Warsaw Then, Gaza Now

The oppressed have now become the oppressors. One would think that having undegone the unspeakable horrors of the Nazi's attempts to obliterate the Jewish people, they would be the last to ever visit those same horrors on another. But psychpathy knows no cultural or ethnic boundries. Whatever ideals those who sincerely believed in a "corner of the world where Jews would be safe" were horribly misled by the psychopathic leaders of the Zionist movement. It was almost too easy. Ponerology explains:

To individuals with various psychological deviations, the social structure dominated by normal people and their conceptual world appears to be a "system of force and oppression". Psychopaths reach such a conclusion as a rule. If, at the same time, a good deal of injustice does in fact exist in a given society, pathological feelings of unfairness and suggestive statements emanating from deviants can resonate among those who have truly been treated unfairly. Revolutionary doctrines may then be easily propagated among both groups, although each group has completely different reasons for favoring such ideas."

Gaza is the outcome of how misled the normal segment of the Jewish population has been. Once again they are embroiled in a tragedy, this time of their own making.

Blue Ibis
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Warsaw Ghetto and Gaza: Disturbing Parallels

Arab News
Sun, 02 Mar 2008 00:33 UTC
Steve Hutcheson

I saw a photo last week of a father holding his 6-month-old baby son. The father's face was devoid of expression; the child in his arms was dead. The boy's name was Mohammed Al-Borai; he along with several others had been killed in a blast fired indiscriminately by an Israeli cannon into the densely populated areas of Gaza.

There were more photos, one of a group of young boys holding flowers standing around the battered and bloodstained body of the baby boy. That struck me as the most poignant. I had been having a discussion about the cause of suicide bombers among Palestinians and it will be this image more than any other that will concern me more than most. In their minds the young dead boy will have more impact on their future than anything any one might tell them.

It was then that I started to contemplate perhaps more fully the plight of the Palestinians today and the parallels in the history of the Jews that led to their mass exodus from their own countries to immigrate to the land that was at the time known as Palestine.

The Warsaw Ghetto during the Jewish Holocaust holds special significance to the European Jews. It was a place of oppression and the pathway to the ultimate death of thousands of their population that has become symbolic with their struggle for recognition. Yet what they are failing to acknowledge as their descendants press forward with their own brand of Jewish and Zionist idealism is the parallel set of conditions that they are now imposing on the Arab people of Palestine.

The Nazis rounded up the Jews of Poland and quartered them in a small area of Warsaw, building a barricade around the perimeter to prevent them leaving.

So too have the Israelis through conflict and force pushed many of the Arab inhabitants out of Israel into an enclave that now has a population density of 4,200 people per sq. km which is 14 times that of the surrounding area of Israel which has 360 people per sq. km.

The Nazis deprived the ghetto inhabitants of food and essential supplies.

So too has the Israeli government stopped the flow of goods to the 1.4 million inhabitants of Gaza by limiting the convoys of supplies to a mere trickle.

The Nazis reduced the average calorie intake of the Jewish inhabitants of the ghetto to 241 calories per day.

So too have the Israelis reduced the calorie intake of the Palestinians in Gaza. According to a UN report, it is presently at 61 percent of the average daily requirements.

The Nazis restricted public utilities such as water and electricity.

So too has the Israeli government.

The Nazis restricted the inhabitants from adequate health care.

Israelis restrict the health care in Gaza by limiting the medical supplies in or the treatment of cases that need to be done outside.

The Jewish inhabitants through the ZZB and the ZOB resisted the oppression by the Nazis albeit too late and their rebellion was brutally crushed without concern for who was in the way.

So too have the Palestinians of Gaza through their own resistance organizations, in particular Hamas, rebelled against their oppressors and so too do the Israelis use all means available to crush the rebellion without concern for who is in the way or who they maim or kill in doing so.

The Nazis destroyed the structure of the ghetto leveling it to the ground in a broad quest to rout the resistance to their oppression.

Israelis indiscriminately level buildings and the infrastructure in Gaza in a quest to rout out the resistance to their oppression.

The Nazis assigned the Jewish people to a lesser status of all their inhabitants depriving them of their rights as citizens and even as humans.

Israel assigns the refugees held in Gaza less status than is given to the Jews worldwide and deprives the Palestinians of their rights to return to their former lands.

The Nazis applied whatever was at their means to break the will of the Jewish inhabitants of the ghetto.

Israelis do the same thing; they use whatever is at their means to break the will of the Palestinians.

The Nazis killed the Jewish inhabitants of the ghetto indiscriminately.

Don't the Israelis kill indiscriminately the inhabitants in forcing their control over Gaza?

The Jews of Israel and elsewhere are quite right to protest at the inhumanity of the Nazis in their treatment of them and oblige the world not to allow the same situation to happen again. The Palestinians protest at the inhumanity of the Israeli treatment, yet in a bizarre twist of events, the world still allows the oppression to happen and continue.

It was after the Jews in the ghetto had been largely killed or transported that the world stood up and felt guilty in not acting sooner.

With the picture of Mohammed Al-Borai in my mind I question when the world will stand up and say: Enough is enough, there is not going to be a repeat of the Warsaw Ghetto and particularly when its perpetrators are those who suffered the most by its conduct.

There is a basic conflict of inhumanity occurring to the Palestinian people of Gaza that the world is deliberately ignoring. An inhumanity that was inflicted by the Nazis on the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto is now more than ever closely paralleling that which they are inflicting on the people of Gaza. They learned a hard lesson but it was not a lesson learned well. They have been given the power to practice humanity but have decided instead that they will treat the concerns of the Palestinians in the same inhumane way the Nazis treated them.

A future monument will no doubt contain photos of Mohammed Al-Borai in the arms of his father and the world will decry the injustice.

---

Steve Hutcheson has worked in crisis recovery in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Indonesia for the past several years and is now based in Thailand. He can be contacted at: steve50 @ mail.com

Mangled bodies, wailing relatives at Gaza hospital

Mangled bodies, wailing relatives at Gaza hospital

Agence France-Presse
Sat, 27 Dec 2008 17:43 UTC

© AFP
A Palestinian is rushed to hospital after he was wounded in an Israeli air strike on Gaza City

Relatives wail as the mangled bodies of loved ones are brought into Gaza's Al-Shifa hospital on Saturday following Israeli air strikes that killed nearly 200 people in the Palestinian enclave.

Ambulances and private cars rush those wounded or killed in the punishing raids to the hospital, where staff use sheets as makeshift stretchers.

In some cases, a single stretcher is used to carry several bodies. Torn limbs fall to the blood-soiled floor.

There is no space left in the morgue and bodies are piled up in the emergency room and in the corridors, while many of the severely wounded scream in pain.

Overworked doctors and nurses can only deal with the most pressing cases.

Most of the victims wear the uniforms of the security services of Hamas, the Islamist movement that runs Gaza and whose installations were targeted in the attacks Israel says were in response to rocket attacks by Gaza militants.

Morgue employees use megaphones to ask parents who throng the entrance to identify their loved ones and take the bodies for burial.

"My brother was still alive when he arrived here, and was talking to me but no one could help him. He died," said Ahmed al-Gharabli, his voice shaking and tears streaming down his cheeks. His brother Baha was a Hamas policeman.

The bloodied body of another policeman, Mohammed Abu Shaaban, is carried on the same stretcher as that of a girl aged about 10 who was hit in the stomach.

Abu Obeida al-Jarah, a police commander who was inside one of the buildings targeted by the Israeli bombs, escaped unharmed.

"We managed to get out and immediately came here to identify the bodies," he said.

"It is truly a massacre and it will not go unpunished. The blood of policemen cannot be unavenged."

The health minister in the Hamas government, Bassem Naim, worried about the dire lack of resources to deal with the large number of victims.

"Our means are too modest to respond to this terrible massacre," he told AFP.

At the best of times the health sector is stretched to the limit in this impoverished and overcrowded enclave that has been the subject of crippling sanctions since Hamas seized power in June 2007

Barefoot, her headscarf dropped on her shoulders, Asmaa Abdo rushed to the hospital immediately after the raids to inquire about the fate of her two sons, who are training to become policemen.

"I was told my sons are both dead but nobody at the hospital can tell me whether that is true," she cries, shouting insults at moderate Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas and Arab states she feels failed to do anything to protect Gaza.

Abbas' forces were ousted from Gaza in the Hamas takeover.

Near the hospital, a mountain of rubble marks the spot where a 10-storey building that housed a Hamas prisoner support association once stood. Bulldozers clear the ruins as rescuers continue a grim search that has already turned up five bodies, all torn to pieces.

Verses from the Koran, the Muslim holy book, echo across the streets, broadcast from the minarets of the city's mosques. Women in tears head to the hospital.

Al-Aqsa, the Hamas television station, broadcasts images of mangled, bloodied bodies lying on the ground. A message on the screen proclaims: "The Holocaust continues" and the anchorman denounces what he calls the silence and the complicity of some Arab countries.

Comment: ... the silence and the complicity of the whole world - for decades now!

A Gaza Witness speaks

Video: What I Witnessed Today in Gaza

Israels60thbirthday.com
Sat, 27 Dec 2008 16:53 UTC

Safa Joudeh

The following is moving eyewitness testimony from Gaza.

It was just before noon when I heard the first explosion. I rushed to my window, barely did I get there and look out when I was pushed back by the force and air pressure of another explosion. For a few moments I didn't understand, then I realized that Israeli promises of a wide-scale offensive against the Gaza Strip had materialized. Israeli Foreign Minister, Tzpi Livni's statements following a meeting with Egyptian President Hussni Mubarak the day before yesterday had not been empty threats after all.

What followed seems pretty much surreal at this point. Never had we imagined anything like this. It all happened so fast but the amount of death and destruction is inconceivable, even to me and I'm in the middle of it and a few hours have passed already passed.



6 locations were hit during the air raid on Gaza city. The images are probably not broadcasted in US media. There are piles and piles of bodies in the locations that were hit. As you look at them you can see that a few of the young men are still alive, someone lifts a hand here, and another raise his head there. They probably died within moments because their bodies are burned, most have lost limbs, some have their guts hanging out and they're all lying in pools of blood. Outside my home, (which is close to the 2 largest universities in Gaza) a missile fell on a large group of young men, university students, they'd been warned not to stand in groups, it makes them an easy target, but they were waiting for buses to take them home. 7 were killed, 4 students and 3 of our neighbors kids, young men who were from the same family (Rayes) and were best friends. As I'm writing this I can hear a funeral procession go by outside, I looked out the window a moment ago and it was the 3 Rayes boys, They spent all their time together when they were alive, they died together and now their sharing the same funeral together. Nothing could stop my 14 year old brother from rushing out to see the bodies of his friends laying in the street after they were killed. He hasn't spoken a word since.

What did Olmert mean when he stated that WE the people of Gaza weren't the enemy, that it was Hamas and the Islamic Jihad who were being targeted? Was that statement made to infuriate us out of out state of shock, to pacify any feelings of rage and revenge? To mock us?? Were the scores of children on their way home from school and who are now among the dead and the injured Hamas militants? A little further down my street about half an hour after the first strike 3 schoolgirls happened to be passing by one of the locations when a missile struck the Preventative Security Headquarters building. The girls bodies were torn into pieces and covered the street from one side to the other.

In all the locations people are going through the dead terrified of recognizing a family member among them. The streets are strewn with their bodies, their arms, legs, feet, some with shoes and some without. The city is in a state of alarm, panic and confusion, cell phones aren't working, hospitals and morgues are backed up and some of the dead are still lying in the streets with their families gathered around them, kissing their faces, holding on to them. Outside the destroyed buildings old men are kneeling on the floor weeping. Their slim hopes of finding their sons still alive vanished after taking one look at what had become of their office buildings.

And even after the dead are identified, doctors are having a hard time gathering the right body parts in order to hand them over to their families. The hospital hallways look like a slaughterhouse. It's truly worse than any horror movie you could ever imagine. The floor is filled with blood, the injured are propped up against the walls or laid down on the floor side by side with the dead. Doctors are working frantically and people with injuries that aren't life threatening are sent home. A relative of mine was injured by a flying piece of glass from her living room window, she had deep cut right down the middle of her face. She was sent home, too many people needed medical attention more urgently. Her husband, a dentist, took her to his clinic and sewed up her face using local anesthesia

200 people dead in today's air raid. That means 200 funeral processions, a few today, most of them tomorrow probably. To think that yesterday these families were worried about food and heat and electricity. At this point I think they -actually all of us- would gladly have Hamas sign off every last basic right we've been calling for the last few months forever if it could have stopped this from ever having happened.

The bombing was very close to my home. Most of my extended family live in the area. My family is ok, but 2 of my uncles' homes were damaged,

We can rest easy, Gazans can mourn tonight. Israel is said to have promised not to wage any more air raids for now. People suspect that the next step will be targeted killings, which will inevitably means scores more of innocent bystanders whose fate has already been sealed.

This doesn't even begin to tell the story on any level. Just flashes of thing that happened today that are going through my head.

Moving Beyond Political Activism: Deprivation and Desperation in Gaza

A month later, and tragically, even more true. So much for "good will to ALL men"

Blue Ibis

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Moving Beyond Political Activism: Deprivation and Desperation in Gaza

Information Clearing House
Mon, 24 Nov 2008 21:42 UTC

Joe Mowrey

As conditions in the Gaza strip approach a catastrophic level of deprivation, the world media, and in particular the U.S. media, remain largely silent. The United Nations, whose truckloads of food and medical supplies continue to be denied entry into Gaza by Israel, appears to be one of the few international voices of dissent concerning the collective punishment of 1.5 million human beings. This, despite the fact that more than 50% of the population in Gaza is comprised of children under the age of 15.

Israel claims to be defending itself against the crude, often homemade rockets which militant factions in Gaza fire randomly into southern Israel. Though it may be considered politically incorrect, this writer refuses to precede his remarks with the requisite, "It's wrong for militant Palestinians to be firing rockets into Israel." The ethics of Palestinian resistance to the Zionist colonization of Palestine and the dispossession of the Palestinian people is a subject for another article. The issue at hand is one of collective punishment. Regardless of the actions of certain factions in Gaza, the fact remains that Israel (with the approval of the U.S.and the world community) is depriving an entire civilian population of food, medicine and clean drinking water in response to the violent actions of a few among that population.

Comment: And there's the twist, the lie that we are repeatedly told, in blatant disregard for the facts, in the hope that we will swallow it and turn away. The collective punishment of terror that is waged upon the entire Palestinian population is not 'in response to the violent actions'. Rather, those 'violent actions' are a combination of the desperate last attempts at survival in response to the Israeli reign of terror and genocide, and also a continuing manufactured Israeli manouevre, to justify their ongoing bloodthirsty rampage - as has been demonstrated many times, false flag operations are a standard Israel procedure which they use to further their agenda.

By any civilized standard this behavior is wrong and should be condemned vociferously. To paraphrase the words of an alien from another planet in a not-so-great Hollywood movie of some years ago, every sentient being knows the difference between right and wrong.

Comment: By any human standard this behaviour is wrong. Perhaps the perpetrators are not quite human?

Apparently not. Israel's Foreign Minister and likely future Prime Minister, Tzipi Livni, recently dismissed the notion that Israel's actions in Gaza amount to collective punishment and claimed those actions were a justifiable response to the rocket attacks on Israel. She stated, "The international community must be more decisive in making itself heard and in using its influence in the face of these attacks."

To suggest that the international community should condemn "these attacks" by militant Palestinian factions, yet ignore the humanitarian disaster being imposed on Gaza by the government of Israel demonstrates a nearly incomprehensible level of hypocrisy. But more importantly, the fact that Jews are the ones perpetrating these unconscionable actions in Gaza is a tragedy of historic proportions. The Geneva Conventions, particularly those articles addressing the collective punishment of civilian populations, were largely crafted in response to the treatment of Jews by the Nazis during World War II. Has the sense of exclusivity and entitlement created by the Zionist experiment in Israel become so great that people there no longer see themselves in the mirror of their own history? The irony of Jews, among the most egregiously persecuted and maligned people in history, denying food to hundreds of thousands of children in order, allegedly, to insure their own security, is breathtaking. Who could ever have imagined such a thing?

As people of Gaza suffer, here in the U.S., the vast majority of so-called progressives continue to revel in the recent election of the first Black man to the Presidency. While Obama has garnered a great deal of political and financial support by pledging his unconditional support for the Zionist regime in Israel, he remains completely silent on the plight of the children of Gaza. Our first Black President not only refuses to speak out against the collective punishment of an oppressed people, he actively supports and encourages the regime responsible for this behavior. This too is a tragedy of historic proportions. Have we come this far in the struggle against racism in our country only to see Barack Obama put a minority face on U.S. support for violations of international law and essential human dignity by Israel? Again, one has to say, who could ever have imagined such a thing?

Each morning I peruse the alternative media online and hope to see at least some minor degree of outrage at the situation in Gaza. A small but courageous handful of progressive web sites dare to criticize Israel and speak out against the abuse of the Palestinian people. But for the most part, the glorious and powerful "NetRoots" movement is too busy congratulating itself on the so-called victory it has achieved in the recent elections, too busy celebrating the illusion of change which Barack Obama represents, to admit the absence of any indication of substantive change in U.S. foreign policy in Palestine or the Middle East under his coming administration.

Does it ever occur to those who so blindly and passionately rallied 'round their candidate for the Presidency that they might now use their voices to encourage him to oppose the human rights abuses being orchestrated in Gaza? The sad reality is, not even a chorus of such voices is likely to alter the course Obama appears to have taken. He has surrounded himself with a familiar cast of armchair militarists, corporatists and hard core pro-Zionist zealots who will continue to give their unconditional support to Israel regardless of what barbaric tactics the government there uses to advance the colonization of Palestine. He is choosing to turn his back on the men, women and children in Gaza and the West Bank who suffer chronic malnutrition, desperate poverty, dispossession and daily humiliation at the hands of the Israeli military.

We should stand up in opposition to instances of human rights abuses whenever and wherever they occur. The situation in Gaza is only one on an unfortunately long list, locally, nationally and internationally. And U.S. government (that means you and me) support for and complicity in many such instances is no secret. If each of us were to do just one thing per week to address these issues, the result might surprise us all. Take a minute out from the long and endless chatter of day to day living and speak to a friend about the idea of social equality. Write one letter to the editor of your local paper in support of human rights. Spend just one percent of your online hours learning the truth about our complicity as U.S. citizens in the exploitation and degradation of other people and their cultures. Turn off your television. Go stand on a corner with a sign to protest war. Wear a button promoting peace and justice. One small thing at a time.

To those who became politically active, possibly for the first time, and expended their valuable enthusiasm and energy in order to see Barack Obama elected: thank you for being a part of history. Now why not try on the mantel of social activism? Write our President-elect a letter and suggest that he at least acknowledge the suffering of the people in Gaza. It is doubtful it will change him or his policies, but it may change you. And that truly is "change we can believe in."

Every sentient being knows the difference between right and wrong. The question is, why do so few of us act on that knowledge?

War Crazy

Yes, today is a holiday, and I, like the extremely small percentage of fortunate others in this world, have spent the day with loved ones, safe and warm and fed. But I am still reminded of how many who are not safe and warm, not even in their own minds. And before the trolls start bellowing about how I am not grateful to "those brave men and women" for being able to have my day, I would ask them: Can you enjoy your comforts knowing what the cost has been to those human beings?

Think about it. Thanks to SOTT for this thoughtful entry.

Blue Ibis
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War Crazy

Truthout
Wed, 24 Dec 2008 18:57 UTC

Camillo 'Mac' Bica

I have always thought myself a free spirit, a philosopher mendicant, seeking an alternative, more substantive lifestyle. Others, however, see my unorthodoxy, my "spiritual seeking," as abnormal and a clear indication of my insanity. Perhaps I need to pause and reevaluate my life. After all, being insane is not something one readily admits. I guess it's part of being crazy to cling to a facade of sanity, to think oneself normal and everyone else insane.

One thing I am certain of, however. I haven't always been crazy. Wasn't born crazy. I think insanity crept up on me, happened in Vietnam, in the war. War does that, you know, drives people crazy. Shell shock, battle fatigue, soldier's heart, PTSD. All that killing and dying can make anyone crazy.

© Crystal Green

Some survive war quite well, they tell me. Many even benefit from its virtues. But war's effects are not always apparent. No one escapes war unscathed in body and in mind. All war, any war, every war, ain't no virtue in war.

I think, of those not driven crazy by war, many were crazy already. But theirs was an insanity of a different kind, a hard kind, an uncaring kind. I knew people like that. Didn't like them much. Thought them fortunate, though, as killing and dying meant nothing. In fact, in a perverse way, they enjoyed it, enjoyed the jazz, the excitement, the power. They became avenging angels, even god herself, making decisions of life and death, but mostly death. Those crazies hated to see the war end. For me, the war never ends.

Sometimes things work out for the best, though, as my unorthodoxy, my being crazy, probably saved my life. You see, sane people can't live like this, in a war that never ends. Not all crazy people can either. Guess I was lucky. Sometimes being crazy helps you cope. Sometimes I wish I were crazier than I am.

Serious introspection has made clear the basis of my unorthodoxy, the nature of my insanity. It is a cruel wisdom allowing - no, better, compelling - a clarity of vision. I have seen the horror of war, the futility and the waste. I have endured the hypocrisy and arrogance of the influential and the wealthy, and have tolerated the ignorance and narrow-mindedness of the compliant and the easily led. War's malevolent benefactors, who pretend and profess their patriotism with bumper-sticker bravado, with word but not deed, intoxicated by war's hysteria, from a safe distance. Appreciative of our sacrifices, they claim, as they applaud the impending slaughter, sanctioning by word, or action, or non-action sending other men and women to be killed, and maimed, and driven crazy by war.

And when they benefit from the carnage no longer, their yellow ribbon patriotism and shallow concern fade quickly to apathy and indifference. The living refuse of war that returns are heroes no longer, but outcasts and derelicts, and burdens on the economy. The dead, they mythologize with memorials and speeches of past and future suffering and loss. Inspiring and prophetic words by those who sanction the slaughter to those who know nothing of sacrifice.

I used to try to explain war to help them understand and to know its horror, naively believing that war was a deficiency of information, understanding, discernment and vision. But being crazy has liberated me, allowing me to see that war is not a deficiency at all, but an excess of greed, ambition, intolerance and lust for power. And we are its instruments, the cannon fodder, expendable commodities in the ruthless pursuit of wealth, power, hegemony and empire.

And now, I accept and celebrate my unorthodoxy, my insanity, as an indictment of the hypocrites and the arrogant, of the ignorant and the narrow-minded for a collective responsibility and guilt for murder and mayhem, and crimes against humanity. And I offer my insanity as a presage of their future accountability - to humankind in the courts of history, and to the god they invoke so often to sanction and make credible their sacrilege of war.

Comment: This is why an understanding of the world within and around us, with all it's beautiful and terrifying forms, including a good understanding of the Pathocratic processes are so fundamentally important; the truth is that not all men and women are created equally, we do have a predator in our midst that stalks us, controls us, feeds upon us, and vectors us for their own purposes... Psychopaths, and Pathocrats in positions of power:

The pathological social structure gradually covers the entire country, creating a "new class" within the nation. This privileged class of deviants feels permanently threatened by the "others", i.e. by the majority of normal people. Neither do the pathocrats entertain any illusions about their personal fate should there be a return to the system of normal man.... Pathocrats never possessed any solid practical talent, and the time frame of their rule eliminates any residual possibilities of adapting to the demands of normal work. If the laws of normal man were to be reinstated, they and theirs could be subjected to judgment... they would be threatened by a loss of freedom and life, not merely a loss of position and privilege. Since they are incapable of any kind of sacrifice, the survival of a system which is the best for them becomes a moral imperative. Such a threat must be battled by means of any and all cunning and implemented with a lack of scruples with regard to those other "inferior" people that can be shocking in its depravity.

[..]

Pathocracy survives thanks to the feeling of being threatened by the society of normal people, as well as by other countries wherein various forms of the system of normal man persist. For the rulers, staying on the top is therefore the classic problem of "to be or not to be".

We can thus formulate a more cautious question: can such a system ever waive territorial and political expansion abroad and settle for its present possessions? What would happen if such a state of affairs ensured internal peace, corresponding order, and relative prosperity within the nation?

The overwhelming majority of the country's population would then make skillful use of all the emerging possibilities, taking advantage of their superior qualifications in order to fight for an ever-increasing scope of activities; thanks to their higher birth rate, their power will increase. This majority will be joined by some sons from the privileged class who did not inherit the corresponding genes. The pathocracy's dominance will weaken imperceptibly but steadily, finally leading to a situation wherein the society of normal people reaches for power. This is a nightmare vision.

The biological, psychological, moral, and economic destruction of this majority (Normal people) is thus a "biological" necessity. Many means serve this end, starting with concentration camps and including warfare with an obstinate, well-armed foe who will devastate and debilitate the human power thrown at him, namely the very power jeopardizing pathocrats rule. Once safely dead, the soldiers will then be decreed heroes to be revered in paeans, useful for raising a new generation faithful to the pathocracy.

There no such thing as Palestine?

Or Palestinians. We beg to differ. Those who claim this absudity are clearly ignoring the historical record. But 'twas ever thus when a pathocracy has an agenda to uphold. Watch and weep for a disaster that has gone on far longer than the Holocaust, perpetrated by the very people who should remember what suffering is.

Blue Ibis
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Sands of Sorrow (1950) Palestinian Arab Refugee Camps Video
Rosemary Films
Sat, 06 Dec 2008 06:31 UTC

Sixty years later and things are only worse. Why is the world surprised at the anger and bitterness expressed in Gaza and the West Bank.

Sands of Sorrow Palestinian Genocide Gaza, West Bank

Isrealis speak out: "Our West Bank system like apartheid."

Finally. Those with both hearts and brains are making themselves heard in Israel. Who knows where it may lead?

Blue Ibis
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Protest from within: Israeli rights group says "Our West Bank system like apartheid."

Agence France-Presse
Sun, 07 Dec 2008 21:37 UTC

Israeli Left-wing activists protest in Tel Aviv

Israel's discrimination between Jewish settlers and Palestinians in the West Bank is increasingly reminiscent of white South Africa's apartheid system, an Israeli human rights group said on Sunday.

Jewish settlements in the Palestinian territory "have created a situation of institutionalised discrimination and segregation," the Association for Civil Rights in Israel said on Sunday.

"The discrimination in services, budgets and access to natural resources between the two groups in the same territory constitutes a stark violation of the principle of equality, which (is reminiscent) in many and increasing ways (of) the apartheid regime that was applied in South Africa," ACRI said.

The group's report, published ahead of Wednesday's 60th anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, notes that the 2.3 million Palestinians in the West Bank outside annexed Arab east Jerusalem are subject to military law and administration.

By contrast, the 250,000 settlers live under Israeli civilian law.

While the settlers use a modern and developed road system restricted to Israeli cars, the Palestinians are forced to use "winding and dangerous roads," the report said.

In addition, Israel imposes strict restrictions on construction in Palestinian towns and villages and does not develop basic infrastructure there.

The report cited UN figures showing that some 65 percent of roads leading to the 18 most populous Palestinian West Bank towns are blocked or controlled by military checkpoints. The United Nations says more than 600 roadblocks impede Palestinian movement around the West Bank.

The question is among the key issues in US-backed efforts to bolster Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas's rule as part of the sluggish Middle East peace launched late last year.

"The travel restrictions hamper the transportation of sick people and medical staff to hospitals. There is a shortage in medicine and medical supplies," the report said.

In comparing the system with apartheid, ACRI did point out that "in South Africa the criteria was racially based unlike the ethnic-national criteria applied in the territories."

The report also decried the economic situation of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, where Israel has imposed a crippling blockade since the Islamist Hamas movement seized power in June 2007.

"The blockade policy has almost completely destroyed the industry. Unemployment and poverty are surging... The blockade caused the collapse of local authorities that are struggling to provide residents basic services such as water, sewage and sanitation.

Israeli Apartheid West Bank Human Rights Israeli Gaza Blockade military law economic blockade