“When Israelis murder Palestinians, it's a tragedy — for Israelis.”
by Richard Hugus
Since the start of the latest massacre in Gaza — the killing with live fire of almost 40 and wounding of almost 3,000 unarmed Palestinian protestors during the March of Return — propaganda in service of Israel has been mobilized to cover up the blatant crime. Three days after the March began, the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston issued an unbelievably twisted statement on the attacks. What follows is their statement in blockquotes, with comments inserted in plain text:
Jewish Community Relations Council Statement on Events Along Gaza Border
April 2, 2018
We see the events along the Gaza-Israel border this weekend as the continuation of one of the great tragedies of our time.”
This implies that Gaza is a sovereign country bordering Israel, not the prison for Palestinian refugees that Israel established decades ago in the south of Palestine.
“This is a situation where many are at fault, leaving individuals in impossible situations with impossible choices.”
When someone is morally at fault, the situation is always “complicated.” As we shall see, the “many at fault” are always Palestinians, not Israelis.
It is a tragedy for the people of Gaza that, 12 years after the complete withdrawal of Israel from the Gaza Strip, they live under such difficult conditions.”
“Tragedy” in Greek theater held that events are written by our fate and could not have been otherwise. If Zionism had not chosen Palestine in the late 1800’s and then proceeded to steal land from Palestinians from then on, it could very much have been otherwise. There was an actor here; there was a cause, and an effect. The cause of the “tragedy” was Zionism. Ask the settlers to return to their own countries, and the “tragedy” would end.
The sentence also implies that Israel made a noble gesture when it withdrew from Gaza, and that it is the fault of the Palestinians that they did not make the best of this generous gift. In fact, Israel left Gaza because it was more expedient for Israel to administer Gaza as a prison than to occupy it. The “difficult conditions” faced by the people of Gaza are the result of Israeli control over everything and everyone that goes into and out of it. The “difficult conditions” are the result of repeated Israeli bombings of critical infrastructure, and Israel’s clear plan for the complete immiseration of Gaza’s two million people.
It is a tragedy for the Palestinians that Gaza was taken over by Hamas, an internationally designated terrorist organization that rules in a brutal dictatorship.”
Hamas was democratically elected by its people because it distinguished itself from the collaborationist leadership of the Palestinian Authority. Israel defines Hamas as terrorist because Hamas is determined to resist the Zionist entity. Israel’s minions in legislative bodies in other countries have been used to create the “designated terrorist” label.
“Brutal dictatorship” is a buzzword applied to all political movements asserting independence from imperialist control.
It is a tragedy that Hamas has chosen to direct its resources to the building of tunnels and rockets, rather than building hospitals, schools, housing, and factories that would create prosperity and opportunity for the Palestinian people.”
Are these the same hospitals, schools, housing and factories that Israel has been bombing since 2006? Are these the same tunnels that Gazans used to bring in vital humanitarian goods not allowed through Israeli checkpoints? Doesn’t Hamas have the right to its primitive rockets when Gazans are being periodically bombarded by Israel and its highly sophisticated fighter jets?
It is a tragedy that, by squandering the opportunity to build a better future for the Palestinian people, Hamas has forced Israel and Egypt to secure their own borders with a blockade to prevent the further weaponization of Gaza.”
For choosing resistance against the Zionist occupier, the Palestinian people were punished by the Zionist occupier and his servants in Egypt. The blockade is not just against weapons, it’s against any freedom of movement, and any importation of needed goods. Even people in need of urgent medical care are refused. The main purpose of the Israeli blockade is to starve Gaza, to “put them on a diet”, as one Israeli official said. To its everlasting shame, the West-installed political class in Egypt – not the Egyptian people – has chosen to collaborate.
It is a tragedy that the Palestinian people of Gaza have no recourse against their leaders, living without elections or even the ability to protest those in power openly on pain of death.”
Again, Hamas was democratically elected in 2006. One would think “the only democracy in the Middle East” would appreciate this. Stories of Hamas killing protesters have appeared only in the Israeli press – e.g., the Jerusalem Post, the Times of Israel. However, there are stories every day in the worldwide press of Israeli soldiers shooting Palestinian protestors all over the West Bank. Let’s also remember that the March of Return in Gaza is made up of protestors, and that Israel sent snipers there for the explicit purpose of killing and wounding them. This is not to mention the “recourse against” Hamas leaders employed over the years by Israel – namely, open assassination.
It is a tragedy that they are deceived by their own leaders with the unrealistic promise of a destructive victory over the State of Israel – a victory that will never come. It is a tragedy that their own government chooses to use them as human shields, perpetuating their suffering for nefarious self-interest.”
As the Borg said, “Resistance is futile.” Isn’t the promotion of the idea of an unconquerable Israel the worst kind of war propaganda? The “human shields” argument has been used by Israel as an excuse for intentionally killing hundreds of civilians during its repeated bombing campaigns. What is the “nefarious self-interest” of Gaza’s leadership? — liberation from Israeli torture.
It is a tragedy that the Israeli people look at Gaza and see the end of a dream; to live in peace with their neighbors.”
The “dream” of the majority of the Israeli people today is to remove Palestinians from all of historic Palestine, and completely erase Palestinian history. Israelis do not “live in peace with their neighbors.” They have repeatedly attacked Lebanon, Iraq, and Syria and they are the main instigators today of conflict and war with Iran.
It is a tragedy that Israelis living near the border are terrorized by threats coming from tunnels under their homes and rockets over their schools.”
The main tactic of this propaganda piece is to blame the victim. Thus, nothing was done through the agency of the Jewish state and its obvious goals; everything was done as a reaction to injustices committed by Palestinians. It also turns reality on its head. Homes and schools have indeed been destroyed, but by Israel.
It is a tragedy that when Israelis do what any other nation in the world would do – protect their border from being overrun – that they endure a condemnation that no other nation would receive.”
This is the “why pick on us?” argument. Why? Because Israel has the ugliest, most long-standing system of open colonization and oppression visible in the world today. The vast majority of the people of the world are disgusted. What Israel claims as its “borders” is stolen land.
It is a tragedy that Israelis experience this singling out as a further example of an isolation, their status as “the Jew amongst the nations,” with only themselves to protect their inalienable rights to live in security.
Since 2001, Israel, the poor victim nation, has gotten the United States to attack a long list of countries in the Middle East which Israel feels threatened by, now including Russia because Russia has thrown a wrench into Israeli plans to destroy Syria. Israel also receives massive direct funding and political cover from the United Sates.
If Israel resents its status as “the Jew amongst the nations” why does it call itself “the Jewish state”? Why does it display the Star of David on all its national symbols and armaments? This is an identity which Israelis promote – how can they now turn around and blame us for it?
It is a tragedy because this weekend, young men and women of the Israel Defense Forces stared down the sights of their rifles and learned violence at a time when they should have been at home with their families celebrating freedom at the Passover table.”
The idea that it is the Israeli Occupation Forces who have suffered because they have had to kill and maim defenseless Palestinians is a perfect example of what Zionist supremacy and racism is. It is a form of self-worship and psychopathy in which one is never responsible for committing any wrong — it is always the fault of the other. This sentence is reminiscent of Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir saying: “We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children. We cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children.” In other words, the real crime has been committed against Jews, whose purity has been sullied by having to kill innocent people (as they were invading their land and homes).
This belief of Jewish superiority above others is at the bottom of everything Palestinians have suffered for the past 70 years.
It is a tragedy because Palestinians need some way to express their frustrations – at Israel and at their own government after years of wasted opportunities to build a better life for the people of Gaza. Instead they experienced more manipulation, and more loss.”
No, the ” frustration” Palestinians feel is from being consistently and sadistically blocked from life and liberty by the Israeli prison-keeper. The real manipulators are those who would have us believe the oppressive tactics of Israel are of the Palestinians’ own making, as this sentence implies.
We see this weekend as the continuation of a tragedy that has not brought the people of Israel and Gaza any closer to a future of peace and hope for all of their children. As the Boston Jewish community continues to celebrate the Passover holiday this week, we are mindful of the lessons learned at our seders, that we do not rejoice over the tragedy of others and we are ever hopeful for peace and stability for all people.”
Again, no recognition that this “tragedy” might be in any way the fault of Israel. Israel is supported, not by “the Boston Jewish community” but by a cynically propagandistic Washington-based lobby for Israel, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, which provides the political line for 125 supposedly local Jewish Community Relations Councils in the US. In other words, a political lobby for a country 6,000 miles away says they speak for all Jews in Boston.
In 2016 the Jewish Community Relations Council of Boston sponsored a deceptive anti-boycott bill in the Massachusetts legislature. They were successfully opposed by a large number of Jewish activists in the state, and many others. The Council now claims to represent the Jewish community of Boston in mobilizing opposition to a motion in the Cambridge city council to boycott Hewlett-Packard. When was the vote in which “the Boston Jewish community” elected this Council? Who is the real manipulator in this scenario? Doesn’t the Jewish Community Relations Council actually represent a foreign political movement — not Cambridge, not Boston, not Massachusetts?
Israel, you can’t have it both ways. You can’t repeatedly murder people in Gaza in broad daylight and then piously claim you’re for “peace and stability for all people.”
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Until religious hate ends there will not be peace. You can blame Zionism if you wish. Jews have been blamed and hounded out of their homes and banished from countries for how many thousand years? And everywhere they go they bring industry, charity and good-will. Rumours of child sacrifice and gold-grabbing are horrible malicious lies born out of gross envy that have survived millenia and have seeded in the mind, perpetuating this growing trend of anti-Semitism. The Jews, the Jews, it’s all the Jews. If only there were no Jews in the Middle East, then there would be peace. All of the problems that Pallestinians face, all of their suffering can be singularly traced back to the dirty work of the state of Israel, because unlike everyone else on this planet, Pallestinians are pardoned from their responsibilities and are always the victims. I am not defending the Israeli government per… Read more »
A lie in every sentence. Well done, General!
The French Jewish intellectual, Bernard Lazare, in the late 19th century, observed that nearly everywhere that the Jews settled, they ended up reviled. He noted that this was despite great differences in those societies in racial make-up, social arrangements, religions, history, geography etc. Lazare, who was a very firm opponent of Judeophobia and early defender of Dreyfus, observed that surely ‘Israel’ ie the Jews, must bear some responsibility for this antipathy-it could not be all one-sided. The habit of narcissistically claiming to always be the innocent, aggrieved, party, EVEN while murdering defenceless children, was summed up in an old aphorism, which I will slightly amend-‘The Israel wails in pain, even as he smashes you in the face’. I’ve not seen many fouler examples than this gibberish, but it is typical of the type. Blaming the Palestinians for their plight when they are imprisoned by a brutal, racist, sadistic terror regime,… Read more »
The effort to redefine “anti-Semitism” to mean criticism of Israeli policies is irrational at best and more realistically an effort to silence criticism of any kind, something totalitarian states, not democracies, are accustomed to doing.
Unfortunately the ‘West’ have no intention of confronting Israel for all the egregious breaches of International law and crimes against Humanity that they are guilty of, preferring to say that those crimes are “unhelpful”, their is just no political will. In fact Netanyahu has declared that Israel will ‘Live by the sword’. That being the case Israel can only change its way by i.e. observing International Law by ending the illegal occupation of Palestinian and Syrian land and returning back to the ‘Green line’ [Armistice line] or face being militarily forced to do so. Unfortunately the Palestinians are too weak and divided, and it must be said are too keen to defer to their paymasters the US/EU and GCC states to initiate such action, they would be slaughtered in any case. Far better to align with the ‘arc of resistance’ Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Hezbollah backed by Russia. This alliance… Read more »
Could anyone offer any reason or an explanation why was the latest election held way back in 2006, twelve years ago? Has Hamas been elected for life? (Only asking).
I don’t know why this reasonable question has twice been thumbed down. Aren’t you allowed to ask questions here? (However, it’s true you could have done a little research, Baron.) Palestinian elections since 2006 keep being postponed because of the conflict between Hamas and Fatah (who control the Palestinian Authority). Hamas, as its Arabic name indicates, aims to resist Israeli occupation; the PA mainly does Israel’s dirty work by ‘administering’ (i.e., policing) the occupied West Bank, much as the subservient Bantustan authorities used to do in apartheid South Africa. Fugus’s analysis is spot on. The Boston Jewish Community Council’s press statement is a disgrace. We have much the same problem here in France, where the CRIF (Conseil représentatif des institutions juives françaises) acts mostly as a lobbyist and rottweiler on behalf of the Israeli government’s colonial oppression in Palestine, to the disgust of many French Jews – how many is… Read more »
Thanks Peter, for an excellent synopsis of the situation in France.
Villainous hasbara TRIPE. The refusal to hold new elections is ENTIRELY caused by the Quisling ‘President for Life’ Abbas, and the USA and Israel. FILTHY victim blaming, such a vile hasbara technique.
The fact that Israel regularly kidnaps imprisons and tortures elected Palestinian politicians might be a factor for the lack of candidates or reason to even have elections.
Heck, over 280 Palestinians were arrested by Israel for their Facebook-posts last year! Also to note: 22 journalists were among those put behind bars last year too.
And you worry about “elections”, were should be a statement about a citizen’s free will????
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20180101-israel-arrested-more-than-6000-palestinians-in-2017/
Excellent article, thank you.
Israeli aggression towards its neighbours and the world in general has for too long been a cancer that has been allowed to metastize. Everyone knows this but very few are ready to express it, for fear of the inevitable
and risible accusations of antisemitism.
In a half-sane world nations would have broken off diplomatic relations with Israel a long time ago.
Israel is merely the Jerusalem Office of the global Anglo-Zio-Capitalist empire. On a scale for mass murder, wholesale robbery and sheer brutal destructiveness Israel is far surpassed by the AZC’s Paris Office, its London Office and its Oval Office.
“Correct your own faults first — they might be bigger than the other person’s” — New Testament.
Your suggestion, or demand, that correction of “israel’s” faults be deferred is just plain wrong.
The toxoplasma-like control of USUK and France persists in part because the illegal entity still occupies Jerusalem. The American spy (well he was American, but maybe we should put that in quotes, too) Pollard is expected to go to Palestine, no? “Head or tentacles” may be the wrong metaphor.
Reblogged this on circusbuoy.
New Palestine Party Visit of Menachen Begin and Aims of Political Movement Discussed TO THE EDITORS OF NEW YORK TIMES: Among the most disturbing political phenomena of our times is the emergence in the newly created state of Israel of the “Freedom Party” (Tnuat Haherut), a political party closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties. It was formed out of the membership and following of the former Irgun Zvai Leumi, a terrorist, right-wing, chauvinist organization in Palestine. The current visit of Menachem Begin, leader of this party, to the United States is obviously calculated to give the impression of American support for his party in the coming Israeli elections, and to cement political ties with conservative Zionist elements in the United States. Several Americans of national repute have lent their names to welcome his visit. It is inconceivable that those… Read more »
One must remember, Robbobobin, the time was soon after WW2 when the world learnt of the reluctance, often a blunt refusal, of many countries to accept Jews fleeing Nazism (the Republic, Britain amongst them), the machinations of the Grand Mufti of Palestine with Adolf, and above all the unparalleled atrocities committed by the Nazis and their sympathisers, and not just in the gas chambers of the concentration camps.
Begin and his followers must have been desperate to avoid that past still felt painfully, saw a chance of acquiring land for the Jews, deployed any means to keep it. This is not to condone fully their often criminal behaviour, merely to explain it.
The question is whether Israel has any right to behave criminally today.
I guess Hannah, Albert, Sidney et al, didn’t remember that.
The great existential problem for Israel is that continuing, as they have for 70 years, to place an Iron Wall between themselves and their dehumanised victims, the true Indigenous, the Palestinians, and their neighbours who they have attacked over and over again, only guarantees Israel’s eventual destruction. Self-destruction to be exact. I for one find that a dreadful prospect, because a decent Israel, living at peace with its neighbours, could benefit the region, and the world, greatly. The Palestinians are immensely talented people, like the best of the Israelis, and if released from their eternal Hell of brutal repression, could achieve great things. Instead we have the filthy situation where swine like the Belgian PM, Michel, can seek to please his Zionist masters by viciously attacking Ken Loach, precisely for his support for the Palestinians, now increasingly being defined as ‘antisemitism’. It will gain the Zionists NOTHING if they buy… Read more »
When an arrest warrant for war crimes and crimes against humanity was issued against Tzipi Livni in England, the British government simply changed the law to ensure that she could visit the country with complete impunity. Until all war criminals are treated equally before the law, such crimes will continue to be committed. It is necessary to hold our own war criminals to account. The trial of Tony Blair would probably be a good start.
[[ the British government simply changed the law ]]
Almost, but not quite.
Exception was made for her at the personal intervention of then-Foreign Secretary, David Miliband. The matter never came before Parliament, nor any governmental body whatsoever. Miliband subsquently fled Britain entirely, and today he is living in the United States. He is said to have taken American citizenship. The Milibands collect passports the way others collect postcards. David Miliband claims he isn’t Jewish. Yet his mother and brother are Jewish. A peculiar situation which he’s been unable to explain. When I mentioned this in a comment on the Daily Telegraph website, I got a call from the Metropolitan Police, saying that it was not permitted to mention Miliband’s religious persuasions.
The law was changed in 2011, the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act. The change required the Director of Public Prosecutions to agree to the warrant (rather than a judge being able to issue one without prosecution request).
Israel should always be allowed defend itself against aggression.
Just as the Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrians etc must be allowed to defend themselves from Zionist aggression. Not to mention the Western publics whose Freedom of Opinion and Freedom of Moral Conscience are under relentless attacks from the Zionists and their Sabbat Goy stooges, as they drive, fanatically, to outlaw ALL criticism of Israel’s barbarism as ‘antisemitism’.
Actually, it is becoming more obvious that the Zionists, in a sort of frenzy of hatred and rage, are actually demanding that people not just refrain from supporting the Palestinians, but must join the Zionist fury of hatred for the Palestinians, the Syrians, Lebanese and Iranians, and fully support the death and destruction rained down upon them, and the very much worse planned to be inflicted on them, or stand condemned, by denunciation, of ‘antisemitism’. Good to see Ken Loach, at least, standing up to the thug Michel, the Belgian Sabbat Goy stooge PM, who villainously libeled Loach as an ‘antisemite’, PRECISELY for his support for the Palestinians.
Your comment equals: Bank robbers should always be allowed defend themselves against aggression.
Because even you must realise that the entity stealing Palestine has stolen some banks.
To ignore this behaviour of vicious and organised criminal behaviour by Israel towards the people of Palestine is to endorse and legitimise the crimes they are committing. Here in the west we seem to plead ignorance as our corrupt and degenerate MSM continue to shape the propaganda and by omission focus our attention away from this blatant inhumanity towards those in the Gaza strip. The reality though can be found on alternative sources for those who wish to break free from the fantasy Israeli supporting western media and the picture they can see is the difference between black and white. The Israelis continue to use the Holocaust as part of a moral justification for their behaviour but seemingly they fail to see that they are but a hairs-breadth away from behaving in the same way as those who demonised and attempted to destroy their own people.
It serves us well to on occasions to revisit the inhuman barbaric act of the Holocaust for us in some way to conceptualise the sheer scale of destruction. I recently came across a collection of work entitled “Holocaust of bullets “, the level,of depravity present during the massacre of men woman and children remind us of how close humanity is to pure evil . One has to wonder how small children could be tossed alive into mass graves , or burnt alive or tossed into heaps with the use of pitchforks .That said the fact that the EinsatzGruppen knew it took roughly 3 days for a mass grave to stop moving would make one instinctively treat the horror with absolute respect .Apparently not for some within the Labour Party, for them there appears to be no issue with accusing some of the more impeccable anti racists on the left as… Read more »
Israel, as the Jerusalem Office of the AZC is senior to the USA (which is merely the AZC’s Oval Office). Thus Israel is the main local agent for AZC plans to turn the entire Middle East into a Rothschild “Gas Company masquerading as an Arab Caliphate” similar to what the London Office of the AZC established a century ago in Saudi Arabia. This means that besides the historic motive — the ME being The Promised Land for The Chosen People — the ME’s hydrocarbon reserves are an motive behind Israel’s incessant wars against its neighbours: especially Gaza, Syria, Lebanon , Iraq and Iran — all of whom have gas & oil reserves which are partially owned or illegally exploited by the AZC but not yet satisfactorily under its control. The Jerusalem regime has not killed thousands of Palestinians in its Gaza prison just for the fun of “shooting fish in… Read more »
In The Guardian Weekend of 21 April 2018, Hadley Freeman has written a literally fabulous piece about “the Holocaust”. She soon denies that there was a holocaust by telling us that various Jewish people survived. She says too few people in the US know about “the Holocaust” and suggests that they could find out about it by watching Jewish propaganda films from Hollywood. Then she switches to a paragraph about how “hundreds of Jews protested against Jeremy Corbyn’s attitude to antisemitism”, how Ken Loach said protesting that attitude was “mischief”, and how Loach is antisemitic for even suggesting that those Jewish protesters were making mischief. Then Ms Freeman ends with an odd mix of holocaust denial and Holocaust promotion. “There were nine million Jews in Europe before the war, three million afterwards and only six million today. I suppose if six million Jews disappeared from Europe during the war, they… Read more »
Freeman’s typically self-obsessed tribal narcissism (she is, in my opinion, one of the most consistently nauseating of the hordes of Zionists who infest the ‘Fraudian’s’ rotting corpse) was repulsive on so many levels, but that is quite typical of Zionist agit-prop. No mention or, I would say, any interest in, any of the millions of other, goy, victims of the Nazis eg the Roma, Sinti, gays, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Poles, Soviet POWs and twenty million Soviet citizens. Only the Jewish victims count, and, despite the Nazi Judeocide having been made a pseudo-religion in the West, with insistent, never-ceasing, obsession with the tragedy, and near TOTAL ignoring of all other genocides in history, that is NOT ENOUGH!! Even worse is the use, so very typical of Zionists these days, of the Nazi Judeocide as a filthy hate-mongering device to attack anyone who dares to get in Israel or Zionism’s path. That, to… Read more »
Palestinians being Semitic people .
A good read “From Yahwey to Zion ” by Dr.Laurent Guyénot .Much history of the Jewish / Zionist people and the relationship with other nations ,especially the English.
An excellent commentary. The suffering of the Palestinians at the hands of zionists goes back much further than 70 years however. The role of the British colonial administration and forces-heavily biassed in favour of european settlers- was crucial in the period before and during the second world war. One of the reasons why Britain’s automatic defences of Israel in international forums is so disgraceful is that Britain and governments of both labour and Tory zionist sympathisers played a crucial role in enabling the establishment of the state of Israel.
The Attlee Government abstained in the UN vote on the creation of Israel.
He I suspect knew what trouble would lay ahead.
Really? I didn’t know that. Trouble ahead, indeed. Ultimately, zionism was a bad solution to a real problem.