You need to click on the links to see the artwork:
"DIVIDED FAMILIES WITHIN A DIVIDED PALESTINE"
"Can you imagine being separated from your children for almost half a year? Can you imagine how four children aged 4 to 16 feel being kept away from their parents?
These horrors are real in Palestine… a nation that is split in two…. so are families. All this thanks to Ehud Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas… the dynamic duo of the region. Thanks also to Uncle Sam for allowing this to happen.
And you wonder why these kids grow up with hatred and resentment? There is a very simple way to prevent that from happening… a very obvious way, PALESTINE MUST BE UNITED AND FREE! THE SIEGE OF GAZA MUST END IMMEDIATELY!!
The following reports of one family’s agony….
"Israel blocking Gaza kids from joining parents in Ramallah
Amira Hass, Haaretz
February 19, 2008
Israel is preventing four children in the Gaza Strip from joining their parents in Ramallah. The children, aged 3 to 16, have been alone in the Gaza Strip since September 2007 when their mother went to the West Bank for medical treatment and did not return.
The High Court of Justice is now debating a petition filed at the end of January by the Center for the Defense of the Individual against the Interior Ministry and IDF, to enable the children to join their parents.
Mohamed and Amal al-Adaluni lived in Gaza from 1994. In 2002, al-Adaluni was diagnosed with Behcet’s syndrome, an infectious disease that affects the body’s immune system. In the absence of treatment for her condition in the Strip, she received permits from the Israeli authorities to travel to Ramallah for treatment.
In January 2007, the father, an employee of the Palestinian aviation ministry, was moved to a Ramallah position. The family’s requests to visit him were denied or unanswered.
In September 2007, Al-Adaluni’s condition worsened and she received another permit to go to Ramallah for treatment. Since then, the children have been alone.
The state told the court the family intends to move to the West Bank and there is no reason to allow them to do that. “The petitioners have no right, either in Israeli law or international law, to move from the Gaza Strip, which is no longer under military control, to the West Bank,” the prosecution stated.
The prosecution argued that the mother’s condition did not oblige her to remain in Ramallah and she could return to Gaza.
Attorney Ido Blum, who represents the minors, said the state was ignoring the doctors’ opinions that she must remain under his constant supervision. Another medical opinion said the complicated treatment requires the supervision of an expert doctor who is familiar with the illness and patient."
"OLMERT’S WORD IS AS GOOD AS BUSH’S"
"At Annapolis Olmert promised that there would be a halt to expanding settlements in the occupied West Bank….
When Bush was in Israel Olmert promised there would be a halt to expanding settlements in the occupied West Bank….
Annapolis is over, Bush has left…. there has not been a halt to the expansion of settlements in the occupied West Bank…. the only thing that has been halted are forthcoming promises.
Bush supposedly demanded an end to the expansions…. was that a wink I saw in his eye when he was speaking to Olmert?
The settlements ARE expanding, Olmert lied AGAIN…. worst part is NO ONE GIVES A DAMN! Not the Americans, Not the EU, Not the UN…. Palestine (whatever is left of it) stands alone once again….
BUT…. best to be silent or you might be called an anti Semite…
Israel does what it wants, when it wants, where it wants…. It has been for 60 years and has no intention to stop now.
The following paragraph is taken from THIS HaAretz report…. take note of the last sentence
A new neighborhood comprising 27 trailers is currently under construction at the settlement of Eli, north of Ramallah, even though Prime Minister Ehud Olmert vowed publicly after the Annapolis conference that any such building would cease.
Even though some of the trailers are being set up on land privately owned by Palestinians, the authorities are taking no action.
You must demand action …. Your silence is destroying any hopes of a peaceful solution to the conflicts we are facing here."
"THE PSYCHOLOGY OF GENOCIDE ~~ TWO VIEWS"
"When history repeats itself it is frightening… especially if what is being repeated are what we should have taken lessons from… one being NEVER AGAIN!
But it is happening again… and again… and again.
It happened in Eastern Europe, it’s happening today in Palestine… just what goes on in the minds of those that commit these crimes? The following two essays touch on the subject, both interesting reads, one by our friend Khalid Amayreh, the other are the the views of a (Jewish) clinical psychologist at the University of California…
"Palestinians should seek reparations from Germany" by Khalid Amayreh in the West Bank
In the early months of the Aqsa intifada against the Israeli occupation, an Israeli officer in the Nablus region told dozens of handcuffed and blindfolded Palestinian detainees that “we are treating you like the Nazis treated us, and maybe when you are free from our grip, you will find another people whom you will treat the same way we are treating you.”
These were not facetious remarks. That officer was actually displaying definitive symptoms of a chronic collective psychosis permeating through the Israeli Jewish society. It is this collective mental sickness that make Israelis commit the most heinous crimes without feeling the slightest shred of guilt.
Didn’t Dan Halutz, the former Israeli air-force commander and later chief of staff boast that he slept well at night and felt no compunctions after he ordered an F-16 fighter warplane to drop a one-ton bomb on a residential apartment building in downtown Gaza , killing sixteen sleeping people, including 11 children.
In truth, there is an umbilical relationship between the holocaust and Israel’s nefarious behavior toward the Palestinians. In the final analysis, the Palestinians are the victims’ victims as the late Palestinian intellectual Edward Said put it.
In fact, one would not cross into the realm of the absurd by arguing that had Jews not been victims of the holocaust, the Palestinians would most likely have not been victimized by Jews in such a diabolical manner and for that long.
In a certain sense, one can say with very little exaggeration that it was Nazi Germany that created Israel. Yes, Zionism predated the holocaust; but it was the holocaust that gave Zionism the ultimate argument for Jewish statehood.
Not only that, the holocaust proved to be, even today, the ultimate blocker of any meaningful objections to Israeli criminality against the peoples of the Middle East. This explains why and how Israel, which can be viewed, more or less, as an incarnation of Nazi Germany, is treated by the world community as above the laws governing the rest of the world.
Moreover, Israelis continue to evoke the holocaust to justify their harsh repression of Palestinians. Even calls by Jewish settlers for “sending the Arabs to the oven” (which any visitor to Hebron can see scrawled on the walls at the Jewish settler enclave in the city) are justified by the holocaust. Every criticism of Israeli criminality and supremacy, every legitimate objection to the wanton repression meted out to the Palestinian, every criticism of the marauding settlers is always met with the holocaust mantra.! In short, every Palestinian, man, woman, and child, is made to suffer and die because of the holocaust.
Today, every conscripted Israeli soldier, especially those serving in the West Bank, is made to visit the Yad va Chem holocaust museum in Jerusalem right before he or she is deployed to Palestinian population centers to repress and torment these helpless people who had nothing to do with the holocaust.
And one doesn’t have to be a great psychologist to connect the dots and understand the real ghoulish implications of associating the Nazis, the tormentors of the Jews, with the Palestinian, the victims of Zionism
For most Israeli soldiers, the mental message is unmistakable. The Palestinians are today’s Nazis…and by killing and brutalizing them in the harshest of manners, the Jews are only preventing the recurrence of another holocaust. Some Israelis feel that by savaging the Palestinians they are actually avenging the holocaust vicariously, which gives them immense psychological satisfaction.
In their subconscious thinking, many Israeli Jews actually admire the Nazis and their brutality. This is why some of these soldiers and officers often seek to emulate Nazi brutality and project it on Palestinians, since for them might is always right.
Moral blindness
This brings us to post-war Germany and its moral surrender to Zionist blackmail. For nearly sixty years now, Germany has been trying to atone for the holocaust by enabling Israel to commit another holocaust against the Palestinians, never mind that it is a holocaust without gas chambers.
Germany from Konrad Adnauer to Angel Merkel behaved toward Israel in a manner that callously and completely disregarded the monumental oppression meted out by Israel to the Palestinian people.
Germans in general and the German political elite in particular passively watched Israel commit every conceivable crime against the helpless Palestinians, but turned their faces away for fear of displeasing their powerful former victims who came to be in control of powerful nations, such the United States.
Germany was always afraid and reluctant to call the spade a spade, especially when the spade happened to be in Jewish hands, lest it be reminded of the brutal ugliness of its recent past.
Germany, an economic and political giant, but obviously a moral dwarf, actually not only kept silent in the face of Israeli crimes all these years. Germany gave Israel the technical wherewithal to murder Palestinian children. Germany also gave Israel, reportedly free of charge, state-of-the art submarines capable of carrying nuclear warheads.
I don’t know when Germany will wake up from its long moral slumber and deliver itself from the sinister stranglehold of Zionism.
Is it not the time Germany realizes that the holocaust was diabolical in itself, , not necessarily because its victims were primarily Jewish? Would a holocaust against any other ethnic or religious group have been less diabolical? Would Germany have behaved differently had the holocaust targeted non-Jews? Are Germans absorbed so much in the holocaust because of its moral enormity or just because of the post-war Jewish power?
Such questions are vital and relevant since they can eventually contribute to liberating Germans from this haunting moral dilemma whereby they are morally bound to help their former victims savage, murder and brutalize another helpless people that had nothing to do with the holocaust, a people whose sole crime is their weakness and helplessness and determination to be free.
It is probably useless to appeal to the political establishment in Germany, which like its equally evil sister in the United States, is not based on morality but sheer immediate political expediency.
Non the less, one is encouraged by certain recent indications that Germany might finally be getting sober from decades of moral blindness and criminal indifference toward the Palestinians, its ultimate victims.
According to media report, a group of German intellectuals have called on Berlin to change the holocaust-rooted blind support of Israel, arguing correctly that the creation of the Jewish state turned the Palestinians into victims of the Nazi holocaust as well.
The intellectuals, who include 25 prominent figures, argued that it was the holocaust which Germany perpetrated that brought about the suffering that has persisted in the Middle East for the last six decades and has at the present become unbearable.
Furthermore, these intellectuals argued that “without the holocaust of the Jews, Israel wouldn’t see itself as entitled, or forced to ride over the human rights of the Palestinians and the inhabitants of Lebanon.
Of course, the language used here is extremely mild since what Israel has been doing in Palestine and Lebanon goes far beyond merely riding over Palestinian and Lebanese human rights.
Israel is effectively committing genocide. For example, the dropping of 2-3 million cluster bomblets over populated areas in southern Lebanon is par excellance a genocidal act of the highest order since 2-3 cluster bomblets are sufficient to kill 2-3 million children. The same can be said about the ongoing blockade of Gaza which is killing innocent Palestinians in the hundreds.
Reparations
In light of the proven umbilical relationship between the holocaust and the ongoing Palestinian plight, one can say that the Palestinian people have a legitimate moral right to demand holocaust reparations from Germany.
The Palestinians nearly lost everything. And every Palestinian under the sun has a story of suffering. This writer for example lost three paternal uncles to Zionist bullets on a single day. And up to this day, there has been no acknowledgment of guilt, no compensation, nothing from Israel.
I know such talk is likely to raise many eyebrows in Germany. However, if Germans have the moral courage to look deep into their souls, they undoubtedly will discover that the Palestinians are more than justified in seeking adequate and just reparations from Germany for the enormous calamities Nazi Germany had inflicted on us.
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"Psychology of the ShoahHolocaust educators hold reunion conference" by Debra Rubin
To understand evil, one must understand the psychological proclivity to prejudice. That, says Aaron Hass, is an important lesson of the Holocaust.
A psychology professor at California State University and an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California at Los Angeles, Hass made his remarks Saturday evening during the 13th national alumni conference of the Holocaust and Jewish Resistance Teachers’ Program, co-sponsored by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.
The program ‹ sponsored with the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, the American Federation of Teachers and the Jewish Labor Committee ‹ each summer takes Holocaust educators on a study mission to Poland and Israel.
A winter reunion conference, open to all program alumni, allows further study. This year’s reunion, held Saturday through Monday at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, brought together some 155 teachers from more than 20 states, including Hawaii. Agenda topics included “Using the Works of Young Writers to Teach About the Holocaust” and “Holocaust Denial: Flat Earth Theory or a Clear and Present Danger?”
In his remarks, Hass said that people often wonder how Nazis, “who went to church on Sunday, played with their children and saw themselves as wonderful family men with wonderful values” could commit such heinous acts and be able to maintain a positive self-image.
There is a tendency among people, he said, to “want to feel superior to others.”
Acknowledging this is “not a very seemly part of ourselves,” Hass said, “Why do we enjoy gossip? Because it makes us feel superior.”
This superiority extends to groups, as well. “Every group seems to have a need to feel superior to other groups,” he said. The next step for the Nazis was to take that feeling of superiority and then dehumanize Jews.
“In order to persecute innocents,” Hass said, “you have to first dehumanize them. You have to dehumanize them in order to quell your conscience.”
Hass worries about today’s emphasis on pride in diversity, saying it is a “little wrongheaded,” in that there is a very thin line between asserting pride in one’s group to “then go over and feel your group is better than the other group.”
Looking at other psychological aspects that allowed the Nazis to commit their crimes against humanity, Hass pointed to “moral drift” and group pressure to demonstrate loyalty.
Seeing other people lie, cheat and steal lowers inhibitions “because everyone does it,” he said. “You don’t have to hate Jews to kill them. You need individuals who are insensitive and willing to engage in heinous acts in order to maintain their comrades’ respect.”
Warning that “you can’t look at history backwards,” Hass indicated that it is wrong to blame the Jew themsevles for not more actively resisting their perpetrators.
“There is a human tendency to keep your head down, hope that you’ll survive,” he said, pointing out, in fact, that when the Jews were rounded up into the ghettos, “they thought this was the end of their persecution.”
Plus, he said, resistance requires outside assistance. “Most people were quite happy the Germans were eradicating Jews from their midst,” Hass said.
Conference material had billed Hass’ topic ‹ erroneously as it turned out ‹ as “Once the Eyewitnesses Are Gone: The Future of Holocaust Education.”
Asked prior to the dinner to comment on that topic, Stan Malm, who teaches in the Johns Hopkins School of Education Division of Public Safety Leadership, stressed the importance of videos and testimonials by survivors and eyewitnesses.
“Someday, that’s all we’re going to have left,” said the Columbia resident."
"THERE IS NOTHING PASSIVE ABOUT NON-VIOLENT RESISTANCE TO EVIL"
"The following was written by a very dear friend on her Blog yesterday.
It raises some questions that we are not all aware of, after reading it you might come to accept the concept of Non-Violent Resistance as the means to rid the world of the violence….
Many people think that what Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. taught and stood for was passivity in the face of attack.
What Gandhi and King stood for, taught and practiced was “Non-violent RESISTANCE to Evil.” This is anything but passive.
Her Blog offers many worthwhile ideas to think about… it’s a good place to visit daily.
"Non-violent Resistance is Misunderstood" by Nola Drazdoff
I had a discussion with a friend today that got me to thinking about the issue of non-violence as a means to change unjust situations.
Many people think that what Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. taught and stood for was passivity in the face of attack.
What Gandhi and King stood for, taught and practiced was “Non-violent RESISTANCE to Evil.” This is anything but passive.
What these great men demonstrated was that you MUST stand against injustice, oppression and violent attacks. You must STAND up. You must refuse to obey with unjust rules and laws. They taught that you must refuse to go along with acts that support and sustain discrimination or racism.
There is nothing passive about resistance. These acts - to refuse to comply with injustice and evil motives of the powerful - require more courage than picking up a stick and fighting back with violence.
The beauty of the non-violent resistance approach is that the abused/oppressed resistor is clean in the struggle. It is easier to expose the dastardly deeds of the aggressor and the oppressor, when the victim STANDS AGAINST the propagator, and does not use violence to fight back.
When an oppressed person or group responds to their oppression with violence, it is easier for the oppressor to justify their acts. They can turn the tables and try to make it look like the victim gives them no choice but to be violent and abusive. Look at the Israeli/Palestinian conflict for a good example of this.
Non-violent resistance is not about just sitting down, doing nothing, and allowing others to beat on you. It is about standing up to them when they come, taking the beating, and letting the inhumanity and the bestiality of their behavior convict them in the eyes of all decent human beings.
That is how India gained its Independence from British Colonial rule. The Indians, under Gandhi’s leadership, burned their ID cards, refused to honor laws making Indian’s second class citizens in their own country, making salt when it was prohibited for Indians to do so. They took ACTIONS that defied the British colonial rule of their country. They were arrested, beaten, imprisoned… and ultimately, they prevailed.
Apartheid is no more in South Africa, for the same reason.
When the world finally wakes us to unprovoked and hideous injustice, they finally end it. But when there is blame to be shared by both sides, it takes longer to reveal the true villian.
That is the way we change the world.
Not by warring. Not by doing nothing.
There is nothing PASSIVE about Non-violent resistance to evil."
"ASK A BIGOT….."
"My favourite bigot will be responding to questions today in HaAretz’s special ‘Ask a Question’ section…
Their guest today is none other than Abe Foxman of the ADL…
So, why not make his day…. ask him a question or two…
Ask how he can justify the genocide of the Palestinian people by the Israeli government….
Ask how he can justify 60 years of occupation of the Palestinian nation….
Ask how he can justify the Israelis building a wall around Palestinian towns and villages…. fencing them in the same way Jews were fenced in in Warsaw….
Ask him how he can justify the inhumane siege of Gaza that has already resulted in hundreds of deaths… OF INNOCENT CIVILIANS….
The ADL stands against DEFAMATION…. ask him what the meaning of that word is…..
He can be reached today…. through THIS link…. go for it!
BUT… prepare yourself …. his answer to ALL of the above just might be….. ‘YOU’RE
AN ANTI-SEMITE!!’ …. that’s his standard answer to most questions."
