BotlBrush

There’s something odd about a populace largely agreeing with itself that it’s racist. Such open self critique is quite a phenomenon,

The majority of Saudis and non-Saudis agree with Labor Minister Ghazi Al-Gosaibi’s statement that Saudis are “arrogant and racist,” according to an Arab News survey. Al-Gosaibi made his controversial comments on Dec. 28, while addressing the heads of labor departments in Saudi provinces.

“In the past we adulated foreigners for they would be doctors from whom we sought treatment, or teachers from whom we sought knowledge, or accountants who we’d ask to organize or run our businesses,” said Al-Gosaibi, who was criticized by some for the comments.

Gosaibi vindicated

This isn’t that big of an issue but has still struck a nerve with me, the IDF gladly posts a video claiming to show them killing Hamas militants when in fact they are just civilians and they prevent anyone from responding with comments. This appears to be a new policy they started about four days ago. As you can see most if not all of their recent videos prevent comments and video responses but those (as of writing) older than four days do.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised the IDF is censoring any possible response to their YouTube videos, they have a history of censoring the Israeli media.

Free discussion? I’m sorry facts have an anti-Massacre bias.

…all but one of them U.S.-born citizens who were headed to a religious retreat in Florida, were subsequently cleared for travel by FBI agents who characterized the incident as a misunderstanding, an airport official said. But the passengers said AirTran refused to rebook them, and they had to pay for seats on another carrier secured with help from the FBI.

So clearly it was discrimination, otherwise after the ‘misunderstanding’ was cleared up they should have been allowed to board the airplane, there was no reason to keep them off now was there?

“My brother and his wife were discussing some aspect of airport security,” Irfan said. “The only thing my brother said was, ‘Wow, the jets are right next to my window.’ I think they were remarking about safety.”

For a casual observation… one which someone who wanted to blow up an airplane probably wouldn’t make.

What upsets me most about this is after people have gotten tired of being afraid of Muslims they’re going to find something else to be afraid of and the cycle is just going to repeat.

9 Muslim Passengers Removed From Jet

With the exception of the United States virtually every free country in the world has come out to condemn Israels attack on Gaza. Israeli politicians and commentators have been thusfar trying to justify what is plainly obvious as unjustifiable and have been failing in the propaganda war. Their claims are falling on deaf ears.

Given the nature of Hamas Israel argues their actions are entirely justified and something of a necessity. Without a doubt Hamas is not innocent of committing war crimes, without a doubt they target civilians and nobody in the International community denies this. Hamas is recognized as a terrorist organization the world over yet Israel is slammed for claiming to defend itself against Hamas. Why is that?

To explain Israels predicament all we have to do is look at the last seven years of their closest ally, the United States of America. Following 9/11 the International community was by and large America’s best friend however during the Iraq war things went bad quickly. The left was finding it harder and harder to give the war support nor would it trust what the Bush Administration claimed without substantial evidence, right wing commentators and politicians were reduced to having to keep reminding people about 9/11 to justify their views and images of the US military engaged in torture were emerging, not to mention an ever rising death toll.

No one denies 9/11 was bad, no one denies that Al-Qaeda is a terrorist organization, no one denies the United States has a right to defend itself. What people have an issue with is the United States itself and its actions because they cannot be justified by repeating 9/11. In fact the more people compare the more they find the ridiculousness of it all, what the US has been doing has matched and exceeded 9/11 in terms of terror and has not at all made the world a safer place.

The war crimes the US has committed is no longer going unnoticed, while the point of America’s criminal activity is seldom mentioned it is often reflected in the International communities responses to what the US does. Torture is a war crime, holding people without trial is a crime, raising cities to the ground is an immoral thing to do and death tolls cannot be justified as ‘its war’ when the war is so wrong.

Israel finds itself in the same position as her ally, no one denies Israel has the right to defend itself, no one denies Hamas is a terrorist organization, but people the world over recognize the simple obvious fact: Israel has reduced itself to the level of Hamas to ‘defend’ itself and because of its actions hundreds of civilians have been killed.

What pro-Israel politicians and commentators are forgetting is that they are defending wholesale slaughter of innocent men women and children as ‘necessary’, what they also don’t seem to realize that the more they repeat these lies the less credibility they end up having.

A good real world example would be a video released by the Israeli Air Force claiming to show them killing 8 Hamas militants, it later emerged they were civilians. Now are we to keep believing what the Israeli Air Force says? They show a pixelated video and say ‘here is definite proof we killed Hamas!’ and really they were civilians. Is this the best they have to show us? How can they expect the international community to take their word for anything now?

Only the staunchest pro-Israel commentators and politicians still believe what the IDF says, people like Alan M. Dershowitz who writes

In a recent incident related to me by the former head of the Israeli air force, Israeli intelligence learned that a family’s house in Gaza was being used to manufacture rockets. The Israeli military gave the residents 30 minutes to leave. Instead, the owner called Hamas, which sent mothers carrying babies to the house.

There is no proof of this whatsoever, not even a pixelated video. Why should anyone give the Israeli air force the benefit of the doubt? If anything we have found the Israeli air force cannot even guarantee it has killed Hamas members, not even the videos it releases as propaganda material are what they claim. If the best evidence of their success is the death of 8 civilians then surely we must conclude they are at best inept and at worst evil. Under no circumstances however can we take their word for what they say anymore, at least no sane person would.

Israel is isolated because it has foregone any credibility it had with the International community, they can yell all they want but the IDF is no longer trusted and no matter how many times people like Alan repeat what the IDF says no one is going to believe the lies.

The following video is to compliment an earlier post I made, please share it and help get the truth out!

Those who want to use the video for anti-Semetic reasons should note that the Human Rights group ‘B’Tselem’ is a Jewish organization. Without their tireless work we would never have known about what really happened. Human Rights groups such as B’Tselem give voice to people like Ahmad Sanur who lost family in attacks which the IDF disgustingly twisted to work as propaganda for their own agenda. I cannot thank B’Tselem enough and strongly encourage everyone to consider donating to their cause.

People who work at B’Tselem truly embody Judaism and its many pro-Human values, please don’t allow yourself to hate people who are Jewish simply because they are linked to people who care very little for human life.

The IDF gleefully released videos of a rocket hitting a truck it claims to have been owned by Hamas, upon inspection by the human rights group B’Tselem it has now become apparent the truck did not belong to Hamas and had no ties to Hamas. The IDF killed 8 civilians who had no ties to Hamas whatsoever.

Video posted by the IDF on youtube:

Mind you the video may be taken offline, it was originally uploaded on the IDF YouTube page but was taken offline,

We are saddened that YouTube has taken down some of our exclusive footage showing the IDF’s operational success in operation Cast Lead against Hamas extremists in the Gaza Strip. As the State of Israel again faces those who would see it destroyed, it is imperative that we in the IDF show the world the inhumanity directed against us and our efforts to stop it. It is also worth noting that one of the videos removed had the highest number of hits (over 10,000) at the time of its removal.

I do not condone YouTubes censorship, there is nothing innately harmful about watching the video. This is an unfortunate reality of YouTube, it often takes down videos which are considered politically sensitive from holocaust denial videos to the IDFs military actions. It is hopefully a practice which will eventually die out. I believe the holocaust happened and I am against the glorification of the murdering of civilians however that does not mean the videos should be taken off YouTube.

A point of irony however, the video the IDF gleefully showed off demonstrating the ‘inhumanities’ directed against them turned out to be a video demonstrating the inhumanity of the IDF towards the Palestinian people.

The trucks owner, Abu Imad-Sanur who lost family didn’t have many good things to say about what is happening,

“I’m not satisfied with what’s going on. Please, we want peace. Who wants his children to die? Who hates peace? The Israeli account is absolutely wrong. The pickup is still there and the oxygen cylinder is still next to it. Anyone can come and look at it.”

From B’Tselem,

According to Sanur’s testimony, he and members of his family were trying to salvage material from a metal workshop he owns, which was next door to a bombed house, in order to prevent looting. He denies any connection to militants, or military activity, and is willing to talk to any journalist, or investigator.

8 people were killed in the bombing, including his son. Two were severely wounded (names may have different spelling):

Muhammad bassel Madi, 17
Wisam Akram ‘Eid, 14
‘Imad Ahmad Sanur, 32
Rami Sa’adi Ghabayan, 24
Mahmoud Nabil Ghabayan, 14
Ashraf a-Dabagh, 26
Muhammad Majed Ka’abar, 20
Ahmad Ibrahim Khila, 15

Two were severely injured:

Bilal Suheil Ghabayan, 19
Baha Suheil Ghabayan, 16

‘Eight civilians killed’ in surgical strike on truck

31 Dec. ‘08: Suspicion: bombed truck carried oxygen tanks and not grad rockets

Hamas has always been more pro-active in trying to find a ceasefire with Israel perhaps in an effort to consolidate its power and when the last ceasefire was achieved Hamas did not break it. The six month ceasefire it had struck up with Israel through Egypt ended not because of Hamas firing rockets into Israel after the IDF withdrew form the Gaza strip but because of an IDF incursion into the Gaza strip, an action which itself broke the ceasefire.

Now Hamas is attempting to reach a ceasefire agreement with Israel and has laid down some fairly obvious ground rules before negotiations can happen, as Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said,

“First, the Zionist aggression must end without any conditions … Second, the siege must be lifted and all the crossings must be opened because the siege is the source of all of Gaza’s problems,” he said in a televised speech to Palestinians. “After that it will be possible to talk on all issues without any exception,” Haniyeh said, referring to recent truce proposals raised by all parties, including Israel.

Hamas is not an angelic organization however neither is the Israeli government innocent of guilt. If the bloodshed can end on both sides then surely it should and Israels continued actions are an indication it does not want peace. The last ceasefire was broken because of Israel and now Israeli politicians are too afraid of breaking another ceasefire agreement so they’re making up a cock and bull story about how a ceasefire will not achieve peace.

Some may argue that Israel should not trust Hamas, this despite Israel being morally no better than Hamas, breaking International law numerous times. To those people I say, the Israeli attack has not made the people of Israel safer, deaths have gone up and as the fighting continues more Israeli’s are put at the risk of Hamas’ rockets.

Similarly more and more Palestinians are dying every day and even if you do not like Hamas, much like me, you should surely recognize any move to end bloodshed is a good move and the IDFs actions have certainly not helped Israels situation. If anything now more Palestinians will be resentful to Israel and this will do little more than insure the mindless killing of both sides go on and on.

Israel rejects ceasefire move as divisions emerge in leadership

Israel claim to have allowed aid into Gaza, a symbol of their supposed generosity to the evil Palestinian people. What their propaganda arm won’t tell you however is that they blocked humanitarian aid, twice. Another thing they won’t tell you is that the blockade of humanitarian aid had a devastating effect on the Palestinians living in Gaza, it was so bad in fact that people were eating grass to survive.

Israels outgoing PM is in on the whole propaganda thing and as one would expect was lying to the oblivious Israeli public about having the Israeli government prevent a humanitarian crisis, he was saying this as the Palestinians were starving. To that end one can forgive the Israeli populace for largely believing their government has prevented a humanitarian crisis by allowing only 40 trucks of aid in through the blockade and that the attacks themselves were unprovoked.

And the aid they let in? Well first they delayed it, right up until the day before the air raids, and the 40 trucks they did allow through, carrying medicine and food, was no more than a drop in the ocean that is the Palestinian humanitarian crisis. Forty trucks for 1.3 million people? Simply putting the numbers in perspective exposes the lie.

Make no mistake, the reason they let in aid was purely to serve as propaganda, so they could tell people ‘hey, we let in aid, see?’. The truth is the aid was neither enough nor was it timely and they thwarted two attempts before to allow aid to enter Gaza.

The right wing of Israel believes all Palestinians to be their enemy while they don’t say it outright they seldom make the distinction between Palestinian civilians and Hamas. Ghaleb Majadle, the first Arab minister in the Israeli government, says the fighting will destroy almost any chance of diplomatic recovery and for having these blasphemous thoughts is now being called upon to resign, or more like ‘fired’ in the words of Binyamin Netanyau who added “A minister in Israel cannot identify with the enemy during a time of war”.

Of course Netanyau also accused Ghaleb of representing Hamas,

“Majadle held a demonstration in support of our Hamas enemy in Gaza,”

“By doing so, he violated his loyalty oath that he swore to Israel when he joined the cabinet and proved that he represents Hamas in our government.”

The Israeli far right expect unquestioned support from their people, anyone who dares think about the suffering of the Palestinians is supporting Hamas. The ambiguity is deliberate, they claim to be fighting Hamas and not the Palestinian people, but show any sympathy for the Palestinian people and they will accuse you of supporting Hamas.

Majadle slammed after he ‘identifies with enemy’