Demonstration against Israeli bombing of Gaza in London on Saturday.

[SmilleysPeople]

If anyone is intersted.

It's at 12.30pm along Embankment, nearest tubes Embankment and Charing Cross.

It's being organised by Palestinian Solidarity Campaign, Stop the War Coaltion and numerous other groups.

I will bump this sporadically, but if anyone else would like to help promote this, plaese bump too.

I will be there.

MT I think that is exactly the point the poster is making.

Very moving Starhawk...

She could have made it in fewer lines then. This is a parenting forum FGS. Some of us don;t hacve times for essays

MT from the same paragraph (maybe shortly before you stppoed reading)

'I only know that they are children, too.'

Yep, children are children and they suffer both ways. Just like you said.

That doesn't make the situation equal.

German children suffered just as much as British children in WWII when their fathers were killed or when thier cities were of bombed. Making the bombing of either sets of civilains wrong of course. BUT surely you don't claim there was no side in that conflict without a genuine justifiable reason for fighting? that there were injustices being committed, against the Jews of course, and occupations of others that needed to be resisted?

I do not understand your argument.

The suffering is equal, whatever your nationality, of course, violence is futile and should be stopped;all that I can agrre with but the idea that an underlying injustice causing much of the violence should not be spoken against in the form of a protest, I just do not get.

Ah well MT, that is an entirely different, and more understandable reason.

(the essay thing. Just incase any one thinks I am grinning at anyone being bombed or anything)

Which I'm not.

Bloody minefield.

bad analogy.

I give up.

he answer is people, even very clever popel, are fools. They have been folls in the past and will be fools in the future. The dead are dead. Their suffering has ended. Think about it, really.

The whole propogander movement on any sode is making people alive feel anger at dead peoples suffering. But their suffering is over. If you resurrect the dead you only ensure more people suffer and die - if you wnat any death to mean anything, respect their peace.

The people who do mnost of the killinbg on boith sides are not romantic freedom fighteers - they are brutal gangsters. Dp ypu thik the man who cut off another human beings head with a knife was making a political statement? He was a maniac, a psychopath. These are the top ranks of Hamas. And they thrive in this environment.

If anyone wants to do anthinbg of good - stop swallowing the rhetoric.

Smilleyspeople, the fact that you are quoting situations such as Russia and Chechnya and China and Tibet in the same post shows a shaky grasp of the nature of oppression/protest imo.

The Chechnyans might very well be oppressed but their level of violent protest is quite sickening and unacceptable. I'm thinking of the school seige in particular, but also various hideous hostage takings and other incidents that I've tried to blank out of my mind over the years.

It's the same with most violent protest such as the IRA campaign and the blowing up of buses full of innocent Israelis including children. It never works and it's never justified.

I despise and amsickenede by every terrorist attack as much as you MM.

You can be sickened by Beslan and also sickneed by the ongoing suffering the Russians cause in Chechnya every day.

I want both the stop, but I think the only way it will stop is when people stop being oppressed.

the IRA have only stopped now they feel their greivances ar being addressed politically. Heavy handed tactics, did not work with them, and bombing Palestinians will not work either.

Fanial sentience should have been: The injustice need sto be addressed then the violence will stop.

I am protesting for the injustice to be recognised and addressed.

The Israeli's are just as oppressed as the PAlestinains. Until you can see thatm this farce will continue. The wealth of nations has nothing to do with it.

Smilleyspeople, you despise terrorist attacks and yet you justify them at the same time?

And what exactly is the injustice that you want recognised? The existence of Israel?

yes what injustice SP? Lets remove the emotional unhelpful rhetoric...

The fact is, Israelis cannot just live in peace because their neighbours have vowed to wipe them out and push them into the sea. They continually bomb them.

What choice do the Israelis have but to lash out? They have spent the last 2000 years without a home land, being bullied and murdered and cast as the eternal scapegoat around the globe. Don't you think they would do anything to avoid that again, to kill anyone that threatens their country? The palestinians were offered their own state in the 1940s but they wanted all the land (and no it didn't all belong to them in the first place!)and they tried to take it in the ensuing war. They failed and here we are.

Its a mess so please explain how on your march you propose to solve this????

If the people in these marches were really matching against violence, where were they last week when Hamas began to bomb Israel?

Where have I justified terrorism?

The injustice is ,(the fact you ask that demonstrates you know absolute;y nothing about the Plaestinain history),that the Palestians were forced from thier land and country due to fear of being wiped out (see deir yashim post above) in 1948, and forced into refugee camps in gaza, west bank and Lebanon.(previosuly to this they lived peacefully sisde by side with jews). Sixty years later they are still living in these refugee camps, never allowed to reteurn (many families still have th keys and deeds to thier homes that Israeli now live in.)

Incidentally, two refugee camps in lebanon, Sabre and Shatila were attacked in 1981,and all residents, men women and children were murdered under the supervision of Israeli army. Arial Sharon was the foreign minister at the time, and this is why there were calls for him in the EU, to be brought to trail as a war criminal and why Eitan the israeli general at the time wouldn't enter the UK 3years ago for fear of being served papers as a war criminal.

Thousands of Plaestninans still live in refugee camps in Lebanon, where they are not wanted, but they have no where else to go as Israel will not allow then to return to the homes they forced them out of.

Israel has ignored UN resolutions to allow Palestinians to return, and to rteurn land to Plaestinains to 1967 borders and continues to ignore these resolutions. No actions would ever be taken against them for this as they have US support.

Israeli settlers, have continued to gradually occupy and take over the little pieces of land which the Plaestinains had been left with, in an attempt to return all Israel to a zionist state.

Israel has made Gaza into a huge open air prison, built a wall around it and controls everything whihc is allowed in or out. They limit water and electructy supplies, they have been blockading food and medical supplies so that Palestinain poeple are suffering from mass malnutrition and the UN has been warning of humanitarian disaster for a long time.

If you don't beleive me about injustices the look at the UN staements about Israel/Plaestine for decades, which the Israelis can ignore as they know they have the US on thier side, or see what Nelson mmandela has said, or Kofi Anan or Noam Chomsky, or Primo Levi many many more.

The staements that 'Israel is oppressed as Palestine' and 'what is the injustice?' just demonstrates you know nothing about the history of the Palestians and the level of the injustices against them, and have little interest.

I'm signing off MN for a while, buy finally let me unequivcally state,as some seem to have misundetsood, I despise violence and terrorism, I feel sick to my stomach when and Israeli bus is blown up and when a mosque is bombed (just on the news now), but I view the actions of Israel as tererorism too, and much more destruvative terrorism, just because it's backed by a state and the US does, not make ot any less terrorism, and if they want the attacks to stop on them they need to stop bombing and give the Plaestinians the justice they have syatematicallay denied.

yes I think that quotation from Golda Meir pretty well sums up the Israeli position nicely.

I see Israel is categorically denying that there is a humanitarian crisis on Gaza whilst the UN is categorically stating that there is.

Smilleyspeople - zionism will not listen to facts or reason. It just won't. It is implacable and belligerent. But there are plenty of people who are in full agreement with you.

Interesting points you raised about Sharon's status as a war criminal: was it not Menachim Begin who was part of Irgun/stern gang, which blew up the King David hotel? he was also an Israeli Prime Minister at one time. And Mr Olmert, with his five investigations for corruption. What nice people. What moral high ground.

There is no moral ground to be had here on either side.

I agree with MT, fwiw. Israel is always the bad guy, eh?

Dear Monkey trousers
I am sorry you felt that the Starhawk essay was a con - I apologise for the length, but it would have been unfair to edit it without asking the author.

To reply to your comment on it - I agree that Palestinian children are not more (nor less) important than Israeli children - I thought that this was EXACTLY the point that Starhawk was making.

We all bring our pre-conceptions, mis-conceptions and prejudices to everything we read/see/hear as a kind of filter, so it is not surprising that different people understand things in different ways. The only way to try and overcome this is to keep talking. Even if the other side seems completely at odds with your own position.

I cannot speak for others - I would agree that Hamas should not fire rockets into Israel. I did not march against the upswing in rocket attacks partly because I did not know about them - we are all reliant to some extent on the editing of news (and hence our perceptions of reality) by others.

However despite this, I do not feel that the Israeli response is proportionate - so still feel that in justice I must protest against the air strikes (and now the invasion). Power does seem very much to be with the Israelis in this situation.

In addition I cannot see how on earth the Israel response will help - surely it must just entrench further hatred and alienation in a population that already feels itself to be in an intolerable situation with little to lose? Then the cycle of violence continues. This does not excuse or condone the rocket attacks from Hamas - but two wrongs do not make a right, and just as the members of Hamas are responsible for their actions, so are (in a democracy) Israelis responsible for the actions of their government.

Have you any suggestions how I could (to the limited degree that it is possible for one private citizen) do my best to make sure that BOTH SIDES are held accountable for their respective behaviour?

it's all gone off hasn't it

A really interesting thread.

Can I ask as a bit of an aside what the significance is in the shoe-throwing in London today here? Am I being really thick and missing something blindingly obvious?

SP, I know you said you were leaving MN now, but in case you were still around I still genuinely don't understand your position. Unless I misunderstood your post, you feel that the injustice was the initial displacement. So, if that injustice is to be resolved does this mean your support a wholesale land return to the Palestinians (meaning the end of Israel as a state) and does this apply to all the other countries around the world where similar events have occurred? Or do you support a more practical solution such as financial compensation to the Palestinians and perhaps a redrawing of both states' borders, giving the Palestinians a viable homeland in return for allowing Israelis to live in peace?

I found this letter in the Times today quite uplifting, because it is so unusual to hear any words of empathy from the Arab community about Israel's position (but I fear that the present bombing campaign will undermine such progress).

"Should blame be placed on Israel, Hamas or the United States for the violence in Gaza?
Each one plays a role, but whose actions are responsible for powering the violence in Gaza?"

"Sir, From within the current conflict in Gaza, a kernel of hope for a lasting peace may come from an unlikely source, the mainstream Arab populations themselves. Unreported in the mainstream British media, an increasing number of the Arab press and political commentators are openly condemning Hamas, and expressing an understanding of Israel?s predicament.

Although democratically elected, Hamas has repeatedly proved itself unwilling to act in the best interests of its people. This, coupled with the missile attacks on Israeli civilians from Gaza, has created for the first time in generations a degree of understanding for the Israeli position from within the Arab world.

This voice of empathy, long absent from the region, could be a vital turning point in building a long-term peace across the borders of the Middle East. It is time that those on both sides of the divide put aside their generations of mistrust, and demonstrated that they can be objective and even handed in working towards a lasting peace.

Dr Wafik Moustafa"

Sorry, meant to have added that Dr Moustafa is the Chairman of the Conservative Arab Network.

That is uplifting MM, I wish the media would report such actions so we can see the true views of both sides instead, as with the bbc, portraying what is seen to be more newsworthy.

well I suppose it all depends which newspaper you read doen't it? the Times is a right wing newspaper. Everybody knows that. Read the letters in today's Guardian - which is a more leftist newspaper - and you will get a very different picture. Most of the letters are from Jewish people living in England who are disgusted at the actions of Israel and condemn them wholeheartedly. Why not look at them online, now? then you really will get "the true views of both sides" won't you?

Hassled - the gesture of throwing your shoe is the equivalent of spitting on somebody's face. It is a supreme insult. Remember the Iraqi journalist with GWB a couple of weeks ago? remember what Iraqis did when Saddam's statue was toppled? that's what it means.

Quite honestly one of the most uplifting events that is not reported by the mainstream press is the Egyptian working class holding mass demonstrations and strikes against both the attack on Gaza by the Israeli state and their own government which has disgracefully closed the border to refugees.

I find it hard to understand how anyone can think that the might of Israel with F16s, tanks and the potential to use nuclear weapons can be compared with what Hamas does. Also to equate the two would be a bit like saying that if the IRA planted a bomb it would be okay to bomb Belfast because all those people desrve what they get.