Leon Wells

Israel and America: stopping the settlements

leonwells’s comment 26 Jun 09, 1:37pm

Berchmans, you forgot the 6-day war – Israel attacked after it had been assured by it’s intelligence services, and the intelligence services of the US and UK, that no Arab countries were planning to attack it and that all the surrounding Arab countries combined were inferior in strength to Israel’s army. Although, given the goal was the acquisition of land, maybe not “unavoidable” in that respect….

Indeed — and let us not be taken in by the sophisticated, yet blatantly cynical (as always) Israeli state propaganda machine. In 1967, Israel clearly wanted to silence (or at least damage) the intelligence service of the US.

USS Liberty Memorial

On June 8, 1967, US Navy intelligence ship USS Liberty was suddenly and brutally attacked on the high seas in international waters by the air and naval forces of Israel. The Israeli forces attacked with full knowledge that this was an American ship and lied about it. Survivors have been forbidden for 40 years to tell their story under oath to the American public. The USS Liberty Memorial web site tells their story and is dedicated to the memory of the 34 brave men who died.

http://www.gtr5.com/

http://www.gtr5.com/evidence/warcrimes.pdf

As Israeli historian, Avi Shlaim succinctly puts it: “Israel‘s real aim is not peaceful coexistence with its Palestinian neighbours but military domination.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/07/gaza-israel-palestine

Or with any other of its Arab neighbours. Military domination is the name of the game here (at any brutal cost: witness the recent barbarous assault on the predominantly innocent civilian population of Gaza).

Open door

leonwells’s comment 15 Jun 09, 2:09am

Siobhain Butterworth

I was engaged quite passionately in that debate on CiF (won’t go over it all again here..) and I have to say; I was deeply moved by the Guardian’s adaptation for video of Caryl Churchill’s ‘Seven Jewish Children’ read by so effectively by Jennie Stoller.

Bravo to Caryl Churchill. Bravo to Jennie Stoller.

And bravo to Tom Happold.

Shalom / Salaam.

It’s not British fascists we should fear

leonwells’s comment 13 Jun 09, 9:50pm

My apologies — one ‘the’ too many…

..and it is a fascistic nationalism that has fuck all to do with any noble, Jewish safe-haven ideal.

A recipe for resentment

leonwells’s comment 27 May 09, 1:00pm

Ahmad Samih Khalidi

Absolutely well said, sir — in no uncertain terms !!!

Let’s cut the crap here — that the Palestinians should recognise the State of Israel’s existence is surely – ENOUGH – for heaven’s sake!?

Far from being a prerequisite for peace and coexistence, this is an unnecessary and dangerous diversion – and a recipe for deep future resentment, revanchism and renewed conflict.

Israel must think again about whether there is any real utility – besides dis­ruption and delay – in pressing this issue. The west must steer well clear of adopting this ideologically loaded ­formula, or seek to impose it on an already weakened and divided Pales­tinian polity, or to add to the burdens of the already tenuous and very uncertain prospects for peace.

Yes indeed — excellent advice there. But as your University of Oxford colleague, the esteemed Israeli historian and Professor of International Relations, Avi Shlaim puts it:

This brief review of Israel’s record over the past four decades makes it difficult to resist the conclusion that it has become a rogue state with “an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders”. A rogue state habitually violates international law, possesses weapons of mass destruction and practises terrorism – the use of violence against civilians for political purposes. Israel fulfils all of these three criteria; the cap fits and it must wear it. Israel’s real aim is not peaceful coexistence with its Palestinian neighbours but military domination.

How Israel brought Gaza to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/07/gaza-israel-palestine

Israel’s real aim is not peaceful coexistence with its Palestinian neighbours but military domination… And where does one go from there..??

Lebanon’s intelligence war

leonwells’s comment 24 May 09, 10:04am

Ah yes, Israel and Lebanon…

On Monday Lebanon celebrates the ninth anniversary of Israel’s withdrawal from South Lebanon; while weeks from now both countries will be commemorating the third anniversary of a bloody war that left more than a thousand Lebanese and 150 Israelis dead.

From Sabra and Shatila in 1982, through to the brutalities of the Israel proxy SLA until 2000, and on to the Qana and other massacres of predominanty innocent Lebanese civilians in 2006 — the world HAS NOT FORGOTTEN.

Israel Shahak: a voice of controversy

leonwells’s comment 17 May 09, 11:45pm

Hey! BlueWhite!

I said I don’t take kindly to being called an anti-Semite!

I called on you to substantiate your offensive accusations directed both at myself and the Guardian — but of course, you can’t substantiate them can you? So I take it by your silence on the matter, that you have ‘shut up’ because you are unable to ‘put up’.

Kindly keep that nonsense to yourself in future.

Gaza: pursuit of the laws of war

leonwells’s comment 10 May 09, 9:41am (about 16 hours ago)

TomWonacott

LeonWells: The lid is off? Maybe. Were the ambulance drivers medical personnel or Hamas terrorist?

Yes, I know exactly where you’re coming from Tom — everyone in Gaza is a potential terrorist, and no excuses (after all, a majority did actually vote for Hamas) let’s kill everyone, man, woman, child — oh, and donkey — just in case.

Which is of course, the overall [im]moral philosophy and guiding strategy of the Israeli military — as witnessed by the world in the summer of 2006 and again in Gaza three months ago.

You are more than an apologist for the State of Israel’s war crimes — you are a full-blown supporter (and you come across as a professional propagandist to me). Too late though, Tom my old buddy — you can come on as strong as you like with all this desperate damage limitation stuff — but if the shameless Mark Regev can’t pull the wool over the eyes of the informed of this world — you haven’t got a hope in hell’s chance.

Did you watch the Guardian video? No — I very much doubt it. Well here it is again:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/23/gaza-war-crimes-medics

And what about the words of those noble (and Nobel Prize winning) folk at Physicians for Human Rights-Israel — digest those did you..?

In a report released yesterday, Physicians for Human Rights Israel said there was “certainty” that Israel had violated international humanitarian law, with attacks on medics, damage to medical buildings, indiscriminate attacks on civilians and delays in medical treatment for the injured.

The lid is well and truly off — and you can run (with your desperate, Israeli government damage limitation manual) — but you cannot hide from the brutal truth of the atrocities committed here.

The blood libel brought up to date

leonwells’s comment 01 May 09, 10:22am

Dave Rich and Mark Gardner of the Community Security Trust:

The blood libel brought up to date..??

Let’s get into the 21st century here shall we? (for want of a better phrase to describe this point in the evolution of human consciousness) — Seven Jewish Children is a scathing response to the State of Israel’s brutal domination of the Palestinian people — NOT an attack on the Jewish people.

When I saw the following version on this website on Sunday — I wept. And I wept, Dave and Mark — for all of us. All of us — geddit?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/video/2009/apr/25/seven-jewish-children-caryl-churchill

I can understand your defensiveness, because Caryl Churchill’s play certainly gets down to the nitty-gritty — and the Guardian’s brilliant online version with Jenny Stoller really does hit home. But your faux-sincere, ‘boy who cried wolf’ calls of anti-Semitism (blood libel – did you choose the title of this piece?) don’t fool those who can see the truth shining through.

Durban II, another opportunity missed

leonwells’s comment 26 Apr 09, 12:28am

TiredOldDog @ 25 Apr 09, 9:23pm

Leon: You’re the one repeating the statement “Israel is racist”

How long have you been repeating: “Israel and Zionism have nothing to do with racism but rather with national liberation”..? Personally, I have never used slogans such as ‘Genocide of Palestinians’ / ‘The Gaza holocaust’ / ‘Zionism is racist’ – but I’ll tell you what convinced me of the racist nature of the Israeli state (over and above the undeniable institutional racism as amply catalogued by EL above) – the recent barbaric onslaught rained down upon the predominantly innocent civilian population of Gaza. The widespread contempt (indifference is too weak a word) for Palestinian Arab life (and all that sustains it) was absolutely astounding. The cold and gloating arrogance that justified the undiluted terror and indiscriminate killing that went on, beggars belief coming from a so-called civilized country.

http://www.pchrgaza.org/files/PressR/English/2008/photos_de-08.html

IMO, it all adds up to one thing – racism – exactly as defined by your dictionary.

And I’m afraid that this black and white, you’re either with us or agin us, “enemies of Israel” stuff, just doesn’t wash with me, my friend. Let me make it clear to you – I love Israel – the Israel with soul and noble principle, but NOT the Israel that has abandoned common human decency and compassion in favour of prolonged and brutal racism.

Shalom / Salaam.

The goal is to kickstart the road map

leonwells’s comment 29 Mar 09, 2:29am

ONiell70

Glad you found the Avi Shlaim piece informative.

Listen my friend – I am not anti-Israeli — and I appreciate where you’re coming from with your wife being Israeli ‘an all. (For the record here, my own extended family is a mix of Brit Anglo-Saxon, Palestinian Arab, and Australian Jew) But as I said before: Personally, I dont give a shit what ethnic, tribal, national or religious grouping people identify with – just as long as they dont stamp on other groups to maintain that identity. And that of course, brings us right back to the State of Israel’s dispossession and prolonged brutal oppression of the indigenous Palestinian people.

Unfortunately (and this is the tragic injustice which fuels the Israel / Palestine conflict) — as SOE wrote in his post @ 28 Mar 09, 8:08pm: The establishment of a state for the benefit of one particular ethnicity at the expense of another is a racist endeavour.

http://www.palestineremembered.com/Gaza/al-Faluja/Picture1424.html

There really is no polite or palatable way of putting it. But that does NOT of course mean that all Israelis are racist just because they live in an inherently racist state.

The following article written by former CIA operatives Bill & Kathleen Christison in November 2003 is a long one, but this extract gives it straight:

Zionism as a Racist Ideology

When a powerful state kills hundreds of civilians from another ethnic group; confiscates their land; builds vast housing complexes on that land for the exclusive use of its own nationals; builds roads on that land for the exclusive use of its own nationals; prevents expansion of the other people’s neighborhoods and towns; demolishes on a massive scale houses belonging to the other people, in order either to prevent that people’s population growth, to induce them “voluntarily” to leave their land altogether, or to provide “security” for its own nationals; imprisons the other people in their own land behind checkpoints, roadblocks, ditches, razor wire, electronic fences, and concrete walls; squeezes the other people into ever smaller, disconnected segments of land; cripples the productive capability of the other people by destroying or separating them from their agricultural land, destroying or confiscating their wells, preventing their industrial expansion, and destroying their businesses; imprisons the leadership of the other people and threatens to expel or assassinate that leadership; destroys the security forces and the governing infrastructure of the other people; destroys an entire population’s census records, land registry records, and school records; vandalizes the cultural headquarters and the houses of worship of the other people by urinating, defecating, and drawing graffiti on cultural and religious artifacts and symbols ¬ when one people does these things to another, a logical person can draw only one conclusion: the powerful state is attempting to destroy the other people, to push them into the sea, to ethnically cleanse them.

These kinds of atrocities, and particularly the scale of the repression, did not spring full-blown out of some terrorist provocations by Palestinians. These atrocities grew out of a political philosophy that says whatever advances the interests of Jews is acceptable as policy. This is a racist philosophy.

http://www.counterpunch.org/christison11082003.html

The goal is to kickstart the road map

leonwells’s comment 27 Mar 09, 10:56pm

Come on Mr. O’Neill… No need to get unpleasant with our SOE here!

All he said was: Jewish is not and has never been a nationality. Surely he’s right… The logical sequence regarding nationality here has gotta be: Irish state, Finnish state, British state, Indian state, Israeli state — not Jewish state.

Jews may have been considered a separate ethnic group since Graeco-Roman times (or even earlier) — but I thought we were talking nationality here, not ethnicity. I think you’ll find that they are not one and the same.

It’s time to rethink Zionism

leonwells’s comment 17 Feb 09, 11:50am

Daphna Baram — What an excellent, forthright and clear-headed article.

So refreshing to read vigorous and challenging arguements coming to the fore on this – one of the longest running injustices in the world today.

LeonWells

27 Jan 09, 4:32pm

An excellent, forthright article here, Chis Patten

You have gone where others fear to tread with this (The Right Dishonourable Tony Blair for example) — and I for one applaud you.

Without Hamas, how would any peace deal be sold to the Palestinians? The diplomatic trick is not how to justify the isolation of Hamas but how to ease them out of their isolation, to get them to endorse a permanent ceasefire, and to release captive Corporal Shalit.

Indeed — absolutely well said. As you yourself affirmed in a TV interview at the height of this most recent of cruel Israeli onslaughts — ‘We’ need to talk to Hamas — not further isolate them. The problem is of course that, fire-spitting Fortress Israel just ain’t interested in talking to anyone – or in making authentic concessions of any kind whatsoever. Peace is firmly off the agenda, as is a Palestinian state. And how ‘spokespersons’ such as Mark Regev can keep up their shameful barrage of lies when so many innocent souls are dying a horrible death really does beat me. Where is the humanity in these people?

Well done Israel …???