O presidente da Autoridade Nacional da Palestina quando vai à ONU fala comoo se ainda fosse Abu Mazen. É como se o espírito de Yasser Arafat baixasse em seu camarada toda vez que pisa no plenário de um organismo internacional. Em Ramallah e em Washington, Mahmoud Abbas é mole, manipulável, até um pouco venal. Mas quando discursa em palco do mundo inteiro, cria coragem e representa a vontade popular.
Na sexta-feira na ONU quem falou foi o militante da OLP, companheiro de Yasser Arafat que não tinha medo de ninguém e de nada até cair na lábia dos sionistas que querem roubar-lhe terra, soberania e dignidade. E falou com autoridade, já que representava também o Hamas.
Quem acordou Abu Mazen, uma vez mais, foram os palestinos da Faixa de Gaza e da Cisjordânia que não aguentam mais.
Mas foi sobretudo o povo palestino e seus próprios filhos. Pois quem pensa que a determinação dos palestinos vai diminuir com o tempo e com mudança de gerações está mais do que enganado. Os sobreviventes adultos da Naqba estão idosos, muitos, mortos, mas a memória e a revolta passaram aos filhos, netos e bisnetos que empurram os pais e avós cansados de guerra a lutarem, se não, a passarem o bastão aos novos que hastearão a bandeira palestina cada vez mais alto, como mostra um dos vídeos abaixo - com Yasser Abbas (filho de Abu Mazen e "afilhado" de Abu Amar - Yasser Arafat), quando pergunta ao filho de onde é e o menino responde sem hesitar: Sou de Safed, Palestina. Safed fica na Galileia e faz parte das 400 cidades palestinas que os grupos para-militares judeus "despopularam" durante a Naqba exterminando os habitantes ou os forçando ao exílio afim de confiscarem a terra que a ONU traçara em território deixado aos palestinos. A família de Mahmoud Abbas fazia parte dos cerca de 20 mil palestinos que conviviam pacificamente com uns mil judeus imigrados no início do século, até serem expulsos de casa, carregando a chave. Mahmoud tinha 13 anos quando a família conseguiu escapar para a Síria onde ele se formou em Direito, depois doutourou-se em Moscou. Aderiu ao Fatah aos vinte e poucos anos ficando próximo de Yasser Arafat, tanto fisicamente quanto ideologicamente, até que a morte de Arafat o desviasse do caminho que seu amigo e líder traçara para atingir a liberdade.
Yasser, Mahmoud Abbas' son, speaks (27/07/14)
O discurso (na íntegra no vídeo abaixo) contém parágrafos memoráveis:
"We will not forget and we will not forgine, and we will not allow war criminals to escape punishment".
"It is impossible, and I repeat - it is impossible - to return to the whirlwind cycle of negotiations that failed to deal with the substance of the matter and the fundamental question", which is the occupation. "There is neither credibility nor seriousness in negotiations in which Israel predetermines the results via its settlement activities and teh occupation's brutality."
"There is no meaning of value in negotiations for which the agreed objective is not ending the Israeli occupation and achieving the independence of the state of palestine with East jeruzalem as its capital on the entire Palestinian territory occupied in the 1967 war. An there is no value in negotiations which are not linked to a firm timetable for the implementation of this goal."
E acusou Israel de planejar "ghettos for Palestinians on fragmented land, without borders and without sovereignty over its airspace, water and natural resources, which will be under the subjugation of the racist settlers and army of occupation, and at worst will be a most abhorrent form of apatheid".
"This last war [Israeli Operation Protective Edge] against Gaza was a series of absolute war crimes carried out before the eyes and ears of the entire world, moment by moment, in a manner that makes it inconceivable that anyone today can claim that they did not realise the magnitude and horror of the crime... Israel has perpetrated genocide."
E culpou Israel do fracasso de todas as tentativas de negociações: "Throughout the months of negotiations, settlement construction, land confiscations, home demolitions, killing and arrest campaigns, and forced displacemnt int he West Bank continued unabated and the unjust blockade on the Gaza Strip was tightened.
The occupation's campaign specifically targeted the City of Jerusalem and its inhabitants, attempting to artifially alter the spirit, identity and character of teh Holy City, focusing on Al-Aqsa Mosque, threatening grave consequences. At the same time, racist and armed gangs of settlers persisted with their crimes against the Palestinian people, tha land, mosques, churches, properties and olive trees."
Trocando em miúdos, Abu Mazen falou sem papas na língua. Na minha terra, Goiânia, diríamos que deu nome aos bois, falando sem se preocupar em ferir as suscetibilidades egoístas de Israel e do padrinho gringo.
Aliás, a Casa Branca saiu logo em socorro do "pobre" afilhado : "Such provocative statements and deeply disappointign are counterproductive and undermine efforts to create a positive atmosphere and restore trust between the parties."
No, really!
Estabelecer confiança entre quem e para quê?!
O governo de Israel não consegue emitir uma frase que não seja cheia de "inverdades". Usei o eufemismo para não dizer 'mentira', que é indelicado e fui bem educada.
Contraproducente para quê e para quem? já que a solução do problema é simples de resolver: terminar com a ocupação e pronto!
Discutir mais o quê?
Para Israel ganhar tempo manipulando Mahmoud Abbas e continuar sua pilhagem e limpeza étnica enquanto Obama é controlado pela AIPAC?Este foi o melhor discurso de Mahmoud Abbas na ONU. A única coisa que decepcionou algumas pessoas foi ele não ter fixado prazo para o fim da ocupação. Mas estes talvez não soubessem que isto nunca esteve na pauta, embora em todas as reuniões de elaboração do documento tenha se levantado prazo de 6 meses a três anos oralmente. Esta é a vontade dos palestinos. Um prazo fixo e imutável. Porém, sabem que primeiro têm de passar pelo Conselho de Segurança, como farão em pouco tempo, e fazer a proposta de resolução a este. Pois como disse um dirigente palestino "without acceptance by the Security Council for the need for a deadline any time frame is meaningless." E o discurso todo se enfraqueceria caso o prazo não fosse acatado.
Ora, os palestinos finalmente entenderam que não podem e não devem contar nem com a mediação dos Estados nem com boa vontade de Israel. Neste nem em qualquer governo. A única saída é a ONU. E caso os Estado Unidos vetem mais esta Resolução que os palestinos já estão projetando com alguns membros do Conselho de Segurança, há um outro plano. Primeiro, o Plano B
Avigdor Lieberman, o imigrante russo, fascita, que ocupa o cargo de ministro das Relações Exteriores de Israel e que mora em uma das colônias ilegais na Cisjordânia descreveu o pronunciamento do presidente palestino de "diplomatic terrorism" e outras bobagens.
Lieberman e Netanyahu estavam apostando em mais uma das mediações estadunidenses que empurram o problema com a barriga em vez de atacá-lo para erradicá-lo de frente. A mediação do momento é uma resolução que os EUA vêm mediando com israelenses, jordanianos e qataris (sem os palestinos presentes) para garantir segurança completa de Israel (desarmando o Hamas) e em contrapartida Israel diminuir o bloqueio. Ou seja, os querem continuar negociando soluções paliativas que protejam Israel de seus crimes, que mantenham os palestinos sobreviendo com o mínimo, em vez de terminar com a ocupação que é o verdadeiro problema.
É por isso que os palestinos estão apelando para a ONU em busca de uma Resolução que dê prazo para o fim da "racist and colonial" ocupação, que será certamente vetada pelos EUA. Aliás, Barack Obama recebe Binyamin Netanyahu nesta quarta-feira em Washington. A fim de arquitetar um plano de ataque às demais 191 Nações Unidas contra os crimes sionistas?
Só que para Mahmoud Abbas voltar a ser Abu Mazen é porque não encontrou mesmo saída, pois ninguém mais do que ele mergulho de ponta cabeça em "a just peace through a negotiated solution", como diz ele mesmo. Para Abbas admitir que a apropriação estadunidense do processo de paz jamais servirá a justiça e sim os interesses dos sionistas israelenses foi preciso pisarem muito nele até lhe tirarem esperança e confiança na Casa Branca, qualquer que seja o ocupante.
Embora os Estados Unidos estejam na presidência do Conselho de Segurança e conte com a abstenção da Inglaterra, Austrália e Lituânia, a resolução palestina encontrará apoio dos outros nove membros e passará com certeza. E será aí que os EUA vetará, mais uma vez, reiterando sua cumplicidade nos crimes que Israel comete através da IDF, dos colonos e das empresas que pilham o Vale do Jordão. Ais quais boicotamos, certo?
Aí os palestinos acelerarão sua adesão aos organismos internacionais, com a ajuda de burrocratas humanitários, inclusive a Corte Criminal Internacional.
O importante é os palestinos terem se conscientizado que o processo de paz que os Estados Unidos vêm empurrando com a barriga durante mais de duas décadas está morto e enterrado e é "impossible to return to negotiations", como dizem os palestinos no documento que Mahmoud Abbas leu em Nova York nocauteando padrinho e afilhado com a mesma cajadada.
Agora é hora da União Europeia, os BRICs e a América Latina tomarem a frente com cara e coragem. Aliás a Resolução 242 de apoio à Palestina foi de autoria de países do nosso continente latino-americano. É só repetir o feito com mais força ainda, unir atos às palavras, e libertar a Palestina nem que seja com tropas das Nações Unidas.
Esta justiça à Palestina melhoraria muito o mundo. Esvaziaria inclusive a influência dos desvairados do ISIS que devo abordar outro dia.
Concordo com Nelson Mandela que dizia que a questão palestina "is the greatest moral issue of our time". Só vai dar para dar lição de moral a degenerados como al-Bagdadi quando Israel parar de ser absolvido por seus abomináveis crimes e os palestinos obtiverem justiça.
Abu Mazen's full speech at the UN
Íntegra do discurso de Abu Mazen na ONU
In Arabic with English translation
Then Mahmoud Abbas called on Binyamin Netanyahu to cancel the appropriation: "This decision will lead to more instability. This will inflame the situation after the war in Gaza", his spokesman Abu Hdainah had said.
In a statement published on its website, Peace Now also condemned the land confiscation and said that it would further damage the chance of achieving a lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians based on a two-state solution.The Palestinian village of Wadi Fukin, which has been seized, sits just west of Bethlehem along the Green Line, and is surrounded on three sides by Israeli colonies that are constantly growing.
Residents of Wadi Fukin were recently handed down eviction notices and have already had some of their farmlands destroyed, all with the purpose of forcing them to abandon their village to the invaders. The villagers have refused to leave and now face a lengthy struggle to stay on their land.
They need help. They need freedom. They need stability. They need justice. They need a sovereign state. Like everybody else.
Ilan Pappe: Is Israel a Democray?
Apartheid Adventures
V
Millions of us in South Africa collectively recoiled from Israel's gruesome assault on the people of Gaza during those 51 nightmarish days of "Operation Protective Edge" and the attendant ongoing cruelty in the West Bank. As the dust settled, we were left shocked beyond belief as we witnessed a community of 1.8 million in ruins; Khozaa, Shujaiyya, Beit Hanoun, with entire families and neighbourhoods, gone.
According to the United Nations, 2,131 Palestinians were killed during Israel's offensive. Of those 501 were children, with 70 percent under 12.
The Ministry of Health in Gaza recorded 10,918 people injured including 3,312 children and 2,120 women. According to the United Nations, 244 schools were shelled and one used as a military base by Israeli soldiers. Al Mezan human rights organisation documented at least 10,920 houses damaged or destroyed of which 2,853 were completely flattened. Eight hospitals - resulting in six being taken out of service - 46 NGOs, 50 fishing boats, 161 mosques, and 244 vehicles were also hit.
Eighty percent of Gazan families have no way to feed themselves and are dependent on aid. Farmland in the border areas has been defined as a buffer zone which Israel unilaterally extends by direct gunfire upon farmers. When you deprive a population of the means of life and of movement, when the injured cannot access healthcare, when the exiled are forced time and again back into canvas tents, and when all of this happens under ferocious attack by land, sea and air with the international community looking on whilst quietly arming Israel - what would you call this?
For the first time with regards to Israel and its' actions in Gaza, the Russell Tribunal on Palestine, which I am proud to be a juror for, has examined the crime of genocide. As Professor John Dugard, another Tribunal Jurist explains: "The crime of genocide is the crime of crimes. Great care should be taken in considering it. Nevertheless Operation Protective Edge was of such gravity that the Russell Tribunal believes it is necessary to consider whether this crime has been committed."
The characteristics of this crime involve killing, causing serious bodily harm or inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction in whole or in part of a national, ethnical, racial or religious group. Unlike the crime against humanity it must be inflicted with the intent to destroy the group in whole or in part. What we found from this session of the Tribunal is that we are on the brink of a genocidal apartheid, with incitement to genocide a real and present danger, articulated across many levels of Israeli society, on both social and traditional media, from football fans, police officers, media commentators, religious leaders, legislators, and government ministers.
The people of South Africa, save for a minority of Zionists and their hangers on, are horrified. We have known apartheid. The freedom fighters among us visiting the occupied Palestinian territories have unanimously declared "we are reminded of apartheid but what we see is far worse". The apartheid system in South Africa required cheap black labour to make the economy function and thus the state kept them alive - if barely. But there were still huge similarities with Israeli apartheid.
As in Israel, the "non-white" people or "non-Europeans" (Apartheid terms) were deprived of equal rights and freedom of movement; had their homes in white towns demolished and were removed to wired-off ghetto settlements; faced check points, undignified searches, constant harassment and strict requirements for work permits. If you failed to produce one and were in a white town, you went straight to jail. Any resistance was met with police repression, imprisonment, torture and sometimes massacres such as the most infamous at Sharpeville in 1960 where 69 peaceful protesters were shot dead. However, no African (black) townships or Bantustan settlements were ever bombed from the sky or attacked by tanks and artillery.
During those bad old days, the people of South Africa learnt the lessons of struggle. Foremost was never to give in to repression but to continue to resist. To submit meant to effectively validate and exonerate the oppressor's system. To be intimidated or shocked by punitive repression into submission meant giving the opportunity to the oppressor to claim that the oppressed were quite content with their lot. They would then boast that their "blacks" were better off and happier than those in independent Africa.
So we South Africans who went through the struggle understand very well a people's right to resist tyranny and occupation. Even the right to resist with weapons is recognised in international law. In our apartheid struggle we contemptuously rejected the "terrorist" barbs hurled at us by the likes of Reagan and Thatcher and were inspired by the international community understanding and supporting our just struggle.
With such a legacy we benefited from the international solidarity and the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement (BDS) and understand our moral duty. We cannot tolerate a critique that questions the Palestinian people's right to resist by whatever means they deem necessary. We reject the attempts to equate the violence of the two sides as though there can be parity with Israel's state terrorism and Palestinian resistance. We reject the nonsense of the "terrorism" of the Resistance having the sinister motive of "digging tunnels". They have enough right to do so as we sometimes did during our armed struggle and as the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto did in their courageous action in their 1943 uprising against the Nazis. We easily understand that it was precisely those tunnels on the borders of Gaza that halted Israeli land forces from advancing to inflict greater carnage.
Solidarity demonstrations in cities and towns around South Africa (200,000 in Cape Town) have urged our own ANC Government and all governments everywhere to stop playing the game of calling on both sides to cease violence as a precondition to ceasefire and negotiations. We certainly go as far as pressurising government to implement BDS against apartheid Israel, as the ANC requested all governments to do so during our struggle, and not to toothlessly say that this is the task of civil society. It is governments who apply sanctions and ensure they are implemented by the public and private sector.
The findings of the RToP have served to educate and mobilize governments, institutions, civil society and solidarity movements to implement Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions tactics and policies. Most significant has been the RToP’s investigation into Israel's practise of ethnic cleansing and currently of what the Russell Tribunal has articulated as murder, persecution and extermination.
The barbaric onslaught on Gaza July-August 2014 will be a main focus of our campaigning for accountability of not just Israel but third party states. Israel and its accomplices must not be allowed to get away with the extermination of a people. We must prevent the crime of genocide from taking place. What we saw in Gaza 2014 can and will happen again, if the world remains silent. The world must stand by the people of Gaza, of the West Bank, and the Palestinian refugees. This is for the sake of peace and justice for all living in the entire land of Israel/Palestine."
Ronnie Kasrils served in the ANC's armed wing from its inception in 1961 and was South Africa's Deputy Minister of Defence (1994-99); Water & Forestry Minister (1999-2004); and Minister for Intelligence Services (2004-2008). He has retired from government but is active in Palestine Solidarity Committees.
The Palestinian Authority, then purporting to be a State, lodged such a declaration with the Court in January 2009 giving the ICC jurisdiction over crimes committed on its territory since July 1, 2002 (the date when the ICC Statute came into force). There was no question that the declaration was validly signed on behalf of the Palestinian Authority. Indeed, the Prosecutor at the time opened a preliminary examination to consider whether to start a full investigation into the alleged crimes. In the end, the declaration was rejected because the Prosecutor determined in April 2012 that Palestine was not a State capable of making such a declaration to accept the ICC's jurisdiction.
However, as explained in the Deputy Prosecutor's letter of August 14, 2014, the situation has changed since 2009 due to the UN General Assembly's decision in November 2012 to accord to Palestine non-member observer State status in the UN. The Deputy Prosecutor notes that as a result of this resolution Palestine can "activate the Court's jurisdiction either through accession to the Statute or by lodging a new declaration".
It appears from his letter that an attempt had already been made to a lodge a new declaration on July 30, 2014 by the Palestinian Minister of Justice. Yet, it too has now been rejected by the Prosecutor as a basis for the ICC to seize jurisdiction.
This is because the Deputy Prosecutor states in his letter that he "did not receive a positive confirmation" from the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Palestine that the declaration was submitted on behalf of the Palestinian Authority. The current position is thus the opposite of the situation when the Prosecutor found the ICC lacked the authority to act in 2012 - statehood is no longer the issue, but the validity of the declaration is.
There is no indication in the letter about whether any consideration was given to obtaining the necessary confirmation and, if so, in what time period so that the ICC's jurisdiction would be effective once and for all. The public is in the dark about what steps may have been discussed, if any, to facilitate the ICC's intervention, and thus whether this is the overall intention.
It is known that the Prosecutor gave a strong response in her article in The Guardian on August 21, 2014 (only a short time after the meeting with the Foreign Minister) to the claims that her office has persistently avoided opening an investigation into alleged war crimes in Gaza as a result of US and other western pressure. The Prosecutor emphasised that her office is powerless to act as a matter of law because Palestine is not yet a State Party and has signed no declaration. Her argument is that "the simple truth is that my office has never been in a position to open such an investigation due to lack of jurisdiction".
There is a vibrant debate unfolding about whether the Prosecutor could and should rely on either the 2009 or 2014 declarations. What the Prosecutor has not mentioned is that she does have a clear legal jurisdictional basis to act in respect of alleged war crimes in Gaza as a result of the referral by the Government of the Comoros (a State Party of the ICC) as long ago as May last year. The Comoros referred to the ICC for investigation the attack on May 31, 2010 by the Israeli Defence Forces on the Humanitarian Aid Flotilla which was sailing on the high seas bound for Gaza. It is alleged that the crimes committed during this attack form part of a planned and widespread pattern of unlawful conduct in the continuing armed conflict between Israel and Palestine, including the recent hostilities in Gaza. The ICC's jurisdiction for the May 2010 attack stems from alleged crimes occurring on a ship registered to the Comoros. It is reported that persons on board were killed, injured, tortured, mistreated and unlawfully detained by Israeli forces. Crimes allegedly took place on other ships in the flotilla as well, including on board ships registered to Greece and Cambodia over which the ICC has jurisdiction as they are both States Parties.
Thus the Prosecutor's assertion that there is nothing that she can do in respect of Gaza, and that it is not her fault, is not quite the whole story. She has an active State referral which does permit her to act in respect of investigating crimes committed in the same overall conflict. Yet to date she has failed even to open an investigation for nearly a year and a half. The Comoros has stressed to the Prosecutor that the delay in opening an investigation continues to waste the potential deterrent effect on the commission of further crimes in Gaza that knowledge of her willingness to investigate Israel's military conduct could achieve. It could be said that alleged perpetrators may be reassured that their actions will not be subjected to the ICC's jurisdiction.
Of note, another way in which an ICC investigation could be delayed may lie in Israel's hands: by telling the Prosecutor as Israel has done that they are investigating war crimes themselves, the Prosecutor is compelled to shift her focus from investigation of the alleged crimes within the ICC's jurisdiction. Instead she has to concentrate on whether an investigation by Israel is genuine, and covers the same persons and conduct of any potential ICC investigation. If she is satisfied of these requirements, the Prosecutor may well lose jurisdiction to investigate. This process itself can take time and can cause delay."
Rodney Dixon QC is a barrister specialising in international law. He has acted in many cases before international criminal courts, having both prosecuted and defended, and represented governments, international organisations and victims.
Em Gaza, nada mudou desde o cessar-fogo pois Israel não respeita os acordos
Reservista da IDF, forças israelenses de ocupação,
Shovrim Shtika - Breaking the Silence
In 2002 a fighter jet dropped a one-ton bomb on the home of Salah Shehade, the former head of Hamas’ military wing, in a residential neighborhood. The bomb killed him in addition to 14 other innocent people, 11 of whom were children. The incident didn’t blow over quietly. Reservist pilots heavily criticised this type of operational activity in an open letter. The Supreme Court encouraged an independent inquiry into the situation, and as a result the government appointed a committee to investigate the operation. Throughout the last month we bombed dozens of houses inhabited by Palestinians – some targeted by the Air Force and others using artillery and mortar fire. These bombs killed hundreds of men, women and children. The bombing of the homes of Hamas members, who do not pose an immediate security threat to Israel, has become an explicit Israeli policy – even when it is known that innocent civilians are inside.
When Shahade’s home was bombed, there were people who questioned the morality of the action. Throughout the last month, over a decade after the aforementioned bomb, hardly anyone in Israel and among its allies around the world criticises the policy of bombing the homes of Hamas members. The lone voices that are heard speaking out against it are hastily silenced. After a month of fighting, over 2,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza. According to the UN, at least 1,400 of the deceased were civilian casualties, 458 of which were children. Israeli society remains silent.
What has changed? My reply begins with a memory from the year 2004, two months after I was released from my service as a soldier and commander in the Occupied Territories. During that period, my friends and I reflected back on our years of service and understood that as soldiers in the Territories we had each gradually erased our moral red line. We understood that in order to carry out our routine activities as soldiers, whose role is to control the territories and the civilian Palestinian population – we needed to erase the humanity of Palestinians along with our own humanity. And that’s what we did. This understanding led us to produce an exhibition of photographs and video testimonies of soldiers from Hebron, the city in which we served for a year. Our goal was to share with the Israeli public the things that we did daily there, in their name.
One of the many attendees of the exhibition, was Lieutenant Colonel Chen Livni, the Deputy Commander of the Nahal Brigade. We were all veterans of the Nahal Brigade and he had come to see what all the fuss was about. After a tour of the gallery, Livni said that he agreed with the facts that we displayed regarding the process combatants undergo in the Territories. However, he noted that he disagreed with us on one point. “You call this process moral corruption, insensitivity, or intoxication of power,” he said. “I call it growing up.” In response to Livni’s statement, one of my friends replied, “You’re right. That’s how people grow up in Israel. Which is the reason why we created this exhibition and are breaking our silence.” My friend was right. Adolescents in Israel grow up when they learn to impose military control over another nation.
Livni might have been right in this sense, as I would be obliged to say that 47 years as an occupying power have taught Israeli society a similar lesson to the one learned by every soldier who serves in the Territories. We have learned to glorify power, and have lost our ability to see Palestinians as people whose lives are no less valuable than ours. We have learned to avert our gaze from the tears of the hundreds of children who were killed over the course of the past month in Gaza. In addition to the dozens of families that were erased when one-ton bombs were dropped on their homes. The destructive images give rise to feelings of pride, rather than questions about the people for whom the rubble was once a home. The abject poverty in Gaza arouses contempt, instead of questions regarding the roots of poverty in a region that remains under Israeli control.
From 2004 to this day, my activism is guided by a refusal to accept Livni’s reality. This is not “growing up”, but rather brutalisation. In order to grow up, we need to stop thinking like occupiers, and to start thinking like human beings. As human beings, we can’t avert our eyes and close our ears. Most important, we cannot stop asking questions. Questions about our moral red lines as a society; questions about the moral price that we’ve paid, and will continue to pay, for the ongoing occupation; questions that are related at their core to the recognition of the value of all human lives in this region – both Israeli and Palestinian."
Yehuda Shaul is a co-founder and member of Breaking the Silence, an organisation of almost 1,000 Israeli veterans who work toward ending the Israeli occupation.
Post-war misery dampens Gaza spirit
O documentário abaixo ilustra bem o artigo de Connie Brucks.
Baseado no livro homônimo de John Mearsheimer and Steven Walt,
In English, legendado em espanhol - subtitulado en español
Documentary : The Israel Lobby (2007)
03/10/2014 - I leave the comment on Binyamin Netanhyahu's speech to Uri Avnery, who knows his country and its leadar much better.
"If I could choose between the two rhetorical gladiators, I would rather have Mahmoud Abbas representing Israel and Netanyahu representing the other side.Abbas stood almost motionless and read his speech (in Arabic) with quiet dignity. No gimmicks.
Netanyahu used all the tricks taught in a beginners course in public speaking. He rotated his head regularly from left to right and back, stretched out his arms, raised and lowered his voice convincingly. At one point he produced the required visual surprise. Last time it was a childish drawing of an imagined Iranian atom bomb, this time it was a photo of Palestinian children in Gaza playing next to a rocket launcher.
(Netanyahu was carrying with him a stock of photos to exhibit – ISIS beheadings and such – rather like a salesman carrying samples.)
Everything a bit too slick, too smooth, too "sincere". Like the furniture marketeer he once was.
Both speeches were delivered to the General Assembly of the United Nations. Abbas spoke two weeks ago, Netanyahu this week. Because of the Jewish holidays, he came late – rather like the person who arrives at the party after all the main guests have already left.
The hall was half empty, the sparse audience consisted of junior diplomats sent to demonstrate the presence of their government. They were obviously bored stiff.
The applause was provided by the bloated Israeli delegation in the hall and the Zionist dignitaries and indignitaries packed into the galleries, led by casino-mogul Sheldon Adelson. (After the speech, Adelson took Netanyahu to an expensive non-kosher restaurant. The police cleared the streets on the way. But Adelson publicly criticized the speech as too moderate.)
Not that it matters. One does not speechify in the General Assembly in order to convince its members. One speaks there for the home audience. Netanyahu did, and so did Abbas.
The speech of Abbas was a contradiction between form and content: a very moderate speech clad in very extreme language.
It was clearly addressed to the Palestinian people, who are still boiling with anger over the killing and destruction of the Gaza war. This led Abbas to use very strong language – so strong as to defeat its main purpose of promoting peace. He used the word "genocide" – not once, but three times. That was a bonanza for the Israeli propaganda machine, and it immediately became known as the "Genocide Speech"...
...The speech itself, shorn of the strong language, was quite moderate, as moderate as it could be. Its crux was a peace program identical with the terms Palestinians have proposed from the start of Yasser Arafat's peace policy, as well as with the Arab Peace Initiative.
It stuck to the Two State Solution: a State of Palestine with East Jerusalem as its capital "alongside the State of Israel", the 1967 borders, an "agreed-upon solution to the plight of the Palestinian refugees" (meaning: agreed upon with Israel, meaning: essentially no return). It also mentioned the Arab Peace Initiative. No Palestinian leader could possibly demand less.
It also demanded a "specific time frame" to prevent the charade of endless "negotiations".
For this he was attacked by Netanyahu as the incarnation of all evil, the partner of Hamas, which is the equivalent of ISIS, which is the heir of Adolf Hitler, whose latter-day reincarnation is Iran.
I have known Mahmoud Abbas for 32 years. He was not present at my first meeting with Yasser Arafat in besieged Beirut, but when I met Arafat in Tunis, in January 1983, he was there. As chief of the Israel desk of the PLO headquarters, he was present at all my meetings with Arafat in Tunis. Since the return of the PLO to Palestine, I have seen Abbas several times.
He was born in 1935 in Safed, where my late wife Rachel also grew up. They used to ruminate about their childhood there, trying to work out if Abbas was ever treated by Rachel's father, a pediatrician.
There was a striking difference between the personalities of Arafat and Abbas. Arafat was flamboyant, extrovert and outgoing, Abbas is withdrawn and introvert. Arafat made decisions with lightning speed, Abbas is deliberate and cautious. Arafat was warm in human relations, fond of gestures, always preferring the human touch (literally). Abbas is cool and impersonal. Arafat inspired love, Abbas inspires respect.
But politically there is almost no difference. Arafat was not as extreme as he seemed, Abbas is not as moderate as he looks. Their terms for peace are identical. They are the minimum terms any Palestinian leader – indeed any Arab leader – could possibly agree to.
There can be months of negotiations about the details – the exact location of the borders, the exchanges of territories, the symbolic number of refugees allowed to return, security arrangements, the release of the prisoners, water and such.
But the basic Palestinian demands are unshakable. Take them or leave them.
Netanyahu says: leave them.
If you leave them, what remains?
The status quo, of course. The classic Zionist attitude: There is no Palestinian people. There will be no Palestinian state. God, whether He exists or not, promised us the whole country (including Jordan).
But in today's world, one cannot say such things openly. One must find a verbal gimmick to evade the issue.
At the end of the recent Gaza war, Netanyahu promised a "new political horizon". Critics were quick to point out that the horizon is something that recedes as you approach it. Never mind.
So what is the new horizon? Netanyahu and his advisors racked their brains and came up with the "regional solution".
The "regional solution" is a new fashion, which started to spread a few months ago. One of its proponents is Dedi Zuker, one of the founders of Peace Now and a former Meretz member of the Knesset. As he explained it in Haaretz: The Israeli-Palestinian peace effort is dead. We must turn to a different strategy: the "regional solution". Instead of dealing with the Palestinians, we must negotiate with the entire Arab world and make peace with its leaders..
...There is no contradiction at all between an Israeli-Palestinian solution and an Israeli-pan-Arab solution. They are one and the same. The Arab League will not make peace without the consent of the Palestinian leadership, and no Palestinian leadership will make peace without the backing of the Arab League. (I pointed this out in an article in Haaretz on the day of Netanyahu's speech.)
Yet some time ago, this "new" idea sprang up in Israel, an association was formed, money was spent to propagate it. Well meaning Leftists joined. Not being born yesterday, I wondered.
Now comes Netanyahu in the General Assembly and proposes exactly the same. Hallelujah! There is a solution! The "regional" one. No need to talk with the wicked Palestinians anymore. We can talk with the "moderate" Arab leaders.
Netanyahu could not be expected to touch on the details. What terms has he in mind? What solution for Palestine? Great men cannot be bothered with such details.
The whole thing is, of course, ridiculous. Even now, when several Arab states are joining the American coalition against ISIS, not one of them wants to be seen in the company of Israel. The US has asked Israel discreetly and politely to please keep out of it.
Netanhyahu is always quick to exploit changing circumstances to promote his unchanging attitude.
The latest hot issue is ISIS (or the Islamic State, as it prefers to be called now). The world is appalled by its atrocities. Everyone condemns it.
So Netanyahu connects all his enemies with ISIS. Abbas, Hamas, Iran – they are all ISIS...
... Netanyahu counts on the fact that most people do not know what he is talking about. By the same logic, France belongs to ISIS. Fact: the French revolution chopped off heads. ISIS chops off heads. Some time ago, the British chopped off the head of their king. All ISIS.
In the real world, there is no similarity at all between Hamas and ISIS, except their professed adherence to Islam. ISIS disclaims all national borders, it wants an Islamic world-state. Hamas is fiercely nationalist. It wants a State of Palestine. Nowadays it even talks about the borders of 1967.
There cannot be any similarity between ISIS and Iran. They stand on opposite sides of the historic divide: ISIS is Sunni, Iran is Shiite. ISIS wants to overthrow Bashar al-Assad, and possibly chop off his head, too, while Iran is Assad's main supporter.
All these facts are well-known to anyone interested in world politics. They are certainly known to the diplomats in the corridors of the UN. So why does Netanyahu repeat these misrepresentations (to use a mild word) from the UN rostrum?
Because he was not speaking to the diplomats. He was speaking to the most primitive voters in Israel, who are proud to have such a fluent English-speaking representative to address the world.
And anyway, who cares what the Goyim [plural of "goy", pejorative term that the Jews use for Christians, and Muslins,] think?"
Uri Avnery
Uma semana antes de irmos às urnas escolher quem vai definir o destino do nosso país nos próximos 4 anos, ouvi dizer que Israel e seus cúmplices brasileiros estão investindo na Marina contra a Dilma por terem certeza que ela vai forçar o Itamaraty a posicionar-se em favor da ocupação da Palestina e fazer do Brasil outro vassalo de Washington-Tel Aviv. O novo embaixador israelense em Brasília não desmentiu que uma mudança de governo lhes fosse favorável. Pelo jeito, o lobby sionista conta com a Marina para influenciar a política interna e externa brasileira como faz nos Estados Unidos. Lá, é graças à laia do Tea Party, no Brasil, graças às ligações estreitas e milionárias do venal Edir Macedo com o poderoso lobby sionista. Xô Satanás!
Leonardo di Caprio pleads for Earth at the UN
"When I get older, I'll be stronger, they will call me freedom,
just like a waving flag;
just like a waving flag;
and then it goes back, and then it goes back..."
Nenhum comentário:
Postar um comentário