Author: Carsten Agger

Styrkeforhold

Sådan ser det ud, når en af Hamas’ hjemmelavede Qassam-raketter rammer en vej i Israel:

I virkeligheden lander de selvfølgelig oftest på marker og i krat, langt fra veje og anden bebyggelse.

Sådan ser det ud, når et af Israels amerikanskproducerede missiler rammer jorden i Gaza:

I virkeligheden lander de selvfølgelig oftest på boliger, skoler, moskeer eller bygninger, som hæren først har bedt civile søge tilflugt i.

Styrkeforholdet mellem Israel og Gaza er cirka som mellem en toptrænet, hårdtpumpet jægersoldat med håndgranat i hånden og et maskingevær over skulderen og en femårig med bind for øjnene og hænderne bundet på ryggen, for nu at bygge videre på Ramis glimrende analogi:

Israel is a big guy, hitting a small kid really hard, despite that the little kid might strike back with a hit or two. That is why Israel will always been seen with rolling eyes and people will have a hard time understanding their rhetorics, which really insult any intelligence on this planet.

To Israelis, I am tired of your rhetorics, but I pity you for having to live by your own propaganda machines. I am tired of Israelis who will always believe that they are victims no matter how advanced they have become in all walks of lifes and no matter how many years its been since their horrific tragedies. How many noble prizes would it take to find one single solution? 60 years and we still have no substantial solution in the horizon.

Som Rami også skriver, må araberne i almindelighed og Hamas i særdeleshed naturligvis indstille sig på, at Israel er kommet for at blive. Men ikke desto mindre – hvor meget skal vi sympatisere med den bevæbnede bølles hylen og jamren, fordi den femårige med bind for øjnene nogle gange får et spark ind mod skinnebenet?

Via KABOBfest.

Palæstinas tragedie: Quislingen Abbas knuser fredelig protest mod invasionen i Gaza

Den palæstinensiske “præsident” Mahmoud Abbas eller Abu Mazen har efterhånden udviklet sig til en helt åbenlys kollaboratør og håndlanger for Israel.

Han har egenhændigt udvidet sin præsidentperiode med et år, selvom den egentlig skulle være endt allerede nu. Reelt sidder han alene på Israels og USAs nåde og barmhjertighed, holdt ved magten bl.a. af en personlig “livgarde” i form af en sikkerhedsstyrke, der er uddannet i Jordan for Bush-regeringens penge.

Mohammad fra KABOBfest bor i Ramallah og sender denne øjenvidneberetning om det palæstinensiske “selvstyres” fremfærd mod en fredelig demonstration:

I was hoping that today the PA, in light of the continuing atrocity, would be a bit more understanding of the people’s needs to express their solidarity with their own brethren in the beleaguered Strip. As ever, Mahmoud Abbas and his thugs disappointed me. And today they seemed intent on putting the boot in.

I left the house after Friday prayers with my mom, walking past Mahmoud Abbas’ headquarters, the Muqata’a. The streets were filled, as they were last Friday, with hundreds of Presidential Guards, the Jordanian-trained, American funded security force of the PA (whom are repeatedly told during training that ‘you are not here to fight the occupation’. They were clad in body armor, black tops, black helmets, balaclavas, fatigues, automatic weapons and batons. As I walked past, I thought of how pathetic these men were, heavily armed and armored, tasked with policing non-violent citizens, while in Gaza the men of the resistance were standing their ground against Israeli tanks, artillery, war planes, helicopters, warships and special forces. That observation is not lost on the vast majority of Palestinians, no matter their political affiliation.

[A group of] women were chanting slogans supporting Hamas. They weren’t attacking anybody else, just supporting the group currently bearing the brunt of the fight against the Zionist oppressors. The security forces in Ramallah, however, rely on security collaboration with the Israeli occupation for their salaries. They forced the women onto the narrow sidewalk, barricading them on all sides. I found a former classmate from university watching from the side. He confirmed that they women were being pinned back by the police. I sarcastically exclaimed that they must be a huge security threat to the state. He told me, in English, to keep silent, and gestured around him. All around us, we could see security men in plainclothes, talking over radios or into microphones embedded into their jacket collars. They were reporting the approximate number of demonstrators and what the women were saying.

Suddenly, a huge open-bed truck rolled down the market street from Manara Square. It was full of young men, holding high flags and posters. Many jaws dropped open as the truck moved closer. The flags being waved at the front were Fatah, Palestinian and Egyptian flags.

Egyptian flags? Were they showing their solidarity with Hosni Mubarak, who had ordered the Rafah crossing closed as the Gaza Strip was turned into a death camp? The Egyptian government is extremely unpopular here for the way it has treated Gazans and its open collusion with Israel. The truck’s presence seemed to indicate something dark was about to happen. And it did.

The men, about 100 of them, dropped down from the truck, holding up pictures of Mahmoud Abbas and posters of a quote he made last week in his pathetic address to the people of the Gaza Strip: ‘Our blood and your blood is one’. They moved straight towards the women trapped on the corner and began screaming “With our souls, with our blood, we will sacrifice for you, Abu Mazen!”

It was a deliberate provocation. The men had the right to chant what they wanted, but everybody knew they were trying to provoke the women, especially since Abbas had done absolutely nothing to stop the slaughter, and in fact had blamed it on the victims. It wasn’t just the Hamas women they were provoking.

They moved right up to the women, bypassing the police and hurling the vilest insults. I noticed they were all holding clubs, sticks and batons. Without warning, they brought them all to use. About ten of the men began attacking the 50 year old man who was leading the chants with the women. It was savage. With several other concerned bystanders, I ran to stand between them and the man, but they had, for absolutely no reason, turned vicious, hitting us to get to the man. We managed to hold them off for a few seconds, just so he could escape, but as he did one of the thugs blindsided him with a blow to the forehead. The man staggered forward, blood streaming from a gash in his head. Someone was screaming that the cameras should be recording this. It was true. Manara Square was full of TV cameras, but none had bothered to record the vicious beating.

Der er mere –  meget mere. Abbas’ præsidentperiode udløb i går, men han har som sagt og i strid med loven forlænget den et helt år; reelt et kup, understøttet og accepteret af hans herrer i Tel Aviv og Washington. Han er en diktator, der beskytter besættelsesmagten mod upassende fredelige demonstrationer, mod til gengæld at bevare sin egen magt og den gennemkorrupte Fatah-bevægelses privilegier.

Og for hans folk? Israel synes ikke indstillet på at gengælde Abbas’ imødekommenhed med nogen som helst form for indrømmelser eller mildning af besættelsens vilkår. I stedet må de almindelige palæstinensere leve videre, undertrykt af en morderisk besættelsesmagt på den ene side og en forræderisk diktator på den anden. Tragedien er sandelig komplet, og med Rune Engelbreths ord er der meget lidt grund til optimisme.

Link: Ramallah pours on the fuel as Gaza burns

Hvorfor ophavsretten skal reformeres – Lawrence Lessig i Colbert Report

Colbert: You say our copyright laws are turning our kids into criminals, because they’re keeping kids from doing all the remixing they want of pre-existing art and copywritten material, right?

Isn’t that like saying that arson laws are turning our kids into pyromaniacs?? They’re breaking the law! You can’t just throw the law out the window!

Lessig: “Totally failed war.” Is that familiar to you?

Colbert: No. No. You’re saying we need a surge?

Lessig: We tried the surge. For ten years we’ve been waging this war. Artists have not gotten any more money, businesses have not gotten any more profit, and our kids have been turned into criminals.

Via Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Gaza: Racisme og selvretfærdigt raseri

Gideon Levy i Ha’aretz:

Racism and hatred are rearing their heads, as is the impulse for revenge and the thirst for blood. The “inclination of the commander” in the Israel Defense Forces is now “to kill as many as possible,” as the military correspondents on television describe it.

The unbridled aggression and brutality are justified as “exercising caution”: the frightening balance of blood – about 100 Palestinian dead for every Israeli killed, isn’t raising any questions, as if we’ve decided that their blood is worth one hundred times less than ours, in acknowledgement of our inherent racism.

Rightists, nationalists, chauvinists and militarists are the only legitimate bon ton in town…

Anyone who justifies this war also justifies all its crimes. Anyone who sees it as a defensive war must bear the moral responsibility for its consequences. Anyone who now encourages the politicians and the army to continue will also have to bear the mark of Cain that will be branded on his forehead after the war. All those who support the war also support the horror.

Link: The time of the righteous

Om Israels PR-krig og hvorfor de taber den

Problemet for er ikke, at den israelske regering ikke har gode PR-folk, men at de ikke har en god sag, skriver Gideon Lichfield i Ha’aretz:

I frequently get asked by Israelis, “why aren’t we winning the PR war? Why don’t people understand that this is what we have to do?” Many are convinced that there is something wrong with Israeli hasbara (public advocacy), that the spokespeople aren’t effective enough, or that the Palestinians have a huge and demonically efficient propaganda machine.

When I hear this I have to explain that Israeli hasbara is so sophisticated that there is still no adequate word for it in English; that some of Israel’s spokespeople could talk the hind legs off a donkey and then persuade the donkey to dance the hora, and that the Palestinians barely even know what a spokesman is, let alone be able to provide one who is available when he needs to be and knows anything about what is actually going on. So why isn’t Israel winning the PR war?

The question the foreign media really wants answered is invariably not “who’s in the right?” but “how will this round of fighting improve the overall situation?” And on that point, Israel never has a convincing argument. Given the country’s long history of engaging in wars that kill many more of its enemies than its own citizens but only buy a few months or years of calm, it’s a tough call to explain how this latest escapade will change the strategic balance, bring peace and prevent the need for another such bloodbath further down the line. Often that’s because there is in fact no good reason.

Og det er vel bl.a. derfor, det nuværende angreb på Gaza ikke synes at virke. Hvad er strategien? At “udslette Hamas”? Det er ikke så let, ser det ud til. At svække deres opbakning? Omfattende drab på uskyldige civile svækker faktisk ikke opbakningen til dem, hvis hovedbudskab er, at de vil slå igen.

Israel ser ud til at følge den samme kurs som ved invasionen af Libanon i 2006, hvor det lykkedes at bruge en knusende militær overmagt og betingelsesløs opbakning fra verdens eneste supermagt til at lægge Libanon i ruiner og samtidig påføre sig selv et ydmygende militært og politisk nederlag.

Det er svært at se, hvordan den nuværende invasion af Gaza kan ende anderledes.

Link: Israel’s PR war

Dansk Folkeparti: Menneskerettighederne skal ikke gælde udlændinge

Aminas og Oles Sæbekasse gør opmærksom på, at Dansk Folkepartis Martin Henriksen nu eksplicit vil have en lov, der sikrer, at menneskerettighederne ikke gælder for  udlændinge:

– Domstolene skal se bort fra de dele af menneskerettighederne, “som forhindrer Danmark i at udvise personer”.

– Regeringen skal sende en skrivelse til “de relevante internationale organer” om, at Danmark “forbeholder sig ret til at fravige bestemmelserne i Den Europæiske Menneskerettighedskonvention og andre konventioner”, når en udlænding i Danmark selv har bragt sig i en situation, hvor vedkommende ikke kan påberåbe sig beskyttelse.

– Regeringen skal nedsætte en kommission, der skal udarbejde “et samlet forslag til ændring af relevante internationale konventioner”, der forhindrer Danmark i at beskytte “egne ordentlige og fredelige borgere”.

Så kan man vel sige, at udlændinge fra nu af må være en slags “undermennesker” i Dansk Folkepartis øjne? Altså undermennesker, som ikke har de samme rettigheder, som man er sikret, hvis man er et “rigtigt menneske”.

En sådan ufredning af de fremmede er i hvert fald i modstrid med ånden i dansk lovgivning helt tilbage til Jyske Lov, hvor det iflgl. et glimrende læserbrev i dagens Jyllands-Posten hedder:

Det er Kongens og Landets Høvdingers Embede at overvaage Domme og gøre Ret og frelse dem, der tvinges med Vold, saasom Enker og værgeløse, Børn, Pilgrimme og Udlændinge og fattige – dem overgaar der mest vold – og ikke lade slette Mennesker, der ikke vil forbedre sig, leve i sit Land; thi idet han straffer og dræber Ugerningsmænd, da er han Guds tjener og Landets vogter.

Idet vi bemærker en lidt blodtørstig tilgang til retsudøvelsen, er bødlens sværd i Jyske Lov tydeligvis rettet mod landets egne borgere, mens “Enker og værgeløse, Børn, Pilgrimme og Udlændinge” først og fremmest skal beskyttes.

Hvor udansk skal Dansk Folkeparti egentlig blive i sin undermennesketankegang, før vi for alvor gennemskuer det?

Link: Dansk Folkeparti vil slække menneskerettighederne

Gaza

Engelbreth har sagt en stor del af det, der skal siges. Andetsteds anstiller Fodnoter og Hovedtræk et tankeeksperiment:

Det selvstændige Langeland er en regional stormagt. De har opbygget et betragteligt lager af atomvåben, har den mest moderne (og største) hær i hele regionen, og modtager ENORM militær, økonomisk og politisk støtte fra verdens ubetingede supermagt.

Igennem en længere årrække, har en af Langelands naboer – fx Svendborg – jævnligt sendt hjemmelavede raketter ind over grænsen, og har derved dræbt 20 langelændere de sidste 8 år.

Det sidste halve års tid, har Langeland og Svendborg byråd haft en våbenhvile, som rent teknisk var bestemt til at vare indtil 19. december.

Langeland bryder imidlertid denne våbenhvile d. 4. november, og dræber 6 svendborgensere.
Efter våbenhvilens udløb, d. 19. december, sender nogle svendborggensere med en vis tilknytning til byrådet, nogle af de før omtalte hjemmelavede raketter ind over grænsen til Langeland, og dræber 1 langelænder.

Det store spørgsmål er så, ville vi – Danmark, Det ‘Internationale Samfund’ – mene at Langeland – en civiliseret stat – er berettiget til at slå hundrevis af svendborggensere ihjel i en byge af luftangreb der er rettet mod universitetet, kirker og andre civile mål?

Svaret er naturligvis: Næppe. Men i det her tilfælde evner man ikke at formidle svaret eller situationen så klart – med fodnoteskriverens ord: Det er skammeligt, at danske medier ikke sætter tingene i perspektiv.

Ny israelsk krigsforbrydelse – Gaza brænder, 155 palæstinensere dræbt

Al-Jazeera skriver:

Israel has launched air strikes on Hamas installations across the Gaza Strip, killing at least 140 people and causing heavy damage, according to officials and witnesses.

At least 30 missiles were fired at targets on Saturday, with the head of emergency services in Gaza saying that at least 200 people were also wounded.

Hours after the Israeli strikes Gaza fighters fired rockets into southern Israel, heeding to calls by Hamas and other affiliated Palestinian groups to avenge the attacks, unprecedented in their scale.

Mustafa Barghauthi, former Palestinian information minister, said; “This is not an attack on the Hamas. Its an attack on the whole population and the free will of the people of Gaza.”

He accused Israel of committing “war crimes” and demanded that Abbas and his government stop all relations with Israel.

Bint Battuta bringer en SMS fra et øjenvidne i Rafah:

“They struck the whole Gaza Strip at the same second. Many of the casualties are school children. My colleague told me he has seen 8 cases of death in the street. He picked his son alive. I am in my school now and the horror is everywhere in Gaza”

… og tilføjer for egen regning: “A Palestinian friend here, a relative of friends in Gaza City, just called me distraught because she can’t get through to them. I feel angry, and I feel helpless.”

Mohammad på Kabobfest skriver:

a day after Tzipi Livni threatened, from Cairo, to destroy Gaza, Egypt announced that it was sending reinforcements to its border with Gaza and urging Egyptians in the area to stockpile food in case the border was breached. Again, many saw this as an ominous warning-that Israel had received a green light from the Egyptian regime for a large scale attack on the Strip.

The day before, Ehud Olmert appeared on the Saudi-owned Arabiyah TV channel, urging Palestinians to rise up against Hamas, at the same time saying he would attack the Strip soon with destructive force.

It happened at noon today, December 27th. As the schools let out for the day, Israeli fighter planes, helicopters and warships launched a series of strikes. Within half an hour, 40 Palestinians were reported killed. It is now 2 hours after the beginning of the ongoing strikes.

The death toll is now 155 Palestinians.

Glædelig jul, alle sammen. Og godt nytår. Med hilsen fra den israelske regering og Obama, Inc.

Update, kl. 14:30: Politiken.dk har nu også historien og skriver bl.a.:

Tyk, sort røg stiger op over Gaza By, efter at 30 missiler har ramt især politikontorer.

Mindst 155 mennesker er dræbt i Gaza By og det sydlige Gaza efter et angreb af det israelske luftvåben, skriver Reuters på baggrund af oplysninger fra lederen af Gazas ambulance-service.

Censurfrihedsselskabet

Redaktør Bjarke Larsen rammer plet i et debatindlæg i Jyllands-Posten, hvor han observerer, at Trykkefrihedsselskabet reelt arbejder for censur af anderledes tænkende:

Kritik af jødisk fundamentalisme i form af bosætternes ulovlige fremfærd skal stemples som ”jødehad” og helst ikke trykkes i de pæne aviser. Forhenværende PET-chefer, der er betænkelige ved terrorlovgivningen, og som ønsker dialog med unge muslimer, der er på vej ud i ekstremisme, skal have munden lukket.

Trykkefrihedsselskabet har mistet sit figenblad som »kompromisløse forkæmper for ytringsfriheden« og står afklædt som det kobbel af højrefløjens hylende hunde, man hele tiden har kunnet se bag den idealistiske facade.

Det kan godt være, at Ehud Olmert kan finde på at kalde bosætterne i Hebrons aktion mod palæstinenserne for en “pogrom”, men hvis en dansk progressiv gør det samme, er han antisemit. (Gad vide, hvor det ville placere Herbert Pundik?)

Det kan godt være, at det fagligt mest fornuftige er at få så mange som muligt med frem for at udgrænse og  marginalisere, men hvis en tidligere PET-chef siger det højt, skal han trues til at holde sin kæft – alt sammen fordi, det ikke passer med Lars Hedegaards lille, billige had mod muslimer og islam.

Hvor Orwellsk er det ikke, at alt dette foregår under netop “Trykkefrihedsselskabets” auspicier?

Link: Klædt af til skindet