Yessir, leftist wackos who cannot tell vicious anti-semitic double standards from reasonable criticism of Israel side with you, Big C. Congratulations.

Big C, if you proudly insist on applying double standards to Israel which you apply to no one else, you can expect to be strongly criticized--in fact, very strongly criticized. And the EU institutions specifically charged with combatting anti-semitism, which did not adopt behind any closed doors the definition of anti-semitism you admit you fall foul of because you apply double standards to Israel and no one else, fully back your critics up.

Keep digging yourself into that hole, Big C.

This definition, in use by the EU bureaucracy that deals with racism, was not adopted mysteriously by a faceless bureaucracy in secret but came at the behest of the representatves of European governments which are themselves freely elected.

Big C now explicitly admits that his stance on this blog, e.g., the application of double standards to Israel that he does not apply to any other state (e.g., the Czech Republic, or, as SteveM pointed out, Hungary), falls foul of the official definition of anti-semitism now in use by the EU institutions whose specific purpose is to fight racism.

As you yourself said, BigC, when you find yourself in a hole, it's time to stop digging.

Big C, you make the American Jewish Committee into some sort of Zionist conspiracy to corrupt the EU. This is because you dislike and want to reject the definition of anti-semitism which is currently in effect among the EU bureaucracies that deal specifically with racism, because that definition fits your conduct.

I'm not the only person who has pointed out this aspect of your postings; look at what SteveM said to you on Friday 1-16 at 04:55..

I'll now let the readers judge how this has come out.

(I sent an earlier message to this effect and it hasn't appeared; this message is more or less a repeat of it; sorry.)

You see the American Jewish Committee as some sort of Zionist conspiracy to pervert the EU. That's the meaning of your statement on Sunday 1-14 at 14:06, which I quoted. You try to reject the definition of anti-semitic behavior currently used by the EU, since your behavior fits that definition. SteveM pointed in that direction too..

You can have the last word, Big C. I think I've more than made my case.

Big C, on Sunday 1-14 at 14:06:

"The (unratified) EU Working Definition of Anti-Semitism was written by an American Zionist.(see http://www.muzzlewatch.com/2007/04/05/american-jewish-committee-defines-anti-semitism-for-eu/ ).

If Big C doesn't want to call that "conspiracy theory", that's up to him. He cites a post that says american-jewish-committee but he says he doesn't know what the AJC is. Enough said.

I distorted nothing of Big C's remarks. Perhaps he doesn't realize what he is saying.

The definition of anti-semitism I referred to is the one officially in use today by the specific EU bureaucracies which are concerned with combatting racism. And Big C's remarks fit that definition. Big C can protest all he wants, but. that's the fact.

Another fact--that Big C sees this EU definition as the result of a conspiracy by the American Jewish Committee (Sunday 1:18 at 14:06)--only makes the situation worse. (Perhaps he doesn't know the AJC's long history of working for univeral human rights.)

The snide remarks about Beinin and "trayf" demonstrate what kind of web-site Big C prefers. There's a lot of "capitalist-conspiracy" material on that site as well.

I'll now let the readers decide who has the weight of evidence

Readers, the definition of "anti-semitism" which I have employed on this thread is the definition currently in use on the website of the official European Union Monitoring Center on Racism and Xenophobia, a branch of the official European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA). Simply google "EU defintiion of anti-semitism + EUMC". The definition was the first item that came up when I googled this.

By contrast, the site Big C uses on this is a left-wing conspiracy-oriented anti-semitic website (Note, on the article on Joel Beinin, this phrase: "Beinin was long ago declared declared trayf...")

Big C, you ask for proof of your fury and double standards:

On the Gaza Deja-vu thread on Open Democracy,
you equated Zionism with Nazism. This was last Sunday (1-11) at 22:39, along with a snide remark in German ("Ein Volk, ein Land) at 16.38. On THIS thread, on Wednesday 1-14, at 19:52, you also equated Israel with the Hamas Sharia-totalitarian fantasy, and the terms you applied to it were racist, exclusivist and an international crime. You don't apply the same fury to, say, the Czech Republic.

You asked for proof, Big C, of your fury and double standards. There it is.

1. Big C, I have provided cogent reasons and evidence for everything I have said. That includes pointing out to you the EU definition of anti-semitism.

2. I'm certainly glad to hear that some of your best friends are Jews.

3. I don't think you have refuted any of my other points; in fact, I don't think you have tried to engage them.

4. Calling one state--and one state alone--exclusivist, racist and criminal in essence, or equating it with Hamas' Sharia totalitarianism Caliphate fantasy: well, that sounds like "fury" to me. For instance, it's clear you don't equate the Czech Republic, with its nationality-grouping in its national title and its ban on expelled German immigrants, with a Sharia totalitarian Caliphate, and it is worthwhile to point out the double standard (Refer to the EU definition of anti-semitism again.)

4. I'll let the readers here judge who has the better and more rational arguments.

Big C wanted me to stop the debate with him, and let us both be quiet, and so I did. But he can't stop debating, himself. So...

Big C, I simply don't detect in your "deploring" of Czech nationalism (which includes by the way forbidding Germans expelled in 1945 ever to try to re-imigrate) the same FURY that you display towards Jews. "Deploring" is not the same as never tiring of calling a state racist, exclusivist, imperialist, and criminal in essance. There's, um, a difference in your tone.

So you are applying double standards to Jews and only Jews, and thus you are applying a standard of conduct to Israel which you don't apply to any other state, and thus you are--by the EU definition--simply an anti-semitic propagandist, as SteveM has deduced.

As for "demonization", it doesn't take much in terms of people who murder peaceful Olympic athletes (remember that one?), intentionally launch attacks on schoolchildren (the Maalot Massacre), attack busses filled with women and children (Second Intifada), or university dining halls (ditto), or peaceful old people at a Passover celebration (ditto), or proclaim in their Charter that all Jews must be killed. No, sir--it doesn't take much.

As for "delegitimation", the Palestinians were offered 98% of the West Bank and Gaza + terrirotial adjustments in 2000/2001 for their own legal and recognized state. They turned it down. President Clinton blamed Arafat. Arafat later blamed himself.

Now if you mean by "delegitimation" Jewish resistance to becoming helpless dhimmis in a Muslim ruled state--well, the Israelis are certainly "guilty" of that. And if you mean by "delegitimation" the fact that the Israelis themselves don't want to conquered by and ruled by religious fanatics (Hamas) or corrupt ideologues (the PA) after the latter have been offered their own independent state and their leader blames himself for having turned the offer down--then, yes: what planet are you living on, Big C?

As for "double standards", a Palestinian poet said it best: the Palestinians are unlucky in having Jews as the enemy because they are militarily powerful, but lucky in having Jews as the enemy because if it were anyone else, no one anywhere (and especially not in Europe) would care what was happening to the Palestinians; as it is, though (he says), when Jews are involved, it's the Jews who are the topic. This fits you like a glove, Big C.

The proof is in your ludicrous equating of Israel with the Hamas Caliphate, as both I and SteveM have now pointed out to you.

"Overwhelming force must not become the new normality of the middle east."

-- Since when was the settlement of disputes by overwhelming force NOT the normality of the Middle East?

How can it be "new" if it's always been that way?

Israel, like most states at all periods (including our own), was established precisely by war and "overwhelming force". It's rather exceptional for states to be established or maintained any other way.

The Arabs tried to stop the establishment of Israel by force that they thought was overwhelming but turned out to be humiliatingly underwhelming.

Or to use the demotic, they got their tuchis kicked good and hard.

And since then the Arabs in general and the Palestinians in particular have been trying to muster "overwhelming force" to destroy Israel and kill its people.

If they don't want overwhelming force to be the new/old/whatever normality of the Middle East, all they have to do is accept that they lost, as the Germans did at about the same time.

Or for that matter, as my Highland ancestors did after 1745.

And ultimately if they don't... well, as an Israeli of my acquaintance once said with respect to nuclear weapons: "This time, if we go, -everybody- goes."

BigC: The conflict in the 6 counties of Northern Ireland did not end in the maintenance of the status quo.

-- yes it did. The area is still part of the UK.

The IRA stated that their war aims were to end partition, force the British to withdraw, and compell the unification of Ulster with the Irish Republic by force of arms.

Northern Ireland is still a part of the United Kingdom, and will remain so as long as the people of the area wish it to be. Partition has been maintained.

All else is minor details. The IRA did not take up arms to remedy discrimination against Catholics. That was done by the peaceful civil rights movement, and was largely accomplished before the Troubles began.

The IRA has laid down its arms (and in fact disarmed and effectively disbanded) without getting what they said they wanted when they began the war.

The British state got what -it- said it wanted, which was to maintain the Union as long as the people of Northern Ireland wanted it.

Hence, the IRA lost and the British (and the Ulster Unionists) won, since "victory in war" means precisely "accomplishing your war aims".

QED.

BigC: The fact that countries have in the past based their nationality on ethnicity or confessional choice does not mean that we have to encourage it now.

-- well, actually, yes it does, because that's what people want, generally speaking.

It's called "national self-determination".

A nation-state is simply an ethnic group with a flag and an army.

I'll take your position seriously when you get seriously and continuously indignant about the Czech Republic being a Czech national state or Germany being a German national state -- and one, I might add, with far more restrictive citizenship laws than Israel.

Until then, it looks strongly like mere anti-semitic racism(*) on your part. And no, criticism of Israeli actions is not necessarily anti-semitism... although it is more often than not, as these pages bear witness.

Attempts to delegitimize Israel and Jewish statehood -are- anti-semitism and racism, pure and simple.

As Sharansky pointed out, you can tell when someone's criticism of Israel is racist by applying the "three D's": demonization, delegitimization, and double standards." The slightest hint of these, and it's obvious what the real motivation is. Good old-fashioned Jew-hate.

"And we should certainly not be taking sides with a nation which bases it's citizenship on this."

-- Israeli citizenship is not restricted to Jews. The Arab national minority in Israel has citizenship and can vote and sit in the Knesset, provided they abide by the law.

(Which of course forbids advocating violent overthrow of the State or similar actions, the reasons for which the Kach party was outlawed.)

I take sides with Israel for many reasons; the most obvious of which is that its neighbors refuse to accept it and live in peace with it.

All they have to do is stop attacking. Accept the results of the 1947-48 war, and suck it up.

"Both Zionism and the Islamic Caliphate favoured by Hamas are examples of the latter."

-- I can only say: "What planet are you living on, and how many moons does it have?"

At present, mainstream Zionism threatens nobody who doesn't attack it. Hamas and its equivalents such as al Qaeda, to the best of their feeble ability, threaten -everybody-. They're murderous lunatics and the enemies-general of human kind.

(*) and please, everyone spare us the idiotic "Arabs are Semites too" meme. Anti-Semitism is a 19th-century European term and applies specifically to prejudice against -Jews-.

1.

It's more than "atavism" re Israel, Big C. You're calling Israel racist, exclusivist, religiously totalitarian and indeed *criminal in essence*--that's your accusation. I quote you:

"We can move forward to a situation where nations are multi-ethnic and multi-confessional and where discrimination on grounds of race or religion becomes an international crime. [NB: AN INTERNATIONAL CRIME] Or we can move backwards towards medieval conventions where racism and religious intolerance remain as part of statehood itself."

2.

And then, Big C, you ludicrously *equate* Zionism with Hamas' desire for a totalitarian (sharia-ruled) global Caliphate. I quote you again:

"Both Zionism and the Islamic Caliphate favoured by Hamas are examples of the latter."

3.

SO, Big C: do you include France, Germany, Ireland, Poland and the Czech Republic in your condemnation here? Yes or no? (You've avoided that question so far.) Or is it only Israel that is an international crime in essence because of nationalism according to you? And if the latter is the case, then this application of one standard to Israel and not to any other state fits the definition of anti-semitism as formulated by the EU.

4. And, Big C, I was correct to say, here and elsewhere, that you favor the destruction of Israel per se (and why not, if it is racist, exclusivist, and criminal in essence?). I quote you:

" I believe that all Palestinians (Jewish, Islamic or Christian) should decide what sort of state (or states) should exist in Palestine."

This is a big slick in expression, but what this phraseology comes down to is a "decision" (I guess by majority vote) in which all "Palestinians" would vote together, and the result is obvious: a unitary state in which Jews would be a minority. A minority of defenseless dhimmis ruled by Muslims. You know it, Big C.

I didn't put words in your mouth, Big C. Rather, I correctly deduced your position.

5.

And why do I say "defenseless dhimmis"? I ask again: what is the percentage of Arabs in Israel, compared to 15 years ago? And comparatively: what is the percentage of Jews or CHRISTIANS in the PA and Gaza, compared to 15 years ago? Answers please. I believe you KNOW the answers here, Big C. And what the implications are.

Big C once claimed on another thread I had no right to say that he was against the existence of Israel. it is now clear that I was right, and he is.

I wonder if he is also, on the same grounds he has expressed, against the existence of France, Ireland, Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic. Or do his standards only apply to Israel--or, bluntly, Jews? Answers, please.

In any case, Big C, you equate Israel and Hamas as equally religiously totalitarian and exclusionary (hence Zionism = the Islamic Caliphate). Really? Question: what percentage of the Israeli population is Arab? Muslim? Christian? Comparative question: what percentage of the population in the PA or Gaza is Jewish? OR, for that matter, CHRISTIAN?

Answers, please.

Don't be harrassed or afraid of the 'negative' comments! Thank God, you do not live in America. If you were living there these comments would have been hate mails. That's how the Zionists in America, Jews and Christian Zionists SILENCE TRUTH followed by ...... Keep on speaking and writing the TRUTH! The day is not far away when 'single nationality/ID Americans will finally wake up and discover the TRUTH about WHO runs the political circus in the US.

Dear Mary

I appreciate your concern for the suffering of the people of Gaza, but note an ill considered note of causality in the above concerning the origins of this present slaughter:

"...Thus it was particularly distressing to see Hamas refuse to extend the cease-fire which expired on 19 December and to watch as Israel launched an all out war which is now compounding the suffering that already existed. "

As Robert Burns once put it: ‘..facts are chiels that winna ding, An downa be disputed’. i.e:‘...facts are fellows that will not be overturned and cannot be disputed’.

So let us then look at facts. As the respected Israeli historian Avi Shlaim points out "It was not Hamas but the IDF that broke the ceasefire. It did so by a raid into Gaza on 4 November that killed six Hamas men."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/07/gaza-israel-palestine

Furthermore: "... The readiness of Hamas to return to the ceasefire conditionally in mid-December was confirmed by Dr. Robert Pastor, a professor at American University and senior adviser to the Carter Centre, who met with Khaled Meshal, chairman of the Hamas political bureau in Damascus on Dec. 14, along with former President Jimmy Carter. Pastor told IPS that Meshal indicated Hamas was willing to go back to the ceasefire that had been in effect up to early November "if there was a sign that Israel would lift the siege on Gaza".

Pastor said he passed Meshal's statement on to a "senior official" in the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) the day after the meeting with Meshal. According to Pastor, the Israeli official said he would get back to him, but did not."

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=45350

And, as the following Huffington Post article points out, it is almost always Israel that breaks any truce, as it indeed did in this case.:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nancy-kanwisher/reigniting-violence-how-d_b_155611.html

So the question then is, not who broke the truce, but why did Israel break this truce?

It did so because it does not intend to ever accept a neighbouring Palestinian state.

And it will not do so untill it is made to do so.

I think Ms. Robinson's comment, which focuses narrowly on the welfare of civilians from one side of the conflict and not on the conflict's political sources, is naive. But at least when she looks at the problem she sees people.

rosross and Jim Read see neither Israel nor the Jews. They invite us to see one side through the lens of hate propaganda rather than as human beings. They want to bring the reader to the emotional point that when a Jewish Israeli dies or is hurt, it makes no impact. Their object, in fact, is to foster hatred, because it advances their political agenda.

In fact, there is a Jewish people, made up of human beings who are Jews, which refused to die even though forcibly expelled from its land thousands of years ago. They, too, have the right to self-determination in their homeland. Many find these facts inconvenient and would like rage and hate to obscure them. Those who submit to this temptation are abusing something human within themselves, just as happened in Europe 70 years ago.

Hamas is an organization dedicated to fostering this hatred and pursuing it to the point of physically eliminating the Jews in their homeland. Nobody is required to submit to that. One thing that escapes most of the commentators here is that this point of view has become political consensus in Palestinian society. It's because he expresses different sentiments that Abbas has no support within his own society.

At great domestic cost Israel left Gaza three years ago and hesitated to send military force there despite provocations that not one state in the region, in Europe or in North America would tolerate without trying to put an end to them. Self defense is justified. This war is taking place because of the political agenda of the Hamas, and Israel has a right to thwart that agenda. I suspect that "proportionality" as Mary Robinson understands it amounts to "ineffectiveness." While Israel cannot (and is not) indifferent to civilian casualties, it's not required to be bound by Robinson's notions of proportionality.

detereodou makes sense; The whole concept of the ethnic or religious state is a mistake. Balfour was wrong - Israel should not exist AS A JEWISH STATE. It will eventually have to join the other states of the region as a SECULAR organisation, accepting ALL races and creeds into its orbit.
So, of course will the Arabs.

I am afraid this well-meant and deeply felt piece amounts to little more than a groan of pain which gets us nowhere. The demand for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza is frankly naive: a cease-fire now, on its own, will achieve nothing (even if the Israelis and Hamas were to agree to it) except the certainty of a repetition in a few weeks' or months' time. The whole thing will come round again unless this opportunity is taken to install some form of international monitoring of the cease-fire, and of the entry points into Gaza from Egypt as well as from Israel to guard against renewed smuggling of illegal arms into Gaza (why doesn't Mrs Robinson mention this important element in the problem?). It's essential to give Hamas a motive for ending its rocket attacks on Israel (i.e. the internationally guaranteed opening of the crossing-points into and out of Gaza on both the Egyptian and the Israeli borders) and a motive for Israel to end its incursion into Gaza and withdraw its forces (i.e. an internationally guaranteed end to Hamas's rocket attacks).

Mrs Robinson's article is really far too one-sided to have any practical effect. Why does she berate Israel but not Egypt for preventing relief supplies from being imported into Gaza? Why does she mention the ending of Hamas rocket attacks only in an aside? Why does she describe Israel's military action against Hamas as 'aggression' when it clearly falls within the UN Charter's definition (Art. 51) of self-defence? Where is her condemnation of Hamas's rocket attacks, actually aimed at innocent civilians and without any vestige of military or other justification, as 'aggression'? Where are her proposals for practical action on the ground to deal with any of these issues, which if not resolved will inevitably lead to yet more rounds of fighting, killing and destruction? Where is her advice to the Security Council to do more than sit there wringing its collective hands and demanding an immediate cease-fire without any of the additional measures needed to make it stick? Why does she think that either Israel or Hamas will give up their current military activities before either has achieved any of its goals?

It's rather sad that such a talented, attractive and experienced lady, who has been so active in actually visiting the area to see its problems for herself (even though after having visited she seems to think that Gaza was still 'occupied' by Israel last November when she was last there), should have so little to say about the crisis that is of any practical use.

Brian
http://www.barder.com/ephems/

As for "colonization and dispossession", note that in 1947 the UN proposed a division of the Palestine Mandate.

The Yishuv (the Jews of the area) accepted the proposal.

The Arabs rejected it and launched a military attack avowedly and openly aimed at massacre and expulsion of the Jewish community.

Which is precisely what happened in every area inhabited by Jews which the Arab armies overran. Nor was there anything new about this; Google "Hebron Massacre 1929".

When you set out on a campaign of ethnic cleansing and massacre, you forfeit the right to complain if you get fed your own medicine when you lose.

Just as millions of German civilians were ethnically cleansed from areas of Eastern Europe where their ancestors had always lived in 1945-50, so hundreds of thousands of Arabs were driven out during the fighting in the course of the Israeli War of Independence.

And like the Germans, they had nobody but themselves to blame if they were regarded as an intolerable threat. This was because they -actually were- an intolerable threat to Jewish survival.

Is Germany entitled to rain missiles down on Poland and the Czech Republic? Send suicide bombers to blow people up in Warsaw and Prague and Kalingrad?

Would they be entitled to drive out the Russian and Polish and Czech inhabitants of East Prussia and Silesia and the Sudetenland who have replaced the Germans who were driven out with fire and massacre?

Yes or no?

The reason there's no peace between Palestinian Arabs and Israelis is quite simple -- the Arabs won't accept the legitimacy of Jewish statehood and the Jews won't consent to their own destruction.

Hamas is quite open about this refusal, and its genocidal intentions.

As the saying goes, if the Arabs laid down their arms, there would be no war; if the Israelis laid down their arms, there would be no Israel.

When they accept Israel -- which is to say, accept as final and legitimate all the results of the 1947-48 war, as the German people have accepted the results of the war of 1939-45 -- there will be peace. Other issues will then become negotiable. Until then, war, and it's war of their own chosing.

What's needed isn't ceasefires; ceasefires don't end wars, they prolong them. Likewise, a "peace process" somehow never delivers peace.

The way to end a war is a "war process".

Wars end when they're fought through to a conclusion. The solution is to fight the war until it's over.

Jim  Reed

What can the world do with a gangster state which the U.N. created?

Ms. Robinson...I admire you and I respect your work. But if you really want to do something...get 100,000 women from Europe and North American to go to Israel and stop this madness.

Up until 1948 every single piece of land which had come to Jews in the Palestine Mandate had been bought from willing Arab sellers. In 1948 the UN recognized the State of Israel. The response was a genocidal attack by Arab states and the Palestinians. They lost. There are consequences to losing a war, as the Israelis know they will find out if they ever lose another one.

The Palestinians suffered a trauma in 1948--but many peoples have suffered similar or worse traumas and have not resorted to terrorism. Terrorism against Israeli civilians was and is a Palestinian cultural choice, with a genocidal meta-message, pursued from the first, from the 1950s, and backed by savage anti-semitic propaganda (read the Hamas Charter). It is not a response after long-standing patience. On this, read Nonie Darwish, whose father, an Egyptian colonel, organized the first Palestinian terrorists, from Gaza. (She says the savage anti-semitic propaganda was already being taught to school-children when she went to school in Gaza in the 1950s).

To repeat: The Palestinians suffered a trauma in 1948--but many peoples have suffered similar or worse traumas and have not resorted to terrorism, and what happened to the Palestinians is something that happened to many groups during the chaotic years after WWII. Terrorism is not, however, a "natural" response to such traumas. Proof of this:

12 million Germans were expelled from eastern Europe in 1945, 1 million died, a million women were raped, they spent years in "Displaced Persons camps", and by LAW they cannot return to, e.g., Poland or the Czech Republic, or Romania. Yet you do not see Germans blowing up supermarkets in Danzig.
850,000 Jews were expelled from Muslim lands in the period 1948-1960 in a classic case of ethnic and religious cleansing of peaceful civilians; this is 100,000 more victims than Palestinians in 1948 (who had started a war). Every single one of these Jews arrived in the U.S., Britain or Israel penniless. Some Muslim is enjoying their property as we speak, but this is not an issue at the UN. Yet you don't see Jews blowing up schools in Tunis.
300,000 Greeks were expelled from Egypt in the mid-1950s in a classic case of ethnic and religious cleansing of peaceful citizens by the Nasser government. The refugees arrived in Greece penniless, and some Muslim is enjoying their property as we speak, but this is not an issue at the UN, but you don't see Greeks blowing up busses in Alexandria.
50,000 more Greeks were expelled from northern Turkey in the mid-1950s in a classic case of ethnic and religious cleansing of peaceful citizens. They all arrived in Greece penniless, and some Muslim Turk is enjoying their property as we speak, but this is not an issue at the UN. But you don't see these Greeks blowing up university dining halls in Trebizond.
The Israelis have made many mistakes, especially (in my view) allowing settlers onto the West Bank. But they made a good-faith offer at Camp David and Taba in 2000/2001 for a two state solution, President Clinton blames Arafat and the Palestinians (not the Israelis) for the failure of talks (he says Arafat's only contribution was to deny the historicity of the Second Temple!), and Arafat himself, in an interview in 2002, blamed himself for not taking the deal. The fault for not coming to a negotiated solution in 2000/2001--according to both Clinton and Arafat--lies with the Palestinians.
Most of the issue between Israel and the Palestinians is a clash of nationalisms. Clashes of nationalisms can be resolved by negotiation, though it is difficult.
But this is different from Hamas, for whom Israel is a *theological* threat. That is, the existence of israel is a stain on Allah, on the honor of Allah, who promised rule over the Middle East (actually, rule over the entire world) to Muslims because they worship Him correctly.
In Hamas' view, every minute that Israel exists is thus an insult to Allah. There can be no negotiation or argument with the celestial. Read the Hamas Charter.
In fact, Hamas isn't interested in Palestine per se. HAMAS is an acronym in for "Islamic Resistance Movement"-- the name "Palestine" doesn't occur, and it is the only significant party among the Palestinians where that is so. That is because the goal of Hamas isn't Palestine but global and messianic, the establishment of a proper Islamic empire from Indonesia to Spain. To Hamas ideologues such as the late Sheikh Ahmad Yassin the ideological leader of Hamas, love of Palestine as a nation is in fact a form of "sherk"--that is to say, false worship or idolatry. Hamas sees Palestinian *nationalists* such as Abu Mazen as traitors to Islam. So, for Hamas, hatred of Israel for being a Jewish state in the Muslim world is not nationalist but theological--Israel and its existence (and its success) is a violation of the honor of Allah who decreed that Muslims should be in control in the Middle East. That is why Israel must be wiped out. Again, read the Hamas Charter.
There is not the slightest reason to believe that if Hamas desisted from and abandoned the rocket attacks, Israel would not immediately stop its own military response, nor would the Israelis do anything other than encourage Gaza to flourish. (It would be in Israel's interest--as one can see with the economic success of the West Bank in the past two years.) But Hamas does not want Gaza to flourish because that might very well lead to the Palestinian people abandoning Hamas and its devotion to the total destruction of Israel. Hamas therefore immiserates its own people and deliberately provokes Israel in a manner that give the Israelis no alternative--after 8 years of rockets-- but a military response.
Civilian casualties are terrible, and every single one of them is to be mourned.
But when Hamas militants launch thousands of rocket attacks intentionally from within civilian Palestinian areas, using civilians as human shields from which they launch attacks against Israeli civilians (and they BOAST of this, by the way), then they are themselves responsible--and no one else is--for the civilian deaths caused by Israeli counterfire.

.

There is much here which makes sense but nothing can be sensibly made of the situation until the realities are acknowledged.

This situation exists because Israel was established by the dispossession of Palestinians and the colonisation of their land. It has been exacerbated because for nearly half a century Israel has maintained a vicious and murderous occupation and has continued to colonise. In addition, Israel has refused to give the Palestinians either citizenship or the freedom of their own State.

Israel is the coloniser and occupier and aggressor.

Palestinians are the colonised, occupied and victimised.

These are the simple facts which make what Hamas is or isn't irrelevant. All responsibility rests with Israel as the occupier and as the party with all of the military power.

Saying Israelis are victims and Palestinians the aggressors because of some of the more extreme view which Hamas has is ridiculous. That's like saying the French had no right to hate the Germans or to resist them. Or that the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto and the Russians in Stalingrad were the aggressors and the equals of the Germans who were trying to kill them in order to maintain occupation.

The world is insane to cast the victimised as the aggressor and the aggressor as the victim.

All deaths are the responsibility of Israel because Israel is responsible for the core wrongs: colonisation and occupation.

How many people here would have said the Americans Indians were the dangerous aggressors and the colonising English the helpless victims? No-one. Yet that is what they say about Palestinians, the indigenous peoples dispossessed by Israel.

The Arab world has been attacking Jews long before the creation of Israel. Regardless of the land Israel cedes, or the compensation Israel pays, the Arabs will continue attacking. Read more history, especially regarding the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Hussani.

What about the 650,000 Jews expelled from Arab lands during the 1950's. Israel absorbed most of these refugees. Why won't the Arab world absorb their brethren into their vast lands? They want the violence to continue and hope for the ultimate annihilation of Israel.

You are also missing the bigger picture-Iran probably told Hamas not to continue the cease fire, continue the rocket fire, in order to divert attention from Iran's nuclear program.

To Phillistine ... you are so ignorant. In Ireland we were subjected to the same crap as the Palestinians for more than SEVEN HUNDRED YEARS. How can you insult Ms Robinson with your inane and non factual comments. Frankly the reason Israel withdrew the final 8000 citizens was so they could turn Gaza into a GHETTO. Jimmy Carter has it right. It simply made it possible to bomb the shit out of innocent civilians. Hamas is connected to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt ... that is why Mubarak will not come to their rescue, something of a Quisling.

I cannot support a moral equivalency type of argument for Israel and the Palestinians-- each side has its wrongs and its rights. First of all, HAMAS is not Palestinian. It is a fanatical branch of the Muslim Brotherhood supported by Khomeini's Iran decades ago, though Sunni instead of Shia; its original goal was to force the normally secular (even Christian) Palestinians to submit to their brand of Sunni Islam through Jihad, NOT to liberation of Palestine. The latter was a means, not an end. The only way HAMAS became a government was through an election forced on the Palestinians by GW Bush so he could claim that he promoted "democracy" (sic) in the Middle East. But what Israel, on the other hand, is doing in Gaza is what it had been trying to do to create "Greater Israel" since 1947. Ben Gurion realized that no peace is possible unless people learn to stand on each other’s heads. So he went along with the Jewish Agency insistence that "only Jewish hands can touch Jewish land"-- a thesis to which few of the original Zionists adhered. It was rich Jews in Europe-- Jews that only visited but never lived in Palestine-- that forced that on the Jews living there. That is why the "Jews only" Zionist objective of the Jewish Agency located abroad was always to push the Palestinian Arabs out with a violent "iron wall"-- just as proposed by Jabotinsky, the founder of the Zionist lebensraum through force thesis based on terrorism against British and Arab residents of Palestine; today he is hailed as the Founding Father (instead of Ben Gurion) by Likud and much of Kadima Parties. The Israeli insistence on the divine legitimacy of its lebensraum thesis-- "God gave us this land" (sic)-- is not a matter of ever expanding settlement to make room for the many Diaspora Jews coming to Israel as refugees (olims) to settle there for, in fact, there have been  few olims making the great alyiah (eg. migration)  to live on land seized by force from the Palestinians and built up as "settlements" at US Taxpayer's expense. Most Jews prefer living where they are in the Diaspora and deem Israel a nice place to visit but they wouldn't want to live there. Many Diaspora Jews retired in Israel only to leave once the Israeli tax system ate up their pensions. The real gambit was given away by Sharon in 2002 when he said that any Diaspora Jew that doesn't move to Israel by 2020 "will be damned because he will lose his Jewish soul." Yes, ALL Jews are expected to move to Israel, whether they like it or not, because unless Israel grows in population it will wither away, according to their thesis. It is understandable, therefore, why, according to the US DeptState, 78% of the settlement housing is empty; the expected olims refused to come and many of Israel's youths have had enough; as soon as they finish school, they take jobs in the West in a reverse aliyah. But the Israeli Gov. keeps pushing the borders through violence, crushing all Palestinians that will not get out of the way. That's why to date Israel has not proposed final borders.  After Muslim Brotherhood adherents assassinated Egyptian President Sadat, Israel gave them sanctuary in Gaza in order to undermine the PLO. Israel feared that the world was beginning to see the PLO as the legitimate representative of Palestinians and that this would lead to a two-states solution. Iran supported HAMAS as much as Israel had. Israel lost control of HAMAS because of its land grab obsession in the occupied territories it seized in the 1967 War. The Palestinians voted for HAMAS, desperate for someone who will stand up to Israel after years of Israel's scorched earth "collective punishment" of the Palestinians packed like sardines in Gaza. So now, Israel fears HAMAS for the same reason it feared the PLO: because Israel's leaders expect that the West and Obama might recognize it as a legitimate political force,  this at the expense of the Israeli lebensraum thesis of ever expanding "Greater Israel," settled by expansionist "facts on the ground" instead of Israel's non-existing olims. Israel doesn't worry about HAMAS not accepting the existence of Israel, but that HAMAS will give Palestinians the determination not to flee the occupied territories needed for the non-existent "Great Aliyah" of Diaspora Jews....Jews that, it hopes, will be forced to come to Israel as a result of anti-Semitic waves in the West.  So what looks like reactive use of massive airpower and illegal WMDs thrown at HAMAS to stop rockets aimed at Israel, is really  anti-personnel ordnance indiscriminately thrown at the Gaza Palestinians in order to get them to leave or to die; The current government of Israel is trying to take back the land Sharon erroneously gave up. The current assault is pure extermination disguised as "collective punishment" of the Gazans for the HAMAS rockets fired into Israel. In fact, once again, it is a page borrowed from the Nazi Germans; copying the Warsaw Ghetto, where Germans surrounded and strangled Polish Jews and when some Jews resisted, the Nazis used that as an excuse to level the area. Its sole purpose-- as was the case in other devastations of Palestinian towns-- is to get the Palestinians cleaned out-- it is ethnic cleansing, NOT self defense. As in Lebanon in 1982 and 2006-- a nation Israel still hopes to dominate, as realized by President Reagan's personal Mideast Emissary, Amb. Habib-- Israel always goes after the civilians FIRST, not the "terrorists." Israel wants lebensraum and it can only have it by exterminating the inhabitants.   The Zionist followers of Jabotinsky's "iron wall" strategy to crush the Arabs living on the "Jewish land" that "God gave to His people" can rightly be called "Zionazis"-- as did many Israeli leaders-- given their lebensraum through ethnic cleansing policy. During the 1930s these followers of Jabotinsky admired Hitler, despite his anti-Semitism. Their youth group, Batar, had its uniforms designed and sewn by the Nazis. The Zionists exploited but did not give priority to the Holocaust. That is because Zionism's greatest problem was always that the Jews didn't want to move to the so-called Jewish land given them "by God."  And so,  though Livini knew well that forcing on the West its hasbarah through censorship of news abroad would feed anti-Semitism, she didn't care because that would force them into the Great Aliyah" by 2020. The Right Wing Greater Israel lebensraum theory is very much like Hitler's...as is their "final solution" for those Palestinians who refuse to flee their homes and give up their lands. It's a one..two punches: first you massacre the Palestinians and when that creates anti-Semitism abroad, you get the Jews to make the Great Aliyah, motivated by fear. Normally Livni would find  Zionazi behavior as repugnant as does any other Jew. But she is also an opportunist; since the rabbis declared that no woman can be Prime Minister, she wants to prove that she is as tough as any of the Zionazi men who will run against her by massacring innocent Gazan civilians on excuse that she is assassinating HAMAS. This is Lebanon all over again; they tried to massacre as many Lebanese as possible from the air before going after Hezbollah, hoping Lebanese flee and Israel can take the land, adding it to Greater Israel. As in Lebanon, in Gaza, Livni will see that the Israeli will for battle is very sensitive to body count. So when the Israeli reservist soldiers are sent to climb over the bodies of the innocent Palestinian civilians previously killed from the air, many will refuse to fight on moral grounds while others will refuse because of the high risk to their lives from hateful and desperate Palestinians. Most Israelis are not Zionazis and, as always before, they can not tolerate too much massacre, neither of Arabs nor Israeli, before they react in revulsion. Consequently, every epoch of Zionazi tactics has been followed by a post-Zionist period when Israelis and Diaspora Jews demand peace at the price of land; especially Diaspora Jews will not sacrifice their integration and acceptance in the West for the Zionazi lebensraum thesis. HAMAS knows that; it also knows that its adherents are willing to die for revenge in Jihad. So HAMAS encourages Israeli massacre of Palestinians, expecting the survivors will join HAMAS, seeking revenge. In the end, they know, Israel will be morally weakened and will be forced to accept peace terms under pressure of a Jewish post-Zionist tsunami that includes the Israeli public.  By killing Arabs indiscriminately in Gaza now, Israel is committing suicide at the very time when it stands to become the leader of the Middle East. If Iran gets a puny atomic bomb, all Sunni Arab states will be forced to seek deterrent coverage under Israel's nuclear umbrella. At the same time, the current one crop (oil) banana republic-type Arab regimes are disintegrating. The only way out for the Arabs will be to, again, turn to Israel for technical guidance to modernization and to educate their youths. So there is an alternative to the current precarious status of Israel: (a) a 60 years old fetus on an engorged American $$placenta, (b) not accepted by its neighbors, (c) with an economy that is in shambles because when an Israeli shaves in the morning he has no idea whether he will put on a military uniform of work clothes. Worst still, America is broke and much of the pro-Zionist "hasbarah" agitprop machinery was robbed of its assets by shyster Bernard Madoff. The Israeli sheckle is worthless unless backed by the dollar-- a debt Congress dutifully forgives every year. Israel has only two options:(a) the Zionazi thesis of lebensraum and trying to create so much anti-Semitism abroad so that Diaspora Jews will be forced to move to the lands cleared of indigenous Palestinians; or (b) work out a two states-one economy relationship with the Palestinians and use them as intermediaries to integrate Israel into the Middle East as nuclear protector of its neighbors, becoming their leader in guiding them out of their oil banana republic status.  Sharon's Likud Party strategy of exterminating Palestinians and creating anti-Semitism in the West so Diaspora Jews will be forced to flee to Israel is a repeat of the Zionist strategy before the start of World War II. Now neocons call it "World War IV" against Islam, a prescription for catastrophe befalling, not only the Arabs, but also the Diaspora Jews, one of the central pillars of Western Culture. But this Zionazi "World War IV" they call for need not be. Israeli-Arab unity is inevitable given the complimentarity of one to the other in the global economy.  Israel is the only nation that can modernize the Arabs because it is more trusted than is the West.  Very many of those people Mohammed converted to Islam were Jews and many of the Jews who were driven to Israel by the WW II Holocaust were originally South Eastern Europeans converted to Judaism, not "lost tribes" who originally came from mythical Israel. Therefore, the "land given by God" to the returning "lost tribes" is nonsense. The racist theory of the Zionazis is as absurd as that of the Nazis. The only solution is for Israel to eventually integrate with its neighbors and then, as originally hoped by some of the Founding Fathers of Zionism, "become a light onto the [Arab] nations, guiding them into modernity, prosperity and security under its nuclear, high tech, and educational umbrella. For that to happen, Israel must abandon its current Zionazi lebensraum thesis. A broke America is shifting its forces from the Middle East to South Asia and can no longer finance the Zionazi "Ethnic Cleansing" of the Palestinians. HAMAS is as foreign to the Palestinians as Zionism, so it will be abandoned as soon as the Palestinians no longer feel that they are on the receiving end of extermination. HAMAS only managed to exploit the desperation of the Palestinians facing extermination by the Zionazis. This need not be. Israel can still win over the Palestinians and use them as good-will ambassadors to the Arabs. Only then will Israel lead a revolution in the Arab World, democratizing and modernizing it through support and guidance. As Bush showed through his incompetence and criminal warfare: DEMOCRACY DOES NOT COME OUT OF THE BARREL OF A GUN! Daniel E. Teodoru

Watching the invasion of Gaza progress is incredibly frightening. And realizing that the IDF forces are only creating another generation of terrorists is even more so. Yes, Israel has been goaded into doing this, but their actions only add to the problem.
Everyone has an idea of what would be right but the truth is, only when the people of Gaza have enough hope for their future that they will take on the extremists in their midst will there be any chance at peace. And every bomb makes that less likely. Israel must cede control of this area to NATO forces or, if that is not possible, take control themselves and begin to supply humanitarian aid. If neither of these is amenable to them, perhaps it is time to peg aid dollars to movements towards peace.

Dear Mary
Your piece is timely and balanced. Your statement that the International Committee of the Red Cross has accusing Israel of delaying ambulance access to Gaza to assist the wounded is particularly troubling. We should all care.

I can't fathom why Zoolazoom, who shares your concerns, quibbles that this present attack by Israel is not really 'a new escalation'. It's sad to hear people quibble over tiny details when they agree with the gist of your piece. Some quibble over whether exactly six million Jews were killed by the Nazis, and in so doing seem to suggest that there is falsehood somewhere in the reporting.

I really disrespect this kind of attack.

I wish you well. Keep up the good fight.

My wish is that both the Israelis and the Palestinian people can live in peace and security.

I agree with Zoolazoom, but I take it one step further.

It is deeply hypocritical to censure Israel in the UN. They are only doing what they see others doing. They see what the Americans did in Yugoslavia, in Serbia, in Iraq (twice) in Afghanistan. They see what the Russians did in Chechenya, in Georgia.

The rights and wrongs of these situations are irrelevant. We stupid and ignorant sheep will never know the truth, and wouldn't know what to do with it if we did. Today the Serbs are shot, killed, cut off from the world, the water poisoned with depleted uranium. One day it will be the Kosovars turn too. The only constant is that the powerful can and must do whatever they want, and the weak must pay with their lives. They deserve it, precisely because they are weak. They deserve to have their children maimed and mangled, theyd deserve to die from starvation and thirst and lack of medicines.

Ms, Robinson you probably believe I am a troll, looking to start a fight, or being sarcastic and trying to make my point through irony. The truth is I am being deadly serious. People like you must learn to give up. The Palestinians and all others like them are doomed. Just hope and pray that you won't live to see your own people, your own family and country, destroyed in this way. That is all any of us can hope for, even if in the long run it is a vain hope.

Humankind is disgusting, and we will always behave as such. You should spend your time enjoying the life you have been blessed with. Sleep in a safe bed, go to your safe work, watch your children grow up, ahve children of their own, do all the things my people dream of and will never have. Don't go to Ghaza.

I admire your intentions, but I think your hope is misplaced.

Dear Mary,

I do share your concerns regarding the Humanitarian situation in Gaza and the terrible sights that we are witness to.

However, it seems that your assertion that this is a 'great new escalation' and 'contravenes international legal norms' is, in my view, not founded.

Recent confrontations that come to mind as South Ossetia, where Georgia lost 1100 civilians and 144 military personal, South Ossetia 300-1500 civilians.

In Kosovo War Nato confirm to kill around 600 civilians. where Human Right Watch claim 1000-6000 civilians were killed in Nato Bombarding (+ 500 civilians killed in other actions by Nato)

Civilian casualties are always issue that need to be highlighted and focused upon. However, when ever it comes to Israel, the terminology changes. suddenly 20 combatant killed in Jenine are "Massacre". 300 civilians killed in Gaza are refereed to as 'Genocide' and 'Crimes against Humanity'. well, anybody wish to claim the same for Nato? surely civilians casualties should be avoided also by European forces and if failed to do so, should they be brought to justice?