Here is just one little story of the everyday humiliation, the destruction of Palestinian livelihood and culture, carried out by the ruthless, racist Israeli military machine.
I could post such stories every day, including many much worse, and could describe more of the political context which beggars belief – the Israeli Knesset, for example, has just passed through its committee stage a bill providing for Palestinians and other Arabs to pay the costs of the demolition of their own homes by Israel bulldozers. There is a horror to that which should not lead you to overlook a yet more horrible underlying fact contained in that sentence – exactly as in apartheid South Africa, thousands of Israeli laws are ethnically explicit.
I haven’t checked out this little olive tree story, I don’t have to. it is prototypical of thousands of such stories throughout my adult life. I have met victims and know such stories are true.
This is why I support all those working to give some justice and hope for Palestinains. And this is why I cannot understand how such controlling sections of the media and political establishments of the west have signed up so completely to defend the indefensible, to deny to themselves what kind of state Israel has in truth become.
@ Craig,
A lot more problems ahead.
I was driving in the US some years ago, listening to PBS. The Palestinian intellectual, Edward Said ( now deceased) was being interviewed. He offered a novel assessment.
He mentioned the demographics surrounding where Israel has implanted itself. He went on, correctly in my opinion, to mention the denial of democratic participation to the Palestinians within Israel.
He went further in his analysis and in dealing with the territory which is supposed to be the ground for the so-called “two state solution” he came down on the side that there can be but – one state.
We in the West, have been dumbed down from understanding the criminality and true nature of Western colonialism and imperialism. Not just in the Palestinian instance, but across the globe over centuries. What is the criminal bombardment of Libya now but colonialism raising its ugly head yet again ( back to the Berlin Conference – and history repeats itself).
No justice for the Palestinians – no peace for Israel – and the wars are not far off.
Maybe Israel is used to destabilise the Middle East, to aid corporatist exploitation of the oil. If Israel were to start behaving decently (or indeed rationally), it would cease to perform that function.
Hi Clark,
–
Israel will not behave decently Clark – I have just reviewed an evil plan – pie in the sky to some but I take these things seriously based on the evil we know so far. Here are the main points which of course are just food for deep thought:
–
A Final Solution Assessment
–
UAV Nuclear missiles are the vision for the final destruction of the entities enemies. In this scenario a networked group of next generation UAV’s currently testing at Area 51 are capable of carrying miniature thermo-nuclear deuterium-tritium boosted bombs with primary beryllium reflected plutonium fissile cores. These nuclear bombs have been developed in Israel. The UAV’s would be controlled from command and control centres in Afghanistan and Iraq. A ‘swarm’ could be directed into China. China’s nuclear arsenal is the smallest and least advanced among the five nuclear powers and retaliation is deemed only 16% effective. Pakistan’s nuclear weapons storage and launch areas have been compromised so that another ‘swarm’ of UAV’s controlled from the new underground command centre in Iraq, with the same lightweight and low yield bombs would neutralise that threat. So it is clear Russia is the entities main threat and must be encircled by European missile defences against land launched ICBM’s. The US global missile defence must be capable of knocking out Russian launched submarine ICBM’s.
Hi,
In the end, when justice finally prevails, and the tortured Coolidge victims have humbly their own right to retribution (as the truth & reconciliation committee did), these establishment figures will pretend as if they always supported the cause of the Palestinians; while in the mean time they will actively do everything in their power and influence to prevent that resolution by any means of procrastination and prevarication.
There is absolutely no logic, whether viewing events through the concepts of fairness or national interest, to support the state of Zionism, except through the prism of corruption, wilful ignorance or plain hypocrisy, or an infusion of 5th columnists openly given free reign.
Now who supplied the heavy water for Israel’s initial nuclear arms, and who were the first victims of israeli terrorism, and who are the most friendly of the friends?
Kind regards,
MN
Should be:
Hi,
In the end, when justice finally prevails, and the tortured colonised victims have humbly given up their own right to retribution (as the truth & reconciliation committee did), and the perpetrators have escaped what they would ensure unto others, these establishment figures will pretend as if they always supported the cause of the Palestinians; while in the mean time they will actively do everything in their power and influence to prevent that resolution, by any means of procrastination and prevarication.
@ Mark,
I hear you Mark. I believe you Mark. I do not think it is feasible Mark.
I am a lawyer – not a military man, but let’s reason.
There are different levels of nuclear military capacity. Some nations are able to inflict MAD ( mutually assured destruction). Crazy as the Bush, Rumsfeld, Pentagon etc. folks are/were, they are/were fundamentally cowards. They would never want to be in the line of fire, but are happy to sign off on the policies that send other people’s children into criminal wars. This is a preface for what I have to say.
Take the instinct for human survival on board. Kissinger, Bush, Rumsfeld and many other cowards – fundamentally – cowards. They, in their mindset, do not want to be at all in harm’s way of the wars they engineer.Extend this simple observation, if not totally “simple minded observation” to the nature of global strategy. The ones who politically implement the strategies – Wolfowitz who was shit scared in his underpants when the Iraqi resistance almost got him in the bombing attack on the hotel in Iraq – are not real men, in any sense. He personified that cowardliness that reigns. They will effect polices to kill innocents and make more and more money – but – they are fearful of death. Extend this simple psychological observation to global policy making.
If you believe that you are on your way to 72 virgins, you are of a totally different mindset than these cowards. If you feel that your purpose in life is a higher purpose than pursuit of paper with supposed value printed on it – you are a different kind of human being.
The idea that the US can develop, at this stage, an effective first strike devastating capacity against China, Iran, Russia, Pkitan etc. – I seriously doubt. PNAC had its ideas back when the Soviet Union collapsed, then they set out to project military might into the world. They have undenaibly failed.
My humble assessment – they will with, the cowards that lead and advise them, fail yet again when they calculate how to dominate the globe by nuclear bombing the world.
PEACE!
yes but it is a lot worse than that . by just focussing on palestine and isreal and the war of atrocity us europeans are doing you haven’t actually asked yourself the most fundamental question…
Are We Nice People?
Or are We Evil People?
The answer is
If any of us humans survive… we really don’t deserve it..because our planet is just so incrediilly beautiful##
i DON’T THINK WE ARE WORTHY ON CURRENT BEHAVIOUR
tONY
@ Tony,
You are off the wall. Be assured:-
A.You are a worthY, beautiful human being.
B.You are entitled to a space on this planet that we both share and
call ” home”.
C. Those of us who are not worthy are the ones on the wrong side –
you have a postion that does not place you within the ranks of
being ostracised from the worthy within humankind, for
as you say:-
” If any of us humans survive… we really don’t deserve
it..because our planet is just so incrediilly beautiful##
i DON’T THINK WE ARE WORTHY ON CURRENT BEHAVIOUR”
You are not one of them – press on – ALUTA CONTINUA! AND MAY WE PROCEED TO A MORE PEACEFUL PLANET AND REALISE OUR TRUE INHERENT HUMAN POTENTIAL.
PEACE!
“I haven’t checked out this little olive tree story, I don’t have to.”
“Never mind the truth. Print thr legend.”
Courtney Barnett,
When I first started reading your response I thought you were being like most people who respond to anything I write, but you were really nice.
Thank You
I wrote this in American
The reason why english is understood all over the world is because we also do the french warmth and the spanish dance
Us English have also learnt how to use our bodies
We’ve been doing gestures throughout recorded english time
GMT
The rest of the world can try and hate us if they want to
But we just welcome people with open arms
And introduce Our Guests to our Family and Friends
My Wife and I and Our Children
We often Experience Much The Same Welcome when We Travel
But Sometimes They Welcome Us So Much With Hugs and Kisses and Then they Take us Round Their Villages and Towns and…..
We just can’t believe how people can be so nice to us who we have never met before and barely understand their/our language
Tony
In the “stock photo” about Weils disease – it was not me. I was not punting on the cam. I was wearing My Yorkshire Gliding T-Shirt. She was Georgeous So I Told The Punters To Punt Off and I Rowed The Boat Myself – Just With Her
She Came From Bedford and She Still Lives in Bedford
I phone her up every 20 years or so
Tony
I wonder what Anne Frank would say. She had a connection to trees — one tree in particular, which, sadly, fell last year.
http://www.annefrank.org/en/Worldwide/Anne-Frank-Tree/
“The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quite alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature. As long as this exists, and it certainly always will, I know that then there will always be comfort for every sorrow, whatever the circumstances may be. And I firmly believe that nature brings solace in all troubles.”
— Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl
I remember too a scene from the Murder in Samarkand BBC radio play where Craig faced the destruction of olive trees and gave an impromptu speech about it, called it a crime. Craig, would you care to post that here? I’d like to see it again. Thanks then, thanks now.
“I have met victims and no such stories are true.” Craig. I think there may be a typo in there, Craig. Should be ‘know’. No?
Clark, yes, that may be it: Chaos.
There is a de facto straight-jacket on free expression in relation to specifically the subject of Palestine/Israel in the mainstream media and in national political discourse in the USA. Denial is the order of the day; to deny this is to compound matters. Less so, in the UK media. But it’s relative. In the UK, there is also a large faction within left-liberal-whatever thinking that is terrified of being branded ‘anti-Semitic’ and which appears willing to bend over backwards to appear ‘impartial’ and ‘balanced’. Would these same people have affected ‘impartiality’ and ‘balance’ wrt apartheid South Africa, Fascist Chile, Fascist Spain, Fascist Italy, or indeed Nazi Germany? Interestingly, they might, and did, wrt Stalin’s USSR, though. No, these people need to stand up and say: This is wrong, this must stop, this is not just a few bad extremist eggs in the Israeli basket; this is, and has been, the nature of the Israeli state, and to stop making apologies for Israel. To put regional matters in perspective, though, in Syria and Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and of course Libya (now a complex mess), the Government/authorities also were/are busy massacring their own people – but seven wrongs do not make a right. IN other words, just because Arab regimes are oppressive and brutal does not exonerate Israeli oppression and brutality – and importantly, the converse also applies. Oppression is oppression is oppression, wherever and by whomever it is committed – this website, and all of Craig’s work over the past several years exemplifies a commitment to that laudable, and not always easy, principle and practice.
Ah Tony…
Just when I was starting to believe you can make sense, you descend into the swirling world of Old Peculiar yet again…
Especially for Attila the Pedant above –
In Occupied Palestine
Zionism in practice
.
Israel’s Daily Toll on Palestinian Life, Limb, Liberty and Property
.
24 hours to 8am 29 June 2011
.
Main source of statistics: Palestinian Monitoring Group (PMG).
.
Northern Gaza: Israeli Army opens fire on kite-flying children
.
Israeli Occupation troops steal hundreds of Palestinian olive seedlings
.
2:15am home invasion: Israeli troops abduct 14-year-old boy
.
Occupation settlers and troops invade West Bank village
.
Night peace disruption and/or home invasions in 12 towns and villages
.
3 attacks – 21 raids including home invasions – 1 beaten – 1 injured
.
agricultural sabotage – 9 taken prisoner – 13 detained – 84 restrictions of movement
.
Home invasions & occupations: 03:00, Anata – 10:30, Seida – 02:15, Husan – 01:15, Dura.
.
Peace disruption raids: 10:40, Jaba – 01:35, Al Yamun – 01:35, AsSilat al Harithiya – 10:30, Illar town – 11:30, Baqa ash Sharqiya – 11:30, Nazlat Isa – 22:00, Tulkarem – 23:00, Jit – 12:35, Nablus – 22:00, Awarta – 00:45, Deir al Hatab – 22:25, Fasayil – 11:20, Al Khadr – 12:25, Beit Jala – 09:25, Hebron – 01:20, Hebron – 01:30, Bani Na’im – 20:05, Iraq Burin.
.
Palestinian attacks: none
.
Israeli attack: Northern Gaza – an Israeli Army position on the Green Line opened indiscriminate fire on 60 children who were flying kites in an anti-blockade protest demonstration, north of Beit Hanun.
.
Israeli attack – property violation: Salfit – 15:15, Israeli troops at the Za’tara junction checkpoint opened fire on a truck, took the driver prisoner and seized his vehicle.
.
Israeli attack: Jerusalem – 18:30, Israeli troops at the Qalandya checkpoint opened indiscriminate fire on pedestrians.
,
Agricultural sabotage: Salfit – 08:50, Israeli troops bulldozed crops on privately-owned farmland near the Revava Occupation settlement in Deir Istiya and stole around 300 olive seedlings.
.
Home invasion – abduction: Bethlehem – 02:15, Israeli troops raided Husan village, invaded three houses and abducted a 14-year-old boy, Ibrahim Fayez Sabatin.
.
Raid – beating – injury: Hebron – 09:25, the Israeli Army raided the city, set up a checkpoint and patrolled the area, beating up a resident in the street.
.
Occupation settler vandalism: Qalqilya – 21:55, Israeli militants stoned passing vehicles, damaging one of them, on the main road near Jit.
.
Occupation settler and Israeli Army violence: Nablus – 20:05, an Israeli mob invaded the outskirts of Iraq Burin, aided by the Israeli Army as it fired stun and tear gas grenades at villagers.
.
Recent news updates:
Former Israeli combat pilot takes part in Freedom Flotilla 2 Reports in Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth reveal that a former Israeli Air Force commander is taking part in Freedom Flotilla 2 heading for Gaza. The former combat pilot, Yonatan Shapira, ended his service in the Israeli Air Force when he refused to bomb Palestinian residential and civilian areas.
.
Sapiens Promise website
That’s quite a catalogue of abuse, Mary. Of course, eventually, there will be a response from those on the receiving end, which the Western media will jump on as yet another example of how unreasonable and anti-Israel the other side is. This will give Israel the excuse to launch a massively destructive attack, a Cast Lead 2, or whatever; there will then be a lull, followed by tentative talk about talks, and grumbles of half-arsed encouragement from Washington and Brussells, etc. Then nothing until oppression and humiliation produce, once again, an understandable reaction. This is the cycle. This is exactly the way Israel has been playing it, deliberately, for decades. Meanwhile, those “demographic realities” make a viable Palestinian state ever-more unattainable…
Precisely, Mary and Mike, precisely. It is, and always has been, very deliberate.
Thanks Courtenay I appreciate your thoughts. You can deduce I have a high degree of faith in British and American public pressure against such a scenario. In my mind during the review were the words of Francis Perrin, former head of the French nuclear weapons program, who wrote, ‘We thought the Israeli Bomb was aimed at the Americans, not to launch it at the Americans, but to say, `If you don’t want to help us in a critical situation [when we] require you to help us … we will use our nuclear bombs,’ – I still think that statement holds true today.
–
Israel used this blackmail during the 1973 war with Egypt, forcing US President Richard Nixon to re-supply its badly shaken military.
–
John Steinbach, a nuclear specialist once quoted Israel’s former president Ezer Weizman: ‘The nuclear issue is gaining momentum [and the] next war will not be conventional.’
–
Steinbach said that, whatever ‘deterrent effect’ the founders of the Israeli nuclear program may have intended, ‘today, the nuclear arsenal is inextricably linked to and integrated with overall Israeli military and political strategy”.
–
Israel Shahak, a survivor of the Warsaw ghetto and the Bergen-Belsen death camp said, ‘The wish for peace, so often assumed as the Israeli aim, is not in my view a principle of Israeli policy, while the wish to extend Israeli domination and influence is.’
–
Disarming Israel I believe is crucial to PEACE.
Craig
Your prototypical story reminded me immediately of a fine poem (below) by the Australian writer Mark O’Connor. There are striking parallels and contrasts between the patient malice of goats nibbling at olive leaves and the impatient malice of Israeli forces uprooting entire olive trees. No sign of the Israeli government taking the risk that millennia after Noah a dove might fly back “and. lo, in her mouth was an olive leaf pluckt off” (Genesis 8:11). The flood waters of illegal occupation have not yet abated … but they will; and olive groves will flourish again in Palestine.
To Kill An Olive
Nobody knows how long it takes to kill an olive.
Drought, axe, fire, are admitted failures. Hack one down,
grub out a ton of mainroot for fuel, and next spring
every side-root sends up shoots. A great frost
can leave the trees leafless for years; they revive.
Invading armies will fell them. They return
through the burnt-out ribs of siege machines.
Only the patient goat, nibbling his way down the ages,
has malice to master the olive. Sometimes, they say,
a man finds a dead orchard, fired and goat-
cropped centuries back. He settles and fences;
the stumps revive. His grandchildren’s family prosper
by the arduous oil-pressing trade. Then wars
and disease wash over. Goats return. The olives
go under, waiting another age.
Their shade still lies where Socrates disputed.
Gethsemane’s withered groves are bearing yet.
Beautiful imagery Iain.
.
This on a Palestinian’s yearning for his homeland. The poet lives in the US, one of now millions in the Palestinian diaspora.
.
http://dissidentvoice.org/2008/04/thinking-of-spring-in-palestine/
Deir Istiya is one of several villages in Salfit district. Its also a base for the International Women’s Peace Service in Palestine – here’s the 2011 page of reports, which does not yet mention the recent events.
http://iwps.info/?page_id=85
Its worth taking a look at the reports for earlier years, just to see the kind of things that have been happening in the Salfit area.
It would be hard for Americans, Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders and many others to acknowledge the right of “aboriginal” or indigenous inhabitants to what was once their land. If an American admits that the Israelis were wrong to take over Plaestinian land and kick the Palestinians out into the desert, how can he defend his own people’s treatment of the Native Americans? The only exceptions I can think of are in Africa – where the locals people have won back control of erstwhile European colonies like South Africa, Kenya, Angola, and many others. Perhaps it’s because there were too many native Africans to kill or displace?
Winston Churchill articulated the establishment point of view very clearly in his remarks to the Peel Commission (1937) on a Jewish Homeland in Palestine:
“I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place”.
I have always wondered what Churchill would have said if the Nazis, “a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way” had used their strength to conquer Britain, shoot him, and enslave the rest of us. In view of his remarks quoted above, I don’t see that he could have done anything but meekly acknowledge their right of conquest.
Mary
Thank you for the introduction to the poem by Mike Odetalla. Googling his name brings up more good writing.
Craig’s olive trees story led a friend to forward to me (with permission for wider sharing) the email below from the World Archaological Congress (WAC). My friend commented: “I wonder if they will ask the Palestinians to pay for the removal of the graves.”
——– Original Message ——–
Subject: [Wac] Burial Desecration in Jerusalem to make way for the “Museum of Tolerance”?
Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2011 11:50:10 -0400
From: [email protected]
Reply-To: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
PLEASE FORWARD! (I’ve asked permission to send this far & wide)
—————————–
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]; [email protected]
CC: [email protected]; [email protected]
Subject: Destruction of Ancient Muslim Cemetery in Jerusalem
Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2011 22:34:52 +0000
Dear Kehaulani,
I’m writing to share an alarming development regarding the Mamilla
Cemetery in Jerusalem. This past weekend, only weeks after a Jerusalem
Municipal planning committee granted final permission for construction of
the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s so-called “Museum of Tolerance” atop the
oldest Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem, Israeli bulldozers entered the part
of the ancient Mamilla Cemetery that remained intact to destroy and
dispose of nearly 100 grave markers, both ancient and renovated. The
bulldozers worked under the cover of night (from 11pm to 1am on June
25-26, 2011), and retreated hastily when their operators realized that
they were being filmed by local media and activists, as can be seen in the
coverage broadcast by Al-Arabiya and Al-Jazeera,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxDqH3rrMPo&feature=player_embedded;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNdw2tQK0Cg&feature=player_embedded.
Even before this weekend’s developments, preparatory construction for this
Museum had already resulted in the destruction and disinterment of
thousands of Muslim graves and human remains. Gideon Suleimani, the chief
archaeologist appointed by the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) to
excavate the site, concluded after a review of the site that construction
should not continue and that the IAA’s conduct on the site, which contains
“tens of thousands of skeletons,” constituted an “archeological crime.”
Can you help get the word out to archeologists and anthropologists and see
if any network or group would be willing to organize against this- either
through a statement, an open letter, or any other ideas that might emerge?
I think it would be very powerful to have that sector of academics and
professionals speak out on this. If you know of any groups that are
concerned about cemetery desecrations please send this email to them.
CCR has been involved in an effort by 60 individual descendants from 15 of
Jerusalem’s oldest Muslim families; we worked with a group of advocates to
submit a Petition in February 2010 to United Nations bodies urging them to
help stop the building of the Museum atop the cemetery. You can find more
information about this effort, as well as a 2-page factsheet for
distribution, here:
http://www.ccrjustice.org/ourcases/current-cases/mamilla. The U.N. Human
Rights Council in 2010 and 2011 passed two resolutions expressing “its
grave concern at the excavation of ancient tombs and removal of hundreds
of human remains from part of the historic Ma’man Allah (Mamilla) Cemetery
in the holy city of Jerusalem in order to construct a museum of
tolerance.” The U.N. Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief
has asked Israel what measures it was implementing to respect and protect
cultural heritage and cultural property as well as freedom of religion or
belief with regards to Mamilla Cemetery, and UNESCO has also raised the
issue of Mamilla Cemetery with Israel. Unfortunately, most recently,
UNESCO has responded to Petitioners that the Mamilla Cemetery is outside
of their mandate, despite the fact that in the past they have urged the
protection of Palestinian cultural heritage throughout the Holy City of
Jerusalem, including the Mamilla Cemetery.
Close to 10,000 individuals have signed a public petition supporting the
demands of the UN Petition, which include the reburial of disinterred
remains, the relocation of the Museum outside of the Cemetery, and the
preservation of the Cemetery as a religious and cultural heritage site
(see:
http://www.ccrjustice.org/get-involved/action/take-action%3A-protect-cultural-rights-and-religious-freedom).
Please let me know if you have any thoughts, and feel free to forward this
email on to anyone who might be able to help.
All my best, Laura
Laura Raymond | Education and Outreach | Center for Constitutional Rights
| 666 Broadway, 7th Floor, New York, NY 10012 | p (212) 614-6459 |
[email protected] | Follow @laurajraymond and @theCCR on Twitter
_______________________________________________
WAC mailing list
[email protected]
https://listserver.flinders.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/wac
note to moderator: it is me, Ingo, just hacking away on my sons laptop, away from home and I do not know his email address, hence the confusion. His name is Titus and he occasisionally comments on Craigs issues raised.
please copy the following into the debate
What great debate and poetic resemblances, thank you Ian and Mary for reminding us all of the inhumanity displayed towards all and sundry, especially their neighbours. That little fence coming down in Jenin, trumpetted over in the media means nothing when multiple violations occur somewhere else, again and again.
Running the engines onboard the flotillas might burn some fuel, but it would keep saboteurs wary of turning props but is a costly affair in todays economic circumstances.
leaving Piraeus without a pilot could make you liable to a massive fine and loss of your certification, should they want to throw the book at you, not to speak of the vast amount of scrap ships littering the place. If one had such intentions, one would try and stay incommunicado with the port authorities, what you don’t know can’t be held against you, little satisafaction when all your senses are geared towards leaving port. What are the chances of Syria being attacked before this flotilla leaves ports?
Also what of those ships still at sea on their way, should they be encouraged to keep out of harbours?
There has to be a structural cause.
.
As a lad I was naive; I had feelings, impressions that came from the media and the assumptions that were common around me – ie. propaganda. Russia constantly menaced all around it, and the sun never shone there. South Africa had racist apartheid. There was always trouble around Israel, with no real explanation.
.
Thirty-something years on, the USSR and apartheid have long since fallen, various wars have come and gone, and I’ve learned to be wary of propaganda. But there’s still always trouble around Israel, and there’s still no real explanation.
.
“Muslims hate our freedoms” – “Jews want to take over the world” – such “explanations” are vacuous. People want peace in their lives, and they will change things until they get it. Unless something prevents that.
.
There has to be a structural cause.
A liberal is someone who believes that “Palestinians” have rights by virtue of being “Palestinian”.
A liberal is someone who believes that Palestinians have rights by virtue of being human.
Hear, hear, dunx. I was in the process of typing those exact words…
BE must’ve thought he was quite a wit. He was only half right.
‘the ruthless, racist Israeli military machine’
If it’s a machine it can be neither ruthless nor racist. You can’t own a racist car. Alright, that sounds like just a semantic quibble, but you cant throw those sorts of words around without absolute precision or when Yugo Stiglitz has a pop later on about your motives it’ll be harder to shrug off.