mainstream media coverage is so biased it makes me want to vomit

[asimplechord]

This is an unpopular opinion, and you're welcome to defriend me if you feel the need.

I've been quiet about the situation in Gaza over the last few weeks because my sympathies lie in no way with Israel, and somehow even justified criticism of Israel is forbidden in our Judeo-Christian friendly society, earning the title of anti-Semitism. (I find an incredible amount of irony in how that term has been co-opted. I think most people don't realize that that word originally did not mean "anti-Israel" or "opposition to or hatred of Jews". It actually meant opposition to any member of the Semitic-speaking peoples of the Middle East and North Africa. Thus, Arabs, Ethiopians, Jews, etc.)

But honestly? Given the years-long blockade, the IDF's invasion, the expulsion of journalists and humanitarian aid via bombing of UN facilities, the use of white phosphorus?

What Israel has done to Gaza is no better than the treatment of Jews and Romani people in the Warsaw Ghetto. I don't understand how a community that has based its entire identity in the persecution of the holocaust (and I'm deliberately not capitalizing it) can't see (or more likely: don't care) that they have, with the complicity of the U. S., become the persecutors.

Comments

[idle-graffito.livejournal.com]

oh man, yeah - the first paragraph. somehow even justified criticism of Israel is forbidden in our Judeo-Christian friendly society, earning the title of anti-Semitism. agreed so hard. (though admittedly a part of my silence is also because i feel i don't know enough about the whole mess to be entitled to weigh in. most of my opinions on ~world issues just stem from my own moral beliefs, and do not take into account the complexities of the politics and history and so on, because i fail in life.)

i'm not sure if i would draw parallels between what's going on now and some of what happened during the holocaust, but i certainly do agree with the general sentiment of this post.

[asimplechord.livejournal.com]

I'm not comparing it to concentration camps, because that's a whole 'nother matter, and I'm not denying that they were victims on a massive scale, not just of the Third Reich, but historically. But walling a population up and denying them food, aid, fuel, education, health care, not to mention bombing their power sources so there is even a lack of clean, running water? Pretty reminiscent of the treatment of Jews in the ghettos of eastern europe before deportations to camps started.

[ordinary-magic.livejournal.com]

Love the Stephen icon. Reminds me of something Jon Stewart said recently about the situation in Gaza... he made the point that it was like having people live in your hallway, with no access to the kitchen or bathroom, and you just can't understand why they're upset. (His point being that Israeli policy has royally f'ed up the situation even more.)

I can see why Israel is taking this opportunity to go in and literally do a building by building ground sweep: this is it. This is their ONE CHANCE to go in and do this before the Great Enabler (Bush) is gone. It is all or nothing. They need those rockets to stop from Gaza. Withholding supplies, walling people in, cutting off the flow of economics has not worked. They're not going to stop until they've gotten to every stockpile and known sympathiser on their lists.

That said, it won't work, in my opinion, but I can't think of anything else, short term they can do to stop the missiles. Personally, there's so much blood and chaos on BOTH sides that I'm rapidly becoming numb to everything about it.

And as long as Egyptian government is siding with Israel because of the illicit traffic coming across their border, it'll continue. I have the impression that if Egypt could build a 50 ft wall along their Gaza border, they would. In the mean time, the rockets from Gaza continue, and Israel keeps squeezing the life out of Gaza.

[asimplechord.livejournal.com]

Oh, I totally agree. I don't have much hope that Obama will generate positive change, but I think his administration is likely to be far less hands-off than Bush's.

Exactly, re: Egypt. They don't want the refugees either, but they can't do much more without looking far far worse to other Arab states.

I've reached saturation, but it's like watching a train wreck: I can't look away.

[fleurdeliser.livejournal.com]

Agreed. Blind support of Israel makes me want to smack people.

[asimplechord.livejournal.com]

*sigh*

I just. There's no *reasoning* with people about it, because feelings are so strong on both sides. I have some friends whose parents are only children b/c they lost their entire family in WWII, and I get that it's very personal for them. But I also don't understand why they don't see that militant Zionism and occupation is doing to Palestinians exactly what was done to Jews historically. It's like me (as a descendent of Irish who left Ireland in the famine and were forced off land by the clearances of Scotland) telling a modern landholder in Scotland that I have a right to their land because my ancestors were illegally evicted. Or, I don't know, like Italians of today telling the people of London, "The Roman Empire built Londinium, so by rights it's ours and we're taking it back." No one would think that was acceptable. But occupation of the West Bank, complete control of Jerusalem, and cutting off the Palestinians in Gaza is?

[inkandchaos.livejournal.com]

Having grown up as a minority "not-Jewish-enough" in an orthodox Jewish neighborhood, I have my own... unique perspecive on Judaism and its adherents.

Put it this way, I was thirty years old and a thousand miles away from home before I ever met a Jewish person who was capable of being a decent human being, who didn't automatically, on first meeting, try to hurt me, abuse me, cheat me, or treat me like garbage.

No, my opinions aren't very popular, either.

[asimplechord.livejournal.com]

We'll just stay over here in the not-cool-kids corner, then. :)

[byandby.livejournal.com]

I agree with you completely.

[asimplechord.livejournal.com]

I hate that I can't talk about this with people IRL without being ostracized. But it's good to know I'm not the only one who feels this way.

[silentauror.livejournal.com]

I am wholly with you. And yeah, it's totally unpopular to be both anti-terror AND anti-facist, totalitarian regime, isn't it? One of my best friends when I was a kid was a Palestinian refugee and I always had Jewish friends in school (I grew up in a pretty Jewish neighbourhood, so much so that my friend's family always said they were Saudi to avoid persecution), so I literally grew up with the issue. The thing is, the terrorists are a very small percentage of the population, while the Israeli military is a very large force, and a significant portion of that part of the population. It's not a fair balance.

[asimplechord.livejournal.com]

No, there's no "fair" anywhere in this. I just get so tired of the way the American mainstream media sources ignore the fact that the response here is so disproportionate as to be collective punishment.