Today is the 12th day of Israel's murderous attacks on Gaza.
The Palestinian body count is 336, 70 of whom are kids. This has become a murderous spree of killing for the zionist terrorist army, supported by government of this racist colonial entity and by their people , many of whom have been turning increasingly into blood thirsty mobs urging the murder of Palestinian
On the eve of Abu Khudair’s lynching, Member of Knesset (Israel’s parliament) and government faction whip Ayelet Shaked issued a call over Facebook to ethnically cleanse the land, declaring “the entire Palestinian people is the enemy.” She advocated their complete destruction, “including its elderly and its women,” adding that these must be slaughtered, otherwise they might give birth to more “little snakes.”
... Since the beginning of July, raging crowds of Jewish Israelis just like these have marched through Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Nazareth and Beer Sheva, chanting “Death to Arabs” and “Death to Leftists,” swarming and attacking vulnerable victims. While a tiny contingent of radical Israelis have formed a loose “anti-fascist” network that tries to patrol city streets and prevent additional lynchings, they are extremely few in numbers and cannot be everywhere at all times.
While Israeli leaders unleash conscripted soldiers to bombard Gaza, they dispatch ultra-nationalist vigilantes to conquer cities inside Israel. With the incitement to murder Palestinians (and the few Israeli allies they have) continue unabated, it seems to be only a matter of time before the bubbling bloodlust boils overs into a bloodbath.
I am sure that you, the people behind Archinect, are well aware of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, this racist colonial entity that has been described by Moshé Machover as being far worse than the south african apartheid system: "talk of Israeli ‘apartheid’ serves to divert attention from much greater dangers. For, as far as most Palestinians are concerned, the Zionist policy is far worse than apartheid. Apartheid can be reversed. Ethnic cleansing is immeasurably harder to reverse; at least not in the short or medium term."
The global BDS movement is a peaceful movement that has been, in the face of Israeli racist, oppressive and genocidal policies against the Palestinians, garnering great traction around the world as people everywhere are increasingly grasping the nature of the Zionist establishment that is called Israel. Through a deliberate, effective boycotting Israeli products, academics, businesses, items of interest, the movement contributes to the economic and moral isolation of Israel.
“In light of Israel’s persistent violations of international law, and Given that, since 1948, hundreds of UN resolutions have condemned Israel’s colonial and discriminatory policies as illegal and called for immediate, adequate and effective remedies, and Given that all forms of international intervention and peace-making have until now failed to convince or force Israel to comply with humanitarian law, to respect fundamental human rights and to end its occupation and oppression of the people of Palestine, and In view of the fact that people of conscience in the international community have historically shouldered the moral responsibility to fight injustice, as exemplified in the struggle to abolish apartheid in South Africa through diverse forms of boycott, divestment and sanctions..."
I notice that there are Israeli businesses being hosted within Archinect's firm listings (for example). As are listings of Israeli universities within the academic section. I highly urge Archinect, the people behind it, Paul, the editors, the writers....to desist from ignoring your responsibilities apropos taking a stand against this racist entity and to remove all Israeli related material from Archinect. You, like everyone else has that responsibility, because you have the knowledge and you have the right of choice. To ignore this is to be complacent and to be regressive.
As a virtual space that spans the social, the professional and the academic, as a gathering of professionals including architects, designers, artists, engineers and others, as a gathering of minds that by implication suggests a progressive humanist endeavor, please instate an anti-zionist, anti-israeli policy (that covers israeli academics, businesses, media, etc) in the spirit of the BDS movement.
hamas could end this today. right now. there are a bunch of people in egypt trying to get that to happen.
but hamas won't let it end. what's more important to them than lives of the palestinian people? what are you really fighting for here? if it really is the palestinian people you're concerned with (and i know it's not) then why aren't you talking about hamas accepting defeat and talking to the groups in egypt trying to broker a peace deal?
there is a war between israel and hamas. as with pretty much all wars, what's happening is atrocious. it should stop. but realistically, israel has the superior army. hamas can't even get help from it's neighbors like it did in 1948 anymore. they're army is so much smaller and so powerless that there is no way they could confront israel in a open battle, so they have to rely on some sort of subversive guerrilla tactic. that's why the israel claim that they're hiding munitions in housing, and using human shields, is credible. from a military standpoint, hamas doesn't have the means to do anything else. this is a campaign to build support from other countries with the hopes of being able to turn the tide.
but that won't work. israel is a nuclear country. you said that israel is not "holding back." do you really have any idea what they're capable of? they could level all of gaza and the west bank in an afternoon and have enough left over to defend themselves against the retaliation for at least a little while if they chose to.
sanctions could work against israel, but if hamas isn't willing to step down what would be the point? hamas would just use what military infrastructure they have to shoot rocket over israel again, and israel would fire back, and this would all start again. hamas lost the war. at the end of pretty much all wars, there is demilitarization and reconciliation. get over it.
the people and government of israel aren't going to leave. it's just not a realistic scenario. even if your boycott was able to get a bigger army to fight along side hamas, you just get the same escalation and mutually assured destruction we had during the cold war. you can't fight a nuclear war, because everyone dies. you'd have better luck getting all the immigrants and influence from the french and british colonizations to leave canada and return the land and language back to the aboriginal population.
led signal light
Jul 27, 14 4:36 pm
All the hasbarats are easily detected in Archinect. Not because of investigation but sound of their posts. I suspect they have no idea about architecture either as they complain about this being an architectural forum and not political but they only respond to this thread with their stupid commentary.
Oh Israel.., you invest in wrong people in the wrong places for the wrong cause and you sink and sink like drowning in innocent children's blood.
chatter of clouds
Jul 27, 14 4:39 pm
so curtkram...they're both wrong ...because Israel can wipe out Palestinians with a nuclear bomb? irrespective of who is slowly killing and deporting Palestinians irrespective of whether there was a Hamas or not to begin with? Amongst other resistance factions, Hamas is the reaction to colonization and it is a resistance faction that rose out of the Palestinians themselves. Actually, now more than ever, Palestinians ...are supporting all the Palestinian factions. Palestinians in Gaza support their resistance...because, unlike you, they are in their own shoes and have been experiencing a long dragged out death - oppression, near starvation, assassinations, you name it.
And still, you will say they are both wrong...because you have no sense of what is right, the right not to be colonized, the right not to live under oppression, the right to be able to live and and prosper, the right not to be kicked out of the land that is yours because you don;t belong to the race of the force colonizing you. Your amorality makes of you immoral; you equate right with who has the nuclear bomb. this is how you think. a Palestinian child throwing a stone at an Israeli tank has 100 times more humanity than you.
As for the Palestinian resistance factions (and not just Hamas, there are many others now fighting) being on their own, you, again, show how ignorant and lacking of knowledge you are. The fact that they've been able to fight for this long against this huge military monster of Israel is ownly due to their alliance with other forces in the region. And, if this drags on too long, expect other fronts to open up.
“These are war crimes being committed before the world, before the eyes of the whole world and I just can’t understand how people sit back and say [it's] self-defense. I just can’t take the language, I can’t take the propaganda, I can’t take the mantra that Israel has a right to defend itself. Against whom? Against innocent civilians? More than 80 children have been torn to bits. Is this self-defense?”
curtkram
Jul 27, 14 6:39 pm
would you rather see peace and reconciliation or more palestian children getting killed? because there is a choice for hamas. obviously tammuz would prefer to see dead kids over peace since he knows nothing but fear and hatred
i'd like to see peace. i'd like to see a peace treaty that includes guarantees to palestinians regarding equal treatment under law, rights to land ownership, and equal access to government. i don't like seeing a war between hamas and israel where civilians are getting killed. as far as i'm concerned the solution is simple, but then i know the cost is pretty great for some people. i'm pretty sure any peace agreement will include demilitarization of hamas and israel remains (if there is a 2-state solution, of course israel loses a lot of the land it currently controls). for tammuz, it's better to sit back and watch kids die on tv from the other side of the world, which for me is horrible because i'm not filled with hate and would much rather not have him posting how horrible the unnecessary continuation of this war is.
the problem as i see it is that they won't stop fighting. it sounds from your perspective that the problem is that israel won't just lay down and die? if we quit supporting israeli companies and stop sending them foreign aid, you think hamas will quit attacking them? or it just makes it a bit easier for hamas to attack them?
if hamas does attack, it's pretty likely israel's reaction will be overkill. we know that, because it's happened several times before. yet hamas won't stop provoking them. why? what do they have to gain? some public boycotts? it's not worth the loss of life.
then again, israel is a colonizing force, just like canada, where i understand tammuz chooses to live now. isn't that right?
Once again Gaza is under massive aerial bombardment from Israeli warplanes and drones, and, once again, the BBC’s reporting of these assaults is entirely devoid of context or background.
We would like to remind the BBC that Gaza is under Israeli occupation and siege.
We would like to remind you that Israel is bombing a refugee population – Palestinians who were made refugees when they were forced from their land in 1948 in order to create Israel.
We would like to remind you that Gaza has no army, air force, or navy, while Israel possess one of the strongest militaries in the world.
When you portray Israel’s shelling of a civilian population as a ‘response’ or ‘retaliation’ to rocket strikes from Gaza, we would like to remind you that these events flow from the displacement of the overwhelming majority of the Palestinian people from their homes and communities, with millions now corralled as refugees in the Gaza Strip. That initial injustice was compounded and continues with the ongoing occupation and siege.
When you portray the occupier as the victim, and the occupied as the aggressor, we would like to remind you that resistance to occupation is a right under international law. And we would like you to remember that Israel’s occupation, siege and collective punishment of Gaza is not.
And, finally, we would like to remind BBC journalists, when interviewing Israel’s spokespeople over the coming days, to ask the one question they have all failed to ask: “If Israel ends its occupation of Palestinian land, and allows the people of Palestine to live in freedom from Israeli domination, would that bring peace?”
Non Sequitur
Jul 27, 14 8:29 pm
Curt, nice attempt at rationalizing but I think it's painfully obvious that you will not gain any ground.
Tam, I call photoshop bullshit on those pictures. I can see the pixels.
So...what was the reason for killing all these Palestinians in the first place? Oh, of course, they weren't dying quickly enough under the impoverishing, oppressing, apartheid regime being enforced upon them. Yes, that fucking stubborn victim isn;t dying fast => its his/her fault=>therefore Israel has a right to speed up the murder of children instead of just stunting their growth and starving them
curtkram
Jul 27, 14 9:18 pm
i know non sequitur. i should somehow learn to shut myself up on the internets. it just seems like it could be sad if this site becomes known as part of a hate group or something.
Video description: Shujayea: Massacre at Dawn A powerful film with exclusive footage from the day of the Israeli assault on the densely populated Shujayea district. Uploaded 27 July 2014
led signal light
Jul 27, 14 9:32 pm
it just seems like it could be sad if this site becomes known as part of a hate group or something.
It seems going on that direction in terms of Islamophobia and apathy for Muslims. But more specifically being indifferent on barbaric murder of Palestinian children and treatment of civilian population of Gaza in the hands of Israeli power.
chatter of clouds
Jul 27, 14 9:50 pm
Dear Archinect,
Many massacres are being committed by Israel's terrorist army against Palestinians as shown above in the linked video (linked again). More than 1000 dead with 300 of them being children.
Your listing/hosting of Israeli architects and universities, part of the economic and cultural underpin of that colony, encourages normalcy with that state of racist colonial terror that measures its power by how many children it kills, families it dismembers and land it steals to built its architecture on.
Your nonchalance renders you effectively complicit. You KNOW what it going on; you know that the BDS movement is justified. Yet you think yourself divorced from this. Not so. Having Israeli architects and universities on board here renders you involved. Please do not remain regressive, please don't relax, put your feet up, accept your complicit status quo as another people are being killed. You can take action, positive action, by boycotting Israel and removing these listings and refraining from publishing any news item related to Israeli architects who practice on stolem people garnered through the murder of indigenous innocents.
Please boycott that racist colonial state that has been described as being an apartheid by Bishop Desmond Tutu, who knows well what an apartheid is.
wouldn't indifference and apathy pretty much be the opposite of hate?
hate is a strong emotion, just like love. indifference would imply the lack of emotion. love and hate have more in common than indifference. for that reason, i would say indifference would not lead this site to be considered a 'hate group.' islamaphobia would be bad of course.
sometimes an organization wants to put forward an indifferent opinion towards politically or emotionally charged topic to avoid offending people, and thus losing patrons. archinect isn't really a forum dedicated to advocating for islamic or palestinian causes, so saying nothing might be a better public face for them, even if they support the cause under pseudonyms or through lack of moderation.
led signal light
Jul 27, 14 10:24 pm
I wasn't talking about Archinect per se but rather some people who post here voicing indifference, apathy for the massacre of Palestinians in Gaza and Islamophobia.
Would you still tolerate supporting Israel, financially and culturally?
led signal light
Jul 27, 14 11:13 pm
"Some are shamelessly accusing Israel of genocide, or putting us in the dock for war crimes. The truth is that the Israeli Defense Forces should be given a Nobel Peace Prize! A Nobel Prize for fighting with unimaginable restraint."
(His Excellency, Mr. Ron Dermer, the Israeli Ambassador to the United States, at a Christians United for Israel Conference, 21 July 2014)
The more total society becomes, the greater the reification of the mind and the more paradoxical its effort to escape reification on its own. Even the most extreme consciousness of doom threatens to degenerate into idle chatter. Cultural criticism finds itself faced with the final stage of the dialectic of culture and barbarism. To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric. And this corrodes even the knowledge of why it has become impossible to write poetry today. Absolute reification, which presupposed intellectual progress as one of its elements, is now preparing to absorb the mind entirely. Critical intelligence cannot be equal to this challenge as long as it confines itself to self-satisfied contemplation. - Theodor W. Adorno
"Israel does not want peace. There is nothing I have ever written that I would be happier to be proved wrong about. But the evidence is piling up. In fact, it can be said that Israel has never wanted peace – a just peace, that is, one based on a just compromise for both sides."
"But the truth is that even before that, Israel never really wanted peace. Israel has never, not for a minute, treated the Palestinians as human beings with equal rights. It has never viewed their distress as understandable human and national distress."
"The single most overwhelming item of evidence of Israel’s rejection of peace is, of course, the settlements project. From the dawn of its existence, there has never been a more reliable or more precise litmus test for Israel’s true intentions than this particular enterprise. In plain words: The builders of settlements want to consolidate the occupation, and those who want to consolidate the occupation do not want peace. That’s the whole story in a nutshell."
"There is no way to reach a just peace when the name of the game is the dehumanization of the Palestinians. No way to achieve peace when the demonization of the Palestinians is hammered into people’s heads day after day."
That means the US Security Council. The assholic UN should have been crying bloody murder against Israel from the get go - not just a cease fire. They've obviously got their tacit agreement from the US. And that Ban-ki-moon guy is for hire, didn't you know?
From an age where they were condemning colonialism and violation of human rights...they have virtually morphed into a US puppet.
A 12-hour lull Saturday was agreed to by both sides following intense U.S. and United Nations mediation efforts
Why just a cease fire? Because Israel does not concede to lift the Gaza seige that has been throttling the Palestinians for so long. This is what the resistance wants to achieve now. Israel - and the US- do not want to give the Palestinians that.
Why not? If the US, purporting to be humane (which it is most definitely not), supports humanitarian actions like cease fire - why don;t they support the very humanitarian cause of lifting the siege which would really deflate this for now?
Because the US does not want just yet want, to have Israel stop its war on the Palestinians. The US is looking at this, and waiting - as it did in the 2006 war on Lebanon. When it feels - and, telling from the incidentally recorded ironic comment by Kerry, it does so already- that Israel is sinking too deep in its crap - which it is, both militarily on ground and in front of the international community apropos its massacres of Palestinians- it will step in for a real stop of this.
So, sorry..but don;t expect me to thank either the US or the UN for this ceasefire. They are complicit in this. The UN should have been issuing condemnations against this rabid hateful state that calls itself Israel left and right from the start to avoid the murder of over a thousand people and 300 kids. While Israel is the rabid mad dog, the US and the UN are soaked in Palestinian blood for their tactical deliberate lack of serious action...and worse are a horde of Arab regimes.
led signal light
Jul 28, 14 2:43 am
happy eid world, it's the end of ramadan.
300+ palestinian children had no idea they were going to be in the morgs for this holiday and thousands of them would be observing it without their mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters if not for their best friends and relatives just a few weeks ago.
When you hear the words “settler colonialism,” you might think of it as something that went away in the 20th century, but look no further than the often touted “only democracy in the Middle East:” The state of Israel that was established 66 years ago. While this is often described as a moment of liberation for the Jewish people after facing a thousand years of European anti-Semitism, which we saw the worst of in the Shoah (Holocaust), for Palestinians 1948 represents a traumatic event that they describe as al-Nakba, or “catastrophe” in Arabic.
...Palestinian society was forever impacted when approximately 720,000 Palestinians were forced into exile by pre-Israel Zionist militias from 1947 to 1948. In fact, the majority of those were exiled before May 15, 1948, when Israel officially declared itself as a state and the Arab-Israeli War began. It is simply immoral to frame the establishment of Israel in a liberation context in line with anti-colonial struggles of the post war period in Africa and Asia. How can it be called independence when it is gained by forcibly removing the indigenous population to create a state where the majority of the citizens are Jewish, and while this forced majority is given a higher status and more rights over the indigenous?
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique andexceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoingcolonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonialprojects such as the British colonization of Ireland or Europeansettlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources — and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, “the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct–invasion is a structure not an event.”
Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settlercolonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is notmerely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel,nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is tohighlight Zionism’s structural continuities and the ideology whichinforms Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and towardPalestinians everywhere.
Non Sequitur
Jul 28, 14 10:36 am
TAM, how many keyboards have you gone through over the last week? There must literally be a graveyard of CTRL, C & V keys blocking your way out of your basement lair.
"the concept of stealing from people, killing and stealing, is against the Torah"
chatter of clouds
Jul 28, 14 11:27 am
Its not that history obliviously repeats itself, its that the Israeli Zionist colonialism , by nature and will, seeks to obliterate the presence of the Palestinian people in a succession of massacres, deportation strategies, impoverishment.
TAM, if ever you feel like reading something objective instead of your tripe, perhaps this piece by Sam Harris (http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/why-dont-i-criticize-israel) will help you understand why a decent chuck of people ridicule extremist positions like yours.
curtkram
Jul 28, 14 11:44 am
non sequitur, shouldn't you copy and paste that to fill more space? Perhaps add a list?
chatter of clouds
Jul 28, 14 12:23 pm
you mean my extremist value that we should dismantle the racist zionist state of Israel? yes, i see how extreme this is in the eyes of the zionists themselves.
Sam Harris is a supporter of Israel and pedals his islamophobic views everywhere and anywhere. Yes' he is a more intelligent and cunning one than the dumb wafa sultan, but its like you're going to a zionist to intellectually indemnify a zionist cause. The guy argues backwards - ie his premise is to hate on moslems and then he finds the arguments and modifies them and adapts them to his end. Here is a really good analysis of his way of thinking.
So, typical, you resort to essentializing islamophobic sources in order, again, to exonerate the murdered (perhaps because you either have a stake in this or because of cultural/religious/etnhic prejudice on your part) and condemn the one being obliterated.
The question - which is really rhetorical, I don;t care to have much of a dialogue with someone who descends to sourcing islamophobic sources is: why are you incessantly, here, responding to me, in defense of Israel? Assuming that Palestinians are partly to blame (which they're not), you have not once condemned the murder of all those people by Israel, you have not once been critical of Israel in face of the inordinate evidence of its committing crimes against humanity against civilians. All you have cared for is to afford petty remarks here, mostly shrill mockery that adds to the soundtrack for the hasbara trolls.
I know why I defend Palestinians. I know their history of being oppressed, i know their tragedies, i know how they got kicked out of their land, i know about the massacres that are told from one generation to the other, and of course i know and see the massacres that form a part of that lineage of massacres. For all that, I and many people around the world support the oppressed Palestinians.
What are YOUR stakes? Simply to argue against me, an argument for its own sake? To argue because you sincerely believe that Israel, a racist colonial entity, is a "good thing" and those terrorist Palestinians, including all their children, are a "bad thing" and therefore need to be exterminated, either through slow or quick death? Does this subject, perhaps, impinge on a personal rationally-baseless affiliation you have with Zionism and the sordid state of israel?
Israeli propaganda has hit a new low. While the world was still trying to come to terms with the mass deaths in Shejaiya, Benjamin Netanyahu went on CNN to state that Hamas uses the “telegenically dead” to further “their cause.” He added that for Hamas: “The more the dead, the better.” Even while Netanyahu followed the propaganda script, which is to first show sympathy and express remorse, by reducing dead Palestinians to a photo-op he showed how his own mind works.
There is a standard script for how to deal with Palestinian casualties. After Israel killed four boys on the Gaza beach on July 16, the U.S. establishment media fell in line behind Israel’s PR framework: acknowledge the tragedy but blame Hamas. This is exactly what Israeli spokesperson Mark Regev said on Channel 4 News when grilled by the anchor Jon Snow. It is also how the U.S. State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki responded, using the same word-for-word talking points.
This framework, developed in 2009, can be found in The Israel Project’s 2009 Global Language Dictionary. The Orwellian manual provides a detailed outline on how to “communicate effectively in support of Israel.”
One of its first instructions is that pro-Israeli propagandists need to show empathy. The manual insists that they should “show empathy for BOTH sides” (caps in original) as a way of gaining credibility and trust. To make sure that the point is understood, the manual repeats again (in bold, and underlined this time) the instruction “use Empathy”—the suggestion being that empathy is an important tool to be used in the propaganda war.
When innocent Palestinian children and women are killed, the first response should be to show empathy; the next is to reframe the issue stating that Israel is not to blame and that it is only defending itself and further that it only wants peace. Even when it is raining death and destruction on Palestinians, the manual is clear: “Remind people—again and again—that Israel wants peace.”
Developed after the 2008 Gaza war, when Americans began to show greater sympathy for Palestinians, this propaganda manual tries to address some of the shortcomings during Operation Cast Lead. Among the various shifts it suggests, the manual notes that it is important to distinguish between the Palestinian people and Hamas. Ayman Mohyeldin, one of the few international reporters who covered Cast Lead, noted that Israel sought to “portray everyone in Gaza as a Hamas sympathizer, as a terrorist sympathizer” as a way to justify its indiscriminate killing.
The 2009 manual counters this strategy, stating that while Americans “get” that “Hamas is a terrorist organization. . . if it sounds like you are attacking the Palestinian people. . . you will lose support.” It carefully emphasizes again: “Right now, many Americans sympathize with the plight of the Palestinians, and that sympathy will increase if you fail to differentiate between the people from their leaders.”
In other words, in order to decrease sympathy for the Palestinian people new tactics were needed to augment older ones
Volunteer
Jul 28, 14 12:38 pm
How about Obama's golf game? And Marthas Vineyard is so nice this time of year. Never mind two wars going on and preteen girls getting raped enroute here from Central America. Tee time!
Non Sequitur
Jul 28, 14 1:25 pm
TAM you hear that sound? That was intelligent information passing miles over your head. Don't worry, I knew you would not understand.
Volunteer, I left the office early for a tee-time last week. Felt great to make room in the middle of the week for some beers in the sun.
chatter of clouds
Jul 28, 14 2:32 pm
Typical that you belittle. You support murder in the zionist name, racism, islamophibia, and all you can retortwith is mocking noise and "blah, blah blah's". Your ugly friends have kileld children, again. Congratulate yourself and them on a job well done.
Khalid Abdul-Sattar Sahmoud, 20 years old, was killed east of Khan Younis in an Israeli airstrike on July 27, 2014 while riding a motorcycle. He was a young civil engineer.
His cousin, Ahmed Sahmoud, was killed on July 20, 2014.
Non Sequitur
Jul 28, 14 2:38 pm
You must be real fun at parties.
btw, criticizing religion is not islamaphobia... you should try it, perhaps it'll loosen your blinders.
curtkram
Jul 28, 14 2:41 pm
tammuz, you're advocating perpetuation of the war until israel is destroyed rather than advocating a path to peace and reconciliation. aren't you the one supporting murder? aren't you the one using this as an excuse to draw attention to yourself?
chatter of clouds
Jul 28, 14 2:47 pm
curtkram, it is obvious that you're a liar as I've previously explained what I believe in. You've refused to incorporate that in and you continue to force on me the same idiotic suggestions that I never made. Israel AS A SYSTEM should be destroyed, dismantled, peacefully...with no harm to the people. Thats my preference...but as long as it continues to oppress and kill Palestinians, I believe in the right of Palestinians to defend themselves.
Its very telling that you really care more about reiterating stupidly and endlessly an irrelevant incorrect interpretation of my belief than the fact that it is Israel that is committing massacres now and that it was killing and starving/humiliating Palestinians before this spree of murder. Its obvious where you stand. And it is not just my opinion that you're not interested in having a rational argument or in the truth.
chatter of clouds
Jul 28, 14 2:48 pm
...
curtkram
Jul 28, 14 2:52 pm
then let me rephrase
tammuz, you're advocating perpetuation of the war until Israel AS A SYSTEM should be destroyed, dismantled, peacefully...with no harm to the people rather than advocating a path to peace and reconciliation. aren't you the one supporting murder? aren't you the one using this as an excuse to draw attention to yourself?
Today is the 12th day of Israel's murderous attacks on Gaza.
The Palestinian body count is 336, 70 of whom are kids. This has become a murderous spree of killing for the zionist terrorist army, supported by government of this racist colonial entity and by their people , many of whom have been turning increasingly into blood thirsty mobs urging the murder of Palestinian
........................................................................................................
From Israeli calls for Palestinian blood ring at fever pitch :
On the eve of Abu Khudair’s lynching, Member of Knesset (Israel’s parliament) and government faction whip Ayelet Shaked issued a call over Facebook to ethnically cleanse the land, declaring “the entire Palestinian people is the enemy.” She advocated their complete destruction, “including its elderly and its women,” adding that these must be slaughtered, otherwise they might give birth to more “little snakes.”
... Since the beginning of July, raging crowds of Jewish Israelis just like these have marched through Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Nazareth and Beer Sheva, chanting “Death to Arabs” and “Death to Leftists,” swarming and attacking vulnerable victims. While a tiny contingent of radical Israelis have formed a loose “anti-fascist” network that tries to patrol city streets and prevent additional lynchings, they are extremely few in numbers and cannot be everywhere at all times.
While Israeli leaders unleash conscripted soldiers to bombard Gaza, they dispatch ultra-nationalist vigilantes to conquer cities inside Israel. With the incitement to murder Palestinians (and the few Israeli allies they have) continue unabated, it seems to be only a matter of time before the bubbling bloodlust boils overs into a bloodbath.
............................................................................................................
I am sure that you, the people behind Archinect, are well aware of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, this racist colonial entity that has been described by Moshé Machover as being far worse than the south african apartheid system: "talk of Israeli ‘apartheid’ serves to divert attention from much greater dangers. For, as far as most Palestinians are concerned, the Zionist policy is far worse than apartheid. Apartheid can be reversed. Ethnic cleansing is immeasurably harder to reverse; at least not in the short or medium term."
The global BDS movement is a peaceful movement that has been, in the face of Israeli racist, oppressive and genocidal policies against the Palestinians, garnering great traction around the world as people everywhere are increasingly grasping the nature of the Zionist establishment that is called Israel. Through a deliberate, effective boycotting Israeli products, academics, businesses, items of interest, the movement contributes to the economic and moral isolation of Israel.
As you might know, there is also the US Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel , whose mission statement states the following:
“In light of Israel’s persistent violations of international law, and Given that, since 1948, hundreds of UN resolutions have condemned Israel’s colonial and discriminatory policies as illegal and called for immediate, adequate and effective remedies, and Given that all forms of international intervention and peace-making have until now failed to convince or force Israel to comply with humanitarian law, to respect fundamental human rights and to end its occupation and oppression of the people of Palestine, and In view of the fact that people of conscience in the international community have historically shouldered the moral responsibility to fight injustice, as exemplified in the struggle to abolish apartheid in South Africa through diverse forms of boycott, divestment and sanctions..."
I notice that there are Israeli businesses being hosted within Archinect's firm listings (for example). As are listings of Israeli universities within the academic section. I highly urge Archinect, the people behind it, Paul, the editors, the writers....to desist from ignoring your responsibilities apropos taking a stand against this racist entity and to remove all Israeli related material from Archinect. You, like everyone else has that responsibility, because you have the knowledge and you have the right of choice. To ignore this is to be complacent and to be regressive.
As a virtual space that spans the social, the professional and the academic, as a gathering of professionals including architects, designers, artists, engineers and others, as a gathering of minds that by implication suggests a progressive humanist endeavor, please instate an anti-zionist, anti-israeli policy (that covers israeli academics, businesses, media, etc) in the spirit of the BDS movement.
If you’ve come across a hasbarat, on-line or otherwise, you have learned that no amount of reasoned argument or intellectual maturity has any effect. That’s because hasbarats don’t care if they come across as ignorant, obnoxious, nasty or inane. All that matters for them is sabotaging criticism of Israel and support for Muslims. They're like anti-intellectual stink bombs: designed to cause maximum discomfort but have little if any real power.
both sides are wrong
hamas could end this today. right now. there are a bunch of people in egypt trying to get that to happen.
but hamas won't let it end. what's more important to them than lives of the palestinian people? what are you really fighting for here? if it really is the palestinian people you're concerned with (and i know it's not) then why aren't you talking about hamas accepting defeat and talking to the groups in egypt trying to broker a peace deal?
there is a war between israel and hamas. as with pretty much all wars, what's happening is atrocious. it should stop. but realistically, israel has the superior army. hamas can't even get help from it's neighbors like it did in 1948 anymore. they're army is so much smaller and so powerless that there is no way they could confront israel in a open battle, so they have to rely on some sort of subversive guerrilla tactic. that's why the israel claim that they're hiding munitions in housing, and using human shields, is credible. from a military standpoint, hamas doesn't have the means to do anything else. this is a campaign to build support from other countries with the hopes of being able to turn the tide.
but that won't work. israel is a nuclear country. you said that israel is not "holding back." do you really have any idea what they're capable of? they could level all of gaza and the west bank in an afternoon and have enough left over to defend themselves against the retaliation for at least a little while if they chose to.
sanctions could work against israel, but if hamas isn't willing to step down what would be the point? hamas would just use what military infrastructure they have to shoot rocket over israel again, and israel would fire back, and this would all start again. hamas lost the war. at the end of pretty much all wars, there is demilitarization and reconciliation. get over it.
the people and government of israel aren't going to leave. it's just not a realistic scenario. even if your boycott was able to get a bigger army to fight along side hamas, you just get the same escalation and mutually assured destruction we had during the cold war. you can't fight a nuclear war, because everyone dies. you'd have better luck getting all the immigrants and influence from the french and british colonizations to leave canada and return the land and language back to the aboriginal population.
All the hasbarats are easily detected in Archinect. Not because of investigation but sound of their posts. I suspect they have no idea about architecture either as they complain about this being an architectural forum and not political but they only respond to this thread with their stupid commentary.
Oh Israel.., you invest in wrong people in the wrong places for the wrong cause and you sink and sink like drowning in innocent children's blood.
so curtkram...they're both wrong ...because Israel can wipe out Palestinians with a nuclear bomb? irrespective of who is slowly killing and deporting Palestinians irrespective of whether there was a Hamas or not to begin with? Amongst other resistance factions, Hamas is the reaction to colonization and it is a resistance faction that rose out of the Palestinians themselves. Actually, now more than ever, Palestinians ...are supporting all the Palestinian factions. Palestinians in Gaza support their resistance...because, unlike you, they are in their own shoes and have been experiencing a long dragged out death - oppression, near starvation, assassinations, you name it.
And still, you will say they are both wrong...because you have no sense of what is right, the right not to be colonized, the right not to live under oppression, the right to be able to live and and prosper, the right not to be kicked out of the land that is yours because you don;t belong to the race of the force colonizing you. Your amorality makes of you immoral; you equate right with who has the nuclear bomb. this is how you think. a Palestinian child throwing a stone at an Israeli tank has 100 times more humanity than you.
As for the Palestinian resistance factions (and not just Hamas, there are many others now fighting) being on their own, you, again, show how ignorant and lacking of knowledge you are. The fact that they've been able to fight for this long against this huge military monster of Israel is ownly due to their alliance with other forces in the region. And, if this drags on too long, expect other fronts to open up.
PLO’s Hanan Ashrawi: ‘Deliberate Massacre’ in Gaza
“These are war crimes being committed before the world, before the eyes of the whole world and I just can’t understand how people sit back and say [it's] self-defense. I just can’t take the language, I can’t take the propaganda, I can’t take the mantra that Israel has a right to defend itself. Against whom? Against innocent civilians? More than 80 children have been torn to bits. Is this self-defense?”
would you rather see peace and reconciliation or more palestian children getting killed? because there is a choice for hamas. obviously tammuz would prefer to see dead kids over peace since he knows nothing but fear and hatred
i'd like to see peace. i'd like to see a peace treaty that includes guarantees to palestinians regarding equal treatment under law, rights to land ownership, and equal access to government. i don't like seeing a war between hamas and israel where civilians are getting killed. as far as i'm concerned the solution is simple, but then i know the cost is pretty great for some people. i'm pretty sure any peace agreement will include demilitarization of hamas and israel remains (if there is a 2-state solution, of course israel loses a lot of the land it currently controls). for tammuz, it's better to sit back and watch kids die on tv from the other side of the world, which for me is horrible because i'm not filled with hate and would much rather not have him posting how horrible the unnecessary continuation of this war is.
the problem as i see it is that they won't stop fighting. it sounds from your perspective that the problem is that israel won't just lay down and die? if we quit supporting israeli companies and stop sending them foreign aid, you think hamas will quit attacking them? or it just makes it a bit easier for hamas to attack them?
if hamas does attack, it's pretty likely israel's reaction will be overkill. we know that, because it's happened several times before. yet hamas won't stop provoking them. why? what do they have to gain? some public boycotts? it's not worth the loss of life.
then again, israel is a colonizing force, just like canada, where i understand tammuz chooses to live now. isn't that right?
Dear BBC,
Once again Gaza is under massive aerial bombardment from Israeli warplanes and drones, and, once again, the BBC’s reporting of these assaults is entirely devoid of context or background.
We would like to remind the BBC that Gaza is under Israeli occupation and siege.
We would like to remind you that Israel is bombing a refugee population – Palestinians who were made refugees when they were forced from their land in 1948 in order to create Israel.
We would like to remind you that Gaza has no army, air force, or navy, while Israel possess one of the strongest militaries in the world.
When you portray Israel’s shelling of a civilian population as a ‘response’ or ‘retaliation’ to rocket strikes from Gaza, we would like to remind you that these events flow from the displacement of the overwhelming majority of the Palestinian people from their homes and communities, with millions now corralled as refugees in the Gaza Strip. That initial injustice was compounded and continues with the ongoing occupation and siege.
When you portray the occupier as the victim, and the occupied as the aggressor, we would like to remind you that resistance to occupation is a right under international law. And we would like you to remember that Israel’s occupation, siege and collective punishment of Gaza is not.
And, finally, we would like to remind BBC journalists, when interviewing Israel’s spokespeople over the coming days, to ask the one question they have all failed to ask: “If Israel ends its occupation of Palestinian land, and allows the people of Palestine to live in freedom from Israeli domination, would that bring peace?”
Curt, nice attempt at rationalizing but I think it's painfully obvious that you will not gain any ground.
Tam, I call photoshop bullshit on those pictures. I can see the pixels.
Claim that Hamas killed 3 teens is turning out to be the WMD of Gaza onslaught
So...what was the reason for killing all these Palestinians in the first place? Oh, of course, they weren't dying quickly enough under the impoverishing, oppressing, apartheid regime being enforced upon them. Yes, that fucking stubborn victim isn;t dying fast => its his/her fault=>therefore Israel has a right to speed up the murder of children instead of just stunting their growth and starving them
i know non sequitur. i should somehow learn to shut myself up on the internets. it just seems like it could be sad if this site becomes known as part of a hate group or something.
Israel's massacre in Shujayea
Video description: Shujayea: Massacre at Dawn
A powerful film with exclusive footage from the day of the Israeli assault on the densely populated Shujayea district. Uploaded 27 July 2014
it just seems like it could be sad if this site becomes known as part of a hate group or something.
It seems going on that direction in terms of Islamophobia and apathy for Muslims. But more specifically being indifferent on barbaric murder of Palestinian children and treatment of civilian population of Gaza in the hands of Israeli power.
Dear Archinect,
Many massacres are being committed by Israel's terrorist army against Palestinians as shown above in the linked video (linked again). More than 1000 dead with 300 of them being children.
Your listing/hosting of Israeli architects and universities, part of the economic and cultural underpin of that colony, encourages normalcy with that state of racist colonial terror that measures its power by how many children it kills, families it dismembers and land it steals to built its architecture on.
Your nonchalance renders you effectively complicit. You KNOW what it going on; you know that the BDS movement is justified. Yet you think yourself divorced from this. Not so. Having Israeli architects and universities on board here renders you involved. Please do not remain regressive, please don't relax, put your feet up, accept your complicit status quo as another people are being killed. You can take action, positive action, by boycotting Israel and removing these listings and refraining from publishing any news item related to Israeli architects who practice on stolem people garnered through the murder of indigenous innocents.
Please boycott that racist colonial state that has been described as being an apartheid by Bishop Desmond Tutu, who knows well what an apartheid is.
When we come to the issue of apartheid, whether it is in South Africa, in America, or the Holy Land, there are three significant questions that are always asked,” said Bray. “The coward will ask, is it safe? Vanity will ask, is it popular? But conscience, God consciousness&hellipasks, is it right?”
wouldn't indifference and apathy pretty much be the opposite of hate?
hate is a strong emotion, just like love. indifference would imply the lack of emotion. love and hate have more in common than indifference. for that reason, i would say indifference would not lead this site to be considered a 'hate group.' islamaphobia would be bad of course.
sometimes an organization wants to put forward an indifferent opinion towards politically or emotionally charged topic to avoid offending people, and thus losing patrons. archinect isn't really a forum dedicated to advocating for islamic or palestinian causes, so saying nothing might be a better public face for them, even if they support the cause under pseudonyms or through lack of moderation.
I wasn't talking about Archinect per se but rather some people who post here voicing indifference, apathy for the massacre of Palestinians in Gaza and Islamophobia.
What if it were your child? Would you still blame your child and exonerate and support Israel?
Would you still tolerate supporting Israel, financially and culturally?
"Some are shamelessly accusing Israel of genocide, or putting us in the dock for war crimes. The truth is that the Israeli Defense Forces should be given a Nobel Peace Prize! A Nobel Prize for fighting with unimaginable restraint."
(His Excellency, Mr. Ron Dermer, the Israeli Ambassador to the United States, at a Christians United for Israel Conference, 21 July 2014)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The more total society becomes, the greater the reification of the mind and the more paradoxical its effort to escape reification on its own. Even the most extreme consciousness of doom threatens to degenerate into idle chatter. Cultural criticism finds itself faced with the final stage of the dialectic of culture and barbarism. To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric. And this corrodes even the knowledge of why it has become impossible to write poetry today. Absolute reification, which presupposed intellectual progress as one of its elements, is now preparing to absorb the mind entirely. Critical intelligence cannot be equal to this challenge as long as it confines itself to self-satisfied contemplation. - Theodor W. Adorno
Rabbis stand up for Palestine and Palestinian children
Remember?
From:
Israel does not want peace
Rejectionism is embedded in Israel's most primal beliefs. There, at the deepest level, lies the concept that this land is destined for the Jews alone.
"Israel does not want peace. There is nothing I have ever written that I would be happier to be proved wrong about. But the evidence is piling up. In fact, it can be said that Israel has never wanted peace – a just peace, that is, one based on a just compromise for both sides."
"But the truth is that even before that, Israel never really wanted peace. Israel has never, not for a minute, treated the Palestinians as human beings with equal rights. It has never viewed their distress as understandable human and national distress."
"The single most overwhelming item of evidence of Israel’s rejection of peace is, of course, the settlements project. From the dawn of its existence, there has never been a more reliable or more precise litmus test for Israel’s true intentions than this particular enterprise. In plain words: The builders of settlements want to consolidate the occupation, and those who want to consolidate the occupation do not want peace. That’s the whole story in a nutshell."
"There is no way to reach a just peace when the name of the game is the dehumanization of the Palestinians. No way to achieve peace when the demonization of the Palestinians is hammered into people’s heads day after day."
just in-
U.N. Security Council agrees on demand for Gaza cease-fire
That means the US Security Council. The assholic UN should have been crying bloody murder against Israel from the get go - not just a cease fire. They've obviously got their tacit agreement from the US. And that Ban-ki-moon guy is for hire, didn't you know?
From an age where they were condemning colonialism and violation of human rights...they have virtually morphed into a US puppet.
Cleansing Nazareth: Israeli mayor turns racism to social policy
"agrees on demand for"
Anti Zionist Left Wing Jews Tellin it like it is!
led signal light,
A 12-hour lull Saturday was agreed to by both sides following intense U.S. and United Nations mediation efforts
Why just a cease fire? Because Israel does not concede to lift the Gaza seige that has been throttling the Palestinians for so long. This is what the resistance wants to achieve now. Israel - and the US- do not want to give the Palestinians that.
Why not? If the US, purporting to be humane (which it is most definitely not), supports humanitarian actions like cease fire - why don;t they support the very humanitarian cause of lifting the siege which would really deflate this for now?
Because the US does not want just yet want, to have Israel stop its war on the Palestinians. The US is looking at this, and waiting - as it did in the 2006 war on Lebanon. When it feels - and, telling from the incidentally recorded ironic comment by Kerry, it does so already- that Israel is sinking too deep in its crap - which it is, both militarily on ground and in front of the international community apropos its massacres of Palestinians- it will step in for a real stop of this.
So, sorry..but don;t expect me to thank either the US or the UN for this ceasefire. They are complicit in this. The UN should have been issuing condemnations against this rabid hateful state that calls itself Israel left and right from the start to avoid the murder of over a thousand people and 300 kids. While Israel is the rabid mad dog, the US and the UN are soaked in Palestinian blood for their tactical deliberate lack of serious action...and worse are a horde of Arab regimes.
happy eid world, it's the end of ramadan.
300+ palestinian children had no idea they were going to be in the morgs for this holiday and thousands of them would be observing it without their mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters if not for their best friends and relatives just a few weeks ago.
http://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2014-07-21/calls-for-genocide-enter-israeli-mainstream/
"together we can make a difference"
http://www.channel4.com/news/the-children-of-gaza-jon-snow-video
95% American-made: Where do Israel's bombs & bullets & come from
..
blah blah blah.
From: Settler colonialism is alive in Israel
When you hear the words “settler colonialism,” you might think of it as something that went away in the 20th century, but look no further than the often touted “only democracy in the Middle East:” The state of Israel that was established 66 years ago. While this is often described as a moment of liberation for the Jewish people after facing a thousand years of European anti-Semitism, which we saw the worst of in the Shoah (Holocaust), for Palestinians 1948 represents a traumatic event that they describe as al-Nakba, or “catastrophe” in Arabic.
...Palestinian society was forever impacted when approximately 720,000 Palestinians were forced into exile by pre-Israel Zionist militias from 1947 to 1948. In fact, the majority of those were exiled before May 15, 1948, when Israel officially declared itself as a state and the Arab-Israeli War began. It is simply immoral to frame the establishment of Israel in a liberation context in line with anti-colonial struggles of the post war period in Africa and Asia. How can it be called independence when it is gained by forcibly removing the indigenous population to create a state where the majority of the citizens are Jewish, and while this forced majority is given a higher status and more rights over the indigenous?
This is not liberation: It is colonialism.
From: Israel is a colony, remember?
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique andexceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoingcolonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonialprojects such as the British colonization of Ireland or Europeansettlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources — and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, “the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct–invasion is a structure not an event.”
Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settlercolonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is notmerely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel,nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is tohighlight Zionism’s structural continuities and the ideology whichinforms Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and towardPalestinians everywhere.
TAM, how many keyboards have you gone through over the last week? There must literally be a graveyard of CTRL, C & V keys blocking your way out of your basement lair.
Rabbi Dovid Weiss: Zionism has created 'rivers of blood'
"the concept of stealing from people, killing and stealing, is against the Torah"
Its not that history obliviously repeats itself, its that the Israeli Zionist colonialism , by nature and will, seeks to obliterate the presence of the Palestinian people in a succession of massacres, deportation strategies, impoverishment.
Israeli Soldier Speaks Out against Zionist Israel War Crimes
TAM, if ever you feel like reading something objective instead of your tripe, perhaps this piece by Sam Harris (http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/why-dont-i-criticize-israel) will help you understand why a decent chuck of people ridicule extremist positions like yours.
non sequitur, shouldn't you copy and paste that to fill more space? Perhaps add a list?
you mean my extremist value that we should dismantle the racist zionist state of Israel? yes, i see how extreme this is in the eyes of the zionists themselves.
Sam Harris is a supporter of Israel and pedals his islamophobic views everywhere and anywhere. Yes' he is a more intelligent and cunning one than the dumb wafa sultan, but its like you're going to a zionist to intellectually indemnify a zionist cause. The guy argues backwards - ie his premise is to hate on moslems and then he finds the arguments and modifies them and adapts them to his end. Here is a really good analysis of his way of thinking.
So, typical, you resort to essentializing islamophobic sources in order, again, to exonerate the murdered (perhaps because you either have a stake in this or because of cultural/religious/etnhic prejudice on your part) and condemn the one being obliterated.
The question - which is really rhetorical, I don;t care to have much of a dialogue with someone who descends to sourcing islamophobic sources is: why are you incessantly, here, responding to me, in defense of Israel? Assuming that Palestinians are partly to blame (which they're not), you have not once condemned the murder of all those people by Israel, you have not once been critical of Israel in face of the inordinate evidence of its committing crimes against humanity against civilians. All you have cared for is to afford petty remarks here, mostly shrill mockery that adds to the soundtrack for the hasbara trolls.
I know why I defend Palestinians. I know their history of being oppressed, i know their tragedies, i know how they got kicked out of their land, i know about the massacres that are told from one generation to the other, and of course i know and see the massacres that form a part of that lineage of massacres. For all that, I and many people around the world support the oppressed Palestinians.
What are YOUR stakes? Simply to argue against me, an argument for its own sake? To argue because you sincerely believe that Israel, a racist colonial entity, is a "good thing" and those terrorist Palestinians, including all their children, are a "bad thing" and therefore need to be exterminated, either through slow or quick death? Does this subject, perhaps, impinge on a personal rationally-baseless affiliation you have with Zionism and the sordid state of israel?
From : "The more the dead, the better”: Israel’s crumbling media war
Israeli propaganda has hit a new low. While the world was still trying to come to terms with the mass deaths in Shejaiya, Benjamin Netanyahu went on CNN to state that Hamas uses the “telegenically dead” to further “their cause.” He added that for Hamas: “The more the dead, the better.” Even while Netanyahu followed the propaganda script, which is to first show sympathy and express remorse, by reducing dead Palestinians to a photo-op he showed how his own mind works.
There is a standard script for how to deal with Palestinian casualties. After Israel killed four boys on the Gaza beach on July 16, the U.S. establishment media fell in line behind Israel’s PR framework: acknowledge the tragedy but blame Hamas. This is exactly what Israeli spokesperson Mark Regev said on Channel 4 News when grilled by the anchor Jon Snow. It is also how the U.S. State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki responded, using the same word-for-word talking points.
This framework, developed in 2009, can be found in The Israel Project’s 2009 Global Language Dictionary. The Orwellian manual provides a detailed outline on how to “communicate effectively in support of Israel.”
One of its first instructions is that pro-Israeli propagandists need to show empathy. The manual insists that they should “show empathy for BOTH sides” (caps in original) as a way of gaining credibility and trust. To make sure that the point is understood, the manual repeats again (in bold, and underlined this time) the instruction “use Empathy”—the suggestion being that empathy is an important tool to be used in the propaganda war.
When innocent Palestinian children and women are killed, the first response should be to show empathy; the next is to reframe the issue stating that Israel is not to blame and that it is only defending itself and further that it only wants peace. Even when it is raining death and destruction on Palestinians, the manual is clear: “Remind people—again and again—that Israel wants peace.”
Developed after the 2008 Gaza war, when Americans began to show greater sympathy for Palestinians, this propaganda manual tries to address some of the shortcomings during Operation Cast Lead. Among the various shifts it suggests, the manual notes that it is important to distinguish between the Palestinian people and Hamas. Ayman Mohyeldin, one of the few international reporters who covered Cast Lead, noted that Israel sought to “portray everyone in Gaza as a Hamas sympathizer, as a terrorist sympathizer” as a way to justify its indiscriminate killing.
The 2009 manual counters this strategy, stating that while Americans “get” that “Hamas is a terrorist organization. . . if it sounds like you are attacking the Palestinian people. . . you will lose support.” It carefully emphasizes again: “Right now, many Americans sympathize with the plight of the Palestinians, and that sympathy will increase if you fail to differentiate between the people from their leaders.”
In other words, in order to decrease sympathy for the Palestinian people new tactics were needed to augment older ones
How about Obama's golf game? And Marthas Vineyard is so nice this time of year. Never mind two wars going on and preteen girls getting raped enroute here from Central America. Tee time!
TAM you hear that sound? That was intelligent information passing miles over your head. Don't worry, I knew you would not understand.
Volunteer, I left the office early for a tee-time last week. Felt great to make room in the middle of the week for some beers in the sun.
Typical that you belittle. You support murder in the zionist name, racism, islamophibia, and all you can retortwith is mocking noise and "blah, blah blah's". Your ugly friends have kileld children, again. Congratulate yourself and them on a job well done.
From Gaza:
Israel AGAIN kills children playing in a park! ONCE MORE! An empty park! No Hamas or resistance rockets being fired! Just kids enjoying their first day of EID! TEN CHILDREN KILLED! Then bombing the most densely populated hospital in Gaza, al-shifa! The Israeli pilot knew for a fact he will be murdering hundreds. But did not give a damn! Because that’s who they are. They are terrorist, blood and war loving creatures. Wake up people. Everyone should be speaking up against these illegal war crimes.
IN MEMORY: KHALID SAHMOUD
Khalid is pictured on the left
Khalid Abdul-Sattar Sahmoud, 20 years old, was killed east of Khan Younis in an Israeli airstrike on July 27, 2014 while riding a motorcycle. He was a young civil engineer.
His cousin, Ahmed Sahmoud, was killed on July 20, 2014.
You must be real fun at parties.
btw, criticizing religion is not islamaphobia... you should try it, perhaps it'll loosen your blinders.
tammuz, you're advocating perpetuation of the war until israel is destroyed rather than advocating a path to peace and reconciliation. aren't you the one supporting murder? aren't you the one using this as an excuse to draw attention to yourself?
curtkram, it is obvious that you're a liar as I've previously explained what I believe in. You've refused to incorporate that in and you continue to force on me the same idiotic suggestions that I never made. Israel AS A SYSTEM should be destroyed, dismantled, peacefully...with no harm to the people. Thats my preference...but as long as it continues to oppress and kill Palestinians, I believe in the right of Palestinians to defend themselves.
Its very telling that you really care more about reiterating stupidly and endlessly an irrelevant incorrect interpretation of my belief than the fact that it is Israel that is committing massacres now and that it was killing and starving/humiliating Palestinians before this spree of murder. Its obvious where you stand. And it is not just my opinion that you're not interested in having a rational argument or in the truth.
then let me rephrase
tammuz, you're advocating perpetuation of the war until Israel AS A SYSTEM should be destroyed, dismantled, peacefully...with no harm to the people rather than advocating a path to peace and reconciliation. aren't you the one supporting murder? aren't you the one using this as an excuse to draw attention to yourself?