Thursday 29 January 2009

Hilary Clinton on Gaza

Just when we were all wondering about the Barack Obama New Deal on the world, his Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, gave us an important insight into her own take on the Israeli massacre in Gaza, (December 2008/January 2009)

Yesterday she addressed the question. She did not say that the State of Israel went in and murdered 1300 and injured 5000 near defenceless people in the Strip of Gaza which they had weakened by siege. She did not say that Israel had refused to accept the democratic elections in Palestine (2006) which removed Fatah from power and elected the rival Hamas political party in their place.

She did not say: "For shame on the administration of George W Bush who said he was spreading democracy around the world, yet when elections were held in Palestine, internationally monitored and declared to have been free and fair, he did not condemn Israel for refusing to recognize the democratic process. In fact, the USA also refused to recognize the election results. For shame on the USA. We will be different."

No, Hilary did not say that as any true democrat should have done.

Nor did she chide Israel for lying again about their pretext for the savage murders in Gaza of men women and children. She did not tell the world that the propaganda from Israel that Hamas had been the first to break the truce was a blatant lie. For the truce had been well and truly broken by the State of Israel on the night of 4 November 2008 when the IDF crossed the border and killed five Palestinians on Gaza soil. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/05/israelandthepalestinians

Instead, she said: "We support Israel's right to self-defence. The (Palestinian) rocket barrages which are getting closer and closer to populated areas cannot go unanswered.”

Then she went on to give substance to a new lie, namely that the present truce was also broken first by Hamas. This lie has been presented in various media although there had been an Israeli attack on a fisherman's boat days before the death of the Israeli soldier and the Palestinian man to whom she referred.

Ignoring this, and always mentioning a killing by Hamas first, Mrs Clinton "blamed Hamas for the death of an Israeli soldier on the Gaza border yesterday and the subsequent killing of a Palestinian man by Israeli forces", according to the Irish Times report.

Hilary Clinton is no Barack Obama but she could be the tail that wags the dog. Just as the State of Israel has been the tail wagging the USA dog for many decades.

It all adds up to little hope for a fair and just peace for Palestine and Israel.

Monday 26 January 2009

Letter to Israeli Ambassador to Ireland Zion Evrony

Letter written and e-mailed to Ambassador 2 January 2009
First published in Indymedia Ireland 3 January 2009


Dear Ambassador Dr. Zion Evrony,

Further to my telephone call to your office this morning I wish to reiterate some of the points which I made in the conversation with your secretary, and to elaborate on them a little further.

1. I am sick to the teeth of the lies you are telling on RTE and in the Irish media about what is happening in Gaza. Israel has killed over 400 people there on the pretext that a cease-fire had been broken unilaterally by Hamas. You know this is not true.

2. You said that Israel is trying to avoid civilian casualties but that Hamas use their civilians as shields for Hamas soldiers. You know that this is not true. Gaza is smaller in area than our smallest County, Louth, and is over-populated with 1.4 million people, before your country reduced the population with murder from the sky.

3. Your Army invaded Gaza prior to an election and in the interregnum between the Presidencies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama. You kill over 400, injure over 1000 and promise more killings and injuries. And you blame Hamas for all of these killings and injuries. You know that it is not true that Hamas are to blame for your murders. You, the State of Israel and the IDF, are to blame for the people you kill and injure, no one else but you.


4. You said the upcoming elections had nothing to do with the massacre in Gaza. You know that this is not true. On the eve of the election you deliberately provoked a barrage of rockets from Hamas, even though you knew it would put Israeli lives in danger because you also knew that the Hamas response would give you a pretext to wreak havoc on Gaza and make it appear that it was Hamas' fault.

5. You and other Israeli propagandists keep repeating ad nauseam on RTE and in articles in the Irish Times the question: "What would you do, if you lived in Sderot or Ashkelon and your children had to run from constant rocket fire?" But you never ask the countering questions: "What would you do if you lived in Gaza, besieged by an Israel that denied the legitimacy of your democratically elected Parliament, and where Israel,a hostile power, has ultimate control over every aspect of your life? What would you do when this hostile power has the fourth or fifth most powerful army in the world, complete even with a nuclear arsenal, when it "agrees" to a truce (good public relations) that it breaks at will (no-one will notice the "small" incursions and killings of Palestinians)? What would you do if Israel invaded your little plot of land, murdering men, women and children, including many civilians, from the sky? Would you take your children and run to the sea (there is no other escape in Gaza) or would you think "This is a war against me and my children" and would you resist in whatever way you could?"

6. Do you think that all of the Irish people are stupid enough to believe your propaganda, no matter how often it is repeated?

7. Though not mentioned this morning, your Government has lied about the Israeli navy ramming the Dignity in international waters. The Dignity was carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza and had two Irish citizens on board. I protest against this action also and strongly condemn it

8. As a result of the war crimes which the IDF/Israel has committed in the Gaza Strip and in Palestine, I believe that our Government should call you in, advise you to leave and shut down the Israeli Embassy in Ballsbridge.

I have already written to Minister Mícheál Martin making this precise request.

With best personal wishes

Justin Morahan
2 January 2009

Wednesday 14 January 2009

letter to Israel January 2009

Dear members of Israeli Government and Armed Forces

I protest against the relentless, most cruel and savage bombing and invasion of Gaza which you have carried out and continue to carry out against the will of the peoples of the world, in spite of international condemnation which is growing in intensity at every hour. At every hour too your aggression is defying all comprehension in its pure evil. Do you not even care about the children that your soldiers are blowing into pieces?

On TV and in the press you defend your flagrant killing of defenceless people in Gaza, no matter how horrendous and bloody the killing. Your spokesperson from the IDF lies through her smiling teeth after every new and fearsome atrocity. All of you are guilty of war crimes.

It is a disgrace of the highest magnitude that the Governments of the world are cosseting and pampering you while you ride roughshod over the people of Palestine whom you have divided, in order to conquer and obliterate them.

You, Ehud Olmert, you, Ehud Barak, you Tzipi Livni are all war criminals. All of those who planned and now support these horrific killings in Gaza are also war criminals. As some decent people of Israel have said, you are compelling your own young soldiers to be guilty of war crimes.

For your own selfish reasons, to win popularity before the forthcoming elections , you are teaching them how to murder and then forcing them to murder people who are stuck in the cage of Gaza which you have locked and sealed. There are credible reports now emerging that you had planned this atrocity for six months and that you hope it will help you to gain control over the off-shore gas belonging to Palestine. You are the real murderers. You are killing children and stealing the goodness and virtue away from the hearts of your own children.

When the Germans were murdering Jews in Europe there was no Internet and people like myself could not protest against it. Now the shoe is on the other foot, you are the aggressors, the Internet is there and I, a pacifist, a human rights activist, and above all a human being, call upon you in the name of whatever or whoever you believe in to stop murdering people. Stop murdering children, stop acting the bully, stop the massacre, stop the New Holocaust.

At the present time your apologists give the impression of supreme arrogance. They repeat the same lies, over and over again, gaining continual access almost at will to the world's media. When the lies are uncovered, they are nevertheless repeated in different parts of the world by countless spokespersons, while others of your lobby of propagandists complain and whinge, like so many Uriah Heeps, that your side of the story is not being heard.

But the lying propaganda of tyrants wins only temporary and Pyrrhic victories. Where is the legacy of Joseph Goebbels today? Your imitation of the Nazi persecutors of your fathers can only lead you and your children into a similar ignoble oblivion. Is that what you wish for yourselves and for your children?

Through this letter from one human being, I call on the Government of my own country, Ireland, to expel your ambassador, Zion Evrony. I call on all other Governments to expel your Ambassadors from their own countries and to deny you all the special privileges you have been granted until you come to your senses, look at the carnage you are creating and realize that we, the people of the world, will not tolerate the savagery of your actions against defenceless and hapless civilians.

I call on you who are still fellow humans to end this new and already infamous Holocaust of Gaza, to lift the siege of Gaza, to end your occupation of the whole of Palestine, to stop stealing land for your settlers, to recognize the rights of Palestinians to their own homeland from which you once ousted them, to treat Palestinians as humans with equal rights to yours.

I call on you to put your humanity before the politics of the forthcoming elections. otherwise, you may win the elections but lose your humanity.

If you don't care about your own humanity, have regard for the humanity of your children. Many of them, many in your own households, are crying out against your actions, your own children are calling these actions war crimes, they do not want you to murder other children. They are shouting to you, even as you throw them into jail for doing so:

"COME WHAT MAY WE WILL NEVER ENGAGE IN VIOLENCE".

Are you totally deaf to these profound words of wisdom?

With best personal wishes

Justin Morahan
Dublin, Ireland.