ISIS & ISRAEL

I had my own similar conspiracy theory that, the only way to ever get the parties of the Middle East to work together was to have a common enemy that made working together the lesser evil. It would certainly be doable to finance a mercenary core that recruits true believers.

It does seem sketchy that they can move large amounts of money around without the NSA and CIA freezing the accounts. Or can post on twitter without being shut down, tracked etc.

I don't have any evidence or really believe it but one thing I have learned in my many years is "**** will happen you cannot believe'.

 

Not cool, but really a minor incident. Students and professors at a University in the West Bank don't like an Israeli to enter their university. With the increase of Jewish mob violence against Palestinians even in Israel proper, the slaughter in Gaza and the killing of a dozen or so in the West Bank and the arrest of hundreds in the West Bank etc. you cannot expect Palestinians to always act kindly even to the few Israelis who are sympathetic to them like Amira Hass.

Hopefully Hass understands this, but it will be seized on by the opponents of the Palestinians to justify their hatred.

 

It's hard to imagine protests against Jim Crow or Apartheid ever being defeated without solidarity with white people that were also against it. It's a stupid rule, plenty of Palestinians know it is and don't like it, but that's part of the absurd nature of the conflict. As I write this, the black helicopter-Mossad-voodoo conspiracy theory is getting more traction amongst the less educated in the West Bank rather than this -- something self-defeating and shameful and unfortunately, actually real.

Amira Hass was there at the behest of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, who organized the damn thing in the first place. This is an event associated with Die Linke for Marx's sake. If you don't see the inherent absurdity of not allowing a Jewish radical Leftist to an event organized by a radical faction of Germany's far Left party named after a German-Jewish radical Leftist, then you either aren't paying attention, or you are a really lousy Leftist.


The real lesson of Amira Hass' ejection from a Palestinian university
How Palestinian universities like Birzeit are intellectually straitjacketing their students.
By Matthew Kalman


I’m not an Israeli, so even though I’ve been reporting on Birzeit University near Ramallah for more than 15 years, I didn’t know until my colleague Amira Hass was asked to leave the campus last week that the university operates a ban on Israelis.

Well, not all Israelis, as Amira explains. Just “Jewish Israelis.”

The ban probably makes sense to most Palestinians, but it’s a disgrace and should be repealed.

The Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, which organized the conference from which Amira was ejected, denounced her expulsion as “discrimination” and expressed its solidarity with her. In a statement, the university said it had “no objection to the presence of the reporter Hass” but felt justified “as a national institution to distinguish between friends of the Palestinian people and its enemies.”

On Tuesday, the university issued a tougher statement, regretting the “lamentable incident” excluding Amira and clarifying that it welcomes “supporters of the Palestinian struggle and opponents of the Israeli occupation of Palestine, regardless of nationality, religion, ethnicity, or creed. Hence, Hass, who has consistently condemned the Israeli occupation, evinced support for Palestinian rights, and helped expose the discriminatory policies of occupation and its flagrant violations of these rights, is always welcome on our campus.”

So not all Jewish Israelis, then. Not the good ones.

The ban is not just immoral and racist, it’s symptomatic of the crushing failure of the Palestinian higher education system to fulfill its role as the engine powering the Palestinian future because of its stifling obsession with the Palestinian past.

I've reported from Birzeit dozens of times for The Chronicle of Higher Education and other media. I've reported the random arrests and administrative detention of their students and lecturers, often in the middle on the night, by the IDF. I’ve reported how many of those students and lecturers have been held for months, even years, without a fair trial, sometimes without even being told the crimes of which they are suspected.

In 2009, for example, there were 83 Birzeit students incarcerated in Israeli jails, of whom 39 were convicted of various terror-related charges, 32 were awaiting trial, nine were in “administrative detention” and three were undergoing interrogation following their arrest. Birzeit accounts for more than half of all the 1,000 Palestinian students arrested by Israel since the start of the Second Intifada in 2000, including at least three of its student council heads who were arrested and held for months on end.

Clearly, some of these students were also engaged in dangerous terrorist activity, but the majority appears to have been innocent of any real crime.

Nor is Birzeit alone in feeling the crushing weight of Israel’s occupation interfering daily with its studies and students. Just about every Palestinian university in the West Bank has stories of nighttime IDF raids, campus teargas attacks and random arrests and intimidation.

So I am well aware of the pressures that distinguish university life at Birzeit from Berkeley or Brooklyn College.

But much of the trouble there has little to do with Israel or the occupation. I have also reported the political intimidation and violence doled out by some Birzeit students to their political opponents. I met the Islamist student who led the stone-throwing rioters who injured the visiting French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin and chased him off campus in February 2000. The British Consul-General Sir Vincent Feane had to beat a similar retreat in 2013.

In 2007, university classes were suspended and students evacuated from the campus after Ahmad Jarrar, a student supporter of the ruling Fatah party, was assaulted in his dormitory room, apparently by four men from the Marxist PFLP. Jarrar was treated at a hospital for severe injuries suffered as he was apparently being tortured. The assailants used charcoal to burn Jarrar’s face and hammered nails into his feet. Fatah gunmen arrived soon after, threatening to kill PFLP supporters.

Earlier this year, I broke the story of a Palestinian student trip to Auschwitz organized by a professor at Al-Quds University who has since resigned over the fallout it caused. Two Birzeit students were due to go on that trip. They pulled out at the last moment after heavy pressure from the university.

This obsession with politics, although understandable, does a considerable disservice to the students who rely on Birzeit and the other Palestinian universities to help them create a better future for themselves – and for the Palestinian people.

Birzeit, ironically, was actually founded by the Israelis. The dictatorial Jordanian regime would never sanction an independent university in the West Bank. It soon became the intellectual powerhouse of Palestinian resistance against the Israeli occupation.

But it has failed to mature into a new, post-revolutionary role and become the engine of emerging Palestinian statehood.

One small example illustrates the problem. Despite enormous efforts by international companies, Arab entrepreneurs and a small number of Israeli and Jewish investors, the Palestinians are failing to produce a viable high-tech sector. While thousands of Israeli twenty-somethings are developing world-class technology with little more than a Wi-Fi connection and a laptop, their Palestinian counterparts have precious little to show. Apologists argue that it’s because of Israel’s refusal to allow a Palestinian 3G network, but that’s not true. Sure, the lack of 3G is another disgrace, which should be fixed, but it affects domestic consumers, not developers. Tech development uses Wi-Fi, not 3G, and is aimed at the international market, not the local one.

The main reason for the under-development of Palestinian high-tech is the poor education on offer from universities like Birzeit. One of the few successful tech start-ups in Ramallah was founded by an East Jerusalem Palestinian who studied at a Hebrew-speaking Israeli school and then at an Israeli university. His business is expanding fast, but he cannot find enough skilled Palestinian graduates to hire.

It’s a complaint I hear repeatedly when I’m reporting on Palestinian graduates. High grades in exams are achieved by parroting the lecturers’ ideas, not by challenging them. The universities are simply not teaching their students the independent critical thinking skills needed in today’s world. Their educational system is mired in the past.

If Birzeit and the other Palestinian universities spent less effort intellectually straitjacketing their students, and more time teaching them how to think critically and independently, the Palestinian future would look a lot brighter.

 

I think it's dumb but I wouldn't compare it to Jim Crow or Apartheid so much. I'd compare it to Native Americans on reservations having their land stolen, being lied to and screwed over for a couple hundred years and then having their enemies show up for access to their kids and to tell them how they're doing it wrong. I'd fully expect Native Americans to tell them to **** off.

 

It is a poor comparison because the civil rights movement and the anti-apartheid movement were coalitions that welcomed anyone that wanted to help, regardless of their ethnicity or politics.

Considering that this happened within a few days of it reminds me that most of the human race are tribalistic apes with sharp sticks. No one should make apologies for any of it.

 

Somebody PM'd me questioning my contention that a large percentage of Americans believe we found WMD in Iraq and asked for a link. From 2012 (page 26):

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~benv/files/poll responses by party ID.pdf

32% is a pretty large percentage, if you ask me.

 

Well, I suppose the question could be interpreted differently than I originally said since the question didn't say found, but it still shows a lot of ignorance.

 

It's not like ISIS has a bunch of electronic accounts for the CIA to freeze, and we allowed those twitter accounts to stay up due to their potential intelligence value. These days, they are being shut down.

 

It's important we're clear what you're talking about here. The "parties" in the Middle East you refer to are not representative of the people. This means two very important things:

1) They are in competition with each other, and therefore they will be divided by default much like Republicans and Democrats in the US. There are several common enemies to those particular parties (totally separate from what Middle Eastern people consider enemies), namely Israel and Iran and their affiliates.

2) Even if those parties ever did come together - and btw, they have not been closer than they currently are for over 1,000 years now - it would be temporary at best. These parties are not representative of the people, and as the history of 200+ other countries has shown they will sooner or later have to be gone, and the process of them going is almost always violent and chaotic. That will lead to another period of aggression.

If you have any interest in the Middle East coming together and unwilling to spend any extra money on it, there's a very easy solution. Gradually leave the Middle East, genuinely invest that same money in infrastructure and education and do not send political money anymore. This costs the same, makes you safer, and brings the ME together.

However, we both know from political patterns, unclassified documents and leaked information that the Middle East coming together is not part of what the USG disgustingly calls the interests of Americans. Those interests they cite are more easily reached through conflict than peace, through fear than safety, through division than unity. Now if the USG were more proportionately interested in the actual financial, political and humanitarian well being of all its citizens equally, then your assertion makes sense. A Middle East that reaches stability through freedom would help all of those interests IMO but it would cost rich people a lot of annual income and it would take time and patience. A country that has never voted before, for example, is more likely to make bad decisions about candidates before learning their lesson over time.

 

And Mathloon is naive. Again.

I could go on and detail, but one observation: why the heck do you keep talking about the "people" of the Middle East as if they are one people? There is no such thing. Not to mention that you fall into the standard petty bourgeoise trap of assuming that you and your democratic ideals must represent the people - and if the people are not interested, then it is obviously the fault of some outside nefarious force.

 

Here is a good article for the all too common "Hamas omg!!-- anything is justified; no need to think crowd ; kill a couple thousand innocent civilians who cares it is Hamas!!

Top 5 Differences between Hamas and ISIL (Pace Netanyahu)
By Juan Cole | Sep. 30, 2014 |

By Juan Cole
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu delivered a speech at the UN to a half-empty hall in which he tried to exemplify the most logical fallacies in a short period of time.
Netanyahu’s message is that all political Islam is equivalent. Thus, if ISIL is a danger to the west, then the Hamas movement in Gaza is as well. And both of them are equivalent to Iran.
Hamas is a movement of political Islam that has often deployed violence, which it terms resistance to occupation and which Israel and the US see as terrorism. But the US State Department was quick to put distance between it and Netanyahu’s views, dissenting from his crazy quilt of equivalencies.
Here are the top 5 differences between Hamas and ISIL:
1. Hamas has foresworn attacks on the United States and other Western countries, presenting itself as a national liberation movement against Israeli military occupation (an occupation that has lasted since 1967 in Gaza). ISIL on the other hand has called on radicals to attack the US and Europe.
2. Hamas has joined a national unity government with the PLO. Some Hamas legislators hold that this step automatically results in an implicit Hamas recognition of Israel, insofar as Hamas delegates will be bound by PLO rules of discourse, and the latter recognize Israel. In contrast, no high-profile member of ISIL has done anything but attempt to foment more violence and to break all political deals.
3. Hamas has not concertedly attacked non-Muslims, and, in fact there has sometimes been good cooperation between it and the Eastern Orthodox church. In contrast, ISIL attempted to ethnically cleanse the Yazidis and has threatened Christians and other minorities.
4. Hamas has concluded ceasefires with Israel, however imperfect on both sides. ISIL was kicked out of al-Qaeda for declining ever to make a truce even with its own allies.
5. Hamas has a civilian wing that ran for elective office in 2006 and won the Palestine elections. ISIL has no civil wing and is profoundly opposed to holding elections by party.
Hamas is a horrible fundamentalist organization (created in part by Israeli conniving and by the horrible conditions under which Palestinians in Gaza are made to live by the Israeli government), but it isn’t ISIL. And neither is like Iran, which is a Shiite state (Hamas and ISIL are hard line Sunni fundamentalists). Netanyahu comes close to racism in painting all Muslims with an extremist brush that is for him invarying. His own Likud movement was perfectly willing to turn to terrorism when it did not get its way, but not all Zionists or all Israelis would have approved. Netanyahu is doing propaganda and so cannot afford insightful oppositions.

Top 5 Differences between Hamas and ISIL (Pace Netanyahu)
By Juan Cole | Sep. 30, 2014 |
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By Juan Cole
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu delivered a speech at the UN to a half-empty hall in which he tried to exemplify the most logical fallacies in a short period of time.
Netanyahu’s message is that all political Islam is equivalent. Thus, if ISIL is a danger to the west, then the Hamas movement in Gaza is as well. And both of them are equivalent to Iran.
Hamas is a movement of political Islam that has often deployed violence, which it terms resistance to occupation and which Israel and the US see as terrorism. But the US State Department was quick to put distance between it and Netanyahu’s views, dissenting from his crazy quilt of equivalencies.
Here are the top 5 differences between Hamas and ISIL:
1. Hamas has foresworn attacks on the United States and other Western countries, presenting itself as a national liberation movement against Israeli military occupation (an occupation that has lasted since 1967 in Gaza). ISIL on the other hand has called on radicals to attack the US and Europe.
2. Hamas has joined a national unity government with the PLO. Some Hamas legislators hold that this step automatically results in an implicit Hamas recognition of Israel, insofar as Hamas delegates will be bound by PLO rules of discourse, and the latter recognize Israel. In contrast, no high-profile member of ISIL has done anything but attempt to foment more violence and to break all political deals.
3. Hamas has not concertedly attacked non-Muslims, and, in fact there has sometimes been good cooperation between it and the Eastern Orthodox church. In contrast, ISIL attempted to ethnically cleanse the Yazidis and has threatened Christians and other minorities.
4. Hamas has concluded ceasefires with Israel, however imperfect on both sides. ISIL was kicked out of al-Qaeda for declining ever to make a truce even with its own allies.
5. Hamas has a civilian wing that ran for elective office in 2006 and won the Palestine elections. ISIL has no civil wing and is profoundly opposed to holding elections by party.
Hamas is a horrible fundamentalist organization (created in part by Israeli conniving and by the horrible conditions under which Palestinians in Gaza are made to live by the Israeli government), but it isn’t ISIL. And neither is like Iran, which is a Shiite state (Hamas and ISIL are hard line Sunni fundamentalists). Netanyahu comes close to racism in painting all Muslims with an extremist brush that is for him invarying. His own Likud movement was perfectly willing to turn to terrorism when it did not get its way, but not all Zionists or all Israelis would have approved. Netanyahu is doing propaganda and so cannot afford insightful oppositions.

http://www.juancole.com/2014/09/differences-between-netanyahu.html

 

They are both based on the same death cult ideology. Hamas just has its hands full killing the Jews right in front of them, so it doesn't have the capacity to attack the USA and Europe at the same time. But the celebrations of Palestinians on 9/11 speak volumes. If they could, they would.

Yeah right. Constantly shooting rockets at civilians certainly means "implicit recognition of Israel". Their charter calls for the destruction of Israel. Couldn't be any clearer. What is this guy smoking?

Hamas has constantly been attacking non-Muslims. Why is this guy lying? They are kidnapping, murdering, shooting rockets at civilians, and have been doing so since...ever since they came into existence.

Hamas has broken every ceasefire. They only agree to ceasefires for tactical reasons, so they can build more terror tunnels and restock weapons.

I'll give him that, but that doesn't change the underlying ideology. It's the same.

At least he got that one right

...but then of course, he blames it on Israel, like Islamists, leftists and other anti-semites would.

Muslims are not a race, but of course, this idiot who calls himself a scholar would not understand that.

This "Juan Cole" character is doing propaganda.

Also, why did you post his nonsense TWICE? Doesn't make it any better.

 

What do you say about people who believe that Obama is a Muslim born in Kenya? Sadly you don't have to go very far to find them...

 

I think they cannot be taken seriously.

 

...but they aren't as delusional as Exiled.

 

That's pretty shocking.

I had no idea that this was the reason the United a Stated had joined other countered so late.

 

No, no glynch, your line is supposed to be "So my country can be free!"

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