[Editor's Note: Second Life's Crap Mariner offers this response to the protests. He's not the only one who has gotten in touch to ask us where the other perspective is.]
Dozens of people have been gathering since Saturday in Second Life at a protest of the recent attacks in the Gaza Strip. The Egypt and Qatar-based news site, IslamOnline.net, has built a Palestine Holocaust Memorial Museum with scores of pictures of the attacks and people wounded in the attacks drawn news sources around the world. The museum was previously named the Gaza Holocaust Museum, about which we blogged in March 2008. Those who identified themselves who attended the gathering were mostly in Egypt, but also included people in Morocco, Italy, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, France and the United States.
The gathering is an example of the rich, textured opportunity that 3D immersive spaces like Second Life offer for people to express their concerns about present day issues.
Breathe Swindlehurst from IslamOnline.net offered these words to the attendees:
This is a statement for all the children who died in Palestine. Regardless of our political opinions, I'm sure we all agree that we don't want those children dying. There is no place here for arguments on which country is helping or which country is harming. Lets just agree that we want to send out a unified message to the whole world through SL that we are against what is happening here, and lets show them the pics of everything happening so the world knows the disaster from our side.
39 comments:
Eureka, I find it absolutely disgraceful that you would endorse and promote this sort of one-sided and tendentious protest, and at this awful "Palestinian Holocaust Museum" which is just an outrage against the memory of the victims of the real Holocaust.
To take the term everyone knows is specific to the Jewish people's suffering under the Nazis and other victims of the Nazis, and import it tendentiously and hugely inaccurately into the Palestinians' situation is morally wrong. You shouldn't be validating this SL-amplified spite wall. Isn't the purpose of your project to find ways to tell these stories without all the hate and incitement we also get out of the Middele East?!
I'm totally with Crap on this -- where's the focus on the war crimes of Hamas?
And 21 kids could be murdered in cold blood by Taliban terrorists in Afghanistan this week and you and your islamonline.com cronies had no tears to shed then.
Hi Prokofy.
I didn't post this, Josh did. With that said, I do approve of the content. We have been working all day covering news and media pushes across multiple platforms related to what's happening on the ground in Gaza, and the protest in Second Life was only one of many links related to this work today. For example, Josh's blog posts about the Consulate General of Israel having a Twitter press conference tomorrow was linked to from Boing Boing earlier this evening.
Crap's response to the protest is an excellent one, and will appear in the graphic book that accompanies the Understanding Islam through Virtual Worlds project that will launch officially on January 29, 2009.
Like you, I disagree with the use of the word "holocaust," but I did not name the project, nor was I responsible for creating or contributing to the philosophical tone that it took. We have been documenting the evolution of the "Palestine Holocaust Memorial," since it was first developed in March 2008. At the time it was known as the "Gaza Holocaust Memorial."
The implication that the creators of this project, Breathe Swindlehurst and Frozenfire Fride have no tears to shed when children are murdered simply because they are Muslim implies that you perceive all Muslims to be heartless. I do not share this view.
Personally, I'm tired of all the violence.
I blogged about the IslamOnline.net event not to support it nor Hamas's violence. But because it was a unique development in Second Life. By the same token, I think the Israeli Consulate's Twitter press conference is equally notable. But by blogging about that I am not also advocating Israel's attacks in Gaza.
What I'm most interested in is how special interest groups are using evolving Internet based social ecosystems to get their message out creatively. That's what I've always been interested in. To ignore it, is worse than advocating it, in my opinion.
As far as I'm concerned, any pressure, outrageous or not, that shames either side back to the cease-fire negotiating table is precious and should be nurtured.
Prokofy, I wouldn't bring the word holocaust into this. Last year Israel announced their intention to inflict one on Palestine. A "Shoah", the hebrew word for Holocaust.
"Israel's deputy defence minister has said Israel will have "no choice" but to invade Gaza if Palestinian militants step up rocket attacks.
Matan Vilnai said Palestinians risked a "shoah", the Hebrew word for a big disaster - and for the Nazi Holocaust. "
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7270650.stm
It is a shame that you are seen to be taking sides in this...mainly because it is too easy for us to sit at a distance and pontificate. Yes, violence is disgustsing, but ignorance of the real facts is worse. Citizen reporting of global events (which this is by default) should be balanced. Nothing in life ever is balanced though, and this post does come across as supporting one side against the other even if you are neutral in you views (which I am tipping you are not). This is a very emotionally charged topic and it is interesting to see how it is crossing the virtual and social media boundaries. The hope would be that one day our easy access to information and virtual environments might eventually cut into the social and cultural hatred ingrained in some. Regrettably, if history tells us anything, it is that these deep pools of hatred will never go away.
Mortars, Qassams, and now Grad rockets launched from Gaza for the past few years have a not-insignificant statistical correlation with the times that children go to school and leave school for home in the Israeli communities that border Gaza.
The number of civilians killed in this recent surge in the conflict is LESS of a proportion of the population.
Conclusion: Hamas, Fateh, and Islamic Jihad are the ones TARGETING the children.
More civilians may have been injured or died these past three days in Gaza than have died in Israel as a result of Gazan attacks, but the numbers that people ave around show who's making efforts to attack civilians and who's making efforts to target armed/military forces.
The casualty figures are seemingly low only as a result of Herculean efforts to educate citizens of basic first aid, provide safe rooms and street bunkers when possible, rapid-response medical teams, and a horrifying amount of experience in dealing with such injuries as a result of years of terrorism sent from Gaza, West Bank, Lebanon, Egypt, and Iraq.
Children have died or suffered horrible debilitating injury as a result of those attacks by Gazans. Attacks which come without warning from those launching the attacks.
Warnings were given to those in proximity to military ammo dumps in civilian areas. Paltel blocked some of those calls, Hamas kept people locked down in homes to act as human shields and potential casualties, refusing to move out those munitions.
And, after years of indoctrination and threats, others willingly stayed in proximity with those weapons dumps.
If the enemy isn't targeting your schools and hospitals, take the propaganda-bounty to where they are targeting or will target. A bloody and cruel lesson learned by Hamas from Hezbollah.
That thought horrifies and sickens me, as it should any rational and civilized person - to drag civilians into the target zones.
Or deliberately target time attacks so that children are targets of opportunity, as the constant rain of mortars and missiles from a non-ceasefired Gaza have done upon Israel.
Once again, where the the photographs of those children in the display? Where are their screams to the Heavens?
If only the rockets and mortars had stopped. If only the citizens of that area had stopped them, had protested them, had wanted them to stop, had sabotaged the munitions stored in their neighborhoods so they couldn't be used. If only Rafah were open to commercial traffic instead of used as a smuggling conduit for Iranian and Egyptian munitions.
This death is senseless. This death is cruel. This death is unholy.
This death is brought to you by Hamas.
(We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.)
I'm just going to leave this quote for Mr Talks Crap. A quote from Richard Falks, a UN human rights investigator, posted on the BBC news site today. This is not Hammas talking, this is not Israel talking, this is the UN talking.
"Israel is committing a shocking series of atrocities by using modern weaponry against a defenceless population - attacking a population that has been enduring a severe blockade for many months,"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7804218.stm
I agree with Anonymous. The polemics of the "Israel-can-do-no-wrong" contingent represented here by Crap and Prokofy have brought you the state of the Middle East today. It's tiring and completely one-sided. It's dead-end and dead wrong.
But it is true that as shortsighted, belligerent, and self-delusional as Israeli policies have been towards Palestinians the past few decades, Hamas and Hezbollah are even more full of shit, to be blunt. Their worldviews leave no room for democratic values.
However, in Gaza the world sees the difference is the SCALE and PROPORTION of attack and damage. Despite the Israeli government's advantages of language, education, and money in propagandizing the public to accept its atrocities as somehow a reasonable response, it's not working. The sleepy American electorate is generally sadly swayed by the loudest voices, not by the facts, but perhaps the lopsidedness of this unfolding massacre will backfire on the hawks.
Crap's crap above is an example of the twisted talking points that the American right uses to attempt to silence truth. And Prokofy's prolific punditry is the usual we can expect from him/her. No use directly rebutting or trying to reason with a hyper-intelligent say-anything sociopath--it is, as someone famously said, like trying to argue with a blow drier.
The term "Holocaust" does cheapen what is happening in Gaza now. It's stupid and counter-productive--it hurts the cause of the Palestinian people, because it's transparent propaganda. It doesn't help--just stop. However horrible their plight is, it's not the Holocaust by a million miles, and you lose lots of support when you lamely attempt to link these two situations.
But the more salient facts are the scores of children and mothers dead as "collateral damage" from the targeting of empty buildings. This is a war crime that anyone can understand. Israel is acting idiotically. Like a spoiled child, it will not see its large part in the making of the misery around it. The Israeli leadership has long suffered from a lack of imagination and real empathy. The victims have become aggressors.
Cheney and Bush have further enabled the conditions in which this kind of killing, long Israeli government practice, can be justified. Not that slimy hateful lovers-of-the-gun like Netanyahu ever needed any encouraging, but the American public holds the key. And a freeing from dependence on fossil fuels is close to the root of the problem.
This conflict will not be solved militarily, despite the constant flood of small-minded right wing fears (they've been so right the past few decades) and their championing of billions of military aid to Israel as well as Arab dictatorships, year after year.
I'm glad to see Egyptians and people from all over the world making whatever little protests in virtual worlds, etc. I also hope the new Obama team will be able to focus on solving this nightmare now that we are less hobbled by the fundamental idiocies of the right wing here in the States.
Al-Salam, Shalom, Peace.
Did you forget? that almost 2 years Hamas bombs on Sderot and other Israeli places which suffered every day for 2 years.
Did you forget that Israel withdraw from Gaza more than a year ago and Hamas is controlling everything and instigate the Palestine peaple to Terror.
I guess It's about time to destroy Hamas.
Did you forget that Palestinians give the Hamas places with children to take the rockets from there? then you are all surprise Israel kills?
Did you forget that Hamas doesn't want peace AT ALL?
So stop being Naive and grow up already. What have to be done . is done now. otherwise there going to be chaos. more than now!
The UN sometimes has very biased representatives like this. It' s not "the UN talking" but merely this one unpaid expert brought in with a terribly politicized point of view.
These mandates can become terribly manipulated. Richard Falks isn't a credible UN human rights investigator, and people in the UN and human rights movement know that.
His mandate does not involve determining whether a crime against humanity has occurred -- other more credible bodies within the UN and the ICC can determine that.
It's like the UN special rapporteur on housing, who obsessed hysterically on only one housing issue on the planet -- in Israel.
The UN has numerous biased and disreputable resolutions, special commissions, special sessions, etc. all flogging the Palestinian cause and creating a constant climate of hate, incitement, and violence within the UN. It's part of why the problems in the Middle East are never solved; the body charged with resolving them is biased and not credible. A special session at the Human Rights Council is held on a targeted assassination of a Hamas leader who has mounted a terrorist offensive on Israel; a special session is never held on the victims of Hamas, all defenseless civilians.
But it's generally believed that you will never fix all the trumped-up anti-Israel bias generated at the UN by the Arab states until you fix the peace, through separate offices. Fix that, and the UN will follow suit. But it terribly weakens the UN as a body all around.
The population that has been enduring a blockade apparently has been unsuccessful in ensuring its leaders to stop sending missiles into Israel.
anarki,
It is not "Israel" making use of this term, but certain officials. And if they use the word "shoah," which means big calamity just the way "Nakbah" means big disaster to Palestinians, what of it? They haven't used the word Holocaust. Two wrongs wouldn't make a right in any event.
The Palestinian deliberate malicious use of their opponents' term for their great tragedy of the 20th century is despicable. It's wrong.
Certain Israeli officials using the term "shoah" which has a meaning not only associated with the Holocaust might not be advisable, but it's the Israelis using their own word, not maliciously coopting the word of their enemies' tragedy.
Maybe you'd get it better if they used the word "Nakbah"? The Palestinians have their own language. Let them use their own language, and not borrow English words associated with their enemy's tragedy.
And if the Palestinians are interested in ending their "Nakbah", they need to stop sanctioning, inciting, and celebrating suicide attacks and all attacks on civilians. When they get done with that, they will find they might become more credible victims.
I have been following the posts here and am troubled by alot of what I hear.
So let me start from the beginning. Alot of people here are mad at the holocaust naming of the museum. Well, as you may know, I'm part of the team that made this museum. I did not come up with that term.
We created the museum when Matan Vilnai came up, publicly, and threatened the Palestinian people with a "Shoah", a word that sometimes is used to refer to the holocaust. One day later, bombings from Israel killed 160 people in Gaza, more than 40 of whom were children.
Now, why is it that the Palestinians are not allowed to call what is happening to them a holocaust? You think it is just about the bombing? You have 1.7 million people who have been impoverished for more than a year now due to the embargo by Israel. I know friends inside Gaza, they usually go for days without food. And when they do have food, often it is bread dipped in water to fill them up. Many children die in these conditions.
Add that to the bombing that targets many innocent people (yes it does and I have eye witnesses on record for this) and I think it looks more and more like the holocaust. The only difference is that Israel hasn't killed millions (yet?)
The name might anger you. That is your choice. But it is also my choice to make the statement in the way that I feel about it. While the holocaust was great suffering for the Jews, what is happening right now is great suffering for the Palestinians. Both are humans, both deserve to be addressed.
Now regarding the argument of "Hamas is doing this to the people in Gaza" - I really am sick of that one.
My colleague who sits on a desk RIGHT across of me was in Gaza. Now let me tell you this, Hamas don't drag civilians into combat zones for media publicity. I challenge you to get me the source for that information. Once again, I know people living in Gaza, people I can get on the phone right now, who would confirm that NEVER happens.
Regarding how Israel is targeting Hamas only. Well, just this morning I watched a video on Al-Jazeera and a plane rocket hit a donkey cart, killing two little girls. The donkey cart was not carrying weapons, nor were the girls, nor was it anywhere close to a building operated by Hamas.
Our own correspondent there in Gaza, a fellow reporter, lost her mum, her dad, 3 uncles, and 7 nieces and cousins when a plane targeted her house. She survived because she was out covering the events taking place for us. She went home to find that she lost everything. She is a reporter and I know her family well. None are Hamas.
However, the problem I have is that alot of people, like posters here, believe that these deaths are tragic mistakes but the important thing is the destruction of Hamas. And that makes me sick. These souls are worth as much as any Jew, or anyone else for that matter.
Don't tell me that Israel is targeting them by mistake. When more than 30% of those who died so far are civilians, when there are 47 children dead in 3 days, then something is horribly wrong.
No Hamas didn't do this. It is Israeli planes attacking them. No Hamas are not using civilians as human shields. They are being targeted.
You can go on and deny all I am saying, but until you have real sources from INSIDE Gaza, I doubt I should really take notice.
And finally, please don't go discrediting Richard Falks because you don't agree with what he said. There are dozens of others who believe that what Israel is doing is illegal and immoral. Every person on the boats that were sent to break the blockade (whether successfully or not) feels the same way.
So you may all feel that the museum is horribly biased. And actually, it is. But you know why it is? Because everything ELSE is oppositely biased. Everyone else is looking at it from one side. We wanted to show the world the other side. Maybe then people can start making unbiased informed decisions on where they stand regarding what is happening.
V, in fact, what happens all too often, especially on forums in settings of the liberals and the leftists such as Second Life, is that everyone bashes Israel, and everyone takes the side of Palestinian suicide bombers and missile launchers out of Gaza. Sorry, I won't play.
And sorry, although I usually tend to stay out of RL political debates with people in SL who are anonymous and unaccountable, this time, precisely because Eureka is making this Carnegie-funded project to try to force her "Understanding of Islam" on people, I'm going to stand up, and say, no, you're wrong. In fact, there isn't any "Israel-can-do-no-wrong" lobby anywhere in sight. We all "get it" that Israel uses disproportionate force, that it has a history of "never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity" and all the rest. ALL the criticism is against Israel, everywhere.
As to SCALE AND PROPORTION, this is a time when you have to look seriously at "who started it" (just as you had to with the war in Georgia) and ask who has the responsibility to stop it. And that's clear: Hamas does.
Er, the Israel government's advantages? they are dwarfed by the stupendously funded Arab media hate machine, handsomely funded by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and all the rest, and echo-chambered from London to Cairo by the leftist press. We never hear an admission that the people killed are *fighters* -- the distinction between armed militants and civilians is blurred. We never hear an admission that yes, as Crap says, Hamas uses all the tactics of insurgents, human shields, targeting civilians deliberately, living among civilians and storing missiles in civilian buildings and all the rest. Whatever you want to say about Israel, it doesn't do that *deliberately*.
The American electorate ain't sleepy. The American electorate just elected a black president with unprecedented participation, duh. But the electorate isn't persuaded by your biased, one-sided, hysterical incitement and unequivocal support of suicide bombers and militants who break cease-fires. It's just not credible. When it comes time to see a war like this unfold, there just isn't willingness to one more time get down and genuflect to Arab propaganda hysteria, when it's so obvious that Hamas breaking the ceasefire, lobbing missiles into Israel, and deliberately attacking civilians incited this war. You can't undo that truth.
If you don't want to see scores of mothers and children dead in Gaza, V, then tell your Palestinian friends to stop using civilian areas as bases from which to shoot missiles. Tell them to stop using human shields. Tell them to stop using civilian buildings as stockpiles. And tell them to cease their hostilities and follow the ceasefire. That would be my suggestion, if you hate seeing dead people. Don't cause their deaths by starting hostilities? Then your cause is credible.
Bush and Cheney, frankly, are irrelevant to all this. What matters is the OIC, the Arab League, and their incitement and their hate media and their arming and funding of suicide bombers. When they are ready to stop their hostile encirclement of Israel, using the suffering Palestinians as their weapon to gain sympathy, and exploiting their situation for their own agenda, and inciting generation after generation to war, it will stop. Dry up the funding, the arms through the tunnels from Egypt, the hysterical outsourcing of hate to youths in Iran by the government -- let these oppressive regimes take care of their own collapsing societies with internal distress, let these youths bring about justice and freedom in their own country, and you will see a change in the Israel-Palestine situation. It is not a problem you tackle by fisking and parsing SCALE AND PROPORTION. We've all seen how SCALE AND PROPORTION have been hopelessly manipulated. The number of victims in Palestine are utterly dwarfed by those in Chechnya, Sudan, Afghanistan, Nigeria and other areas where Muslims and others are victims of other Muslims. Yet the hysterical and biased left never has a tear or even a moment of attention for them, but goes on exaggerating this conflict as if it is the center of the universe. It's not.
What you will find is that America, Obama, the Democrats are irrelevant. Bush and Cheney gave you a comfortable and convenient hate target, but they're gone now, and perhaps that can help you to an awareness that America doesn't control this situation, and therefore cannot fix it. Whatever aid it gives to Israel or regimes like the Egytian government is again, dwarfed by the considerable resources of the entire Arab world arrayed against this tiny nation. Look at a map. It's simply ridiculous not to state the obvious: this conflict is contrived, and contrived by those with the proximity and the power in that region, who refuse to fix it.
Yes, Breathe, you're not used to people standing up and arguing with your attempts at biased propaganda, and your attempts at emotional blackmail. Those methods don't work. They are not credible.
One Israel official coming up and using the word "Shoah" isn't any excuse whatsoever to misuse the term "Holocaust". It's simply not morally equivalent, no matter what spin you put on it, and we all know that. And frankly, we've seen a thousand times the propagandistic references to the Palestinian "Holocaust" long before your display, so it's not new at all -- it's a classic gambit constantly used in hate speech. And it's like the malicious use of the term "anti-Semitism" to refer to Arabas because they are Semites -- again, discredited, and merely a low form of propagandistic malice. We get all that.
No, the Palestinians are not allowed to usurp the term universally known as the term of the Jewish people's suffering. And there is absolutely nothing innocent in them picking up an English word of this nature -- and you've said as much. It's completely disingenuous. And we all know that. Can't they find their own word? Don't they have their own language and terms? Of course they do. And they should use them -- and then they will gain credibility.
If you don't want 1.7 people to be impoverished by an embargo, Breathe, then work to get them to climb down from their support of terrorism. From their celebration of violence and suicide bombing. From their hate. Get them to behave like movements for change the world over that use *non-violent* tactics. That focus on the struggle for justice, and not the celebration of suicide. Why is that Tibetans or Americans or Russians try to use non-violent methods, and call for an end of violence, but we never, ever, ever, ever see this from the Palestinian people, and from their rabid supporters in the West? Why?
They are not special.
As for your colleague that sits at a desk RIGHT ACROSS from you in Gaza, and your litanies of people killed, your weeping from the incitement of Al-Jazeera, you know what? I am dry-eyed. Completely. You know why? Because you are merely trying to use emotional blackmail, and not reason, and it is not persuasive. Because I have a colleague, too, who sat RIGHT ACROSS from me who was killed in the terrorist attack on the UN compound in Baghdad. And I had colleagues who sat RIGHT ACROSS from me who were injured in 9/11. And other colleagues who sat RIGHT ACROSS from me whose relatives were murdered by terrorists in Israel. If you want to talk lists, we'll talk lists. There are plenty of lists to go around. I can only say this: If you don't want to see little girls on a donkey cart killed, then tell your Hamas friends to stop lobbing missiles into Israel. It's just that simple. This is one time, that it's very clear cut who did what when.
You can be "sick" of "that one" all you like but it merely has to be presented to you again and again until you grasp it: Hamas is a terrorist organization, committing terror, deliberately seeking civilian targets, and bringing this war on themselves, and using their people as a human shield. You can't cover up those facts that are in every newspaper and TV of the world, unless they are totally Arab-funded and skewed. There are plenty of pro-Palestinian journalists -- I know quite a few -- and they will tell you the problem here: Hamas is a terrorist organization, mobilizing its entire people to terror, and using civilians and homes and buildings as shields and safe havens. When they're ready to stop doing that, they will find the situation will change dramatically, and they'll have a case, and they'll have credibliity of they are disproportionately attacked by the IDF. But that's not the case now, and you simply can't persuade me that it is.
As for this notion that "none are Hamas," there you simply aren't believable. I have heard countless reporters and UN personnel entirely sympathetic to the Palestinian cause and hateful toward Israel even privately admit -- it's a completely mobilized population completely immersed in hate for Israel and celebration of violence and suicide-murders. The teachers' union hangs up posters to glorify suicide bombers. Everybody is turned out to the cause.
And there is no dissent. If everybody isn't Hamas, Breathe, where's the Women in Black? In Kosovo, in Chechnya, in Darfur, everywhere, there are Women in Black, the mothers who demonstrate against violence, against the government, against the militants, against the sacrificing and killing of their children. Where are they? Where, indeed? Instead, all we get are hate demonstrations and hysteria about the other side. Where's the peace movement? How come there's only a peace movement in Israel and the West?
Yes, there is something horribly wrong. A terrorist government is voted into power because the entire population is hysterically mobilized, and they continue to reject Israel as a state, continue to fight to the death, and continue to hate. And you are simply not credible when there is ample documentation from those heavily concerned about the suffering of the Palestinian people, at Human Rights Watch, and the UN, at Amnesty International, who forthrightly find and report that Hamas uses people as shields. So you gain no credibility when you deny that.
I saw the "real sources inside Gaza". They lobbed missiles into Israel and broke a ceasefire.
As for Richard Falks, it's a highly political matter, and the claims of "war crimes" are really outside his competence. Let credible bodies and people perform the investigations.
And finally, by your admission that you use this museum name deliberately to incite and provoke, you completely undermine your cause. You cannot get people to see your side by being deliberately biased and provocative.
And frankly, we live in a supremely politically correct atmosphere most of the time where liberals are afraid to criticize the Palestinian movement. They fear the incredibly angry hate and venom they face if they dare to say anything about lack of dissent to Hamas.
Your cause will not become credible by shrieking your allegations and provoking hatred. It simply never will. It is lost already by your biases so on display here and your admission of the misuse of the term to provoke and deliberately shove something in people's faces. The Palestinian movement has to change its nature to get support. It has to change its nature. To grow up, like every other movement of struggle in the world has had to grow up and cease indulging violence and inciting hate. The cause is just when the means to wage it are just, too.
We are open to posting various viewpoints in this forum but need to correct factual errors.
The Understanding Islam through Virtual Worlds project is not funded by the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, as claimed incorrectly by Prokofy Neva. It is being conducted in partnership with the Carnegie Council, but it is being funded by the Lounsbery Foundation.
Hello Eureka. My name is Adar Shalev and I'm an Israeli journalist, working for ynet. I want to use some of the photos in your post (with credit and a link to your website) in an article I'm working on - is that possible? Thanks in advance.
Hi Adar. Feel free to use the photos. If you need any other information please let us know. Please send us a link to the article when you publish it. Thank you!
Richard Falks is credible enough to be quoted as an expert by the BBC news team, and he does indeed work for the UN, if he was not credible they would throw him out.
I've spent a year working and living in Israel and it is as much an Muslim country as it is a Jewish one. It is not an extension of the USA. Everyone I met there, was great, whether Muslim, Jewish, Christian, atheist. Believe it or not, the average guy in the street just wants to get on with his life in peace. It is Governments that start wars, not people.
The history of the region is also highly complex and there is no black or white in this. I'm completely surprised at the one dimensional viewpoint Prokovy and Crap have. I'm presuming Crap has never actually been outside his own country to have a greater understanding of the world and the people who live in it, am I right?
Trace
Food for thought:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1230733118401&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Gotta love people with the name "Anonymous" posting and demanding accountability from people whose avatar names are readily linked to their RL names.
You don't have to have travelled the world or lived in foreign countries or speak foreign languages -- as I do -- to be critical of Hamas, the violent and dysfunctional Palestinian cause, and call the NGOs and citizens and bloggers and Arab-state-funded media to account on these issues.
You'd do well to read this excellent piece by a Muslim reformer of the type whose voice is always crushed, if not killed in his homeland:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1230733118401&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
The BBC tilts to the Palestinian cause often enough, and they'll quote Falk merely because he can wave the credential of the UN.
You can read about him here and see all the obvious bias:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Falk
Just because some rapporteur is appointed in the highly-politicized UN, at the hugely biased UN Human Rights Council (which has cut many country mandates at the behest of some of the world's worst human righs violators) doesn't mean he speaks with authority. The HRC has trouble condemning many countries, and like other UN bodies, tends to obsess about Israel, along among nations, preferring to duck far, far worse human rights situations in Sudan, DRC, Afghanistan, etc. to pass resolutions, hold special sessions, call for commissions for inquiry, etc. etc. only on Israel/Palestine. There is a proliferation of such activity at the UN, and much of it, I might add, ineffective.
Here's what the UN's High Commissioner has said, in a statement that many will find tilted:
http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/Media.aspx
She has *condemnd the rocket attacks by Hamas*, however. She's done that much!
Can *you* do that? Anonymous? Well?
Here's what the UN's Security Council, with the world's powers, has said on Gaza:
http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2008/sc9559.doc.htm
Can any of *you* say *at least that much* and condemn ALL military actions and call for ALL attacks to stop? Or will you go on being not only selective in your outrage, but in fact incite and endorse violence?
Look, if we're going to play UN, let's play UN all the way. Let's endorse not only Falk screaming about war crimes he hasn't the mandate to investigate, let's add the *other* UN bodies that *condemn Hamas*. Ok?
I think you will find that I signed my name "Trace" and that is indeed my real life name. I don't need to hide behind made up SL names. Forgive me for not wanting to create a Google/Blogger account just so I can post here.
It's completely fair to oppose Hammas, did I say it wasn't? Just because I do not share your views does not mean I want to stamp out your viewpoint, as some recent ranting blog posts seem to want. I don't agree with terrorism in any form, but I don't agree with bombing people either. There is no simple answer.
Have some compassion for the women and children who have died this week, if you have no sadness in your heart for that, well what does that make you?
Trace
I don't "hide behind an SL name". I use an SL name in a perfectly legitimate activity -- working in Second Life. Just like these two bloggers here. My RL name is linked to my avatar name. Er, make sure you spell it correctly when you Google witch-hunt me for publishing unpopular views, and note that many spite/hate pages about me are filled with falsehoods.
You, however, publish only a first name, and yet demand personal details from Crap, as to whether he ever travelled outside the country.
As if that can distract from the basic issue here.
If you don't agree with bombing people, Trace, then condemn Hamas' bombing of Israel.
Have some compassion for the women and children killed in the *past weeks*, Trace, *in Israel*. By Hamas bombs. And killed in lots of other places. Like Afghanistan. Like India. Where Islamic militants are killing non-Muslims or even fellow Muslims. Let your tears be equal-opportunity, Trace, then you can obtain more sympathy for your particular cause.
That is just it though isn't it. I have the exact same compassion for innocent people being blown up in Israel as I do for innocent people being blown up in occupied territories.
All the protestors were doing in SL were voicing their dislike for war and remembering the dead, if there were protests for the Israeli dead in SL I would equally stick up for that.
What I have no compassion for is a one sided, one dimensional viewpoint that tries to stamp out anything that opinion doesn't like.
Trace
No, Trace, that's not true. While you may have such compassion, *you did not express it until pressed to*. That's the bottom line here.
The protesters in SL weren't merely "expressing their dislike for war and remembering the dead" -- that's crap. They were posing on an Arab-state-funded sim at a build maliciously and provocatively called 'the Palestinian Holocaust Museum' denigrating the victims of the Holocaust deliberately and meanly.
They were holding up signs only condemning one side of the conflict. They were expressing sympathy only for one side of the conflict. You're going to look at this very page, at these very screenshots, which ONLY depict the damages to one side, and which show the Palestinian flag, and you're going to look at me with a straight face, and tell me that these are people merely "mourning the dead"?
Trust me, this is no Women in Black. Where are the Women in Black in this conflict?!
Like so many insular thinkers around SL and on forums, you imagine if someone like me forcefully expresses an opinion and calls you on your bias, and calls others on their bias, this is somehow "a one dimensional viewpoint" that "tries to stamp out others". Nobody, least of all me, has denied your right to express whatever you feel. What you don't get to demand, however, is my concession that what you say is true. Because it's not, and I won't be doing that. And if you truly believe in pluralism, you'll concede that, instead of misrepresenting my position as "stamping you out".
Do you actually imagine that I should adopt your one-sided, biased viewpoint celebrating Hamas and the war against Israel? Why would I do that? That's indefensible. Sorry, but I can't do that. That would not be the position any genuine, freedom-loving, democracy and human rights advocate could ever take. It is not a liberal position; it is an illiberal position.
Your implication here is that people with other views should somehow "come around" and "adapt to you" and homogenize down into conformity but sorry, that's but indefensible.
What you mean to say is you have no compassion for the truth. What you mean to say is that when I called Eureka here on her bias, and you on your bias, you can't admit it, and become furious, and lash out and declare your interlocutor as biased. You can't see anything in any other way. You say lamely "well, if there's a demonstration for the Israeli dead, I'll go to it" as if that would be a moral equivalent -- although of course, that's not what this demonstration -- heavily politicized -- was about.
Once again I can only ask all the posters here:
1. Can't you condemn Hamas' violence? Why can't you? Why do you believe violence is ever justified?
2. Can't you condemn terrorism? Why not? Do you believe terrorism is ok in the pursuit of a cause you believe to be just? Why do you think just outcomes will come from unjust methods?
3. Can't you admit that yes, Hamas is a terrorist group committing terrorism?
4. Can't you admit it has sent rockets into Israel and committed numerous acts of terrorism over the years?
5. Can't you admit that it seeks to destroy Israel, and does not concede the right of Israel to exist as a state?
6. Can't you admit that it uses despicable immoral and unlawful tactics like taking human shields, using civilian buildings, even staying with entire families with children in homes during a war, when the militants are leading the charge against their enemy and vowing to fight them to the death?
It's your inability to admit -- or even see, or even acknowledge -- these glaring facts that stare us all in the fact that make you an absolutely non-credible interlocutor. You admit some of these things only when pushed, and only with insolent, begrudging admission that still places them down in some tertiary point, under your overarching points of "Palestinians only as victims" and "Israelis only as perpetrators".
Indeed, in a particular act of moral inversion, you seize on these acts when committed by Israel, as if what a legitimate democratic state does is "terrorism," when in fact Israel does not deliberately target civilians.
If it did, the Israel snipers would shoot to kill the man dragging the boy with him as a human shield, instead of pausing to let him run by. But they don't.
And that's the difference between the two sides, and if you cannot affirm civilization even if that seems to benefit one side in a conflict, then you aren't part of civilization matters.
You drag in a thousand irrational and irrelevant points when what is needed is a forthright, liberal, humanitarian, democratic recognition that those 6 things I've just mentioned here are outside the norms of human rights, are outside the realm of civilization. They're outside the realm when any movement or state practices them; this particular terrorist movement is practicing them and you have nothing to say.
When you are ready to do acknowledge that yes, civilizatoin norms apply against terrorists and they don't get a pass, then you will find more supporters, and more people to take you seriously. Because you cannot do that, you have no credibliity.
Well Prokofy the problem is when you post, you adopt a one-sided argument, just like the one you are attacking.
But I really can't be bothered about that. Let me point out a few "facts" that you take for granted about things you don't know about and were not even a part of.
The protesters in SL were indeed expressing their dislike for war and remember the dead. No it is not crap. The dead, to many, were family and friends. People they cared about. And even if they were not family, they were of ethnic ties. You have a problem understanding that because for some sick reason you decide to label them as "not part of civilization", almost as not part of humanity.
Yes they were protesting on an Arab-state-funded sim. So what? On that same sim we have had Israelis who have come to bash the protesters, bash the museum, and other who came to talk and express their points of view. The place is BUILT by Arabs, but everyone is allowed free speech in it so your point here is baseless.
As for the naming of the museum, it is not meant to provoke you. The term holocaust is not owned by anyone and I don't have to answer to anyone on the name. I named it this way because, ironically, the same people who suffered the holocaust are exerting a form of it now. You might not agree with me, but that is my opinion and I uphold it. And no the holocaust here is not just the bombing. It is the 18 months long embargo that has reduced nearly the whole population to poverty, putting the area of 1.7 million residents in a worse humanitarian crisis then you can ever imagine. I have friends there and I hear the stories first-hand.
We were not provoking anyone with the name. We were making a statement. I respect the victims of the Jewish Holocaust totally and I have said that many times to many people. But I still believe that the people of Palestine are being subjected to a form of holocaust.
My opinion, and though you don't agree, there are others who do. And I hope we agree that if someone "like me forcefully expresses an opinion" here then they have the right to it :)
They were not holding signs condemning one side. Do you even understand Arabic? If you don't then let me help you. The first sign in the pics reads "Save Palestine" and the other is English reading "Stop War Crimes in Gaza". There were others in Arabic there that don't show up in these pictures including statements like "Don't forget Palestine". So far, I don't see condemning here. I see people addressing a certain point of view. And, according to your own argument, this is not one-sided.
On this same blog, you will find a post about Netanyahu tweeting. He has posted a video showing the area where a Hamas rocket landed, killing a woman. Based on your own ideas, then Netenyahu is doing the same thing that these protesters were doing. He was taking sides and showing a very one-sided point of view by ignoring the more than 430 dead and 2000 injured.
Don't kid yourself or lie to yourself. Everyone has their opinion and will highlight it. If Netenyahu would have also expressed in that video that Israeli rockets are also killing children, women, and old men in Palestine, then maybe then you can come and call the protests one-sided.
Until then, everyone is allowed to visit the museum and express their point of view, whether positive or negative.
As a matter of fact, we even had a press conference yesterday with speakers from inside Gaza telling us how conditions were there.
Too bad you didn't attend that. But don't worry, there were Israelis there who attended. Some who sympathized with the speakers and others who attacked and bashed them.
And all were allowed to stay.
I suggest you go back and re-read what I have actually written, you see what you want to see Prok.
A few stupid people decided to bomb Israel (and that happened as a consequence of other things happening as you very well know) killing (4? approx) people and a few stupid people in charge of the Government and Army in Israel decided to bomb the Palestinian territories killing (450? approx) people so far. Do I believe the retaliation is over the top and should stop? Yes. Will this help peace in the region? No. Will there be a lot more killings in the future as a consequence of this? Of course.
You see everything in black and white Prok, you cannot comprehend that just because I condemn a war I see as wrong I do not automatically condemn the people in whose name it is carried out. 99% of Israel had no say in this war, 99% of the occupied territories had no say in the shelling of Israel. Why on earth would I blame them or have no compassion? You presumed that I didn't because only your mindset sees such clear cut lines, such black and white. Faceless enemies don't exist in the real world.
Trace
Breathe,
You've committed a biased, sectarian, inciteful, and indefensible act with your SL demonstration and with your continuing posts here.
My criticisim of this bias and these indefensible view are part of upholding universal values, they aren't "a biased one-sided view".
And -- I might add -- even if I *did* wish to hold a "biased one-sided view" -- I'd get to do that, and couldn't be *forced* to come around to *your* biased perspective -- just as you don't feel you have to change *a thing* about your view, despite being confronted. Pluralism is intolerable to you; it's not to me.
Protesters might well be expressing genuine sentiments for their family and friends, and all that's understood. But they are doing so in a provactive, inciteful context in front of a despicable, deliberately malicious building called the "Palestinian Holocaust Museum". And I will continue to point that out. They don't get a pass. Grief doesn't entitle you to be malicious to others.
Ethnic identity politics that you celebrate here don't get to trump basic civilizational norms -- of the type that would prevent someone following them from putting up such a build called "The Palestinian Holocaust Museum". That's something you're not grasping. I'm not here to celebrate ethnic identity politics with you, or offer, in serial fashion, a set of other ethnic identity politics. I'm here to point out that this method or organizing perceptions and values is a violent and hateful one in its extremes. It's not one I can legitimize and celebrate and justify with you.
Not being part of civilization norms -- respecting the enemy's right to his own language and culture and grief -- isn't about declaring those who don't do this "not part of humanity". It's about calling them on their lack of civilization. Civilizational norms are important to uphold. It's regrettable you don't share them. And that needs to be said, again and again, and exposed in your productions here and the productions of your boosters on this blog. Solidarity/identity/ethnic politics ultimately lead to hate and war. They don't lead to peace. They are leftist ideological rather than universal in their nature.
Protesting on an Arab-funded sim is an important element of this story to air -- and keep airing, because people constantly lose sight of this. A lot of the "Arab street" and the incitement of crowds everywhere online is sponsored by governments -- government with a specific and targeted foreign policy to deny the existence of Israel, to organize attacks on it everywhere in every setting like the UN, and to keep propping up the Palestinian militant movements of hate and violence to keep attacking Israel. It's an important aspect to keep spotlighting, especially when emotional people come up to tell you that they are "just" mourning their friends and relatives. The context we need to see is that whatever their sincerity, their emotions are cynically exploited and amplified and used as a tool of war.
I doubt the point of free speech on this Arab-funded sim will extend to anything that will be characterized as "blasphemous" by the powers that be. If some Jews came to protest the ill-named museum and weren't expelled, that's great, but the kind of griefing and assault the Israel sim has suffered, were it extended to the Virtual Haj sim, would lead to expulsions.
I'm afraid you're all wrong about the term "Holocaust". It's taken. It's taken by the Jewish people and it is also applied to the Roma and gays and Catholics who were killed by the Nazis as well. It is everywhere in every nation and international institution identified with the Jewish people's tremendous suffering. When the UN holds a commemoration of the Holocaust, it reflects the suffering of the Jews, not the misuse of the term by malicious Palestinian victimology. It is not available for use to mock Jewish suffering.
Your continuing defiance and obdurance on this moral issue lets us know what we're dealing with, and why your cause is indefensible.
No, there isn't any "irony" here except in your own hysterical mind. The people who historically suffered in the Holocaust aren't entering into "victims become executioners" mode as the Palestinian ideological shill has it. That's not a credible or defensible claim.
The fact that a Hamas militant with a machine gun can grab a small boy and drag him across a line of Israeli snipers -- and both of them remain alive -- lets us know the difference. And that eloquent example can be multiplied thousands of times over.
Israel is a country, as I've pointed out, whose Supreme Court can pronounce on torture. Who has human rights groups and peace movements and dissident movements who can speak out and call on their government not to use force. Who have a free media to reflect the events from different perspectives. It is a democratic state where political enemies are not routinely assassinated.
Contras that with the Arab world, and specifically, with Palestine. As I keep asking: where are the Women in Black? Where's the Palestinian peace movement?
We have every indication that whatever its violations, whatever its excessive use of force, whatever its missed opportunities, the Israeli government attempts to avoid civilian casualties.
Hamas doesn't; Hamas drags their own family members into the line of fire, and stockpiles weapons in hospitals and mosques, and deliberately targets civilians.
There aren't Israeli suicide bombers. Jews don't blow themselves up in New York or Mumbai or Madrid or Moscow.
If a population of 1.7 million is under an embargo for 18 months, then their leaders need to ask what they need to do to end this measure, taken to stop them from lobbing missiles into Israel and killing civilians.
Boycotts and embargoes seldom achieve their goals, but those governments using these methods do so because they haven't found a successful way to end the violence and terrorism of the insurgents or country continuing to use violence.
Rather than fanning the victims' amplified grief along with the Arab media, you might ask yourself what *else* could be done by independent social movements of concerned people to place *pressure* on Hamas and its frenzied, mobilized Palestinian people, who are violently discouraged from dissent, to end their violence and force them to peace talks. That's all.
Humanitarian crises are horrible things but there are always plenty of people to work on them, and to work on them with Red Cross rules, which means never speaking out about the sides in the conflict (which of course the ICRC has itself violated in its politicized statements on this conflict at times).
What's needed are civic movements willing to speak out against violence and terrorism, and the methods of Hamas. Where are they?
To deny that this name of this museum is not "provoking anyone" is to live in some either wilfully obdurate or infantile amplification of victimology that simply isn't credible. I'm here to remind you of that. Most people wouldn't wish to engage in the endless polemics involved in making this point to someone like you, or fear they will appear politically incorrect. I'm fearless in that regard. I'm happy to wait, until you stop this provocative and nasty action in Second Life -- as long as it takes, and to keep denouncing it, as long as you sustain it. It's wrong.
Those who respect the victims of the Jewish Holocaust -- as you belatedly claim about 10 rounds into this discussion, don't malicious denigrate them and their surviving relatives by maliciously misusing the name for propaganda purposes. Stop it.
The people of Palestine are not being subjected to "a holocaust". Whatever the violation of their rights, whatever their suffering from indiscriminate firing, they are not the targets of a specific national policy to exterminate them through methodical mass murder numbering 6 million or more, like the Nazi-conducted Holocaust. To make a claim like this is to beg not only credulity, but to indicate lack of education, or persistent wilful and malicious propaganda.
The Jewish state of Israel has no plan to exterminate the Palestinian people and does not herd them into work camps and ovens. It continues to negotiate with them, try to avoid unnecessary deaths during military operations *in response to terrorism*.
Meanwhile, I'd readdress you to the Arab states in the region, and to Iran. They persist in using the Palestinian people as human shields and proxies in their own war against Israel.
Your right to forcefully express your opinion isn't at issue here by me or anyone else. You have the right to express and perform onesided malicious and propagandistic acts in SL, absent some discretionary ruling that your provocation is hate speech and incitement of hatred against the Jews.
In the United States, prosecution of hate speech has a very, very high threshold. In Second Life, it has a far lower one as they strive to make a peaceful community. So those who are concerned about this museum are welcome to file abuse reports on the SL platform regarding intolerance.
Your right to go on with this malice doesn't exempt you from me regularly and often and forcefully showing up to declare it as malicious and wrongful.
I can read the captions on the same signs on other sites and in the Arab media sites.
"Stop the war crimes in Palestine" is *already* a provocation. It is ALREADY one-sided. It's not reasonable absent any kind of investigation to call the actions of Israel in Gaza "war crimes".
It's like the Jena conflict, when people rushed forward to scream that war crimes and deaths of civilians had taken place, but as the story evolved, it turned out there was more use of human shields and less civilian casualties than initially indicated by the screaming NGOs.
Terrorism is a war crime too. Will you be denouncing that, too, or are you afraid? Afraid of what the violent leaders of your people will do to you? What kind of life is that?!
If you believe Israel has committed war crimes, then document them, and send them to the ICC. It will not likely get far, because Israel isn't a party to the ICC, and neither is the U.S., China, and Russia, and to get this case reviewed by the ICC, you would have to have a Security Council referral, which would be difficult to get given the permanent 5 vetoes, specifically the US.
In the course of attempting this exercise, however, you'd have to document credible information, not shrill propagandistic screams, and you'd have to reach a threshold where there are enough victims for the ICC to in fact justify the case, and justify that remedies aren't found elsewhere. But that's perhaps a beneficial exercise.
It's instructive to see what Human Rights Watch has done with this latest round of violence:
http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2008/12/30/israelhamas-civilians-must-not-be-targets
"Firing rockets into civilian areas with the intent to harm and terrorize Israelis has no justification whatsoever, regardless of Israel's actions in Gaza," said Joe Stork, deputy director of Human Rights Watch's Middle East and North Africa division. "At the same time, Israel should not target individuals and institutions in Gaza solely because they are part of the Hamas-run political authority, including ordinary police. Only attacks on military targets are permissible, and only in a manner that minimizes civilian casualties."
HRW does not use the term "war crimes". It is more careful and cautious in analyzing the same data. On this particular round, it has given a more balanced statement than anything coming from you and your associated groups, or any of the numerous NGOs out there, some sponsored by the EU, others by Arab states, screaming "war crimes".
HRW concedes, unlike the Palestinian solidarity gang, that storing missiles inside police stations, hospitals, mosques, etc. would be wrong. Israel claims that this is being done, and points to the explosions that go off when they fire on these objectives. HRW calls on Israel to prove it. I frankly am inclined to believe Israel here simply because I see no credible evidence from HRW or any other group that in fact these areas *weren't* used to store weapons and missiles, and that's what I personally would like to see. Your mileage may vary. Others would personally like to see proof that they *were* used.
Given the history of Hamas and other militant Palestinian movements using human shields, booby traps, firing into civilians areas deliberately, using suicide bombers, stockpiling weapons, using the settled cities of "refugee camps" from which to launch military offensives, sorry, but I look for evidence that facilities were *not* used for military operations, not for evidence that they *were*.
Obviously the Israel government, and specifically the twittering Netanyahu, will put out their own perspective on this, and all governments, and Israel is no different, will present themselves in the best light. Again, it all comes down to what you find more credible.
A country that has dissent and peace movement and doesn't shoot at human shields and drops leaflets to warn civilians?
Or a militant movement that uses suicide bombing and drags its family members into targets?
It's a question of basic civilizational norms.
I'm not "lying to myself" as I have no stake in the Middle East, I don't work on these issues, I don't have any ethnic or religious affiliation to these countries, or have any reason to "kid myself" about this or that despicable act. I will apply liberal values and basic common sense to the set of facts as I hear them, however, and I've outlined the huge credibility gap we have always seen in the Palestinian cause and its boosters because of its celebration and amplification of hate, suicide bombing, violence, and militarism, and its provocative and malicious use of terms from other struggles (like "apartheid") or their enemy's suffering (like "Holocaust").
When you are ready to become more credible and support a peace and protest movement yourselves, you'll find more mainstream followers. Until then, enjoy your isolation on the hard, extremist and sectarian left, boosted by Arab governments *shrugs*.
Trace,
Hamas is not about a "few stupid people". It has a long track record of deliberately attacking civilians and deliberately making militaristic attacks on Israel. It is a terrorist movement, committing terrorist acts as a policy of state, not a handful of outsiders.
Your characterization of Israel as being "99 percent having no say" on this is simply not credible, as you can find all kinds of peace movement statements and all kinds of Israeli intellectuals making recommendations, for example in The New York Times, that Israel should follow a unilateral ceasefire now and not make a ground offensive.
Again, where are the Women in Black in Palestine?! Where are the protests against continued Hamas rocket attacks?! You simply aren't credible when you keep flogging these exaggerated and one-sided statements.
It's also not credible to claim that the people of Palestine are utterly 99 percent in thrall to the one percent of the Hamas leaders, and in dissent. They aren't. Any journalist, any casual NGO observer who has gone to this region -- and I've heard numerous reports from colleagues who have gone there, and even take the Palestinian side always -- will tell you that this is a militarized, mobilized, commanded population that has come to see suicide bombing and the involvement of minors and civilians in war as heroic.
"To take the term everyone knows is specific to the Jewish people's suffering under the Nazis and other victims of the Nazis, and import it tendentiously and hugely inaccurately into the Palestinians' situation is morally wrong."
this is, of course, wrong from a linguistic point of view.
The word 'Holocaust' has been around since the English Middle Ages, taken from the Greek word 'holokauston' - which means 'to burn'.
Whilst most people today would use the word Holocaust to describe the Nazi actions against Jews and others during WWII, it should be remembered that this word can (and at times) should be taken for it's literal meaning.
Therefore, some Palestinians tonight, may indeed be facing their own Holocaust. Whether you agree with the actions Israel is taking, one thing you should all agree on is that no one has exclusive rights to a word and to claim outrage for the usage of such detracts from the issue at hand...that being a conflict that can and should be avoided on both sides at all costs.
Once again you are assuming instead of reading Prok. Firstly I did not say Hammas were a "few stupid people". I said "a few stupid people who made the decision to bomb Israel". Hammas is not one faceless mass Prok, you may lump everyone who has any kind of sympathy for Hammas into one big barrel who all make the same decisions equally but unfortunately that would be an assumption with no basis in reality.
Secondly, an occupied territory that has been occupied for 42 years will never be a peaceful place. If the USA was occupied against the will of it's people would you really expect it to be peaceful? Was northern Ireland peaceful? Is any occupied country in the world a peaceful place? No! You are very well aware of this Prok, but you choose not to see it.
Trace
Charlie,
The Palestinian Holocaust Museum isn't naming itself that because it, uh, once to refer to a bundle of burning twigs and is, er, casting around for a word in the English language to mean "burn".
As Breathe himself admits -- more honest than you -- the name has been chosen to provoke and to right perceive wrongs by being exaggerated and hostile.
The Palestinians are not facing "a" Holocaust or "the" Holocaust. That is what the Jews faced. And indeed, they do have exclusive moral right to use that term, already filled with meaning, to signify that great horror. And indeed, misuse of it by Palestinians to describe their own experience is malicious and mischiefous, and in fact, repugnant as false moral equivalence.
What detracts from the issue at hand is this kind of insolent, malicious griefing on the part of the Palestinians. They should grow up, and find their own word, and stop trying to make their case in this uncivilized and outrageous manner.
Trace, could you point me to an example where people in Hamas have, er, disagreed with the actions taken by their leaders? Where there's eh, uh, debate about whether or not to attack Israel with rockets in their...parliament? Could you show me some bloggers, some pundits, some journalists, some, oh, I dunno, mothers griefing for sons who call on their idiot leaders to stop?
I'm not seeing them.
If they don't want their territory to be occupied, they need to cease militant actions and the glorification of dysfunctional death cults like suicide bombing, and provocative acts like shooting missiles and maliciously usurping the last century's term for the Jewish tragedy, and get down to the business of peace.
Perhaps there might be some lessons learned in the trajectory of Northern Irelanders who once used violence and then gave it up, I don't know, it certainly took a long time for them to do it.
Do you see India occupied by the British any more?
Actually, today's New York Times brought an interesting story that in part answers my question. And shows how much conventional "old media" is still so necessary, and that if we rely on "new media" with all its partialities and biases, we are doomed never to hear the truth.
And this news came even in a story rather biased by the Times, written by a journalist who has obviously taken sides, and asks a lot of empty, rhetorical questions in his story, that he puts on the first page, but probably does not remain around tomorrow -- and next week -- to answer.
And here is that news:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/05/world/middleeast/05gaza.html?_r=1
Another woman found only half of the body of her 17-year-old daughter in the Shifa morgue. “May God exterminate Hamas!” she screamed, in a curse rarely heard these days. In this conflict, many Palestinians praise Hamas as resisters, but Israel contends the group has purposely endangered civilians by fighting in and around populated areas.
Rarely heard, indeed. And not heard from Israelis, or anyone on this blog. It's not something I'd ever say, nor should anyone say. But it was wrung from this poor mother's heart in the worst possible way -- by losing her daughter -- an unspeakable horror. And wrung from her, as honest as as cutting to the quick as you could ever hope, because she realized, even if all of you didn't, that Hamas leaders exposed her and her daughter and the other civilizns in Gaza to death. Deliberately. Cruelly. And with no remorse.
No one should have to come to this realization by losing their child. Perhaps some of you could work on coming to this awareness before any other children are lost, and put pressure on Hamas and the Palestinians and the Arab world to cease their use of human shields, rather than onesidedly putting pressure only on Israel not to wage war on terrorists who use these methods.
Thanks for your comment and bringing this article to the broader attention of the readership of this blog. I read it with interest as well. I also appreciated David Remnick's column "Homeland" in the most recent issue of the New Yorker.
It is not our intention to provide the depth of reporting that a full-time, daily news organization the size of The New York Times does, however the volume of text in the comments this post has received from you alone -- making the case for your perspective -- far outweighs any other political perspective so far.
I feel good this page in toto, with your opinions included, represents the passion and diversity of opinions surrounding this debate.
As Rita likes to say, "Peace is not the absence of conflict. Rather, one's attitude toward it." I think the debate around this topic illustrates how this conflict whether cast in bombs or pixels has a long way to go toward "peace."
The web is filled with the rant and clever nonsense of Prokofy. The "Hair Dryer" is quite busy doing what s/he does on any blog or forum that will allow him/her: misleading with a smidgen of truth, endlessly attacking opposing viewpoints with barrages of ad hominems, and fortifying his/her argument with cherry-picked, unrepresentative examples.
Here s/he isolates a single wail by a heartbroken Palestinian mother: "May God exterminate Hamas!" from a NYT article describing the Israeli government's maiming and killing of noncombatants ("Gaza Hospital Fills Up, Mainly With Civilians") to support his/her idea that Hamas is more to blame than the Israeli government in the deaths of the children of Gaza this week. One paragraph from this well-written, firsthand report of the facts on the ground is all she has! But because the facts don't contribute to P's view, the usual tortured logic is going on in his/her head--and everyone is "biased" who doesn't agree with P.
Not that s/he's not bright. Crazy-bright. Alan Keyes-bright. Ann Coulter-bright. As with Keyes and Coulter, you get that feeling that if s/he would ever turn his/her parsing, rhetorical brilliance away from the pathological need to be filled with moral certitude, and instead strive toward uplifting something other than his/her own loud, shrill, annoying ego, the world would benefit so much. As is, P's ceaseless addiction to aggression makes any world s/he's in sadder and more divided. If you often read P, you get the blog version equivalence of this in style if not precisely in content: http://snipr.com/9mmcj
There is context in Gaza, facts and history that cannot crack P's usual black vs. white, all-or-nothing, my-side-can-do-no-wrong mentality. Hamas' ideology is a horror--it plays by less rules than the Israeli military does. They certainly were a bad choice for those who voted for them out of desperation. Hamas' missiles killed 20 Israeli civilians over the last 8 years.
But the way to end Hamas' tactics is not to destroy thousands of more lives and a tattered infrastructure, or to traumatize a generation of children who are already living like dogs to get at those who are your enemies. That's Cheney's failed bonehead approach to the world--throw out the babies with the bathwater. The attitude is: kill scores of civilians, blame someone else for their deaths, and there will be no blowback. That arrogant self-justification works so well.
If the money Americans spend on Israel's apartheid scheme was used for farms, health care, education--and difficult dialogue, Gaza would be less the festering stinkhole of giant refugee camp that it is. Arab theocratic dictatorships have been miserable in relation to Palestine. But today Israel has yet again used its victimhood to justify its murdering, propped up by bright but disturbed apologists like the P.
There are no good actors in this mess. We need to expect more from both the Arab world and the Israeli government. But we have been hobbled by our addiction to oil, as well as the influence of the right wing and the Israeli lobby.
It's no surprise this insanity is happening while Cheney & Bush are still screwing up our country, and before Obama can advise the Israeli government with some sense. We can help the new American leadership try to change course and be responsible in this conflict, however hard that will be. It's the only way through.
I wonder if the people in palestina know how Jesus was born. The people of gaza have to deal with big militairy world power.
At christmass was born at a safe heaven, also a result of political power maniacs.
How little has been learned from that in region, how little did gods own folks have learned from it. I wont be supriced i would require another jesus to be born in Gaza to get peace there. As all the people seam to be blinded with hate and feelings for going to war.
As an alternative to bombs, try a football match or whatever, the world gets sick of both nations.
And i blaim especialy israel, the should know how to behave better.
And waht happened during WOII that you got promissed a country, well also respect the peoplew who originaly lived there, or you'll be no buck better then a NAZI !!
I don't get all this hate. Why does the value of a child's life depend on where it comes from? And are two children's lives worth more than one? If so, is it ok to waste any of them? I hope I'm not causing offence when I ask this, I don't mean to. I just don't understand: are semantics really more difficult than understanding loss of innocent life?
Can someone please explain in simple terms, in "black and white" if you like.
I spend a lot of my time defending Israel's actions. It annoys me that I have to. It annoys me that Hamas fires missiles into Israel and deidicates it so much to anti-Jewish hate.
At the same time, footage of artillery firing into cities don't look good. Calls for Hamas to site their military in the desert, in the open, with big targets painted on, are just blinkered nonsense.
Guerillas living in ghettos fighting massively superior forces do so from where they live. Fighting set piece battles in the open just means they die quickly.
Israel should agree to leave the tanks, jet fighters, warships and APCs behind, and fight toe-to-toe in the dust with assault rifles. I'm sure Hamas would see that as fair.
Until that time, Israel looks like a bully, responding to oversized fireworks with cruise missiles and satellite targeted artillery.
The world should listen to this wise Israeli
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