US State Dept defines Israeli settler violence as terrorism

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

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 ?

I get it, it's a volatile situation. I don't think anyone is denying that.

However... it is a fact of life there, many of us are quite lucky we don't have to live in that situation or fight in civil wars to overthrow repressive governments. Believe me, I get it.

A guy can get punched outside of a nightclub here and end up as a vegetable while the perp gets let off with a 9 month suspended sentence.

Noone said life was fair.

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

I get it, it's a volatile situation. I don't think anyone is denying that.

However... it is a fact of life there, many of us are quite lucky we don't have to live in that situation or fight in civil wars to overthrow repressive governments. Believe me, I get it.

A guy can get punched outside of a nightclub here and end up as a vegetable while the perp gets let off with a 9 month suspended sentence.

Noone said life was fair.

You have avoided the pertinent question: Does the continued pattern of Israeli incitement and violence against "Arabs" (Palestinians,) along with the state's pattern of failing to arrest, prosecute or punish the perpetrators (some of whom are employees of the state,) fit the definition of state-sponsored terrorism ?

Edited August 21, 2012 by wife_of_mahmoud

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

You have avoided the pertinent question: Does the continued pattern of Israeli incitement and violence against "Arabs" (Palestinians,) along with the state's pattern of failing to arrest, prosecute or punish the perpetrators (some of whom are employees of the state,) fit the definition of state-sponsored terrorism ?

I have no idea. What is the definition of state-sponsored terrorism? More to the point - whose definition is it?

[Usui Takumi 1,562]

I have no idea. What is the definition of state-sponsored terrorism? More to the point - whose definition is it?

Given the OP, I guess the answer to both questions is per the US. I had a brief look and one item that stood out was "providing safe haven"

Edited August 21, 2012 by Sousuke

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Given the OP, I guess the answer to both questions is per the US. I had a brief look and one item that stood out was "providing safe haven"

Yeah I guessed that - I'm not sure what the point is of asking me the question, when the article makes plain what the position of the US State Department is.

Quite honestly, what the State Department regards as terrorism isn't necessarily something that should be taken as read.

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

I love the way you totally ignore what Israel *got* for free when it stole half, then 3/4 (and now working on what's left) of Palestine - all the businesses, all the farms, all the homes, all the property that it rents out to tenants or sells. You probably believe Israelis made the desert bloom and invented the Jaffa orange and hummus and felafel, etc. etc...

Yes, the superior culture did it. Ask Mitt.

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

Here is a detailed compilation of the patterns of incitement, violence, and impunity that I mentioned - the categories are linked directly to each section:

FACT SHEET: A Culture of Impunity: Violence Against Non-Jews in Israel & the Occupied Territories

Increasing Violence by Jewish Israelis Against Palestinians & Other Non-Jews

Recent High-Profile Cases

Skyrocketing Settler Violence

Israeli Government Complicity

Failure to Investigate & Racism in the Legal System

Incitement by Jewish-Israeli Politicians

Incitement by Jewish Religious Leaders

Source:

http://imeu.net/news/article0022895.shtml#settlerviolence

Edited August 22, 2012 by wife_of_mahmoud

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

Yes, the superior culture did it. Ask Mitt.

Heh. Did you see this ?

Jon Stewart/Democalypse 2012 - National Geogaffe-ic - Romney Abroad

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

Yeah I guessed that - I'm not sure what the point is of asking me the question, when the article makes plain what the position of the US State Department is.

Quite honestly, what the State Department regards as terrorism isn't necessarily something that should be taken as read.

The reason I asked you the question is because you are the one who tried to characterize the continuing pattern of violence and terror against Palestinians, incited by employees of the State of Israel who continue their behavior with impunity from legal repercussions, as the equivalent of garden-variety criminal activity that happens in every society.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Does it matter what the cause is? You posted an article about a couple of people who got beaten up in a volatile part of the world. It's unfortunate, but it's a fact of life.

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

Does it matter what the cause is? You posted an article about a couple of people who got beaten up in a volatile part of the world. It's unfortunate, but it's a fact of life.

Systematic, institutionalized terrorism, incited and excused by government leaders and employees, against a particular ethnic group is something far more disturbing than "a couple of people who got beaten up in a volatile part of the world."

This is from a much longer article on what is happening in Israeli society, but it's insightful:

Another thing I saw first hand in the 1980s was the anti-Black dehumanization of Jewish Brooklyn transferring into anti-Arab racism in the West Bank, filled with growing numbers of state-subsidized Brooklyn ex-pat settler extremists. Since then, that once extremist discourse has seeped its way into the mainstream of Israeli parliament, and we see the violence of a street mob looking for “Arabs” to kill. The first vigilante mob I was ever invited to join was in Crown Heights, as my Yeshiva buddies went to “patrol” or in reality antagonize Black residents on the periphery blocks of our shtetl neighborhood. In Israel, some of these same pimply overcompensating dork yeshiva kids and their parents would later be armed with uzis and military training, and unleashed on villagers with the backing of the IDF. Beyond the trash talking teen thugs, was an armed wing of the Jewish Defense League, which was also on the scene in 1980s Brooklyn. This group really thrived in the occupied territories, and their leader, Kahane, literally crossed over, to the West Bank, and into Knesset, where his radical ideas eventually got him expelled, but would now make him almost a centrist. This gradual seeping of racism across the Atlantic has completely corrupted the core of Israeli culture, which was already steeped in racism of another kind, derived from 19 th century colonial European roots. While it could rightly be argued that this kind of racism and violence has always been a part of Israeli history, its hard not to see the steady, unidirectional intensification. Israel’s ethnic cleansing missions in the late 1940s, the Nakba (or Catastrophe) of Palestinian removal, were always denied by Israel, covered up for decades, until being confirmed in the past decades by Israeli historians using declassified documents as proof. But now we see this street lynching, and the Zionist Hasbara machine is barely working to deny or cover it up. Its as though racist dehumanization has become more acceptable.

...

One hundred years ago, and after being violently removed from her role as a journalist in the US South, the great anti-lynching crusader Ida B. Wells had to hire white private eyes to go into white communities to investigate lynchings so she could document the horrors of the Jim Crow era. Similarly now, Palestinians need Jewish allies within Israeli society to further expose what is happening, in order for the apartheid and racism that has seized the society to be revealed and challenged before a reluctant Western world. Like their Black counterparts in the US or South African past, Palestinians know this violence on a daily basis, but it is the liberal Western audience that has to be moved in order for global pressure to be brought to bear. The problem is that the globalized West still holds onto Jews as the victims par excellence , and is more comfortable than ever post-9/11 dismissing the humanity of all Arabs and Muslims.

http://mondoweiss.net/2012/08/a-lynching-in-jerusalem-anatomy-of-jewish-racism.html#comments

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

And the surrounding region has been torn apart by civil war for the last two years. What do you want people here to say?

[ready4ONE 5,400]

And the surrounding region has been torn apart by civil war for the last two years. What do you want people here to say?

Just don't mention Arab State sponsored terrorism and look away from this thread...

[Sofiyya 1,687]

Israel's pool of potential immigrants is tapped out since the fall of the Soviet Union. Most of the world's Jews don't want to live in Israel, and have no intention of moving there. Barring another catastrophe on the level of the Holocaust, there will be no more mass aliyahs.

There are also a lot of Palestinians living outside of Palestine who are currently denied the right of return. They could come back, too, when the Jews are outnumbered.

[Sofiyya 1,687]

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.

A past long lost and perceptions like:

We are God's Chosen People.

God gave us this land.