Boycotting Matisyahu is Reasonable, Even if You Don’t Agree with It

Liberal Zionists tolerate uncritical Israel supporters because they are family. But we shouldn’t be surprised when others don’t. To be sure, I doubt this Spanish BDS group would have much sympathy for anybody who didn’t endorse the three goals of the BDS movement. But that is their right. Had Matisyahu, who has made political statements in the past in favor of Israel, endorsed a Palestinian state, or justice for the Palestinians, he would not have been cancelled, even with the protest of the Spanish BDS group. But an artist who has politicized his work should not be surprised if he is called out on it.

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The Magnes Zionist: Why Boycotting Matisyahu is Reasonable, Even if You Don’t Agree with It.

I’ve read in many places how antisemitic is Spain. Well…. for being antisemitic, we should have some relevant proportion of Jewish comunities living in Spain, such as, let’s say, Gipsies, Moors or Chinese.

But there aren’t.

And one can’t be racist against some race they don’t even learn to identify.

When we, Spaniards, position ourselves against Zionism, we do the same we did against White, Anglo-Saxon, Christian Supremacists in South Africa during the times of the Apartheid. The same many of us do when we criticise Erdogan and the Turks for the way they treat other minorities, and specially Kurds. The same many of us do when we reject fascists, ultranationalists and supremacists of every kind.

Nothing else.

They call it leftist hypocrisy. I call it cowardice. Plain cowardice.

Satire has been a sanctuary historically monopolized by progressives, originally used as a discreet tool against Western religious fundamentalism. Of course, an authentic Muslim should not dress well, speak lucidly nor drink, of all things, a skinny flat white coffee. The real Muslim is scruffy. A credible Muslim can only be inarticulate, someone who requires an intermediary to ‘explain’ their anger, invariably through the prism of leftist ideological dogma. And if a Muslim does speaks for themselves, they must only do so when full of rage, obviously.

How patronizing.

As another blogger accurately noted in response, the problem begins when journalists and others seek out “community representatives,” or “credible Muslim voices” to fit into convenient boxes. This relies on so many assumptions that it is hard to know where to begin. Not all Muslims wish to express themselves in public through a communal religious identity. Identities are multiple, and some may wish to speak instead just as citizens in their professional capacity, through their political party, or their neighborhood body. Those Muslim who do speak through their communal religious identity are not homogenous. This particularly holds true because majoritarian Islam has no organized clergy, and no pope. The question of religious “representation” becomes particularly difficult to achieve as a result. And in its most extreme sense it is undesirable anyway, leading logically to nothing but ISIS-style bloodshed and theocracy. Muslim “credibility” is just as flimsy an idea to pursue doggedly. In fact, this is nothing but a variant of the African-American “not black enough” theme. Who decides whose “Muslim experience” is real, and whose is not? Is the credible Muslim only he who dresses in Arab robes, eats spicy food and drinks cava? And yet we then worry about profiling?

The great irony is that, unlike many of today’s champagne socialists and shisha-jihadists my entire life has been a prototype of their archetypal aggrieved Muslim. Unlike the Guardian’s private school, Oxbridge-educated journalist David Shariatmadari, I am a state school-educated Muslim and racial minority. I have been stabbed at by neo-Nazis, falsely arrested at gunpoint by Essex police, expelled from college, divorced, estranged from my child, and tortured in Egyptian prison, and mandatorily profiled. I’ve had my DNA forcibly taken at Heathrow Airport under Schedule 7 Laws, which deprive terror suspects of the right to silence at UK ports of entry and exit, among much else. I’ve been blacklisted from other countries. I am every grievance regressive leftists traditionally harp on. Yet their first-world bourgeois brains seem to malfunction because I refuse to spew theocratic hate, or fit their little “angry Muslim” box. Yet they talk to me about privilege, and non-fat lattes?

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The British Left’s Hypocritical Embrace of Islamism – The Daily Beast.

Israeli Occupation and The growing mistakes of the Seventh Day.

“Tragically the majority of Israeli citizens knowingly live in complete denial and deliberate ignorance of what is done in their names on the other side of the Green Line. An Israeli society that became desensitized towards the Palestinians, became also insensitive to injustices within its own society, allowing racism, poverty and violence to spread. Undeniably, there is a direct correlation to the Israeli behavior in the occupied territories and the deterioration of values within the Israeli society.

(…) David Ben Gurion, a founding father and the first Israeli prime minister, warned immediately after the end of the Six Day War, against the euphoria that engulfed the Israelis. At that point he was no longer in a position of power and was not known for his dovish opinions. Yet, he forewarned the Israelis that this famous military victory would become destructive for the Jewish state unless it returned the land captured during the war. Not many took notice of these words of wisdom. Consequently, despite continued prosperity and development, the curse of the military victory of 1967 is haunting the country, eroding it from within, and also strains relations with its closest allies around the world to a breaking point.”

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Six days that changed Israel forever – Al Arabiya News.

The ‘seventh day’: ” I knew that peace could not come from the defeat and humiliation of the Arabs.”

The ‘seventh day’: Censored voices from the 1967 war

Powerful new documentary recounts what happened on the day after the Six-Day War.

By Gili Izikovich | Jun. 7, 2015 | 10:21 AM

An Israeli soldier stands guard over Egyptian prisoners in El Arish, Sinai, during the Six-Day War in June 1967.Photo by Shabtai Tal / GPO

It was an early summer’s night. A group of men had gathered in a room inside Kibbutz Geva. Outside, the Jezreel Valley was quiet. The men sat indoors, confused and hesitant. Only 10 days had passed since the end of the Six-Day War they had fought in, and the impact of what they had witnessed had refused to leave them. It actually provided the impetus for their gathering. When the initial excitement died down, a young literature teacher who would become one of Israel’s leading authors opened the discussion.

“A few guys had an idea of putting together an unconventional book that would try to provide an authentic record of what people returning from war feel,” this guest from Kibbutz Hulda, Amos Oz, said. It was an introduction he would repeat dozens of times over the next few months. “Generally, this booklet will try and explain what we’ve all encountered – namely, that people returned from the battlefield without any [sense of] joy.”

Oz’s words can be heard in the documentary “Censored Voices,” directed by Mor Loushy. It has been playing since Thursday in cinemas and will be aired this summer on Yes TV’s Docu channel, which helped finance the production.

What lends this documentary its unsettling effect for Israeli viewers, particularly ones from a certain generation, is that it acts as a reality-changing time capsule, one that no one has disturbed for 48 years since the original audio recordings were made. This selection of testimonies has a power that can shatter truths at the very heart of the State of Israel.

Israeli soldiers with Egyptian captives in Sinai. June, 1967. Israel film service

The original “Siach Lochamim” (“The Seventh Day”) was a collection of testimonies compiled by Avraham Shapira, a historian and editor who had been a pupil of Martin Buber and Gershom Shalom. Assisting in the compilation were Amos Oz, David Alon, Amram Hayisraeli, Yariv Ben-Aharon, Abba Kovner and others, all of them kibbutz members from across the country. As Oz explained, it was born out of the sense of oppressiveness with which so many of them had returned, which stood in such stark contrast to the sense of elation felt by most of the public. “There was a tense emotional polarity across the whole country,” Shapira remembers in the documentary.

A few days after the war ended, Shapira and Oz were summoned to the Kibbutz Movement’s headquarters in Tel Aviv. The purpose of the meeting was to produce a commemorative booklet in honor of fallen soldiers. A few days later, Oz told Shapira he was going to meet some friends in Geva. This tentative meeting was the first in a series of meetings and unplanned nightly discussions, without any schedule, timetable or agenda. As the conversations unfolded, initial hesitation was replaced by gut-wrenching confessions about war and its costs, about the corrupting effects of violence, and about what happened to Israel after what started out as an act of self-defense. Some 200 hours were recorded, but when the editors got ready to publish the recorded material, the censors stepped in. Seventy percent of the material submitted to them was stored in the archives, so as not to tarnish Israel’s image.

Softened version

Three months after the war ended, the collection of conversations was published. “The Seventh Day” was a 286-page book, comprised mainly of reflections and soul-searching by agonized young men encountering violence and death; testimonies of harsh confrontations with enemy soldiers and civilians; and comments that would be considered heresy nowadays. These included questioning whether the conquest of [East] Jerusalem was really necessary, and whether, in exchange for peace, it [East Jerusalem] should be returned to Jordan. There were no testimonies describing war crimes.

IDF soldiers in Sinai. June 7, 1967. Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images

Even though this was a softened version, it turned out to be sufficient to make waves. In the sea of victory albums and tales of heroism – and in total contrast to its antithesis, the best-selling book “The Tanks of Tammuz,” by Shabtai Teveth – “The Seventh Day” became a sensation. The book’s print run was 150,000, and it was translated into English, Spanish, Swedish, German, French, Arabic and Yiddish.

When it was first published in October 1967, it was intended only as an internal booklet for kibbutz members. But reports of it and quotations from it led to its dissemination among the general public.

The book was received in two ways. Its supporters viewed its antiwar character and universal sensitivities to the horrors of war as decisive proof of moral superiority. Discussion about the burden of fighting, recoiling from violence and the oppression of victory – all were perceived as yet another justification for being victorious. However, most people saw it as something completely different. Among all the victory albums, the adoration of the military, of holy places and of liberated swaths of land, this book was perceived as a defiant downer. Some people considered the censored and lean testimonies to be sanctimonious, or miserable wailing. The book even got the derogatory moniker “Shooting and Crying,” while some people described it as an apology for winning the war. The subversive, competing narrative of the book was ridiculed, and the winners were also victorious in the underlying battle over national memory and the country’s history books.

Over the decades, the book slowly receded from memory, along with its voices – both the ones heard and the ones censored. Some tapes were kept by Shapira, but most were deposited in Yad Tabenkin, the Kibbutz Movement’s research and documentation center. Even though prominent journalists and media figures urged him to release his audio tapes over the years, Shapira refused to do so.

After finishing her studies at the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School in Jerusalem, Loushy returned to Tel Aviv and did a degree in history and literature. She took a history course and came across “The Seventh Day,” which she hadn’t been aware of. “I read it and my stomach turned,” she relates. “I couldn’t understand how I hadn’t heard about it until then, this book that came out three months after the war, with its strong antiwar message. I told myself we had all grown up with one clear narrative, and only [Prof.] Yeshayahu Leibowitz was known to have had other opinion. But here were conversations with 400 soldiers, all of them talking against wars – that did something to me. I was angry that this book didn’t even exist for my generation.”

Mor Loushy, director of “Censored Voices” film about Six-Day War. Tomer Appelbaum

At first, Shapira ignored Loushy’s requests – until she ambushed him at a conference where he was speaking. After that, they met at his kibbutz. “From the first meeting,” she recalls, “I felt both of us understood that we were now at a point in time where these things should come out. I told him these issues were relevant to us, to our society, and that we should look at our past with open and realistic eyes. Also, that this moral discourse must be publicized again. He understood.”

Loushy, 33, lives with her production partner, Daniel Sivan (he also edited the film). This is her second film, after “Israel Ltd.,” which followed young Jewish people on their trips to Israel financed by the Jewish Agency. She has already started work on her next film, “The Oslo Diaries.” It will deal with the secret channel of talks between Israel and the Palestinians in the 1990s, viewed through the private diaries of diplomats and other central figures.

The long hours involved in making “Censored Voices” began in Loushy and Sivan’s apartment. She listened to and transcribed 200 hours of recordings. She admits to being greatly affected by the conversations and getting sucked in, as if she were reliving that period herself.

“It’s usually people looking back at their experiences as they remember them today, many years later. I had a document that captured authentic testimonies immediately after the [Six-Day] War,” she says. “The way they analyze their experience is sincere and true. This was a pre-media era; they didn’t know how it would turn out and they talked freely, uncompromisingly and unapologetically.”

This impacted the way she constructed “Censored Voices.” It doesn’t deal with “The Seventh Day” itself, and there are no talking heads, intellectual analyses, historians or experts. Instead, there are recordings from the original audio tapes, accompanied by archival photos or, in some cases, the faces of the speakers listening to themselves, nearly 50 years on. The confusion and enthusiasm are replaced by grave, mature faces, sporting shocked expressions.

Rafael Eitan (right) in Rafah. June, 1967. Michal Han, GPO.

The Holocaust question

It’s impossible not to reflect on this moral discourse. There seems to be a clear line stretching between the shock felt by the soldiers of 1967, testifying about war crimes that they or others committed, and Israel in 2015, including its social and political situation. The movie serves as a clear invitation to renew the debate about moral issues. That’s why it seems that, just like the original book, the new documentary also faces being rebuffed.

Earlier this week, in an interview to radio’s Channel 7, Deputy Defense Minister Eli Ben-Dahan announced his intention to censor the documentary. Even though he hadn’t seen it, he called the movie “part of a trend aimed at discrediting Israel.”

It’s reasonable to assume that criticism will soon be brought against the testimonies that link some of Israel’s wartime actions with the Holocaust. “There is no comparison between war crimes and the Holocaust in this movie,” says Loushy. “The Holocaust is mentioned twice: once by Menahem Shalem, who was a child refugee himself. He, as a soldier, looks at refugees and remembers his experiences as a child. Another instance was very similar – these are very personal testimonies.

“The Holocaust was the dominant backdrop to the recordings in 1967,” she continues. “This was 20 years after it happened, a short time [six years] after the Eichmann trial, and questions of whether we were similar to them [Nazis] featured very prominently. We treated it with kid gloves. Not everything should be viewed through a prism of propaganda, or of Israel haters. We need to have the courage to contend with our own morality during wars. It’s in our interest as a society to review the past and face our demons.”

No place for humans

“I’ll tell you something I didn’t say in that book,” says Oz in the film. (During the war, he was a reservist in an information-dispensing unit.) “At 8 A.M. on June 5, as the fighting began, I stood among the tanks of Maj. Gen. [Israel “Talik”] Tal’s division opposite Rafah, and at 8:30 A.M. they moved in, with us behind them. For the first time, I saw a dead body along the road side. An Egyptian soldier lay on his back with outstretched arms and legs, his head on the ground with his eyes open. I looked at him and said to myself, ‘I’ll never be able to drink or eat again in my entire life.’ Six or seven hours later, I was standing in Sheikh Zuweid, surrounded by Egyptian casualties. I drank water from my canteen and listened to music on my transistor radio between news reports. The transformation I went through within seven hours was hard to comprehend.”

Amos Oz, from “Censored Voices” film about Six-Day War. Avner Shahaf.

Loushy asks Oz how he views the modern Israeli reality in relation to “The Seventh Day.” “I see more apathy in today’s society, more lack of sensitivity. What happens in the territories sometimes crosses a red line, constituting a war crime, but it’s [viewed as happening] there and not here. There is some mechanism of repression and disengagement at play. Many people don’t read news items relating to the occupation when they come across them. Thus, the media doesn’t adequately cover what happens there. Every day, every hour, Palestinians suffer humiliation, harassment at checkpoints, in their villages – the settlers’ sewage flows downhill into Arab villages.”

Did you already sense the consequences of the war back in 1967?

“Already during the fighting in Sinai, I felt that this victory was sowing seeds of deep hatred toward Israel. I thought we were justified in conducting that war, that we were acting in self-defense. I felt it was a just war, otherwise I would have refused to serve. I knew we were at the beginning of a long and difficult road of a bloody war with the entire Arab and Muslim world. I knew that peace could not come from the defeat and humiliation of the Arabs.”

Reflecting on the atmosphere in Israel after the 1967 war, Oz says, “The sense of relief was understandable, and I shared it. We thought we were facing annihilation. We were still under the shadow of the 1948 War of Independence, and many of us remembered living through it as children. We remembered siege, hunger, shelling, living in shelters, numerous casualties, terrible losses, prolonged suffering. No one thought this war would be so short. People were shocked when it ended after six days. It’s no wonder that a whole nation became euphoric – especially one that for thousands of years experienced force only as inflicted on its whipped backs. It’s probably natural that a people such as this gets a bit drunk with its physical prowess. But my friends and I saw the other side of the coin as well.

“I remember the sensation and I remember that a Holocaust hovered above us twice. Once was during the waiting period before the war, when many people feared annihilation – since the Arabs were more numerous and powerful, equipped with modern Soviet weapons. They had the initiative and felt cocky. The prevailing feeling was they would come and exterminate us, just like in the Holocaust. The second time was when we saw the convoys of refugees, those who fled. Just as Menahem Shalem said in the recording you just played, as a former child refugee he saw himself in a Palestinian child carried in his parents’ arms, fleeing from an abandoned village into exile. I strenuously object to such comparisons. I always believed in different degrees of evil. Anyone who cannot rank different degrees of evil may end up a servant of evil.”

What did you feel when the collection of stories was distributed across the country?

“I remember feeling a bit alarmed when I saw the completed book. I thought to myself, What have we done? Maybe we are party spoilers, putting a wet blanket over the national celebration? I knew that many people would be angry with us, that the book would be attacked. But I felt at one with myself, that it was good we had spoken out. I never thought it would become a best-seller. I thought it would be read mainly in kibbutzim.”

In retrospect, are you pleased with that heritage?

“Yes, I’m pleased with it, pleased that this voice was preserved. I’m sorry it is no longer heard at this time.”

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The ‘seventh day’: Censored voices from the 1967 war – Diplomacy and Defense – – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

Once again, I copied/pasted a Haaretz article… for you to read, if you don’t have premium access.

I know that it’s not exactly legal nor nicely presented, but still, as usual… it’s a worthy read, and the message must be spread.

I must find that docu. Yes, I must. 

Enjoy!

Why is Israel respecting IS and AlQaeda so openly?

(…) an Israeli army spokesperson had now confirmed these reports. He clarified that this extended to logistical support in the form of medical aid to al-Qaeda rebels. “We don’t ask who they are, we don’t do any screening,” the unnamed Israeli military official told the Wall Street Journal. “Once the treatment is done, we take them back to the border [sic – ceasefire line] and they go on their way [in Syria],” he said.

For several years now there have been propaganda reports in the Israeli press about how Israel is supposedly playing a purely “humanitarian” role in the Syrian war, by treating civilians and sending them back. But this has now been exposed as propaganda. If that were really the case, Israel would be treating combatants from all sides in the Syrian war and furthermore it would arrest suspected al-Qaeda militants. But in reality, all reports confirm that the Israelis are treating only the “rebel” side, including the al-Qaeda militants that lead the armed opposition in that area of Syria (as indeed they do in much of the country). The key difference that disproves the propaganda line, and proves an active Israel-al-Qaeda alliance is that, after treatment, instead of arresting them, the al-Qaeda fighters are sent back to fight in Syria. There is no chance at all that, in the event that Israel captures injured Hamas, Hizballah or Iranian combatants alive, it would send them back to Gaza or Syria to “go on their way”, as the unnamed Israeli official put it.

After all, Israeli forces in that area have, during the course of the war, made several air-strikes on what they claimed were Hizballah targets in Syria. If Israel were genuinely opposed to al-Qaeda, it would hit their positions too. But it seems that Israel prefers al-Qaeda over Hizballah and Iran.

In April, I reported how Israel had started to cover up its alliance with al-Qaeda. It seems that the propaganda line about their humanitarianism had not been bought by many, so they took measures to stop too much being revealed. Sedqi al-Maqet, a pro-government Syrian activist from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, was arrested, with a military gag-order initially banning the Israeli press from reporting the case. Al-Maqet had used his residence in the Golan to report from his Facebook account in Arabic about contacts he said he had witnessed between Israeli armed forces and what he termed terrorists active in the Syrian-controlled sector of the Golan. One of these videos, aired on Syrian state TV, was used to charging him with “spying”.

Since those reports, there have been further confirmations of the Israeli-al-Qaeda alliance. The most oblique of these came from David Ignatius, the Washington Post associated editor and foreign affairs columnist. Earlier this month he wrote that “Jordan and Israel have developed secret contacts with members of the Jabhat al-Nusra group along their borders.”

The second new confirmation came from the Israeli press in the form of Ron Ben Yishai, an Israeli war reporter for Yediot Ahronot, a popular Israeli tabloid. The report, which included video (vetted by the Israeli military) of a hospitalised Syrian rebel (possibly an al-Qaeda militant) with a obscured face, mostly took the usual propaganda line, singing the praises of the wonderful morality of the glorious Israeli army.

In the video, Lieutenant Colonel Dr. Itzik Malka claims of the 1,600 wounded he said have arrived in Israel from Syria, “the majority are women, children and elderly people” (my emphasis). That’s another implicit acknowledgement that Israel is treating wounded militants from Syria (the majority of whom in that area are al-Qaeda). And Ben Yishai himself in the article accompanying the footage states that “wounded Syrians have been arriving almost daily to the security fence, seeking medical help. It is likely that most if not all of these nationals are rebels from the rival jihadist Islamic State and al-Nusra Front groups”.

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Why is the media ignoring Israel’s alliance with al-Qaeda?.

Beware, it’s a long and extensive report.

But it’s worthy. After all, both IS and AQ work well in supporting the Israeli Govt. rethoric “we are a haven of democracy and civilization surrounded everywhere by subhuman barbaric Arabs who can’t even agree in who may massacre us and how”… They seem to ignore that Syria was a peaceful neighbor for decades and also that Hizbullah had stayed far from creating mess since years ago. They also seem to prefer to ignore that AQ and IS are both enemies of Hamas and Fatah, and have been in conflict in recent times.

Is it that they prefer to ignore it or…?Honestly, I use to run from conspiranoic theories but… Facts seem too clear. Too much to be easily denied. 

European Democracy must protect itself from its own suicidal naivety.

They haven’t understood a thing. The hundreds of thousands of patriots (that is what they call themselves), the Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West ―PEGIDA―, haven’t understood a thing.

I mention them because they are the latest fashion in Germany where they have gathered tens of thousands of protestors in just a few months. But we could also be talking about France’s National Front or, simply, of the wave of comments you will find if you peek into any Spanish internet forum where the words ‘immigration’ or ‘Islam’ are mentioned.

Regrettably, those who rush to the street in counter-protests, normally backed (at least in statements) by the governments, demanding the respect, tolerance and acceptance of other cultures, have understood even less.

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Respecting the cannibals.

(…) Because for Europeans, all Islam which is not directly assassinating is “moderate”. It can be as violent as it desires: predicate the mandatory veil for women, half-way or complete; say that women and men should not touch each other; that girls should not learn music; that being gay is bad for health; that all literary or humoristic work which questions the ‘sacred’ must be forbidden; that Koran laws are immutable, divine and must be above each country’s legislation…
An Islamic preacher can say all this and more and will be courted by ministers and presidents which will line up to debate with this ‘moderate Islam’ spokesperson. Many of these preachers would have been thrown into jail in Morocco or Syria for their hate-inspiring discourse, but Europe offered them not only asylum but a tribune, a debate, the position of president of the official Muslims council, the title of Honorary Gentleman and the Queens’ Order.

Yes: Europe has promoted, I don’t know if aware of it or blindly, but in an active and continuous way, a criminal way, the most extreme currents of Islam, financed by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and their neighbors thanks to the oil tide. From the government elites to the last mayor, the imams, theologians and preachers have been raised to the rank of representatives of the collectives of Maghrebi, Turkish or Pakistani origins. A rank they never had in their countries of origin, a power which they could only acquire thanks to the complicity of European administrations. By a double path: electing them as representatives and by eliminating any alternative ways these collectives may have had for expressing themselves. (…)

I CAN ONLY AGREE.

Haneen Zoabi is right. Mosques must be under scrutiny. Everywhere… and it’s Muslims themselves who must do the task.

For Zoabi this is an issue close to her heart; it stokes the fire in her belly. She posted a status on Facebook in which she asked who are those “barbarians” who are terrorizing the lives of residents with their violence and their weapons. Zoabi wrote of social terrorism against women, and women’s freedom of movement, expression and conduct.

Ostensibly, her comments were both just and on point — the phenomenon of Arab towns being ruled by a handful of armed violent criminals is a painful affliction in our community. Just yesterday a resident of Jaljulya was murdered by gunfire. Last week a school principal was shot and severely wounded in Kuseife. But Zoabi’s post went on to analyze the situation of religious coercion and incitement against both women and men who offer a different voice. And more significantly — Zoabi hinted at a link between clerics and extremists who seek control through violence and firearms. She added a clause in which she demanded that all the political movements, including the Islamic Movement must enhance their “social control” of clerics and imams in Arab towns and villages. They need to supervise what is said in the said in mosques on Fridays. “There are some people who think it is their own fiefdom,” wrote Zoabi.

Naturally, this statement angered many people who mobilized to defend Islam, the clerics and the Islamic Movement, whose members had condemned the shooting of the women’s marathon organizer and, alongside all the Joint List Knesset members, supported her.

From here on, the lively discussion very quickly became stormy and heated. Serious accusations of incitement, slander and “disturbing the peace” were hurled at Zoabi. This was the trigger for Photoshop wizards who rushed to fabricate shocking images of the MK. In one of them, Zoabi’s shaved head was superimposed on an orange-clad man’s body, next to whom there was a black-draped ISIS fighter! (Does that methodology remind us of anything?). This picture repulsed me, sending shivers up my spine in a way that I had never felt before; I felt as if the horrors of Islamic State are closer to me than ever before. Look at just how far the extreme right’s campaign of fear and incitement has permeated our community. For these were the same images used by the extreme right in its campaign to anoint Zoabi as the enemy of the people. And, of course, the sight of ISIS’ crimes, which are all over the Internet, govern our consciousness, crossing all boundaries or red lines of morality and law — of what is legitimate and what is permissible within the limits of freedom of expression.

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This time Haneen Zoabi went too far | +972 Magazine.

This is what happens when you prevent those among Palestinians who follow the rules to reach any right, legal solution.  

You simply tell their people that they are not the ones to follow. They lose respect for them.

And they look toward those who are succeeding everywhere. 

Not a game I’d like to play, to be honest.

It’s simply too stupid, even for someone who awaits the Armageddon.

The whole world says it: Turkey… J’accuse!

Is Turkey collaborating with the Islamic State (ISIS)? Allegations range from military cooperation and weapons transfers to logistical support, financial assistance, and the provision of medical services. It is also alleged that Turkey turned a blind eye to ISIS attacks against Kobani.President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu strongly deny complicity with ISIS. Erdogan visited the Council on Foreign Relations on September 22, 2014. He criticized “smear campaigns [and] attempts to distort perception about us.” Erdogan decried, “A systematic attack on Turkey’s international reputation, “complaining that “Turkey has been subject to very unjust and ill-intentioned news items from media organizations.” Erdogan posited: “My request from our friends in the United States is to make your assessment about Turkey by basing your information on objective sources.”Columbia University’s Program on Peace-building and Rights assigned a team of researchers in the United States, Europe, and Turkey to examine Turkish and international media, assessing the credibility of allegations. This report draws on a variety of international sources — The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Daily Mail, BBC, Sky News, as well as Turkish sources, CNN Turk, Hurriyet Daily News, Taraf, Cumhuriyet, and Radikal among others.

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Research Paper: ISIS-Turkey List | David L. Phillips.

Turkey, ….and Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, ….even US and Israel have allowed this evil to grow, in certain moments.

And the worst is Arabs and Muslims themselves doing nothing …because “it’s a CIA/Israeli creation” (¡¡¿¿??!!)

… damn myopic generation of spiritually retarded degenerates.

Listen Israel! … May 15th is also Nakba day!

The more Israel represses the Nakba, the stronger the memories

By Gideon Levy | May 14, 2015 | 2:15 AM

How nice it would be if Israel would allow its minority citizens to commune with their misfortune and at least respect their pain.

The State of Israel should be bowing its head tomorrow. It should be bowing its head out of solidarity and empathy for the pain of a fifth of its citizens and to take responsibility for their tragedy; to bow its head in apology for what happened.

Tomorrow, May 15 – the date of the declaration of the State of Israel – is Nakba Day, the anniversary of the Palestinian people’s catastrophe; a day to commemorate its fallen, its lost villages and land. One needn’t be a Palestinian to identify with their pain; you can be an Israeli Jew, or even a Zionist, and respect those for whom your Independence Day marks their tragedy. Nor is there any need to accept the Palestinian historical narrative in order to recognize that the native people suffered a terrible calamity.

One can respect the other’s pain, about which there is no historical doubt, and, if we want to be honest and brave, one can also ask if the State of Israel has ever atoned for what it did, whether deliberately or accidentally, with forethought or lacking choice, in 1948. Has it ever abandoned the policy that caused the Nakba? Isn’t it the same policy of dispossession, occupation, oppression, destruction, and expulsion that continues to this day, 67 years after 1948, and 48 years after 1967?

Nakba Day ought to be a national commemoration, even if it involves a minority, the same way Mimouna, the Saharna, and Sigd (an official holiday by law) are marked, even though they are the traditions of minority groups. There should be sirens and memorial services in the state’s Arab communities and special television broadcasts for everyone.

Of course this sounds delirious, during a tour that foreign ambassadors took of Army Radio this week, a western diplomat asked in all innocence if the popular station broadcasts Arabic music. Her hosts thought she was rather out of it. Anyone who even thinks that the State of Israel should be marking Nakba Day is also out of it; worse, he’s a traitor.

But the truth is that there is no greater proof of Israel’s insecurity about the justness of its cause than the battle waged to forbid marking the Nakba. A people confident in its path would respect the feelings of the minority, and not try to trample on its heritage and memories. A people that knows something terrible is burning under its feet sees every reference to what happened as an existential threat.

Israel started to battle the Nakba immediately after it occurred; it did not allow the refugees to return to their homes and lands and confiscated their abandoned property. It destroyed nearly all of their 418 villages out of foresight, covered them with trees planted by the Jewish National Fund and prevented any mention of their existence.

The primitive concept was that one could erase the memory of a people with trees and suppress its pain and consciousness with laws and force. This country of monuments forbade any monument to their tragedy. This country of commemoration days and wallowing in grief forbade them to mourn. Every Arab carrying a rusty key is considered an enemy; any sign marking a destroyed village is an abomination.

Not only is there no justice in this, there’s no benefit in it, either. The more Israel tries to repress the memory, the stronger it gets. The Soviet Union tried to do this to its Jews and other minorities and failed. The third and fourth generations after the Nakba remember and are bolder than their elders. Forbidden summer camps have been held on the ruins of some of the villages; there is no great-grandchild that doesn’t know where his ancestors lived. A concealed wound will never scab.

How nice it would be if Israel took some token steps. How nice it would be if an Israeli Willy Brandt would get on bended knee, take responsibility and ask for forgiveness, and if the country would be covered with commemorative signs for what was and is no more. How nice it would be if Israel would allow its minority citizens to commune tomorrow with their misfortune – one of history’s largest, ongoing national tragedies – and at least respect their pain.

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The more Israel represses the Nakba, the stronger the memories– Opinion – Israel News | Haaretz.

“Everywhere you see houses and churches on fire”

The year is 2015. It has now been exactly 100 years since the genocide took place. The perpetrators and most of the victims are gone. The Turks and Kurds of today are not the ones guilty of genocide but a process of reconciliation has not occurred.

Some Kurdish leaders and organizations have recognized Kurdish clans’ involvement in the massacre but from the Turkish side there is only silence. It hurts in your heart. But not only the cruel massacres and the holocaust on the Christians; not only did you see your entire family and your relatives killed, thousands of villages being emptied of its indigenous people and your entire history annihilated, but today they say that it never happened. It hurts within you. You can still feel the smell. The process of extermination against you is continued today, 100 years later.

Far from all Turks and Kurds were responsible for the massacre. There are examples of Turkish, Kurdish and Arab families who adopted children or protected persecuted, to save them from a sure death. There are documented cases where governors refused to follow government orders of the massacres. There are also examples of Kurds who protected Christian villages against other Kurds.

The night of April 24, 1915, the first phase of the genocide began when 250 Armenian doctors, lawyers, politicians, government officials, teachers, writers, poets and other intellectuals who could become the core of a future resistance, were arrested overnight and executed within 72 hours. Therefore April 24 is counted as the start of the genocide.

The genocide that destroyed over two million Christians and that emptied the Syriac village of Kerburan, twice. The night is still your friend. For the night is when you still hear your mother’s voice, calling your beautiful name.

The year is 2015, but a part of me died in 1915.

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Reliving the Armenian genocide: “Everywhere you see houses and churches on fire” – Your Middle East.

Armenian women crucified by Kurdish clans in Deir-El-Zor, 1915… but at least they have acknowledged their role in the hell experienced by Armenians 100 years ago.