'Israel is a Lunatic State' - Finkelstein on Gaza Flotilla Attack

Gaza and Flotilla Solidarity Action Melbourne

Gaza and Flotilla Solidarity Action in Melbourne Australia 1st June 2010 Video by Izzy Music by Monkeymarc

CTU Calls for Stronger Action over Gaza

CTU media release

1 June 2010
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The CTU has called for stronger action over the Israeli attack on the  humanitarian flotilla attempting to breach the blockade of Gaza.

Peter Conway, CTU Secretary, said: “It is not enough for our Government to simply call the new Israeli ambassador Shemi Tzur in for a chat. The new Israeli embassy in Wellington should be closed and the special  arrangement for young Israelis to travel to New Zealand should be revoked.”

“The Government should also call for an end to the blockade.”

ENDS

For further information contact:

Fraser Pettigrew, Communications and Campaigns Advisor

04 802 3817 / 027 243 7031 / fraserp@nzctu.org.nz

Peter Conway, Secretary, CTU

04 802 3816 / 027 493 9748

Sacrosanct State and Complacent West

By Jeremy Salt – Ankara

'Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel and it must remain undivided.' -- Barrack Obama

'I've been to Gilo and seen the security fence protecting Israeli families from attacks in their own homes.' -- Hillary Clinton

'When I heard about the rocket fire at Israel I felt it was a danger to Italy and to the entire West.' -- Silvio Berlusconi

'While we speak here today thousands of people are living in fear and dread of missile attacks and acts of terror by Hamas.' -- Angela Merkel

These quotes are chosen at random from a script written in the theatre of the absurd known as ‘the west’. Does Barrack Obama, the Harvard law graduate, not know that Jerusalem is an occupied city? Does Hillary Clinton not know that the Israeli ‘families’ living at Gilo have built their homes on land belonging to someone else? Does Silvio Berlusconi seriously regard Hamas rocket attacks as a threat to Italy and even the ‘entire West’? Barrack Obama and Hillary Clinton were speaking at the AIPAC conference in Washington last June, Angela Merkel in the Knesset in March and Silvio Berlusconi at Sharm al Shaikh this week. He and other European ‘leaders’, as they are called, Merkel, Sarkozy and Gordon Brown among them, had gathered in Egypt to ‘discuss’ Gaza with Husni Mubarak and Mahmud Abbas, i.e to tell them what their part would be in the European plan to bring peace to Gaza.

Remember that during the three weeks of Israel’s onslaught on Gaza close to 500 children were amongst the 1300 people killed. More than 85 per cent of them were civilians. As bodies are still being pulled out of the rubble it will be some time before the final civilian death toll is known. Banned weapons were used. Whole families were massacred and whole streets destroyed with bunker buster bombs. The living was left for days alongside the dead because Israeli soldiers prevented ambulances and medics from reaching them. Trapped between the sea and the fences erected by Egypt and Israel the Gazans were simply shot down like animals in a game reserve. Then the killers were hauled off so that Barack Obama’s inauguration would not be ruined by the spectacle of children still being killed.

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Chomsky: Undermining Gaza

Sameer Dossani | January 16, 2009 Editor: Emily Schwartz Greco
Foreign Policy In Focus
Noam Chomsky is a noted linguist, author, and foreign policy expert. Sameer Dossani interviewed him about the conflict between Israel and Gaza. DOSSANI: The Israeli government and many Israeli and U.S. officials claim that the current assault on Gaza is to put an end to the flow of Qassam rockets from Gaza into Israel. But many observers claim that if that were really the case, Israel would have made much more of an effort to renew the ceasefire agreement that expired in December, which had all but stopped the rocket fire. In your opinion, what are the real motivations behind the current Israeli action? CHOMSKY: There's a theme that goes way back to the origins of Zionism. And it's a very rational theme: "Let's delay negotiations and diplomacy as long as possible, and meanwhile we'll 'build facts on the ground.'" So Israel will create the basis for what some eventual agreement will ratify, but the more they create, the more they construct, the better the agreement will be for their purposes. Those purposes are essentially to take over everything of value in the former Palestine and to undermine what's left of the indigenous population. I think one of the reasons for popular support for this in the United States is that it resonates very well with American history. How did the United States get established? The themes are similar. continues here

RAKON INDUSTRIES NZ HELPS KILL GAZAN BABIES

Today, at an Auckland protest against the invasion of Gaza and the contribution of the Rakon company to death and destruction around the globe, Christian peace activist Tyler Culpepper was arrested for an act of non-violent direct action.

Tyler climbed onto the roof of Rakon's manufacturing facility and revealed the true nature of the Rakon company, using red paint to adjust the building's signage to say 'Rakon Kills', an accurate and unfortunate reality. This action was taken during a protest of around 400 people opposing the ongoing israeli invasion of GAZA. In addition to Tylers action others threw water baloons of red paint at the front of the building. These paint bombs were to symbolise the blood shed of hundreds of palestineans by israel.

Components manufactured and sold by the Rakon company from right here in Aotearoa have undoubtedly helped guide the missiles that have killed and injured thousands of people in the Gaza Strip over the last three weeks and millions more in Iraq and Afghanistan over the course of the so-called War on Terror.

Tyler said, "We can't sit back and do nothing when there are people being slaughtered. Especially when companies in our own country are helping to facilitate that killing."

The following was written last night as Tyler was preparing for this action:

All the nations will beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks.
All wars will stop, and military training will come to an end.
Micah 4:3

Wars today are no longer fought using simple weapons like swords and spears. Instead, complex weapons, capable of much greater damage are used. These weapons require complex components from all over the world, even from here in Aotearoa.

If we are to participate in the fulfilment of this ancient prophesy – the beating of swords into ploughshares - we must know where to find these modern swords and spears, including the components essential to their operation.

The Rakon company supplies crystal oscillators to weapons companies. These oscillators are used in guidance systems for guided missiles and munitions systems - weapons of mass destruction. Rakon's components have undoubtedly been used in the invasion and on-going occupation of Iraq, as well as in the current invasion of the Gaza Strip. The invasion of Gaza over the last three weeks has cost the lives of over 1100 men, women and children, and injured thousands more, while Rakon made record profits last year.

Tomorrow I will take a can of red paint to the rooftop of the Rakon manufacturing facility and attempt to modify the signs on the front of the building. It is my intention to reveal the fact that Rakon is helping to manufacture weapons of war, for those that have forgotten and those who never knew. Then the process of beating these swords into ploughshares can begin.

The red paint symbolises the blood that Rakon helps to shed by selling components to the weapons companies. It stands in contrast to the sterile white walls of the Rakon factory which give the false impression of purity, so far removed from the death and destruction Rakon facilitates

' Israel's' 'colonial tactics' decried

source

A majority of Gazans are refugees whose ancestors used to live in what is today Israel [GALLO/GETTY] Azmi Bishara, an Arab-Israeli analyst and former member of the Israeli parliament, has lashed out at the Israeli media campaign being run alongside its war on Gaza that criminalises the victims and victimises the coloniser. Speaking to Al Jazeera on Tuesday, Bishara said Israel's war on Gaza was disproportionate and punishes the Palestinian people for refusing to bow to Israel's fait-accompli in the strip. "Usually people are pushed to collective punishment because they want to punish resistance movements or national liberation movements. "That's usually what colonial powers did, and that's what Israel is doing. Bishara said the majority of Gazans are refugees, whose ancestors used to live in what is now Israel. "Everybody knows that 75 per cent of the people of Gaza are refugees. Everybody knows that Israel disengaged from Gaza militarily, but occupies it economically and politically and also it besieges Gaza militarily. "Israel would say, "what would any normal country do if they were threatened by rocket fire? They would act". "But Israel is not a normal country, it is an occupying country, a colonial country and the people of Gaza are under siege." ‘Punishing democracy’ Bishara said that Palestinians are being punished for choosing Hamas in the January 2006 democratic elections and accused Israeli officials for dramatising their lies. "Shimon Peres, the Israeli president, should be asked, "What would you do if your house is besieged and you can't feed your child, can't go to school, and can't take them to the doctors and physicians when they are ill. "I consider Hamas rockets a protest shout, they haven't hurt many, only the few. They are weapons of the poor, used to express their will. "What brought the war was the siege. When colonial powers have historically gone to occupy countries, siege has always been a weapon. Siege is a military action at the beginning of war. "When it did not work to break the will of the Palestinian people... Israel realised that the rockets were a response to the siege, and they went to the next phase which was direct military aggression, which is actually now directed against civilians to punish them for their democratic choice. "What I think will happen is a ceasefire that will mean an end to the siege if the rockets stop. It will happen after the deaths of so many people."

Nowhere to run for those trapped in Gaza

Palestinian families are wondering whether they will become the next target after four days of Israeli air raids on the Gaza Strip.

As Sherine Tadros reports, there are few places to hide, and civilian casualties continue to rise

AlJazeeraEnglish