A foreign peace activist wearing a kefieyh, a traditional Palestinian scarf, wipes her tears after Israeli forces fired tear gas at demonstrators during a weekly protest against Israel’s apartheid wall in the West Bank village of Bilin on June 17, 2011 (AP/Palestina)."If you choose to fight with violence, you're choosing your enemy's best weapon."
Police forces have the best access to violent means, violent tactics, violent ideals. If you win by violence, violence will have won again. If you win by peace, peace wins and the world changes.
- People realize police want protesters to be violent, right? It explains their preemptive violence and is used to justify their extrajudicial punishments.
How about even one day of peace like, say, maybe September 21st next year?
Rarely is a Palestinian asked what happened, and no one listens anyway with all that (understandable) emotion and yelling. Who can listen if people being murdered won't use their indoor voice? Meanwhile sinister politicians, like Netanyahu, and apologists/spokespersons in America (Israeli Nationalists) with soothing and familiar-sounding Jewish (Hebrew) accents say:
"We were only defending ourselves against their children's deadly rock-throwing campaign. We demolished their hovels and found a 'stockpile' of slingshots. We must defend our borders from these displaced people and never take the nuclear option off the table. Mossad can't be expected to do everything. We need a show of force against their uprisings. We have American backing and the best weapons at our disposal! When are they going to learn that? Might makes right. And Israel is always right [and beyond criticism]."
Oops! Didn't mean to criticize self-styled representatives of the Holy Land, which is of course peaceful, pure, and beyond reproach.
This is about US police departments in collusion with the military-industrial complex, clandestine services, Homeland Security, Pentagon crowd-control weapons contractors.
US police say the same thing as Israeli forces. The occupied, however, are now Occupy Movement occupiers who have turned the tables and taken a stand in their own country, the US.
This is about US police departments in collusion with the military-industrial complex, clandestine services, Homeland Security, Pentagon crowd-control weapons contractors.
US police say the same thing as Israeli forces. The occupied, however, are now Occupy Movement occupiers who have turned the tables and taken a stand in their own country, the US.
JG’s blood-and-soil Israeli nationalist fantasy
Supporting a "two-state solution" isn't worth much, if you refuse to acknowledge any criticism of Israel. As a Middle East expert who lived in the Muslim world for nearly 10 years, travels widely there, speaks the languages, writes history from archives and manuscripts and follows current affairs, I found that none of my experience counted for much when I entered the public arena in the United States.