QuakerInfo.com Forum

[Pulpculture]

The Israeli cabinet met for a week to discuss the incoming aid convoy and their arrogant conclusion was to attack the boats in INTERNATIONAL waters using Israeli armed commandos. To then hijack the ships and take them to Israel amounting to Piracy. Breaking the international laws in place by normal decent countries. Again Israel has broken them. The Israeli media then has the audacity to spout the usual tripe about how the people on the boats are supporters of Hamas, Al Quada and other terrorist groups. Then they say the people on the boats were armed showing images of catapults on the floors - It would be a joke if people weren't lying dead.

The UN will do nothing as ever. At best we'll get an Israeli investigation into itself. Guess what? - it'll be full of lies and go nowhere. Be sure though that people in Gaza will continue to die.
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I said don't forget Burma!

[Pulpculture]

[Anthony]

[Pulpculture]

I think the Israeli's figured on a massive over the top deployment of force to hinder anyone from thinking about doing this ever again.
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I said don't forget Burma!

[Pulpculture]

A History........


Contrary to a popular misconception, the conflict in Palestine/Israel is neither hundreds of years old nor is it primarily religious. At the heart of it, is a struggle for the control of land.

Zionism, which emerged in nineteenth century Europe, is an ideology of Jewish nationalism. A key factor in the birth of the Zionist movement was anti-semitic persecution in Europe and Russia.

But in choosing Palestine as the place for a Jewish state, the Zionists were on a collision course with Palestine’s Arab population (Muslim and Christian).

In 1900, the population of Palestine was about 96% Arab, and 4% Jewish. In 1917, British Foreign Secretary Lord Balfour revealed that the British government supported “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”. The Palestinian Arabs – at that stage still over 90% of the population – were simply referred to as the “non-Jewish communities”.

Jewish immigration into Palestine increased dramatically through the 1930s and ‘40s, as a result of the intensifying persecution in Europe that culminated in the Nazi Holocaust.

When the UN voted for Palestine to be partitioned in 1947, over half of the land was allotted to the Jewish state, even though Palestinians were over two thirds of the population and only 6% of Palestine was under Jewish ownership.

In 1948, as the State of Israel was established, up to 90% of the Palestinians who would have been inside the new Jewish state’s borders were expelled. As many as 500 Palestinian towns and villages were destroyed. This is why Palestinians refer to the creation of Israel as the Nakba (‘catastrophe’ in Arabic).

In 1967, during a war with the neighbouring Arab states, Israel conquered the West Bank and Gaza Strip, beginning its military rule of what became known as the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT).

Soon after the occupation began, Israel began to expropriate land and create Jewish settlements. These settlements have been established and expanded, by successive Israeli governments, in breach of international law.

In 1987, Palestinians under Israeli military occupation rose up in what became known as the First Intifada (literally, ‘shaking off’ in Arabic). Stone-throwing Palestinians confronted Israeli soldiers, while many communities adopted classic civil disobedience tactics.

In 1993, the Oslo Peace Accords were signed, establishing the Palestinian Authority in small pockets of the OPT. The claim was that this would be an interim stage towards full Palestinian statehood, but by 2000 the Israeli settler population in the West Bank had grown by 50% (three times the population increase in Israel itself).

In the summer of 2000, attempts by Bill Clinton to get Israeli PM Ehud Barak and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to reach a deal at Camp David failed.

At the end of September 2000, another Palestinian uprising began (the Second Intifada). It was triggered by the visit of Ariel Sharon and hundreds of security forces to the site of the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, one of the holiest places for Muslims.

In the first 30 days of the Second Intifada, over 120 Palestinians were killed by Israel across the West Bank and Gaza, without one Palestinian attack inside Israel. The violence quickly escalated.

Israeli forces inside the OPT invaded Palestinian towns and refugee camps, deploying tanks, helicopters and F-16s. Palestinian suicide bombers targeted buses and restaurants in Israeli cities. By the end of 2006, 4400 Palestinians had been killed, and around 1000 Israelis.

In 2002, Israel began work on the Separation Wall in the OPT, officially calling it a security measure. However, the Wall’s route, looping around the West Bank and East Jerusalem to include significant Jewish settlements, suggested a land grab. The judges of the International Court of Justice agreed 14-1 in July 2004 that the Wall is contrary to international law.

Israel pulled out several thousand settlers from the Gaza Strip in 2005, part of a unilateral ‘disengagement’ plan. Then-PM Ariel Sharon said that the move was necessary to strengthen Israeli settlements in the West Bank and would mean Israel was no longer responsible for the 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza.

After Palestinian elections in January 2006, when Hamas won a parliamentary majority over its rival Fatah, the Gaza Strip was subjected to an increasingly tight blockade. In December 2008, after a truce between Hamas and Israel expired, Israel launched a massive assault on the Gaza Strip. The ostensible provocation was Palestinian rocket fire, which had killed over 20 Israelis since 2001.

Israel’s offensive wreaked massive destruction to every day infrastructure, and 1,400 Palestinians – the vast majority civilians – were killed in a few weeks. A UN fact finding team (the ‘Goldstone report’) would later conclude that Israel and Hamas were guilty of war crimes
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I said don't forget Burma!

[CelticNorth]

The actions of the Israeli military seem always excessive, and appear to never calculate in thier response the saving of human life. Israeli intelligence had to have known the content of materials destined to Gaza, as well as a general profile of the people, from some forty nations, who would be on those ships. The United Nations Security Council will meet, and will no doubt encounter, once again, a veto by the United States for any meaningful action against Israel. When did Israel lay claim to the shores off Gaza as Israeli waters anyway? While the government of Israel rants and raves about groups such as Hamas and Hezbolla being "terrorists" organizations, they remain unshakable about the 300,000 illegal Jewish "settlers" on the West Bank, which only fuels the conflict. Israel seems to not want peace, but more land. As for the Palestinians, they are justified in wanting guns, ammunition and any military ordinace they can command to defend themselves. Like lambs at a slaughter, we have disarmed them to the point where the wolf at the door can enter at will, and at any time.

[Anthony]

It seems that Israel was set-up and in its arrogance fell for the bait.

[CelticNorth]

The Free Gaza Movement, which is behind the peace flotilla, is no stanger to Israeli authorities. What is so amazing about the intransience of the Israeli government is the fact that the Free Gaza Movement is in no way, shape or form a voice for Hamas or any other "terrorist" group in the Middle East. Click onto the Fee Gaza Movement website to get accurate information about the group; something the major news media in the United States has failed to do.

[Patrocles]

Anthony,

I think that most members of the flotilla would admit that their action was "provocative" in the sense that they wanted to provoke a heavy reaction of the Irael government. (They would defend that referring to the "freedom rides" and similar actions the Civil Rights Movement did in the U.S. southern states and which were provocative as well.

But (from all I've read) I don't see that anyone was really prepared for a nightly attack by Israeli soldiers from helicopters. Insofar the claim (of the Israel government) that the soldiers were lured into a trap and then attacked seems unfounded.

[Pulpculture]

Trouble is passions run high when the people at the receiving end are caged up like animals and dying.

The Israeli government are very clever with the media in twisting everything that comes their way into "being involved with Hamas" or a "terrorist organisation" (and the Jewish run UK media follow this this line in support) - Oh look we're back to the original thread - Israel and it's control of the UK media. Nice one.
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I said don't forget Burma!

[Anthony]

[Pulpculture]

Point taken Anthony however we have to remember there were numerous ships and the rest of the ships didn't attack the invading Israeli soldiers. We mustn't get distracted from the facts - this was a group of ships taking food, medicine, wheelchairs, building materials and the like to a large colony of people caged into an area with all routes in and out restricted. The Israeli soldiers illegally invaded these ships and A HANDFUL of flotilla men on one ship attacked some soldiers.

If a people who so recently experienced such unspeakable inhumanities cannot understand the injustice and suffering its territorial ambitions are inflicting - what hope is there?

This is the sort of people the IDF are made up of:

"An Italian journalist who was detained by the Israel Defense Forces following the raid on the Gaza-bound flotilla says his credit card was used to purchase items after it was confiscated by the Israeli authorities."

Source
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I said don't forget Burma!

[Anthony]

[Shay]

[Pulpculture]