From Warsaw Ghetto to Gaza: Oppressed and Disposessed

I am currently involved in a threaded discussion with Don_Joe on a website entitled ShalomLife, a back and forth which began with a comment posted from a ShalomLife supporter to my blogpost in support of Israeli Apartheid Week.  According to Don_Joe, the fact that I do not consider Hamas a terrorist organization, but do equate the current regime in Israel to a terrorist state, means that I am in need of professional help. Ha, ha.

Here is a copy of my most recent threaded response to Don_Joe:

Diane_V._McLoughlin Mar 1st 2010 6:55 PM Response to Don, Hamas is the legitimate political representation of the Palestinian people. After the Palestinian elections, which were deemed by independent international observers to be free and fair, a coup was plotted to overthrow them. Hamas got wind of the plot and in order to fulfill their duties to the people moved to solidify their control of Gaza. On the topic of suicide bombers, an expression you slyly use to insinuate characteristics of irrational bloodlust to one side of the equation - the Palestinians - versus ’innocent civilians’ which you mean to imply the lily-white motives of the Apartheid state of Israel, several things: On this Jewish blog, the Ethical Spectacle (http://www.spectacle.org/495/deir.html) we find a passionate accounting of the bloody terrorist activities of such Jewish entities as the Stern Gang and the Irgun. The Irgun attacked a defenseless Palestinian village called Deir Yashin and slaughtered hundreds of innocent civilians in cold blood. Manachem Begin’s statement after the fact: Accept my congratulations on this splendid act of conquest.... Gaza is a Warsaw Ghetto. The people there are being held under a military siege, an illegal, immoral crime-against-God ghetto where all are imprisoned - by Jews. There is no way of getting around this. Hamas abided by the ceasefire agreement with Israel. Israel was supposed to then lift the siege. Israel instead girded to flatten them. I am sure you would say that the resistance of Jews imprisoned in the Warsaw Ghetto was right and just. How is Gaza any different? The Jewish blog I refer to above concludes with the following: A country founded in blood--built on the backs and the corpses of a group of its inhabitants--is badly off-balance and will never recover, if it does not undertake a terrible soul-searching, a flight from violence and lies. There is a stirring, a yearning for peace and relief from violence today, but it is still being mitigated by hatred, denial, greed, and the desire for revenge. When the Israelis learn to police their own lunatic fringe, can avoid offering with one hand what they withdraw with the other, and face the Palestinians with firm honesty, there will be a chance.

Diane_V._McLoughlin