Gaza - A Suggested Solution

Further to that piece Friday on how Israel’s radical rightwing shift is brutalizing Israeli society, I stumbled across this:

http://forward.com/articles/202558/israeli-professor-suggests-rape-would-serve-as-ter/

And I found this insightful and well footnoted piece from The Nation on AlterNet debunking Israel’s (and our own) narrative on the Gaza invasion.

http://www.alternet.org/world/five-israeli-talking-points-gaza-debunked?akid=12060.103986._jtkpX&rd=1&src=newsletter1013185&t=5

When an Israeli, of all people, can openly call for a “final solution” to the Palestinian problem, well...

Netanyahu calls upon Palestinian civilians to “leave Gaza.” How exactly? And go where?

I have a solution to this unbearable mess. This would be a perfect opportunity for NATO to do something useful for a change instead of babysitting an unresolved civil war in Afghanistan or haplessly bombing Libya while al Qaeda snuck in the back door to spread through North Africa. What I have in mind is a 40-year peacekeeping mission along the lines of what we did successfully in Cyprus.

NATO forces re-establish the pre-67 borders between Israel and the Palestinians. Yes, that means the Israelis leaving the illegal settlements on the West Bank. Jerusalem is reconstituted as an “open city.” A buffer strip, extending at least five miles into the Palestinian and the Israeli side of the border is occupied by NATO personnel armed to the teeth and with the latest surveillance technology.

The Palestinians would be assisted to re-establish a functioning government and economy in the West Bank and Gaza. Israel’s blockade of the Palestinian coastline would be lifted. NATO naval forces would patrol Gaza’s coastal waters. NATO would also be responsible for securing the airspace over Palestinian territories and reopening air transport corridors into the West Bank and Gaza.

The idea would be to give the Palestinians their own homeland and statehood. Give them a viable, secure and peaceful place to again live and work freely, relieved of the yoke of generations of occupation. Allow them to rebuild their homes, their farms and their cities. Let them discover a way other than armed resistance.

Why 40 years? That’s roughly two-generations which I figure would be the minimum needed to breed the worst of the mutual hatred out of the Palestinians and Israelis. It would also allow both peoples and both governments to very gradually establish something approximating normal relations.

I’m convinced that extremism and violence are not traits inherent to any people and that, given the chance, we all would choose security, stability and peace, not only for ourselves but especially for our children.

Mos, The Disaffected Lib

Massaging The Message: How A Republican Has Helped Israel Justify Its Invasion Of Gaza

The Independent reports on how an American Republican pollster and political strategist has helped Israel sell its recent invasion of Gaza, drawing upon a

playbook [that] is a professional, well-researched and confidential study on how to influence the media and public opinion in America and Europe. Written by the expert Republican pollster and political strategist Dr Frank Luntz, the study was commissioned five years ago by a group called The Israel Project, with offices in the US and Israel, for use by those "who are on the front lines of fighting the media war for Israel".

The strategy, which relies heavily upon an understanding of psychology, advises tailoring one's message according to one's audience. Among the gems is this:

For example, the study says that "Americans agree that Israel 'has a right to defensible borders'. But it does you no good to define exactly what those borders should be. Avoid talking about borders in terms of pre- or post-1967, because it only serves to remind Americans of Israel's military history. Particularly on the left this does you harm.

For the pesky journalist who asks uncomfortable questions, such as those involving the right of return for Palestinian refugees who were expelled or fled in 1948 and in the following years, and who are not allowed to go back to their homes, the person being question should respond this way:

They should call it a "demand", on the grounds that Americans don't like people who make demands. "Then say 'Palestinians aren't content with their own state. Now they're demanding territory inside Israel'."

An in situations where widespread destruction and loss of life results, as in the current situation:

Dr Luntz says that Israeli spokesmen or political leaders must never, ever justify "the deliberate slaughter of innocent women and children" and they must aggressively challenge those who accuse Israel of such a crime. Israeli spokesmen struggled to be true to this prescription when 16 Palestinians were killed in a UN shelter in Gaza last Thursday.

To show empathy, Luntz advises this "effective Israeli sound bite":

"I particularly want to reach out to Palestinian mothers who have lost their children. No parent should have to bury their child."

As the article suggests, the 112-page booklet should be must-reading for all journalists and, I would think, anyone else interested in truth over propaganda and public relations.

The Climate Change Debate Lives On

The science on the theory of climate change is not settled. There is a powerful, scientific consensus that anthropogenic or man-made climate change is real, here now and worsening. There is a powerful, scientific consensus that man-made climate change is already triggering natural feedback mechanisms that eventually can become "tipping points" beyond which we will have runaway global warming. Runaway as in all the king's horses and all the king's men won't be able to stop it.

For all of that, the science isn't settled. That much is obvious from the tsunami of research studies that keep pouring in from a broad spectrum of scientific disciplines such as geology, glaciology, hydrology, oceanography, atmospherics, physics and chemistry, biology and marine biology, epidemiology, botany, meteorology, climatology and others. The science isn't settled because we're constantly uncovering new information, new pieces of a puzzle that give us a clearer picture of what we're up against. It may not be good news and it usually isn't but it's all important information that we ignore at our increasing peril.

Now, having said that, what about this climate change "debate"? It does exist but the important point is not that it exists but where it exists. It lingers on amidst the far right in magazines such as Forbes, in papers such as the Washington Post and Times, on TV networks like FOX and on open-mouth radio shows that appeal to the slack jawed, tea party crowd such as Limbaugh. It exists within any media outlet owned by Aussie news mogul, reptilian Rupert Murdoch.

What they're debating, however, isn't the reality of anthropogenic global warming. They can read the science as well as anyone or at least they can pay people to give them that information. What they're debating is the question of how much longer they can get away with sowing doubt and outright denialism before their pants burst into flame and their audience walks.

And then there's the debate among the political crowd, the sort-termer "Friends of Rupert Society." That would be people like Stephen Harper, Tony Abbott and David Cameron, most of the Republican caucus and an unseemly segment of the Democrats too, and camp followers such as Sarah Palin. Yeah, that's right. Sarah Palin and Steve Harper are on the same page. These types debate how much longer they can fudge and obscure and block any meaningful action.

Maybe the worst, though, are the pols who say they accept the reality of global warming but continue to act as though the debate was real and the science wasn't settled. Here I'm talking about the closet neoliberals who lead our opposition parties - Trudeau and Mulcair. Just like Harper, they're all for ramping up bitumen production and export. They're merely quibbling about transportation options which creates the false impression that there are any good options. They'll cajole you out of your vote on the promise that they'll be "less worse" than Harper and they'll dress up that claim with a tweaked policy here and there and then, if they convince enough of you to let them in, it'll be business pretty much as usual.

How can you tell they're closet neoliberals? Easy. Just like anyone else in a closet, unwilling to reveal themselves for who they are, they tread very lightly. They avoid getting drawn into certain conversations and they're adept at distraction. They bob and weave away from discussions that link things like the highest carbon oil on the planet and climate change tipping points. Much as Harper is vulnerable on it, they won't attack him for establishing Canada as a global pariah on climate change lest they find themselves hoisted on the petard of their own hypocrisy.

Look at it this way. Their foreign policy is neoliberal. Their policy on Israel is neoliberal. Their energy policy is neoliberal. Their economic policy is neoliberal. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck and waddles like a duck and lays duck eggs - it's a f__king duck! Makes no difference if it's labeled Liberal or New Democrat. Names simply don't mean much any more. They're false flags.

And now understand this. Fighting climate change is progressivism at its very best. Fighting inequality lies at the heart of progressivism. Leaving a better world for our grandkids is progressivism. Neoliberalism, however, is antithetical to progressivism. Neoliberalism is the grease on which corporatism quietly slides into our lives. Neoliberalism, no matter what sort of happy face you slap on it, eventually smothers progressivism.

It could be fairly argued that the 2015 general election will actually be a referendum on what form of neoliberalism we prefer. Some like it hot, hard and spicy. Most of us just hold our noses and swallow, hoping we don't gag. As for me, I'll be voting progressive and in this fetid milieu that can mean only one party, Green.


MoS, the Disaffected Lib

It Wasn't Hamas - And Israel Knew That From the Get-Go.

We all know that Israel used the kidnapping/murder of three Israeli teens, that it blamed squarely on Hamas, to whip up support for its brutal invasion of Gaza. It's been claimed that Israeli intelligence knew the teens had been killed shortly after they were kidnapped but withheld the information to stoke anti-Hamas sentiment.

Now, with over 1,000 Palestinians dead at Israeli hands, word is out that Israel knew Hamas had nothing to do with those three murders. An Israeli police spokesman is said to have confirmed to BBC reporter, Jon Donnison, that the killings were not the work of Hamas but a "lone cell."

This suggests that the west, especially our own Harper and Baird, were duped by Netanyahu. No need going at length into what this does to Justin's praise of Israel for its "commitment to peace."

MoS, the Disaffected Lib

But Then Again ...

S.E Cupp does not agree with the New York Times recommendation that the federal ban on marijuana be ended:

End Prohibition - The New York Times

The editorial board of America's "newspaper of record" has called for Washington to repeal federal laws prohibiting marijuana. The New York Times says it's time to end America's second prohibition:

It took 13 years for the United States to come to its senses and end Prohibition, 13 years in which people kept drinking, otherwise law-abiding citizens became criminals and crime syndicates arose and flourished. It has been more than 40 years since Congress passed the current ban on marijuana, inflicting great harm on society just to prohibit a substance far less dangerous than alcohol.

The federal government should repeal the ban on marijuana.

There are no perfect answers to people’s legitimate concerns about marijuana use. But neither are there such answers about tobacco or alcohol, and we believe that on every level — health effects, the impact on society and law-and-order issues — the balance falls squarely on the side of national legalization. That will put decisions on whether to allow recreational or medicinal production and use where it belongs — at the state level.


MoS, the Disaffected Lib

Our Monochromatic Political Leadership

The images are graphic and heartbreaking - buildings reduced to rubble, maimed and dead children strewn among that rubble, families fractured, lives broken beyond repair. Were it not for the distancing effect that television news inevitably brings, the pictures would be overwhelming, leaving room for nothing but despair.

Thus is the reality of the ongoing Israeli assault on Gaza, a seemingly insoluble situation aided and abetted by a West that offers nothing but the staunch bromide of Israeli's 'right to defend itself,' an assertion with which few would disagree.

And therein lies the problem. That reflexive cliche whenever Israeli 'excesses' make the news relies on an uninformed and unsophisticated mode of thinking that sees the world only in terms of absolutes, where things are right or wrong, where you either stand with Israel wholeheartedly and unequivocally, or you are an anti-Semite who stands with the terrorists.

This is certainly the position of the Harper regime, and it is one held by Thomas Mulcair as far back as 2008, and by Justin Trudeau as well, as noted by The Mound of Sound on this blog.

Taking, as they say, a more 'nuanced' public position takes courage for the political risk it entails, and all three leaders of the major parties have shown themselves extraordinarily risk-averse. Unfortunately, their decision to play a safe and defensive game carries with it stakes far greater than their own political ambitions.

It is that cowardice that invites a withering assessment by Haroon Siddiqui in this morning's Toronto Star:

Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau and, to a lesser extent, NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair have fallen in line with Stephen Harper’s support of the Israeli onslaught on Gaza.

None question the Israeli killing and maiming of hundreds of civilians, including women and children.

All echo the formulation that, given the barrage of (ineffective) Hamas rockets, Israel has a right to retaliate (bombing by air, shelling from the sea, mounting a ground invasion, levelling houses, hitting hospitals, mosques and schools run by the United Nations, and disrupting electricity, water and sewage systems).

Siddiqui suggests there is great room for a genuine discussion that all three 'leaders' have no interest in initiating:

Our federal leaders do not ask whether there could have been a less lethal response to the rockets than a wholesale war on Gaza, the third in six years.

Indeed, they hew closely to the official narrative, refusing to allow facts to interfere with expediency:

They studiously avoid mentioning the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands, now in its 47th year. They never mention the Israeli blockade of Gaza that entered its eighth year last month, leaving its 1.7 million inhabitants destitute.

Nor is the writer impressed by their blanket absolution of Israel for the mass destruction its actions have wrought:

All three suggest that Israel bears little or no responsibility for what’s happening. It’s all the fault of Hamas, the terrorist entity. They ignore a parallel narrative that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu provoked this war in order to derail a recent unity agreement between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, an accord that he saw as a threat to the status quo that he prefers.

Siddiqui disabuses those who hold out hope for change under young Justin Trudeau:

Trudeau issued a statement July 15 that “Israel has the right to defend itself and its people. Hamas is a terrorist organization and must cease its rocket attacks immediately.” He made no commensurate call for Israel to show restraint.

He condemned Hamas for rejecting an Egyptian ceasefire proposal and commended Israel for accepting it “and demonstrating its commitment to peace.” He did not say that the Egyptian military junta is not a neutral party, that it considers Hamas an extension of the banned Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood whose elected president Mohammed Morsi the army toppled in a coup last year. Hamas’ conditions for a ceasefire were rejected. It wanted, among other things, an end to the siege of Gaza.

There is much more in Siddiqui's column that merits reading, including the pushback from 500 prominent Canadians condemning the Harper regime for its uncritical stance on Israel, and condemnation by Canadians For Justice And Peace In The Middle East of all three federal parties because they have betrayed Canadian values.

All in all, much to disturb our Sunday equanimity.