Here we go again…

“War is the terrorism of the rich and powerful; terrorism is the war of the poor and powerless.” Peter Ustinov

With shades of Lebanon 2006, Israel is ramping its policy of collective punishment against the citizens of the Gaza Strip. Dropping 2000 lb. bombs into one of the most densely populated places on earth ensures that the already battered infrastructure will be destroyed and innocent civilians will be killed (which I would argue is part of Israel’s intentions). Even the U.N. Secretary general has warned Israel that it is using excessive force. Israel has prohibited reporters and journalists from entering the Gaza Strip to help cover up its crimes, but the pictures and voices of the Palestinian people still leak out.

Since 9/11, we have been constantly bombarded with the “us vs. them” rhetoric of terrorism, in which people can be divided into two stark categories: peace-loving, citizens with nothing but love in their hearts who only want to live their lives in peace and who do no harm to their neighbors; and blood-thirsty, suicidal terrorists whose only goal is to destroy this peaceful existence and sow violent chaos throughout the world. This hyper-inflated dichotomy leads many people to believe that when the U.S. or Israel says it has killed X number of suspected militants in a bombing or raid, these were the bad people, and only the bad people. A glaring example of the U.S.’s record for getting their man is, of course, the Guantánamo Bay detention center. Since October 7, 2001, 775 detainees have been brought to Guantánamo. Of these, approximately 420 have been released without charge, and of the approximately 270 detainees that remain, more than a fifth are cleared for release but must nevertheless remain indefinitely because countries are reluctant to accept them or the Bush administration refuses to release them. Only three have been convicted of any charges. Israel holds more than 8,000 Palestinians in its prisons; I’m curious what percentage of those are really criminals.

Ali Abunimah is the author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse and a fellow with the Palestine Centre in Washington, DC. I find his most recent article, We Have No Words Left to be a realistic description of the current situation.

Gideon Levy, an Israeli journalist for the Haaretz newspaper (Israel’s oldest daily paper), where he is also an editorial board member, also wrote this response to Israel’s attack.

I see your neo-new wave and raise you el hardcore espanol. oh yeah, HERE

Watching closely...

I haven’t been overly impressed with Obama’s cabinet picks so far (aside from Stephen Chu), and choosing unapologetic homophobe Rick Warren to deliver the invocation is really just sad. But I saw something on the news this week that just downright shocked me. The animal cruelty record of this cabinet pick really has me asking, where’s the change?

I swear I'll get back to being political...

but in the meantime, how about a video from my favorite Mexico City neo-new wave band.

The Libertine despises oppression and systematic brutality of the innocent

While listening to Morning Edition last week (when I wrote and should’ve posted this), I heard a rather disturbing story of a group of young Israelis who bought a building from an Arab man in Hebron, and shortly after moving in, began terrorizing the Palestinians in the area. Hebron is the largest city in the West Bank, located in the south, 30 kilometers south of Jerusalem. It is home to some 166,000 Palestinians, and over 500 Israeli settlers. Although Hebron continues to be the site of numerous acts of violence from both sides, a couple of things in this story stood out. The first being, if the situation were reversed, and it were Palestinians being required to evacuate the building, how quickly do you think they would be removed (and not by using water hoses and non-lethal stun grenades)? The second was the Israeli father who was rabidly overzealous in his use of the false argument that if you criticize absolutely anything Israel or Israelis do, you are an anti-Semitic Jew-hater (even though the reporter seemed purely neutral, I can only surmise the father thought that giving the oppressed Palestinians a voice put the reporter in this category). “The government refuses to recognize the right of Jews to own property in the land of Israel” the father said. Disgusting? Evil? Is this guy serious? After looking around on the internet for more on this situation, I came across another story that pointed out how widespread these attacks are. I then found this video on the BBC that shows one of these attacks taking place (Warning: you may find it disturbing). I ask you, who are the real terrorists? These settlements have become a symbol of the Israeli occupation, and are a tactic to incrementally rob the Palestinians of their land, while confining the 2.5 million Palestinians living in the West Bank into what is fundamentally a concentration camp. Take the most recent story of the Libyan ship carrying 3,000 tons of aid that was turned back by the Israeli Navy. This, along with arbitrarily closing border crossings is collective punishment, a violation of the Geneva Conventions. This is a widely used tactic by Israel, as more broadly witnessed in the 2006 Lebanon War* when large parts of the Lebanese civilian infrastructure were destroyed, including 400 miles of roads, 73 bridges, and 31 other targets such as Beirut's Rafic Hariri International Airport, ports, water and sewage treatment plants, electrical facilities (the Israeli Air Force bombed the Jiyeh power station, 19 miles south of Beirut, resulting in the largest ever oil spill in the Mediterranean Sea), 25 fuel stations, 900 commercial structures, up to 350 schools, 2 hospitals, and 15,000 homes. Some 130,000 more homes were damaged, and over a million Lebanese were displaced. A 2007 Human Rights Watch report found that most of the civilian deaths in Lebanon resulted from "indiscriminate Israeli airstrikes," and found that Israeli aircraft targeted vehicles carrying fleeing civilians. In addition, the Israeli Navy imposed a naval blockade, ensuring that no aid would reach the civilians they had targeted and indescriminately (or perhaps a more concise term would be purposefully) killed, injured, and displaced.

I’ve spent a lot of time researching the “Israeli-Palestinian conflict" as it is called in the main stream media. Jimmy Carter, I believe, has a more realistic definition in his excellent and well-balanced book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. In an interview with Amazon.com, Carter explains the use of the term this way: “The book is about Palestine, the occupied territories, and not about Israel. Forced segregation in the West Bank and terrible oppression of the Palestinians create a situation accurately described by the word. I made it plain in the text that this abuse is not based on racism, but on the desire of a minority of Israelis to confiscate and colonize Palestinian land. This violates the basic humanitarian premises on which the nation of Israel was founded. My surprise is that most critics of the book have ignored the facts about Palestinian persecution and its proposals for future peace and resorted to personal attacks on the author. No one could visit the occupied territories and deny that the book is accurate.”

I, on the other hand, think apartheid is not the correct term. The Israeli action against the Palestinian people, in my opinion, is nothing short of genocide.

*I personally think calling this atrocity a “war” is incongruent with the facts. This unbridled agression by Israel was literally overkill as retribution for the Hezbollah attack on seven Israeli soldiers, killing three, injuring two, and kidnapping two.

Further reading: British politician George Galloway in the Monthly Review

Happy Holidays Bill O' Reilly

Wow, I haven't uttered these words in a while, but wow, I completely agree with the catholic priest.

Prop 8: The Musical

A little comic relief from Jack Black and friends while I figure out where to go with the most recent Buttar's non-sense.

See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die