RACHEL CORRIE CONTINGENT FOR APRIL 12 RALLY

You state that, "No anti-war rally is complete without including the anti-apartheid in Israel message". Says who? Not the the same voice that gave you the right to speak for and use this dead womans name, perchance? Shame on your self serving divisive self. This rally is for one specific issue and not yours and it calls for one loud united voice. Do the living and the dead a favor and stay home. Honor, don't co-opt, the dead.

Zionists want to defame the antiwar movement as motivated by anti-Zionism. These are Zionist lie, motivated by the Zionist attempts to deflect criticism for Zionist Crimes. The Zionists who are spamming Indymedia with anti-Zionist posts are trying to confuse and divide the anti-Zionist left.

Without an anti-Zionist message, anti-war rallies have almost no legitimacy. Zionists wanted this war, Zionists got this war, and we have to confront them as the authors of this war.

Those who are trying to keep an anti-Zionist message out of the anti-war rallies are doing us all a disservice. No one stands to benefit more from this war than the Zionists. This is a truth that can only be denied by the most cynical and opportunistic politicians out there.

Zionism is a disease that holds both Jew and gentile hostage to its bloody design. If we truly want a just world, we must fight to overcome this supremacist ideology.

Rachel Corrie died fighting Zionism, and if we are not cowards we will take up her banner and do the same.

-Earl

If you support Zionism, your are by defintion a Zionist. If you refuse to oppose Zionism, there is no role for you in the progressive movement. War on Zionism is the defining movement of our time - it is no different than the war on slavery. Why? Because the war on Zionism encompasses everything we stand for - civil rights, workers rights, animal rights, the environment. Zionists are poisoning our planet, oppressing workers, commiting genocide against minorites and torturing children. The "anti-war" movement is only a small part of the fight against Zionism and the Zionists who rule the earth.

In the 19th century Jews were accused of poisening the wells in europe

In the 20thcentury they were accused of rulling the world

In the 21th century we just need to read the previous posts

If our movement does not understand the connection between Zionism and the war on Iraq and the deeper "malady of spirit" that exists within the American people we will be marching against the same Vietnam for generations to come. King's quote expressing this spirit of our struggle rings true today, and unless the movement understands and deals with Zionism and white power that it represents our children will have to march again against the same war.

If you do not hate Zionism with every ounce of your being then you do not belong in our movement. If you believe that Zionists have the right to live and breathe among us, then go join the neo-conservative party, because we don't want you. If you don't dream of dead Zionists, then you have been brainwashed by the Zionst controlled media and you should go educate yourself. Only then can you march with us or be one of us.

"Zionists are poisoning our planet, oppressing workers, commiting genocide against minorites and torturing children. The "anti-war" movement is only a small part of the fight against Zionism and the Zionists who rule the earth."

"If you don't dream of dead Zionists, then you have been brainwashed by the Zionst controlled media and you should go educate yourself. Only then can you march with us or be one of us."

I'm sad and outraged to see such explicit hate against Jews, full w/ the usual conspiracies about evil Jewish control of the world. To dream for "dead Zionists" is beyond disgusting, and there's no way that I (or most other people who have come to the peace rallies) would march with you if that was your message.

I want peace, freedom, and justice for Israelis and Palestinians, Iraqis and Americans. While we may disagree on whether a one- or two-state solution is best for Israel/Palestine, let us not espouse hate and violence towards one side--that it precisely what continues the cycle of violence.

Yes, we should discuss Israel/Palestine at anti-war rallies. But that does mean chanting "Sharon and Hitler are the same/The only difference is the name" or holding signs equating the Jewish star with Nazism. Remember: hate breeds violence breeds hate breeds violence breeds hate breeds violence...

Go back to jpost, nationalreview, littlegreenfootballs and opinionjournal, you fucking ZioScum. We are INDEPENDENT of your lies, INDEPENDENT of your control, INDEPENDENT of your greed for land and thirst for blood.

"""We are INDEPENDENT of jewish lies, INDEPENDENT of jewish control, INDEPENDENT of their greed for land and thirst for blood. """

This is Hitler speech ( Der Sturmer 1933).
Exactly ! Word in word.

" ... greed for land and thirst for blood"""

the same demonization.

""INDEPENDENT"" ?

Yes, the nazis ARE independent. Everybody knows that.
Independent of the Truth, Logic, Intelligence.

Your vitriol has essentially rendered this site
completely
obsolete.
The homepage always talks about anti-war protests, but the
discussion area is rarely about that.

Jews were persecuted for about 2000 years. Zionism is a response to that, and the definition of zionism is the belief that Jews, like all "nations" of people, deserve a safe homeland on this earth.

Those of you crazed neo-nazi loons who froth at the mouth against "zionism" are truly insane and lost.

You can hate the Israeli government all you want, you can exaggerate lies about Ariel Sharon you want, but that is a SEPARATE MATTER from being against "zionism."

Being against "zionism" essentially means you are against Israel, or any Jewish homeland, existing. Is that what you want? That is entirely separate from being against actual government policies.

I have a feeling that the crazed "zionist"-hating lunatics above won't care about this, though, since it's logical, factual and straightforward.

Get lost, Zionists - go to your stolen land, your media empires and your million dollar homes. You are not wanted HERE.

And Nazism was a response to the persecution of Germans.

So what's your point, that having been persecuted gives you the right to persecute others?

lets all just take our white sheets off wrestle naked!

Why not talk to the average Apache or Mohegan about stolen land...and if the Jews don't live in Israel, where should they go? The Arab states will kill them without thinking twice. Same with most of Europe. China will react as peacefully as they do to Tibetians...

"If you do not hate Zionism with every ounce of your being then you do not belong in our movement. If you believe that Zionists have the right to live and breathe among us, then go join the neo-conservative party, because we don't want you. If you don't dream of dead Zionists, then you have been brainwashed by the Zionst controlled media and you should go educate yourself. Only then can you march with us or be one of us."

You know, this one sets off my troll detector. Not even Windy Wendy with her "Japhethite" racial theories is this whacked.

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Gehrig is right about one thing at least--- even "Windy Wendy" would never support the crazed notion that the only good Zionist is a dead Zionist!

Zionists just need to go the way of White Supremacists--- they must be exposed, marginalized, delegitimized, and criticized for their racist ideas! They need to be made to let go of their Jewish supremacist ideas. Otherwise, most of them are good people in other ways.

Zionism OUT of US politics! Zionism OUT of Palestine-Israel!

Uh, "zionism out of palestine-israel" means what, shutting Israel down? Allowing people in who want to destroy it?

Zionism has nothing to do with "suprmecism." It's about a main homeland, like almost everyone else has.

--"It's about a main homeland, like almost everyone else has."

Like the Palestinians... whose homeland was and still is being destroyed by Zionists to make way for Israel?

Like the homeland that's been theirs for the asking since 1947 if only they'd renounce their intention to destroy Israel -- not just announce they've renounced it, but actually renounced it.

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Were the Zionists prepared to settle for the territory granted in the 1947 partition?

"While the Yishuv's leadership formally accepted the 1947 Partition Resolution, large sections of Israel's society - including...Ben-Gurion - were opposed to or extremely unhappy with partition and from early on viewed the war as an ideal opportunity to expand the new state's borders beyond the UN earmarked partition boundaries and at the expense of the Palestinians." Israeli historian, Benny Morris, in "Tikkun", March/April 1998.

Public vs private pronouncements on this question.

"In internal discussion in 1938 [David Ben-Gurion] stated that 'after we become a strong force, as a result of the creation of a state, we shall abolish partition and expand into the whole of Palestine'...In 1948, Menachem Begin declared that: 'The partition of the Homeland is illegal. It will never be recognized. It will not bind the Jewish people. Jerusalem was and will forever be our capital. Eretz Israel (the land of Israel) will be restored to the people of Israel, All of it. And forever." Noam Chomsky, "The Fateful Triangle."

The war begins

"In December 1947, the British announced that they would withdraw from Palestine by May 15, 1948...During that fateful April of 1948, eight out of thirteen major Zionist military attacks on Palestinians occurred in the territory granted to the Arab state." "Our Roots Are Still Alive" by the People Press Palestine Book Project.

Zionists' disrespect of partition boundaries

"Before the end of the mandate and, therefore before any possible intervention by Arab states, the Jews, taking advantage of their superior military preparation and organization, had occupied...most of the Arab cities in Palestine before May 15, 1948. Tiberias was occupied on April 19, 1948, Haifa on April 22, Jaffa on April 28, the Arab quarters in the New City of Jerusalem on April 30, Beisan on May 8, Safad on May 10 and Acre on May 14, 1948...In contrast, the Palestine Arabs did not seize any of the territories reserved for the Jewish state under the partition resolution." British author, Henry Cattan, "Palestine, The Arabs and Israel."

Culpability for escalation of the fighting

"Menahem Begin, the Leader of the Irgun, tells how 'in Jerusalem, as elsewhere, we were the first to pass from the defensive to the offensive...Arabs began to flee in terror...Hagana was carrying out successful attacks on other fronts, while all the Jewish forces proceeded to advance through Haifa like a knife through butter'...The Israelis now allege that the Palestine war began with the entry of the Arab armies into Palestine after 15 May 1948. But that was the second phase of the war; they overlook the massacres, expulsions and dispossessions which took place prior to that date and which necessitated Arab states' intervention." Sami Hadawi, "Bitter Harvest."

The Deir Yassin Massacre of Palestinians by Jewish soldiers

"For the entire day of April 9, 1948, Irgun and LEHI soldiers carried out the slaughter in a cold and premeditated fashion...The attackers 'lined men, women and children up against the walls and shot them,'...The ruthlessness of the attack on Deir Yassin shocked Jewish and world opinion alike, drove fear and panic into the Arab population, and led to the flight of unarmed civilians from their homes all over the country." Israeli author, Simha Flapan, "The Birth of Israel."

Was Deir Yassin the only act of its kind?

"By 1948, the Jew was not only able to 'defend himself' but to commit massive atrocities as well. Indeed, according to the former director of the Israeli army archives, 'in almost every village occupied by us during the War of Independence, acts were committed which are defined as war crimes, such as murders, massacres, and rapes'...Uri Milstein, the authoritative Israeli military historian of the 1948 war, goes one step further, maintaining that 'every skirmish ended in a massacre of Arabs.'" Norman Finkelstein, "Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict."

Windy Wendy responds with a glob of cut-and-paste.

I love the twisted logic. The Yishuv formally accepts the UN partition, but because it isn't unanimous, Windy Wendy's favorite propaganda site sez it doesn't really count. That's called "reaching for a reason to ignore the fact." And the fact is that the Zionists formally accepted the UN Partition plan. And the Arabs responded by bullets. Sorry if you don't like it, Windy Wendy; it just happens to be true. It just happens to be a fact. And the area that was meant by the UN Partition to be the Palestinian state -- well, that got swallowed up by Jordan.

Remember the part of history when the West Bank was in Arab hands after 1948 and they used it to set up an independent Palestinian state? No? That's because it didn't happen. The West Bank was annexed to Jordan for almost two decades. But -- in one of those bursts of brotherhood -- Jordan said, "screw that Palestinian state stuff, we want the land ourselves."

And I also love the twisted causality. "War begins." What a hoot. Like it landed like a meteor from space. The war began because five separate Arab armies attacked Israel at once in an attempt to destroy it. But in the Wendified version, it's just "war begins."

So here's the state of play: Israel accepts the UN partition, a plan with wide international endorsement, and the Arabs reject it and try to wipe Israel out. Who's at fault? Israel, obviously! The damned place refused to let itself be destroyed! Those wicked Zionists didn't let themselves be marched into the sea the way the Arab armies said they were going to.

And the quote from Begin -- another hoot, because anyone with any shred of memory knows how Begin's position changed. That's the same Begin that built the idea of Palestinian autonomy into the Camp David Accord with Egypt. But if you're looking for an excuse to hate Israel, then pretend that Zionists can't ever change their minds.

And then imagine -- imagine the gall! In fighting a war for its own survival against the five separate armies that attacked it, announcing their intention to destroy it, Israel has the audacity to no longer accept the boundaries of a partition plan that the Arabs had unilaterally rejected and then rendered completely irrelevant by attacking Israel with the intent to destroy it. To go back and say that _Israel_ was bad for not honoring the boundaries of the Partition -- well, that's the mote/beam thing Windy Wendy excels at.

Really, folks, that's a heck of a funhouse mirror Windy Wendy's using. But I've come to expect no less.

Now then, Wendy -- go to the cactus48 site, click on the link that sez "We Hold These Truths," and peruse that site's section called "Pharisee watch." Notice anything significant?

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The anti-war/peace movement is bullshit if it refuses to confront the racism of Israel which we pay for to the tune of billions every year. After the attack against Iraq started, Colin Powell called Sharon to tell him that the "loan" guarantee for 10 Billion dollars had been approved (which doesn't have to be repaid). This war which is slaughtering thousands of innocent Arab civilians is every bit as much for Israel as it is for oil. In fact, without the decisive neo-con voices in the media and the Bush administration, I doubt this war would even be possible.

Neo-cons have argued that "we don't have any choice" and that the peace movement hasn't not offered any alternatives. Here is an alternative that the neo-cons would loathe. Stop aiding Israel and enforce UN Resolutions on them like removing Israel's weapons of mass destruction and giving Palestinians equal rights. And stop murdering Iraqis through sanctions. That would immediately alleviate any resentment against us in the region and would remove any threat of terrorism that the neo-cons use to scare everyone into line.

The following is an email from Rachel Corrie to her mother.

February 27 2003

(To her mother)

Love you. Really miss you. I have bad nightmares about tanks and bulldozers outside our house and you and me inside. Sometimes the adrenaline acts as an anesthetic for weeks and then in the evening or at night it just hits me again - a little bit of the reality of the situation. I am really scared for the people here. Yesterday, I watched a father lead his two tiny children, holding his hands, out into the sight of tanks and a sniper tower and bulldozers and Jeeps because he thought his house was going to be exploded. Jenny and I stayed in the house with several women and two small babies. It was our mistake in translation that caused him to think it was his house that was being exploded. In fact, the Israeli army was in the process of detonating an explosive in the ground nearby - one that appears to have been planted by Palestinian resistance.

This is in the area where Sunday about 150 men were rounded up and contained outside the settlement with gunfire over their heads and around them, while tanks and bulldozers destroyed 25 greenhouses - the livelihoods for 300 people. The explosive was right in front of the greenhouses - right in the point of entry for tanks that might come back again. I was terrified to think that this man felt it was less of a risk to walk out in view of the tanks with his kids than to stay in his house. I was really scared that they were all going to be shot and I tried to stand between them and the tank. This happens every day, but just this father walking out with his two little kids just looking very sad, just happened to get my attention more at this particular moment, probably because I felt it was our translation problems that made him leave.

I thought a lot about what you said on the phone about Palestinian violence not helping the situation. Sixty thousand workers from Rafah worked in Israel two years ago. Now only 600 can go to Israel for jobs. Of these 600, many have moved, because the three checkpoints between here and Ashkelon (the closest city in Israel) make what used to be a 40-minute drive, now a 12-hour or impassible journey. In addition, what Rafah identified in 1999 as sources of economic growth are all completely destroyed - the Gaza international airport (runways demolished, totally closed); the border for trade with Egypt (now with a giant Israeli sniper tower in the middle of the crossing); access to the ocean (completely cut off in the last two years by a checkpoint and the Gush Katif settlement). The count of homes destroyed in Rafah since the beginning of this intifada is up around 600, by and large people with no connection to the resistance but who happen to live along the border. I think it is maybe official now that Rafah is the poorest place in the world. There used to be a middle class here - recently. We also get reports that in the past, Gazan flower shipments to Europe were delayed for two weeks at the Erez crossing for security inspections. You can imagine the value of two-week-old cut flowers in the European market, so that market dried up. And then the bulldozers come and take out people's vegetable farms and gardens. What is left for people? Tell me if you can think of anything. I can't.

If any of us had our lives and welfare completely strangled, lived with children in a shrinking place where we knew, because of previous experience, that soldiers and tanks and bulldozers could come for us at any moment and destroy all the greenhouses that we had been cultivating for however long, and did this while some of us were beaten and held captive with 149 other people for several hours - do you think we might try to use somewhat violent means to protect whatever fragments remained? I think about this especially when I see orchards and greenhouses and fruit trees destroyed - just years of care and cultivation. I think about you and how long it takes to make things grow and what a labour of love it is. I really think, in a similar situation, most people would defend themselves as best they could. I think Uncle Craig would. I think probably Grandma would. I think I would.

You asked me about non-violent resistance.

When that explosive detonated yesterday it broke all the windows in the family's house. I was in the process of being served tea and playing with the two small babies. I'm having a hard time right now. Just feel sick to my stomach a lot from being doted on all the time, very sweetly, by people who are facing doom. I know that from the United States, it all sounds like hyperbole. Honestly, a lot of the time the sheer kindness of the people here, coupled with the overwhelming evidence of the wilful destruction of their lives, makes it seem unreal to me. I really can't believe that something like this can happen in the world without a bigger outcry about it. It really hurts me, again, like it has hurt me in the past, to witness how awful we can allow the world to be. I felt after talking to you that maybe you didn't completely believe me. I think it's actually good if you don't, because I do believe pretty much above all else in the importance of independent critical thinking. And I also realise that with you I'm much less careful than usual about trying to source every assertion that I make. A lot of the reason for that is I know that you actually do go and do your own research. But it makes me worry about the job I'm doing. All of the situation that I tried to enumerate above - and a lot of other things - constitutes a somewhat gradual - often hidden, but nevertheless massive - removal and destruction of the ability of a particular group of people to survive. This is what I am seeing here. The assassinations, rocket attacks and shooting of children are atrocities - but in focusing on them I'm terrified of missing their context. The vast majority of people here - even if they had the economic means to escape, even if they actually wanted to give up resisting on their land and just leave (which appears to be maybe the less nefarious of Sharon's possible goals), can't leave. Because they can't even get into Israel to apply for visas, and because their destination countries won't let them in (both our country and Arab countries). So I think when all means of survival is cut off in a pen (Gaza) which people can't get out of, I think that qualifies as genocide. Even if they could get out, I think it would still qualify as genocide. Maybe you could look up the definition of genocide according to international law. I don't remember it right now. I'm going to get better at illustrating this, hopefully. I don't like to use those charged words. I think you know this about me. I really value words. I really try to illustrate and let people draw their own conclusions.

Anyway, I'm rambling. Just want to write to my Mom and tell her that I'm witnessing this chronic, insidious genocide and I'm really scared, and questioning my fundamental belief in the goodness of human nature. This has to stop. I think it is a good idea for us all to drop everything and devote our lives to making this stop. I don't think it's an extremist thing to do anymore. I still really want to dance around to Pat Benatar and have boyfriends and make comics for my coworkers. But I also want this to stop. Disbelief and horror is what I feel. Disappointment. I am disappointed that this is the base reality of our world and that we, in fact, participate in it. This is not at all what I asked for when I came into this world. This is not at all what the people here asked for when they came into this world. This is not the world you and Dad wanted me to come into when you decided to have me. This is not what I meant when I looked at Capital Lake and said: "This is the wide world and I'm coming to it." I did not mean that I was coming into a world where I could live a comfortable life and possibly, with no effort at all, exist in complete unawareness of my participation in genocide. More big explosions somewhere in the distance outside.

When I come back from Palestine, I probably will have nightmares and constantly feel guilty for not being here, but I can channel that into more work. Coming here is one of the better things I've ever done. So when I sound crazy, or if the Israeli military should break with their racist tendency not to injure white people, please pin the reason squarely on the fact that I am in the midst of a genocide which I am also indirectly supporting, and for which my government is largely responsible.

I love you and Dad. Sorry for the diatribe. OK, some strange men next to me just gave me some peas, so I need to eat and thank them.

Rachel

"I wish ISM had only protected innocent palestinians. Then I'd be a lot more supportive of them, as a group and as individual members. Unfortunately, in the past, ISM has also protected hamas killers and also the king sicko of them all, arafat."

On one hand, apparently they didn't know that the Hamasnik they were hiding was someone who had planned suicide bombings against Israeli civilians, because they didn't stop to ask before they hid him. (I guess that the ISM believes being chased by Israelis is a guarantee of innocence.)

On the other hand, it's awful hard not to conclude that these folks are in _way_ over their head, just as in the Church of the Nativity fiasco, and their idealism is leading them into places -- in Alexander Pope's famous phrase -- angels fear to tread.

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Rachel Corrie is our new martyr. Her blond hair and blue eyes and white skin couldn't privilege her enough to stop the juggernaut of Israeli occupation. It sucks that she was killed, but I have to agree that she and her ISM comrades are in way over their heads. As if the Israelis aren't playing for keeps (literally), as if being beautiful (by bourgeois American standards) were enough to stop The Man, as if... It may be totally lopsided, but it is a war. Human shields might work in a situation where universal standards of humanity are used--or even just paid lip service to--but the conflict between the State of Israel and the Palestinians has no room for such rhetoric. Human shields have to know before they go what they're getting into. Naive adherence to American bourgeois standards of Non-Violent Civil Disobedience are not applicable in just about every place in the world. ISM is made up of many suckers apparently. Too bad.

Rachel Corrie is our new martyr. Her blond hair and blue eyes and white skin couldn't privilege her enough to stop the juggernaut of Israeli occupation. It sucks that she was killed, but I have to agree that she and her ISM comrades are in way over their heads. As if the Israelis aren't playing for keeps (literally), as if being beautiful (by bourgeois American standards) were enough to stop The Man, as if... It may be totally lopsided, but it is a war. Human shields might work in a situation where universal standards of humanity are used--or even just paid lip service to--but the conflict between the State of Israel and the Palestinians has no room for such rhetoric. Human shields have to know before they go what they're getting into. Naive adherence to American bourgeois standards of Non-Violent Civil Disobedience are not applicable in just about every place in the world. ISM is made up of many suckers apparently. Too bad.

Rachel Corrie is our new martyr. Her blond hair and blue eyes and white skin couldn't privilege her enough to stop the juggernaut of Israeli occupation. It sucks that she was killed, but I have to agree that she and her ISM comrades are in way over their heads. As if the Israelis aren't playing for keeps (literally), as if being beautiful (by bourgeois American standards) were enough to stop The Man, as if... It may be totally lopsided, but it is a war. Human shields might work in a situation where universal standards of humanity are used--or even just paid lip service to--but the conflict between the State of Israel and the Palestinians has no room for such rhetoric. Human shields have to know before they go what they're getting into. Naive adherence to American bourgeois standards of Non-Violent Civil Disobedience are not applicable in just about every place in the world. ISM is made up of many suckers apparently. Too bad.

It is the cause of all world problems. It is anti-scripturals. G-d is going to punish all you zionists for your sins.

Jews against Zionism

The L-RD punished us for our sins. He took away the holy land from us. We are to live in exhile until the arrival of the messiah. Everything you zionists do is blasphamous!!! G-d shall punish you all.