Obama, please do me a personal favour

[ProgressiveMuslim]

By: Edna Canetti
MachsomWatch
4 November 2008
Translated by George Malent
Original Hebrew
http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=29844

Obama my dear, they tell me that you are going to change the world. Do me a favour, come and change my life personally.

Come to Israel, grab its stupid leadership by the throat and take its foot off the neck of another people. Come and force us to do what is clear, and written, and fitting, and necessary, come and get us out of the Territories, if necessary do it with a smile that reveals million-dollar teeth. If necessary bare your teeth and force us to do it.

Make it so that I don’t have to get up in the morning – I who hate to get up early, to go to the checkpoints, to watch and to weep. Make it so I will not have to see 19-year-old children who have been duped into believing that they are defending the home front by pointing rifles at five-year-old children.

Make it so that when my daughters take a shower for half an hour I don’t have to think about Ayad’s family from Awarta that puts buckets under all the washbasins in order to reuse the water which is more precious than gold. Because the settlements need the West Bank’s water more than the Palestinians do.

Make it so that when I sit in a traffic jam I don’t have to think about the vast numbers of cars that are standing at the entrance to Tul Karem while each one is checked by soldiers and dogs because there has been a warning that they’re about to blow up Tul Karem.

Make it so that when my sister urgently rushes to the hospital to give birth and when I rush my husband to the hospital practically with red lights flashing, I don’t have to think about the women giving birth and the heart patients and the wounded people who are stopped at the entrance to Nablus because their vehicle has no permit to enter.

lots more..........
http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=29849

[rateyes]

1. Thank you.

[Kurska]

2. The basic idea here is he wants obama to lose the next election?

Because thats exactly whats going to happen if obama goes to israel and tries to drive them out of the territories or makes them abandon the check points. Not to mention the thousands of Israelis who will die to suicide bombings and whatever massacres the palestinian "Resistance" can cook up to drive the jews out of what tiny strip of land the arabs leave them when it is all said and done.

Luckily obama isn't the foolish.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

3. Obama wouldn't have to go to Israel...

...all Congress would have to do is turn off the free flowing river of $$$$$ from the pockets of U.S. taxpayers to Israel. Who will sponsor the continuation of their ongoing genocide if not the U.S.?

[henank]

4. There you go

with your old genocide accusation again. It's getting boring.

[Name removed]

5. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Jim Sagle]

20. It's not genocide just because a circus clown says it is.

[Kurska]

7. Genocide eh?

You mean the nonexistent kind where the supposedly targeted population increases year on year, heck even faster then the ones supposedly doing the crimes against humanity.
Well, This is the 21st century, where men are men and words apparently no longer have any meaning what so ever.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

9. The argument that it can't be genocide...

...because the number of Palestinians has not been sufficiently reduced makes use of what definition of genocide?

For each Palestinian killed in Israel's illegal expropriation of land and resources that belong to the Palestinians, their numbers are reduced by one.

Also, the internationally accepted definition of genocide does not state any requirement for the overall net reduction of the targeted population. Your argument that they're being replaced faster than we're killing them so it can't be genocide would almost certainly be judged to be without merit by the ICC.

http://www.preventgenocide.org/genocide/officialtext.htm

Please cite your source(s) for population trends for Palestinians in the occupied territories for the past half century of occupation.

Professor of Anthropology, Jeff Halper (an Israeli Jew) speaks of the Dahiya Strategy and believes ethnic cleansing was the intent of Israel's military assault on Lebanon in the Summer of '06:

On October 10, 2008, 2006 Nobel Peace Prize candidate Jeff Halper spoke here in Eugene at the United Lutheran Church to a Christian, Jewish, Muslim and secular audience of about 70. The YouTube videos below are selected excerpts from his talk . . .

http://www.squadron13.com/JeffHalper/default.htm

[Kurska]

11. Seriously?

Are you honestly disputing the fact that the population of the west bank and gaza has gone up in the last 60 years? I'm quite honestly flabbergasted that you seem that be lacking in requisite knowledge of the situation. In 1948 there was a total of 800,000 arabs in the entire original arab partition of israel (Most of the west bank, Jerusalem, gaza), there is now half that in gaza alone. Go look the numbers up yourself. I honestly don't feel like doing your google searches for you.

Where is your evidence that israel has "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such". You're accusing a group of 5 million people of just pulling at the leash to wipe out their neighbor and fellow citizens. A people that is one of the most heavily armed in the world and is a possessor of not only one of the world's top militaries, but of nuclear weapons. You are saying these people want nothing more then to wipe out this group of people. So why haven't they? Why haven't they EVEN MADE A DENT in palestinian population if that is their clear intent and they are more then capable of doing it? You clearly are capable of reading the minds of israelis so tell me, when are the ovens going to start going up? When is israel going to get off it's lazy arse and start using that world class air force to bomb arab cities into the ground, not surgical strikes, but carpet bombing? Why is the israeli nation denying themselves this thing you so clearly state they so desperately want.

Doing something is WILL+MEANS, Israel clearly has the means, so the only logical conclusion is that they lack the will.

Then again, the word genocide sounds bad so please continue to throw it around like it has no meaning. Please continue to claim that a few thousand dead on both sides, in a mutually destructive sectarian conflict, is justification for telling one side it is doing the equivalent of the systematic destruction of half of european Jewry, the starving of a million black sudanese or the machete murder of countless hundreds of thousands of tutsi.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

12. .

Are you honestly disputing the fact that the population of the west bank and gaza has gone up in the last 60 years?

No. Is this how you normally respond to a simple request for sourcing to back up your claims? And still I see no link(s) to your source(s) -- pathetic.

Where is your evidence that israel has "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such".

Establishing Israel's intent to destroy, at least in part, the Palestinian people as a group would be a matter of examining Israel's lengthy record of repeated instances of abuse, cruelty, murder, theft of land and water, destruction of homes, and the cutting off of access to the basic necessities of life, ALL of which have taken place consistently over the last half century. From the international definition of genocide:

The crime of genocide has two elements: intent and action. “Intentional” means purposeful. Intent can be proven directly from statements or orders. But more often, it must be inferred from a systematic pattern of coordinated acts.

I do not think an ICC would find it the least bit difficult to infer genocide from Israel's well documented record of oppressive brutality toward their Palestinian neighbors over the last 50 years.

You are saying these people want nothing more then to wipe out this group of people.

No. I made no such statement. You're putting words in my mouth and then attempting to argue against those words, and that's called a straw man:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

Why haven't they EVEN MADE A DENT in palestinian population if that is their clear intent and they are more then capable of doing it? You clearly are capable of reading the minds of israelis so tell me, when are the ovens going to start going up? When is israel going to get off it's lazy arse and start using that world class air force to bomb arab cities into the ground, not surgical strikes, but carpet bombing? Why is the israeli nation denying themselves this thing you so clearly state they so desperately want.

Doing something is WILL+MEANS, Israel clearly has the means, so the only logical conclusion is that they lack the will.

Wow. "When are the ovens going to start up?" Your hyperventilating hyperbole does not persuade -- it is both transparent and silly. Again, we see all the elements of our familiar straw man. If this is the crux of your argument, to simply point out that Israel has the means to kill their Palestinian neighbors in much greater numbers and much more quickly than they have chosen to do and is therefore not guilty of genocide, I can only hope that it is you Israel designates as lead defense counsel should they ever be brought before an ICC to answer to the charge of genocide in the occupied territories.

Then again, the word genocide sounds bad so please continue to throw it around like it has no meaning. Please continue to claim that a few thousand dead on both sides, in a mutually destructive sectarian conflict, is justification for telling one side it is doing the equivalent of the systematic destruction of half of european Jewry, the starving of a million black sudanese or the machete murder of countless hundreds of thousands of tutsi.

"A few thousand dead on both sides." I don't suppose you'd be good enough to provide your sourcing on that one either?

Again you seem wholly oblivious to the internationally accepted definition of genocide, so again, I'll just point out that a coordinated systematic pattern of acts from which genocide can reasonably be inferred is all that is required to satisfy the definition.

The case for genocide is a slam dunk.

[Kurska]

14. Okay how about this

Do you think the population of gaza and the west bank has gone down in the past 60 years, because that seems to be what you're asserting.

My point is that the Israeli-palestinian conflict has been a brutal sectarian conflict with unacceptable levels of loss on both sides. You're ignoring the massacres and murders of one side while throwing a horrible word at the other. Your intent seems to be to equate it with some of the worst acts ever performed in human time while ignoring the fact that the tragedies that have happened are neither on the same scale or performed with similar intent. If you think that the soldier at a checkpoint holds up a pregnant woman because his desire is to wipe out part of the palestinian population, I guess thats your view point.

You're the one making the positive assertion, you're the one saying israel is guilty of genocide. Why don't you provide examples of isreali brutality that has no palestinian equivalient and tell me how those acts were motived by a desire to wipe out the people of palestinian?

I think my point still stands, you say the israeli government wants to wipe out the palestinains. So why have the deaths on the palestinian side been so tame, especially in comparssions to other accepted acts of genocide where so much more was done with so much less? Why is the israeli government denying itself this thing that you say they want so badly?

You can't have a slam dunk if you never take the ball my friend.

[pelsar]

17. let me help....

Mr_Jefferson_24 definition of genocide is extremely (to say the least) specific....it requires a Palestinian to be killed by an israeli, thats all (i think it just the jewish israelis, hes not that clear if a muslim bedouin and druz or christian israeli kills a Palestinians if that too is defined as genocide-perhaps he can clear it up?)

oh and Palestinians killing israelis obviously doesnt fit his definition either......

[Jim Sagle]

21. Only on Opposite Day. Any other day, it's unmitigated claptrap.

[Chulanowa]

22. It's not genocide

If it were genocide, all Arabs would be targeted. Saudis, Jordanians, Egyptians, Israeli Arabs, the whole lot.

It's ethnic cleansing. Trying to decimate / displace one population so another can take its place. The target here is not Arabs, but Palestinians.

Similar words that often get used interchangably. But genocide this is not.

[shira]

27. now it's ethnic cleansing? ROTFLOL......try again

The only ethnic cleansing that demonstrably exists in Gaza is that no Jews are allowed to live there under Palestinian control. So while you write of imaginary ethnic cleansing perpetrated by Israel, the reality is that it's the other side that has successfully pulled it off.

I needed that laugh so thanks.

[Chulanowa]

23. Nice propaganda.

"Thousands of israelis killed"
"tiny strip of land"

And of course the overarching message that a bunch of half-starved people who's main weapon is a souped-up bottle rocket are going to obliterate the most powerful nation in hte middle east, 'cause they're Arabs (and I guess that means they have super powers, despite getting their goofy asses handed to them, what, four, five times now in the course of this conflict, even when well-armed?)

Obama could cut all ties to Israel, Israel could roll up its settlements and clear its checkpoints and, hell I dunno, use its jets and tanks for very elaborate daffodil planters, and israel would still remain a solid nation under no threat of an apocalyptic push to the sea liek I hear so often. The only people who buy that crap are people who engage in passive antisemitism - "the jews are too weak to defend themselves"

[eyl]

24. Do you think a threat has to be existential in order to be a concern? n/t

[Chulanowa]

25. Nope

But I don't think flying over the top and screaming that the magic Arabs are going to wipe out the poor defenseless Israelis accomplishes much besides making someone look like an ignorant dumbass.

There's various stages of threat, and responses to each threat level. Not all of them require a Defcon 1 response.

[Vegasaurus]

26. "Souped up bottle rocket"?

Those rockets have caused millions of dollars of damage in southern Israel.

And, if the Palestinians had their way, they would have obliterated Israel a hundred times over already.

They just don't have the means (yet). But they are working on it, with help from Iran.

In the meantime, they just use their bodies as bombs, which shows that killing themselves is worth it, in order to kill Israelis.

Which shows that had they bigger weapons to obliterate Israel, they would absolutely use them.

All Palestinian and Arab news/comment/comic/speeches say the same thing.

The goals haven't changed, and if rockets and human bombs are all they have now, that's what they will use.

But they are getting more and more powerful weapons, and the goals remain the same, so the threat is actually increased for Israel.

[LeftishBrit]

6. A moving article and I agree with much of it - but two points

(1) The only way to peace is negotiations involving both - or rather all - sides. Changes in the Israeli leadership and its attitudes are vital; but *all* sides will need to change many of their current attitudes, and to make hard compromises.

(2) Obama is the leader of an allied country; not a colonial ruler of the Middle East. Thus he cannot *make* any of these things change. He can only act as a facilitator of negotiations, and as the holder of some economic and diplomatic carrots and sticks. I think he will be much better at anything that involves organizing diplomacy than most leaders - but ultimately only the Israelis and Palestinians themselves can determine their own fate.

[oberliner]

8. Great article - thanks for posting!

I think with Obama and (hopefully) Livni as leaders of their respective countries, things will start moving in the right direction!

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

10. A beautiful letter, thank you for sharing it.

[azurnoir]

13. Beautiful article

but I am not sure President Obama has the power on his own to do this.

[Vegasaurus]

15. Of course he doesn't

it isn't up to President Obama to force peace on people who have claimed they don't want it.

The Palestinian leadership of Hamas has made it clear that they are not interested in peace.

So it doesn't matter what Obama does, because at least half of the Palestinians refuse to negotiate with Israel.

This cannot be left up to Obama, since he does not have the power to change their political will.

If the Palestinians want peace, they will have to choose it over violence or taking back the land of Israel.

Then there can be negotiations.

[azurnoir]

16. Ah yeah

After all Hamas did attack Israel the other day, they used their drones to attack an Israeli refugee camp and of course claimed that was an accident and killed how many Israeli's?
Oh wait a minute was that the other way around?

[cali]

18. sorry. Obama is not some omnipotent god.

Furthermore, I/P will by dint of the current exigencies, be relatively far down on his list of priorities.

[Vegasaurus]

19. This is very true

there are pressing needs in the US first and foremost.

An American president must address those needs before the needs of foreign nations, even those that are allies.