Armies of Liberation

Comment by Walter E. Wallis

4/6/2005 @ 11:39 am

Why don’t we demand that the Palestinians guarantee the safety of any Jews who stay in the settlements? Arabs live at peace in Israel.

Comment by Jane

4/6/2005 @ 11:52 am

I think that was our first demand, the demand that had to be fufilled before any progress on the roadmap could be made. The Palestinian leadership is more in line with this demand than at any other time in recent history. The society is far far from perfect, but the roadmap calls for simultanous steps from both sides now in the quest for a lasting peace and a two state solution. I know any criticism of Isreal for any thing is unpopular, but this is like a slap in the face to Bush, the roadmap, and the Palestinians. For 3500 new houses? On land where there wasn’t Israeli houses before? now? The logic of two wrongs might make it less wrong if you squint, but it still doesn’t make it right.

I’m not really directing this all toward you Walter, I just have the feeling I’m going to get slammed on this post, so I’m slamming back first.

Comment by joe 90

4/6/2005 @ 1:45 pm

Hello Jane,
as usual, and I was just saying to someone else just recently, you give US Conservatism a good name. It’s infuriating!
In case some people haven’t realised, Palestine, or what is left of it (The West Bank and the Gaza Strip) are under illegal military occupation. Palestinians want the Israeli military to leave, and take whatever belongs to the Israeli Regime, with them.
That seems pretty reasonable to me, to International Law, the Geneva Conventions, the UN, world opinion etc
So what is the problem?

Comment by Stefania

4/6/2005 @ 3:02 pm

Jane, don’t be so optimistic …

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news.php3?id=79584

Comment by Jane

4/6/2005 @ 8:40 pm

Hi Joe, Good to hear from you. Weren’t the Iraqi elections stunning? Going to vote for Tony Blair now? Cheers, Jane

Stephania, thats a good link and I get your point that the Palestinians aren’t complying with the roadmap either. So then isn’t the answer to yell at both sides louder, instead of stopping to yell altogether? Its not just a cycle of violence. Its also a cycle of distrust, negativism, and pessismism. If we on the parameter can’t muster a little enthusiasm and optimism, how can we expect those who have been living it for years to make the leap?

Comment by joe 90

4/7/2005 @ 1:07 pm

Hello Jane,
I agree the Iraqi elections were a victory for those who want the US to leave Iraq.
Despite every effort to give their man , former CIA spy Allawi, every advantage ie ordering the foreign press out the country, blanket media coverage etc Iraqis emphatically rejected the US occupation.
It is a stunning success story for Iraqis who have wanted democracy for decades. Why does the US take the credit? The US did everything it could to prevent the election. It was only held to ‘appease’ native Iraqis such Ayatollah Sistani etc otherwise resistence to the unwanted US presence would have went from pretty bad to unmanageable. Don’t you think?

As for Occupied Palestine – it is the Israeli Regime and its US supporter who have to comply with international law and order. It is a funny world when those under illegal occupation have to show they want to live in peace with their oppressers.

Comment by joe 90

4/7/2005 @ 2:40 pm

Let me ask you some questions, my good American friends.
Put yourself in the shoes of the people of Occupied Palestine.
What if you had to give up 78% of your native America, and the remaining 22% was invaded and has been under military occupation for nearly 40 years. Your occupiers are bent on stealing what is useful to them ie land and water. What will be left you can have. Like it or lump it!
Now, if this was the situation in America right now, how would you feel? Americans being left to rot in unviable ‘reservations’.
All this, despite your best efforts to have international laws and statutes applied to your situation but your attempts at peaceful resolution are blocked by your oppressers.
Now how would you feel if America was treated in such a shabby illegal fashion?

All Palestinians want is justice. To live in peace with their neighbours. Nothing more.

Comment by Jane

4/7/2005 @ 4:32 pm

I’ll take that as a “no,” you’re not voting for Tony.

Comment by The Redhunter

4/7/2005 @ 4:50 pm

Here’s the thing about the settlements:

1) If the settlements are the problem now, what was the problem before 1967?
2) The reason Israel occupies the West Bank is because all of the Arab countries attacked them mercilessly before 1967. The Palestinians started their terrorism in the early 60s, forming the PLO in 1964. The pre-67 borders are largely indefensible.
3) The “Palestinians” (a term that did not come unto use until the late 50s or 60s) had a chance to live in peace in the 1940’s and blew it.
4) Jordan owned the “West Bank” until 1967. Why didn’t Jordan give the Palestinians a homeland when they could?
5) Israel should stop building settlements and should dismantle most of the ones they have built. They do not need all of them for security, which is the only reason I’d accept them.
6) If the Palestininas want my sympathy they need to A) stop the terrorism immediately period and B) Form a represenatative government.
In short, if the Palestinians want justice they need to start acting responsibly and not like a bunch of Yahoos.

Comment by joe90

4/7/2005 @ 5:02 pm

Oh pardon me Jane. I am too pre-occupied (pun intended) with my own shallow personal agenda.
Well, years ago, I was what would have been called a ‘natural’ Labour voter. Even though there are still good people left in the ‘New Labour Party’, I don’t think I shall be voting for Tony.
You know, of course, that there is no real difference between New Labour and the Conservative Party. Just to stop any puzzlement you may have over the two main parties in Britian. The BBC has an excellent mini-site devoted to the election campaign, and the Guardian newspaper has an excellent service on any info you may want to get a hold of on individual MPs and their CVs. It’s called ‘Socrates’, or something like it. Just in case you need hassle-free info for any op-eds and articles you might want to do on the UK elections, that have a bearing on US issues etc

I am more of a Scottish Nationalist -Socialist type, I’m afraid. I bet you would never have guessed I was one of these die-hard Euro-Lefties!?

Keep up the great traditions of American Conservatism my friend. Henry David Thoreau is one of my heroes. ‘Walden’ has to be read to be believed.
Actually I seem to be gravitating, these days, between Russian and American literature – Herman Melville and Leo Tolstoy etc!

Comment by joe90

4/7/2005 @ 5:17 pm

Eh sorry before I go and watch ‘The Masters’ just a quick reply to ‘Redhunter’.
No one is asking for sympathy. People only want justice.
To use the activities of the Palestinian Resistence against the illegal military occupation as an excuse to continue the illegal occupation is arrant illogical nonsense.
Legitimate Resistence isn’t terrorism. Palestinain Resistence is as legitimate as any resistence activities were against Hitler in Nazi-Occupied Europe.
The current Israeli regime has no buisness being in The West Bank and The Gaza Strip. It is illegal and peoples have every right under international laws to oppose the armed aggression and the stealing of their land and resources, as set out by The Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal. International State Terrorism is the worse crime possible.
How can a people act responsibly and throw out their illegal oppressors, in the manner you prescribe?
Just abide by UN Resolutions, the Geneva Conventions and International Humaintarian Laws and Customs and everyone will have peace and quiet to get on with their lives. Even the Israeli public are sick of the illegal settlers.

As for the stuff about Jordan, the Ottoman Empire, British Mandated Palestine etc etc that is old hat, this is today. Give both peoples the justice they want and deserve. No more and no less. Address the reasons for the Resistence and it will go away, then we can all go on holiday to The Holy Lands.

All the best.

Comment by joe 90

4/8/2005 @ 1:13 pm

You are right, of course. I was being rather churlish, but the Iraqi elections were something the US govt should be proud of, regardless of background noises from the likes of me.
Even more important, were the Afghan elections, where there was no duress on the US to organise and hold them. I can’t think of any realpolitik reason why they should did. Great stuff! Definitely the way ahead.

In case your journalistic Muse comes calling, here is the BBC Election website http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/vote_2005/default.stm
There is a handy guide to all the polls etc on the colourful cartoonish right-hand side bar
Here is the Guardian’s ‘Ask Aristole’ service for instant info on MPs performance, how they voted, their CVs etc http://politics.guardian.co.uk/aristotle/0,9356,,00.html

Comment by Jane

4/9/2005 @ 7:05 am

I’m with Tom.

Joe, thanks for the links. You know I was just teasing you. Also anything the US can be proud of, the UK can too. DeMarco is going to win the Masters.

Comment by joe 90

4/9/2005 @ 9:37 am

I know you are teasing me :-) I didn’t want to seem rude – netiquette can be a prob sometimes.

Er, I meant to add this essential site to your UK election hassle free look-up info stuff – The Channel 4 Election Fact Checker, which investigates claims made by politicians
http://armiesofliberation.com/archives/2005/04/06/bush-displeased-with-settlements/#comments
Most people regard the Channel 4 News as the most trustworthy TV news prog in the UK.

The speed of greens at Augusta never cease to amaze me. They must be made of glass.
Being a good Scot, I have to go for Sandy Lyle but I don’t know know his standing after the first day. I didn’t pay much attention to the washed-up highlights served up to us last night on the BBC.
I would also have been rooting for Big Monty, but he was deliberately excluded because he was such an obvious threat to the US players.

I have to disagree with your first caller on this thread
http://www.counterpunch.com/laor04072005.html
Israel is an Apartheid state to all intents and purposes.
As for illegal settlements. Their title says it all. The colony in Hebron, for instance, of 900 Israeli-Jewish illegal colonisers is a particularly nasty and violent bunch of mostly ex-US racists fundamentalists. Even ordinary Israeli-Jewish folk are harrassed and frightened by these people.
Rememebr the massacre at Hebron by an ex-US Doctor Baruch Goldstein. The Israeli Military Administration punished the local Palestinian population for it! Months of military curfews, movement restrictions etc

Israel has the fourth largest military in the world. Why is their government so frightened at the prospect of peace breaking out?

Comment by Doug

4/10/2005 @ 2:17 am

Here’s the thing about the settlements:

Dead on, Tom.

Comment by Al Gore

4/10/2005 @ 2:18 am

I invented Palestinians.

Comment by joe 90

4/10/2005 @ 10:33 am

Well we’re all familiar with a bunch of terrorists from long ago. I am reading a collection of writings by one of them. His name is Tom Paine.

The standards you use to judge your defenceless victims are no better or worse than those used by Hitler and his gang of Supermen. Israel is no a passive agent but an active one. So-called settlements are illegal. The Israeli Occupation of Palestine and Syria is illegal. Israel victimises its own citizens on ethnic-racist lines. Israel claims to have some god given right to expand to the east – Hitler called this policy ‘lebensraum’.

Israeli policy is not about ’security’ but about stealing water and land using aggression. The supeme crime, as defined by the Nuremberg Tribunals. Two-thirds of Israel’s water supply comes from the Occupied Syria, in the Golan Heights.

Just to round off the analogies with other past terrorists and assorted regimes – Prof Soefer of Haifa University states that ‘Israel’s greatest enemy if the Palestinain womb’. He is an expert in Geography and Eugenics.

The Apartheid Wall is illegal, the two Occupations are illegal, its own internal laws are illegal under UN and international humanitarian law. All this the Israeli regime is able to do because of US welfare handouts from hard-working US taxpayers, and the US UN veto (which a majority of US citizens want removed from its own government, such is their faith in it to do the right thing).

I notice the history lesson from ‘redhunter’ leaves out all the important bits about USrael from 1967 onwards. The problem before 1967 was Israel wasn’t a US client up to then. Remember big Ike giving the Israeli regime a slap in 1957 and telling them to get back into their kennel, during the so-called ‘Suez Crisis’. What was so different then, compared to the support it recieves today from the US government, that insulates Israel from the effects its illegal actions have on the world?

Comment by Asher - Dreams Into Lightning

4/10/2005 @ 12:23 pm

Jane, great post, as always. I haven’t read Stefania’s Arutz Sheva link yet, but I’m guessing it says mostly the same things as Debka, which has strongly opposed the road map.

I understand the Israelis’ concerns about security and a Palestinian state, but I think the Road Map makes a lot of sense in the context of the broader Bush program. When the remaining fascist regimes (Rice’s “outposts of tyranny”) fall, the backing for Palestinian terrorism will vanish and conditions for peace between Palestine and Israel will be present.

I’m glad the President is taking a tough line with Israel about the settlements; once again, he’s doing the right thing, morally and strategically. And once again, it’s just more proof that he nitwits who complain about “Bush following Sharon’s agenda” don’t know what they’re talking about.

Comment by joe 90

4/10/2005 @ 3:19 pm

How many outstanding UN Resolutions have these so-called ‘fascist regimes’ pending?

Put it another way, how many UN Genral Assembly Resolutions (non-binding), has the Israeli Regime actually recognised or implimented?
What about the applicability of the Geneva Conventions to the land and peoples that Israel has taken by force and aggression (the very crimes Hitler and his Nazi stood accused of)?

What about the US and Israel’s refusal to condemn international terrorism when given the opportunity to do so in the UN Assembly ? They have refused and isolated themselves in the international community on many occassions. So this is no accident, but policy.

Comment by Jane

4/10/2005 @ 5:01 pm

Thanks Asher

Comment by joe90

4/10/2005 @ 6:21 pm

Here is the Channel 4 TV News Fact Checker for UK General Election Watchers
http://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/
I sent the wrong link earlier on.

Occupied Palestine doesn’t belong to the US or the Israeli Government. If both these governments have a case, why don’t they take it to the UN, the proper forum to settle diplomatic issues. The UN was set up after the disterous results of Hitler’s foreign policy, which was based on the efficacy of violence in the international arena.
Occupied Europe didn’t belong to Hitler, and Occupied Palestine belongs to no-one but its occupants.
Why should Palestinains behave any differently from any other people whose only crime is defencelessness against state terrorism?

Comment by Asher Abrams

4/11/2005 @ 11:09 am

This guy sure likes to hear himself talk, doesn’t he …

Comment by joe90

4/11/2005 @ 1:06 pm

Unlike yourself I suppose, someone with their own a blog!
What are these public democratic forums for then? – Idiotic comments, personal vanity or reasoned discussions based on facts and the marshalling of arguments.
Or perhaps I’m missing something – a reasoned response from those that claim to support justice and democracy but seem to contradict themselves by supporting the illegal occupations of Palestine, Syria and Iraq.
They seem to be giving their victims the blame.

Comment by Tom the Redhunter

4/11/2005 @ 9:07 pm

My only question on the Security Fence is why didn’t the Israelis think of it earlier? It’s cut down on terrorism, and who cares what those yahoos on the morally corrupt World Court think?

Yeah, you’re definately missing something Joe. A hell of a lot, in fact. I’ve gone over the issues with regard to Israel on my own many times I’m too tired to rehash it all here.

Comment by joe90

4/12/2005 @ 12:57 pm

Hello Tom,
whose terrorism has it cut down on? The only terrorists in Occupied Palestine are the IDF.
Building on another country’s land without the permission of its people or political representatives is a deliberate act of war. Why shouldn’t Palestinians build on Israeli land, for instance? What is the principle at work here, apart from the Hitlerian one of ‘might is right’ ?
I notice you call the Aprtheid Wall a ’security fence’. Well, if it was about security it would be built inside Israel’s border, with an appropriate amount of space between it and the actual border for detection devices, alarms etc. So it isn’t about security.
As for the activities of the Resistence Movement. There is supposed to be some kind of a ‘truce’ in operation between the IDF and the Resistence, despite the IDF murdering 3 young lads playing football in Rafah City, Gaza, at the weekend. This act of terrorism brought an immediate repsonse from the Resistence, as I am sure you are no doubt aware.

What is morally corrupt about the World Court? Could you let me know.

I am missing something but you won’t let me know what it is. That sounds like the plot of a Franz Kafka novel, or the treatment of US kidnap vicitms in the various concentration camps the US government has dotted around the globe, like at Guantanamo Bay (which the Cuban governmant has repeatedly asked the US government to leave. Just like Iraq, Palestine and Syria). Something is wrong for which I am guilty; I am not allowed to see the evidence; know the charges; who has brought them against me; who the court is comprised of; or even where I am.

Please indulge me. What is it I am missing, apart from a response.
I look forward to hearing from you about the principles of freedom, law and justice that apply to the US and its clients, but not its victims.

Comment by joe90

4/12/2005 @ 5:06 pm

Well, just some food for thought Tom. If you think International Humanitarian Law and its Instruments are something out of Gulliver’s Travels, or other – what about the US Government attacking its own Laws and Constitution
http://www.veteransforpeace.org/impeachment/impeachment.htm
All the crimes are listed on downlaods on the charge sheet by former US Military Personnel, who actually done their bit for their country, unlike some others I could mention.

Comment by joe90

4/17/2005 @ 5:25 pm

Here is the ‘morally corrupt’ ICJ advisory ruling on the construction of th US and ISrael’s Apartheid Wall in defenceless Occupied Palestine
http://www.icj-cij.org/icjwww/idocket/imwp/imwpframe.htm
For all the US warmongers out there
http://deoxy.org/wc/wc-index.htm
and an article on an end to the culture of War Crime impunity
http://www.crimesofwar.org/icc_magazine/icc-kahn.html