It might be simpler if the West went ahead and ended economic sanctions on Iran. Then, a sizable number of Iranians, of their own free will, would probably import more of the junk that the West wants to dump on Iran, as has been shown by the popularity of many kinds of Western junk in such former official enemies of the capitalist West as China and Viet Nam.
However, of far greater concern is the less formal punishment which results from stating opinions as innocent as a parity of value between the lives of Jews and Palestinians; or using the word "apartheid" in relation to the occupied Palestinian territories; or suggesting the Israeli army might have committed war crimes in Lebanon or in Gaza.
There is no law against saying these things but there is certainly a price for saying them. Being identified with such opinions might cost one the recommendation of an already wavering superior. It might undermine a shaky friendship. It has even cost me romantic attachments, at their early stages... ...As the political establishment moves to the right the concern is that what are now informal marks of disapproval of leftist views will be legislated into law. The first attempts have already been made, with Yisrael Beiteinu, the far-right party in the ruling coalition, sponsoring laws like a prohibition of marking the day of the Palestinian nakba. The law failed to pass, but a democracy is about more than its laws.
Even if there is no law to curtail freedom of speech, if we are effectively discouraged from speaking through informal means, then this freedom has no real substance. From there it is only a matter of time before this freedom is gone from the law books, as well as from the talk shows, the water-coolers and the living rooms of the country.
Each dollar spent on bingo by the mostly Latino residents of Hawaiian Gardens, on the outskirts of Los Angeles, helps fund Jewish settlements on Palestinian land in some of the most sensitive areas of occupied East Jerusalem, particularly the Muslim quarter of the old city, and West Bank towns such as Hebron where the Israeli military has forced Arabs out of their properties in their thousands... "Moskowitz is taking millions from the poorest town in California and sending it to the settlements," said Haim Dov Beliak, a rabbi serving Hawaiian Gardens and one of the Jewish religious leaders in California who have campaigned to block the flow of funds to the settlers.
Netanyahu is claiming sovereignty over all Jerusalem. Israel is the only state who can always behave unlawfully in disregard to international law and get away with it...
The violence of the Ultraorthodox Jews in the settlements and their disregard to the rule of law, of international humanitarian law, encouraged by Israel, was going to pour out to Israeli society as a whole, and this is what we are witnessing now. But we are not seeing these pictures in most western newspapers who seem to shy from publishing these pictures while when Muslims demonstrate against Cartoons, it becomes the single news item around the world.
Hamas is maybe nervous about the sexual activities of young Gazans but nothing really surprises me when it comes to zionist tactics. One side effect of this is more Palestinian children which Israel would have to kill.
Among other things, they burn books. And they get away with their crimes. Anti-semitic crimes are well publicised in France, sometimes they are even invented. In 2004, in what became known as Affaire RER D, a young woman tells the police that she was attacked in the metro by an anti-semitic gang; four Arabs and two black people. The media treatment of this episode was hysterical. There were immediate condemnations from every level of civil society, the police, and the government, on the basis of one accusation which turned out to be false, and an empty judiciary file . Alex Moise, the head of the zionist federation of France used to send anti-semite messages to himself and complain about being threatened. Eventually he was caught lying and was condemned. This happened in 2004 when Ariel Sharon was accusing France of being soft on anti-semites and inviting French Jews to emigrate to Israel.
Because of its history of collaboration with the Nazi regime, France is a weak target for zionists. While intimidation goes on on a large scale agaisnt the French state and its people, zionist crimes in France are not reported, neither accounted for, nor punished, for fear from accusations of anti-semitism.
Organisations reporting war crimes and human rights abuse have accustomed us now to this false equivalence between Israel and Palestinian organisations without which they cannot condemn Israel unless they condemn the other side, fearing an outcry from Zionist organisations. First false equivalence: I thought that Hamas being considered anyway a terrorist organisation is not worth the news, while Israel is a 'light unto the nations'. Second false equivalence: More than 1,400 Palestinians, including more than 900 civilians, were killed during the three-week offensive. Thirteen Israelis were killed. Third false equivalence: Israel is the occupying entity, Gaza is occupied (the word is even a misstatement since Gaza is not only occupied but under a constant and harsh Israeli siege... Fourth false equivalence: the Israeli occupation of Palestine has been going on for sixty years now while Palestinian rockets are "the unbearable reality of nine years of incessant and indiscriminate rocket fire on the citizens of Israel" according to an Israeli official, they only killed 11 more Israelis in addition to the thriteen who died during the Gaza December offensive. 544 Israelis died from suicide bombings between 2001 and 2008. So that brings the total of Israeli victims to approximately 568 from both suicide bombings and rockets between 2000 and 2008 while Palestinian victims in Gaza numbered 1400 for the only month of december 2008.
I hate to look at these statistics because every human life is unique but we have to do it when we are to look at these false equivalences...I don't think Jews would have got any sympathy to have a state of their own if they were few to die from Nazi's persecutions. For political purposes, numbers matter, and this is what Amnesty and HRW are missing out when they issue their condemnations. For as long as zionists could maintain this equivalence, nobody can imagine how much pain and suffering is inflicted on Palestinians and how much their situation is dramatic...When the rockets fall silent, settlers return to their homes and their villages but every Israeli incursion into Gaza leaves permanent scars, death, trauma, and tragedies behind at the scale of the population and beyond our imagination...In Gaza, between incursions, there is no return to normal life, there is only a stop on the way down the abyss of the occupation...
Israel imprisoned recently human rights activists from the Free Gaza movement trying to ship aid to Gaza including building material. Listen below to a message from Cynthia McKinney in an Israeli prison calling on president Obama to ease the Israeli blockade of Gaza. This is plainly crime against humanity.
