US State Dept defines Israeli settler violence as terrorism

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

Some people are very threatened by the idea of Palestinians having rights in their own land. But it's Israel that made the choice to insert its settlers into the West Bank, and with the intention of making a separate Palestinian state impossible. Although some people cling to the fantasy that Palestinians will volunteer to disappear, this is not realistic.

These same people get very upset when one points out the choice that Israel has made for itself: A.) dismantle the illegal settlements and take its settlers and its soldiers back to Israel (and face the wrath of its extremist settler faction;) B.) give Palestinians full rights as Israeli citizens (and face the "demographic threat" to the artificially-created Jewish majority;) C.) make apartheid official (and face sanctions;) or D.) go for another round of ethnic cleansing (and face sanctions or worse.)

Thus the howls of "extremist" etc. being aimed at me - it hurts too much to admit that Israel has painted itself into a very uncomfortable corner, so it's easier to blame the messenger.

[^_^ 5,021]

Bibi is an extremist, too.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Some people are very threatened by the idea of Palestinians having rights in their own land. But it's Israel that made the choice to insert its settlers into the West Bank, and with the intention of making a separate Palestinian state impossible. Although some people cling to the fantasy that Palestinians will volunteer to disappear, this is not realistic.

These same people get very upset when one points out the choice that Israel has made for itself: A.) dismantle the illegal settlements and take its settlers and its soldiers back to Israel (and face the wrath of its extremist settler faction;) B.) give Palestinians full rights as Israeli citizens (and face the "demographic threat" to the artificially-created Jewish majority;) C.) make apartheid official (and face sanctions;) or D.) go for another round of ethnic cleansing (and face sanctions or worse.)

Thus the howls of "extremist" etc. being aimed at me - it hurts too much to admit that Israel has painted itself into a very uncomfortable corner, so it's easier to blame the messenger.

Why?

TBH it's perhaps more accurate to say that some people are so invested in a past long-lost that they can't understand any argument that questions their preconceptions without needing to twist them into something they aren't to further their own prejudices.

[^_^ 5,021]

TBH it's perhaps more accurate to say that some people are so invested in a past long-lost that they can't understand any argument that questions their preconceptions without needing to twist them into something they aren't to further their own prejudices.

Bingo.

South Africa showed the world how to forgive. It's a very good example.

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

Bingo.

South Africa showed the world how to forgive. It's a very good example.

History lesson: the South African government dismantled its apartheid system only after years of international sanctions, and years of violence between the oppressors and the oppressed. It was after the oppression ended that they "showed the world how to forgive."

[^_^ 5,021]

History lesson: the South African government dismantled its apartheid system only after years of international sanctions, and years of violence between the oppressors and the oppressed. It was after the oppression ended that they "showed the world how to forgive."

Right, the black people of SA endured much much worse than anything the Arabs of the occupied territories are enduring. And they were still able to find it in their hearts to forgive.

That is an ideal worth looking up to.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Bingo.

South Africa showed the world how to forgive. It's a very good example.

As is the Irish dispute.

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

As is the Irish dispute.

I think the IRA just got bored with it. But, I imagine the Orangemen will do all they can to rekindle that fire any time they have the opportunity.

Edited August 21, 2012 by The Patriot

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

I think the IRA just got bored with it. But, I imagine the Orangemen will do all the can to rekindle that fire any time they have the opportunity.

More like the paramilitary splinter groups, like the 'Real IRA' - of which there are a few. The difference is that it's in everyone's interest now to stop the violence. It's a far better situation than it was in the 1980s.

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

Right, the black people of SA endured much much worse than anything the Arabs of the occupied territories are enduring. And they were still able to find it in their hearts to forgive.

That is an ideal worth looking up to.

That's not what South Africans say (not that you will pay them any mind):

“When you observe from afar you know that things are bad, but you do not know how bad. Nothing can prepare you for the evil we have seen here. In a certain sense, it is worse, worse, worse than everything we endured. The level of the apartheid, the racism and the brutality are worse than the worst period of apartheid.”

“The apartheid regime viewed the blacks as inferior; I do not think the Israelis see the Palestinians as human beings at all. How can a human brain engineer this total separation, the separate roads, the checkpoints? What we went through was terrible, terrible, terrible – and yet there is no comparison. Here it is more terrible. We also knew that it would end one day; here there is no end in sight. The end of the tunnel is blacker than black.”

- Mondli Makhanya

Editor-in-chief of the Sunday Times of South Africa

“Any South African who goes to Palestine today and visits the West Bank and Gaza, or Palestinians living in the State of Israel, come away shocked and, shaking their heads saying “This is far worse than the apartheid we knew." South Africans in great numbers are saying: "What we went through is like a picnic compared to what Palestinians are going through”

- Ronnie Kasrils

South African Minister of Intelligence (2004-2008)

Conditions for Palestinians under occupation were "worse than conditions were for Blacks under the Apartheid regime."

-Kgalema Motlanthe

Deputy President of South Africa and of the African National Congress

As someone who lived in apartheid South Africa and who has visited Palestine I say with confidence that Israel is an apartheid state.

In fact, I believe that some of the atrocities committed by the apartheid regime in South Africa pale in comparison to those committed against the Palestinians. The latest outrage by the apartheid Israeli regime-the construction of the hideous Apartheid Wall-condemned by the International Court of Justice extends the occupation of Palestinian lands, disrupts the already precarious economic, social, health and education well being of an entire people and entrenches the Bantustanisation of Palestine. When the governments of the world turn a blind eye to these injustices; when they are seduced by apartheid Israel’s justification of brutality through the pretext of ‘security’; when they silence criticism of state terror through the canard of ‘anti-Semitism’-then it is time for the global workers movement to stand firm and principled against hypocrisy and double standards.

- Willie Madisha

Former head of the Congress of South African Trade Unions

"I have been to the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and I have witnessed the racially segregated roads and housing that reminded me so much of the conditions we experienced in South Africa under the racist system of Apartheid. I have witnessed the humiliation of Palestinian men, women, and children made to wait hours at Israeli military checkpoints routinely when trying to make the most basic of trips to visit relatives or attend school or college, and this humiliation is familiar to me and the many black South Africans who were corralled and regularly insulted by the security forces of the Apartheid government."

"If you change the names, the description of what is happening in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank would be a description of what is happening in South Africa"

-Desmond Tutu

South African Nobel Peace Prize Laureate

"The issue of separate roads, [different registration] of cars driven by different nationalities, the indignity of producing a permit any time a soldier asks for it, and of waiting in long queues in the boiling sun at checkpoints just to enter your own city, I think is worse than what we experienced during apartheid."

- Fatima Hassan

South African human rights lawyer

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

Back to the topic... these incidents occurred this past week:

Palestinian youth beaten unconscious in attempted J'lem 'lynch'

In the last 24 hours, two near-fatal attacks were committed against Palestinians, one a suspected terror attack, the other a suspected attempted lynch – both allegedly committed by Israeli Jews. Haaretz was the only website (both Hebrew and English) to put the suspected lynch as a top story, while all the other major news sites lead with Iran’s incitement against Israel.

The first incident, a firebomb thrown on a Palestinian taxi driving north near the settlement of Bat Ayin towards Gush Etzion on Thursday, has yet to be confirmed as a terror attack. All six passengers in the car, members of the Hassan family from Nahalin, were injured – one seriously - reportedly suffering first-degree burns. According to Haaretz, the police said they found another firebomb in the area and were looking into the victims’ claim it was a “Jewish terror attack,” but had not yet ruled out other possibilities.

In another incident late Thursday night, which has already been called a “lynch” by an eyewitness who was there, three Palestinian youth were attacked and severely beaten up by “dozens” of Jewish youth in Zion Square, in the center of West Jerusalem. The woman who witnessed the whole thing posted her testimony and devastated thoughts on her Facebook page, which was partially translated by Haaretz. Here is the full translation:

"Its late at night, and I can’t sleep. My eyes are full of tears for a good few hours now and my stomach is turning inside out with the question of the loss of humanity, the image of God in mankind, a loss that I am not willing to accept. But today I saw a lynch with my own eyes, in Zion Square, the center of the city of Jerusalem. I arrived with the staff of “Elem” [NGO that works with children at risk] to Zion Square as we normally do at this hour to volunteer, and barely half an hour went by when I heard screams of ‘A Jew is a good soul and Arab is a son of a ######,’ shouted loudly and dozens (!!) of youths ran and gathered and started to really beat to death three Arab youths who were walking quietly in the Ben Yehuda street.

When one of the Palestinian youths fell to the floor, the youths continued to hit him in the head, he lost consciousness, his eyes rolled, his head at an angle started to twitch, and then those who were kicking him fled and the rest gathered in a circle around, with some still shouting with hate in their eyes…

When two of our volunteers went into the circle, they tried to perform CPR the mass of youths standing around started to say resentfully that we are resuscitating an Arab, and when they passed near us and saw that the rest of the volunteers were shocked, they asked why we were so in shock, he is an Arab. When we returned to the area after some time had passed, and the site was marked as a murder scene, and police were there with the cousin of the victim who tried to reenact what happened, two youths stood there who did not understand why we wanted to give a bottle of water to the cousin of the victim who was transferred to hospital in critical condition, he is an Arab, and they need don’t need to walk around in the center of the city, and they deserve it, because this way they will finally be afraid.

Children aged 15-18 are killing a child their own age with their own hands. Their own hands. Children who’s hearts were unmoved when they beat to death a boy their age who lay writhing on the floor. The picture has not been struck from my eyes and I can still hear the voices and the feeling of helplessness and the question, what happened to us and what is happening to our kids? And the most important – If and how can we still change it?

After many comments and rumors that the Palestinians had somehow started it or attacked the Jewish youth first, the witness wrote: “I saw with my own eyes that they didn’t attack anyone, and I heard with own ears the teens running just to ‘find an Arab to beat up.’”

One of the Palestinians is in the intensive care unit at Hadassah Hospital Ein Karem, after being beaten so badly that he lost consciousness and had to be revived by medics after losing a pulse. A picture of a different Palestinian who was injured by Jews several months ago in Jerusalem was uploaded by a right-wing settler site called “the Jewish Voice” and has been circulating as a visual on their Facebook page. An Israeli named Amihay Hillel wrote a comment on the Facebook photo commending the violent act and essentially admitting some kind of passive support, if not active participation, in the attack by stating “How wonderful…I was lucky enough to be present”

http://wwww.972mag.com/palestinian-youth-beaten-unconscious-in-suspected-lynch-in-jerusalem/53132/

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Back to the topic... these incidents occurred this past week:

http://wwww.972mag.com/palestinian-youth-beaten-unconscious-in-suspected-lynch-in-jerusalem/53132/

It's pretty terrible, but I have to ask - so what?

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

It's pretty terrible, but I have to ask - so what?

I know... it was just a couple of Arabs nearly beaten to death. Not like they were, you know, like... important.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

I know... it was just a couple of Arabs nearly beaten to death. Not like they were, you know, like... important.

As I said, it's terrible but is it important? The news is full of beatings, stabbings, shootings and worse. These are daily occurrences pretty much everywhere.

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

As I said, it's terrible but is it important? The news is full of beatings, stabbings, shootings and worse. These are daily occurrences pretty much everywhere.

Or is it ?

Take a closer look. Prominent rabbis as well as politicians (who are both paid by the state) publicly incite against "the Arabs" (Palestinians) and are neither charged with any crime nor removed from their positions. Afterwards, extremists engage in various attacks against Palestinians - from mosque burnings to murder. The police either don't catch the perps, or (rarely) they are given very lenient punishments by the courts.

This is the pattern that has been going on for years, even decades. So it is a pattern of violence, instigated by people on the state payroll, which enjoys virtual impunity from the justice system.

Does this fit the definition of state-sponsored terrorism ?