal for a US audience and the Australian one on child torture should get them asking questions. 

[Eamonnca1]

You might be right, Mupp. Today I had my ex (who happens to be Jewish) send me a link to a pro-Israeli piece. I tried to read it, stuck it out through the racist comments about people "wearing beards" but when I got as far as "sacrificing his nation's own children" I just had to stop reading. And I told her so. Haven't unfriended her yet, but I get the impression she's worked up about this and I'm sure it bugs her that I've changed my profile pic to a photo of me holding a Palestinian flag at Saturday's protest.

Maybe if she digs a bit deeper and does her homework she might come around.  She didn't grow up with all the Jewish traditions, it's something she's decided to get into lately, and probably thinks that if you're a Jew then you also have to be a Zionist, which ain't necessarily so.

[theskull1]

Seems if your a Jew or a bitter loyalist you have a Zionist perspective. Amazing how both have difficulty understanding what it must be like to be the oppressed community and consider the otherwise unthinkable options available to these people when they see what is theirs being taken away in broad political daylight year after year after year. Its sick

[give her dixie]

Has Peter Robinson mentioned this association recently?

http://www.newsletter.co.uk/news/regional/stormont-meeting-launches-dup-friends-of-israel-group-1-6114099

The DUP were not the only party that entertained this Zionist at Stormont a couple of weeks ago..........

[Sidney]

"72 hour ceasefire" already broken and Israel is back at it again.

[give her dixie]

"72 hour ceasefire" already broken and Israel is back at it again.

The blame game will begin, but its so sad that it didn't hold as so many people need aid relief and there are still an unknown amout of bodies to be recovered. Israel do not want a ceasefire as the public are still baying for more blood.

[muppet]

What proportion of the Israeli death toll is from National Service?

[johnneycool]

"72 hour ceasefire" already broken and Israel is back at it again.

The blame game will begin, but its so sad that it didn't hold as so many people need aid relief and there are still an unknown amout of bodies to be recovered. Israel do not want a ceasefire as the public are still baying for more blood.

But then why do Hamas continue as well and play into the IDF's hands or is there an acceptance within Hamas that its all or nothing at this stage?