-- it's best to be feared and loved but if can't have both fear works best;
-- using the law to institutionalize repression;
-- having a strong military to enforce it;
-- today a supportive media as well;
-- the enemy must be portrayed as criminals, savages, terrorists; they're wicked; we're righteous;
-- mass-killings and imprisonments, repression, occupation, land seizures and total disregard for civil and human rights are acceptable ways to govern;
-- then convince the world, you're the victim acting in self-defense.
Intifada Year Two (2002)
The struggle continued and got world attention and International Solidarity Movement (ISM) support. It's an August 2001-founded "Palestinian-led movement committed to resisting the Israeli occupation....using nonviolent, direct-action methods and principles." It provides "international protection and a voice....to nonviolently resist an overwhelming military occupation force."
Israel tolerates no opposition. It attacks its members - kills, wounds, imprisons and deports them. Yet, like Palestinians, they persist. They're volunteers from around the world, coming to the Occupied Territories (OPT), risking their lives, "laying down before tanks, breaking curfews, (acting as) human shields," and defying an illegal occupation. The UN gives them no legitimacy, and Israel calls them "anti-Israeli radicals."
Its anti-Palestinian jihad persists, and it came to a head in early April 2002 with the infamous Jenin refugee camp invasion. It's the home of 13,000 displaced Palestinians in the northern West Bank. The IDF cut off the camp and city from outside help; destroyed hundreds of buildings; buried people inside under ruble; cut off power and water; kept out food and essentials, including medical aid; and killed dozens of mostly civilian men, women and children.
With no outside help and little for self-defense, Palestinians resisted, and inflicted losses on the vaunted IDF. One Palestinian inside the camp on a cell phone with a dying battery reached Al-Jazeera television and said: " I just wanted to tell the proud people of the world not to worry, we are resisting and will fight to the last drop of blood." It's the price many there paid and keep paying as the struggle continues.
Throughout the ordeal, the West, US administration, Congress and dominant media react the same way - justifying Israeli actions and condemning "Palestinian terror."
A definition is in order, and noted scholar and activist Equal Ahmad offered one a decade ago. He identified five types of terrorism:
I am a 72 year old, retired, progressive small businessman concerned about all the major national and world issues, committed to speak out and write about them.
After growing up as an admirer of plucky Israel, I am compelled to say that Israel's occupation of those terrotories it captured in 1967 has degenerated into a slow form of genocide.
It is decidely NOT pretty. Israel look at yourself in a mirror and see what you have become.
by
kwalsh (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 137 comments)
on Friday, May 9, 2008 at 12:56:01 AM
