You have to watch this video clip from The Daily Show (or read the transcript): http://www.thankyoujonstewart.com/ It's a Jon Stewart clip about the crisis in Gaza. He made clear what should be obvious, that bombing and killing won't bring peace for Israelis or Palestinians. When he spoke, I felt he spoke for me. While almost all of the mainstream news in the United States has reported the story without any context whatsoever, repeating the lie that this is a simple case of Israel defending its people against irrational attacks, it was Jon Stewart, who got it right. He talked about the "soul-crushing" siege of Gaza, the occupation that has forced Palestinians to go through checkpoints to do anything at all, the perverse logic of trying to "get a war in" just before Obama's inauguration. Join me in thanking Jon Stewart by going here: http://www.thankyoujonstewart.com And then tell everyone you know to watch this video. Tell your friends that if it seems like what is happening now is wrong, that's because it is. Muslim woman, rabbis to pray at inaugural serviceJan 15, 2009 2:23 By ASSOCIATED PRESS NEW YORK Barack Obama's choice of clergy is under scrutiny like no other president-elect before him, alternately outraging Americans on the left and the right as he navigates the minefield of U.S. religion. The Inauguration Committee has only released one clergy name so far for the Jan. 21 National Prayer Service that caps the inauguration. The Rev. Sharon Watkins, the first woman president of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), a Protestant group, will deliver the sermon. The Associated Press has learned additional details. A prayer will be offered at the National Cathedral by Ingrid Mattson, the first woman president of the Islamic Society of North America, according to an official who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information. The Islamic Society is the largest U.S. Muslim group. Three rabbis, representing the three major branches of American Judaism, will also say a prayer at the service, according to officials familiar with the plans. The Jewish clergy are Reform Rabbi David Saperstein, Conservative Rabbi Jerome Epstein and Orthodox Rabbi Haskel Lookstein, sources said. 'War on terror' was a mistake, says Miliband Foreign secretary argues west cannot kill its way out of the threats it facesJulian Borger, Amethi, India The Guardian, Thursday 15 January 2009 The foreign secretary, David Miliband, today argues that the use of the "war on terror" as a western rallying cry since the September 11 attacks has been a mistake that may have caused "more harm than good". In an article in today's Guardian, five days before the Bush administration leaves the White House, Miliband delivers a comprehensive critique of its defining mission, saying the war on terror was misconceived and that the west cannot "kill its way" out of the threats it faces. British officials quietly stopped using the phrase "war on terror" in 2006, but this is the first time it has been comprehensively discarded in the most outspoken remarks on US counterterrorism strategy to date by a British minister. In remarks that will also be made in a speech today in Mumbai, in one of the hotels that was a target of terrorist attacks in November, the foreign secretary says the concept of a war on terror is "misleading and mistaken". "Historians will judge whether it has done more harm than good," Miliband says, adding that, in his opinion, the whole strategy has been dangerously counterproductive, helping otherwise disparate groups find common cause against the west. "The more we lump terrorist groups together and draw the battle lines as a simple binary struggle between moderates and extremists or good and evil, the more we play into the hands of those seeking to unify groups with little in common," Miliband argues, in a clear reference to the signature rhetoric of the Bush era. "We should expose their claim to a compelling and overarching explanation and narrative as the lie that it is." "Terrorism is a deadly tactic, not an institution or an ideology," he says. He argues that "the war on terror implied a belief that the correct response to the terrorist threat was primarily a military one - to track down and kill a hardcore of extremists". But he quotes an American commander, General David Petraeus, saying the western coalition in Iraq "could not kill its way out of the problems of insurgency and civil strife". Instead of trying to build western solidarity against a shared enemy, Miliband argues it should be constructed instead on the "idea of who we are and the values we share". He goes on to say that "democracies must respond to terrorism by championing the rule of law, not subordinating. It is an argument he links directly with the Guantánamo Bay detention camp. "That is surely the lesson of Guantánamo and it is why we welcome president-elect Obama's clear commitment to close it." After the al-Qaida attacks of 11 September 2001, the Bush administration presented the threat of a global terrorist onslaught as justification for pre-emptive military action, long-term detention without trial and severe interrogation techniques widely denounced by human rights groups as torture. The incoming Obama administration is expected to avoid using the term "war on terror" and adopt a more multilateral and less military-focused approach to global threats. British officials are signalling, in increasingly public ways, that they cannot wait for the new team to take office next Tuesday, and wave goodbye to an eight-year administration with which they felt increasingly ill at ease, particularly following the departure of Tony Blair in 2007. Miliband said last night that the incoming administration's proposed use of "smart power" meshed with his arguments. "The new administration has a set of values that fit very well with the values and priorities I am talking about," he said during a visit to Amethi, northern India. Asked whether he had not left it late in the Bush era to make his criticism, the foreign secretary said British officials had stopped thinking in terms of a single war on terror more than two years ago, and had been putting a "more comprehensive approach" into practice. British officials said the timing of the speech was dictated more by the Mumbai attacks than Bush's departure, but added that the transition in Washington meant the language could be less cautious than it might otherwise have been. UK-US relations have been particular sour in recent days after Washington reneged on a pledge to back a largely British-drafted UN resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. The White House over-ruled US diplomats after a demand from the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert. Cafe owner 'breached 'human rights'By EVAN HARDING - The Southland Times | Thursday, 15 January 2009 An Invercargill cafe owner's refusal to serve Israelis on the basis of their nationality is a clear human rights breach, Race Relations Commissioner Joris de Bres says. JOHN HAWKINS/Southland Times SHOCKED AND HURT: Israeli nationals Natalie Bennie, left, and Tamara Shefa, with Mrs Bennie's two children Noah, 2, and Ella, 4, were told to leave Mevlana Cafe in Invercargill because they were from Israel. JOHN HAWKINS/Southland Times TAKING A STAND: Mevlana Cafe owner Mustafa Tekinkaya, left, with family and friends. Sisters Natalie Bennie and Tamara Shefa were upset after being booted out of the Mevlana Cafe in Esk St yesterday by owner Mustafa Tekinkaya. They chose to eat at Mevlana Cafe because it had a play area for Mrs Bennie's two children, but they were told to leave before they had ordered any food, Mrs Bennie said. "He heard us speaking Hebrew and he asked us where we were from. I said Israel and he said 'get out, I am not serving you'. It was shocking." Mr Tekinkaya, who is Muslim and from Turkey, said he was making his own protest against Israel because it was killing innocent babies and women in the Gaza Strip. "I have decided as a protest not to serve Israelis until the war stops." He said he had nothing against Israeli people but if any more came into his shop they would also be told to leave, and he was not concerned if he lost business. Mr de Bres said the Human Rights Act prohibited discrimination in the provision of goods and services on the grounds of ethnic or national origin, or of political opinion. "Whatever the rights and wrongs of the situation in Palestine, it is simply against the law for providers of goods and services in New Zealand to discriminate in this way," he said. Mr Tekinkaya's stance was supported by neighbouring Turkish Kebabs shop owner Ali Uzun, who said he was also refusing to serve Israelis. Mrs Bennie said she did not disagree that Israel was committing crimes against children. "I just don't think I should be declined service because I am from Israel." She had rung the Human Rights Commission and was told the cafe owner's actions were against the law because he was discriminating on the basis of ethnicity. "I wouldn't mind having a chat to him. Someone has to put him in his place," Mrs Bennie said. Ms Shefa is visiting Mrs Bennie at her Makarewa home, on the outskirts of Invercargill, where she lives with her New Zealand husband and two children. Both women said they had travelled widely, and to places much more hostile than New Zealand, but had never been treated in such a way. Invercargill Mayor Tim Shadbolt was shocked when told of the incident. "Oh my god, the Gaza Strip has come to Invercargill. Hell's bells." He said he was bewildered. "Generally speaking I am against all wars and I suppose people have got a right to protest. I couldn't really deny that. It would have been upsetting for the women and I feel sympathy for them." - With NZPA * Comments are invited for this story. Stuff.co.nz would like to remind readers to remain on topic. First Published 2009-01-13 'Israel is acting like a state terrorist' 700 Israelis arrested for protesting against war 2009-01-13 In eight years: twenty Israelis died from Gaza rockets, 4,000 Israelis died from car accidents. PACIFICA – About 700 Israelis have been arrested for protesting against the war on Gaza since the beginning of the deadly offensive, said Neve Gordon, chair of the Department of Politics and Government at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel on Monday. "700 Israelis have been arrested since this war began, because they protested this war. This has not made it to an international media, and it's an act of intimidation by the state against those who protest the war," Gordon told Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!. On the number of Israeli deaths, Gordon said: "between ten and twenty people, Israelis, have died from rockets in the eight years that rockets have been launched from the Gaza Strip into Israel. During the same amount of time, 4,000 Israelis have died from car accidents." But Israel still used that as an excuse to bomb Gaza. "From these twenty people, we're allowed to enter into the Gaza Strip and bomb them from the air into their cage and kill 275 children," said Gordon, who is also the author of the book Israel's Occupation. Gordon criticized Israel's continuous violations of international law. "Disproportionality is a term from international law. Israel has been defying international law and international agreements and international decisions from 1967, or probably from before. One of these decisions is that Israel must return these (Palestinian) territories. And by maintaining and holding onto these territories through violent means," said Gordon. Although Gordon opposes Gaza rocket fire, he explained that the Palestinians are trying to defend themselves. "The right to self-defense is a right to self-defense from violence. We have to understand that the occupation itself is violence. It's an act of violence. Putting people in a prison, in a prison of one million and a half million people and keeping them there for years on end without basic foodstuff, without allowing them to enter and exit when they will, is an act of violence. Without electricity, without clean water, it's all an act of violence. And these people are resisting. I am against the way they're resisting, but we have to look at their violence versus our violence," said Gordon. "Gaza is still under occupation, because Israel controls all of its borders, and the West Bank is under occupation, and East Jerusalem is under occupation. And the act—the first, the initial, the primordial act of violence is the occupation. The rockets are a reaction to that act of violence. And so, we have to keep in mind that within—it's not between a state and another state. It's been between an occupier and an occupied," he noted. On the media war, Gordon noted: "Israel is dealing with a propaganda war. Israel is the one that disseminated a video of Hamas shooting rockets from a school, a video that's almost two years old, claiming that the video was taken a day or two earlier. So Israel is in a propaganda war." Gordon noted that "although Hamas did launch an incredible amount of rockets at the end of the ceasefire," it was Israel which broke the ceasefire on November 4th "when it attacked in the Gaza Strip." "Israel actually is a first actor that broke the ceasefire," noted Gordon. Gordon also accused Israel of committing acts of terrorism. "Yes, the Hamas is fighting out from a civilian population, but Israel has the choice whether it's going to bomb the civilian population or not, and it is intentionally deciding to bomb the civilian population. So in terms of intentionality in bombing areas where there are civilians, Israel is acting like a state terrorist. So, if your definition of terrorism doesn't take into account the identity of the actor—and state actors can also be terrorists—then when you bomb a school and when you bomb a university and when you bomb a neighborhood and you're killing much more civilians than militants, then you're doing something that is an act of terror," he explained. Gordon cited two reasons behind Israel's offensive against Gaza. "I think the actual reasons have to do—the two major reasons—with rebuilding the reputation of the Israeli military after its humiliation in 2006 in Lebanon and the upcoming Israeli elections." But the Israeli author believes that there is a way to solve the conflict. "Hamas is the elected government of the Palestinian people. We don't need to like them. I don't like them. But they are the elected government, and we need to sit down and talk with them and not bomb them," he noted. "We have to come out and say we are willing to talk with our enemies, even with people that say that they do not believe in the existence of Israel. The PLO said that they do not believe in the existence of Israel for many years. And ultimately, we sat down and talked with them, and they are now considered our Palestinian partner. I believe that if there is a pragmatic side, a strong pragmatic wing in Hamas, that if we start negotiation with them, over the years these people will also agree to the existence of Israel and be willing to live side by side with us," he added."If we do not talk with them, if we continue this cycle of violence, ultimately Israel will be destroyed, because ultimately, the technological edge that we have over our neighbors will not be meaningful. So we have to change our approach. We have to be pro—by changing our approach, we're actually pro-Israeli. We say we want to see Israel a hundred years from now. And the only way we'll see Israel exist a hundred years from now is if Israel makes peace with Syria, with Lebanon and with the Palestinian people," Gordon explained. -- Whiz News provides news, views and interesting articles from various sources and all perspectives.
