Red Rag to a Bull

Petra Marquardt-Bigman’s excellent article on CiF recently was like the proverbial red rag waved in the face of the assorted bullish anti-Israeli commentators below the line. Almost immediately, there were cries of ‘propaganda!’ from a variety of posters. So quick were they off the starting block that one does have to wonder if they actually bothered to read Petra’s well-constructed piece, or does the very fact that a CiF article fails to meet their expectations of a daily ‘fix’ of Israel-hatred produce this knee-jerk reaction?

orwellwasright
17 Dec 2009, 12:25PM
It’s lines like these that make Petra one of my favourite Zionist propagandists:
“Those willing to give peace a chance would be greatly helped if the Arab states gave up their convenient place on the sidelines and stepped forward to shoulder the responsibilities they have due to their role in opposing Israel’s establishment.”
The “responsibilities” of the Arab states to deal with the problem created by the immoral, violently expansionist Israel, I think she means.
The topsy-turvy world of Marquandt-Bigman on show once again.

Logic101
17 Dec 2009, 1:12PM
I think we have something to learn from zionists. If we just stop giving Petra’s propoganda the spotlight, she will be foreced to shut up. Seth will be able to back me on this 🙂

Namokel
17 Dec 2009, 12:31PM
Another brilliant piece of propaganda. Thank you Petra.
I like this bit best:
One of the things supposedly often said behind closed doors in the Middle East is that the millions of Palestinians who have been told for decades to hold out for a “right of return” to the homes their parents or grandparents left in 1948 will have to make do with a “return” to a future Palestinian state or alternatives such as naturalisation in their current country of residence.

justimagin
17 Dec 2009, 1:03PM
PetraMB
justimagin
Poor imagination!

Wishing for a better world for everyone regardless of colour or creed and a stop to the blatant double standards going on, is poor imagination?
This “article” is nothing short of propaganda.

bass46
17 Dec 2009, 1:29PM
You just know Petra will print propaganda and sure enough, here it is.
The only people who support Abbas are the Americans and Israeli’s, and they do it because they need something to pin their pontification to while they’re busy taking land in order to distract from…. taking land.
This is clearly meant as a challenge to the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, who has been repeating for months that he is ready for serious negotiations.
Rubbish. Netanyahu isn’t ready to negotiate anything no matter what he repeats. All his words are false. When he gives this impression it’s only to highlight how difficult the people he doesn’t want to negotiate with are being, so he can’t negotiate with them even though here he is! Ready to negotiate! What a charade.
The rubbish continues from there down. Once you accept the truth that Israel isn’t prepared to give what it would take for peace, namely land, equality and justice, then the pronouncements of the Israeli government are revealed for what they are. Drivel to distract from the land grab and make it appear as if it’s everyone else’s fault.
But let’s assume we live in the parallel universe that Petra lives in. What have the Israeli’s done to make anyone think they want peace? The “freeze” on settlement expansion is a sop to the Americans and doesn’t mean a thing. The siege of Gaza continues, while the wall building goes on a pace. A couple of road blocks are removed even as the IDF are supporting settler violence, while the judiciary create new ways for the army to take more land. The war drums against Iran are deafening while international calls for an investigation into war crimes are sneered at and the Israeli government promises a “disproportionate response”, or isn’t that their position anymore?
Trying to paint this bunch of war loving nuts as seekers of peace would be laughable if it wasn’t so tragic.

As is usual on the rare occasions when a balanced view of the Middle East’s problems is presented on CiF, the hardliners were in their default state of apoplexy at the very idea of any kind of compromise on the part of the Palestinians which may have the result of upsetting the world view of their valiant key-board bashing supporters. (Incidentally, Matzpen: any relation to the Machovers by any chance?)

Matzpen
17 Dec 2009, 12:46PM
PetraMB
One of the things supposedly often said behind closed doors in the Middle East is that the millions of Palestinians who have been told for decades to hold out for a “right of return” to the homes their parents or grandparents left in 1948 will have to make do with a “return” to a future Palestinian state or alternatives such as naturalisation in their current country of residence.
Transfer has been Zionism’s answer to ‘the Arab question’ for over a century; it is a perverse world view indeed that sees in one of the principal sources of a conflict, a possible “solution” to it.
It’s madness, in fact.
Almost as mad as the idea that any Palestinian leader could trade away the right of return and survive longer than a day after it.

Matzpen
17 Dec 2009, 12:57PM
Keo2008
a way forward which would be acceptable to both Israelis and Palestinians (it’s called “peace”)
Peace – which is unthinkable without the right of return for Palestinians, without the de-Zionisation of Israel, without a secure right to self-determination for Israeli Jews in the region and the reorganisation of the region as a whole – is precisely what is not acceptable right now.

29numbers
17 Dec 2009, 1:09PM
Peace? Bad news for people like you, Petra.

Papalagi
17 Dec 2009, 12:57PM
Last but not least, the Palestinian refugees were created in a war started by the Arab States; so don?t you think they should have some responsibility?
That’s a lie. Ilan Pappe has shown carefully how Israel was preparing to take the lands of the Palestinians, Tom Segev has said that the Zionists only accepted the partition as a diplomatic move. They knew that they couldn’t have a Jewish state where a big part of the population was Palestinian. Were they so stupid that they wanted a partition which would give them a Palestinian state instead of a Jewish state? And how could they get a Jewish state then? Pappe explains this in his book the Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.

Matzpen
17 Dec 2009, 3:51PM
– Immediate and unconditional withdrawal to the 1967 borders
– Right of return for refugees

These are the twin premises for any possible peace.
One of Lynne Truss’ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynne_Truss worst nightmares (I do hope she doesn’t read CiF) then popped along to show us how it is still possible to misinterpret the rise of Hamas to power in the Gaza strip.

gondwanaland
17 Dec 2009, 1:54PM
Surely if the Israeli’s are serious about the peace process with Palestine, they should be talking to the democratically elected government of Palestine?
Yes, we all know there are some unsavory Hamas members, just as there are unsavory Likud members, But there’s something farcical about two alleged democracy’s talking to each other via an old man who’s widely believed to be a flunky for one side.
I linked to the map which looked interesting Petra, and seems to suggest the Israeli’s are no longer interested in the Internationally recognised borders of 1967. I would be very surprised if the Palestinians see these borders as anything other than a temporary stop-gap.

Now I don’t know about you, but I’m becoming increasingly curious as to just what causes the CiF moderators to be so touchy about pro-Israeli comments. Take this one, for example – is it offensive? Is it irrelevant to the topic of discussion? If it is either, I’m afraid I just can’t see it.

zamalek
17 Dec 2009, 2:46PM
Indeed, when Obama spoke in Cairo, some Egyptian-born Jews hoped he would mention the fact that just like Palestinians, hundreds of thousands of Jews in Arab countries suffered displacement and dispossession.
Three cheers for Petra for clearly setting out all the issues, not least the hitherto neglected question of Jewish refugees from 10 Arab states. There was an important development in November when the Knesset voted to introduce a bill for the safeguarding of Jewish refugee rights. The original draft made peace talks conditional on the Jewish refugee issue, but was toned down to say that no final agreement would be signed unless Jewish refugee rights were taken into account.
As Petra says There was an exchange of roughly equivalent reufgee numbers between Israel and the Arab world, but 300,000 Jews were resettled in the West. Their rights to compensation too need to be taken into account.

Go figure….

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