How the West De-Democratised the Middle East

[shakur420]

Talk about it all you want, that's amazing if you're inclined to. Just make sure it's in the proper context so it'll be taken seriously. Don't talk about it in response to the US and what they've done, what they continue to do.

Have you ever seen The Godfather? Part 2, specifically. If I were living in that neighborhood, I absolutely would've supported Vito Corleone once he killed Don Fanucci. Then, as Corleone's benevolence declined and he started making things dangerous for civilians (though it's debatable as this isn't really mentioned, we only get a sense of his morals throughout the movie), that would be the time to direct opposition at him. American Gangster is another good parallel, where Lucas took over. If he engaged in severe oppression and shit, brought violence to innocents, as I'm sure he did, that would be the time to bring such fierce opposition and condemnation to him, not while he was a small time thug in the context of apologizing for the root problem. Small time thugs are largely a cause of the socio-economic conditions imposed on populations by design.

On my way in, was going over some stuff about Colombia. So if I were to discuss the situation there in the last half century or so, talk about peasants driven off their lands and forced into coca production in order to survive, proven methods like prevention and treatment ignored in favor of criminal acts like chemical warfare and destabilizing commodity prices, just trying to break down why FARC feels it necessary to tax coca production in their areas, like they tax a bunch of other shit, you'd come in with "look at FARC's atrocities and their hand in the drug business". This is the game you're playing, dropping facts, and they are facts, which are irrelevant to the discussion. The same game people play when they try to shift the discussion from Israeli crimes - say in the context of understanding where the rejectionism lies and how to combat it, why and how this shit has been sustained for so many decades - to asking why people don't cry about Jordan's crimes. It's see through, I'm not playing. If you have any relevant points about the article, or the topic in general, let me know.

[Introcluse]

Shakurs views meddle in syncretism. Apparently the views of impartial human rights groups is propaganda.

corleone was charismatic, so was frank lucas, so was hitler, so was bin laden . that's how succesful totalitarian leaders and regimes succeed! They didn't make of authoritarianism of being overtly repressive, they masqueraded themselves as individuals/ideologies standing up for their people,.

[Asshole]

well your views meddle in excretism.

OH!

[Fuzzly Bear]

I am not allowed to give blood, but I can jack off in a cup and get given $300. Explain that.

[Introcluse]

(04-13-2012 03:04 AM)Laz Wrote:  well your views meddle in excretism.

OH!

[1871]

'Did I ever tell you I was born in Texas?'

.......



.......Godammit I knew it !!!!

[shakur420]

(04-13-2012 02:49 AM)Introcluse Wrote:  Apparently the views of impartial human rights groups is propaganda.

Excuse me?

(12-18-2011 05:26 AM)Introcluse Wrote:  ...Palestianian terrorists are to blame for the death of less militant palestinians/Palestinian children. They deliberately and cunningly blend in with the rest of the population & base themselves in in hospitals, schools, UN buildings ETC. so when israel hunts them down and launches an attack there is guaranteed to be some collateral damage too. Many of these are also people who ignore the leaflets dropped by Israel so that they can achieve islamic martyrdom...

...With regards to the UN resolutions, Geneva Convention etc ...other countries haven't had to deal with hundreds of suicide bombers almost daily in the last few years. If the shit that was happening in israel was happening in any other developed/western country they would be breaking the geneva convention too and be culpable for a gang of US resolutions...

(12-18-2011 03:57 PM)shakur420 Wrote:  ...The record is pretty clear, and uncontested...despite all your talk about religion and irrationality, I doubt you really care for the facts, the documented record. The undisputed record.

Quote:The operative plan for the Gaza bloodbath can be gleaned from authoritative statements after the war got underway: “What we have to do is act systematically with the aim of punishing all the organizations that are firing the rockets and mortars, as well as the civilians who are enabling them to fire and hide” (reserve Major-General); “After this operation there will not be one Hamas building left standing in Gaza” (Deputy IDF Chief of Staff); “Anything affiliated with Hamas is a legitimate target” (IDF Spokesperson’s Office).[14] Whereas Israel killed a mere 55 Lebanese during the first two days of the 2006 war, the Israeli media exulted at Israel’s “shock and awe” (Maariv)[15] as it killed more than 300 Palestinians in the first two days of the attack on Gaza. Several days into the slaughter an informed Israeli strategic analyst observed, “The IDF, which planned to attack buildings and sites populated by hundreds of people, did not warn them in advance to leave, but intended to kill a great many of them, and succeeded.”[16] Morris could barely contain his pride at “Israel’s highly efficient air assault on Hamas.”[17] The Israeli columnist B. Michael was less impressed by the dispatch of helicopter gunships and jet planes “over a giant prison and firing at its people”[18] — for example, “70…traffic cops at their graduation ceremony, young men in desperate search of a livelihood who thought they’d found it in the police and instead found death from the skies.”[19]

As Israel targeted schools, mosques, hospitals, ambulances, and U.N. sanctuaries, as it slaughtered and incinerated Gaza’s defenseless civilian population (one-third of the 1,200 reported casualties were children), Israeli commentators gloated that “Gaza is to Lebanon as the second sitting for an exam is to the first — a second chance to get it right,” and that this time around Israel had “hurled [Gaza] back,” not 20 years as it promised to do in Lebanon, but “into the 1940s. Electricity is available only for a few hours a day”; that “Israel regained its deterrence capabilities” because “the war in Gaza has compensated for the shortcomings of the [2006] Second Lebanon War”; and that “There is no doubt that Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah is upset these days….There will no longer be anyone in the Arab world who can claim that Israel is weak.”[20]...

...is it even true that Hezbollah was “embedded in,” “nested among,” and “intertwined” with the Lebanese civilian population? Here’s what Human Rights Watch concluded after an exhaustive investigation: “we found strong evidence that Hezbollah stored most of its rockets in bunkers and weapon storage facilities located in uninhabited fields and valleys, that in the vast majority of cases Hezbollah fighters left populated civilian areas as soon as the fighting started, and that Hezbollah fired the vast majority of its rockets from pre-prepared positions outside villages.” And again, “in all but a few of the cases of civilian deaths we investigated, Hezbollah fighters had not mixed with the civilian population or taken other actions to contribute to the targeting of a particular home or vehicle by Israeli forces.” Indeed, “Israel’s own firing patterns in Lebanon support the conclusion that Hezbollah fired large numbers of its rockets from tobacco fields, banana, olive and citrus groves, and more remote, unpopulated valleys.”[22]...

...If Israel targeted the Lebanese civilian population and infrastructure during the 2006 war, it was not because it had no choice, and not because Hezbollah had provoked it, but because terrorizing the civilian population was a relatively cost-free method of “education,” much to be preferred over fighting a real foe and suffering heavy casualties, although Hezbollah’s unexpectedly fierce resistance prevented Israel from achieving a victory on the battlefield. In the case of Gaza it was able both to “educate” the population and achieve a military victory because — in the words of Gideon Levy — the “fighting in Gaza” was “war deluxe.” Compared with previous wars, it is child’s play — pilots bombing unimpeded as if on practice runs, tank and artillery soldiers shelling houses and civilians from their armored vehicles, combat engineering troops destroying entire streets in their ominous protected vehicles without facing serious opposition. A large, broad army is fighting against a helpless population and a weak, ragged organization that has fled the conflict zones and is barely putting up a fight.[27]...

http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/finkels...-massacre/

Quote:Khaled Mashaal asked for an end of the state of the war, which would include opening the borders. Well, a couple of days later, when Israel didn't react to that, Israel attacked. The attack was timed for Saturday morning - the Sabbath day in Israel - at about 11:30, which happens to be the moment when children are leaving school and crowds are miling in the streets of this very heavily crowded city ... The explicit target was police cadets... Now, there are civilians, in fact we now know that for several months the legal department of the Israeli army had been arguing against this plan because it said it was a direct attack against civilians. And of course, plenty civilians will be killed if you bomb a crowded city, especially at a time like that. But finally the legal department was sort of bludgeoned into silence by the military so they said alright. So that's when they opened -on a Sabbath morning. Now two weeks later, Israel - on Saturday as well- blocked the humanitarian aid because they didn't want to disgrace Sabbath. Well, that's interesting too. But the main point about the timing was that there was an effort to undercut the efforts for a peaceful settlement and it was terminated just in time to prevent pressure on Obama to say something about it. It's hard to believe that this isn't conscious. We know that it was very meticulously planned for many months beforehand.

http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/20090216.htm

Quote:The second part, "The Greatest Tale Ever Told," Finkelstein confronts Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz's The Case for Israel as a standard Zionist account of the impact of Israel state policy. In The Case for Israel, Dershowitz studiously avoids engaging the reputable and mainstream human rights reports Human Rights Watch (HRW), Amnesty International (AI), Physicians for Human Rights--Israel, B'Tselem (an Israel based group) and Al Haq (a Palestinian based group). Finkelstein shines as he compiles the results of thousands of pages of source material documenting Israel's human rights record and emphasizes the consensus amongst the human rights organizations that contradict various claims by Dershowitz. In a glaring case of intellectual dishonesty, Dershowitz uses an internal Israeli Defense Force (IDF) analysis maintaining that "when only innocent civilians are counted, significantly more Israelis than Palestinians have been killed." In fact, the ratio of civilian casualties is actually three Palestinians for every one Israeli civilian. Later Dershowitz claims Palestinians "use women ... and children as human shields" with no source cited. No human rights group has found evidence that Palestinians conscript people. However, Human Rights Watch has documented the IDF policy of coercing Palestinians to act as human shields. Dershowitz suggests that physical force was only used occasionally and as "a modified form of nonlethal torture." However, AI consistently documented these practices from 1991 to 1999 while HRW places the number of Palestinian prisoners tortured in the "tens of thousands". Dershowitz justifies home demolitions as a "benign", "soft form of collective punishment" while AI details the fifteen minutes given to families to vacate the premises before the bulldozers commence and HRW calculates at least 10% of the mostly refugee population of Rajah have had their homes destroyed since the beginning of the second Intifada. The list of abuses continues with the overall condition of prisoners, ambulance and medical interference, land grabbing, lack of regard for innocent lives in targeted bombing, and the list goes on. The overall pattern of these human rights reports establishes Israel's low regard for the human rights of non-Jews and renders Israeli state policy in Palestine indefensible.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2...n27025622/

If you want, I'll take the time to show you the UN and human rights reports concerning human shields, civilian targeting...

(01-07-2012 02:23 AM)Introcluse Wrote:  Israel Attacks a United Nations building and compund in Gaza on 15 January 2008

many palestinian terrorists hide in such locations. This is not my opinion but a fact.

(01-08-2012 07:03 AM)shakur420 Wrote:  

Quote:“Our sources in Gaza report that Israeli soldiers have entered and taken up positions in a number of Palestinian homes, forcing families to stay in a ground floor room while they use the rest of their house as a military base and sniper position,” said Malcolm Smart, Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Programme. “This clearly increases the risk to the Palestinian families concerned and means they are effectively being used as human shields.”

Both Israeli soldiers and Palestinian gunmen are continuing to fire at each other from areas close to civilian homes, endangering their inhabitants.

Israeli forces have bombed civilian homes and other buildings, arguing that they had been used as cover by gunmen firing at Israeli targets, although Palestinian fighters usually vacate the areas as soon as they have fired.

“The Israeli army is well-aware that Palestinian gunmen usually leave the area after having fired and that any reprisal attack against these homes will in most cases cause harm to civilians -- not gunmen.”

“Fighters on both sides must not carry out attacks from civilian areas but when they do take cover behind a civilian house or building to fire it does not make that building and its civilian inhabitants a legitimate military target. Any such attacks are unlawful,” said Malcolm Smart...

...Following Tuesday’s attack on an UNWRA school in the Jabaliya refugee camp, Israeli government spokespeople said their forces shelled the school after Palestinian gunmen fired at them from it, but this is disputed. The artillery strike, which killed some 40 Palestinians, including children, and wounded more than 50 others, appears clearly to have been a disproportionate attack.

In the past, Israeli soldiers have frequently taken over Palestinian homes, effectively imprisoning their occupants, to use as military observation and firing positions. In other cases, they have forced Palestinian civilians, at gunpoint, to go before them into buildings from which they feared attack.

The practice by Israeli soldiers of taking over Palestinian civilians’ homes and holding their inhabitants as human shields while using the house as a shooting position has been very common in the past eight years both in the Gaza Strip and in the West Bank. In a previous incursion in the Gaza Strip in March 2008, Israeli soldiers took over at least three houses in the north and in February 2008 soldiers took over another house in the village of Beit Ummar, near Hebron, in the West Bank.

Palestinian families caught up in the current fighting in the Gaza Strip report that in some cases Palestinian gunmen have agreed to vacate areas near civilian homes without firing at Israeli forces when local residents have objected to their presence. In other cases, they have refused the residents' requests and only left after firing. In still other cases, residents say they were too scared to ask the gunmen to leave...

http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updat...s-20090108

Quote:Israeli forces also carried out wanton and wholesale destruction in Gaza, leaving entire neighbourhoods in ruin, and used Palestinians as human shields...

... Israeli forces committed violations of human rights and international humanitarian law amounting to war crimes and some possibly amounting to crimes against humanity. Notably, investigations into numerous instances of lethal attacks on civilians and civilian objects revealed that the attacks were intentional, that some were launched with the intention of spreading terror among the civilian population and with no justifiable military objective and that Israeli forces used Palestinian civilians as human shields...

...The Fact-Finding Mission found no evidence that Palestinian armed groups directed civilians to areas where attacks were launched or that they forced civilians to remain within their vicinity, nor that hospital facilities were used by the Hamas de-facto administration or by Palestinian armed groups to shield military activities, or that ambulances were used to transport combatants, or that Palestinian armed groups engaged in combat activities from within hospitals or UN facilities that were used as shelters.

http://www.amnesty.org/en/for-media/pres...ions-cruci

Quote:Israeli and Palestinian human rights organizations and the Goldstone report commissioned by the United Nations Human Rights Council documented at least 21 allegations of cases in which Israeli soldiers used human shields during the offensive. Israeli human rights groups documented dozens of cases in which Israeli soldiers used human shields in the years before the Gaza conflict.

http://www.hrw.org/news/2010/11/26/israe...inadequate

Quote:...seven incidents during the operation where Israeli soldiers fired with small arms on civilians, killing 11 people—including five women and four children—and wounding at least another eight. These casualties comprise a small fraction of the Palestinian civilians wounded and killed during the operation, but they stand out because, in each case, the victims were standing, walking, or in slowly moving vehicles with other unarmed civilians, and were trying to convey their non-combatant status by waving a white flag. All available evidence indicates that Israeli forces were in control of the areas in question, no fighting was taking place there at the time, and no Palestinian forces were hiding among the civilians or using them as human shields.

http://www.hrw.org/node/85004/section/5

Quote:Israel has repeatedly blamed Hamas for the deaths of Palestinian civilians during the Gaza operation because, Israel says, Hamas fought from populated areas and used civilians as "human shields" - that is, deliberately used civilians to deter attacks against Palestinian forces. Two Israeli commanders have alleged that Palestinian fighters used white flags to shield themselves from attack, but neither provided details to allow an investigation of the claims. The Israeli military turned down requests from Human Rights Watch to discuss the allegations.

http://www.hrw.org/news/2009/08/13/israe...-civilians

Quote:...the army's use of Palestinian civilians as human shields since the beginning of the second intifada, primarily during operations carried out in densely populated Palestinian areas, as occurred in Operation Defensive Shield.

The method was the same each time: soldiers picked a civilian at random and forced him to protect them with his body, and do dangerous tasks for them...

...The soldiers in the field did not initiate this practice; rather, the order to use civilians as a means of protection was made by senior army officials...

...Despite the High Court's decision and army orders given before and after it, security forces continued to use Palestinians as human shields...

...During the course of Operation Cast Lead, which took place in Gaza in January 2009, B'Tselem and other organizations were informed of cases in which soldiers used Palestinians as human shields.

http://www.btselem.org/human_shields

Quote:International Humanitarian Law, which establishes the rules applying during armed conflict, requires the sides to distinguish between combatants and civilians, and requires them to protect the lives and dignity of civilians...

...Despite these prohibitions, for a long time after the second intifada began, in September 2000, and especially during "Operation Defensive Shield," in April 2002, Israeli soldiers routinely used Palestinian civilians as human shields by forcing them to carry out life-threatening military tasks. It was only following a High Court petition against this practice, which was filed by human rights organizations in May 2002, that the IDF issued a general order prohibiting the use of Palestinians as "a means of 'human shield' against gunfire or attacks by the Palestinian side." Following the order, the use of human shields dropped sharply.

However, the army did not construe as a human shield the use of Palestinians, provided they consented, "to deliver a warning" to a wanted person entrenched in a certain location. The army continued the widespread use of this practice, which they referred to as "the neighbor procedure." Following another petition filed by human rights organizations, the High Court of Justice ruled that this practice, too, violated international humanitarian law and that it was thus illegal.

http://www.btselem.org/human_shields/legal_background

Quote:The IDF has used civilians as human shields for a long time, though army officials have vociferously denied it. The state's distinction between the danger to civilian lives in certain cases and the risk entailed in the case of "assistance" is incomprehensible. In each instance, soldiers jeopardize the lives of innocent civilians to protect themselves; thus, these cases are equally forbidden. The order to soldiers must be unequivocal: in no instance may a civilian be compelled to cooperate with security forces by performing military tasks that endanger their lives.

http://www.btselem.org/human_shields/petition_to_hcj

Quote:For a long time, the IDF has been using Palestinians as human shields and ordering them to carry out military tasks that pose a threat to their lives. In implementing this policy, Palestinian civilians have been forced to carry out tasks such as removing suspicious objects from roads, ordering people to leave their homes to be arrested by the IDF, and standing in front of soldiers who were firing from behind them. These tasks were forced upon civilians who were chosen at random and could not refuse the orders given to them by armed soldiers.

http://www.btselem.org/download/200211_h...ld_eng.pdf

Quote:I was a soldier for 42 years and I reject that criticism, which seems intended to excuse alleged Israeli breaches of the laws of warfare. I retired as a colonel in the Irish army in 2001 having served in war zones in Cyprus, Lebanon, Bosnia and Croatia, and I would not underestimate the challenge of combat in built-up areas. Nonetheless, armies have never had the technological luxury that they do today when it comes to taking out targets without inflicting collateral damage...

...We found no evidence that Hamas used civilians as hostages. I had expected to find such evidence but did not. We also found no evidence that mosques were used to store munitions. Those charges reflect Western perceptions in some quarters that Islam is a violent religion. Gaza is densely populated and has a labyrinth of makeshift shanties and a system of tunnels and bunkers. If I were a Hamas operative the last place I’d store munitions would be in a mosque. It’s not secure, is very visible, and would probably be pre-targeted by Israeli surveillance. There are a many better places to store munitions. We investigated two destroyed mosques—one where worshippers were killed—and we found no evidence that either was used as anything but a place of worship.

There is a sinister and foolish notion among certain proponents of insurgency warfare that to fight an insurgency means that civilians will inevitably be killed. But if you give the state authority to be indiscriminate with the lives of civilians in pursuing insurgents, it plays into the hands of the insurgents. Dead bodies are grist to the insurgents’ mill: if the dead are on your side they represent insurgent victories and if the dead are on their side then they have martyrs.

http://harpers.org/archive/2009/10/hbc-90006003

Quote:Let’s just consider whether it is even true that Hezbollah was “embedded in,” “nested among,” and “intertwined” with the Lebanese civilian population. Here’s what the respected human rights organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) concluded aft er an exhaustive investigation: “We found strong evidence that Hezbollah stored most of its rockets in bunkers and weapon storage facilities located in uninhabited fields and valleys, that in the vast majority of cases Hezbollah fighters left populated civilian areas as soon as the fighting started, and that Hezbollah fired the vast majority of its rockets from preprepared positions outside villages.” And again, “in all but a few of the cases of civilian deaths we investigated, Hezbollah fighters had not mixed with the civilian population or taken other actions to contribute to the targeting of a particular home or vehicle by Israeli forces.” Indeed, “Israel’s own firing patterns in Lebanon support the conclusion that Hezbollah fired large numbers of its rockets from tobacco fields, banana, olive and citrus groves, and more remote, unpopulated valleys.”35

A U.S. Army War College study based largely on interviews with Israeli soldiers who participated in the Lebanon War similarly found that “the key battlefields in the land campaign south of the Litani River were mostly devoid of civilians, and IDF participants consistently report little or no meaningful intermingling of Hezbollah fighters and noncombatants. Nor is there any systematic reporting of Hezbollah using civilians in the combat zone as shields.” On a related note, the authors report that “the great majority of Hezbollah’s fighters wore uniforms. In fact, their equipment and clothing were remarkably similar to many state militaries’ - desert or green fatigues, helmets, web vests, body armor, dog tags, and rank insignia.”36

Friedman further asserted that, “rather than confronting Israel’s Army head-on,” Hezbollah fired rockets at Israel’s civilian population to provoke Israeli retaliatory strikes, inevitably killing Lebanese civilians and “inflaming the Arab-Muslim street.” Yet numerous studies have shown,37 and Israeli officials themselves conceded38 that, during its guerrilla war against the Israeli occupying army, Hezbollah only targeted Israeli civilians aft er Israel targeted Lebanese civilians. In the 2006 war Hezbollah began firing rockets aimed at Israeli civilian concentrations only after Israel inflicted heavy casualties on Lebanese civilians, while Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah avowed that it would target Israeli civilians “as long as the enemy undertakes its aggression without limits or red lines.”39

If Israel targeted the Lebanese civilian population and infrastructure during the 2006 war, it was not because it had no choice, and not because Hezbollah had provoked it, but because terrorizing Lebanese civilians appeared to be a lowcost method of “education.” This was much preferred over tangling with a real foe and suffering heavy casualties, although Hezbollah’s unexpectedly fierce resistance prevented Israel from claiming a victory on the battlefield. Still, it must be said that Israel did successfully educate the civilian Lebanese population, which is why Hezbollah was careful not to antagonize Israel during the Gaza invasion two years later.40 Israel’s pedagogy also proved a success among the Gaza population. “It was hard to convince Gazans whose homes were demolished and family and friends killed and injured,” the International Crisis Group reported, “that this amounted to ‘victory,’” as Hamas boasted in the wake of the invasion.41 In the case of Gaza, Israel could also lay claim to a military victory, but only because - in the words of Gideon Levy - “a large, broad army is fighting against a helpless population and a weak, ragged organization that has fled the conflict zones and is barely putting up a fight.”42

[pg 37-39]



After the invasion Physicians for Human Rights-Israel documented Israeli attacks on medical crews, ambulances, and medical installations, as well as “countless obstacles” that Israel created “for the rescue teams in the field who attempted to evacuate trapped and injured persons.” It did not find “any evidence supporting Israel’s official claim that hospitals were used to conceal political or military personnel.”102 An independent team of medical experts commissioned by Physicians for Human Rights- Israel and the Palestinian Medical Relief Society produced a supplementary report containing copious evidence of Israel’s denial of evacuation (“a number of patients died as a result of the delay in transportation to a medical institution”), attacks on rescue crews (“a number of ambulance personnel told their stories of repeated attacks on their ambulances over the last year”), and attacks on medical facilities. The report also noted that “the patterns of injuries, many of which were apparently caused by antipersonnel weapons, are characterized by a high proportion of maiming and amputations, which will cause lifelong disabilities for many.” The “underlying meaning of the attack on the Gaza Strip,” the team of medical experts concluded, “appears to be one of creating terror without mercy to anyone.”103

Whereas Israel contended that “Hamas systematically used medical facilities, vehicles, and uniforms as cover for terrorist operations,” Amnesty reported that officials did not provide “evidence for even one such case” and Amnesty itself “found no evidence during its on-the-ground investigation that such practices, if they did occur, were widespread.” The Goldstone Mission “did not find any evidence to support the allegations that hospital facilities were used by the Gaza authorities or by Palestinian armed groups to shield military activities or that ambulances were used to transport combatants or for other military purposes.”104 In its official brief Israel gave much space to defending its lethal assaults on ambulances and medical facilities. It alleged that Hamas made “extensive use of ambulances bearing the protective emblems of the Red Cross and Red Crescent to transport operatives and weaponry” and “use of ambulances to ‘evacuate’ terrorists from the battlefield.” The only independent “proof” it could muster was the article by the Italian journalist who also reported that only several hundred Palestinians were killed during the assault on Gaza, and the testimony of one Palestinian ambulance driver who recounted that some Hamas militants attempted to commandeer his ambulance but did not succeed.

The Israeli brief goes so far as to allege that “the IDF refrained from attacking medical vehicles even in cases where Hamas and other terrorist organizations were using them for military purposes” - which causes one to wonder why the IDF repeatedly targeted ambulances not used for military purposes. Even Magen David Adom, Israel’s national emergency medical, disaster, ambulance, and blood bank service, testified that “there was no use of PRCS [Palestinian Red Crescent Society] ambulances for the transport of weapons or ammunition.” The Israeli brief further alleged that the IDF “refrained from attacking Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, despite Hamas’s use of an entire ground floor wing as its headquarters during the Gaza Operation, out of concern for the inevitable harm to civilians also present in the hospital.” Toeing the party line Benny Morris likewise declared that “the Hamas leaders sat out the campaign in the basement of Gaza’s Shifa Hospital, gambling - correctly - that Israel would not bomb or storm a hospital.” The sole source for this allegation, apart from the ubiquitous Italian reporter, was the confession of a Palestinian detainee during “interrogation.”105 It is again cause for wonder why Israel did not target this hospital, where Hamas’s senior leadership was allegedly ensconced, but did target many other Palestinian hospitals.

[pg 71-72]



Not all Israelis celebrated their country’s overwhelming victory in this non-war. “It is very dangerous for the Israel Defense Forces to believe it won the war when there was no war,” a respected Israeli strategic analyst warned. “In reality, not a single battle was fought during the 22 days of fighting.”114 The International Crisis Group reported that Hamas “for the most part avoided direct confrontations with Israeli troops,” and that “consequently, only a limited number of fighters were killed.” According to a former Israeli foreign ministry official quoted by the Crisis Group, “There was no war. Hamas sat in its bunkers and came out when it was all over,” while one Israeli officer noted, “Not even light fi rearms were directed at us. One doesn’t see [Hamas] that much, they mostly hide.”115

The postinvasion testimonies of IDF soldiers repeatedly confirmed the near absence of an enemy in the field: “There was nothing there. Ghost towns. Except for some livestock, nothing moved”; “Most of the time it was boring. There were not really too many events”; “Some explosives are found in a house, weapons, significant stuff like that, but no real resistance”; “I did not see one single Arab the whole time we were there, that whole week”; “Everyone was disappointed about not engaging anyone”; “Usually we did not see a living soul. Except for our soldiers of course. Not a soul”; “Go ahead and ask soldiers how oft en they encountered combatants in Gaza— nothing”; “There was supposed to be a tiny resistance force upon entry, but there just wasn’t”; “Nearly no one ran into the enemy. I know of two encounters during the whole operation. The soldiers, too, were disappointed for not having had any encounters with terrorists.”116

The Goldstone Mission noted that it “received relatively few reports of actual crossfire between the Israeli armed forces and Palestinian armed groups.”117 The Palestinian resistance did not manage even to fully disable a single Israeli tank.118 In his defense of IDF conduct during the Gaza invasion, Hebrew University professor of philosophy and New York University professor of law Moshe Halbertal pointed up the challenge facing an Israeli soldier who had to “decide whether the individual standing before him in jeans and sneakers is a combatant or not,” and rationalized the number of Palestinian civilian deaths “under such conditions - Gaza is an extremely densely populated area.”119 But judging by the soldiers’ testimonies the really daunting challenge in Gaza was not differentiating between friend and foe but encountering any foe: no battles occurred in densely populated or, for that matter, sparsely populated areas. In addition, most Palestinian victims “were not caught in the crossfire of battles between Palestinian militants and Israeli forces, nor were they shielding militants or other legitimate targets” (Amnesty).120

[pg 74-76]



To deflect culpability for this premeditated slaughter Israel persistently alleged that Palestinian casualties resulted from the use by Hamas of civilians as “human shields.” Indeed, throughout its attack Israel strove to manipulate perceptions by controlling press reports and otherwise tilting Western coverage in its favor. But the allegation that Hamas used civilians as human shields was not borne out by human rights investigations, while the gap between Israel’s claim that it did everything possible to avoid “collateral damage” and the hundreds of bodies of women and children dug out of the rubble is too vast to bridge. To extenuate the horrors it inflicted on Gaza, Israel pointed to Hamas’s use of Palestinians as human shields and cited the incriminating confessions extracted from “operatives” under “interrogation.” Yet, in one of the most extensive postinvasion human rights reports Amnesty International found that the worst that could be said of Hamas was that it “launched rockets and located military equipment and positions near civilian homes, endangering the lives of the inhabitants by exposing them to the risk of Israeli attacks. They also used empty homes and properties as combat positions during armed confrontations with Israeli forces, exposing the inhabitants of nearby houses to the danger of attacks or of being caught in the crossfire.”

Whereas Israel alleged that Hamas “chose to base its operations in civilian areas not in spite of, but because of, the likelihood of substantial harm to civilians,” and that “Hamas operatives took pride in endangering the lives of civilians,” Amnesty contrarily concluded that there was “no evidence that [Hamas] rockets were launched from residential houses or buildings while civilians were in these buildings”; that “Palestinian militants often used empty houses but...did not forcibly take over inhabited houses”; that Hamas “mixed with the civilian population, although this would be difficult to avoid in the small and overcrowded Gaza Strip”; and that “Palestinian fighters, like Israeli soldiers, engaged in armed confrontations around residential homes where civilians were present, endangering them. The locations of these confrontations were mostly determined by Israeli forces, who entered Gaza with tanks and armored personnel carriers and took positions deep inside residential neighborhoods.”

On the most explosive allegation, Amnesty categorically exonerated Hamas:


Contrary to repeated allegations by Israeli officials of the use of “human shields,” Amnesty International found no evidence that Hamas or other Palestinian fighters directed the movement of civilians to shield military objectives from attacks. It found no evidence that Hamas or other armed groups forced residents to stay in or around buildings used by fighters, nor that fighters prevented residents from leaving buildings or areas which had been commandeered by militants...Amnesty International delegates interviewed many Palestinians who complained about Hamas’s conduct, and especially about Hamas’s repression and attacks against their opponents, including killings, torture and arbitrary detentions, but did not receive any accounts of Hamas fighters having used them as “human shields.” In the cases investigated by Amnesty International of civilians killed in Israeli attacks, the deaths could not be explained as resulting from the presence of fighters shielding among civilians, as the Israeli army generally contends. In all of the cases investigated by Amnesty International of families killed when their homes were bombed from the air by Israeli forces, for example, none of the houses struck was being used by armed groups for military activities. Similarly, in the cases of precision missiles or tank shells which killed civilians in their homes, no fighters were present in the houses that were struck and Amnesty International delegates found no indication that there had been any armed confrontations or other military activity in the immediate vicinity at the time of the attack.


According to Israel’s official brief the rules of engagement of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) during the Gaza assault strictly prohibited the “use of civilians as human shields” and “the IDF took a variety of measures to teach and instill awareness of these rules of engagement in commanders and soldiers.” Nevertheless if Amnesty found no evidence that Hamas used human shields (and other postinvasion investigations echoed Amnesty’s conclusions), it did find that Israeli soldiers “used civilians, including children, as ‘human shields,’ endangering their lives by forcing them to remain in or near houses which they took over and used as military positions. Some were forced to carry out dangerous tasks such as inspecting properties or objects suspected of being booby-trapped. Soldiers also took position and launched attacks from and around inhabited houses, exposing local residents to the danger of attacks or of being caught in the crossfire.” Other human rights investigations - in particular the graphic accounts in the Goldstone Report - and testimony of soldiers corroborated the IDF’s use of human shields.1

Still, it was axiomatic for respected philosophers Avishai Margalit and Michael Walzer that although Israel’s enemies “intentionally put civilians at risk by using them as cover, Israel condemns those practices.”2 In a book that “explores the myths and illusions” about the Middle East, Dennis Ross inveighed against Hamas because it used “the civilian population as human shields” and made “extensive use of human shields.” He also reported in his “reality-based assessment” that Hamas “rejects the very idea of a two-state solution”; that it was Hamas that “chose to end” the June 2008 ceasefire (Israel’s murderous 4 November border raid vanishes in his account); and that “an uneasy quiet was restored only aft er the IDF had destroyed nearly all Hamas military targets.”3 British colonel Richard Kemp, who was commander of British forces in Afghanistan, variously alleged that Hamas “deliberately positioned behind the human shield of the civilian population”; “ordered, forced when necessary, men, women and children from their own population to stay put in places they knew were about to be attacked by the IDF”; “deliberately [tried] to lure [the Israelis] into killing their own innocent civilians”; and—in a yet more colorful accusation—“of course” deployed “women and children” suicide bombers. These allegations bore equal relationship to reality as his ubiquitously quoted proclamation that “during Operation Cast Lead the IDF did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other Army in the history of warfare.”4 Pity the civilian population in his theater of operations.

As already indicated, the circumstances under which many Palestinians died underscored the untenability of Israel’s alibi that the high civilian death count resulted from human shielding by Hamas. “The attacks that caused the greatest number of fatalities and injuries,” Amnesty found in its postinvasion inquiry,


were carried out with long-range high-precision munitions fi red from combat aircraft , helicopters and drones, or from tanks stationed up to several kilometers away—oft en against pre-selected targets, a process that would normally require approval from up the chain of command. The victims of these attacks were not caught in the crossfire of battles between Palestinian militants and Israeli forces, nor were they shielding militants or other legitimate targets. Many were killed when their homes were bombed while they slept. Others were going about their daily activities in their homes, sitting in their yard, hanging the laundry on the roof when they were targeted in air strikes or tank shelling. Children were studying or playing in their bedrooms or on the roof, or outside their homes, when they were struck by missiles or tank shells.5


It further found that Palestinian civilians, “including women and children, were shot at short range when posing no threat to the lives of the Israeli soldiers,” and that “there was no fighting going on in their vicinity when they were shot.”6 A study by Human Rights Watch (HRW) documented Israel’s killing of Palestinian civilians who “were trying to convey their non-combatant status by waving a white flag,” and where “all available evidence indicates that Israeli forces had control of the areas in question, no fighting was taking place there at the time, and Palestinian fighters were not hiding among the civilians who were shot.” In a typical incident “two women and three children from the Abd Rabbo family were standing for a few minutes outside their home - at least three of them holding pieces of white cloth - when an Israeli soldier opened fire, killing two girls, aged two and seven, and wounding the grandmother and third girl.”7 The official Israeli brief meanwhile proclaimed that because IDF soldiers adhere to “purity of arms” they do “not use their weapons and force to harm human beings who are not combatants or prisoners of war.”8

The Goldstone Report concluded that “the Israeli armed forces repeatedly opened fi re on civilians who were not taking part in the hostilities and who posed no threat to them,” and that “Israeli armed forces had carried out direct intentional strikes against civilians” in the absence of “any grounds which could have reasonably induced the Israeli armed forces to assume that the civilians attacked were in fact taking a direct part in the hostilities.”9 The postinvasion testimonies of IDF soldiers corroborated this wanton killing of Palestinian civilians in an “atmosphere” where “the lives of Palestinians, let’s say, is something very, very less important than the lives of our soldiers”: “You see people more or less running their life routine, taking a walk, stuff like that. Definitely not terrorists. I hear from other crews that they fired at people there. Tried to kill them”; “People didn’t seem to be too upset about taking human lives”; “Everyone there is considered a terrorist”; “We were allowed to do anything we wanted. Who’s to tell us not to?”; “I understood that conduct there had been somewhat savage. ‘If you sight it, shoot it’”; “You are allowed to do anything you want...for no reason other than it’s cool” - even firing white phosphorus “because it’s fun. Cool.”10

Unabashed and undeterred, the official Israeli brief still sang paeans to the IDF’s unique respect for the “supreme value of human life,” while in a New Yorker cover story on “what really happened” in Gaza, Lawrence Wright reported that “the Israeli military adopted painstaking efforts to spare civilian lives in Gaza.” Wright also discovered while in Gaza that Palestinians felt a special affinity with an Israeli soldier captured by Hamas: “[Gilad] Shalit’s pale features and meek expression haunt the imagination of Gazans. Though it may seem perverse, a powerful sense of identification has arisen between the shy soldier and the people whose government holds him hostage. Gazans see themselves as like Shalit: confined, mistreated, and despairing.”11 This resolves the mystery as to why one Gazan family aft er another has christened their newborn Gilad...

[pg 83-89]



The Goldstone Report pinned primary culpability for these criminal offenses on Israel’s political and military elites: “The systematic and deliberate nature of the activities...leave the Mission in no doubt that responsibility lies in the first place with those who designed, planned, ordered and oversaw the operations.”12 It also found that the fatalities, property damage, and “psychological trauma” resulting from Hamas’s “indiscriminate” and “deliberate” rocket attacks on Israel’s civilian population constituted “war crimes and may amount to crimes against humanity.”13 Because the Goldstone Mission (like human rights organizations) devoted a much smaller fraction of its findings to Hamas rocket attacks, critics accused it of bias. The accusation was valid, but its weight ran in the opposite direction. If one considers that the ratio of Palestinian to Israeli deaths stood at more than 100:1 and of dwellings ravaged at more than 6000:1, then the proportion of the Goldstone Report given over to death and destruction caused by Hamas in Israel was much greater than the objective data would have warranted.

When it was subsequently put to Goldstone that the Report disproportionately focused on Israeli violations of international law, he replied, “It’s difficult to deal equally with a state party, with a sophisticated army, with the sort of army Israel has, with an air force, and a navy, and the most sophisticated weapons that are not only in the arsenal of Israel, but manufactured and exported by Israel, on the one hand, with Hamas using really improvised, imprecise armaments.”14 Despite their relative impotence, Palestinians are oft en taken to task in the West for not embracing a Gandhian strategy that repudiates violent resistance. In 2003 then-U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz told a Georgetown University audience that “if the Palestinians would adopt the ways of Gandhi, I think they could in fact make enormous change very, very quickly.”15 Whatever the merits of this contention it still should be recalled what Gandhi actually had to say on the subject of nonviolence. He categorized forceful resistance in the face of impossible odds—a woman fending off a rapist with slaps and scratches, an unarmed man resisting torture by a gang, or Polish armed self-defense to the Nazi aggression—as “almost nonviolence” because it was in essence symbolic and acted more as a fillip to the spirit to overcome fear and allow for a dignified death; it registered “a refusal to bend before overwhelming might in the full knowledge that it means certain death.”16 In the face of Israel’s infernal, high-tech slaughter in Gaza it is hard not to see the desultory Hamas rocket attacks falling into the category of token violence that Gandhi was loath to condemn. Even granting that the rocket attacks did constitute full fledged violence, it is still not certain that Gandhi would have disapproved. “Fight violence with nonviolence if you can,” he counseled, “and if you can’t do that, fight violence by any means, even if it means your utter extinction. But in no case should you leave your hearths and homes to be looted and burnt.”17 Isn’t this what Hamas did when it decided to “fight violence by any means,” even if it meant “utter extinction,” aft er Israel broke the ceasefire and refused to relax the illegal blockade that was destroying Gaza’s “whole civilization” (Mary Robinson) and causing “the breakdown of an entire society” (Sara Roy)?18

[pg 129-131]



- "This Time We Went Too Far", Norman Finkelstein

I can hook up a copy of the sources to anyone who's interested.

Quote:Well, Hamas is accused of using human shields, rightly or wrongly. But we know that Israel does it all the time. Is Israel a terrorist state? Well yes according to official definitions. I mean, one of the main things holding up cease fire right now is that Israel insists that it will not allow a cease fire until Hamas returns a captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit - he’s very famous in the West everybody knows he was captured. Well, one day before Gilad Shalit was captured, Israeli forces went into Gaza City and kidnapped two Palestinian civilians (the Muamar Brothers) and brought them across the border to Israel in violation of international law and hid them somewhere in the huge Israeli prisons. Nobody knows what happened to them since. I mean, kidnapping civilians is a much worse crime than capturing a soldier of an attacking army. And furthermore this has been regular Israeli practice for decades. They’ve been kidnapping civilians in Lebanon or on the high seas…They take them to Israel, put them into prisons, sometimes keeping them as hostages for long periods. So you know, if the capturing of Gilad Shalit is a terrorist act, well, then israel’s regular practice supported by the US is incomparably worse. And that’s quite apart from repeated aggression and other crimes. I don’t like Hamas by any means, there is plenty to criticize about them, but if you compare their actions with US and Israel, they are minor criminals.

http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/20090216.htm

Quote:Other war supporters warned that the carnage is "Destroying [Israel's] soul and its image. Destroying it on world television screens, in the living rooms of the international community and most importantly, in Obama's America" (Ari Shavit). Shavit was particularly concerned about Israel's "shelling a United Nations facility...on the day when the UN secretary general is visiting Jerusalem," an act that is "beyond lunacy," he felt.39

Adding a few details, the "facility" was the UN compound in Gaza City, which contained the UNRWA warehouse. The shelling destroyed "hundreds of tons of emergency food and medicines set for distribution today to shelters, hospitals and feeding centres," according to UNRWA director John Ging. Military strikes at the same time destroyed two floors of the al-Quds hospital, setting it ablaze, and also a second warehouse run by the Palestinian Red Crescent society. The hospital in the densely-populated Tal-Hawa neighbourhood was destroyed by Israeli tanks "after hundreds of frightened Gazans had taken shelter inside as Israeli ground forces pushed into the neighbourhood," Al-Jazeera reported.

There was nothing left to salvage inside the smoldering ruins of the hospital. "They shelled the building, the hospital building," paramedic Ahmad Al-Haz told AP. "It caught fire. We tried to evacuate the sick people and the injured and the people who were there. Firefighters arrived and put out the fire, which burst into flames again and they put it out again and it came back for the third time." It was suspected that the blaze might have been set by white phosphorus, also suspected in numerous other fires and serious burn injuries.40

The suspicions were confirmed by Amnesty International after the cessation of the intense bombardment made inquiry possible. Israel had sensibly barred all journalists, even Israeli, while its crimes were proceeding in full fury. Israel's use of white phosphorus against Gaza civilians is "clear and undeniable," AI reported, condemning its repeated use in densely populated civilian areas as "a war crime." AI investigators found white phosphorus edges scattered around residential buildings, still burning, "further endangering the residents and their property," particularly children "drawn to the detritus of war and often unaware of the danger." Primary targets, they report, were the UNRWA compound, where the Israeli "white phosphorus landed next to some fuel trucks and caused a large fire which destroyed tons of humanitarian aid" after Israeli authorities "had given assurance that no further strikes would be launched on the compound." On the same day, "a white phosphorus shell landed in the al-Quds hospital in Gaza City also causing a fire which forced hospital staff to evacuate the patients... White phosphorus landing on skin can burn deep through muscle and into the bone, continuing to burn unless deprived of oxygen." Whether purposely intended or beyond depraved indifference, such crimes are inevitable when the weapon is used in attacks on civilians. 41

The white phosphorus shells were US-made, AI reported. In a report reviewing use of weapons in Gaza, AI concluded that Israel used US-supplied weapons in "serious violations of international humanitarian law," and called on "the U.N. Security Council to impose an immediate and comprehensive arms embargo on the Jewish state."42 Though conscious US complicity is hardly in doubt, it is excluded from the call for punishment by the analogue of the "too big to fail" doctrine.

It is, however, a mistake to concentrate too much on Israel's severe violations of jus in bello, the laws designed to bar wartime practices that are too savage. The invasion itself is a far more serious crime. And if Israel had inflicted horrendous damage by bows and arrows, it would still be a criminal act of extreme depravity.

It is also a mistake to focus attention on specific targets. The campaign was far more ambitious in scope. Its goal was "the destruction of all means of life," officials warned. A large part of the agricultural land was destroyed, some perhaps permanently, along with poultry, livestock, greenhouses, orchards, creating a major food crisis, the World Food Program reported. The IDF also targeted the Ministry of Agriculture and "the offices of the Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committees in Zaitoun -- which provides cheap food for the poor - ransacked and vandalised by soldiers who left abusive graffiti." Large areas were flattened by bulldozers. Beyond "the physical damage done by Israeli bulldozers, bombing and shelling, land has been contaminated by munitions, including white phosphorus, burst sewerage pipes, animal carcasses and even asbestos used in roofing. In many places, the damage is extreme. In Jabal al-Rayas, once a thriving farming community, every building has been knocked down, and even the cattle killed and left to lie rotting in the fields." Leaders of Gaza's business community, generally apolitical, "say that much of the 3 per cent of industry still operating after the 18-month shutdown caused by Israel's economic siege has now been destroyed" by Israeli forces using "aerial bombing, tank shelling and armoured bulldozers to eliminate the productive capacity of some of Gaza's most important manufacturing plants," destroying or severely damaging 219 factories, according to Palestinian industrialists.43

To impede potential recovery, the IDF attacked universities, largely destroying the agriculture faculty at al-Azhar university (considered pro-Fatah, Washington's favored faction), Al-Da'wa College for Humanities in Rafah, and the Gaza College for Security Sciences. Six university buildings in Gaza were razed to the ground and 16 damaged. Two of those destroyed housed the science and engineering laboratories of the Islamic University in Gaza.44 The pretext was that they contributed to Hamas military activities. By the same principle, Israeli (and US) universities are legitimate targets of large-scale terror.

There were occasional reports of the Israeli navy firing on fishing boats, but these conceal what appears to be a systematic campaign in recent years to drive the fishing industry towards shore - thereby destroying it, because the vast pollution caused by Israel's destruction of power stations and sewage facilities makes fishing impossible near shore. Citing recent incidents, the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights in Gaza, which has been a highly reliable source, "strongly condemn[ed] the continuous escalation of the IOF [Israeli Occupation Forces] offensive against Palestinian civilians, including fishermen." International human rights observers report regular attacks on fishing vessels in Gazan territorial waters. Accompanying Palestinian fishers, they report having "witnessed countless acts of Israeli military aggression against them whilst in Gazan territorial waters, despite a six-month ceasefire agreement holding at the time," and now again after the January ceasefire. "Gaza's 40,000 fishermen have been deprived of their livelihood" by Israel naval attacks, Gideon Levy reported from the bedside of a 19-year-old Gaza fisherman, severely wounded by Israeli gunboats who attacked his boat without warning near the Gaza shore on October 5, a month before the ceasefire was broken by Israel's invasion of Gaza, events to which we return. "Every few days the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) publishes reports from its volunteers in Gaza about attacks on fishermen. Sometimes the naval boats ram the wretched craft, sometimes the sailors use high-pressure water hoses on the fishermen, hurtling them into the sea, and sometimes they open lethal fire on them," Levy reported.45

The international observers report that attacks on fishing boats began after the discovery of quite promising natural gas fields by the BG Group in 2000, in Gaza's territorial waters. The regular attacks gradually drove fishing boats towards shore, not by official order but by threat and violence. Oil industry journals and the Israeli business press report that Israel's state-owned Israel Electric Corp. is negotiating "for as much as 1.5 billion cubic meters of natural gas from the Marine field located off the Mediterranean coast of the Palestinian controlled Gaza Strip." It is hard to suppress the thought that the Gaza invasion may be related to the project of stealing these valuable resources from Palestine, which cannot take part in the negotiations.46

Aggression always has a pretext: in this case, that Israel's patience had "run out" in the face of Hamas rocket attacks, as Ehud Barak put it. The mantra that is endlessly repeated is that Israel has the right to use force to defend itself. The thesis is partially defensible. The rocketing is criminal, and it is true that a state has the right to defend itself against criminal attacks. But it does not follow that it has a right to defend itself by force. That goes far beyond any principle that we would or should accept. Putin had no right to use force in response to Chechen terror - and his resort to force is not justified by the fact that he achieved results so far beyond what the US achieved in Iraq that if General Petraeus had approached them, he might have been crowned king.47 Nazi Germany had no right to use force to defend itself against the terrorism of the partisans. Kristallnacht was not justified by Herschel Grynszpan's assassination of a German Embassy official in Paris. The British were not justified in using force to defend themselves against the (very real) terror of the American colonists seeking independence, or to terrorize Irish Catholics in response to IRA terror - and when they finally turned to the sensible policy of addressing legitimate grievances, the terror virtually ended. It is not a matter of "proportionality," but of choice of action in the first place: Is there an alternative to violence? In all of these cases, there plainly was, so the resort to force had no justification whatsoever.

Any resort to force carries a heavy burden of proof, and we have to ask whether it can be met in the case of Israel's effort to quell any resistance to its daily criminal actions in Gaza and in the West Bank, where they still continue relentlessly after more than 40 years. Perhaps I may quote myself in an interview in the Israeli press on the legitimacy of Palestinian resistance: "We should recall that Gaza and the West Bank are recognized to be a unit, so that if resistance to Israel's destructive and illegal programs is legitimate within the West Bank (and it would be interesting to see a rational argument to the contrary), then it is legitimate in Gaza as well."48

Palestinian-American journalist Ali Abunimah observed that "There are no rockets launched at Israel from the West Bank, and yet Israel's extrajudicial killings, land theft, settler pogroms and kidnappings never stopped for a day during the truce. The western-backed Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas has acceded to all Israel's demands. Under the proud eye of United States military advisors, Abbas has assembled `security forces' to fight the resistance on Israel's behalf. None of that has spared a single Palestinian in the West Bank from Israel's relentless colonization" - thanks to firm US backing. The respected Palestinian parliamentarian Dr. Mustapha Barghouti adds that after Bush's Annapolis extravaganza in November 2007, with much uplifting rhetoric about dedication to peace and justice, Israeli attacks on Palestinians escalated in the West Bank, along with a sharp increase in settlements and Israeli check points. Obviously these criminal actions are not a response to rockets from Gaza, though the converse may well be the case.49

The actions of people resisting brutal occupation can be condemned as criminal and politically foolish, but those who offer no alternative have no moral standing to issue such judgments. The conclusion holds with particular force for Americans who choose to be directly implicated in Israel's ongoing crimes -- by their words, their actions, or their silence. All the more so because there are very clear non-violent alternatives - which, however, have the disadvantage that they bar the programs of illegal expansion that the US strongly supports in practice, while occasionally issuing a mild admonition that they are "unhelpful."50

Israel has straightforward means to defend itself: put an end to its criminal actions in occupied territories, and accept the long-standing international consensus on a two-state settlement that has been blocked by the US and Israel for over 30 years, since the US first vetoed a Security Council resolution calling for a political settlement in these terms in 1976. I will not once again run through the inglorious record, but it is important to be aware that US-Israeli rejectionism today is even more blatant than in the past. The Arab League has gone even beyond the consensus, calling for full normalization of relations with Israel. Hamas has repeatedly called for a two-state settlement in terms of the international consensus. Iran and Hezbollah have made it clear that they will abide by any agreement that Palestinians accept.51

http://www.chomsky.info/articles/20090119.htm

If anyone bothers to actually look through the sources, you'll also notice condemnations of Palestinians who fire from populated areas and stuff like that. Not only is this a nail in the coffin of the absurd propaganda that human rights groups are "biased against Israel", but it's actually pretty shocking how little this happens, not to mention it doesn't justify (under international law) attacking those populated areas. The attacks by the IDF are, after all, brought to Palestinian neighborhoods, so of course the resistance is going to be coming from within those neighborhoods. Unless, of course, we expect Palestinian resistance fighters to jump in the sea and fight from there when the IDF comes a calling.

lol, you know, it seems like common sense to me, when you bring tanks and soldiers into someone's neighborhood, those neighborhoods are gonna put up a fight, because you're bringing military occupation and attacks to their hood. But maybe I'm wrong, it's probably their archaic religious texts which motivate them to resist, it's religion's fault. Yeah, that's it, the brutal military occupation has nothing to do with it, they fight because they believe in God. lol

As far as I'm aware, you dipped from the convo after that. And I'm the one who thinks the views of impartial human rights groups are propaganda? lol

[1871]

Quote:Shakur420
Like here where your links are meant to support the position you presented, a position that's irrelevant as it doesn't address the article, or any of the points or facts presented in it.

And then

Quote:Shakur420
Why did I ignore your references? Why did I dismiss your point? Because it's useless here

Which just shows you to be a liar. First you claim that the links don’t address the argument then you openly admit that you ignored them ? So how did you reach the conclusion that the links diont address the argument? Had you read them you would have realised that they do but in a far more informative way than your crude, simplistic attempts.

Its the same as when you openly admitted you didn’t watch the video Introcluse had posted on the Taliban thread.

And then you claim people have 'dipped out of the convo' ? Hypocrite.

YOU dipped out of the convo when you didnt address the links posted, when you didnt watch the video or address the points raised. If you had then you would have understood the references to human rights reports on post 8 of this thread where they were referred to.


JANUARY 2012 COUNTRY SUMMARY

Iran

In 2011 Iranian authorities refused to allow government critics to engage in peaceful
demonstrations. In February, March, April, and September security forces broke up largescale
protests in several major cities. In mid-April security forces reportedly shot and
killed dozens of protesters in Iran’s Arab-majority Khuzestan province.

There was a sharp
increase in the use of the death penalty.

The government continued targeting civil
society activists, especially lawyers, rights activists, students, and journalists. In July
2011 the government announced it would not cooperate with, or allow access to, the
United Nations special rapporteur on Iran, appointed in March 2011 in response to the
worsening rights situation.
Freedom of Assembly and Association
In February and March thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of Tehran, the
capital, and several other major cities to support pro-democracy protests in neighboring
Arab countries and protest the detention of Iranian opposition leaders. The authorities’
violent response led to at least three deaths and hundreds of arrests.
In response to calls by former presidential candidates and opposition leaders Mir Hossein
Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi for mass protests in February, security forces arbitrarily
arrested dozens of political opposition members in Tehran and several other cities
beginning on February 8. Several days later they placed both Mousavi and Karroubi under
house arrest, where they remained at this writing.
In April Iran’s parliament passed several articles of a draft bill which severely limits the
independence of civil society organizations, and creates a Supreme Committee
Supervising NGO Activities chaired by ministry officials and members of the security forces.
Authorities had already banned or severely restricted the independence of several
professional organizations not covered by the draft bill, including the Journalists’
Association and the Bar Association. Dozens of activists affiliated with banned opposition
political parties or student groups are currently serving time in prison.
2
Death Penalty
In 2010 Iranian authorities recorded 252 executions, but rights groups believe many more
were executed without official acknowledgement. Most of those executed had been
convicted of drug-related offenses following flawed trials in revolutionary courts. The
number of executions increased even further following the entry into force in late
December 2010 of an amended anti-narcotics law, drafted by the Expediency Council and
approved by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Since then Iran has executed more
than 400 prisoners—including 67 drug offenders in January 2011 alone—according to rights
groups. Authorities have refused to acknowledge more than half these executions.
Crimes punishable by death include murder, rape, trafficking and possessing drugs, armed
robbery, espionage, sodomy, adultery, and apostasy. On September 3 the semi-official
Iranian Students News Agency announced the execution of six men in the southwestern
city of Ahvaz. Three of the men were convicted under Iran’s anti-sodomy laws.
Iran leads the world in the execution of juvenile offenders, individuals who committed a
crime before turning 18-years-old. The Iranian state executed at least three children in 2011,
one of them in public. Iranian law allows capital punishment for persons who have
reached puberty, defined as nine-years-old for girls and fifteen for boys. There are currently
more than a hundred juvenile offenders on death row.
Authorities have executed at least 30 individuals on the charge of moharebeh (“enmity
against God”) since January 2010, allegedly for their ties to armed or terrorist groups.
During the early morning hours of January 24, 2011, authorities in Tehran’s Evin prison
hanged Jafar Kazemi and Mohammad Ali Haj-Aghai for their alleged ties to the banned
Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK) opposition group. Ali Saremi, who admitted to sympathizing with
the MEK’s ideological aspirations, was also hanged in Evin prison on December 28, 2010,
for the crime of moharebeh.
As of October 2011 at least 16 Kurds were on death row, many of them for alleged national
security crimes and moharebeh.
Freedom of Expression
Authorities continue to shut down newspapers and target journalists and bloggers. On
September 5 the Ministry of Islamic Culture and Guidance’s Press Supervisory Board shut
down the weekly Shahrvand (Citizen) and daily Ruzegar (Time) for insulting the authorities
and “propaganda against the state,” among other crimes. On September 5 and 6,
3
Intelligence Ministry forces raided the offices of Majzooban-e Noor, a website affiliated
with the Nematollahi Gonabadi Sufi order, and arrested at least 11 members of its editorial
staff on unknown charges.
According to Reporters Without Borders, there were 49 journalists and bloggers in Iran’s
prisons as of October 2011. The judiciary sentenced Vahid Asghari, a 24 year-old blogger, to
death for his alleged involvement in “running obscene websites,” according to rights groups.
The Ministry of Science, backed by the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution,
implemented regulations to limit social science course offerings at various universities as
part of an Islamicization program. Authorities also issued restrictive quotas to limit the
courses and majors that women students could take at certain universities. State
universities prevented some politically active students from registering for graduate
programs despite test scores that should have guaranteed them access.
The government systematically blocked websites that carry political news and analysis,
slowed down internet speeds, and jammed foreign satellite broadcasts.
Human Rights Defenders and Lawyers
Authorities have imprisoned, prosecuted, or harassed dozens of defense lawyers since
June 2009. In August 2011 Nobel Peace Laureate Shirin Ebadi said at least 42 lawyers had
faced government persecution since June 2009. In January a revolutionary court convicted
Nasrin Sotoudeh, a prominent rights lawyer, of “acting against the national security” and
“propaganda against the regime” and sentenced her to 11 years in prison. Authorities also
barred Sotoudeh from practicing law and from leaving the country for 20 years. In
September the judiciary reduced her sentence to six years imprisonment.
In February a revolutionary court sentenced rights lawyer Khalil Bahramian to 18 months in
prison and imposed a 10-year ban on his practicing law. In July the judiciary sentenced
Mohammad Ali Dadkhah, a prominent lawyer and co-founder (with Ebadi) of the Center for
Defenders of Human Rights (CDHR), to nine years in prison and a 10-year ban from teaching
and legal practice. On September 10 security forces arrested Abdolfattah Soltani, another
CDHR co-founder. On September 27 a revolutionary court in Tehran sentenced Narges
Mohammadi, an executive member of the CDHR, to 11 years imprisonment for acting
against the national security and membership in an illegal organization.
4
Also on September 27, security forces raided the home of Masoud Shafiee, the lawyer who
represented three American hikers detained in Iran since July 31, 2009, and interrogated
him for several hours. On October 2 they prevented him from leaving the country.
Authorities had earlier released one of the hikers, Sarah Shourd, on September 14, 2010,
and the two others, Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal, on September 21.
Few if any independent rights organizations can openly operate in the country in the
current political climate.
Women’s Rights
Iranian women are discriminated against in personal status matters related to marriage,
divorce, inheritance, and child custody. A woman requires her male guardian’s approval
for marriage regardless of her age. An Iranian woman cannot pass on her nationality to her
foreign-born spouse or their children. A woman may not obtain a passport or travel outside
the country without her husband’s written permission.
Treatment of Minorities
The government denies freedom of religion to adherents of the Baha’i faith, Iran’s largest
non-Muslim religious minority. On May 21, security forces arrested at least 30 Baha’is in a
series of coordinated raids in several major cities. At this writing authorities were still
holding the defendants without charge. All those arrested were affiliated with the Baha’i
Institute for Higher Education, a correspondence university established in 1987 in
response to the government’s policy of depriving Baha’i students of the right to pursue
higher education. According to the Baha’i International Community, there were 100 Baha’is
detained in Iran’s prisons as of October.
Authorities discriminate against Muslim minorities, including Sunnis who account for
about 10 percent of the population, in political participation and employment. They also
prevent Sunni Iranians from constructing mosques in major cities. In recent years officials
have repeatedly prevented Sunnis from conducting separate Eid prayers in Tehran and
other cities. On September 5, in Fars province, paramilitary Basij militia attacked members
of Iran’s largest Sufi sect, the Nematollahi Gonabadi order, killing one. The authorities
then launched a campaign of arrests against members of the group in several cities.
Authorities also targeted converts to Christianity. In September a revolutionary court
convicted six members of the evangelical Church of Iran to one year prison terms on
5
charges of “propaganda against the state,” allegedly for proselytizing. On September 25,
authorities summoned Yousef Nadarkhani, the pastor of a 400-member Church of Iran
congregation in northern Iran, to court and told him he had three opportunities to
renounce his faith and embrace Islam. Nadarkhani refused to recant and faced possible
execution as of this writing. In 2010 the judiciary had sentenced Nadarkhani to death for
“apostasy from Islam” despite the fact that no such crime exists under Iran’s penal code.
The government restricted cultural and political activities among the country’s Azeri, Kurdish,
Arab, and Baluch minorities, including organizations that focus on social issues. In April
security forces reportedly killed several dozen protesters, most of them ethnic Arabs, in
Iran’s southwestern province of Khuzestan. Authorities arrested dozens and executed nine
men allegedly connected to protests on May 9. Security forces also arrested hundreds in
Iran’s Azerbaijan region following large-scale protests in August and September, part of a
pattern of harassment against environmental and Azeri civil society activists.
Key International Actors
In March the UN Human Rights Council appointed a special rapporteur for Iran. In July 2011
the Iranian government announced it would not cooperate with or allow the special
rapporteur access. On September 23 the special rapporteur submitted his first report on
Iran in which he highlighted a “pattern of systematic violations of … human rights” and
repeated his call on the government to allow him to visit the country.
Iran continued to refuse access to UN special procedures, despite their longstanding and
repeated requests for invitations to visit. No special rapporteurs have visited the country
since 2005.
On September 15 the UN secretary-general submitted a report to the UN General Assembly
in which he said he was “deeply troubled by reports of increased numbers of executions,
amputations, arbitrary arrest and detention, unfair trials, torture and ill-treatment” and
bemoaned “the crackdown on human rights activists, lawyers, journalists and opposition
activists.” On November 3 the UN Human Rights Committee issued its concluding
observations following its review of Iran’s implementation of the International Covenant on
Civil and Political Rights. The committee concluded “that the status of international human
rights treaties in domestic law is not specified in the legal system, which hinders the full
implementation of the rights contained in the Covenant.”
6
On April 14 the European Union imposed asset freezes and travel bans on 32 Iranian
officials, including members of Iran’s judiciary, who have committed rights abuses. In June
the United States extended individuals sanctions against additional members of the
Revolutionary Guards, the Basij militia, and Iran’s security forces involved in rights
violations. Later that month the US sanctioned companies with ties to the Revolutionary
Guards and military.
Iranian and Turkish cross-border military operations against Kurdish rebels in Iraqi
Kurdistan, which began in mid-June, killed at least 10, injured dozens, and displaced
hundreds of civilians.


Iran: Arrest Sweeps Target Arab Minority

Dozens Held; 2 Have Died in Custody


February 7, 2012
















Iran: New Assault on Freedom of Information

Iran: Investigate Reported Killings of Demonstrators


More Coverage:


More Human Rights Watch reporting on Iran


(New York) – Iranian security forces arrested more than 65 Arab residents during security sweeps in Iran’s Arab-majority Khuzestan province since late 2011 according to local activists, Human Rights Watch said today. The Iranian government should immediately charge or release those arrested, Human Rights Watch said. Authorities should also investigate reports by local activists that two detainees have died in Intelligence Ministry detention facilities in the past week.

Reports by local activists about security sweeps in the towns of Hamidiyeh, Shush, and Ahvaz indicate that authorities carried out at least some of the arrests in response to anti-government slogans and graffiti spray-painted on public property expressing sympathy for the Arab Spring and calling for a boycott of Iran’s parliamentary elections, scheduled for March 2, 2012. Human Rights Watch received information that Mohammad Kaabi, 34, and Nasser Alboshokeh Derafshan, 19, died in detention facilities run by local intelligence officials in Shush and Ahvaz respectively, apparently as a result of torture. The local activists say that most of those arrested are being held in incommunicado detention.

“There has been a blackout inside Iran on this latest round of arrests targeting Arab protesters and activists,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “Authorities should immediately divulge the reasons for the arrests, give detainees access to family members and lawyers, bring all detainees promptly before a judge, and hold anyone responsible for torture to account.”

Human Rights Watch expressed concern for those in custody. Based on past government actions some of those arrested could be at imminent risk of execution if they are convicted by revolutionary courts of national security crimes including terrorism or espionage, or face prosecution on such charges. Human Rights Watch is not aware of any charges that have been brought in these cases.

According to several Iranian Arab rights groups, security forces have since November 2011 arrested at least 18 Arab men in Hamidiyeh, 25 kilometers west of Ahvaz, the provincial capital. The first arrest, on November 28, was of the prominent activist Hasan Manabi, an elementary school principal, and his brother Ghabel. A close friend of Hasan Manabi told Human Rights Watch that security and intelligence forces had arrested him numerous times since 2005. He said that Manabi, who had told the friend about torture and ill-treatment at the hands of intelligence officials following earlier arrests, had decided in late 2010 to seek asylum in Turkey.

Manabi’s friend told Human Rights Watch that the Intelligence Ministry summoned and detained Manabi’s wife for several days to pressure him to return to Iran. Manabi returned in September 2011 and introduced himself to intelligence officials in Ahvaz, who interrogated him, then released him after several hours. But on November 28 intelligence agents raided Manabi’s home and arrested him and his brother Ghabel. The authorities have since accused Hasan Manabi of spying for the United States and the United Kingdom, in addition to having ties with Arab opposition groups operating in Khuzestan province.

A local Khuzestan activist told Human Rights Watch that the latest round of arrests in Hamidiyeh began when security forces arrested nine Iranian Arabs on January 10 and four more on January 26 and 30. Most are between ages 20 and 28, and some had previously been detained for participating in demonstrations demanding more rights for Iran’s ethnic Arab minority. At least one has been released on bail, the local activist said, and several others have since been arrested.

Authorities have also arrested at least 27 people in Shush, 115 kilometers northwest of Ahvaz, in recent weeks. A local activist there said that security forces, including plainclothes members of the Intelligence Ministry, initiated the arrests in response to anti-government slogans and graffiti spray-painted on public property expressing sympathy for the Arab Spring and calling for a boycott of Iran’s parliamentary elections, scheduled for March 2. The activist said that security forces set up checkpoints throughout Shush. After they arrested Jasim Kaabi, his daughter Khadijeh, and his son Mohammad in their home on January 21, he said “people became angry and poured into the streets.” In response, security forces arrested at least 24 men, most of them in their 20s, on January 25 and 26. The arrests took place in Ahmadabad, Khazireh, Davar, and several villages outside of Shush.

“For about four days [from January 25] Shush was effectively under martial law, which has since been lifted,” the activist said. “But the city is still under a heavy security presence.”

The local activist told Human Rights Watch that Mohammad Kaabi, who was arrested in Shush on January 21, died in custody at a local Intelligence Ministry detention facility. The local activist confirmed reports from other activists that on February 2 authorities from the Shush Intelligence Ministry office contacted Kaabi’s family and informed them that he had died. The official reportedly told the family that authorities had already buried Kaabi’s remains and there was no need for funeral services. They warned the family not to conduct a public mourning service for their son.

Prior to news of Kaabi’s death, local activists told Human Rights Watch that 19-year-old Nasser Alboshokeh Derafshan had allegedly died after being tortured on January 30 in an Intelligence Ministry detention facility in Ahvaz. A source close to Derafshan’s family told Human Rights Watch that security forces arrested Derafshan on January 26 for unknown reasons.

On January 30, agents from Ahvaz’s Intelligence Ministry called Derafshan’s father and told them to come pick up him up, the source said. When his father arrived at the detention facility, he caught a glimpse of a body inside the ambulance parked there and asked if it was his son, but the authorities denied it. He followed the ambulance to Golestan hospital and discovered that the body in the ambulance was his son’s. The source told Human Rights Watch that Derafshan’s family saw signs of torture on his body, including bruises on his face, neck, waist, and ribs. The authorities claim that Derafshan died of natural causes.

The source told Human Rights Watch that authorities have so far refused to return Derafshan’s body to his family.

Local activists also told Human Rights Watch that intelligence agents have arrested at least 11 Arab men in and around Ahvaz since February 3. Security forces arrested another 10 Arab men, all of whom are members of the Sunni sect, on January 17, activists said. One of them told Human Rights Watch that security forces, many of them plainclothes agents, are present throughout Ahvaz and the situation there is very tense.

Human Rights Watch has received the names of many of those arrested or killed, but has not been able to verify the circumstances of each arrest due to severe government restrictions on independent monitoring and reporting in the province. Human Rights Watch previously called on Iranian authorities to allow independent international media and human rights organizations access to investigate allegations of serious rights violations in the province.

“Security operations in Khuzestan province since protests there last April have resulted in the largest number of deaths and injuries since the crackdown that followed the disputed 2009 presidential election,” Stork said. “With the province under an information blackout and the history of secret convictions and executions, we have reason to be very worried about the people the authorities have been snatching up and carrying off there.”

Background
Khuzestan province, where much of Iran’s oil and gas reserves are located, has a large ethnic Arab population believed to number more than 2 million, possibly a majority of residents. Despite Khuzestan’s natural resource wealth, ethnic Arabs have long complained about the lack of socioeconomic development in the region. They also allege that the Iranian government has systematically discriminated against them, particularly in employment, housing, and civil and political rights.

The arrests in Hamidiyeh, Shush, and Ahvaz are the latest in an intense government security and media campaign over several years targeting Khuzestan Arab residents and activists. The government routinely alleges that Arab rights activists and protesters engage in terrorism and espionage, or are tied to armed Arab separatist groups. On December 13, 2011, Press TV, a government English-language station, aired a documentary featuring three Arab men who confessed before the cameras that they had carried out terrorist activities. The program alleged that the men – Hadi Rashedi, Hashem Shaabani, and Taha Heidarian – were part of a group called ‘Khalq-e Arab,’ supported by US and UK interests and foreign-based Iranian Arabs who fronted as human rights activists.

A source who knows both Rashedi and Shaabani told Human Rights Watch that the two men are among more than 10 others from the town of Khalafabad, located about 120 kilometers southeast of Ahvaz, who have been arrested and detained by authorities since January 2011. He said he believes the men were forced to confess to these crimes after being subjected to physical and psychological torture.

In April 2011, Human Rights Watch documented the use of live ammunition by security forces against protesters in cities throughout Khuzestan province, killing dozens and wounding many more. No Iranian official has been held to account for these killings.

Authorities also arrested several hundred demonstrators and rights activists, some of whom are still in detention, and executed at least seven Arab men and a 16-year-old boy in Ahvaz’s Karun prison between May 4 and May 7, Iranian Arab rights groups reported. Local rights activists have told Human Rights Watch that at least some of those executed had been arrested only weeks before, during the April protests. Activists say that at least four others died in custody between March and May. The authorities should open independent and transparent investigations into all alleged killings, Human Rights Watch said.

The April 2011 protests were held to mark the sixth anniversary of 2005 protests in Khuzestan, in which security forces opened fire to disperse demonstrators in Ahvaz and other cities and towns, killing at least 50 protesters and detaining hundreds. The 2005 crackdown led to a cycle of violence throughout Khuzestan province, including several bomb attacks in June and October 2005 and January 2006 that killed 12 people. In response, the government imprisoned numerous activists it claimed were Arab separatists responsible for terrorist attacks against civilians and sentenced more than a dozen people to death on terrorism-related charges. Since 2006, authorities have executed at least 19 Iranians of Arab origin.

Names of People Reported Arrested in Khuzestan Province Since November 2011 (provided by local activists)*

Shush: Qasem Badavi, Jaajaa Chenani, Aadel Dabbat, Ahmad Dabbat, Ashur Dabbat, Faisal Dabbat, Kazem Dabbat, Ebrahim Heidari, Hamid Kaabi, Jaafar Kaabi, Jasem Kaabi, Karim Kaabi, Khadijeh Kaabi (female), Mohammad Kaabi (died in detention), Sajjad Kaabi, Ali Kenani, Abbas Khasraji, Mehdi Khasraji, Moslem Mazraavi, Morteza Mousavi, Hasan Navaseri, Mehdi Navaseri, Salar Obeidavi, Amir Sorkhi, Adnan Zoqeibi, Ahmad Zoqeibi, Osman Zoqeibi

Hamidiyeh: Hasan Abiat, Jalil Abiat, Jamal Abiat, Aadel Cheldavi, Adnan Cheldavi, Karim Doheimi, Ali Heidari, Mohammad Adnan Helfi, Ghabel Manabi (arrested November 2011), Hadi Manabi, Hasan Manabi (arrested November 2011), Seyed Faraj Mousavi (released on bail), Heidar Obeidavi, Khaled Obeidavi, Ayoub Saedi, Emad Saedi, Abbas Samer, Eidan Shakhi

Ahvaz (and vicinity): Ahmad Afravi (Sunni), Nasser Alboshokeh Derafshan (died in detention), Majid Bavi (Sunni), Abdolvahid Beit Sayyah (Sunni), Valid Hamadi, Qazi Handali Farhani (Sunni), Jamal Hazbavi (Sunni), Tofiq Heidari, Hamid Khanfari Batrani (Sunni), Hossein Khazraji (Sunni), Said Khazraji (Sunni), Jasem Marvani, Taher Moaviyeh, Mohammad Naami, Seyed Ahmad Nazari (Sunni), Aadel Saedi, Hossein Savari, Ali Sayyahi, Ali Sharifi, Sadoun Silavi, Khalaf Zobeidi (Sunni)


*This list is not exhaustive and Human Rights Watch could not independently verify whether the individuals listed remain in detention.

as for you copy and paste and links.....

http://www.ned.org/where-we-work/middle-...ern-africa
http://www.law-lib.utoronto.ca/diana/afghanwomen.htm
http://www.universaljurisdiction.org/wor...ar-taliban
http://www.hrw.org/middle-eastn-africa/iran
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?Ne...=iran&Cr1=
http://www.voanews.com/policy/editorials...-IRAN.html
http://middleeast.about.com/od/syria/f/hama-rules.htm
http://www.meforum.org/1680/can-there-be...-democracy
http://www.al-bab.com/arab/background/reform.htm
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast...23958.html
http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/bah...ed-amnesty
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/201...27461.html
http://www.france24.com/en/20110122-alge...nstrations
peacebuild.ca/MENARoundtableJune2011modified.pdf
http://www.hrw.org/news/2011/11/21/flaws...rism-trial
http://www.law-lib.utoronto.ca/diana/afghanwomen.htm
http://www.universaljurisdiction.org/wor...ar-taliban

The actual situation is far more multidimensional than characterised by a simplistic 'Anti-Americanism'.

[Introcluse]

shakur why would I have a conversation with a copy and paste post? i may as well be talking to a bot lol ...and since when does not replying to a post mean the person who made the last post wins a debate/ discussion ? using that yardstick of 'if no one replies to your post you're right' then you yourself would have lost many debates/discussions on here, and with your narcissistic egocentric mentality you wouldn't for a second concede you ever been wrong anywhere or any one else has 'won' a discussion/debate.

I love how you retrofit everything in line with popular concensus. Let's just say there was a new innovative political system arose which is better then democracy and that political word became fashionable for people to brand about the way democracy is now. Let's call it SHAKUROCRACY. Shakur would then be in here saying all those years the middle east empires haven't existed and there's been shakurocracy...the abbasids, the byzantines and the ottomans are just urban myths & propoganda. Then he would say "recently the evil imperialist western forces came in and 'de-shakurocrasised' the region" and drop 25 links extracted from a 5 minute google search. Then he would also say "look !, this whole time my holy book has said shakurocracy is the best political system for governance and the verses which oppose personal freedoms are just for domestic relations."

shakur your so blinded by your anti-westernism/americanism it ain't even funny....If you had herpes you would blame it would on the west... there's no point in engaging in a conversation with someoe so one sided and biased.

[YaelTheGreat]

Damn, you got angry as shit! Anywho, don't you think you anti-islamist and anti- middle east mentality also makes you blind? 80% of your post deal with Islam, you throw it in even when it wasn't bought up. Isn't that a little bit arrogant? Also, don't you also badger us with quotes and endless argument when arguing about Islam? The answer is yes. Not trying to say what you said about shak is neccisarily wrong- he is super anti-west- but you should look at what you do and he does and compare, how much differently do you act on this forum than he does? You are just more brazenly hateful and spiteful.

[1871]

Is that so. Try reading the Taliban thread. Try reading the Syria thread.

MAKE SURE YOU WATCH ALL THE VIDEOS AND READ THE ENTIRE THREAD. Then you might understand who is more brazenly hateful and spiteful. Rick Ross summed it up in pretty much the same way

Note post 138/149

http://www.immortaltechnique.co.uk/Threa...ce?page=13

Quote:Shakur420
lol, the problem is, when states who go around gassing civilians and crops, occupying countries and dropping bombs on cities, crushing rebellions and funding dictators, when they do that shit, it's justified, when the weak, official enemies do much less, it's a crime against humanity. Now you may not adopt this utter hypocrisy, but your presenting arguments from people who do. Those arguments can be dismissed.

http://www.immortaltechnique.co.uk/Threa...ort?page=3

^
'much less' ((and who apart from the voice in his own head, says it is 'justified'???? A blatant lie))

And these videos become syncretised with Saudi Arabia??? Bahrain???
Like FUCK THEM, THEY ARE DOING THE SAME THING.

as though this






is 'much less'. Segues nicely with the Godfather 'nickels and dimes' I suppose these people are 'nickels and dimes'. Ugly.

And what a pathetic argument. This is an example of the Syncretism introcluse refers to. As though the reports are symbiotic with State repression and therefore showing the reality of such abuses can be 'dismissed' and as though journalists and reporters who filmed those videos and report on Assads atrocities are symbiotic with fascists.

Like I said, make sure you watch all the videos.

http://www.immortaltechnique.co.uk/Threa...yem-Report

[YaelTheGreat]

And did I not concede that he is extremely ant- west and that is somewhat blinding? I also said not everything Interclose said wrong, Also, that is neither hateful or spiteful. It is overlooking and under"appreciating"- can't think of a better word right now- the crimes of others, but not explicitly hateful. Find a thread about Islam that Interclose has participated in and then tell me what hate is.