Comments on: Police besiege, arrest activists planning to commemorate Nakba

By: Patrick W. Stodola

Patrick W. Stodola — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 00:41:05 +0000

As an American lawyer, I’d like to be allowed to parse this situation. As I understand the article, it recites “A law was passed last year forbidding any state-sponsored organization from making Israeli’s Independence Day as a day of mourning,,,” As I see it the Zochrot is an NGO (not state-sponsored). What they did then, in non-violence, was to make Israeli’s Independence Day as a day of “remembrance”; not mourning. On this analysis, Zochrot was within its rights to read the names quietly within the walls of its own building. The consequence would necessarily follow that the police were wrong and acting “illegally”. By the way, the Ministry of Education is pitifully inadequate in preventing knowledge of Nakba: witness this article. Thus they have no opportunity to put an Israeli spin on the phenomenon. Further, this event stands on its own, without any help from the analysis of WWII bombing, or any other unfortunate happenings in history.

By: Greg Pollock

Greg Pollock — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 09:18:05 +0000

When people want to suppress speech this badly they’re worried about somethng. Good sign.

By: the other joe

the other joe — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 08:27:46 +0000

I’m going to take the most charitable view of Caden’s ridiculous outburst, namely that he/she is so insecure that he/she finds no problem with labelling anyone he/she disagrees with a Nazi. In this case, clearly many eminent historians – and those who drafted the Fourth Geneva Convention are also Nazis. As are people who stand on street corners and read historically accurate information from books.
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I’m surprised is able to function with his/her condition. It must be stressful seeing the bogeyman behind every closed door.

By: Greg Pollock

Greg Pollock — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 05:28:01 +0000

oops. That first line should have read:
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MikeSailor seems right that the actual event of this post, the arrest of a handful of protestors, coupled with prior loss of liberty by disallowing them to leave their building has been lost through irrelevant comments on who merits being a present Nazi, based on their view of bombing Dresden.
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Sorry. But the number of comments on this site goes up by one by my error!

By: Greg Pollock

Greg Pollock — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 05:24:23 +0000

MikeSailor seems right that the actual event of this post, the arrest of a handful of protestors, coupled with prior loss of liberty by disallowing them to leave their building.
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The commenting hysteria on this post seems disproportionate to the post’s content. Perhaps the content is to be quashed thereby.

By: Mikesailor

Mikesailor — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 04:23:01 +0000

Caden and Max: Nice try at deflecting the discussion. Why is it so hard to admit that the actions of the Israeli ‘police’ and ‘security’ forces in this case were completely idefensible? Or is parroting the old line that illegal and unjust actions are defensible if they offend your apparently ‘delicate’ sensibilities? I seem to remember such reasonong was used by the government and its followers in another country in the 1930′s. Trying to paint Aristeides and TOJ as ‘Nazis’ leads one to only one piece of advice: Look in the mirror to find out who the true moral midgets are.

By: max

max — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 23:45:07 +0000

Referring to the distribution of Korans in Germany, The Economist explains why the benign act creates such a furry in Germany: “it’s not the gift but the giver”; it’s an “aggressive action”.
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It concludes by “Fundamentalists are delighted by the shift in attention away from their ideas to their rights”

By: cadent

cadent — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 23:08:22 +0000

Anybody who believes that the Germans were the wronged party in WW2 is a Nazi, and that would be Joe and Aristedes.

By: max

max — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 21:07:05 +0000

@TOJ, your ‘you’ is misplaced, but you’re allowed to make mistakes when the context is right, which it probably is.
Vicky noted (maybe in another post) that the ceremony she attended last year in Jerusalem was – in my words – an intimate one. The ones reported on this site were anything but.
That’s what I was referring to, not the commemoration by itself.
I don’t know whether the police acted by the law, but again that’s not my point, though I’m familiar with laws in several countries that require a permit for political manifestations.
My point is that in the current context in Israel such provocations are disgusting and can only mean – in my opinion – a wish to hurt or at least an utmost disrespect to others.
Whether or not the law was broken is to me completely irrelevant; I’m referring to the human, not legal aspect.
It’s not the economy, it’s the context…

By: the other joe

the other joe — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 19:40:59 +0000

@Caden, I never suggested that I “think the Germans just had bad public relations in WW2″. It seems that you have a free run around here deciding who is or isn’t condoning terrorism or underplaying the German atrocities. I stand by everything I’ve written here, I think everyone who looks at it fairly can see that at no point did I justify war crimes by anyone at any time.
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@Max, I just wish you’d think before you type. You made some general comment which amounted to ‘the British would never have cried over Dresden’ without for a second considering that maybe they did, and do. I don’t think you are malicious, but you are mistaken. This stuff is easy to find, there is no reason to be building castles on clouds. Everything I have written about Coventry is entirely factual. If you don’t believe me, it is very easy information to check out.
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I didn’t comment on the rest of your post because at its centre was that glaring, obvious error. You claim that the intention was always for the group to get attention, but without any evidence that is the case. We hear that they’ve been doing similar things for years without anyone doing anything. What did they do this time which required such a response? And if you honestly think their case is bad and that they’re only looking for publicity, why give it to them? Why are you (the police, the state, you in particular) taking any notice of them?
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The fact that so much time and effort is spent on preventing someone from doing something as simple as reading factual information out of a book suggests to me that deep down you (collectively) are ashamed and you’d rather bury the truth than face it.