Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Una buona analisi dell'attuale situazione a Gaza

Two Perspectives on Gaza, a note form Uri Avnery on his 85th birthday,
and a call for an immediate end to the hostilities in Gaza.
{Editor's Note:  The NSP joins with the Committee to End House
Demolitions in calling for an immediate cease fire in Gaza and a
return to negotiations with Palestinians, this time including Hamas,
toward the goal of ending the Occupation. There is much truth in both
Gideon Levy's article attacking Israel's actions in Gaza and in
Bradley Burston's critique of the critics of that attack. We at Tikkun
have responded to our readers request to not deluge them with daily
reports on the daily assaults by Israel on Palestinians suspected of
being "militants" or Hamas activists that have been going on all
through the past years, or on the cutting off of food and supplies to
Gazans that has led to starvation  for some, malnutrition for most-and
all this while Israeli proclaims how it "left Gaza" (instead of
acknowledging that it turned Gaza into a large prison camp). But
because we didn't give you that daily information, it can now seem as
if the refusal of Hamas to return to a cease-fire, and its charges
that Israel consistently broke the cease fire, seem extreme, and its
return to minor shelling in the past few days (killing no one-because
its rocket supplies are pathetic and incapable to reaching most
Israeli cities, thank God!) seems to supply Israel with its
justification for a renewed war (in which it killed over 250 men,
women and children in one day of indiscriminate bombing raids of Gazan
civilians). Yet the fundamental context of Occupation and massiv
Israeli power lends plausibility to Gideon Levy's account of Israel as
"the Neighborhood Bully."  Yet on the other hand, Hamas' reliance on
violence, not only against Israel but against the more peace-seeking
Palestinian Authority associated  Palesitnians, must also be
unequivocally condemned, even while saying, as Burston does, that it
does n ot follow from such a condemnation that a new war is the
appropriate response.. Indeed, this is another voluntary war by
Israel, and seems to be motivated more by dishonored Israeli Prime
Minister Olmert  and Defense Minnister Barak's desire to not leave
office without somehow erasing the memory of their failed  Lebanon
invasion two years ago-and since Gazans have none of the military
capacities of Hezbollah, the Israeli politicians who chose to do this
war two months before the election are likely to get higher esteem in
Israel for this shooting fish in a barrel type war than they did when
they faced enemies who had some way of defending themselves.  From the
standpoint of Tikkun, war is the wrong response. If Israel wants peace
with Palestinians, it can achieve it by negotiations based on the
Saudi peace initiative; it cannot achieve it by killing more
Palestinian civilians or even by wiping out the current generation of
Hamas activists. There is no path to peace-peace is the path. Ånd if
Israel wants to destroy Hamas, it has one clear way: rebuild Gaza and
the West Bank with a massive Marshall Plan type enterprise-adopt our
Strategy of Generosity and renounce the strategy of domination. Trust
in God,, trust in love, trust in kindness, trust in generosity-and
give those strategies a ten year chance to work and Israel will get
far more security than it will achieve by this latest violation of
international law, Torah ethics, and common sense. I invite our
readers to respond to this and to the statements below. I'm
particularly interested in inviting the Reform, Conservative,
Reconstrucitonist and Renewal rabbis on this list to see how many
believe that trusting in God is a ridiculous strategy, that loving the
stranger or the Other is irrelevant, and that all those good Torah
values really have no relevance to "the real world." It remains the
case that we who trust in the power of love and generosity, and hence
in the message of Torah and the tradition of the Jewish people that
"not by might, and not by power, but by my spirit , says the Lord of
poiwer the Lord of hosts"  are largely vilified by many of those who
claim to be the current representatives of the Jewish tradition. And
our response: stop being "realistic," because the realism of military
force and power has not brought you peace-so how about trying a
different strategy, a strategy of love and generosity and caring for
others, and start by applying that to the Palestinian people. -Rabbi
Michael Lerner
The neighborhood bully strikes again
By Gideon Levy
Tags: gaza strike, israel news
Israel embarked yesterday on yet another unnecessary, ill-fated war.
On July 16, 2006, four days after the start of the Second Lebanon War,
I wrote: "Every neighborhood has one, a loud-mouthed bully who
shouldn't be provoked into anger... Not that the bully's not right -
someone did harm him. But the reaction, what a reaction!"
Two and a half years later, these words repeat themselves, to our
horror, with chilling precision. Within the span of a few hours on a
Saturday afternoon, the IDF sowed death and destruction on a scale
that the Qassam rockets never approached in all their years, and
Operation "Cast Lead" is only in its infancy.
Once again, Israel's violent responses, even if there is justification
for them, exceed all proportion and cross every red line of
humaneness, morality, international law and
What began yesterday in Gaza is a war crime and the foolishness of a
country. History's bitter irony: A government that went to a futile
war two months after its establishment - today nearly everyone
acknowledges as much - embarks on another doomed war two months before
the end of its term.
In the interim, the loftiness of peace was on the tip of the tongue of
Ehud Olmert, a man who uttered some of the most courageous words ever
said by a prime minister. The loftiness of peace on the tip of his
tongue, and two fruitless wars in his sheath. Joining him is his
defense minister, Ehud Barak, the leader of the so-called left-wing
party, who plays the role of senior accomplice to the crime.
Israel did not exhaust the diplomatic processes before embarking
yesterday on another dreadful campaign of killing and ruin. The
Qassams that rained down on the communities near Gaza turned
intolerable, even though they did not sow death. But the response to
them needs to be fundamentally different: diplomatic efforts to
restore the cease-fire - the same one that was initially breached, one
should remember, by Israel when it unnecessarily bombed a tunnel - and
then, if those efforts fail, a measured, gradual military response.
But no. It's all or nothing. The IDF launched a war yesterday whose
end, as usual, is hoping someone watches over us.
Blood will now flow like water. Besieged and impoverished Gaza, the
city of refugees, will pay the main price. But blood will also be
unnecessarily spilled on our side. In its foolishness, Hamas brought
this on itself and on its people, but this does not excuse Israel's
overreaction.
The history of the Middle East is repeating itself with despairing
precision. Just the frequency is increasing. If we enjoyed nine years
of quiet between the Yom Kippur War and the First Lebanon War, now we
launch wars every two years. As such, Israel proves that there is no
connection between its public relations talking points that speak of
peace, and its belligerent conduct.
Israel also proves that it has not internalized the lessons of the
previous war. Once again, this war was preceded by a frighteningly
uniform public dialogue in which only one voice was heard - that which
called for striking, destroying, starving and killing, that which
incited and prodded for the commission of war crimes.
Once again the commentators sat in television studios yesterday and
hailed the combat jets that bombed police stations, where officers
responsible for maintaining order on the streets work. Once again,
they urged against letting up and in favor of continuing the assault.
Once again, the journalists described the pictures of the damaged
house in Netivot as "a difficult scene." Once again, we had the nerve
to complain about how the world was transmitting images from Gaza. And
once again we need to wait a few more days until an alternative voice
finally rises from the darkness, the voice of wisdom and morality.
In another week or two, those same pundits who called for blows and
more blows will compete among themselves in leveling criticism at this
war. And once again this will be gravely late.
The pictures that flooded television screens around the world
yesterday showed a parade of corpses and wounded being loaded into and
unloaded from the trunks of private cars that transported them to the
only hospital in Gaza worthy of being called a hospital. Perhaps we
once again need to remember that we are dealing with a wretched,
battered strip of land, most of whose population consists of the
children of refugees who have endured inhumane tribulations.
For two and a half years, they have been caged and ostracized by the
whole world. The line of thinking that states that through war we will
gain new allies in the Strip; that abusing the population and killing
its sons will sear this into their consciousness; and that a military
operation would suffice in toppling an entrenched regime and thus
replace it with another one friendlier to us is no more than lunacy.
Hezbollah was not weakened as a result of the Second Lebanon War; to
the contrary. Hamas will not be weakened due to the Gaza war; to the
contrary. In a short time, after the parade of corpses and wounded
ends, we will arrive at a fresh cease-fire, as occurred after Lebanon,
exactly like the one that could have been forged without this
superfluous war.
In the meantime, let us now let the IDF win, as they say. A hero
against the weak, it bombed dozens of targets from the air yesterday,
and the pictures of blood and fire are designed to show Israelis,
Arabs and the entire world that the neighborhood bully's strength has
yet to wane. When the bully is on a rampage, nobody can stop him.
*********
Falacies of thei Left   by Bradley Burston
The first five are arguments of the anti-Israel left, claims which
are, curiously, as tired as they are unflagging.
____________________
Leftist 1: Israel's true motive in bombing Gaza, is genocide against
the Palestinian people and extermination of their right to statehood.
Israel's genuine interest in this campaign is strikingly similar to
Hamas' interest in firing scores of rockets into Israeli population
centers: Forcing a cease-fire on better terms than the one just ended.
For Hamas, this largely means easing Israeli economic sanctions
against Gazans. For Israel, this centers on ending shelling by Qassam
and Grad missiles and mortar shells. For both sides, this means a
prisoner exchange, centering on Gilad Shalit and hundreds of jailed
Hamas members.
Leftist 2: The Palestinians have no recourse but to defend themselves,
and the makeshift rockets they fire are nothing compared to the
world's most advanced warplanes and munitions, which the IDF is using
against them.
The Human Rights Watch organization has been unequivocal in condemning
the use of Qassam rockets as a direct violation of international
humanitarian law and the laws of war. The firing of Qassams and
mortars against civilian populations also
constitutes collective punishment
against hundreds of thousands of innocent Israeli men, women and
children.
Moreover, the firing of Qassams began not as a response to the siege
against Gaza, but as a marathon celebration by armed Islamic
fundamentalist groups following Israel's withdrawal of its troops and
settlers from the Strip. To purposely add insult to injury, Islamic
Jihad and other organizations used the ruins of settlements as launch
platforms.
Leftist 3: All that Hamas is asking, is recognition as the
democratically elected government of Gaza, and an end to the Israeli
economic embargo. Were they to attain these goals, there would be calm
on both sides of the border.
It is both unrealistic and dangerous to believe that Hamas has
abandoned its clearly stated and often reiterated goal of establishing
an Islamic Palestinian state in all of the Holy Land, including all
land claimed, annexed by, or in any way occupied by Israel.
Beyond that, Hamas has strong alliances with the Egyptian opposition
Muslim brotherhood, as well as working partnerships with the Iran-
dominated Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad.
Israeli restraint, when practiced, has been met with contempt and
additional Hamas and Hamas-tolerated strikes against civilian
populations.
Leftist 4: The Israeli blockade against Hamas is state terrorism and
any means to fight it are legitimate.
There is every reason to believe that Israel's economic siege against
Gaza is misguided, but not for an essential cruelty, rather because
Hamas taxes collected on the influx of goods imported through tunnels
from Egyptian territory have subsidized and cemented Hamas rule.
Leftist 5: The world overwhelmingly sympathizes with the Palestinians
against Israel, and unreservedly backs their struggle for
independence.
In an era of global revulsion against radical Islamic terror, Hamas'
protracted program of suicide bombings, drive-by murders and shelling
of civilian populations, coupled with its refusal to renounce
violence, recognize Israel, or accept past peace agreements, coupled
with its ideology of militant jihad, have drained the Palestinians of
international sympathy and have, in fact, legitimized Israeli
arguments of military self-defense.
Nothing has been more instrumental in harming the cause of Palestinian
independence than Hamas, with its brutal take-over of Gaza in a war
with brother Palestinians, and its frank efforts to build a large-
scale regular army force in the Strip.
Uri Avnery
27.12.08
     "Gush Shalom" has acceded to my wish to mark my 85th birthday not
with a public celebration, as on my 80th, but with a brain-storming
session devoted to the main issues concerning Israel.
     The event took place on the morning of Sunday 21.12.08 in Tel-
Aviv's prestigious Cinematheque hall, under the headline "Until
[White] Smoke Comes Out - Views and Confrontations". It consisted of
two debates: "Two States for Two Peoples - Realistic or Impossible?"
and "The Media: Do They Serve Political Power and Money or the
Public?"
     In the first confrontation, moderated by former Haaretz editor
David Landau, Israela Oron (of the Geneva Initiative) and Gilad Sher
(former advisor of Ehud Barak and senior Israeli representative at the
2000 Camp David conference) argued that the Two-State solution is
viable, while the historian Meron Benvenisti argued that it is
impossible, and Dr. Menachem Klein (Bar-Ilan University) took an
intermediate position.
     In the second confrontation, senior journalists Ron Ben-Yishai
(who appears in the memorable film "Waltz with Bashir") and Rina
Matzliach argued that the Israeli media are free, while Prof. Yaron
Ezrachi and senior journalist Ofer Shelach argued that they are
shackled.
     At the close of the event, I was given the floor. This is what I
said:
            A Congress of Peace Seekers
DEAR FRIENDS, DEAR PARTNERS,
I have to admit that I am moved. Throughout my long life I have not
been pampered with expressions of affection. I am much more used to
manifestations of hate. Therefore, please excuse me if I am a bit
embarrassed.
PEOPLE ASK ME: How does it feel to be 85?
Well, it is strange. After all, only yesterday I was 42, the youngest
member of the Knesset. I don't feel any older or wiser than I did
then.
85 is (in the old Hebrew way of numbering by letters) PH. PH can mean
"poh", here - and yes, I am here and fully intend to remain here for a
while to come - first, because I enjoy it, and second, because I still
have some things to finish.
PH can also mean peh, mouth - the mouth that enables me to voice my
thoughts. I would like to take this opportunity to share with you some
of the thoughts that are occupying my mind today.
What is special about 85-year-olds in Israel? First of all, we are the
generation that founded the state. As such - I feel - we bear an
additional responsibility for what is happening here. If our state is
not what we imagined it should be - it's our duty to act to change it.
AND HERE we face a strange paradox. We are partners in a historic
success. And we are partners in a dismal failure.
Perhaps only members of my generation can fully grasp the extend of
our success in the transformation of the national consciousness.
Many people ask me: where do I draw my optimism from when the
situation becomes very bad, when good people are seized by depression
and despair? At such moments I remind myself - and remind the people
who listen to me - where we started from. I bring this up again and
again for those who did not live through it, and those who have
forgotten:
On the morrow of that war, the '48 war, when some of us said that
there exists a Palestinian people and that we must make peace with
them, we were a tiny handful here and in the whole world. We were
laughed at.  There are no Palestinians, we were told. "There is no
such thing as a Palestinian people!" Golda Meir was still asserting
much later.
Is there anyone today who denies the existence of the Palestinian
people?
We argued that in order to achieve peace, a Palestinian state must
come into being. They laughed at us. What? Why? There is Jordan. There
is Egypt. There are 22 Arab states. That's enough!
Today it is a world-wide consensus - two states for two peoples.
We said that we must talk with the enemy, and the enemy was then the
PLO. Four cabinet ministers demanded that I should be put on trial for
high treason when I met with Yasser Arafat in Beirut during the siege.
All four of them later met with Arafat, and the State of Israel signed
official treaties with the PLO.
True, the treaties were not implemented and did not lead to peace. But
the mutual recognition between Israel and the PLO, between Israel and
the Palestinian people, became a fact. That was a revolution, and it
cannot be reversed.
Today we are saying: we must talk with Hamas. Hamas is an integral
part of the Palestinian reality. And this idea, too, is gaining
ground.
What an uproar we caused when we said that Jerusalem must become the
capital of the two states! Today almost everybody knows that this must
happen, that it will happen.
I have devoted 60 years of my life to this struggle, and it is still
in full swing. But we have defeated the idea of a Greater Israel and
put forward the alternative of the two states, which has carried
conviction in Israel and throughout the world. So much so, that even
those in the successive Israeli governments who strongly oppose the
idea are now compelled to pretend to support it in order to attract
votes.
Think about this when you feel despair. Look at the whole picture, not
only at the nearest small part of it.
BUT AS BIG as our victory is our defeat.
It is enough to look at these coming elections: the three big parties
talk almost the same language, and not one of them puts forward a plan
for peace.
There are small parties which say good and honest things, but at this
juncture we simply need more than that. What is lacking is a major
political force that is ready to come to power in order to make peace.
It is quite clear that the results of this coming election will be bad
- and the only question is whether they will be just bad, or very bad,
or even worse.
Why is this happening? There are many reasons, many pretexts. We
criticize - and rightly so - many things, the media, the education
system, all our successive governments, the President of the United
States, all the world.
But I miss one criticism - the criticism of ourselves.
My father used to tell me: if the situation is bad, the first thing to
do is to ask yourself if you are alright. So I am asking: Am I
alright? Are we alright?
Yes, we have voiced the right ideas. Our ideas have won. But what have
we done to realize these ideas in practice, on the political
battlefield?
Politics is a matter of power. What have we done to create a
progressive political force in Israel? How did it happen that the
Left, the camp of peace and progress, has almost been eradicated from
the political map? Why don't we have political power, why don't we
have, for example, even one newspaper, radio or TV station? How did
the Israeli Left lose, in the last generation, all its levers of
power?
We in the peace camp include many wonderful men and women, who
confront the army every week in the fight against the Wall, who
monitor the checkpoints, who refuse to serve in the occupation army,
who fight against the occupation in dozens of ways. Many of us, of all
ages, take part in these actions.
But while we stand and protest, the settlers rush ahead. Another goat
and another dunam (1000 square meters), another hill and another
outpost. Sometimes I, too, have the feeling that the dogs bark and the
caravan moves on - and I am not content with being the dog. We chase
the mosquitoes, but the swamp that produces the mosquitoes gets bigger
and bigger.
The swamp is political. Only a political force can drain it. In other
words: only a force that can confront the ruling powers, influence the
decisions of the government and the Knesset.
That is a historic failure, and we bear the responsibility for it.
IF I may be permitted to voice a birthday wish: the day after the
elections I would like us to start thinking about the next elections.
We have to think anew. From the ground up. Examine everything we have
done up to now and find out where we went wrong.
Why did we not succeed in convincing enough of the young, of the
Oriental Jewish community, of the immigrants from Russia, of the Arab
community in Israel, of the moderate religious sector - that there is
somebody to talk with, that it is possible to bring about change, that
indeed - we can! Why did we not succeed in touching the heart of the
young generation that is disgusted by politics - by the politics they
know?
What is needed is something completely new, a new act of creation. I
would say: we must prepare the ground for an Israeli Obama.
Obama means: to kindle hope where there was no hope before. To demand
a change from the foundations up and believe that it is possible to
bring about this change. To ignite the enthusiasm of masses of young
people for a message that stirs the heart, a message of ending the
occupation, of social justice, of caring for the planet. The longing
for a different system - secular, just, decent, seeking peace.
The new message must address the mind and the heart, speak to the
emotions and not only to the intellect. It must arouse again the
idealism that is hiding in many a heart and dare not show its face.
The great obstacle to such an explosion is despair. It is so much
easier to despair. So much more comfortable. It doesn't demand
anything. It is easier to say that everything is lost. That they have
stolen our state. But pessimism, as is well known, does not give birth
to anything, it just leads to internal or external emigration.
I refuse to be pessimistic. In my 85 years I have seen too many
unexpected, surprising, amazing, things - both good and bad - for me
not to believe in the unexpected. Obama was unexpected, and here it
happened before our very eyes. The fall of the Berlin wall was
unexpected, and nobody could even have imagined it a moment before it
happened. Even the victory of the Greens in the recent municipal
election in Tel-Aviv was like that.
I WANT to propose the start of a new endeavor a day after the
elections. I would like the best of the intellectuals and the peace
activists, the social activists and the fighters for the environment
to gather and start thinking together, in order to bring about the
Israeli miracle.
Perhaps there should be a grand congress of those who want change, a
Sanhedrin of peace and human rights activists, a kind of alternative
Knesset.
From the heights of my 85 years I want to call all those to whom our
future here is close to the heart, Jews and Arabs, and especially the
young, to mobilize for a joint effort to prepare the ground for the
big change, for the Other Israel, for a state where it will be fun to
live, an Israel we can be proud of.
This is not a game that can be played between existing organizations,
but a completely new political creation, that will speak a new
language, that will bring a new message.
I believe that this will happen, if not tomorrow then the day after. I
wish for myself, and for all of you present in this hall, that we
shall see it with our own eyes, that we shall be partners, that we
shall be able to say: we have succeeded, we are entrusting the state
to good hands.
AND NOW I want to express my heartfelt thanks to all of you, my
friends, who have come to mark my birthday with me by exchanging views
and debating the issues that are so important to all of us.
Heartfelt thanks to the moderators and the speakers, who have bared
the issues for us, to the organizers of this beautiful event, to the
members of Gush Shalom who made it possible. Thanks to all of you, who
have come from near and afar, and thanks for the good wishes you have
showered on me.
I couldn't imagine a more enjoyable and exciting birthday. Thank you.

 Gideon Levy
anche loro, probabilmente, molto interessati alle attività
dell'Istituto Tarshish.


tass, ciakciak, prepara la divisa per il sabra, che ha diritto anche
lui alla sua tonnellata di sangue palestinese

 civilians).
E anche questa sarebbe una "buona analisi dell'attuale situazione a Gaza, 
per quel poveraccio di X.Over :)
*LOL*
Almeno i giornalisti seri hanno *ELENCATO GLI OBIETTIVI COLPITI* e sono 
quasi tutti *CENTRI DI HAMAS*.
Altro che "indiscriminate bombing raids of Gaza civilians".
-Stefano 

 lui alla sua tonnellata di sangue palestinese
questo è il concetto di: ogni bambino ebreo nato a Gerusalemme,
aumenta la percentuale di ebrei ritarda la internazionalizzazione
della città ed è quindi un ostacolo alla pace. Il che è la convizione
di troppi. Che non offendono solo me, ma offendono, in nome dei loro
folli ed irrealistici sogni, l'intero popolo ebraico.

 questo è il concetto di: ogni bambino ebreo nato a Gerusalemme,
finchè viene allevato per uccidere, è un ostacolo alla pace. Ma la
colpa è di quelli che governano, non sua di sicuro. Se non fossero
feccia razzista, potrebbe crescere in un paese normale e in pace coi
suoi vicini. Ma da Washington vogliono diversamente, e allora date
pure i figli alla patria (altrui)..

 Two Perspectives on Gaza, a note form Uri Avnery
Ah interessante.
Tb


direi invece piuttosto prevedibile. Una note breve breve, appunto...
----
"Ho l'impressione che si tratti di una di quelle simpatiche
cazzate" (Luca Logi / rodewalder)
cfr 
http://raionim.blogspot.com/2008/12/luca-logi-e-i-piselli.html