Israel Blind To Its Own Isolation

I wrote less than two weeks ago that Israel was in an accelerating decline as a result of changed geopolitical realities in the Middle East, most recently and acutely the Arab Spring. That Arab Spring is now in the throes of a 2.0 reawakening and reconstitution of last year's settlements, as events in Egypt in the last two weeks have made clear, not to mention the momentum of Syrian rebels, rioting in Tunisia and renwed protests in Kuwait, Jordan, Bahrain, etc.

But like a Saudi Emir who can't see the protests outside his window past his line of servants, the Israeli regime appears to have no idea that they are more isolated than ever. Or, perhaps they do, but are unable to change their modus operandi because it is hard-baked into how the state operates, ie. by terror, humiliation and intimidation.

In any case, there's no doubt the world is a changed place when the UK and France call in Israel's ambassador to condemn plans to build 3,000 illegal settler homes as revenge for Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas seeking recognition at the UN. And the UK's mooting of the possibility that it will withdraw its own ambassador from Israel - a major diplomatic slap in the face - is a stunning development. You have to know that America's given its approval for this strong response - the UK is, after all, the tail that the American dog wags.

This is not really the result of Israel engaging in illegal or inhumane practices. Israel has been building settlements in the West Bank since it seized control of it, and Gaza, during the 1967 war. This is not a new event. What has changed isn't Israel, it's everything else.

The US and Europe all fear that Israel's uncontrollable brutality is inflaming the region, making it more unstable and more anti-American/anti-European. They are deepening the radicalization. Where once Israel's policy of armed fury towards all comers was useful to keep in line weak and despotic Arab regimes, it is now a hindrance. At a time when Mohammad Morsi, president of Egypt, is facing a revolt for being too much like Mubarak, despised in part for his refusal to confront Israel, Israel's actions could undermine Morsi's credibility further. Or it could force him to hit back at Israel to bolster his domestic position, putting the Camp David Treaty with Israel, which underpins American hegemony, at risk.

Israel really is shooting itself in the foot here. But it's not clear that they have any option. Already almost totally isolated - as the lopsided vote at the UN in support of granting statehood status to Palestine demonstrated - what is Israel to do? If it doesn't respond, coming after its perceived defeat in Gaza, it looks weak - which endangers its role as the American gendarme. And worse, it would look like it accepts the world's verdict that Palestine is a state, which would mean real negotiations towards a viable two-state solution. This it has never and will never accept. Israel has always played the long game, meaning it creates "facts on the ground" over time by stalling on negotiations as it pushes forward on settlement construction and economic strangling of the Palestinians. The end goal was always to gain control of all of Biblical Israel, in part because it provided a strong ideological underpinning justifying the right of European Jews to steal the land of the indigenous population, ie. Palestinians. But also because of the valuable natural resources - in particular water - that exists in the West Bank.

If the rest of the Middle East continues on its journey towards a deepening of democracy, Israel's bullyboy routine will put it increasingly in conflict with the policy of the Americans - and will stand out as anachronistic to the rest of the region. How this will play out in the end is unclear but if Israel closes off definitively the possibility of a two-state solution and the Americans place some distance between themselves (and their barrels of money) and Israel, they could be faced with their own Arab Spring - meaning a civil rights movement of Palestinians and Israeli-Arabs demanding full civil rights and equality.

France and Britain summon Israeli ambassadors - Middle East - Al Jazeera English:

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Arab Democracy Makes Netanyahu Nervous

I'll give the Israeli PM this: he's at least honest. Israel's interests lie with the continued existence of Arab dictatorships that are bought and paid for by the USA. Why? Because Israel is a vile colonialist and racist regime whose existence is only made possible by the fact that tens of millions of Arabs have been suppressed and prevented from expressing their democratic desires. Israel's "democracy" - truncated and deformed as it is by its ethnocratic character and by the Occupation - is only made possible by the denial of democracy for the vast majority of the regional population. Netanyahu, like all the best Zionist politicians of the past 100 years from Herzl onwards knows this.

"In February, when millions of Egyptians thronged to the streets in Cairo, commentators and quite a few Israeli members of the opposition said that we're facing a new era of liberalism and progress...They said I was trying to scare the public and was on the wrong side of history and don't see where things are heading," he said.

But time has proved him right, Netanyahu said. His forecast that the Arab Spring would turn into an "Islamic, anti-Western, anti-liberal, anti-Israeli and anti-democratic wave" turned out to be true, he said.

OK, so his portrayal of why he opposes the Arab Spring is a lie. It is precisely its democratic aspirations that he loathes. But for saying as much of the truth as he can stomach, I'd like to wish Benny Netanyahu a happy thanksgiving, like I would a fat turkey.

Netanyahu: Arab world moving backward, not forward - Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News:

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Baird's UN Rant Is A Museum Piece

Baird was the attack dog for the Harper government at the UN yesterday with his meandering rant that read like it was written by the Israeli ministry of international propaganda. Claiming people and nations who didn't support Israel were akin to appeasers of fascism and communism, Baird demanded that Israel's struggle against extremism and terrorism be recognized, along with its struggle to defend its borders.

Huh?

Apparently nobody sent Baird the memo that Israel is illegally occupying other people's land, not the other way around. Nor that Israel has initiated more wars against its neighbours than any other country in the region. In fact, it would be worth pointing out that Israel, as a colonial settler state, constitutes in its majority people who are not indigenous to the region. They have, in other words, taken over someone else's land. This is all in the public record and non-controversial.

Baird knows this, as does Harper and Jason Kenney, who have both been on the trail this week attacking the Palestinian leadership for finally standing up and stating what has been obvious since shortly after the Oslo Accords were signed in 1993 - that negotiations with Israel are pointless appeasement. After all, Israel has accelerated its settlement building project since the Palestinians agreed to a negotiated solution to the Israel occupation, breaking both the spirit of the agreement and the letter of international law. As a result the two-state solution is all but dead as a realistic possibility, with close to half a million Israeli settlers now living in highly developed West Bank suburbs.

The reason for Baird's attack has nothing to do with ignorance and everything to do with playing to the band of Canada's homegrown Republicans. Most of the time foreign policy is a freebie, failing to rouse most Canadians to protest or even change the character of their vote. Harper and his cronies can say the most outlandish stuff, no doubt to many eye rolls and head shakes in the UN, because while the hard right in the Tories laps this stuff up with the Christian right believing that the ultimate domination of Jews over the ancient land of Israel will lead to the Return of Jesus (where he will then dispose of the Jews who fail to convert).

Playing to the Tories motivated, activist base at a time when Harper and Flaherty are intending on being "pragmatic" on government spending is a useful counterbalance to maintaining support where it really counts for the Tories. It's also true that these guys fully understand the important role that Israel plays as a watchdog for imperialism in the region. That role is under threat now more than at any time in Israel's history as a result of the Arab Spring, the mantle of which the Palestinian leadership of Mahmoud Abbas is now trying to seize for its own, rather more moderate ends. For Israel nothing could be worse than democracy in the Arab world. It has only been the restraints of domestic repression that have kept Israel from being utterly isolated in the region where the country is popularly seen for what it is: an invading, colonial regime with a racist disdain for the indigenous Arab population.

In addition to the explosive shifts in regional politics, there has also been the rise of Turkey, with a population the size of Egypt and a fast-growing economy. The US is also seeing a historic decline in its influence as its economic power  becomes relatively less important to the global economy and it has damaged its esteem and power of persuasion by its inability to get a handle on Afghanistan, the poorest nation on the planet. The rise of China is aiding this process as an alternative pole for developing nations. All this adds up to make Baird's speech look like the rantings of a cranky old man with a loose grasp on reality. But, then, that describes the core of Tory support so it will have done its job, even as it isolates Canada internationally as being led by extremists and, yes, appeasers.

Israel Attacks Free Speech To Defend Democracy

When is an attack on democracy not an attack on democracy? When the government says that they are defending democracy, of course. That seems to be the thinking in Israel's higher circles in any case as a bill moves towards becoming law that will ban Israeli citizens from advocating boycotts of Israel or its illegal occupations. It seems likely that the bill will pass with more or less fillibustering from the parliamentary opposition.

The real story here is that it's not surprising that over the long term, in order to sustain the Israeli dictatorship over the Palestinian population, it will have to reduce more and more the trappings of democracy for the minority of its population who are Jewish. Since its founding Israel has moved more and more away from "labour zionism" and "socialist zionism" towards the kind of far-right revisionist zionism espoused by people like Ze'ev Jabotinsky.

And since the only justification that could exist for taking over Palestine and re-designating it by its (short-lived) biblical name was to refer to religious doctrine, it's also not a surprise that the reversion to open racism has been accompanied by a rise in power of obscurantist Jewish fundamentalism. The religious fervour, the racism, the regime of permanent military crisis, these things are all necessary to sustain the campaign to colonize "eretz Israel" by driving out the indigenous population.

The present law, a response to the global disgust and growing boycott/divestment movement directed towards Israel's apartheid policies, is just another step down a road whose path was laid at the very foundation. Any society that is founded upon oppressing, dispossessing and humiliating another, will ultimately turn inwards and devour itself.

Israel prepares to pass law banning citizens from calling for boycotts | World news | guardian.co.uk

"Anti-Semitism" Committee A Rearguard Defence Of Israel's Crimes

It's nothing new really - the right wing, who can barely make their lips form the words "anti-racism", spend boatloads of cash to "take a stand" against anti-Semitism. Except that what they're really defending are the odious actions and policies of the state of Israel. That's exactly what this hokey Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Anti-Semitism is all about.

When there was serious, life-threatening anti-Semitism prior to and during the Second World War, with the rise of Jew-hating fascism, did the Canadian Parliament set-up any special committees? No, the Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King pronounced that "none is too many" and turned away desperate Jewish refugees. Back then the Jews weren't of any particular political use to the ruling class in Canada or the US or the UK - or numerous other countries that turned them away. It's still the case that most Jews aren't of any particular political interest to the Canadian political elite. Most Jews don't live in Israel and aren't any more pro Israel than the rest of the population. In fact, this bullshit "coalition" specifically excluded a Jewish organization that didn't have a pro-Israel agenda, Independent Jewish Voices of Canada.

It's also worth noting that Parliament has never set up a committee to combat Islamophobia - even as Muslims suffered job and income losses, suffered harassment and attacks in the streets, campaigns against their places of worship and demonization in the media, not to mention no-fly lists that disproportionately target Muslims, etc. But then Canada's Parliament has facilitated that particular form of discrimination and oppression.

Nor has there been a coalition to combat homophobia, a fact that gay, former MP Mario Silva might want to ponder as he stands shoulder to shoulder with Tory MPs who would happily take away his right to get married, enjoy same sex spousal benefits or any other legal equality that has been fought and won in the last thirty years.

But, besides demonstrating an utterly craven hypocrisy on the question of racism, the existence of this committee also demonstrates something of greater significance - after all, we knew that Parliament was a corrupt dung heap filled with sycophants and toads. Israel and its racist, genocidal policies - it's Apartheid - is suffering the deepest international crisis of legitimacy in its history. The old methods of justifying Israel's uncivilized and inhumane practices by referring to the inhumanity suffered by the Jews during the Holocaust and, more generally, as a result of European anti-Semitism, has faded in potency. After all, why should the Palestinians be punished for crimes committed by Europeans over half a century ago?

Nor is the underlying racist, colonialist justification holding the same weight as it once did. The argument that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East is less impressive when not only are their Arab neighbours overthrowing dictatorships in favour of democracy, prominent Israeli officials have more than once expressed their dismay that they are losing "reliable" leaders. The truth is revealed that Israel's existence depends precisely on neighbouring dictatorships to suppress the solidarity felt by the Arab peoples of the region for their Palestinian brothers and sisters. The $2 billion/year that the US spent to prop up Hosni Mubarak actually saved billions more that Israel didn't have to spend on its military in fear of being swamped by the hostile nations around it. Israel could instead focus on their real goal and pleasure - squeezing the Palestinians bit by bit, through illegal settlement expansion, though constant harassment and humiliation, through economic destruction of any indigenous economy, with the goal of driving them out and taking over the whole of "eretz Israel" - from the Jordan to the Mediterranean. This has been the goal from before the founding of Israel and has never been particularly hidden.

And just as Israel's "democratic security" depended upon pliant dictatorships for neighbours, it is dependent upon a pliant dictatorship to rule over the Palestinians. The real outrage over Hamas, and the illegal and ongoing blockade of the Gaza Strip is entirely about the fact that the Palestinians - even faced with the full horrors of Israeli Apartheid, refused to submit and voted for a party not sanctioned by their Israeli/American overlords. They are to be punished in perpetuity for voting incorrectly. But as the recent high profile fiascos (and massacres) involving anti-Israel protestors has revealed - whether it is blockading aid boats or shooting unarmed protestors on Israel's border - Israel is just another tinpot dictatorship that allows a small minority within its borders to vote and have full rights.

What Mario Silva - happily voted out in my riding of Davenport - and the goons on Toronto council who tried to deny funding to Pride based upon the participation of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid don't realize is that they are fighting against the wheels of history. And with the revolutions in the Middle East still roiling and reshaping the region (and the world), the wheels of history have just sped up. Their pathetic committee will have no real impact on the inevitable: Israeli Apartheid will be revealed for what it is and defeated.

Anti-Semitism on the rise at Canadian universities, committee says - The Globe and Mail

Israel Is No Different Than Syria

Israel likes to tout itself as the "plucky little democracy" in the Middle East, and as an island of European-style democracy besieged by a sea of dictatorships and dark, Arabic hordes. Besides the (fading) appeal to the oppressions Jews suffered in Europe, particular the horrors of the Holocaust, it is this "light of nations" image - and the racist stereotypes of the Arab societies and peoples - that has been a key component of its PR in the west. For the political elites, of course, it is more real politick than that - Israel is their watchdog to keep the unruly Arabs who happen by unlucky accident to control the lion's share of the world's oil supply. These tropes have served Israel well since its founding in 1948.

However, you have to wonder how long this image can stick when it is so at variance with the reality of Israel's actual record. This weekend's murder of unarmed protesters by Israeli soldiers in the illegally occupied Golan Heights region of Syria reminds us once again that Israel, in fact, behaves no differently than the dictatorships that surround it - or used to before Egyptians did theirs in. The usual answer given to such accusations is that Israel only deals harshly with its enemies but practices an open form of democracy and vibrant civil debate amongst its multi-cultural citizenry. Well, this is as true of Israel as it was of the early United States of America - i.e. not at all. Because it disappears the many millions of people who are denied civil rights and who faced armed, murderous repression by the Israeli state, which exercises control over the most fundamental aspects of their lives - from control of tax revenues to control of ground water, airspace and international borders.

We shouldn't forget that it was less than two years ago that Israel - without provocation and having broken the terms of a peace treaty with Hamas several times - invaded Gaza and murdered over 1,000 civilians, including hundreds of children. Since then, another 200 Palestinians have been killed with dozens killed in the last month during the demonstrations to mark the Nakba ("catastrophe") and Naksa ("setback") that marked the founding of the state of Israel from the Palestinian point of view. In other words, Israel has killed as many protesters as the Syria security forces. Just because Israel goes one step further than the Syrian dictatorship and refuses to recognize the civil rights of a majority of the human beings over whom it rules - and kills - hardly makes Israel a better regime. Nor is the fact that Israel prevents the majority of the indigenous population from returning to their homeland as a way to avoid the overwhelming demographic challenge of denying democratic rights not only to a small majority - as is the case now - but to a massive an insurmountable one.

And the fact that Israel has such a large body of domestic support amongst the Jewish population for its actions provides no more of an exoneration than the denial of citizenship rights to the Palestinians makes its actions democratic. The reality is that Israel only exists because of the largesse of American dollars - to the tune of $3 million per day - and American high tech weapons. And just as in the Arab dictatorships where the regimes provide privileges to a section of the population, usually from the ruler's tribe, region or religious minority, in order to create a loyal base in the population, Israel does the same with the local Jewish population - it just so happens that American government money allows the base to be larger than in the relatively poorer Arab countries. The weight of history also brings support to the regime - in Egypt, the regime maintained for a long time the patina of support that carried over from the immense popularity of Gamal Nasser, the anti-imperialist and populist president until his death in 1970. With Israel the historic weight of the Holocaust and the previous oppression of the Jews in Europe provides a further base of support to the actions of the Israeli state.

These elements all combine to provide a cover to some of the most brutal crimes against democracy and human rights in the world today - all with the enthusiastic support of the Canadian government. And they make it clear that the struggle against this oppression of a multi-pronged one. The revolutions in the Arab world - and hopefully Assad will be the next dictator to fall - are a key element in undermining Israel legitimacy and support base. Along with those mighty events is the continued resistance of the Palestinians themselves both within the region and internationally along with their allies to expose Israel as an apartheid type state. And, lastly, to destroy western state and corporate support for Israel, which provides the domestic foundation for Israel's colonialist and *theocratic policies at home.

Israel fires on 'Naksa' protesters - Middle East - Al Jazeera English

*I deliberately use "theocratic" and not "ethnocratic" for a number of reasons. First, Jewishness or Judaism is both a religion and a set of cultural practices/shared history but this doesn't coincide with an ethnicity in the same way as, say, Han Chinese does (and this is still problematic), nor is it, like say, American or Canadian, the denotion of a civil conception of citizenship. And, as the original "liberatory" claims of Zionism dissipate, the state is more and more reliant upon religious justifications to support its claims over the land and the people.

When The Ex-Mossad Chief Thinks You're Crazy...

This article in the New York Times is interesting. The recently retired head of the Israeli Mossad (i.e. CIA) is using his newfound civilian freedoms to run around and say that Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defence Minister Ehud Barak are, basically, f***ing nuts. Now, anyone with access to information more substantive than FOX News has probably known or suspected for some time that the Israeli leadership are apartheid-organizing, ethnocratic, colonialist scum - but that some of the people in the top tiers of the Israeli leadership think Bibi and Ehud are bonkers it tells you something. Just to put it in perspective, the ex-Mossad chief is hardly a bleeding heart liberal or lover of freedom. As the Times notes:

While in office, Mr. Dagan served three prime ministers, was reappointed twice and oversaw a number of reported operations that Israelis consider great successes — forcing delays in Iran’s nuclear program through sabotaging its computers and assassinating scientists; setting the groundwork for an attack on a nuclear reactor in Syria in 2007; and assassinating Imad Mughniyeh, a top Lebanese Hezbollah operative, in 2008 .

When Ariel Sharon, the prime minister in 2002, appointed Mr. Dagan, he was reported to have told him he wanted “a Mossad with a knife between its teeth.” Mr. Dagan is widely thought to have complied and is not seen as a soft-hearted liberal.

What this schism reflects is the pressure coming to bear on sections of the Israeli ruling class as a result of the Arab revolutions, which are causing the region to shift wildly under their feet, and the growing sense that Israel is a pariah state utterly uninterested in peace or justice. The only thing that really allows the Israelis to continue with their policies is American support - political, financial and military. Israel wouldn't last a day without America. But there is a weariness within a section of the American elite for the rabid nature of the Israeli leadership. It's still a minority strand, to be certain, but it is an expression of the fact that some doubt how useful is a despised Jewish Sparta, surrounded by a sea of resentful Arabs ruled by increasingly unpopular and unstable dictatorships (also sponsored by the USA).

Well, the more splits the merrier, as far as I'm concerned. Splits make it more difficult for the Israelis to attack Iran - as Dagan suggests the leadership around Netanyahu wants to do - and can create an opening for the Palestinians to drive a wedge, particularly if there are more successful revolutions in the Arab world and the revolution in Egypt deepens. For one thing, Israel is at risk of losing a key ideological prop: it's claim to be the only democracy in the middle east. That looks laughable as 80 million Egyptians build a vibrant democratic society next door and, meanwhile, the majority of the population under the effective control of the Israeli government (i.e. the Palestinians inside Israel and in the Israeli colonized and controlled Territories) have no civil or democratic rights over that government.

Harper: More Hardline Than Most Israelis

Well, there ya go: Harper is to the right of everybody else in the G8 on the question of the character of a two state solution. Harper blah blahs about "balance" and then lays out what that means - everything for Israel and nothing for the Palestinians. Israel must be recognized as a Jewish state and the Palestinian "state" must be "de-militarized".

Let's unpack these two things for a moment, shall we.

To say that Israel is a Jewish state either means that it is a theocratic state - something that we oppose when that theocracy is Muslim, suggesting a double-standard that is frankly Islamophobic. Or Israel is an ethnic state that thus treats its significant non-Jewish population (20% are Palestinian/Arab-Israeli) as second tier.

The fundamentally racist character of Harper's attitude is made more obvious by the fact that Israel isn't expected to withdraw from land that it illegally occupied post-1967, after a war that it started, but the Palestinians aren't permitted the basic right to self-defense via a Palestinian military. They are to be treated as children, undeserving of the full right accorded to adult nations.

This is all the more shocking because Israel has started more wars, led more invasions and killed more civilians than any other country in the region and perhaps (USA aside) any other nation on the planet. If any country has shown that it is lacking in the ability to use its military in a "mature" way it is Israel. But, then, that is exactly the point. Israel is the west's watchdog in the Middle East, keeping the local indigenous population in line. The role of the Palestinians is to leave, die or become a compliant native population satisfied to live in ever smaller bantustans and, perhaps, provide Israel with a source of cheap labour.

It's worth noting that the position that Harper "pressed hard" for at the G8 summit was not only more harshly pro-zionist than every other leader in attendance, it is also less accommodating even than the long-standing majority viewpoint in Israel.

The irony of all this, of course, is that the absolute inability of the Israeli political class to accomodate a real Palestinian state or to stop colonial expansion into the West Bank as a core state agenda has all but killed the two state solution. Barring the mass expulsion of the Palestinian population in toto - a policy made less likely as a result of the Egyptian revolution having overthrown Mubarak - it becomes more and more likely that Israel will ultimately face a one state solution. The struggle will shift. Instead of being a national struggle - which allows Israeli politicians and their western supporters to portray this as a war - it will become a civil rights struggle that will be much more difficult to dismiss. And Israel will be faced with having to give citizenship rights to the millions of Palestinians who now live under its rule.

Harper blocks mention of 1967 border in G8 Mideast statement - The Globe and Mail

Israel Exonerates Israel in Flotilla Massacre - But It Won't Stop Global Backlash

You've got to hand it to the Israeli government when it comes to chutzpah. They refuse to permit any independent inquiry into their massacre of nine humanitarian aid activists in international waters. Their own "inquiry" has reached the stunning conclusion that the only criticism that should be directed at the operation is that they weren't prepared for the potential for violence.

The report, however, praised the commandos who took part in the operation, saying they were justified in opening fire and killing nine people after being confronted by violent pro-Palestinian activists aboard one of the ships.

Huh? So, let me get this straight - commandos illegally board your ship, firing live rounds from the air and the sea and if you resist this violent assault then you are a "violent pro-Palestinian activist"? I shudder to think what a "better" planned assault would look like: drop a bomb and sink the ship outright?

Well, this bogus inquiry might soothe consciences in Israel where the population is used to killing innocents by the boatload to justify the theft of land from the locals. But in the rest of the world there are a significant number of people prepared to call "bullshit" on such a farce. As Phyllis Bennis, a widely read commentator on US foreign policy notes:

The ferocity of the massacre on the Mavi Marmara has forced even reluctant U.S. allies to criticize Israeli policy, some for the first time. For some countries, the reaction has been exceptionally strong. Turkey, responding to the murders on board the Turkish-flagged ship, withdrew its ambassador from Israel and announced a reduction in overall military and trade relations. Turkish President Abdullah Gul stated that "from now on, Turkish-Israeli ties will never be the same. The incident has left a deep and irreparable scar." Turkey then issued three demands to Israel as the price for restoring normal relations: apologize for the raid, organize an independent investigation, and significantly, to lift the blockade of Gaza. Losing or even diminishing Israel's longstanding relations with NATO's only Muslim-majority country, ties that included access to water, joint military exercises and a ready market for military exports, will have serious consequences for Tel Aviv...
NATO has yet to respond, but Turkey is reported to be considering a request to the NATO High Command to answer Israel's act of war against the Turkish-flagged ship with an act of collective defense as required under the NATO charter.

Even within the US establishment itself, Israel is increasingly seen as a problem, rather than a useful ally. According to this article in Palestine Monitor:

It [is] not surprising therefore to read that the Chief of the Mossad told the Knesset as recently as June 2010: “For the US, we have ceased to be an asset and become a burden.”

The effect of this growing pressure on Israel, and the growing momentum of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions campaign is creating an atmosphere of frustration inside Israel, with the Israeli government proposing a new raft of laws meant to punish any Israeli professors who support the BDS campaign. Rather than squelching the campaign, it has instead drawn more people into opposition to the government's heavy-handed response.

And while there is a bunker mentality forming amongst a significant portion of the population, others are instead critical of the government for not ending the occupation. If the BDS campaign gains further momentum and begins to seriously impact the Israeli economy and visible cultural events and production, it will become clear to ever wider swathes of the Israeli population that the Occupation must end. It's clear that as much as the Israeli government wants to hand-wave and outright lie about what happened on the Mavi Marmara, it has only increased the international opposition and isolation of Israel.

Israeli campaigners believe the Gaza flotilla incident represents a tipping point in raising support for boycotts. Musicians including Elvis Costello, Gil Scott Heron and the Pixies have cancelled shows in Israel. Hollywood actors also snubbed Jerusalem's international film festival and internationally acclaimed writers have supported the BDS movement, which is gaining support in dozens of countries.

In early June, George Galloway announced that Viva Palestina, which was central to the last flotilla, will organize another, more massive convoy from both land and sea. The goal is to have 60 ships and 500 vehicles, including cars, trucks and buses. The convoy and flotilla will set out on Sunday, September 12. The world will be watching.

Former Israeli Minister "We always use the anti-Semitism trick or bring up the Holocaust"

Some things don't really require a comment - the words of the former member of the Israeli government speak for themselves.

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The Globe & Mail's Phoney Gaza "Exposé"

You couldn't be in any doubt that the Globe and Mail were supporters of Israel, certainly not after their plaudits for Canada's lonely vote in the UN Human Rights Council against condemning Israel's "grave violations" in Gaza. Of course they even managed to justify Israel's bombing of civilians and civilian buildings with the thoroughly discredited claim that Hamas uses fellow Palestinians as human shields (not noting the irony that the Israel Defense Forces regularly use human shields,including children - despite a ruling by their own supreme court. See photos.)

The Globe's coverage also managed to miss the story that the studiously neutral International

Committee of the Red Cross condemned Israel for letting children starve next to the bodies of their dead mothers after refusing to allow ambulances to reach the wounded. Nor could I find on their website any account of the internationally covered story of Israeli soldiers shooting children carrying a white flag as a family fled - under orders from the IDF.

The Globe did manage to uncover a much more significant and important "scandal" from the war in Gaza, however. Remember how the IDF bombed that school and killed 43 civilians, many of them children? Well, it didn't happen. That's right, as the Globe says the report "doesn't stand up to scrutiny". Sure, 43 civilians were killed, many of them children. But the bombs landed outside the property line of the school. It just so happened that the civilians, fleeing under orders of the IDF, were standing outside of the school's walls, probably because they were crammed into a small school in their hundreds. So, while Israel lied about there being a sniper's nest, a mortar launching site, no casualties, and that the building was booby-trapped, the real story here is that the shells actually landed right outside the school. Besides demonstrating how utterly, utterly craven are the journalists and editors of the Globe and Mail they also raise questions about their own journalistic abilities. Every article about the school bombing that I could find, names the school al Fakhura - somehow the Globe came up with the name "Ibn Rushd Preparatory School for Boys". One wonders if the reporter was in the wrong place entirely.

Support Israeli Conscientious Objectors

"They Created A Desert & Called It Peace"

Israel Bans Arab Parties, Supports Ethnic Cleansing

Perhaps it shouldn’t be any surprise given the present wholesale slaughter but then Israel likes to tell the world, particularly Europe and North America that they’re the only democratic country in a region ruled by despots and hereditary monarchs.
It makes it all the more interesting then that Israel’s Central Electoral Committee has just banned Arab parties. Mixed parties, like the Communist Party, are OK. Jewish parties are OK. But those Arabs – well, they’re traitors, aren’t they?

“Parliament spokesman Giora Pordes said the election committee voted overwhelmingly in favor of the motion, accusing the country's Arab parties of incitement, supporting terrorist groups and refusing to recognize Israel's right to exist.”

The motion was put forward by a far-right party. That it won support amongst Israel’s mainstream parties shows just how far Israel’s colonialism has caused the nation’s political consciousness to degenerate towards ethnic authoritarianism.
But then, the plan from the beginning has always been to “spirit the penniless Arab population” across the border and out of Israel, as Zionism’s founder Theodor Herzl put it. And that’s still the attitude today.
A poll in March of 2008 found that 76% of Israeli Jews support the idea of transferring the Israeli Arab population out of the country should a Palestinian state be founded.

“…29% said all Israeli Arabs should relocate. An additional 19% said only Arabs living in close proximity to the Palestinian state should relocate, and 28% said transfer should be decided based on loyalty or disloyalty to the State of Israel.”

The Israeli Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni, echoed this sentiment in December, just two weeks before the Operation Cast Lead began in Gaza. In an interview with Army Radio, reported in Haaretz, Livni stated:

“Once a Palestinian state is established, I can come to the Palestinian citizens, whom we call Israeli Arabs, and say to them ‘you are citizens with equal rights, but the national solution for you is elsewhere.’”

This is of no great controversy in Israel. It was founded on the basis of expulsion. As Benny Morris, the “left wing” Zionist historian argued in a 2004 Haaretz interview:

“Ben-Gurion was a transferist. He understood that there could be no Jewish state with a large and hostile Arab minority in its midst. There would be no such state. It would not be able to exist…Ben-Gurion was right. If he had not done what he did, a state would not have come into being. That has to be clear. It is impossible to evade it. Without the uprooting of the Palestinians, a Jewish state would not have arisen here."

Based upon that logic, it is no small stretch for him to say the following in the same interview:

“The Israeli Arabs are a time bomb. Their slide into complete Palestinization has made them an emissary of the enemy that is among us. They are a potential fifth column…”

After all, the goal is to maintain a “democratic, Jewish” state. Unfortunately, there is the small matter of all those pesky Arabs living inside Israel – 20% of the population and growing.
And more than that, there’s another 3.7 million Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories, meaning that the number of people living under Israeli rule at the present is only slightly more than 50% Jewish. Fortunately for the “democratic, Jewish” state the majority of Palestinians under their rule have no vote, no civil rights and don’t even have independent control of their tax collection.
Not very democratic.
However, in Gaza there is a thriving democracy. In 2006, under the watch of international monitors and the basis of one-person, one-vote, the population of the Gaza Strip elected Hamas as the majority party in their Legislative Assembly.
Perhaps that example of democracy at work is part of what Israel wants to eliminate.

Israeli Dog Worth More Than A Palestinian Child

Pity the people of Sderot. Sure, the Hamas rockets - which were silent during the period of the ceasefire that Israel broke - almost never hit anyone. But sometimes they do hit people's pets - or even stray animals. Israel, being a humane society (no pun intended) can't bear the thought of a poor injured animal, so the Agriculture Ministry has agreed to pay for the treatment of pets who are injured by rocket fire. Even stray animals will be treated and, one presumes, released back out to eat from neighbourhood garbage cans, carry disease, etc.
Perhaps the Israelis are sending a message to the Palestinians that they'd be better off if they just accepted a role as pets for Israelis. Why else would Israel refuse to cover the costs of injuries that Palestinians received from Israeli bombs? And, of course, Hamas doesn't even have access to Palestinian tax revenues to pay to treat Israeli-caused injuries since Israel has refused to hand over Palestinian taxes and other revenues since Hamas was democratically elected in 2006.
In any case, it's clear that an Israeli dog is worth more than a Palestinian child.