True Colours

An article such as that written by Rachel Shabi on CiF on April 17th shows not only the true colours of its writer, but also those of some of the commentators below the line and the newspaper which agrees to publish such a piece. Certainly, Shabi appears to agree with the graffiti she quotes:

“Maybe that’s one of the reasons why the graffiti in Nablus urges resistance to the “fake, American-imposed government”. By opting to be the preferred government of the Middle East quartet and Israel, by complying with all those accompanying, belittling and disempowering demands, the PA is backed into a corner – and it will take more than small tactical shifts to clean up its contaminated image.”

The ‘makeover’ actions of the PA which Shabi cites with approval are no less curious. She praises the PA for sending officials to the weekly Bil’in and Na’alin demonstrations against the anti-terrorist barrier, which of course frequently descends into violence and criminal damage. She praises the increase in support for “some models of popular resistance” and the move to boycott goods produced in Judea and Samaria, the prevention of employment of Palestinians by Israelis in the same area, and even the ban on Israeli SIM. In fact for Shabi and those she chooses to quote as supposed authorities on the subject, these actions do not appear to be far reaching enough.

Unsurprisingly, Shabi’s article set the resident CiF btl advocates of BDS into action.

haikara

17 Apr 2010, 1:01PM

Meanwhile, the PA has launched a campaign to boycott settlement goods ? “Your Conscience, Your Choice

The PA may not be able to cook the stew, they haven’t got the pot. But Boycott is the one effective thing we can all do to bring things forward, because forward it must be, not this stagnation under an ever more aggressive Israel expansion.

Boycott means small things like the boycott of H&M and more important things like to stop Israel’s membership of the OECD.

gazagirl

17 Apr 2010, 4:24PM

Rachel writes:

Meanwhile, the campaign to ban settlement products is popular but some wonder: why stop there? “We should boycott all Israeli goods, just as they already boycott our products by not allowing them to pass, not even to Palestinian Jerusalem,” says Stop the Wall campaign coordinator Jamal Juma. Israeli and Palestinian authorities are bound by Oslo-era treaties that guarantee the free-flow of trade ? but in practice that’s a one-way system: Israeli goods flood the Palestinian market, while Palestinian exports are blocked by checkpoints, closures and other restrictions.

Exactly. This is a disgusting situation whch arises because of the toothless quisling PA’s inability (or lack of political will due to being ‘bought off’) to take effective measures to protect / promote Palestinian trade – and the State of Israel’s characteristic cynicism and arrogance (despite the lip-service pretence of otherwise) in using the Palestinian people as a ready market for produce grown or manufactured on land which has been blatantly stolen from them in the first place!!!

No, I am most certainly right behind Palestinian grass-roots activist / Stop the Wall campaign coordinatorJamal Juma’ when he calls unequivocally for a boycott of all Israeli goods – and I call upon all supporters of the Palestinian cause for justice and common human decency to do the same.

The following extract comes from the Stop the Wall Boycott Section:

The Campaign has published numerous documents highlighting the Apartheid nature of the Wall and Israel. The Wall is today the most evident expression of Israel?s Apartheid nature, aiming to complete the Bantustanization of Palestine and the Palestinian people. These documents also emphasize the lessons to be learned from the successful solidarity movement that supported the South African struggle against Apartheid.

And as Naomi Klein wrote in a very clear and robust article for ‘The Nation’ last year entitled, Israel: Boycott, Divest, Sanction:

It’s time. Long past time. The best strategy to end the increasingly bloody occupation is for Israel to become the target of the kind of global movement that put an end to apartheid in South Africa.

From there, of course, it was only a short leap to accusations of apartheid, although this reader does not seem to have fully got a grip on Shabi’s agenda.

MERidley

17 Apr 2010, 1:15PM

The focus needs to be on Israel not the PA, this is just another Israeli journalist doing the ‘there not competent to do the job journalism to distract the focus on the real culprit’. What are you doing living and working in an Apartheid state.

Then, a very interesting interpretation of the concept of ‘justice’:

freepalestine48

17 Apr 2010, 4:19PM

there will never be peace in this tiny strip of land, the sooner people get used to that the better….

for there to be peace there has to be justice and if there is justice and then that will be the end of the jewish state of israel. so obviously the israeli’s are never going to grant peace….

And some armchair general-style military analysis:

wtbtpq

17 Apr 2010, 1:15PM

HaMasmer

She looks for ways to make Israel responsible for other people mistakes .

Impossible! As anyone who reads the comments here or listens to any Israeli spokesman knows, Israel isn’t even responsible for the people it’s army shoots.

Israel is responsible for nothing. According to them, that is. Apparently all Israel’s problems are the fault of other people who have got it in for Israel for no reason at all. The result of this self delusion is a country that shoots 1400 civilians and yet isn’t responsible for anyone dying. That’s what makes settler governed Israel so terrifying,they could do anything and not consider themselves accountable because, hey, wait a minute! It’s all your fault!

edwardrice

17 Apr 2010, 4:40PM

bedebyes

There was a six month cease fire last year, Israel broke it at the beginning of November. Fact.

Fact two:

“The Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 and the Hague Regulations of 1907 forbid occupying powers to alter the lifeways of civilians who are occupied, and forbid the settling of people from the occupiers? country in the occupied territory.”

And yes, Gaza is occupied territory. Prisoners in a POW camp could cook their own food, put on plays, have sports days but they are still prisoners.

LameLad

17 Apr 2010, 5:26PM

Jubilation 1

There was a six month ”cease fire” in 2008 (not last year) during which Gaza violated the calm as follows

the ‘calm’ in Israel being its preparation for a murderous child killing spree in Gaza’s open air prison?

The world fully understands what the term ‘violation’ means in the context of Israel.

Actually, I’m rather grateful to people like Shabi and the above commentators because they perform a vital service as a sort of occasional reality check. Obviously, the PA is not to their tastes and their allegiances lie somewhere more towards the direction of the ‘Hamas School of Diplomacy’. The prevailing opinions in Israel and most of the Western world have for some time now been that peace can be made with the PA, but does the evidence which Shabi brings really support that assumption?

Rather than having ‘upped support for some models of popular resistance’, it would be more accurate to say that the PA never gave up on supporting and encouraging terror, as evidenced by the naming of public places after terrorists and official visits to the families of so-called martyrs. Salam Fayyad’s new Friday hobby of joining in demonstrations and riots against the anti-terrorist fence is not a sign of a man who wants to make peace with the same neighbours that fence protects from the terrorists his government has consciously failed to control. The PA’s calls to boycott Israeli goods do not bode well for any future economic co-operation and its decision to prevent Palestinian workers from extracting themselves from poverty by working for Israelis who pay higher than average wages is also a question mark-shaped cloud over future trade and commerce agreements. In such a small geographical region, projects such as a joint mobile phone network are exactly the kind of thing which should be encouraged as they would benefit consumers on both sides and encourage normalisation and dialogue between both parties.

These recent steps by the PA indicate yet again that preparing their citizens for making peace and introducing a normalisation of relations with their neighbours is the last thing on their mind and if Shabi is correct and indeed “the Palestinian Authority (PA), sick of being slated as an Israeli puppet, is trying to reinvent itself as the People’s Authority”, then the commitment of the Palestinian people themselves to peace must also be called into question. As we can see from the reactions of Shabi et al, it is also not a priority for so many of those foreigners who claim to be ‘pro-Palestinian’ and their true colours appear in clear view when they support legislations and actions which can only drive reconciliation and co-operation further from the horizon and make peace as elusive as the crock of gold at the end of a rainbow.