first, "white" is meaningless. it assumes the arab population was in some sense racially different from the jewish population, a population comprised of ashkenazi and sephartic jews whose origins were presumably from exactly the same region as the arabs.
more importantly to me, the argument that an autochthonous population has prior claims to the territory is too quick and easy to be meaningful. it would take a book (like Settler Colonialism and Land Rights in South Africa, Edward Cavanagh
but even if i were pushed to justify a jewish presence in palestine, it wouldn't take a biblical justification (which is the opposite of a justification for anything, in my view), but simply two things: first, maybe 100,000 jews lived in palestine under the turks, before world war one. maybe one seventh or one eighth of the population. jews suffered persecution in europe, severe persecution in russia. israel was one option that became open to them after the balfour declaration.
now, jews who fled to israel were not like british migrants to zimbabwe or kenya who bought up the land and displaced the africans, under british hegemony, following colonial policies. some jews did become belligerent militants, and fought against arabs, but not much since they were under british rule, and most jews were moderate and wanted to live with the arabs. the same is true of the arabs population that was in palestine. check this out in One Palestine Complete by tom sever.
by the time world war two was over, the ratio of jew to arabs had changed a good deal, but they were still i slight minority. the u.n. divided the lands; there was an immediate reaction by arab states to quash the incipient jewish state, and they failed then, as they did in 1967 and 1973.
now most palestinians fled israel; a sizable portion remained. this partition, like that of india and pakistan, was ugly with the expropriation of lands and the killing of innocents, but it was a mutual conflict, and it was largely conducted despite britain's efforts to forestall it since the brits had major interest in maintaining good relations with the arab states. those palestinians who fled have a right to the lands they lost. and at the same time, the rights of jews, who were subject to considerable constraints, attacks, and oppression in a number of arab lands, were also violated, and many sephardic jews fled from yemen and syria and morocco and algeria and egypt to israel then.
my own feeling is that people should have 100% rights to migrate anywhere they please. there should be no border restrictions. i have never heard a legitimate reason to exclude people from settling within the borders of another land. when migrants come, they don't have the right to expropriate the property of others or abuse them, as occurred under colonialism;
but we all, you and me, and everyone should be free to go and live wherever we want. and especially people who are poor or oppressed should have every right to relocate.
the jews of europe were oppressed, some severely. luckily for them israel was an option; and before, during and after world war 2, many had no other place to go.
of course that doesn't mean that palestinians should have suffered from that, but the real conflict did not begin until the u.n. declared palestine would be divided into a jewish state and an arab state.
i know i am pushing the limits of people's patience with this long email, so i'll stop, and maybe in another respond to moses's analysis of the current conflict.
ken
States--all states--are jealous entities who are especially paranoid about challenges to their sovereignty. So when Hamas proclaims in its charter, which it refuses to modify, that "our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious" thus making enemies of all Israeli Jews, not just the settlers in the occupied territories or Zionists; when it waxes on glibly about its goal of creating an Islamic state in all of Palestine on the ashes of Israel; when the charter proclaims Hamas's commitment to the obliteration of the state of Israel; when it states that Hamas will only tolerate people of other faiths only if/when they "stop disputing the sovereignty of Islam in this region"--that is, to accept the supremacy and hegemony of Islam over them; when Hamas states that "renouncing any part of Palestine means renouncing part of the religion(Islam)" thus equating a two state settlement which "renounces" or concedes some parts of Palestine to Israel and Jews with religious sacrilege; when as a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood it repeats in its charter the Brotherhood's extremist, nihilist, and belligerent moto ("Allah is its goal, the Prophet is the model, the Qur'an its constitution, jihad its path, and death for the sake of Allah its most sublime belief"); when the charter peddles the most abominable anti-Semitism tropes, including freely referencing the long discredited anti-Semitic document allegedly a manifesto of global jewish domination (The Protocols of the Elders of Zion); when the charter deploys terms for Jews that essentially denies their humanity; when, finally, Hamas, in its charter and its pronouncements casts the Israeli-Palestinian dispute as a zero-sum game between Islam and Judaism, Arabs and Jews, allowing for no compromise or mutual toleration; when Hamas does, proclaims, or embraces all these through its charter, how would the Jewish residents of Israel realistically feel? Which sovereign state will be eager to tolerate or make concessions to such a group--a group sworn to your destruction? None of this justifies the Israeli treatment of Palestinians, but for a nation-state, allowing a group with such an ideology, a group which controls territory next to you, access to sophisticated weapons that may bring about military parity or take way your military advantage would be suicidal, foolish. I know of no nation-state that would do that without guarantees that the entity sworn to its annihilation (whether this is actually feasible or not) will not attack it or has renounced the commitment to destroy it.
Some people argue that Hamas is not representative of Palestinians' disposition towards Israel and towards the possibility of a two state solution. That is true to an extent, since the Fatah/PLO faction of Palestinian political leadership is recognized internationally as speaking for Palestinian people and since that faction and its supporters do not subscribe to the hateful, nihilist position of Hamas and generally support a two state solution. Before the 2006 takeover of Gaza by Hamas, it didn't matter what was in Hamas's charter and what the group's goal regarding Israel was, since Fatah was Israel's negotiating partner on behalf of the Palestinians and controlled Palestinian sovereignty in all the Palestinian territories. After the takeover, everything changed. Now, Hamas has emerged as one half of the de facto Palestinian leadership, controlling one half of the Palestinian territories, and making policy, including defense and military policy, for that half. To the extent that Hamas is now one part of the Palestinians' dual leadership and cannot simply be wished away or ignored, what its charter says in relation to Israel and its chosen tactic of resistance (targeting Israeli civilians) are now relevant and have become a legitimate reference for an already paranoid Israeli state. Given the current situation of Hamas's control of Gaza, Israel, the international community, or an analyst would be foolish to simply ignore as irrelevant Hamas's charter, choices, and actions.
The stock, hackneyed retort to all this is that Hamas adopted this hateful manifesto and such an extreme, insular religious vision because of the Israeli occupation, but that is not entirely accurate, since the group is part of the Muslim Brotherhood, which adopts similarly parochial, extremist, and violence-glorifying religious political ideology in Arab countries where Israeli occupation or the fear of it is not a factor. Why are Egyptians--not just El-Sisi but the majority of Egyptians, Muslims, Copts, Atheists, etc--so distrustful of the Brotherhood? Secondly, occupation, alienation, colonialism, or any other form of oppression does not mechanically drive people to ideologies of hate, racial exclusivity, and religious extremism. Humans are not prisoners to their reactive emotions; they are deliberate, rational, calculating entities even situations of distress. The tactic and strategy for responding to oppression is not always dictated by the oppressor or more precisely the tactics of the oppressor. Tactical and strategic responses, whether articulated in manifestoes or actuated in practical resistance, are often a CHOICE. I hate it when the oppressed, marginalized, and the underdog is stripped of his agency, his choice-making agency no matter how strained or constrained this agency may be.
This brings me to the argument that Hamas chooses to fire rockets indiscriminately and deliberately at Israeli civilians out of desperation. I agree that it may indeed be a desperate tactic, but it is still a choice, as resistance against oppression can be carried out in many different tactical and strategic forms. The choice of which tactic or strategy to adopt, even after counter-violence as a weapon of resistance, remains that of the oppressed, a conscious choice for which he should be held accountable, especially since that choice was made out of several other possibilities.
Much has been made of the ANC's embrace of violent resistance against Apartheid, usually as a way of explaining or justifying Hamas's indefensibly criminal tactic of deliberately firing lethal rockets at civilian settlement and endangering Palestinian civilians by firing from their abodes, a tactic whose destructive capacity has been limited thus far on the Israeli side by the Iron Dome technology. Since I recently designed and will be teaching a new course on the Mandelas, I've been rereading Mandela's autobiography and biographies. One of the remarkable things I read in Long Walk to Freedom was Mandela's detailed explanation of why and how the group, once it embraced armed resistance, decided to adopt sabotage operations instead of attacks on whites civilians, staging attacks from black civilian neighborhood, etc. Mandela explains that when the ANC established Umkhonto We Sizwe, the body's armed resistance wing, it settled on sabotage operations because the chance of killing civilians would be minimized, the operations would hurt the infrastructural base of Apartheid, and, most importantly, the public relations liability that would come from targeting civilians would wipe out or dilute the group's support and moral capital, validate the propaganda of the Apartheid regime that the ANC was a terrorist organization, and alienate white South Africans (many of whom recognized the justness of their cause) from their struggle, denying them crucial domestic and international support.
So, clearly, this was a conscious choice that Mandela and other leaders of the ANC made. In making this choice, they rejected other choices that would have undermined their moral high ground, attracted negative attention, drawn undeserved sympathy to the Apartheid regime, and sown the seed of racial enmity and hate. The ANC, like Hamas, faced oppression and was desperate to get rid of it, but weighed its options and wisely chose sabotage operations, instead of a scorched earth racial war fueled by racial hatred and directed at all white South Africans. So, desperation does not excuse making wrong choices in struggle, nor does it inoculate you from criticism for the despicable implications and consequences of that choice. The ANC did not lay down. Far from it; it resisted both peacefully and VIOLENTLY, but its violent resistance was defined by choices it made. The ANC example invalidates the argument that Hamas has no other choice or that the choice before Hamas is to do what it's doing or lay down in the face of Israeli oppression.
It is also instructive, to stick with the ANC example, that while Hamas's manifesto drips hate, confrontation, and irreconcilable, implacable racial and religious manifest destiny, the ANC's Freedom Charter is ecumenical, conciliatory, progressive, and humanistic, stressing interracial and inter-religious harmony, codependence, color- and creed-blind human rights, among other inclusive humanistic values, aspirations, and goals. Compare the following sample to Hamas's document of hate and the difference emerges with clarity.
that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white, and that no government can justly claim authority unless it is based on the will of all the people;
that our people have been robbed of their birthright to land, liberty and peace by a form of government founded on injustice and inequality;
that our country will never be prosperous or free until all our people live in brotherhood, enjoying equal rights and opportunities;
that only a democratic state, based on the will of all the people, can secure to all their birthright without distinction of colour, race, sex or belief;
And therefore, we, the people of South Africa, black and white together equals, countrymen and brothers adopt this Freedom Charter;
And we pledge ourselves to strive together, sparing neither strength nor courage, until the democratic changes here set out have been won.
Finally, predictably, some will point to the existence of religious extremists and right-wing Zionist on the Israeli side as analogous to Hamas and as constituting as much of a complication to peace efforts as Hamas's ideology and resistance tactics. There is no denying that this extremist wing complicates the search for peace, but the difference is that 1) a clear majority of the Israeli public has consistently supported a two state solution as a final settlement (such clear support does not exist on the Palestinian side); 2) while some elements of the ruling Likud Party and some ultra-conservative minor parties harbor a Jewish nationalist version of the Hamas doctrine of zero-sum racial and religious irreconcilability, the majority opinion among Israel's political leadership sees a two state solution as inevitable and central to peace, and the Israeli state has adopted that template in principle, as has the Fatah faction of the Palestinian leadership. Hamas, on the other hand, has not. In other words, in Israel, representatives of the state and those who count in the political life of the state recognize pragmatically that a two state solution has to happen. On the Palestinian side, a major political leadership formation (one half of the leadership) is opposed to a two state solution, final status talks that entail the sovereignty and legitimacy of Israel, and won't change its racist, religiously extreme, and nihilist charter that is both an alibi and a legitimate item of concern and anxiety for Israel.--
On Fri, Aug 8, 2014 at 4:00 PM, Moses Ebe Ochonu <meochonu@gmail.com> wrote:
As folks justifiably criticize the Israeli blockade and Islrael's disproportionate response to Hamas rockets, I hope that they do not slip into the terrain of anti-Semitism or unwittingly endorse the hateful rhetoric of Hamas, an organization whose charter can only be described as a manifesto of hate, anti-Semitism, and religious extremism--an organization that wants ALL jews uprooted from Palestine even if this means killing them all. An organization that seeks to rewrite the history of Palestine as a land of Arabs only, exclude Jews from the territory's story. The term "settler colonial state," which was recently introduced into this otherwise productive discussion is at best unnecessarily elevated rhetoric, at worst a rehash, even if inadvertent, of Hamas' anti-Semitic hate rhetoric.
I don't object to terms that fit or describe observable acts or patterns. In that spirit I am not going to criticize the use of the term "apartheid" to describe Israeli treatment of Palestinians and blacks, which borders on paranoid racist alienation. The term is elastic enough to be applied in multiple contexts outside its South African laboratory and in spite of what some may legitimately point out as differences between South Africa and Israel. However, I draw a line where the object of these terminological deployments is not description or illumination but outlandish comparisons that are invalidated by the facts of history and repeat the incendiary rhetorical inventions of one of the belligerents.
Like Hamas, those who throw around terms like "settler colonial state" pretend that the history of Jewish presence or even statehood in Palestine started in 1948 when in fact the there had been multiple Jewish states in Ancient Palestine, states which existed side-by-side with states built by the ancestors of today's Palestinians. This rhetoric of Israel being a settler colonial state refuses to recognize the pre-1948 history of Palestine or when when it does, writes out Jews from it. It is very easy to fall into the agenda-laden Hamas/Arab revisionist history, which argues that ALL Jews were expelled from Palestine and that this means that the Jewish presence that culminated in statehood in 1948 was wholly imported, imposed, and was exclusively constituted by land-hungry Zionist interlopers and colonists from Europe. The obvious end-point of this one-sided history is obvious--to invalidate any Jewish historical claims on Palestine and establish Arabs as the sole historical claimants to the land.The historical reality is a lot more complex. In reality, as many historians have shown, there had never been a time since recorded history when Jews--in varying numbers--were not present in Palestine, living side-by-side with Palestinians--sometimes in adversarial terms and sometimes in codependency.
In the period between the Roman expulsion in 143 AD and 1948, the Arab population clearly dwarfed the Jewish population in Palestine, and the reasons are obvious. But that does not mean that all Jews left Palestine and that some Jews suddenly returned to Palestine many centuries later after ALL of them were were allegedly expelled. Some Jews NEVER left Palestine, and others returned soon after they were expelled. This means that the line of Jewish residency in Palestine has never been broken from ancient, Biblical times to the present. Bringing in Ashkenazi vs Middle Eastern Jewry is splitting hairs since Jewishness is a religious and not a racial or ethno-national identity.
Here is a link to a film footage from Ottoman-ruled Palestine, showing Jews, Christians, and Muslims living in the same land.
What all these demonstrate is that, 1) both Jews and Palestinians have valid historical claims to Palestine and an unbroken line of residency there, and 2) the most pragmatic and fair solution to the crisis is a two state solution--one Jewish the other Palestinian. A solution/position like Hamas's which calls for the expulsion or destruction of one of the two groups or refuses to recognize their right to exist is as odious as the Israeli atrocities in question.
To refer to Israel as a "settler colonial state" then is ahistorical, since some Jews were always present in Palestine, trace their residency in Palestine to the same antiquity as Palestinians, and thus cannot by any stretch of the imagination be called settlers or equated with actual colonial settlers in many parts of the world, including Africa. If the term "settler colonizer" must be used it should be deployed in precise terms to refer to the Jewish settlers and colonists who insist on building settlements on lands determined by post-1948 international law as Palestinian land--the extreme right-wing Zionists who say ALL of Palestine belongs to Jews by divine decree and whose settlements have complicated the search for a permanent settlement of the dispute.
When we throw terms around recklessly even in the context of justified outrage and critique, those terms may in fact hurt our critique especially when they are over the top or co-opt the hateful, historically inaccurate rhetoric of the underdog with whom we're sympathizing. I for one do not believe that underdogs like Hamas or even the Palestinians as a whole should be given a pass because Israel is such a serial brutalizer of Palestinians. I don't believe that victimhood should ennoble automatically or shield one--or one's rhetoric--from scrutiny. Hamas's charter, if anyone cares to read it, shows clearly that the group is implicated in the tragic, unfolding history we're debating and that it is far from an innocent victim.
To be continued......
--
On Fri, Aug 8, 2014 at 7:35 AM, kenneth harrow <harrow@msu.edu> wrote:
wait a minute, waco is in texas. doesn't work
anyway, to be serious, i'd at least begin by asking, what's their problem, and try to address it, resolve it. i believe the problem w gaza and israel lies in the stranglehold in which israel holds gaza, a virtual blockade, and the really deleterious conditions under which they are living.
ken
On 8/7/14 6:30 PM, Anunoby, Ogugua wrote:
--"What would happen - or, more directly , how would you feel if year after year a bunch of Christian terrorist nut heads in Waco, Kansas State kept on firing their primitive missiles (primitive by US military standards ) at the Pentagon?" .
ch
I refer you to your assertion below on the "pitfalls inherent in making analogies". It seems to me that it is a grossly misleading simplification to try to understand Hamas' resistance to Israeli occupation by referencing a hypothetical "Christian terrorist" group in Kansas State. Palestinian Arabs are under a brutal Israeli occupation and continue to lose their land, and lives. Your "Christian terrorist" are not, and never likely to.
Hamas has a legitimate case in the minds of many Palestinian people, and many non-Palestinian people paying attention. Al Qaeda is a violent group in search of a cause. Hamas is a political party with a military wing fighting the occupation of her homeland. Al Qaeda is nothing of the sort.
Hamas duly won an election that was forced on her. The proponents and some critical supporters of that election rejected the result. One would have thought that they would accept it and work with Hamas. Depending on their outcome, democratic elections in Palestine can be an encumbrance for some people and governments.
Hamas militancy is mostly a reaction to extant and continuing circumstance. Many people seem to have forgotten why Hamas came into existence. Remove the circumstance and enabling conditions and Hamas in its present form, will be surplus to requirement. Hamas uses the occupation to justify her existence. Israeli occupation has become Hamas' most effective recruitment tool. Many Israelis know this to be so.
The Jamaican Reggae Great, Peter Tosh, reminds us in one of his celebrated songs that people are crying for peace but he is crying for equal rights and justice. Mr. Tosh makes a good point with some exaggeration. He is not alone in crying for equal rights and justice.
oa
From: Cornelius Hamelberg [mailto:corneliushamelberg@gmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, August 07, 2014 5:33 AM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Cc: Anunoby, Ogugua
Subject: Re: FW: USA Africa Dialogue Series - In Gaza, International Law Is Up in Flames
An aside: For better or worse, as we all know, there are the usual pitfalls inherent in making analogies, citing disparate situations, such as a fallacious, flawed, incorrect, and imperfect, some would say an untenable and useless analogy about Gaza - posing a question, as far-fetched as
"What would happen - or, more directly , how would you feel if year after year a bunch of Christian terrorist nut heads in Waco, Kansas State kept on firing their primitive missiles (primitive by US military standards ) at the Pentagon?" .
In the case of Waco, they (the Pentagon) bombed the barn.
How is the Hamas method different from al-Qaeda's , Sir ? ( By all means, please feel free to go ahead and justify terrorism, Boko Haram, violence and mass destruction, who do you think is or could be standing in your way?
Oga Ogugua,
O how I love these lines by Nigeria's Shakespeare (with a wink in his eyes)
Lakunle: That is what the stew pot said to the fire.
Have you no shame – at your age
Licking my bottom? But she was tickled
Just the same?
Sidi: The school teacher is full of stories
This morning. And now, if the lesson
Is over, may I have the pail?
On Monday, 4 August 2014 16:43:31 UTC+2, Anunoby, Ogugua wrote:
There seems to me to be a weakness with the World War 11 analogy. The Resistance then had friends, powerful friends. The Nazis were not defeated by the Resistance only but with the assistance of powerful friends like the United States that planned and led the invasion of Europe. The Palestinians have practically no friends. They are mostly on their own except for humanitarian aid that is compelled by the Israeli occupation, and sketchy military assistance.
Israel withdrew from Gaza nominally. Her iron-clad blockade of Gaza makes the withdrawal practically meaningless. Israel withdrew from most of the West Bank earlier. She has been seizing Palestinian land there since. Who is to say the same was not going to happen in Gaza.
Hamas may seem stupid attacking Israel today but there is an area parallel. The establishment of the state of Israel is believed to have been hastened by the armed attacks on British Administration and Army by Jewish terrorists. The "worst" of the attacks was the bombing in 1946 of the King David Hotel- headquarters of both the British administration and army in Palestine and Transjordan, by Jewish "terrorist" led at the time by Menachem Begin- a Polish Jew and a future prime minister of Israel.
While one may not support the desperate armed attacks of Hamas and other Palestinian resistance against Israel, one understands their despair and frustration with the worsening state of their daily existence in their homeland. We remember "Give me liberty or give me death" credited to the United States' Patrick Henry. For some Palestinian Arabs, death is becoming preferable to living under an Israeli occupation that arguably has no equivalent anywhere in the world in 2014. Hamas has said over and over again in current cease fire negotiations that she will not accept a ceasefire without a lifting of the Israeli blockade albeit supervised, on Gaza. That for me say everything.
oa
From: Anunoby, Ogugua
Sent: Monday, August 04, 2014 9:31 AM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Subject: RE: USA Africa Dialogue Series - In Gaza, International Law Is Up in Flames
There seems to me to be a weakness with the World War 11 analogy. The Resistance then had friends, powerful friends. The Nazis were not defeated by the Resistance only but with the assistance of powerful friends like the United States that planned and led the invasion of Europe. The Palestinians have practically no friends. They are mostly on their own except for humanitarian aid that is compelled by the Israeli occupation, and sketchy military assistance.
Israel withdrew from Gaza nominally. Her iron-clad blockade of Gaza makes the withdrawal practically meaningless. Israel withdrew from most of the West Bank earlier. She has been seizing Palestinian land there since. Who is to say the same was not going to happen in Gaza.
Hamas may seem stupid attacking Israel today but there is an area parallel. The establishment of the state of Israel is believed to have been hastened by the armed attacks on British Administration and Army by Jewish terrorists. The "worst" of the attacks was the bombing in 1946 of the King David Hotel- headquarters of both the British administration and army in Palestine and Transjordan, by Jewish "terrorist" led at the time by Menachem Begin- a Polish Jew and a future prime minister of Israel.
While one may not the desperate armed attacks of Hamas and other Palestinian resistance against Israel, one understands their despair and frustration with the worsening state of their daily existence in their homeland. We remember "Give me liberty or give me death" credited to the United States' Patrick Henry. For some Palestinian Arabs, death is becoming preferable to living under an Israeli occupation that arguably has no equivalent anywhere in the world in 2014. Hamas has said over and over again in current cease fire negotiations that she will not accept a ceasefire without a lifting of the Israeli blockade albeit supervised, on Gaza. That for me say everything.
oa
From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com [mailto:usaaf...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of kenneth harrow
Sent: Sunday, August 03, 2014 10:47 PM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - In Gaza, International Law Is Up in Flames
i do not believe israel is interested in land in gaza. it withdrew all its settlements from there 9 years ago.
what should hamas do? i don't know really, but firing rockets at an infinitely stronger enemy, knowing the kind of response it will provoke, seems very nihilistic and wrong to me.
i like to repeat this: the Resistance in world war 2 knew that if they assassinated a nazi, there would be a disproportionate response. the nazi policy was to exterminate villages in response to actions taken by the Resistance. so the Resistance had to calculate whether the price of an assassination would be too high.
that's what hamas had to have done. if they imagined it was worth it to have 2000 palestinians dead, i'd like to know for what??
i am sympathetic with their cause, but find this action idiotic and immoral. those people died for nothing. you can twist a political logic out of it all you want; hamas is now more popular; it had seemed to be accomplishing nothing, etc. but why did those 2000 people die? and the responsibility lies both with hamas that provoked the bombs and the bombers.
they are both immoral and stupid beyond belief because nothing will have been accomplished by either side, no furthering of palestinians' cause, no greater security for israel.
i wonder, too, if this judgment might not also apply to boko haram? what are they possibly gaining by these atrocities they are committing?
kenOn 8/3/14 10:34 PM, Anunoby, Ogugua wrote:
"…if hamas is firing a rocket at israel, israel has the right to fire back at those who fired the rockets."
What should Hamas do about Israel's crushing occupation of Gaza and transforming Gaza into one great prison? Lay down and die? Is the right to self-defense no longer a universal right? Should Israeli's rights be superior to Palestinian Arabs'?
It is mind boggling that some members of a group that has suffered persecution and death, are very mindlessly oblivious of the suffering, persecution, and death they continue to visit on their neighbors. Even Spiderman knew that with great power comes great responsibilities not only to self but to others.
The Israeli occupation of The West Bank and Gaza is no longer about security or even peace. It is about land grab. Mr. Abbas and his PLO are not a threat to Israel. What do they have to show for it? Going from the known to the unknown, it is not likely that the recognition of Israel by Hamas will make a significant real difference to Israel's craving for Palestinian land. Israel will more likely contrive another pretext to continue her occupation and acquisition of Palestinian land. Remember that Israel argues that "natural growth" justifies her acquisition of Palestinian land for new settlements even though Palestinian Arabs have a higher rate of population growth.
Netanyahu and his supporters continue to do a great job of making reluctant opponents of many friends of Israel. There comes a time when bias and self-interest must give way to justice and peace.
oa
From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com [mailto:usaaf...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of kenneth harrow
Sent: Sunday, August 03, 2014 2:31 PM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - In Gaza, International Law Is Up in Flames
dear shina
these are all good questions, but i don't quite think unanswerable.
i am not an international law prof, but i do work with amnesty international and i know it is a war crime, it is against international legal conventions, to target civilians. both israel and hamas have done this.
ok, who is more successful? 2 israeli civilians, and one foreign worker dead. the rest are soldiers who died in combat. under 50.
gaza? my god, the numbers are escalating as we speak. maybe 1600 dead so far; most civilians, far far too many children. you'd have to have a very hard heart not to be broken-hearted over this, be you jewish or christian or muslim. it is plain, simple, clear, wrong.
to your points, then: of course, if hamas is firing a rocket at israel, israel has the right to fire back at those who fired the rockets. that's simple. the accusations that hamas is firing from schools and homes might be pure propaganda. if it did so, and actually caused real deaths, i'm afraid they would be inviting a response back where israel could bomb those sites.
be cautious before you accept too quickly that that is what is happening: i've seen contradictory reports on that.
but really, shina, if the notion of a proportionate and legal response is ditched, what is to stop israel from bombing all of gaza mercilessly and destroying all the palestinians.
that would be genocide, and no different from the horrific crimes of world war two, and as a jew who grew up with the words '"never again" inscribed on my brain, i would have to fight against that. and i'd ask you to do so as well.
that is not happening now. instead, a lower level of horrible violence is inflicting punishment on palestinians to try to bludgeon them into submission, and to bludgeon them into dumping hamas.
many jews are opposed to this tactic: it is the tactic of a particular regime, a right-wing regime that doesn't seem to want to invite palestinians to a real peace accord. that's why it tries to divide hamas from the palestinian authority, and why it keeps increasing the settlements.
i am not a political scientist and specialist, but isn't this easy enough for us to understand just on an amateur level of knowledge?
lastly, it isn't an issue of choosing the israeli govt or hamas. both are choosing belligerence now and using unacceptable tactics. the intemperate responses we get, occasionally, on the list must be from those who believe there is truth and justice on only one side.
but even as i write that, i know that israel has made life in gaza unbearable because of the blockade, and even if hamas has opened up this violent response with all its rockets, it has done nothing to improve the situation. their calculation was a bad one; israel's response is even worse.
one is tempted to cite the prince in romeo and juliet: a pox on both their houses. but the problem is, their houses are ours.
kenOn 8/3/14 10:21 AM, 'Adeshina Afolayan' via USA Africa Dialogue Series wrote:
Prof.,
If Hamas has functional and deadly weapons thwt could be launched deep into Israel with deadly accuracy, would that justify Israel's action? Is the moral issue that of big Israel versus small Hamas? Or that of a cunning Hamas whipping up moral sentiment by deliberately antagonising Israel? Am i permitted to wipe out the enemy if i can identify it or democracy and human rifhts forbid that? What is the moral issue here beyond the geopolitical manoeuvres?
Adeshina Afolayan
Sent from Samsung Mobile
-------- Original message --------
From: Kenneth Harrow <ha...@msu.edu>
Date:
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - In Gaza, International Law Is Up in FlamesIf you learned boko haram had some members in a village would you wipe it out? That's what Israel is doing on a smaller scale. Further, there is no real threat to israel! Lots of useless rockets don't constitute a viable threat.
Sent from my iPad
On Aug 2, 2014, at 4:40 PM, Ibigbolade Aderibigbe <gbolaade....@gmail.com> wrote:For Ken and his "fans" Israel should just stay put and allow its citizens to be wiped out all in the name of conforming to "civil standards" as long as hamas a terrorist group has its way. Then the kens of this world would be happy at the annihilation of the Jewish people- Why cant we have a repeat of the NAZI era- INCREDIBLE!!!
On Sat, Aug 2, 2014 at 2:22 PM, kenneth harrow <har...@msu.edu> wrote:
good questions.
it is very hard for people to separate out a government from the state or nation; and in this case, also, to separate jews from israel. not all jews are israelites or supporters of its govt, not all israelites voted for netanyahu or favor policies of building settlements or squeezing gaza.
but in europe all jews are subject to attacks, now, because they are presumed to be supporters of israel and enemies of hamas.
hamas's armory consists of a bunch of useless rockets and guns; israel has all the modern armaments of a powerful state. so what is this policy of attacking and crushing gaza supposed to accomplish? it turns 1.7 million gazans into inveterate enemies, with young men willing to commit suicide to kill israelis.
what kind of long-term stupid policy can that be? you are right, ogugua, to ask if the israeli govt and its supporters aren't doing themselves more harm by their policies than hamas could ever do.
ken
On 8/2/14 12:50 AM, Anunoby, Ogugua wrote:
Israeli's case for her onslaught in Gaza is that Hamas fires rockets into Israel, and attacks Israelis through underground tunnels. The same government says that its missile defense system (MDS) destroys over 85 percent of the Hamas rockets in the air. Israel's invasion of Gaza has cost many innocent Palestinian lives. It has also cost more Israeli lives than Hamas' primitive, unguided rockets, and tunnel attacks have. Is Israel a penny wise and a pound foolish? Is Israel a greater threat to her people, and their long term peace and security that Hamas is?
There must be a more efficient and effective way to seek, find, and have peace.
oa
From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com [mailto:usaaf...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of kenneth harrow
Sent: Friday, August 01, 2014 11:12 AM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - In Gaza, International Law Is Up in Flames
hamas was put in an impossible position by the israeli blockade. the people in gaza were dying and miserable due to israeli pressure. yet you blame them for striking back. instead, you would have them lie on their back and be squashed, their people dying from lack of good water, food, medicine, jobs. incredible. they hated the israelis for oppressing them, and that hatred was "their fault." and when their youth were ready to die to strike back, you blame them.
there are lots of good reasons for criticizing hamas. but you whitewash israel's crimes, putting the blame on the victim.
that's not "true and courageous," it's immoral and supports an illegal blockade that lies at the root of the conflict. if israel had treated gaza as it did the west bank, we would not have had this situation.
kenOn 8/1/14 5:54 AM, 'Ifedioramma E. Nwana' via USA Africa Dialogue Series wrote:
This is the first time I have read something true and courageous. Yes, if Hamas does not continue to provoke Israel,lsrael would not have need to protect her citizens and there would not be what people regard as violations of International Law. Our elders advise that we should never pull the leopard by the tail whether alive or dead!
I blame the international communities more. If they do not go on massaging Hamas in their idiotic acts, Hamas may have long reallised the futility of its present stand and the need to live in peace with Israel in a 'Two State' arrangement.
Who would rightly blame Israel if it has a 'sieged mentality'. It would be damned insessible to argue that after 66 years the effects of that horrible holocaust should have been forgotten! Indeed, some of the survivours of that horrendous experience are still alive and must be singing daily, even to the hearing of their offspring "Never Again"!
I think there is a simple solution to the Middle East problem: Hamas and its sponsors should accept, genuinely and in practice, the Right of Israel to live under a "Two State" arrangement. I am convinced that once this is settled, Israel being the civilised community that I know, would stop even the errection of settlements in the West Bank. By the way who, except Israel, thought Israel would abandon the settlements it had built in Gaza!
Unless this (Two State settlement) is done, whenever Hamas provokes Israel, Israel will try, not only to retaliate, but will endeavour to ensure that Hamas is incapacitated to the extent that it does not attemp to provoke her again. Unfortunately, whenever this happens, those who misslead Hamas go behind to re-arm it and it thinks it can attack Israel!
I advice the UN and all its agencies to have the courage to tell Hamas to know itself and find wisdom.
IEM Nwana
On Friday, 1 August 2014, 1:32, olakassimmd via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
Dear All
There is no doubt that Israel is breaking international laws
and that she is getting away with it under the leadership
of Benjamin Nettanyau who is as much as war monger as any
Hamas leader could be.
However there would have been no need
for Israel to break international laws if the
Hamas had not kept on provoking Israel in the first
instance.
The state of Israel has no other choice but to protect her citizens.
If the Hamas keeps on using its civilians as sacrificial lambs to shield its troops
from Israel's superior firepower, one can hardly blame only the state of Israel
for the thousands of civilians including infants and school children
who have been either killed or wounded
during the ongoing Israeli counter-offensive.
The leadership of the Hamas are fully aware that that Israel's war doctrine
is to deploy overwhelming disproportionate
force in retaliation for any attacks by Hamas on Israeli citizens,
The Hamas must learn the lesson that it is suicidal to keep
on provoking wars it knows it cannot win and that if by chance
it ever appears it might be winning, such an anticipated victory would be truncated
by the increase in supplies of ammunitions and logistics to Israel by the USA and other western countres
to bolster the Israeli efforts.
Only ruthless religious ideologues keep on year in and year out using its peoples
as guinea pigs for the testing of the
latest weaponry from Israel, the USA and other western countries,
The rest of the world must tell the Hamas and her dwindling number of Arab supporters that
it must learn to live and let live.
The only solution to the Palestinian-Isreali dispute is a two state solution!
The state of Israel is here to stay; it is not going anywhere.
Nettanyau and the rest of the Israeli leadership must also realize that her citizens
would know no lasting peace until it agrees to meet the Palestinians in the middle.
israel must stop building settlements on Palestinian lands!
Bye,
Ola--a strong supporter of Palestinian rights who is currently fed up with Hamas tactics.
---- Original Message ----
From: kenneth harrow <ha...@msu.edu>
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Thu, Jul 31, 2014 6:17 pm
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - In Gaza, International Law Is Up in Flamesthis is completely true
here is the amnesty international report that details these violations: http://www.amnesty.org/en/news/israelgaza-conflict-questions-and-answers-2014-07-25
kenOn 7/31/14 4:35 PM, Emeagwali, Gloria (History) wrote:
In Gaza, International Law Is Up in FlamesIn a flagrant violation of international law, Israel's assault on Gaza has killed hundreds of civilians and devastated civilian infrastructure.By Phyllis Bennis<http://fpif.org/authors/phyllis-bennis/>, July 30, 2014. Originally published in OtherWords<http://otherwords.org/israel-violates-international-law-in-gaza/>.Israel is imposing collective punishment against all Gazans, attacking hospitals, schools, and power stations.As Israel's assault on the Gaza Strip rages on, ceasefires come and go. Most last just long enough for Palestinians to dig out the dead from beneath their collapsed houses, get the injured to overcrowded and under-resourced hospitals, and seek enough food and water to last through the next round of airstrikes."There is nothing left but stones," Palestinian journalist Mohammed Omer quoted an old woman saying as she searched desperately through the rubble of what had been her home.Casualties are soaring. By late July, Israel had killed more than 1,100 Palestinians<http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/29/world/meast/mideast-crisis/> -- at least 73 percent of them civilians<http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/07/28/336000847/conflict-in-gaza-heres-what-you-need-to-know-today>, including hundreds of children. Fifty-six Israelis, almost all of them soldiers, have died too.A July 28 poll<http://www.jpost.com/Operation-Protective-Edge/Poll-865-percent-of-Israelis-oppose-cease-fire-369064> shows that 86.5 percent of Israelis oppose a ceasefire. Yet we continue to hear that Israelis want peace.It's true that at least some of them do. An Israeli protest in Tel Aviv brought 5,000 people into the street. That's good -- though a far cry from the 400,000 who poured into the streets to protest Israel's invasion of Lebanon back in 1982.And when a young Palestinian teenager was kidnapped and tortured to death -- burned alive -- in Jerusalem after the bodies of the three kidnapped young Israeli settlers were found, many Israelis tried to distance themselves from the horrific crime. "In our society, the society of Israel, there is no place for such murderers," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed.But in fact, there is a place for those who call for murder -- at the highest political and military levels of Israeli society.Meet Ayelet Shaked<http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/07/07/israeli-politician-declares-war-on-the-palestinian-people.html>, a member of the Knesset -- Israel's parliament. She belongs to Israel Home, a far-right party in Netanyahu's governing coalition. She issued on Facebook what amounts to a call to commit genocide, by deliberately killing Palestinians, including women, children, and old people."The entire Palestinian people is the enemy," Shaked posted. "In wars, the enemy is usually an entire people, including its elderly and its women, its citie...
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---Mohandas Gandhi
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There is enough in the world for everyone's need but not for everyone's greed.
---Mohandas Gandhi
You received this message because you are subscribed to the "USA-Africa Dialogue Series" moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin.
For current archives, visit http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
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