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What do chocolate, cookies, A4 paper, potato chips, cumin, toys, jelly, nuts, dried fruit, nutmeg, and goats have in common?
It's a tricky one. If you're a moderate, they have absolutely nothing in common. But if you are a hard-line Israeli politician, they are all potentially dangerous goods that could threaten Israel's security. Well, it seems that that side of the political spectrum has won the argument, as all the above are items that the Israeli government has prohibited from entering Gaza.
It's understandable. I mean, you can inflict a lot of damage on your oppressors with a chocolate biscuit. And those paper cuts, boy, they can really hurt.
But I don't want to over-dramatize the situation, because it's not all doom and gloom down in Gaza. Many items are allowed in: mops, sponges for washing, egg cartons, glass cleaner, hair combs, plastic chicken cages, and lentils, amongst a list you can see for yourself at www.gisha.org.
So, what exactly are the 1.5 million Gazan people complaining about? What could possibly have been on the Freedom Flotilla that Israeli commandos attacked early Sunday morning in international waters, in yet another assault that has appalled our global community?
By most accounts, on the flotilla were 10,000 tons of, not guns, but vital humanitarian aid. The people of Gaza desperately need it to survive the 1,000 days of illegal blockade which has crippled Gaza and reduced it to a barely functioning, open-air prison. I'm talking about aid like cement to rebuild homes, which have lain in rubble and ruin since the monstrous attacks on Gaza last year; school supplies so that children can dare to hope and live up to their potential; medical equipment, like water purification tablets and wheelchairs, so that the sick and elderly don't suffer and perish needlessly.
The attack stunned the world because of its blatant and absurd disregard for anything resembling international law, human rights, and diplomatic norms. Although, I was stunned at the glaring outrageousness of the attack, I am not surprised by it. Sunday's event cannot be viewed in isolation; it is just another upshot of a dogma long fermenting on Israel's political landscape.
It is a doctrine that lives for itself and off others. It survives by tapping into the subliminal and cognizant levels. It implants into public consciousness a set of tenets that see Israeli's very existence as eternally under threat, to be defended through any means (preferably through use of force to show the enemy who's boss). It is best served through the adoption of an 'us against the world' mentality.
By its very nature, hard-line ideology is self-serving and self-perpetuating, its primary goal is to survive -- and that precludes everything. If to exist it must redefine what is acceptable, redraw the lines of international law, and re-imagine what weapons are appropriate -- so be it. Assigning themselves authority and immunity, Israel's leaders feel licensed to do whatever they like and not expect an international outcry.
But this hardened path is fraught with dangers for all of us. These radical policies debar Palestinian value and, by extension, human value. Harsh measures then become more palatable. Inflicting violence upon an innocent majority to punish the guilty few now seems necessary. Every day the blockade continues is another day our humanity remains under siege.
The effect is a people trapped between a rock and a hard line policy. The product is desperation, and the reaction is more hard line policies that attempt to defend previous hard-line policies! After all, did this outrageous attack take place to preserve Israel's security or to sustain the blockade itself? Such is the self-serving nature of uncompromising ideologies, and the spiral becomes hard to break.
And what I find most frustrating is how Israel defends its actions. By attacking criticism as part of an anti-Israel, anti-Semitic propaganda war. Israel, yet again, fails to understand that the problem is policy, not PR.
Now and always, hard-line policy and those who embrace it are vessels for darker forces that are at once self-cannibalizing and combustible. No good can come of them. They are unsustainable because their sense of righteousness denies human worth. Apart from other hard-liners on all sides who now have been gifted the fuel to invigorate their fanaticism and circulate it far and wide, everyone else loses out:
The people of Gaza lose out: 80% of them live below the poverty line. The children of Gaza lose out: one third of their schools destroyed during the attack on Gaza last year, still haven't been rebuilt. The newborns of Gaza lose out: 95% of Gaza's nitrate-full water, fails the World Health Organization's standards leaving thousands of babies at risk of poisoning.
The people of Israel lose out: rejected by a third of the countries in the United Nations, shunned by much of the global community whose foundation is human value, ordinary Israelis find themselves persona non grata outside their 'borders'. Living defensively isn't a way of life; people only thrive on secure foundations. Is the Israeli government really prepared to condemn its own people to the shaky foundations of rule-by-fear, and its consequences? So Israel's leadership needs to ask itself some tough questions. "Is our long term strategy to rule by fear? Is our long term outlook for the Israeli people one of constant defense? Are these horizons of hopelessness what we want for our people?"
And moderates around the world lose out: people like me, who dared to believe that the road to peace doesn't have to be a lonely and desolate one. That a two-state solution is not the figment of a naïve idealist's imagination. And those whose ethical responsibility it is now to deal with the science of reality, to form a coalition of humans that question and confront the assumptions of those on their far right, and to reaffirm the ethos of moderation.
After all, isn't moderation where most of the living is done?
Well, speaking as a moderate, I fear if the tides don't turn in our region, moderation will be amongst the most painful casualties of continued aggression and hard line policies. As someone who lived through the late King Hussein's fight for peace, until his very last breath, and watches his son, my husband, King Abdullah, continue that fight, it actually breaks my heart to see us moving further and further away from peace.
Peace. People. Moderation. I would have thought that those were too heavy a price to pay for sustaining a hardened stance.
So, when flotillas came to break the blockade, they came to help the people of Gaza. But, just as important, they came to break the blockade on the Israeli mind.
Israel is not situated in America or Europe, but in the Middle East, where every single country has a deep history of violently suppressing minorities.
Jordan is a country ruled by minority with excess privelages (Hashemites), yet everybody takes it for granted, because the minorities are silent (they know better...)
As for "disproportinate respones": Israel has learned, in time, to speak the language of its neighbourhood, to a degree. It doesnt act like Jordan in Black September (5000 killed), Syria in Hama massacre of 1982 (up to 40,000 Killed), or Turkey with the Kurds (up to 40,000 killed since 1987), and carpet bomb civilian territories (after all, Gaza is the densest populated city in the world, if it was carpet bombed, deaths would be in the tens of thousands, not hundreds). Instead, it chooses the "least damaging" approach that would pressure the Hamas into
A. Not targeting Israeli civilians
B. Agree to a comletely uneven exchange of prisoners (1 Israeli for >200 Palestinians)
"Least damaging" does not mean no damage. That, unfortuanately, is unavoidable. BUT, when you have rhetoric of "Itbach al Yahud (Massacre the Jews) some 30 miles from your largest population center, your #1 priority is to defend yourself. Any other country (in the world, to saynothing of the region) would have done much, MUCH more.
Its already worked in numerous circumstances such as religion and with indigenous population and by addressing a zero forced movement policy we might close that idiotic chapter in history about resettlement issues. Its great if a population wants to resettle but there has to be a proper proportioning of agreement.
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redcelt 10 hours ago (5:45 PM)The siege and blockade of Gaza have damaged water and sanitation infrastructure and prevented the entry of materials necessary for operation, maintenance, and repair. Restrictions on electricity and on the entry of essential chemicals and chlorine necessary to operate desalination plants and disinfect drinking water have compromised the drinking water of Gazans. Access to water is limited to 6-8 hours from one to four days a week for the entire population, and 90% of such water is unsafe to drink.
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redcelt 12 hours ago (3:13 PM)The siege and blockade of Gaza have damaged water and sanitation infrastructure and prevented the entry of materials necessary for operation, maintenance, and repair. Restrictions on electricity and on the entry of essential chemicals and chlorine necessary to operate desalination plants and disinfect drinking water have compromised the drinking water of Gazans. Access to water is limited to 6-8 hours from one to four days a week for the entire population, and 90% of such water is unsafe to drink
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redcelt 10 hours ago (5:35 PM)HUFFPOST SUPER USER
SaraSH 14 hours ago (1:17 PM)I can say that and get away with it. My roots are in the "promised land" so to speak, but right is right, and that is the word of God
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StCuthbert 11 hours ago (4:27 PM)Look, Gaza is ruled by a group that doesn't even recognize Israel's right to exist. That is on its south side. On its north side, much of the same with Hezbollah. Hard to fault any of Israel's security measures given this situation.
If Israel did not want peace, they would still be fighting with Egypt.
Lastly, why doesn't Queen Rania do something about getting a democracy going in Jordan?? Her own country's record on human rights is pretty abysmal.
Here you go:
http://www
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StCuthbert 15 hours ago (12:24 PM)If there is a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, why is Hamas refusing to let aid in? Explain it to me.
Ynetnews is a pro Israeli tabloid. It has about as much credibility as those rags that report aliens and end time prophecies in American grocers
However, you can find this report also in these leading news sources:
http://new
http://www
http://www
So, nice work trying to discredit Israel's leading news source. Sure it's pro-Israeli because it is essentially Israeli, but it's far from "those rags that report aliens and end time prophecies in American grocers".
Israel is turning itself into an authoritarian apartheid state. I was raised by survivors, and we know better. Because of what was done to us, does not give us license do to it to others. Judaism does not believe in collective guilt, nor collective punishment. Judaism can be summed up in one sentence: to save one life is to save the world. "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." George Santayana
The blockade is strengthing Hamas, just as the Cuba embargo had the reverse effect.
To all those who approve: we cannot lose Turkey, and Turkey is in NATO.
I do not live in Israel, because I married outside the faith. In Israel, it is illegal for a Jew to marry a non-Jew. Those 1600 apartments that caused so much friction, are for sale to Jews only. Someone here brought up domestic violence in Jordan. The domestic violence statistics in Israel are nothing to write home about.
Evangelicals only support Israel, so their lord will come back. Evangelicals are opposed to a peace settlement, because no turmoil means no Armageddon.
http://new