Darkness to Expel

Whilst lighting my Hannuka candles last week I’ve been thinking about the words of the song ‘Banu Hoshech Legaresh’ and the darkness which faces us today compared to that which the Maccabees confronted. One of my conclusions from the time I have spent in Britain is that much of what passes for pro-Palestinian advocacy is in fact serving only to perpetuate and prolong the conflict. I am dismayed to see that thousands of miles away from its epicentre there are a growing number of people who are actively encouraging the rejection of any form of compromise or reconciliation which could finally bring a spark of light to the lives of Palestinians and Israelis alike.
Far from supporting or encouraging dialogue and negotiation, we are witness to these activists promoting the idea of the annihilation of a sovereign state, be it through the funding of terrorism, the use of ‘lawfare’, the demand for boycotts, or the general delegitimisation and dehumanisation of half the world’s Jewish population. We see such people in action on a daily basis below the line at CiF. Take, for example, the comments on the recent Victoria Brittain thread.
The promotion of the idea that all Israelis are immoral, inhuman monsters was particularly rife.

Namokel
9 Dec 2009, 11:44AM
Victoria Brittain
Thank you once again for highlighting this monstrous shameful occupation, the imprisonment of a million and a half people in the most inhume conditions, in the world’s largest, cruellest open prison.

When will our leaders show some honour and demand of Israel to stop this horror?

maceasy

9 Dec 2009, 11:45AM
Israel is a sick, sick country to allow this to continue. As the cause of the situation in the first place, they should be barred from any international travel or trade (as they do to the Gazans) until they start acting like human beings. The UN should bust through the barriers and start humanitarian rebuilding and relief straightaway. Stuff what the Israelis think with their punitive destruction of an entire population. No doubt they will tell us what a deadly threat these babies are to their hi-tec military overwhelming forces.

WhattheDormousesaid

9 Dec 2009, 11:45AM
Whoever can demonstrate to the Israelis that even if God gave them some land he didn’t give them dominion over all the inhabitants, and evil iis not a moral concept that does not apply to Israeli actions.
ragworm

9 Dec 2009, 2:31PM
Bilingual…………you’re way off the mark matey. This humanitarian disaster is entirely caused by Israel’s blockade, it’s spiteful bombardment and it’s on-going theft of Palestinian water. Let’s not forget, most of Israel’s water is stolen from the Palestinians.

Papalagi

9 Dec 2009, 2:37PM
And by blaming Israel for the fuck ups of Hamas you will perpetuate the misery because of the refusal to address the real cause of all the social/infrastructure ills.
The real cause is because Israel destroyed all the infrastructure and because they have layed siege on Gaza and on the population of Gaza. This is the continuation of the long term Israeli politics against Gaza. They want an empoverished and sick population that cannot resist Israeli agression. Even before Hamas came to power Israel never opened the borders but for a very limited time. During the Israeli assault against Gaza they destroyed greenhouses, they bombed water facilities. The purpose is clear. Israel is not against Hamas, Israel is against the Gazan people.

KrustytheKlown
9 Dec 2009, 2:48PM
Excellent analysis! Well done Shermanator – you’ve surpassed yourself!!
Don’t be too hard on the boy.
He’s probably afraid, very afraid. Worried that the number of babies born to Palestinians is surpassing the number of babies born to Jewish Israelis. Don’t forget that Israel is the one country in the world which openly speaks of ‘demographic problems’ in this regard.
So maybe he’s thinking in ‘two birds with one stone’ terms? If the ragheads stop birthing babies, then not only will they stop whining about poisoned water (or so he says), but Israelis can be happy that the ‘demographic timebomb’ might not explode for anaother decade or two.

julian1090
9 Dec 2009, 5:48PM
Bear in mind that the huge preponderance of Israeli apologist posts are from persons living in Western countries – where the health and safety of their children is the highest priority.
Yet these apologists demonstrate no concern whatever for the Gazan children – after all, the children of sub-humans are sub-human themselves.

No less prevalent on that thread was a kind of twisted role reversion, so that Israel, rather than Hamas, becomes the terrorist organisation.

FalseConsciousness
9 Dec 2009, 11:50AM
MoveAnyMountain
The solution to all these problems is an end to the terrorism. It is the first step. The pre-requisite. Then everything else can be discussed.
Depriving children of water and other basic necessities is terrorism. Intentionally targeting ambulances, hospitals, and UN buildings with advanced weaponry is terrorism. Primitive rockets launched in retaliation for an unjust blockade is a stupid tactic, but it’s self-defense, not “terrorism”.

Stealthbong
9 Dec 2009, 1:14PM
MoveAnyMountain
9 Dec 2009, 11:38AM
The solution to all these problems is an end to the terrorism. It is the first step. The pre-requisite. Then everything else can be discussed.
More head-up-arsery. Anyone with half an eye on the news these days will be aware that the vast majority of terrorist acts being perpetrated anywhere near Gaza is by Israelis on Palestinians. It matters not one jot how violent or peaceful the Palestinians are – the Israelis want their land and won’t stop terrorizing Palestinians until they have it.

Berchmans
9 Dec 2009, 2:55PM
BigNowitzki
## the problem is that the entire concept of Hamas is terrorism ##
. That’ s odd because their grandparents had been builders.. fisherman.. teachers ..people you think of as not being terrorists
Whatever happened?
B

Ranong

9 Dec 2009, 3:04PM
Thank you Victoria, yet again; not just for highlighting the plight of the innocent but by bringing into the open the sheer nastiness of the haters of justice and human decency.
Suffer the little children….who, one day will be old enough to take revenge on their persecutors.
At which stage, as Berchmanns eloquently points out, they will suddenly become “terrorists.”

Hornstein
9 Dec 2009, 3:37PM
Congratulations on this article. We should all thank you for not allowing the plight of the Gazans to be forgotten.
It is quite amazing that after having all the fairy tales of the Israelis discredited, the Israelis and their Israeli apologists still spew out the same rubbish day after day.
Goldstone was quite specific when he said that the aim of Israel in Gaza is to “punish, humiliate and terrorise a civilian population”. That makes Israel a terrorist state. Israelis destruction of Gaza and massacre of Gazan is a war crime, its siege of Gaza is a war crime and those who support these war crimes are war criminals themselves. Just because they do it anonymously with pseudo names, does not mean that they will not be found.

The employment of Nazi analogies in order to deliberately equate Israel with that most evil regime has become disgustingly commonplace on CiF.

dianab

9 Dec 2009, 12:24PM
Didn’t the Nazis quote the Jewish birthrate as one justification to discriminate – or maybe they provided clean water and copious amounts of food to the Warsaw ghetto?
archkritik

9 Dec 2009, 11:51AM
An excellent article highlighting a humanitarian crisis that the world is ignoring. Israel is carrying out nothing but slow genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. This is a continuation of Israeli policy since 1948, a policy of ethnic cleansing by any means possible. Now the policy is to make Palestinian life unsustainable by depriving it with the most basic means of life – land, water and commerce. This is what the blockade of Gaza means. It is time for us all to wake up and see what is happening instead of clouding all issues in the fog of ‘terrorism’

polrap
9 Dec 2009, 1:36PM
Israel, is an occupying nation, and as a occupier, it has a responsibility to see the occupied have treated in a humane way. To do other wise makes them no better the the nazis. Gaza is todays Polish Gheto.

I do not believe that the CiF moderators are unaware of the meaning of the content of these comments some of which they allow to stand. Contrast their relaxed attitude to such blatant antisemitism with the way in which they are remarkably quick off the mark to delete some of the comments made by those who tried to dispell some of the darkness on that thread.

Bilingual
9 Dec 2009, 12:01PM
Please insert following in this universal leftwing equation:
X + Y = Israels fault
X = Malnourished palestinians
Y = overpopulation

CAPLAN

9 Dec 2009, 12:17PM
It should be noted the prime targets of that hamas in the a last gaza war
1. was the askelon power plant (that supplies electricity to the gaza strip) 2. the desalination plants being built in the south of Israel that also could be used to supply water to gaza and to reduce the use of the coastal aquifier which would also benefit gaza
3.the farms in southern Israel that supplies vegetables to gaza
4.the beersheva hospital that treats cancer patients from gaza ….
however
IN THE CLASSIC HAMAS STYLE ….. CUT OFF YOUR NOSE TO SPITE YOUR FACE…
…anything that would benefit Israel is a hamas target.

SPLD
9 Dec 2009, 11:44AM
Not mention what so ever form the author that Hamas has been taken money and equipment, such as pipes, intended for use in the treatment of human waste. And using them instead to purchase and make weapons for what they see as the far more important task than helping their own people, killing Jews.
Another dam awful CIF article on I/P issue which is designed to make the author feel good , the usual subjects to prove how much they hate ?Zionists? and CIF to prove its credentials. That does nothing what so ever for the Palestine?s, classic CIF approach with lots of hits, lots of hate and lots of work for the moderators.

The malaise at CiF begins, however, way above the line with the editorial decision to print an article by a person with a record such as that of Victoria Brittain. The Guardian knows that she is a member of a fringe political party whose sole MP has openly donated money to Hamas – a terrorist organisation proscribed by the very Parliament in which he sits.
The Guardian also knows full well that Brittain is a patron of the one-staters’ haven known as the PSC, and that she is active in promoting the concept of Israel as the new South Africa, including the chairing of this year’s ‘Israel Apartheid Week’ at SOAS  .
In other words, from the lowliest antisemitic commentator below the line at CiF, through the extremist-commissioning editors at the top of the Guardian tree, and up to the fringe political elements in the CiF stable of writers, there are a lot of people around who have no interest in encouraging any tiny flame of peace in Israel to grow and thrive.
Real progress in the peace process will deprive sundry misfits of a flag behind which to rally; a cause through which to promote themselves. Neither will quiet and prosperity for Israelis and Palestinians sell newspapers or attract hits on online forums. In fact, any progress in the Middle East peace process would be very bad for a lot of people’s business.
Those of us, on either side, who actually need that little flame of hope to light up the darkness of years of constant conflict, war and terror must together try to expel the darkness which so many others are trying to spread, purely for their own selfish interests.