"Gaza Island"

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

New BDS video from Canadian filmmaker John Greyson, who will sail with the international Freedom Flotilla 2 later this month, traveling on the Canadian boat, the Tahrir.

The Freedom Flotilla 2, with 12+ boats carrying humanitarian aid and 1000+ peace activists, is sailing to Gaza in late June. Alice Walker, who's sailing with us, calls this the Freedom Ride of our generation. We want to help open this Palestinian port and end the illegal Israeli blockade, which has caused so much suffering. Meanwhile, the global BDS (Boycott Divestment Sanctions) movement is calling on Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Laurie Anderson and Kiri Te Kanawa to cancel their 2011 Israel concerts and get on the boat!

[ready4ONE 5,400]

Cute video. What could go wrong?

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

It worked for South Africa to end Apartheid.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjWENNe29qc

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

Cute video. What could go wrong?

Well, hopefully the IDF won't murder anyone "important."

Navy determined to prevent breach of Gaza sea blockade

TEL AVIV — Israel made clear on Thursday that if a new flotilla of pro-Palestinian activists sought to break its naval blockade of Gaza like the one a year ago when its commandos killed nine people, the Israeli military would use force again, including boarding the ships and confronting the activists.

“We will do anything we have to do to prevent a boat from breaking the blockade,” a top naval official said in a briefing for foreign journalists. “If there is the same violence against our forces on board, there is a pretty good chance there will be injuries.” The official spoke on the condition of anonymity under Israeli military rules.

...

The statements seemed part of a heightened effort to stop another flotilla and to pre-emptively explain Israel’s position if violence ensues.

Israel Warns of Using Force if New Flotilla Heads to Gaza

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

It worked for South Africa to end Apartheid.

Israel's Sun City moment has arrived.

[ready4ONE 5,400]

The parallels to South Africa are somewhat off. Not as much as the attempted parralels to the holocaust, but off nonetheless.

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

The parallels to South Africa are somewhat off. Not as much as the attempted parralels to the holocaust, but off nonetheless.

South Africans, as well as Israelis, have noted the similarities between the two regimes:

“Israel, like South Africa, is an apartheid state.”

- Former South African President Hendrick Verwoerd, November 23, 1961

“Israel has created in the Occupied Territories a regime of separation based on discrimination, applying two separate systems of law in the same are and basing the rights of individuals on their nationality. This regime is the only one of its kind in the world, as is reminiscent of distasteful regimes from the past, such as the apartheid regime in South Africa.”

...

“This report deals with one of the primary…components of Israel’s policy of restricting Palestinian movement in the Occupied Territories: restrictions and prohibitions on Palestinian travel along certain roads in the West Bank. This regime, based on the principle of separation through discrimination, bears striking similarities to the racist Apartheid regime that existed in South Africa until 1994. In the regime operated by Israel, the right of every person to travel in the West Bank is based on his or her national origin.”

- B’Tselem, The Discriminatory West Bank Road Regime, August 2004

“This is much worse than apartheid. The Israeli measures, the brutality, make apartheid look like a picnic. We never had jets attacking our townships. We never had sieges that lasted month after month. We never had tanks destroying houses. We had armoured vehicles and police using small arms to shoot people but not on this scale.”

- Ronnie Kasrils, South Africa's Minister for Intelligence Services (and also Jewish,) after a 2004 visit to the Palestinian territories

“Apartheid was all about land. Apartheid was about keeping the best parts of the country for the whites and sending the blacks to the least habitable, least desirable parts of the country. And one sees that all the time here, particularly with the wall, now, which is really a land grab. One sees Palestinians dispossessed of their homes by bulldozers. One can draw certain parallels with respect to South Africa that, during the heyday of apartheid, population relocation did result in destruction of property, but not on the same scale as the devastation in Gaza in particular, [or in] the West Bank.”

...

“The similarities between the situation of East Jerusalemites and black South Africans is very great in respect of their residency rights. We had the old Group Areas Act in South Africa. East Jerusalem has territorial classification that has the same sort of consequences as race classification had in South Africa in respect of who you can marry, where you can live, where you can go to school or hospital.”

- John Dugard, South African lawyer and UN human rights monitor

“I’ve been very deeply distressed in my visit to the Holy Land; it reminded me so much of what happened to use black people in South Africa. I have seen the humiliation of the Palestinians at the checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like us when young white police officers prevented us from moving about…"

- Archbishop Desmond Tutu

[mawilson 2,133]

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

Laughing all the way to the guillotine

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

These guys don't seem to be laughing:

In a sign of the rising specter of BDS and its potential impact on Israel’s export driven economy (50% of its value is in exports), a group of 80 of the nation’s most important business leaders, met in closed session (Hebrew) sponsored by a peace group called Israel Initiates (website), to address their fears. The outline of the initiative roughly follows that of the 2002 Saudi peace plan. They agreed that if no political initiative was taken by Israel, the country’s financial stability was in grave danger. Though it wasn’t clear what specific political plan they were advancing, their call was clearly a criticism of the quiescence of the Netanyahu government:

We’re fast becoming like South Africa. The economic damage that will result from the boycott and sanctions will be felt by every Israeli family from the wealthy classes to the middle class and most harshly on the underclass.

These words were spoken by Eyal Ofer, son of the recently deceased Israeli billionaire Sami Ofer. The Ofer conglomerate is one of Israel’s largest and most profitable with strong alleged ties to Israel’s defense and intelligence apparatus. So a peace initiative originating from the Ofers must truly indicate a split of some sort among the Israeli far right political and military echelons and the more pragmatic elements. The passage above and what follows is a summary of an article in Calcalist, Israel’s leading business journal, on the meeting.

...

Dan Gillerman, until recently Bibi’s UN ambassador told the assembled multitude that the day after the UN vote recognizing Palestine a process of “South Africanization” (how’s that for a political neologism?) of the State of Israel would begin. He warned that the economic success enjoyed by the country today could easily explode in the aftermath of such a UN vote. Gillerman claimed he’d received assurances from senior Palestinian officials that they preferred a genuine peace process to a unilateral approach. Which means that a genuine peace initiative is demanded of the current Israeli prime minister [as opposed to the shame current policy] which would avert such a catastrophe.

Ofer told Calcalist that he wanted to remind the government that those in attendance at this session employed hundreds of thousands of Israelis and that their voice should be heeded. That seemed a shot across Bibi’s bow for sure.

Israeli Entrepreneurs, Fearing BDS and UN Recognition of Palestine, Announce New Peace Initiative

[Golden Gate 530]

This is a little different from the subject, but I talked to a friend in Palestine today who said that the Palestinian Authority has stopped the mail. I also found this article about it:

http://www.dbune.com...l-stoppage.html

Edited June 20, 2011 by Golden Gate

[mawilson 2,133]

These guys don't seem to be laughing:

Boycotts of Israel are nothing new.

They are just as toothless as the Arab League or the UN and its numerous resolutions against Israel.

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

Boycotts of Israel are nothing new.

They are just as toothless as the Arab League or the UN and its numerous resolutions against Israel.

“Captain Israel” Comic Series Acts to Combat BDS, Win Support for Israel

[The Dude 206]

Maybe if the Palestinians stopped firing rockets at Israel, they might actually get results. I'm just saying....

[mawilson 2,133]

Maybe if the Palestinians stopped firing rockets at Israel, they might actually get results. I'm just saying....

Stop making sense, you're upsetting the "death to israel" crowd.