By Nadia Kamil / @nadiakamil

I recently saw the Oscar-nominated 5 Broken Cameras and it affected me deeply – though definitely not the first film to make me cry, it was the first film that made me cry audibly. It spurred me into learning more about the history & current situation in Palestine. So I was pleased to see another documentary film coming out of the region.

When The Boys Return is an hour-long portrait of a group of boys in a post-prison rehabilitation group. The Israeli army arrested them all as children, each serving between two months to two years in prison. The most common charge was throwing stones.

The film intimately captures the fragility of these boys caught between adolescence & occupation. The occupation determines their whole lives; it consumes them as they live to fight against it, constantly worrying about being monitored by the Israeli army & getting arrested again. One of the boys nonchalantly admits he sleeps fully clothed in case the army comes to arrest him at night.

When asked about what they hope to do in the future one of the boys responds, “to end the occupation” and when his counselor presses him as to what he will do if that happens, he quietly says he’ll “be free”. He can’t think beyond the occupation. The walls erected by Israel are physical for these boys but also mental. It blocks them from seeing a life beyond living in the shadow of it.

The film is fairly narrow in its scope and provides only the smallest amount of context. There is no explanation of what the occupation is or why the boys feel they have to fight against it. There is very little description of what life in an Israeli prison is actually like for a Palestinian child and only a brief moment where their counsellor explains that their arrests & prison stays were illegal & in breach of international human rights. There is no comment or representation from Israel, only shaky footage of IDF soldiers shooting from tanks, brandishing guns, stalking villages, rounding up child arrestees.

When the Boys Return is a melancholy picture of the seemingly inescapable cycle of anger, resistance, and arrest for many Palestinian boys but watching without a sound knowledge of the illegal occupation of the West Bank; the film might fail to have the emotional impact these stories should provoke.

By @IntheDocHouse

Thursday 16th May | Rich Mix Cinema | 8.00pm | £7 (£5 conc)

DocHouse Presents: When the Boys Return – With Q&A with Director via Skype

Dir. Tone Anderson
Norway – 2012 – 58mins

In a room at their local YMCA in Hebron, the West Bank, a group of teenage boys come together each week to discuss their shared traumatic experiences. They are just a few of the 7,500 Palestinian minors aged 12-18 who, over the past decade, have been arrested on a daily basis and placed in Israeli jails, where their rights as children are completely ignored.

Most have committed crimes no worse than throwing stones, but each is subjected to an average of two years in jail and rarely escapes without suffering the devastating effects of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Following these young boys as they undergo three months of group therapy, all the while struggling to integrate back into the routines they once knew, director Tone Anderson takes us deep into the lives of some of the conflict’s biggest victims.

Astute in its observations and rich with the energy and courage of its characters, When the Boys Return highlights the fear and uncertainty that blights the development of much of Palestine’s youth.

Director Tone Anderson will join us via Skype for a post-screening Q&A. The film will also be screened alongside MY NEIGHBOURHOOD (25 mins), more information here: http://bit.ly/13uzaV5

*Winner: Best Mid-Length Documentary IDFA 2103
*Winner: Family & Child Award for Mid-Length Documentary Al Jazeera Film Festival 2013

Attend this event on Facebook

By Assed Baig

Demonstrations have spread around the world after an anti-Islam video, made by someone named Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, insulting the most revered figure of the Muslim world, the Prophet Muhammed was posted on youtube.

Why is it that this short video, apparently the work of one insignificant individual, can instigate such outrage?  While the filmmaker and his ilk may be a global minority, for Muslims, as well as for much of the rest of the world, they epitomise the ignorance, imperialism and arrogance of the West in its dealings with the Muslim world.

The origins of the film itself are very dubious, its production values are such, that it looks like it was made in a basement.   The insults to Islam or the Prophet Muhammed are obviously dubbed over the original soundtrack.   The film seems to have intended provocation based on some aspect of an apocalyptic ideology.

Today, as in the past, Muslims remain part of a global brotherhood that is unlike anything that exists in the West. This ‘Ummah’, the wider Muslim community, transcends political borders, artificial boundaries and international time zones.  Yet, what the West apparently finds so hard to understand is that Muslims continue to have a sense of the sacred along with a respect for the concept of community as well as brother and sisterhood.  For these Muslims the Prophet Muhammed is sacred.

As a result of the outrage caused by this video it is now possible to see even the simplest, poorest and non-political Muslim take to the streets, as they would rather see their families shamed by such public behaviour than have their religion, which they continue to hold sacred, insulted.  Even the corrupt, pro-Western, Muslim leaders recognise this, accepting that they have to speak out against any attacks on the sanctity of their religion, as their own seat of power would be in grave danger if they did not. It appears that the American establishment has been caught off guard, as is evident by its slow reaction to label the video ‘disgusting’ and ‘reprehensible’.

Middle-class Muslims and non-Muslims alike talk of how Muslims should rise above the prejudice.  It is not that simple since most Muslims do not come from the privileged positions necessary for such a stance. One look at the literacy rates for Afghanistan, as well as the rates at which literacy levels have fallen in Iraq since the US invasion, shows that Western intervention results in people having to choose between eating and sending their children to school.  The mass education that we receive in the West is not widely available to others around the world, while, in the West we are not usually confronted by an occupational force of foreign troops every time we leave our homes or the daily psychological trauma of imminent death.

While American and British troops continue fighting a war in Afghanistan, which, along with the war in Iraq and the occupation of Palestine, encourages a feeling of helplessness across the Islamic world, many Muslims ask, ‘how can we help each other and unite the Ummah?’  These are the Muslims who feel they are being globally humiliated by the policies of western governments and, with the aid of 24-hour ‘impartial’ news, their humiliation is beamed un-sanitised into homes around the world 24/7, for all to see and none to escape.

Now with Muslim lands not to mention hearts and minds being occupied, along with constant attacks in the press, a perceived loss of Islamic self identity has taken hold. Is it any surprise that Muslims who see the central figure of their religion being insulted and mocked should feel dehumanised even further?

Many of these Muslims feel that they have no option but to take to the streets in order to express their anger and frustration.  They are fighting for what they feel is right, for what they believe in and are taking it out on any symbol of Western imperialism – embassies being the primary targets.

These are the same Muslims who felt helpless when images of prisoner abuse emerged from the void of Abu Ghuraib.  They are the ones who felt helpless when half a million people, or more, were killed in Iraq with millions more displaced.  Helpless as Israel bombed Lebanon and Gaza and their Arab leaders belly danced around the West. Their sense of helplessness compounded as drone attacks plague Pakistan and the international blight of Guantanamo stays open for business.  Helpless as the infamous Danish cartoons printed in the name of freedom of expression spread around the world like a virus. Helpless in the face of Kashmir’s continued occupation.   Helpless as Bosnian women, violated and brutalised in rape camps, are denied an international forum to voice their anguish.   Helpless as a flattened Grozny struggles to its feet. Helpless as America carries out drone attacks, breaching the national sovereignty of independent countries with impunity.  Helpless as Switzerland, home to 400,000 Muslims, bans the building of minarets.  Helpless as France bans the hijab from schools.  These are the Muslims who feel helpless in every way imaginable.  Is it any wonder that there is so much anger and frustration across the Islamic world? Is it wrong for humiliated and insulted Muslims to react so passionately? As the most revered figure of their religion is insulted and their lands are stolen. Or should we bring up the United States anti-terrorism,interrogation techniques such as water boarding or the many other forms of state sanctioned torture for good measure?

With the media’s shouts of ‘revolution’ still ringing in our ears when Muslims recently demonstrated against their own oppressive governments, the media now shouts something different as these same Muslims protest.  When these Muslims react the media cries ‘barbaric’ and ‘savage’;  Eurocentric and orientalist terms that were strangely absent from public discourse during America’s ‘shock and awe’ campaign in Iraq.

Imperialistic wars have seen the Muslim lands divided as arbitrary lines were drawn on maps by the Western powers with no consideration for the local people, while their religious institutions were dismantled and their cultures destroyed.  Tyrannical leaders were then imposed on the population with an American or Western seal of approval.  History has continually demonstrated that there is only one objective of imperialism, the exploitation of the lands natural resources which is usually facilitated by the facade of stability, democracy and freedom.

The humiliation of the contemporary Muslim world, as some see it, has taken place, largely in the last century. What the imperialistic governments in the West must realise is that occupying countries and killing civilians is one thing, but to attack the religion, the sacred text and the Prophet, will bring out the masses onto the streets to fight. It will ignite the Islamic concept of ‘ghayra’, the idea that Muslims love something so much that they are willing to fight and die for it.

It remains the arrogance of the West, where there is nothing really sacred anymore, to demand that everyone in the world abandon their religious beliefs in the name of civilisation and progress.  While it has long been ‘funny’ to joke and mock the Christian prophet and disrespect the holy texts of Christianity, this idea is completely foreign and abhorrent to Muslims. Mocking what is held sacred has not been legitimised and integrated into the culture of the Islamic world.

This video has not come out of nowhere; it is a manifestation of the environment created by the so-called ‘war on terror’. The Islamaphobia used by Western leaders to justify their wars has sparked the flames of this fire. That is why Muslims across the world will find it hard to differentiate between one crazy filmmaker and the American government as a whole. This film is a product of the environment created by America, and maybe the fire, the venom, and intolerance has become uncontrollable.

—————–

Assed Baig is a UK based journalist. Assed has reported from Pakistan, Kashmir, Somalia, Libya and Palestine. He writes on current affairs and issues relating to radicalism and terrorism and blogs at www.assedbaig.blogspot.co.uk.

By Robert Kazandjian, Justin B and Barnes McAleer / @RKazandjian @Justinthelibsoc @RepStones

Khader Adnan went on hunger strike while shackled to his hospital bed for 66 days, the same length of time as Bobby Sands. While he was near his last breath, it has ended due to the Israeli government agreeing to grant him freedom on the dubious condition of no  additional “new significant and substantive material” being found. They forget to mention that no evidence has been presented against him or his lawyers since his detention. His heroic stand against injustice brought him to the brink of death for freedom. It has inspired thousands in Palestine and across the world, he received solidarity from former hunger strikers.

The Israeli army arrested Khader Adnan on December the 17^th, 2011. Armed men raided his family home on the West Bank. He was then subjected to successive abusive and brutal interrogations. He alleged that he was beaten and stripped, also that his religion and dignity was ridiculed.

The state argues that Khader Adnan is a threat to regional security. Therefore they can detain him indefinitely under Administrative Detention, without providing charge or evidence. There are currently three hundred and seven Palestinians held under Administrative Detention. Khader Adnan’s hunger strike is a peaceful act of protest against this wholly undemocratic system.

However according to Yossi Gurvitz on the Israeli blog +972:

Administrative detention in Israel is based on the British emergency laws, which were never repealed. A person may be detained for up to six months without the government needing to show any evidence against him. Perhaps the most cruel element of administrative detention is the fact that it may be extended time and time again.

The state argues that Khader Adnan is a threat to regional security. Therefore they can detain him for indefinitely under Administrative Detention, without the state providing evidence to the accused. There are currently three hundred and nine Palestinians held under Administrative Detention. Khader Adnan’s hunger strike is a peaceful act of protest against this wholly undemocratic system. Yet the mainstream media coverage has been small, with a few exceptions in the Independent and The Guardian.

Now cast your mind back and compare the paucity of coverage surrounding Khader with the near media saturation of the name Gilad Shalit.  Throughout the 5 years of Shalit being held by Hamas in Gaza, Western mainstream media routinely peddled the Israeli line that he had been ‘kidnapped’.

The ridiculousness of the idea that a soldier in a conflict can be ‘kidnapped’ by the enemy is one of the quirks of the Palestine/Israel conflict, particularly given this soldier was taken from a outpost which had tanks stationed at it, that routinely shell Gaza. Also remember the day before Shalit was captured, the IDF had committed an incursion into Gaza and taken two brothers, an event that was virtually unreported in western mainstream media.  As Shalit’s name was seared into the memory of folks in the west, those same people would be hard pressed (very hard pressed) to name just one, just a single name of one of the hundreds of Palestinian children Israel has incarcerated.

The plight of Khader Adnan is another case in point.  Israel has not charged him with anything, some media outlets have speculated that he is a member of  Palestinian Islamic Jihad (Harakat al-Jihād al-Islāmi fi Filastīn).  Speculation is all fine and well, but as a self-styled ‘western democracy’ (or beacon) it is incumbent upon Israel to either charge the man, producing evidence to back up those charges, or failing that, release him.  That Israel has neither charged nor released him should come as no surprise to those acquainted with the rather Victorian standards of the Israeli ‘justice’ system.

Israel’s reluctance to charge Khader with any specific crime and their desire to keep him incarcerated, may be related to his involvement in the Palestinian reconciliation committee.  Which as the name suggests, is a group concerned with bringing the various Palestinian factions such as Hamas and Fatah, together.  Honest observers of the Palestine/Israel conflict will know that the idea of a united Palestinian people is an anathema to Israel.  This also helps to explain why Israel steadfastly refused to release the man dubbed the ‘Palestinian Mandela‘ in return for Shalit.  In Ireland, we are well accustomed to the old colonial tactic of divide and conquer, we still bear the scars to prove it.

So as Khader Adnan’s life hangs in the balance, in place of the denunciations of Hamas for capturing an Israeli soldier enforcing an illegal siege, we have weasel words from the EU over Israel’s incarceration of a man, without trial or any semblance of due process, not to mention, as already stated, silence over the fate of Palestinian children.

The easiest way to explain why this obscene reality is the way it is, involves me juxtaposing it against the Western.  The mainstream media’s coverage of the Palestine/Israel conflict is akin to the manner in which the US used to depict Native Americans.  Compare the old westerns from the 40′s and 50′s where the ‘injun‘ is depicted as a soulless, faceless savage – not to be reasoned with or sympathized with.  He is either to be killed or pushed into the reservation.  Manifest Destiny could not be sidetracked by the rights or concerns of some pesky brown natives.  It wasn’t until the late 60′s, early 70′s with movies like Little Big Man and The Outlaw Josey Whales, that a reality dawned on American cinema, of the true nature of the creation of their state.  The fact that it took American society as a whole, so long to recognize the pain and suffering that their vision had inflicted upon a people, whose only crime was to inhabit the land earmarked for their ambition, appears not to have been a lesson learned.  With regard to an honest appraisal in the mainstream media, of the Palestine/Israel conflict, it appears we are still languishing in the 1950′s.

“A deal which will see Khader Adnan released on 17 April unless significant new evidence emerges is insufficient when he needs urgent medical treatment to save his life now,”  -  Philip Luther, Amnesty International’s Interim Director for the Middle East and North Africa.

Khader Adnan is still incarcarated despite his health, support Amnesty’s call to Free Khader Adnan and abolish Administrative Detention.

Latest analysis on Syria, taken from yesterday’s Democracy Now broadcast with British journalist Patrick Seale.

For more analysis see also Seuman’s Milne’s article in yesterday’s Guardian.

by Adam Ford / @neon_black81

The United States government is aggressively ratcheting-up its drive for global domination, by menacing Syria, Iran and ultimately China. Though on the one hand American politicians speak of hopes for diplomacy, they are preparing for war with all three nations, in a reckless thrust which threatens the future of humanity. But in the minds of imperial planners, the possibility of life’s destruction in a nuclear holocaust is as nothing compared with the need to win on the ‘grand chessboard’.

The US economy has long been in a relative economic decline when compared with the Eurozone and especially the hugely expanding China – a nation frequently labelled “the sweatshop of the world”. For the last fifteen years, the American ruling class has responded with an attempt to use its overwhelming military supremacy to offset its production-based profitability crisis. Wars in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq and most recently Libya have all cut across the material interests of Chinese empire-building. But the global economic turmoil has pushed this imperative into overdrive, creating the strong possibility of a final showdown with China itself, plus Chinese allies such as Russia.

The past couple of months have seen a sustained effort to create a pretext for attacking Syria. The Syrian government – like the Libyan Gaddafi regime before it – is currently undertaking a brutal crackdown on the “rebel” movement which emerged from last year’s ‘Arab spring’. Of course, the same could be said of the Bahraini government for example, but Bahrain is an American ally. So the Obama administration is using its Arab League proxies - each of which receives large foreign aid and military assistance from US imperialism – to give the coming military intervention a regional popularist colouring. In truth however, each regional government is deeply unpopular with broad layers of its population.

The Arab League is reprising its craven role in the run-up to the bloody overthrow of Gaddafi. In particular, Qatar and Saudi Arabia – both of whom are ruled by venal despots – are pushing for a United Nations resolution to lay the basis for a Libya-style military intervention. In such an event, the US would likely be joined by the United Kingdom and France amongst others in bombing the Syrians from the air, allowing the ‘rebel’ forces a clearer path to the capital.

The US and its allies have no particular interest in the natural resources of Syria. Unlike Libya, it is a relatively small player in terms of oil production and reserves. But it is seen as being a friend of Iran - Obama’s ultimate military target for 2012.

The drums of war against Iran have been growing louder again for a couple of years now. On the one hand, this is due to pressure from Israel, which fears a challenge to its regional dominance. But on the other – and more significantly given America’s virtual veto over Israeli policy – the US wants to get its hands on Iran’s oil. Having dramatically failed with a similar adventure in Iraq, the US is playing a deadly game of ‘double or quits’.

For imperial policymakers, China not having Iran’s oil to aid its expansion is almost as important as America having it. Under the Ahmadinejad government, Iran has increased its links to China, and supplies it with a large proportion of its oil.

The Strait of Hormuz is a potential flashpoint

Using the pretext of Iran developing nuclear weapons, which borrows from the Iraq narrative, and which even the US-leaning International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has failed to find any supporting evidence for, the US is allowing Israel to lead a propaganda campaign against Ahmadinejad. There is a grim irony in Israel – a non-signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty which illegally maintains a large stockpile of nuclear weaponry – accusing Iran – a signatory which insists its nuclear programme is for civilian use and allows IAEA inspectors in relatively unrestricted. But like Saddam Hussein in 2002/2003, Ahmadinejad is being asked to prove a negative – a theoretical and practical impossibility.

The US is looking to tighten the net on Iran by imposing further sanctions on its oil industry amongst other key economic sectors. In retaliation to this relentless provocation, Iran has threatened to blockade the Strait of Hormuz, through which one fifth of the world’s oil routinely passes. In response, the US has declared this possibility a “red line”, as if Iran was the primary aggressor. A military buildup is well underway, with thePentagon modifying its bunker-buster bombs for use on Iranian facilities, and there are discussions about kitting out a transport and docking ship as an “afloat forward staging base” for troops and air assaults. In maybe the grimmest irony in human history, the Wall Street Journal straightfacedly reported a tactical debate amongst US military brass over using a nuclear weapon.

From the perspective of the Chinese ruling class, the US cannot be allowed to continue chipping at its influence. Each time they allow the Americans to get away with it, they come to believe they can get away with more. Iran’s oil is of huge strategic importance to two imperial rivals, and without decisive intervention from the international working class, it could conceivably be the prize which beckons a fight to the death of billions.

Originally posted on Infantile Disorder

By Dark Politricks

Ewa Jasiewicz, part of the Freedom Flotilla & Free Gaza movement

It’s interesting in the light of last nights events to watch the blogosphere and tweets that are going round to see how a persons pre-existing views on the Israeli Palestinian conflict affect their comments on the actions of Israel. Pro Israeli supporters have come out with the line that:

The Freedom Flotilla was nothing more than a Hamas supporters club who was aiming to break the Gaza blockade to deliver arms to Hamas terrorists.

The Israeli navy warned the flotilla not to proceed and was ignored.

IDF troops peacefully boarded the ships only to be attacked by a mob who threw fire bombs, used knives and other club like weapons to lynch the troops.

Only when the soldiers were being overcome by this vengeful mob did the IDF use appropriate force to defend themselves and unfortunately during the fighting in which numerous IDF soldiers were seriously wounded 9 people were killed and 30 more were injured.

Obviously anyone who disagrees with this line of events or wants the Gaza blockade to end for humanitarian reasons is an anti-semite who supports Hamas and wishes to see Israel destroyed.

Examples of such thought can be seen here, here and here.

A video released from the IDF and shot from one of their helicopters is shown below and has been used to support the point of view that the IDF were doing nothing wrong when they invaded the boats in the dead of night and international waters.

Then there is the other side of the story which is that the Freedom Flotilla was in international waters at the time it was attacked by Israeli troops who boarded their boats like Somalian pirates in the dead of night.

International law allows every country in the world to sail the open seas without constraint. Whilst the Israeli’s may not have wanted the flotilla to reach their waters they had no right to board them outside their own territorial boundaries.

Therefore is it no surprise that the people on board chose to fight to protect themselves with whatever rudimentary weapons they had available.

If the boats were full of illegal armaments on its way to Hamas as Israel claims then surely there would have been a much bigger fire fight when the IDF attacked rather than a few people using metal bars or trying to steal the guns from the soldiers as the Israelis themselves have claimed.

If Israel didn’t want this turning into the massive PR disaster it has become then they should have waited until the boats were inside their waters and then blocked their entry towards the port. Only as a last resort should they have boarded the ships.

So there are two sides of the story being played out across the blogosphere and web with passion on both sides and I don’t doubt that there are people who have anti this and that feelings who are using this as an excuse to bash Israel however we must not forget the reason for the flotilla in the first place.

It’s only been a year or so since Operation Cast Lead killed hundreds of children and women and destroyed the infrastructure of Gaza but it has been out of the public consciousness for a while. The flotilla aimed to get it back in peoples minds and remind them that the people of Gaza are suffering immensely.

Gaza is a huge open prison camp in which a UN report states that much of the infrastructure destroyed in Operation Cast Lead still has not been redeveloped in fact three quarters of the damage inflicted on buildings and infrastructure remains unrepaired and unreconstructed.

The blockade of Gaza means that only basic foods and limited supplies are allowed into the territory and people desperate for medicines and other forms of health care often go without.

Aid agencies agree that the people of Gaza are suffering:

Oxfam states:

The agency calculates that more than 80% of all goods currently allowed into Gaza are basic foods, such as fruit, dairy, flour, oil and sugar. Oxfam said that the tap has been turned off on essential goods needed for agriculture and rebuilding as well as clothing, shoes and supplies for education.

The International Red Cross says

One of the gravest consequences of the closure is soaring unemployment, which reached 44 per cent in April 2009, according to the Gaza Chamber of Commerce. Restrictions on imports and exports of goods imposed since June 2007 have shut down 96% of industrial operations in Gaza, with the loss of about 70,000 jobs. This has also had a severe impact on the capacity to export products to Israel and the West Bank, which has become almost impossible.

…

The collapse of the Gaza economy has led to a dramatic increase in poverty. An ICRC household survey conducted in May 2008 showed that, even then, over 70 per cent of Gazans were living in poverty, with monthly incomes of less than 250 US dollars for a family of 7 to 9 members.

Could you live on humanitarian aid alone?

Could you survive with no job, no clean water and not enough food or medicine?

Yes but Gaza is controlled by Hamas you might say and Hamas fires rockets into Israel.

Yes they do but not everyone who lives in Gaza supports Hamas and I would ask all those people who voted Republican or Labour at the last election and have to live under the rule of a party that you didn’t vote for, would you like to live like the people of Gaza do?

The Freedom Flotilla was not as it’s being claimed by pro-Israeli supporters full of Hamas terrorists but instead full of peace activists, members of European parliaments and other groups who wanted to end the blockade of Gaza. Whilst there may have been on board many who disagree with the blockade and support Hamas this does not equate as the Israeli foreign office is saying to a armada full of terrorists.

The International community has failed the people of Gaza and only a massive public protest like this will wake up the people of the world to the suffering that is being carried out with our support.

Is it any wonder that the people of Gaza chose to vote in Hamas after the decades of Fatah rule that achieved nothing?

The many UN resolutions that are passed against Israel are often ignored or vetoed with US support and there seems to be no end in sight. Whilst the actions of Hamas are deplorable they can be understood in the same way as other groups who fought for their homeland are often tolerated by those who don’t have to live with their consequences.

The last century has been full of people fighting for their homeland and that includes Israeli Jews who fought the British initially using what can only be described as acts of terrorism and murder. Therefore these issues are not black and white and just because you support the people of the Gaza it does not mean support for rockets fired into Israel.

What we know for certain is that there is a massive hypocrisy involved in the Israeli Palestinian problem and the Israeli’s seem to be able to carry out crimes that no other country would often with impunity.

Not only can they destroy the USS Liberty and claim it was an accident but they can kidnap journalists and assassinate opponents wherever they may be and the Gaza war which the UN claimed was in fact collective punishment of a whole population and therefore illegal under international law has gone unpunished along with the numerous war crimes carried out by the IDF that were outlined in the Goldstone report.

The tide is slowly turning against Israel and no longer can the cry of anti-semitism be used to ignore legitamite criticism of illegal or immoral acts.

I like to think that the same people who are supporting the rights of the people stuck in Gaza would be  those that spoke out against the Nazi’s treatment of the Jews in 30’s Germany. I may be wrong however the two are not totally unrelated and those who support Israel no matter what she does should think about the similarities between the two. Hypocrisy is never a nice attribute to possess and what is good for one should be enough for another.

Whatever the truth in last nights events I hope some good comes out of them and that the blockade of Gaza is lifted as soon as possible.