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Jun 5, 2010

Mahatma Ghandi On Jews and Palestine

 

Mahatma Ghandi On Jews and Palestine

http://www.countercurrents.org/pa-gandhi170903.htm  and, http://www.israelvworld.com/ghandi.htm

Why should they not, like other peoples of the earth, make that country their home where they are born and where they earn their livelihood?


Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French. It is wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews on the Arabs. What is going on in Palestine today cannot be justified by any moral code of conduct. The mandates have no sanction but that of the last war.

Surely it would be a crime against humanity to reduce the proud Arabs so that Palestine can be restored to the Jews partly or wholly as their national home.

The nobler course would be to insist on a just treatment of the Jews wherever they are born and bred. The Jews born in France are French in precisely the same sense that Christians born in France are French.

If the Jews have no home but Palestine, will they relish the idea of being forced to leave the other parts of the world in which they are settled? Or do they want a double home where they can remain at will? This cry for the national home affords a colorable justification for the German expulsion ofthe Jews.

But the German persecution of the Jews seems to have no parallel in history. The tyrants of old never went so mad as Hitler seems to have gone. And he is doing it with religious zeal. For, he is propounding a new religion of exclusive and militant nationalism in the name of which any inhumanity becomes an act of humanity to be rewarded here and hereafter.

The crime of an obviously mad but intrepid youth is being visited upon his wholerace with unbelievable ferocity. If there ever could be a justifiable war in the name of and for humanity, a war against Germany to prevent the wanton persecution of a whole race, would be completely justified. But I do not believe in any war. A discussion of the pros and cons of such a war is, therefore, outside my horizon or province.

But if there can be no war against Germany, even for such a crime as is being committed against the Jews, surely there can be no alliance with Germany. How can there be alliance between a nation, which claims to stand for justice and democracy and one, which is the declared enemy of both? Or is England drifting towards armed dictatorship and all it means?

Germany is showing to the world how efficiently violence can be worked when it is not hampered by any hypocrisy or weakness masquerading as humanitarianism.It is  lso showing how hideous, terrible and terrifying it looks in its nakedness.Can the Jews resist this organized and shameless persecution? Is there a way to preserve their self-respect, and not to feel helpless, neglected and forlorn? I submit there is. No person who has faith in a living God need feel helpless or forlorn. Jehovah of the Jews is a God more personal than the God of the Christians, the Mussalmans or the Hindus, though as a matter of fact, in essence, He is common to all and one without a  econd and beyond description. But as the Jews attribute personality to God and believe that He rules every action of theirs, they ought not to feel helpless.

If I were a Jew and were born in Germany and earned my livelihood there, I would claim Germany as my home even as the tallest gentile German might, and challenge him to shoot me or cast me in the dungeon; I would refuse to be expelled or to submit to discriminating treatment. And for doing this I should not wait for! the fellow Jews to join me in civil resistance, but would have confidence that in the end the rest were bound to follow my example.... ...

And now a word to the Jews in Palestine. I have no doubt that they are going about it in the wrong way. The Palestine of the Biblical conception is not a geographical tract. It is in their hearts. But if they must look to the Palestine of geography as their national home, it is wrong to enter it under the shadow of the British gun. A religious act cannot be performed with the aid of the bayonet or the bomb. They can settle in Palestine only by the goodwill of the Arabs. They should seek to convert the Arab heart.

The same God rules the Arab heart who rules the Jewish heart... They will find the world opinion in their favor in their religious aspiration. There are hundreds of ways of reasoning with the Arabs, if they will only discard the help of the British bayonet. As it is, they are co-sharers with the British in despoiling a people who have done no wrong to them. I am not defending the Arab excesses. I wish they had chosen the way of non-violence in resisting what they rightly regarded as an unwarrantable  encroachment upon their country. But according to the accepted canons of right and wrong, nothing can be said against the Arab resistance in the face of overwhelming odds.

Let the Jews who claim to be the chosen race prove their title by choosing the way of non-violence for vindicating their position on earth. Every country is their home, including Palestine, not by aggression but by loving service. A Jewish friend has sent me a book called The Jewish Contribution to Civilization by Cecil Roth. It gives a record of what the Jews have done to enrich the world's literature, art, music, drama, science, medicine, agriculture, etc. Given the will, the Jew can refuse to be treated as the outcast of the West, to be despised or patronized. He can command the attention and respect of the world by being the chosen creation of God, instead of  sinking to the brute who is forsaken by God. They can add to their many contributions the surpassing contribution of non-violent action.


  • Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French.
  • It is wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews on the Arabs.
  • What is going on in Palestine today cannot be justified by any moral code of conduct. The mandates have no sanction but that of the last war.
  • Surely it would be a crime against humanity to reduce the proud Arabs so that Palestine can be restored to the Jews partly or wholly as their national home.
  • The nobler course would be to insist on a just treatment of the Jews wherever they are born and bred.
  • The Jews born in France are French in precisely the same sense that Christians born in France are French.

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Helen Thomas to Israel: "GO BACK TO GERMANY!"

 

Helen Thomas to Israel: "GO BACK TO GERMANY!"

In Defense of Helen Thomas
by Jayne Lyn Stahl | June 4, 2010 - 8:28pm

Earlier today, I came across a You Tube video that was posted by a "friend" on Facebook. The fellow who posted it is a blogger, and he made the point that Thomas should not be allowed to practice journalism because of a two minute clip that was evidently taken from a much longer interview that seemed to indicate Thomas's belief that the Palestinians are the rightful inhabitants of Israel, and that Israel should "go back to Germany."

Both the subject line, and the general tone of the post was inflammatory, and hysterical. The blogger cried out against Helen Thomas's "bias" at the same time he posted a video from a site claiming to be "Rabbi.org." Is there not bias there?

Further, there was the suggestion Helen Thomas favors deporting Jews back io Germany with the attendant innuendo of extermination as if that's all the Germans should be remembered for is gas chambers. Apart from the obvious anachronism, it struck me as egregiously unfair, so I posted a comment suggesting that the blogger consider:

1) Helen Thomas will turn 90 years old in exactly two months from today
2) Ms. Thomas is of Lebanese descent.
3) She was among John F. Kennedy's most beloved reporters, and is a widely respected journalist who has been in the newspaper business for 60 years.

I got a nasty comment in response, so I responded by saying only that the blogger who posted this inflammatory video clip ought to consider going after prominent columnists like Robert Fisk, and others who have consistently sided with Palestinians and suggested Israel was an occupying force with no right to the land. It never occurred to this blogger that maybe, just maybe, Ms. Thomas is still not over the Israeli bombing of Beirut, a town which may have a family history to her.

This was a short video, and not a written article in a newspaper. I merely suggested the blogger go after those who call themselves journalists and make their opinions known in print, and who are widely publsihed and widely regarded instead of an older woman who can't, or won't fight back.

So, let me be perfectly clear. There are some who will seize upon this crisis to create hostility among people who they should count their friends. There are some who will intentionally clip others' words, as if they were clipping coupons, thereby devaluing both the context and the substance. There are some who aren't happy unless they impose their own miserable mindset on the rest of the world.

Things are not black and white. I have no investment in Israel, Palestine, or Hamas. My only investment is in truth and justice, and it is flat out unfair, false, and unjust to call out a 90 year old female writer for saying things that many others have been saying for months with impunity both in the American alternative press, and the European one.

I'm old enough to remember when Vanessa Redgrave was blacklisted for her statement the night of the Academy Awards. I thought it was wrong for her to be met with such universal condemnation then, and I think it's wrong now. People should, and must be allowed to express their opinions---off the time clock---whether they're housewives, Hollywood actors, and mainstream reporters.

Guess I'm naive enough to think we have a First Amendment, and sometimes it might even work.

Those who insist on seeing the world only in black and white will soon be color blind.

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/jayne-lyn-stahl/29263/in-defense-of-helen-thomas

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Fwd: Israel's claim that Peace activists are Terrorists. Commandos opened fire before boarding flotilla

 



From: Dave <dakersting@earthlink.net>
Date: June 5, 2010 1:17:20 AM EDT





   Sorry, but what Glenn Greenwald did in his 'debate' with Eliot Spitzer boils down to classic psy-ops – seeming to 'clobber' one of the bad-guys, while meticulously avoiding the crucial issues, the only issues that actually end the 'debate' and make the simple realities clear.  Everything said by Greenwald is very easily answered by the Zionists.  It's just 'good Zionist' versus 'bad Zionist,' posing a false 'front-line' of debate and burying the entire discourse deep inside the Zionist world-view.

    The one absolutely redeeming fact about Hamas – when accused of denying Israel's right to exist – is that Hamas and the Palestinians have every right and obligation to oppose an officially racist-supremacist regime, as well as all the officially prejudiced policies that must be violently enforced in order to maintain the supremacist 'Jewish identity' of Israel-Palestine.  The semantic muddle between 'destroying the state of Israel' and ending Zionist Israel's defining racist policies is no accident, and those who avoid clarification of this issue show themselves marinated in the Zionist perspective whether intentionally or just very ineptly.  When Greenwald fails to address the crux of the issue, he perpetuates the primary Zionist cover-up.

    IF this is not an intentional process, it is yet another case of activists soft enough for big-media approval doing the best that's allowed in that truncated, career-based, Zionist-dependent climate: inadvertently avoiding the only truths the Zionists don't want spoken, and inadvertently injecting the Zionist ploy deep into 'progressive' circles.

    The absurdly obvious reality is that a Jewish state forced into Palestine is violent racism as plain as it can ever get: the initial ethnic-cleansing was violent racism; the perpetuation of that ethnic-cleansing is violent racism; starving the population of the Gaza Strip is further intentional ethnic-cleansing and violent racism; the constant new 'Jewish Only' settlements forced onto Palestinian land are further obvious violent racism.

    The only possible way to conceal such an obvious moral malignancy at the root of the conflict is to trot out people like Glenn Greenwald – and Noam Chomsky and Jeff Blankfort and Amy Goodman and so on – to charm the 'progressives' while powerfully modeling the false ABSENCE of any truly debate-ending challenge to Zionism.

    The forced creation and constant expansion of an officially Jewish state in Palestine is the most FLAGRANT campaign of openly-declared ethnic violence to be demanded by any significant sector of the US population since Southern Slavery, and everyone who discreetly pedals around this fact is a component of the racist infrastructure.

    Dave





> (7) Eliot Spitzer defends Israel in Debate on attack on Gaza Flotilla
>
> From: ReporterNotebook <RePorterNoteBook@Gmail.com> Date: 03.06.2010 10:24 PM
>
> Glenn Greenwald Clobbers Eliot Spitzer in Debate on the Gaza Flotilla
>
> One of the best cable news smackdowns ever recorded.
>
> June 3, 2010
>
> By Jane Hamsher
>
> http://www.alternet.org/story/147087/glenn_greenwald_clobbers_eliot_spitzer_in
> _debate_on_the_gaza_flotilla
>
> You don't often get a piece of cable TV this good, so it's worth transcribing
> and posting in its entirety.
>
> Yesterday, two Netanyahu propagandists appeared on MSNBC prior to Glenn
> Greenwald, painting a picture of the flotilla raid that was so grossly
> distorted it was unrecognizable as the incident that is being rightfully
> condemned around the world.  Host Eliot Spitzer vigorously agreed with them,
> and then brought them back once again to counter Glenn after his appearance.
>
> Spitzer was not nearly so conciliatory with Glenn, and during the interview,
> clips of the selectively edited IDF propaganda videos and their helpful
> English subtitles played continuously.  In a rare and contentious eight minute
> cable news segment, Glenn decided to set the record straight:
>
> ELIOT SPITZER: Now let's bring in Glenn Greenwald from Salon.com who calls
> Israel's actions quote, "heinous and repugnant" and, well let me just ask you,
> you have ships approaching Gaza, controlled by Hamas; Hamas is a terrorist
> organization, Israel did (I don't think this is disputed) offer to have the
> ships inspected, if there was no contraband on board, let the ships continue
> on to Gaza.  Why was that not a reasonable offer, why should Israel not
> intercede to stop the flow of contraband?
>
> GLENN GREENWALD: Well, first of all, international waters, which is where this
> ship was, is not owned by Israel.  It is a crime, a war crime, to attack a
> ship in international waters that has not engaged in any aggression, and no
> one claims that these ships were.  I mean, what you're describing is absolute
> anarchy, that any country can just say, "no ships can go here, and if you
> disobey our order, we're going to attack you, board your ship forcefully, and
> kill anybody who does resist."
>
> SPITZER: Well, let me interr…
>
> GREENWALD:  No, let me just finish because you just had on 10 minutes of
> uninterrupted pro-Israeli propaganda filled with falsehoods.  The blockade is
> one of the most brutal and inhumane blockades that we've seen in the last
> generation.  Look at UN reports that are objective, not Netanyahu aides, that
> say that 60% of the babies in Palestine have anemia, 65% of the population is
> food insecure; the entire Palestinian economy has collapsed as a result of
> this blockade.  Israel routinely refuses to permit all sorts of imports
> including food, chocolate, french fries, anything but the barest necessities
> to keep those prisoners — which is what they are — alive…
>
> SPITZER: Glenn, I hear you.  Hold on one second.  Let's go back to Ruth
> Wedgewood, who is really a top-flight intellect and scholar of international
> law, said that nations that are a war are permitted in international water to
> enforce a blockade and to check to see if contraband is on board.  Now, nobody
> has said that Israel has prevented humanitarian materials to flow through to
> Gaza.  You may be saying there's not enough…

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I thought you should see this story

 

Gaza-bound aid vessel tailed by Israeli warships http://m.apnews.com/ap/db_16026/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=y4Ra1gUR

Peace.
Michael Santomauro @ 917-974-6367

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