"Gaza Island"

[jundp 191]

Is that Hedy Epstein?! She's one of the people my students study when we talk about the Holocaust and the Kindertransport.

Totally OT: But she's adorable. I know she's also quite the political activist, but that doesn't take away her adorable-ness

ETA: n/m I just saw the post saying that it is her. I didn't read all the way down.

Edited July 1, 2011 by jundp

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

Is that Hedy Epstein?! She's one of the people my students study when we talk about the Holocaust and the Kindertransport.

Totally OT: But she's adorable. I know she's also quite the political activist, but that doesn't take away her adorable-ness

ETA: n/m I just saw the post saying that it is her. I didn't read all the way down.

She is so adorable God bless her.

[sandinista! 1,816]

She is so adorable God bless her.

X2...I pretty much want to hug her, and I'm not even the hugging sort.

[scandal 951]

[scandal 951]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sza9ZsP4u9U

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dzd4lc9Hmw

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

[scandal 951]

You have pain, suffering, and anguish? I believe it.

We have it in spades in our communities as well. You have no monopoly on suffering.

Radical terrorists from within your community are responsible for the death and destruction and mutilation of thousands of Israeli lives. Here are just a few.

Both of our communities and peoples have suffered. Some of us want a lasting solution with two states side by side and an end to the devastation. In the midst of the anti-Israel and anti-Zionist attacks polluting this board, I posted a few videos last night. Of the people and their land, of the love and the ties expressed between Israelis and Israel. Beautiful songs, songs that make me wistful and sentimental when I hear them.

Out of curiosity, do you have such videos and songs? Songs of the eternal love of the Palestinians for their homeland, songs of joy and longing for peace? Or are all your videos militaristic war cries?

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

Until both sides recognize the humanity in the other, the impasse will continue. Either way, the occupation must end.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CuCxxXCM4I

Edited July 2, 2011 by Some Old Guy

[웃 910]

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

[Bad_Daddy 2,209]

http://news.yahoo.com/greece-arrests-gaza-bound-boat-captain-154447412.html

Greece arrests Gaza-bound boat captain

By DEMETRIS NELLAS - Associated Press | AP – 2 hrs 7 mins ago

THENS, Greece (AP) — Greek authorities have arrested the captain of a boat that is part of a Gaza-bound flotilla trying to deliver humanitarian aid to the Palestinian territory, officials said Saturday.

The 60-year-old captain, whose name was not released by authorities, was being held at Piraeus police headquarters and will remain there until a court hearing Tuesday.

Greece's coast guard said the captain of "The Audacity of Hope" faces charges of trying to leave port without permission and of endangering the lives of the boat's passengers. The latter charge is a felony.

The boat was carrying 36 passengers, four crew and about 10 members of the media. Its attempt to sail Friday night from the port of Perama, near Athens, was thwarted by coast guard speedboats. On the same day, Greece had announced it was banning vessels heading to Gaza from leaving Greek ports.

In Jerusalem, Israel has denied claims it sabotaged ships trying to breach its sea blockade of the Gaza Strip.

Activists have accused Israel of damaging two ships docked in Turkey and Greece that were part of a flotilla attempting to reach the Palestinian territory.

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor dismissed the sabotage charges as "ridiculous," calling them "sad conspiracy theories."

Selcuk Unal, a spokesman for the Turkish Foreign Ministry, said authorities had determined that there was no act of sabotage on an Irish vessel in the flotilla that docked in the Turkish port of Gocek on the Aegean Sea.

Israel says it imposed the blockade in 2007 to stop weapons reaching the Islamic militant group Hamas that rules Gaza. Activists describe the blockade as a form of incarceration for the Palestinians.

Nine activists on a Turkish boat were killed last year in an Israeli raid on a similar flotilla.

In a statement, the Middle East Quartet of Mideast mediators — the U.S., U.N., EU and Russia — said it remained concerned about the difficult conditions facing Palestinians in Gaza, but noted "a marked increase in the range and scope of goods and materials" entering Gaza over the last year.

It urged those wishing to deliver goods to Gaza to do so through "established channels," which include Israeli and Egyptian crossings.

The Quartet "urges restraint and calls on all Governments concerned to use their influence to discourage additional flotillas, which risk the safety of their participants and carry the potential for escalation," the statement said.

Edited July 2, 2011 by Why_Me

[Ramialbali 23]

Out of curiosity, do you have such videos and songs? Songs of the eternal love of the Palestinians for their homeland, songs of joy and longing for peace? Or are all your videos militaristic war cries?

63 years of suffering under war, occupation,prison, refugees, illegal settlements, 10s of thousands being killed aren't enough to show the Palestinian eternal love for their Homeland??

Sing for peace while you are being slaughtered!!!

out of your curiosity, you do not need to ask for such songs. You can find them all over the internet for you surf ' palestinian songs for peace or soever.

There are people from both sides sing for peace together too.

The Jewish-Arab (Palestinian) Peace song;

Sorry for the inconveneince

[Ramialbali 23]

You have pain, suffering, and anguish? I believe it.

We have it in spades in our communities as well. You have no monopoly on suffering.

Radical terrorists from within your community are responsible for the death and destruction and mutilation of thousands of Israeli lives. Here are just a few.

Both of our communities and peoples have suffered. Some of us want a lasting solution with two states side by side and an end to the devastation. In the midst of the anti-Israel and anti-Zionist attacks polluting this board, I posted a few videos last night. Of the people and their land, of the love and the ties expressed between Israelis and Israel. Beautiful songs, songs that make me wistful and sentimental when I hear them.

Out of curiosity, do you have such videos and songs? Songs of the eternal love of the Palestinians for their homeland, songs of joy and longing for peace? Or are all your videos militaristic war cries?

63 years of suffering under war, occupation,prison, refugees, illegal settlements, 10s of thousands being killed aren't enough to show the Palestinian eternal love for their Homeland??

Sing for peace while you are being slaughtered!!!

out of your curiosity, you do not need to ask for such songs. You can find them all over the internet for you surf ' palestinian songs for peace or soever.

There are people from both sides sing for peace together too.

The Jewish-Arab (Palestinian) song for peace;

Sorry for the inconvience

Edited July 3, 2011 by Rami-Becky

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

You have pain, suffering, and anguish? I believe it.

We have it in spades in our communities as well. You have no monopoly on suffering.

Radical terrorists from within your community are responsible for the death and destruction and mutilation of thousands of Israeli lives. Here are just a few.

Where have I made any such claims about monopoly, or denied that there are Jewish victims?

I guess you’re trying to make the argument for equating the two sides - as in “both sides have hurt.”

Yes, of course there have been innocent victims on both sides. But I already posted earlier in the thread on why there is no comparison (see post #51.) The suffering inflicted by Israel on Palestinians is on an overwhelmingly more massive, destructive and deadly scale than the suffering inflicted by Palestinians on Israelis.

Israel is the one who is illegally occupying the other - an occupation that began with a war that Israel started.

So let me put it this way: everyone should be horrified at the deaths of innocent civilians and the wanton destruction of their property. But like most people, my feelings of horror about death and destruction intensify as the level of the death and destruction is intensified. So I find the mass slaughter of 8000 innocent people to be proportionately more horrifying than the mass slaughter of 80 innocent people, or even 800 innocent people.

Unfortunately, Israelis suffer from collective amnesia when it comes to the Zionists’ and subsequently Israel’s continued use of violence against civilians throughout the history of the conflict. Considering what radical terrorists from what you call “your” community have done to Palestinians over the past 65 years - well, you‘re living in a house made entirely of huge brittle glass panels. You can't pull up anything the Palestinians have done to Israelis that even begins to compare with the slaughter of Cast Lead, and that was just one operation.

Both of our communities and peoples have suffered. Some of us want a lasting solution with two states side by side and an end to the devastation.

As I’ve said on this board many, many times, I used to believe a two-state solution based on international law was possible.

However, successive Israeli governments have deliberately done and continue to do everything they can to make the two-state solution impossible. The Likud charter openly states in its party platform that it is dedicated to actively resisting and preventing the creation of any Palestinian state, and the current Prime Minister and other top government officials have even appeared at public rallies to denounce the idea.

As we speak, Israel is expanding its settlements, stepping up its expulsion of Palestinians in East Jerusalem in order to “Judaize” Arab neighborhoods, and driving Palestinian Bedouins out of their homes in order to consolidate Israeli control of the Jordan Valley.

The Israeli government does not want to remove any more than a tiny token number of settlers, and in fact is moving them into Palestinian areas with ever-increasing speed. It insists on retaining huge swaths of the West Bank including the majority of the settlement blocs along with the network of roads and "security" infrastructures that crisscross the whole area, and including the entire Jordan valley.

Look at the maps - Israel has offered essentially the same “outsourced occupation” package since 1967. Its vision of a “Palestinian state“ has continued to be expressed as a series of disconnected Bantustans separated by everything Israel wants to keep - its illegal settlements, its "security areas" and a network of “Israeli-only” roads that crisscross the entire West Bank, all of it completely under the control of Israel including the borders, air space, sea coast, and aquifer rights. Any movement of goods or people between two Palestinian “enclaves” or to the outside world would continue to be subject to Israeli closure or curfew at any time.

1949 - Palestinian areas seized by Israel outside the area designated for the Jewish State:

1967 Allon plan:

1995 Oslo II:

1995 Netanyahu’s “Allon Plus” plan:

2000 Barak’s “Generous Offer”:

2001 Sharon Plan:

So what exactly is the difference from the current occupation, other than Israel will no longer be held to the duties and responsibilities of an occupying power under international law? What Israel seeks to do with the "peace process" is to legitimatize its illegal annexation of Palestinian land, keep the rest of the Palestinians locked down in a series of concentration camps until they may be finally persuaded to emigrate, leaving the land "cleansed" for Israel to formally annex and settle its Jewish population there.

This is why there is no peace agreement.

In the midst of the anti-Israel and anti-Zionist attacks polluting this board, I posted a few videos last night. Of the people and their land, of the love and the ties expressed between Israelis and Israel. Beautiful songs, songs that make me wistful and sentimental when I hear them.

Out of curiosity, do you have such videos and songs? Songs of the eternal love of the Palestinians for their homeland, songs of joy and longing for peace? Or are all your videos militaristic war cries?

You didn’t understand the song at all I posted at all - but your knee-jerk reaction reveals so much about your own assumptions and perceptions of Palestinians.

You see it and characterize it as a “militaristic war cry.”

In fact, the song is called “Gaza Under Fire” and it’s about what it was like for Palestinians during the terrifying assault of Cast Lead - the missiles, the massive destruction, the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians from babies to the elderly, asking why the world doesn’t help the people, asking the Arab countries why don’t they do anything but just give empty words, and it urges the Palestinian people, even alone and isolated as they are, to stay united and to never stop struggling for their freedom.

How utterly barbaric of them! How dare they create songs mentioning their own struggles to survive as they are being subjected to a brutal occupation, instead of catchy little ditties about how much they love peace and skipping through the meadows.

[Kathryn41 3,205]

This is an emotionally volatile issue and it will not be resolved here in an internet forum community. Nor does it contribute to a greater understanding of the concerns expressed to lob personal attacks at each other. While it may make you feel vindicated by attacking another poster with whom you have such heart-felt disagreements, it adds nothing to the discussion and ends up being removed for TOS violations. You will be farther ahead making your point without making them personal attacks.