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Even gossip that Senator Chuck Hagel (who dares to defend Palestinian rights from time to time) and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg (who admitted he didn't give a damn about Israel when he first ran for Mayor) might team up and run as third party candidates did not faze them. Not that anyone should think if elected the Military-Industrial-Media-Israel lobbies would allow any quasi-non-interventionist to have any kind of "humble foreign policy" -- you know like the one George W. promised us during his 2000 run for President.
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The Al-Awda ("right of return") National conference felt it necessary to move from its original venue at the University of California, Riverside because organizers opposed allowing members of the Israeli Defense Force to attend events and film participants. Organizers rightly feared that such "evidence" of legal political activity could be used to falsely accuse, imprison or even kill Palestinian associates, friends and relatives in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza..
Rabidly Zionist FrontPage and Dafka articles of course claim Palestinians really wanted to plan terrorist activities. However, having seen these IDF-t-shirt wearing types show up to intimidate Palestinians at an Israel divestment talk where Palestinians spoke, I certainly understand why Al-Awda opted for a private hotel where they could better protect their members from intimidation. See photo I took at that event, and a photo from commercial site selling such t-shirts.
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The World Says No to Israeli Occupation! June 10-11 Mobilization in Washington, DC is putting up a few dozen of these posters inside the metro stations to educate the public. Portrayed is a Palestinian child having to negotiate a tank to get to school.
StandWithUs.Com, a rabid pro-Zionist organization, put up its own advertisements painting Palestinian children as potential terrorists. Of course, the truth is that the Israelis teach their children the Palestinians are inferior and prepare them from an early age to accept compulsory military service where their duties are to keep Arabs safely imprisoned in defacto concentration camps. (Thus the charge the posters are racist.) So it's hardly surprising that some percentage of Palestinians are driven to take up arms to defend themselves from such aggression. Nor is it surprising they encourage their children to commit to the struggle.
What's really sad is that the Israelis have created such conditions for Palestinians that even some of the most committed pacifists consider Palestine to be one of the few instances where the people have a right to engage in armed struggle! The responsibility lies first and foremost on Israel to stop its oppression and withdraw from all land illegally confiscated since 1948.
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People sometimes ask me why I sympathize so much with the Palestinian cause. My top reasons are: that Israel is the only nation with a "Samson Option" of threatening to launch nuclear attacks on Arab, European and even Russian cities if Israel suffers too great of loses in trying to hold on to all the land it has stolen; that if the U.S.'s great ally nukes Russia, Russia will nuke America; that the Israel lobby viciously stifles American citizens' criticism of U.S. aid to Israel and involvement in Israeli wars; that the Iraq war and any Iran war are waged in part for the sake of Israel; that Israelis and supporters hypocritically claim the Nazi genocide against Jews ("The Holocaust") actually excuses ethnic cleansing, shutting millions into defacto concentration camps, long term incarceration of dissidents, and random killings of innocents.
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However, I apply to Israel the same principles I apply to all political entities. They have a right to self-determination and to create their own state on their own private property, as long as they do not force their state on others. Of course, in 1948 the United Nations gave Israel control of a great deal of land they did not genuinely buy or settle and control of a bare minority of people who had no desire to be controlled by them. Israelis then took even more land and drove more than 700,000 people from their lands and homes. See various ideas for Israel-Palestine confederations -- some within a radical decentralist framework -- at Secession.Net.
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Norman Finkelstein, Professor of Political Theory at DePaul University, is son of survivors of Nazi genocide. He has been exposing the truth about Israel's aggression on the Palestinians, the misuse of anti-Semitism to intimidate those who criticize Israel and its supporters, and those who exploit the Holocaust for political and financial gain. He is currently being attacked by Alan Dershowitz and other supporters of Israeli aggression during tenure proceedings at DePaul University. See the Solidarity page: sign the general Petition; sign the student petition. See more Carlos Latuff creative commons cartoons like Finkelstein standing up to the IDF below.
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