News From Gaza

[Mr.Spock]

Just give him the telepathic Vulcan nerve-pinch.

i prefer to throw him to the Klingon's.

 

[Mr.Spock]

violence against members of this community is unlawful

to bad.

 

[S.A.M.]

Mr. Spock: "you maybe dont [hate Jews]..."

Thanks for that, Spock. I appreciate it.

(Spock to draqon) "you probably use an intel cpu manufactured in israel."

ANd thanks for that reminder! I do want to keep this issue in mind in the purchases I make and recommend, for computers and other goods and services.

This is strangely reminiscent of an earlier boycott.

Have you seen this?

http://www.inminds.co.uk/boycott-israel.html

 

[Billy T]

Israeli agents crashed the old "boycott Israel" site (but it is up again now) (link in SAM's post). Here is direct link to the new boycott site:

http://www.inminds.co.uk/boycott-israel.php

Unfortunately, IMHO, Spock and his "stay the course" with high kill ratio, which has a 40+year history of making the risk to Israel greater every year, is making things like this boycott attractive to even me. When the US economy has collapsed a little more, this high kill ratio and the disgust with Israeli policy growing all over the world, will terminate US aid to Israel. Joe American will not willing continue to send such high per capita aid to Israel when he and his neighbors are hurting economically.

Spock and his kind do not seem to understand the danger to Israel continuation of the high kill ratio policy is making. Israel will be isolated and without external funds. The US law against any non-defensive use of US supplied military hardware will finally be applied to stop the Apache helicopters from launching rockets at Gaza apartment buildings, etc.

 

[hypewaders]

Inminds Software is much too reactionary and dialogue-averse for my taste, and I feel like boycotting them, too. I hope that an effective international boycott will be promoted without poisoning the prospects for reconciliation. Innovative Minds are not a very innovative company when it comes to defeating the cycle of mistrust and violence between Jews and their Mideast neighbors.

A serious boycott of Israel will be unlikely to improve things if it is all stick and no carrot. As an international movement to end Israeli apartheid grows, I believe it will be pivotal when such a movement becomes noticeably and definitively selective about the company it keeps. I'm all for boycotting Israel for the purpose of breaking their choke-hold on non-Jews under their power. But it will be ruinous to the effectiveness of an international movement if intolerant people are allowed to pile on any agendas of intolerance in a cause for equal justice.

 

[S.A.M.]

Inminds Software is much too reactionary and dialogue-averse for my taste, and I feel like boycotting them, too. I hope that an effective international boycott will be promoted without poisoning the prospects for reconciliation, which is what Inminds is doing. A serious boycott of Israel will be unlikely to improve things if it is all stick and no carrot.

Why do you consider them dialogue averse?

I thought they were pretty effective with their boycott

http://www.inminds.co.uk/boycott-faq.html

 

[hypewaders]

They're not always on message like that. I'm having trouble navigating my way back to what originally bothered me about them, when I followed your link and looked around their website. I remember statements to the effect that no solutions or negotiatons should involve the US and Israeli governments. It was just one part of what is obviously a collection of diverse viewpoints. I'll link it here when I find it again, by sifting back through the site some more when I have some more time for it.

I'd like to make this point, even though I've lost the statement that brought it to mind. An effective international boycott will require the filtering out of other agendas, and focus on a message that non-Muslim USAmerican consumers (for example) can easily relate to. Tributes to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, rhetoric about Islamic solutions to political and ethnic problems are completely inappropriate to this task. For Muslims to personally apply the best wisdom of even sectarian interpretations of Islam in all that they do is well and good- but to couch a boycott of Israel in nearly evangelical terms will harm the project where it matters most, among Western consumers. If organizers of an international boycott of Israel ignore or inflame the unnecessary and distracting culture-war that is building on the world stage, it is bound to trip things up. Innovative Minds need to do some ideological firewalling; apply some basic principles of intercultural marketing. If they can't do that, they're in the way; not helping.

 

[S.A.M.]

Maybe it was something on their old website, it was hijacked by Israeli intelligence.

 

[hypewaders]

Could be. I'm having a hell of a time finding what miffed me the most again, but I'm ~98% certain it was under the Innovative Minds url.

 

[Billy T]

I agree completely with hypewader's point - the boycott movement should be just that, not a platform for other agendas - just a way to pressure Israel to stop destroying the Negev Bedouins and change to a more truly protective /defensive policy (I have suggested one, long ago*) instead of continue the high-kill ratio RETALITORY policy that has not worked for 40+ years (more and better rockets, more willing suicide bomber, even women now).

There is another reason why Americans should support the boycott, in that it helps hold up the value of the dollar. It obviously does this if the US imports less from Israel (or any country - it is the excess of imports over exports that has weakened the dollar). However in Israel's case, the shekel is too strong and that is hurting Israeli exports so the Bank of Israel is acting:

"...The Bank of Israel bought dollars last week after the shekel strengthened against most world currencies, indicating the local foreign currency market wasn't ``anchored well,'' Governor Stanley Fischer said.
The decision to buy dollars and weaken the shekel has so far been ``successful,'' Fischer told a news conference today at the bank's Jerusalem headquarters. ..."
From:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a_mTiOAyV_4w&refer=home

This action to help Israeli exports is making demand for the dollar - helping stem the decline of the dollar’s value. To the extent that the boycott reduces Israeli exports, the Bank of Israel will need to do more dollars buying to aid the falling exports. Israel is a tiny country and very susceptible to external economic pressure - especially if US aid were terminated.
--------------
*Plan I suggested long ago:
http://www.sciforums.com/showpost.php?p=1124159&postcount=115
is not perfect, but does seem to have a chance.

Also note that in the upper right corner of that page, clicking on the thread's name (Name your solution) will permit you to see all the posts of the thread (not just my post 115). My idea back then did get some discussion, to which I replied.

 

[hypewaders]

I'm repeating my criticism in the "Feedback" box at the lower left of the main New Boycott Israel page. Maybe similar input from others would add impact.

 

[Billy T]

I'm repeating my criticism in the "Feedback" box at the lower left of the main New Boycott Israel page. Maybe similar input from others would add impact.

I too added a brief request to keep to the boycott subject - not make Pro-Islamic etc posts that distract, perhaps offend some. however I could not discover how to read any of the comments. Tried to find yours. I did not give my Email address. Instead in its box place wrote: "PMs via www.sciforum.com" (and called myself "Billy T" there also.)

 

[Mr.Spock]

at least we know you are not objective. i wonder if you are capable of criticizing the palestinians? i still remember SAM explanation why an arab israli broke in a jewish yeshiva and shot everyone on sight, killing 8 people-"maybe a rabbi abused him when he was child".


you should learn from kadark and openly say what you think on jews.

 

[S.A.M.]

DIY: Land Takeover

The method of taking over land is being publicized for the first time, based on testimony from a hearing on an appeal filed by a Kedumim resident, Michael Lesence, against a Civil Administration order to vacate 35 dunams (almost 9 acres) near the Mitzpe Yishai neighborhood of the settlement. Official records show the land as belonging to Palestinians from Kafr Qaddum.

Lesence's lawyer, Doron Nir Zvi, admitted at the hearing that the land in question was private Palestinian property. However, Lesence claims ownership on the grounds that he has been working the land for more than a decade, after he received it in an orderly procedure, complete with a signed agreement, from the heads of the Kedumim local council.
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Affidavits from Civil Administration officials stated that Lesence began cultivating the land only in the past six months.

Attorneys Michael Sfard and Shlomi Zecharia, who represent the Palestinian landowners on behalf of Yesh Din - Volunteers for Human Rights, insist their clients continued to work the land, and that the army and settlers from Kedumim are denying their access to it.

Kedumim residents who testified before the board said that the Palestinian have no problem reaching their lands. However, a visit to the area reveals a different picture: The guard at Mitzpe Yishai announced that "it is forbidden to allow Arabs in" to the lands abutting the neighborhood. After the Palestinians approached their property on foot, an army patrol arrived and moved them off. When the commander was told they have Civil Administration documents proving they own the land, the commander replied: "Documents don't interest me."

The land-takeover method was developed in Kedumim and neighboring settlements during the mid-1990s, after the Oslo Accords, and continues to this day.

Zeev Mushinsky, the "land coordinator" at the Kedumim local council, testified as to how it works: Council employees, Mushinsky in this case, would map the "abandoned lands" around the settlements, even if they were outside the council's jurisdiction, with the aim of taking them over. The council would "allocate" the lands to settlers, who would sign an official form stating that they have no ownership claim on the m, and that the council is entitled to evict them whenever it sees fit, in return for compensating them solely for their investment in cultivating the land.

Kedumim's former security chief, Michael Bar-Neder, testified that the land "allocation" was followed by an effort to expand the settlement. Bar-Neder said that once the settlers seized the lands, an application would be made to the military commander to declare them state-owned, since under the law covering the West Bank, anyone who does not cultivate his land for three years forfeits ownership of it.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/964843.html

How nice. Stop the Palestinians from accessing their lands and declare them state owned due to lack of cultivation.

 

[Billy T]

...How nice. Stop the Palestinians from accessing their lands and declare them state owned due to lack of cultivation.

I do not know if this approach to stealing land has been applied to the Negev Bedouins yet or not.

The Israelis have only been spraying their farms with herbicides since 2002.

How long a period without framing is required before Israeli law declares the land no longer belongs to the Bedouin owner because he has abandoned it?

 

[S.A.M.]

I do not know if this approach to stealing land has been applied to the Negev Bedouins yet or not.

The Israelis have only been spraying their farms with herbicides since 2002.

How long a period without framing is required before Israeli law declares the land no longer belongs to the Bedouin owner because he has abandoned it?

According to the article I linked, it is three years. But as the incident quoted showed, any settler can claim to have been there for 3-4 years even if the real time is six months

 

[Asguard]

MOD HAT:I have already recived 2 complaints about this thread and although i can see the complaintents point im not willing to just out of hand delete the post involved because if i start doing this again i will spend the rest of the day deleting posts and im not willing to comit that much time to trying to save the thread a second time.

SO the next complaint i recive on this thread will be delt with by the closure of the thread and i WILL make a compleatly new thread to replace it.

 

[S.A.M.]

Could we know what the complaint is about so we can avoid what caused it?

 

[Asguard]

actually the last one was from you sam

I wasnt really interested in making them public as anyone has the right to complain about anything and we dont have a policy of making reported posts public (unless they are an abuse of the reported post system)

 

[James R]

The name-calling in this thread is unproductive. For example, take the recent exchange, above, between Mr Spock and draqon.

If members are unable to discuss events in Gaza without calling each other names, there will really be no option but to close the thread.