Cole writes: "The Democratic debate in Brooklyn took an unusual turn when a
grumpy old Jewish American upbraided a slightly younger Illinois Methodist
for not respecting the dignity of the Palestinian people."
The Democratic presidential candidates, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders,
who went at each other fiercely during the debate, hosted by CNN and NY1, at
the Brooklyn Navy Yard. (photo: Lucas Jackson/Reuters)
The Bernie Sanders Miracle: American Crowd in Brooklyn Cheers Palestinian
Dignity
By Juan Cole, Informed Comment
17 April 16
The Democratic debate in Brooklyn last night took an unusual turn when a
grumpy old Jewish American upbraided a slightly younger Illinois Methodist
for not respecting the dignity of the Palestinian people.
BLITZER [Used to work for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee
lobby] : . . . Senator, let's talk about the U.S. relationship with Israel.
Senator Sanders, you maintained that Israel's response in Gaza in 2014 was,
quote, "disproportionate and led to the unnecessary loss of innocent life."
(APPLAUSE)
What do you say to those who believe that Israel has a right to defend
itself as it sees fit?
SANDERS [former kubbutznik, i.e. left wing Zionist annoyed by the rise of
the far right wing Likud Party]: Well, as somebody who spent many months of
my life when I was a kid in Israel, who has family in Israel, of course
Israel has a right not only to defend themselves, but to live in peace and
security without fear of terrorist attack. That is not a debate.
(APPLAUSE)
But - but what you just read, yeah, I do believe that. Israel was subjected
to terrorist attacks, has every right in the world to destroy terrorism. But
we had in the Gaza area - not a very large area - some 10,000 civilians who
were wounded and some 1,500 who were killed.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Free Palestine!
SANDERS: Now, if you're asking not just me, but countries all over the world
was that a disproportionate attack, the answer is that I believe it was, and
let me say something else.
(APPLAUSE) (CHEERING)
SANDERS: And, let me say something else. As somebody who is 100% pro-Israel,
in the long run - and this is not going to be easy, God only knows, but in
the long run if we are ever going to bring peace to that region which has
seen so much hatred and so much war, we are going to have to treat the
Palestinian people with respect and dignity.
(APPLAUSE) (CHEERING)
SANDERS: So what is not to say - to say that right now in Gaza, right now in
Gaza unemployment is s somewhere around 40%. You got a log of that area
continues, it hasn't been built, decimated, houses decimated health care
decimated, schools decimated. I believe the United States and the rest of
the world have got to work together to help the Palestinian people.
That does not make me anti-Israel. That paves the way, I think.
BLITZER: . Thank you, Senator.
SANDERS: .to an approach that works in the Middle East.
The Israeli propaganda line is that the Palestinians are natural, intrinsic
terrorists who are always attacking Israelis out of blind hatred for Jews
and who casually deploy terrorism on a mass scale and refuse to recognize
the inexorability and naturalness of several million European and North
African and other Jews living in Palestine.
Perhaps Sen. Sanders would not agree with what I am going to say. But this
narrative ignores that in 1800 there were virtually no Jews in Palestine. It
ignores that the Jewish settlers in British Mandate Palestine derailed
British plans for a Palestinian state by 1949 (as put forward in the 1939
White Paper), in accordance with all the other Class A Mandates established
at and after the Versailles Peace Conference that ended World War I. That
is, the French Mandate of Syria became Syria and Syrians have Syrian
citizenship, the British Mandate of Iraq became Iraq and Iraqis have Iraqi
citizenship. Even Class B Mandates became independent countries and their
inhabitants became citizens- Tanganyika became Tanzania and Zanzibar,
Ruanda-Urundi became Rwanda and Burundi. Why did not the Mandate of
Palestine result in a state of Palestine in which the Palestinians were
citizens?
It was because the Jewish settlers let in by British Mandate authorities
over the objections of the native Palestinians (whose families had lived
there since time immemorial) who conducted an ethnic cleansing campaign in
1947-1948 and expelled 720,000 Palestinians out of 1.2 million, then
declared Israel and locked the refugees out. Many of those refugees were
forced to crowd into refugee camps in the Gaza Strip, where they still
huddle, penniless and displaced and besieged permanently by the Israelis.
The simple-minded Zionist talking point that the British split their Mandate
into Palestine and Jordan, and that Jordan is Palestine, is historically
laughable and does not answer the question of why the Palestinians don't
have a state of their own and why over 5 million of them are stateless,
lacking the rights of citizenship in any state. French Syria was also split
into Syria and Lebanon, and everybody got citizenship; this is also true of
Ruanda-Urundi, which was split.
Part of what Sen. Sanders likely means by Palestinian dignity is that you
can't have dignity as a human being in the modern world if you don't have
the right of citizenship in a state. Palestinians are deprived of that
dignity. There are likely only about 12 million stateless people in the
world, and Palestinians are the largest single such group. Not only do
Palestinians not have a state and not only are they therefore left without
the basic human rights that come with citizenship, they labor under Israeli
military occupation
Israel is actively depriving the Palestinians of the right to be citizens of
a state. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu actually ran on this platform in
the last election in Israel, and won on it.
Sen. Hillary Clinton [whose campaign in part is being funded by billionaire
cartoonist Haim Saban, a virulent opponent of Palestinian rights and
investor in squatter settlements in the West Bank] responded that Israel
withdrew from Gaza (which it occupied in 1967) in 2005, but then was
subjected to thousands of rocket attacks, and had no choice but to attack
Gaza.
She also alleged that Hamas uses human shields and that therefore Israelis
have no choice but to kill women and children.
Neither of these allegations is true. Even if they were, you're not allowed
deliberately to kill women and children and innocent non-combatants in order
to get at the enemy.
Israel did not actually withdraw from Gaza. It retains 1/3 of Gaza land as a
buffer zone, and routinely shoots Palestinian farmers who own that land and
try to farm it. It denies Gaza an airport and a seaport. It even routinely
shoots Gaza fishermen. It controls the major checkpoint. It coerces Egypt
(with a standing threat of violence) into policing the Rafah checkpoint on
the Sinai. It keeps Gaza Palestinians in a large outdoor concentration camp.
In a particularly evil and creepy move, the Israeli military even set a
calorie limit for Palestinians, including Palestinian children, in Gaza (a
limit it has been embarrassed into lifting). Gaza is still occupied, and the
UN recognizes Israel as the occupying authority, which lays all the
obligations of the Geneva Convention of 1949 on the Israeli state with
regard to nurturing the welfare of the people living under its occupation.
Sen. Sanders' statistics give a good indication of whether Israel is
fulfilling its duties under the Geneva Conventions (Conventions that were
intended to forestall any more Axis-like aggression and war crimes).
As for configuring the nearly two million people in Gaza, half of them
children, as terrorists, usually this discourse is just a form of racism.
And although small chemistry-experiment rockets fired from Gaza (often not
by Hamas) occasionally do property damage or inflict human casualties,
saying that there are "thousands" of them gives a propagandistic impression.
All but a handful land uselessly in the desert. All life is precious, but in
2005-2008 in the lead-up to the 2008-09 Israeli assault on Gaza, rockets
killed 11 Israelis; in the same period, Israel killed 1,250 Palestinians in
Gaza, including 222 children.
Oh, and those towns on which the rockets sometimes manage to fall? They are
the home towns of the Palestinians displaced to wretched huts in Gaza, to
which they could walk home in an hour or a few hours if they were allowed
to.
The biggest problem is actually the future of the Palestinians in Gaza and
the West Bank. Are you going to keep them under Occupation forever? Are you
going to push them into the Mediterranean and give Europe millions more
refugees?
It has been clear for some years that the far-right Likud government's
policies are unacceptable to most Americans, including to most Jewish
Americans. Our political class and the AIPAC lobbyists have tried to obscure
this truth just as they obscure climate change.
In response to Sen. Sanders's comments, Jewish Voice for Peace issued this
statement:
Rebecca Vilkomerson, Executive Director of Jewish Voice for Peace: "It was
heartening to hear the beginning of a much needed conversation about
Israel's disproportionate use of force against Palestinians in Gaza during
the Democratic debate tonight. Today showed that the movement for
Palestinian rights is shifting the discourse at the highest political
levels. However, there is still a long way to go before we see our political
leaders take courageous steps not just to recognize the humanity of
Palestinians but to take action to secure their rights."
What Sen. Sanders is saying is that the status quo is not sustainable. Sen.
Sanders is right.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
The Democratic presidential candidates, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders,
who went at each other fiercely during the debate, hosted by CNN and NY1, at
the Brooklyn Navy Yard. (photo: Lucas Jackson/Reuters)
http://www.juancole.com/2016/04/the-bernie-sanders-miracle-american-crowd-in
-brooklyn-cheers-palestinian-dignity.htmlhttp://www.juancole.com/2016/04/the
-bernie-sanders-miracle-american-crowd-in-brooklyn-cheers-palestinian-dignit
y.html
The Bernie Sanders Miracle: American Crowd in Brooklyn Cheers Palestinian
Dignity
By Juan Cole, Informed Comment
17 April 16
he Democratic debate in Brooklyn last night took an unusual turn when a
grumpy old Jewish American upbraided a slightly younger Illinois Methodist
for not respecting the dignity of the Palestinian people.
BLITZER [Used to work for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee
lobby] : . . . Senator, let's talk about the U.S. relationship with Israel.
Senator Sanders, you maintained that Israel's response in Gaza in 2014 was,
quote, "disproportionate and led to the unnecessary loss of innocent life."
(APPLAUSE)
What do you say to those who believe that Israel has a right to defend
itself as it sees fit?
SANDERS [former kubbutznik, i.e. left wing Zionist annoyed by the rise of
the far right wing Likud Party]: Well, as somebody who spent many months of
my life when I was a kid in Israel, who has family in Israel, of course
Israel has a right not only to defend themselves, but to live in peace and
security without fear of terrorist attack. That is not a debate.
(APPLAUSE)
But - but what you just read, yeah, I do believe that. Israel was subjected
to terrorist attacks, has every right in the world to destroy terrorism. But
we had in the Gaza area - not a very large area - some 10,000 civilians who
were wounded and some 1,500 who were killed.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Free Palestine!
SANDERS: Now, if you're asking not just me, but countries all over the world
was that a disproportionate attack, the answer is that I believe it was, and
let me say something else.
(APPLAUSE) (CHEERING)
SANDERS: And, let me say something else. As somebody who is 100% pro-Israel,
in the long run - and this is not going to be easy, God only knows, but in
the long run if we are ever going to bring peace to that region which has
seen so much hatred and so much war, we are going to have to treat the
Palestinian people with respect and dignity.
(APPLAUSE) (CHEERING)
SANDERS: So what is not to say - to say that right now in Gaza, right now in
Gaza unemployment is s somewhere around 40%. You got a log of that area
continues, it hasn't been built, decimated, houses decimated health care
decimated, schools decimated. I believe the United States and the rest of
the world have got to work together to help the Palestinian people.
That does not make me anti-Israel. That paves the way, I think.
BLITZER: . Thank you, Senator.
SANDERS: .to an approach that works in the Middle East.
The Israeli propaganda line is that the Palestinians are natural, intrinsic
terrorists who are always attacking Israelis out of blind hatred for Jews
and who casually deploy terrorism on a mass scale and refuse to recognize
the inexorability and naturalness of several million European and North
African and other Jews living in Palestine.
Perhaps Sen. Sanders would not agree with what I am going to say. But this
narrative ignores that in 1800 there were virtually no Jews in Palestine. It
ignores that the Jewish settlers in British Mandate Palestine derailed
British plans for a Palestinian state by 1949 (as put forward in the 1939
White Paper), in accordance with all the other Class A Mandates established
at and after the Versailles Peace Conference that ended World War I. That
is, the French Mandate of Syria became Syria and Syrians have Syrian
citizenship, the British Mandate of Iraq became Iraq and Iraqis have Iraqi
citizenship. Even Class B Mandates became independent countries and their
inhabitants became citizens- Tanganyika became Tanzania and Zanzibar,
Ruanda-Urundi became Rwanda and Burundi. Why did not the Mandate of
Palestine result in a state of Palestine in which the Palestinians were
citizens?
It was because the Jewish settlers let in by British Mandate authorities
over the objections of the native Palestinians (whose families had lived
there since time immemorial) who conducted an ethnic cleansing campaign in
1947-1948 and expelled 720,000 Palestinians out of 1.2 million, then
declared Israel and locked the refugees out. Many of those refugees were
forced to crowd into refugee camps in the Gaza Strip, where they still
huddle, penniless and displaced and besieged permanently by the Israelis.
The simple-minded Zionist talking point that the British split their Mandate
into Palestine and Jordan, and that Jordan is Palestine, is historically
laughable and does not answer the question of why the Palestinians don't
have a state of their own and why over 5 million of them are stateless,
lacking the rights of citizenship in any state. French Syria was also split
into Syria and Lebanon, and everybody got citizenship; this is also true of
Ruanda-Urundi, which was split.
Part of what Sen. Sanders likely means by Palestinian dignity is that you
can't have dignity as a human being in the modern world if you don't have
the right of citizenship in a state. Palestinians are deprived of that
dignity. There are likely only about 12 million stateless people in the
world, and Palestinians are the largest single such group. Not only do
Palestinians not have a state and not only are they therefore left without
the basic human rights that come with citizenship, they labor under Israeli
military occupation
Israel is actively depriving the Palestinians of the right to be citizens of
a state. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu actually ran on this platform in
the last election in Israel, and won on it.
Sen. Hillary Clinton [whose campaign in part is being funded by billionaire
cartoonist Haim Saban, a virulent opponent of Palestinian rights and
investor in squatter settlements in the West Bank] responded that Israel
withdrew from Gaza (which it occupied in 1967) in 2005, but then was
subjected to thousands of rocket attacks, and had no choice but to attack
Gaza.
She also alleged that Hamas uses human shields and that therefore Israelis
have no choice but to kill women and children.
Neither of these allegations is true. Even if they were, you're not allowed
deliberately to kill women and children and innocent non-combatants in order
to get at the enemy.
Israel did not actually withdraw from Gaza. It retains 1/3 of Gaza land as a
buffer zone, and routinely shoots Palestinian farmers who own that land and
try to farm it. It denies Gaza an airport and a seaport. It even routinely
shoots Gaza fishermen. It controls the major checkpoint. It coerces Egypt
(with a standing threat of violence) into policing the Rafah checkpoint on
the Sinai. It keeps Gaza Palestinians in a large outdoor concentration camp.
In a particularly evil and creepy move, the Israeli military even set a
calorie limit for Palestinians, including Palestinian children, in Gaza (a
limit it has been embarrassed into lifting). Gaza is still occupied, and the
UN recognizes Israel as the occupying authority, which lays all the
obligations of the Geneva Convention of 1949 on the Israeli state with
regard to nurturing the welfare of the people living under its occupation.
Sen. Sanders' statistics give a good indication of whether Israel is
fulfilling its duties under the Geneva Conventions (Conventions that were
intended to forestall any more Axis-like aggression and war crimes).
As for configuring the nearly two million people in Gaza, half of them
children, as terrorists, usually this discourse is just a form of racism.
And although small chemistry-experiment rockets fired from Gaza (often not
by Hamas) occasionally do property damage or inflict human casualties,
saying that there are "thousands" of them gives a propagandistic impression.
All but a handful land uselessly in the desert. All life is precious, but in
2005-2008 in the lead-up to the 2008-09 Israeli assault on Gaza, rockets
killed 11 Israelis; in the same period, Israel killed 1,250 Palestinians in
Gaza, including 222 children.
Oh, and those towns on which the rockets sometimes manage to fall? They are
the home towns of the Palestinians displaced to wretched huts in Gaza, to
which they could walk home in an hour or a few hours if they were allowed
to.
The biggest problem is actually the future of the Palestinians in Gaza and
the West Bank. Are you going to keep them under Occupation forever? Are you
going to push them into the Mediterranean and give Europe millions more
refugees?
It has been clear for some years that the far-right Likud government's
policies are unacceptable to most Americans, including to most Jewish
Americans. Our political class and the AIPAC lobbyists have tried to obscure
this truth just as they obscure climate change.
In response to Sen. Sanders's comments, Jewish Voice for Peace issued this
statement:
Rebecca Vilkomerson, Executive Director of Jewish Voice for Peace: "It was
heartening to hear the beginning of a much needed conversation about
Israel's disproportionate use of force against Palestinians in Gaza during
the Democratic debate tonight. Today showed that the movement for
Palestinian rights is shifting the discourse at the highest political
levels. However, there is still a long way to go before we see our political
leaders take courageous steps not just to recognize the humanity of
Palestinians but to take action to secure their rights."
What Sen. Sanders is saying is that the status quo is not sustainable. Sen.
Sanders is right.
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
