Palestine will be liberated

[Thinking Man's Idiot]

Palestine will be liberated

(Sunday 04 January 2009)


IT'S a very peculiar feeling, agreeing with anything that the US ambassador to the United Nations says, but so be it.

Alejandro Wolff suggested that an official security council statement that criticised both Israel and Hamas would not have been helpful. We can only agree, although for somewhat different reasons than those given by Mr Wolff.

Statements from the US over the weekend have veered from the merely cringeworthy to out-and-out fantasy, with President George W Bush leading the band.


To hear the US president talk, one would imagine that Hamas is raining rockets on Israel, causing hundreds of deaths and thousands of casualties, leaving families homeless and children orphaned.


In fact, the exact reverse is the truth. Over the whole period of the Israeli blitzkreig on Gaza, the sum total of Israeli deaths has been four. Palestinian deaths, however, have now topped 500 with over 2,500 wounded, including many women and children.


Anyone who considers that to be a proportionate response stands guilty, at the very least, of a particularly sickening variety of racism.


And, with the undue emphasis placed on Palestinian rocketry, that includes Prime Minister Gordon Brown in the same bag as the chief US warmonger - as usual.


Mr Brown has distinguished himself, in his usual fashion, by parroting US gibberish to a slavish degree.


A BBC report said it all when it announced that "at least nine missiles were fired into Israel from Gaza, targeting Sderot, Netivot and other communities close to the border. There were no reports of damage or casualties."


However, it continued by reporting that "a tank shell fired in northern Gaza killed 12 people, most of them civilians, and at least five people died as shells exploded near a shopping centre and a school in Gaza City."


As Mr Brown was speaking, troops and tanks were continuing to pour across the Gazan border with Israel and the death toll was mounting by the hour.


All across the world, including inside Israel itself, tens and hundreds of thousands of normal, decent people have come out onto the streets to call for an end to Israel's sick assault on the people of Gaza.


And yet the politicians of the capitalist world continue in their drive to equate the desperate resistance of the Palestinian people with the overwhelming force of the modern Israeli war machine.


Mr Brown even had the temerity to call for stopping the supply of arms into the region by singling out the cross-border tunnels into Gaza.


Perhaps the Prime Minister doesn't consider US-built F16 fighters with laser guidance systems and air-to-ground missiles to be armaments when in the hands of Israelis, who have a fleet of over 100 of them. We beg to differ.


And perhaps he considers US Apache attack helicopters armed with Hellfire missiles to be a tool for peace. Again, we disagree.


And there are millions of us who will continue our resistance to this blatant collective punishment of the Palestinians for electing Hamas into government and will reject our nations' complicity in Israel's murderous policies.


This edition of the Morning Star is unashamedly dedicated to the struggles of the Palestinian people, to their brave battle for statehood and independence and, in common with millions of others across the world, we will not be silent until Palestine is free and its people treated with humanity and respect.





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[Thinking Man's Idiot]

Britain unites to attack Israel strikes

(Sunday 04 January 2009)
by PAUL HASTE





DISGUST: A British army veteran joins the protest in Manchester (pic: Richard Searle).



MASS protests against the Israeli state's terror attacks on the people of Gaza swept Britain at the weekend.

As the Middle East's only nuclear-armed state sent US-supplied helicopter gunships and tanks into the densely populated territory, thousands of people took to the streets in dozens of British towns and cities to demonstrate their support for Palestine.


Some 2,000 angry protesters took over the centre of Glasgow, while another 2,000, including Muslims, Christians and Jews, demonstrated in Edinburgh against the Israeli attacks, which have wiped out more than 500 lives in the last week.


A Scottish Islamic Foundation spokesman said that the protests showed "the feeling of people in Scotland who want the bombing to end immediately."


Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond added that Israel seemed intent on "punishing the people of Gaza" and demanded "an immediate ceasefire to allow much needed humanitarian aid to be delivered."


Thousands of people in Wales also voiced their anger at the Israeli terror assault, which comes after a relentless economic blockade that has impoverished Gaza.


Bangor demonstrator Nick Jewitt pointed out that, even when there had been a ceasefire in the past, "Israel continued to prevent essential goods entering.


"I am here to register my protest. I want to see the borders open and the Palestinians being allowed to live normal lives," he stated.


Welsh solidarity activist Linda Rogers agreed, explaining how the blockade and now the invasion was making "the situation in Gaza a humanitarian disaster."


"The hospitals can't cope with the number of injuries. We're asking for a ceasefire, we're asking for aid to go in immediately to help these people," she pleaded.


Demonstrators in Swansea conducted a mock funeral, carrying small coffins to represent the children killed by Israeli gunmen during the Christmas season.


More than 4,000 people marched through the centre of Manchester, hundreds attended protest rallies in Liverpool, Brighton and Portsmouth and almost 1,000 demonstrated in Bristol, calling for a boycott of Israeli goods.
Bristol Palestine Solidarity Campaign organiser Cliff Hanley blasted Israel's "genocidal policy towards the Palestinians.


"We are appalled by the outrages in Gaza. People are angry at what Israel is doing, and furious at the hypocrisy of our own government's support for that country," he stormed.

[Thinking Man's Idiot]

Power of protest

[Thinking Man's Idiot]

Stop this slaughter

Palestinian death toll hits more than 500

[Thinking Man's Idiot]

EI: Gaza massacres