Re: Morrissey: Say YES to human rights, No to apartheid Arab world
The cultural boycott doesn't aim at the Israeli public, but at the government and its musicwash of its crimes. Just watch the photo of Netanyahu with Madonna...
Israel has stated repeatedly that they use culture for Hasbara [propaganda].
However, it is naive to imply that the ethnic cleansing and apartheid are just government policy and the Israeli public is against it.
We, as Israelis, benefit from the stolen land and resources. I grew up on stolen land.
When I found out about the Nakba, I was horrified. I shared what I discovered with my friends, but not a single one of them was outraged. To my dismay I realised they were all racists with different shades and intensity. Not one of them accepted that the Palestinians should have their right, as refugees, to return. My childhood friends were all happy to continue to live on the stolen land while Palestinians were forced into deprivation because of Israel.
Need I say how many Israelis actively facilitate the Israeli crimes against the Palestinians? I left Israel because I was disgusted that so many were directly involved and even more were complicit. I guess such a high proportion is not completely out of character for colonialists, but it was too much to bear and I was longing for a society in which there are more than a handful who are outraged by racism.
Yael Kahn
First of all , lie number 1 - HASBARA doesn't mean propaganda in Hebrew . It means to explain, hence explaining FACTS.
And now a fact - The cultural boycott doesn't aim just against the Israeli government, it boycotts both Israelis and Jews, which is nothing new in the Arab world as even before the creation of the state of Israel , the Arab league loved that weapon (one out of many) against Jews :On December 2, 1945, the Arab League Council declared a formal boycott to any Jewish owned business operating in Mandatory Palestine: "Jewish products and manufactured goods shall be considered undesirable to the Arab countries." All Arab "institutions, organizations, merchants, commission agents and individuals" were called upon "to refuse to deal in, distribute, or consume Zionist products or manufactured goods."
Hmmm a boycott long before the creation of Israel and the Nakba....
Don't speak as "we as Israelis" , speak for yourself only as you're clearly a self-hating Jew trying to lose your identity on the expense of wiping the Jewish nation.
You're nuts, there is no policy of ethnic cleansing or an apartheid. It's a brutal lie.
Stolen land??? there is an undeniable historical connection between the Jewish people and the land. The Jews were expelled from the land 2,000 years ago by the Roman Empire, but a small core minority always inhabited the land of Israel. Your hatred for Judaism has blinded your mind completely. The whole world is a stolen land and occupied :America, Australia, Europe, Africa. The Jews have more right and legitimacy for their place in Israel than most countries in the world especially more than the Arab/European colonists.
Crimes against the Palestinians? you should blame the Arab leaders for that. How convenient that until 67 when the West Bank and Gaza were under Jordan's and Egypt regime respectively, there was no cry for the creation of a Palestinian state.
Nakba? It was tragic how 700,000 Palestinians left their homeland in 48'(it should be pointed out that a progress report of the United Nations Mediator on Palestine, Submitted to the Secretary-General for Transmission to the Members of the United Nations, General Assembly Official Records in September 1948 claimed the refugee number was actually 472,000) . However, the term of "refugee" has a very different meaning, in the context of the Palestinian problem, to the normal international law for refugees created in 1951 by UNCHR. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), which was established prior to the 1951 convention in response to the humanitarian crisis, applied the following definition:
"Under UNRWA's operational definition, Palestine refugees are persons whose normal place of residence was Palestine between June 1946 and May 1948, who lost both their homes and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict. UNRWA's services are available to all those living in its area of operations who meet this definition, who are registered with the Agency and who need assistance. UNRWA's definition of a refugee also covers the descendants of persons who became refugees in 1948."
That means that any Arab who came to live in the British Mandate of Palestine just for two years is considered a Palestinian refugee! why was the date June 1946 selected in the UNRWA law? Because in 28-29 May 1946, the first Arab summit in Alexandria claimed that the Palestinian issue is a common Arab issue and that Jewish immigration to Palestine is unacceptable since it leads to unrest and affects public safety. The Bludan conference of the Arab League in June 1946 established the Higher Arab Committee to "coordinate efforts with regard to Palestine," a radical body that led and coordinated attempts to wipe Israel off the map.
What's even more preposterous about the UNRWA law is one's refugee status can be inherited to the descendents who never lived/born in Palestine in the first place. This is against the normal international law which refuses to acknowledge descendents as refugees. That means the Palestinian refugee problem has jumped in ridiculous numbers - from 700,000 to 5 million Palestinian refugees in 2012! Only 30,000-50,000, of the original Palestinian refugee population, live in the world today.
Even President Mahmoud Abbas said in 2011: "On numbers of refugees, it is illogical to ask Israel to take 5 million, or indeed 1 million" . "That would mean the end of Israel."
The Palestinian refugee problem is the responsibility and creation of the Arab League, as it had decided to threaten the existence of the Jews and the newly planned state of Israel agreed upon by UN Partition Proposal in 1947 : Arab League Secretary Azzam Pasha, according to an interview in an 11 October 1947 article of Akhbar al-Yom, said: "I personally wish that the Jews do not drive us to this war, as this will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades". Most of the Palestinians left their homes from their free will after being promised by the Arab League, that upon returning to their home all of Palestine would be clean of Jews. The Arab countries wanted to finish what Nazi Germany started. Moreover, the Arab leaders threatened the Palestinians that those who would wish to stay under the newly Jewish regime, would be looked upon as renegades.
A little more than two years after World War 2 has ended when 1/3 of the total population of Jews was exterminated, the Jews in Israel had to fight for their lives as they knew what the Arab world is capable of. It is well documented that during WW2 high figurative key men in the Arab World made a pack with the devil and agreed with Hitler on the fate of the Jewish nation in the world, notably the Grand mufti of Jerusalem, Muhammad Amin al-Husayni. Hitler was considered a hero, a saviour and a modern prophet in the Arab world, why aren't you horrified at that?! Why aren't you horrified that the Holocaust crossed over to North Africa as well, and concentration camps and transportations started there?!
What about the Jewish Nakba?! are you ignorant as hell or are you so racist to Spharadic Jews that you've "forgotten" about it? there were many horrific pogroms happening in North Africa , escalating in 1947 when Jews were murdered in various Arab countries and were deprived by the Arab governments of their citizenship, their property was stolen and they were expelled from their homes. Between 800,000 to 1 million Jews were expelled from their homeland in the Arab world in the years of 1948-70's. Israel solved the Jewish refugee problem when they took them in and gave them citizenship. In contrast, The Arab league didn't want to give a solution to the Palestinian refugee problem and preferred to use their tragic state for their own benefit as a "human strategic weapon" against Israel. Few Palestinians actually received citizenship from the Arab countries they fled to. Most were placed in refugee camps in the Arab countries, continuing to suffer there to this day.
You're disgusted? I'm disgusted by people like you, who use lies and propaganda to upgrade their social status in foreign countries and apologize to the world for their "bad" DNA of Jewish blood. The unfortunate fact which many are not aware or perhaps cannot believe is that some of the biggest Anti-Semites in the world are Jews themselves or at least have some Jewish background in their family tree. Your state of mind is more dangerous and life threatening than any other form of Anti-Semitism by non-Jews since you use your Jewish background to give your lies, twisted hate and racism a backbone and legitimacy. You're using the old trick in the book - you can spread hate and lies about Jews and Israelis because you're "Jewish" and "Israeli" yourself, so it's all good. Bravo traitor.