warsaw remembered

When Denis Goldberg was released from a South African prison for his role with Nelson Mandela and the ANC, he was, in a complicated arrangement, sent to Israel. It did not last long. Although part of his condition of release was to sew his lips on criticism, Goldberg broke word, then left for England. He said Israel was much like South Africa, like an apartheid state, but not exactly since there were differences. This always perplexed me, until you realize there are elements other than Palestinians who are at odds and suffering from state sanctioned violence.

When Gush Katif in the Gaza was evacuated, the whole process bore eerily resemblance to a liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto. The settlements were cut off from food and water hemmed in by barbed wire and surrounded by overwhelming military force. Its odd that the Jewish holiday of Purim is over, this liberation of Jews from near extinction, yet the modern state is capable of similar acts to its own. Another political prisoner Jacobo Timmerman from Argentina expressed similar sentiments to Goldberg.

—A Special Military Force made up of exclusively secular, non-Jewish IDF and Police is being trained to act solely against their fellow citizens to forcefully transfer them. There will be four Special Forces personnel to every Jewish “Settler” citizen.—

---In retrospect, the recklessness of that move has become all too apparent, as Gaza has been transformed into a launching pad for rocket attacks against the Jewish state, leaving southern towns and cities across the Negev, such as Sderot, in the crosshairs of palestinian terrorists. The fiasco of Israel’s retreat has led many of those who supported the move to publicly admit the error of their ways.---Read More:http://princesspana.blogspot.com/2011/01/remember-rebuild.html

“The army sent thousands of soldiers to every settlement in the Gaza Strip on August 15, 2005 with notices informing the Jews that they were required to leave their homes and that those who left before the 17th would receive assistance from the IDF. Afterward, it was illegal for Israelis to stay and, at midnight on August 16, those that remained were to lose a significant portion of their compensation. The evacuation started on August 17, 2005, and was expected to take about a month, but the operation went so smoothly that the civilians were evacuated from Gaza by August 22 and the West Bank the following day.” Most of the Jews living in Gaza at the time of evacuation were children. More than 46 percent were under 14, 10 percent were between 15 and 19, approximately 15 percent were in their 20s and 28 percent were between 30 and 59 years-old.Read More:http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Peace/compensation.html

---These are Porta-Cells. You don't even have to drag the offending resident to a paddy wagon or bus with barred windows - the paddy wagons come to them. Then you can stack them like the cages of chickens being taken to slaughter on the back of a large truck and drive them off to the concentration camps built for that purpose just South of Beer Sheva. These cages are meant for entire families. Oh, and don't worry, there are plenty more cages! ---Read More:http://www.revelations.org.za/Gush_Katif.htm#Cage


Now, “smoothly” is a contentious word. The IDF , or Israel has a large population of non Jewish citizens who are in the IDF, most of whom came in the Russian migration. These soldiers were trained to expluse the settlers, because almost no Jewish soldier would do it.Like kapoks in the concentration camps. They were trained in torture; very sophisticated techniques for torture that would leave no mark, no evidence on the victim, targeting nerves and avoiding legal recourse.That is, a parent clutching their baby would receive a torture, the army would grab the child and the parents would follow. Thats what you call “smoothly”. Also, soldiers that refused to comply with these demands would be punished by the IDF. We know because some of those who refused to carry out orders and were awaiting their tribunal fled the country to relatives in the West.

For propaganda purposes, Israel is a vigorous democracy in the heart of darkness etc. etc. but the reality is not democratic, just junta begetting junta.Whether one agrees with the settlers, or would spit on a torah, the fact remains the Gush Katif operation was inspired by Nazi SS down to the small short and curlies on the PM’s dominant head with the full complicity of Western powers.

And the myth of Israel of having a free press, freedom of expression is also a folk tale. The inglorious history of closing radio stations, censorship in the interest of national security is of mythic proportions. One small example among many:

Galel Hoyam Hatichon. Translating as Waves of the Mediteranean Sea, this station started broadcasting offshore on Friday 27 October 1995. They broadcast for a total of around three weeks from the MV Kajun on 95.1 FM, before it was closed down by the police and Ministry of Communication officials, who claimed they were broadcasting from inside Israeli territorial waters. The ship was boarded and broadcasting equipment confiscated. The station immediately went to court, trying to get their equipment returned. This was probably academic as on 23 November, the ship ran aground on the Tel Aviv coast and was so badly damaged that it was declared unseaworthy….
…The sta


was a very successfullandbased operation, broadcasting “Middle-Eastern” music, from the Tel Aviv area, 24 hours a day. They were constantly raided by the authorities. After being raided three times in two weeks, they closed down for four months, preparing to go to sea. Read More:http://www.cwgsy.net/private%2Foffshorepirateradio/israel.html

And back to Gush Katif:

What was the psychological impact on these soldiers? The book “Tachlit Re’uya” by Israeli psycologist Ruti Eisikowitch sheds new light on those dramatic questions.

“Soldiers were given ‘mental preparation’ for this operation, which actually means their brains were tampered with, brainswashed”, says us Mrs. Eisikowitch. “The IDF behaved like robots ‘helped’ by psychologists who had planted an ‘emotional disconnection mechanism’ in order to ‘prevent thinking’….

---A Jewish girl comforts an Israeli soldier in Gush Katif (Gaza Strip) during the expulsions of 2005--- Read More:http://blog.eretzyisrael.org/post/14385244194/comfort-comfort-my-people-a

….”Soldiers were taught to behave ‘sensitively’, but that included kidnapping babies from their mothers’ arms to be able to evacuate the mothers, ‘because every mother will run after her baby’… “The psychologists didn’t prepare the IDF for an army mission – to protect civilians or their country, but turned the soldiers into a non-thinking police force that harmed its own civilian population”.

This was a population that defended, with their own bodies, the Israeli citizens who live on the coast.

In “Operation Defensive Shield” if the IDF had not had the remote settlement of Har Bracha overlooking Nablus, it would have taken the army four days to enter the city to commence operations, fighting all the way.

---These frantic and draconic siege measures included a police blockade on food and water and the removal of all ambulances services to the now greatly overcrowded village, normally home to a few hundred people only. Inside the camp though, the atmosphere resembled a music festival and religious conference. People were dwelling around, conversing with friends and troops through the barbed wire fences, exactly as in a concentration camp.--- Read More:http://www.revelations.org.za/Gush_Katif.htm

The same was true of operations in Gaza. Yet In Amona, TV crewmen recorded the amount of brute force used against Israelis during the demolition. Adults were thrown to the ground, banging their heads. Blood streamed down their faces, not to mention the systematic humiliation of the rabbis.

Eisikowitch’s book is important not only because she unveils the IDF’s psychological preparation, but because she explains that the “disengagement”, which should be call evacuation or expulsion, became possible because of “years of de-humanization of the settlers”. Former head of military intelligence Shlomo Gazit likened crocheted kippot worn by the National Religious to Nazi insignia. Prof. Moshe Zimmerman of Hebrew University said he regards Jewish children in Hebron as Hitlerjugend. …Judea and Samaria’s citizens have been called “leeches”, “snakes”, “vicious”, “primitives”, “medieval”, “obscurantists”, “corrupt” and “parasites”.Read More:http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/152660#.T1oNK_Vb76M

And to boot, most of the settlers resettled, which does recall Eichmann’s defence of he was just “trying to find a little firm footing for the jews” , never received the compensation they were promised: In June 2010, according to a report released by the State Commission of Inquiry into the Handling by the Authorized Authorities of the Evacuees from Gush Katif and Northern Samaria, 70 percent of evacuees who were forcibly removed from their homes in August 2005 still lacked permanent housing and were living in temporary dwellings. Published close to five years after the evacuation of the settlements, the 488-page report documented how the government failed to resettle and properly compensate the 9,000 people removed from 21 communities in the Gaza Strip and four in northern Samaria.

ADDENDUM:

On November 4th, the Ministry of Communication sent a letter to Kol Hashalom, saying it is acting illegally and must close down immediately. The managers, having consulted their legal counsel, sent a letter last week denying all those claims. On Thursday, a day later – unheard-of speed for the Israeli police – Raz was summoned for a police interrogation, where he was informed that he was suspected of managing an illegal radio station, and that if he does not order it to shut down immediately, he would be arrested and the police would raid the station’s Jerusalem offices.

In a phone conversation with Raz today, he noted that a threat of detainment over the claim of running an illegal radio station is unprecedented. As far as I recall, in all of the years of the saga surrounding settler radio Channel 7, never were any of its managers arrested – even though its broadcasting interfered with the radio frequencies of the Ben Gurion Airport, and even though it never even claimed to be legal or licensed.

Kol Hashalom, again, is based in Ramallah (the Jerusalem offices serve for its internet broadcast) and has a Palestinian license. Raz says the interrogators presented him with two arguments. One, that the station broadcasts in Hebrew, for a Hebrew-speaking public, which means it is an Israeli station which bypasses the law. Really? I guess the police don’t know that bypassing the law is, by definition, not breaking it. Raz, sarcastically, suggests the police should immediately arrest the anchors of the Persian Voice of Israel: According to the logic of the police, it is an Iranian radio station and the anchors are obviously Iranian spies.Read More:http://alethonews.wordpress.com/2011/11/19/israeli-police-shut-down-jewish-palestinian-radio-station/

…………………………………………….

The plan dubbed “Brothers United”(!) is claimed by senior Israeli Defense Force (IDF) officers to be the most massive endeavour undertaken by the defence establishment in a generation.

Israel captured the Gaza Strip in the first two days of the 1967 Miracle Six Day War with a brigade of tanks and a brigade of paratroopers. For the evacuation from Gaza, it has planned for more than 25,000 soldiers in three reinforced divisions.

The Defence Ministry is contracting thousands of civilian trucks and heavy equipment. The IDF will reoccupy swaths of Palestinian cities and towns as a pre-emptive move to smother attempts to fire on the operation and will turn the area around the Gaza Strip into a huge army base.

Some NIS 1.5 billion has been earmarked for the disengagement.

The Disengagement area of Gush Katif in Gaza will be declared a closed military zone, to stop ordinary Israeli civilians from entering the area to oppose the forcible removal of Jews from their homes, businesses, farms, synagogues, schools and graveyards. The IDF (Israel Defence Forces) will seal it on land and the Navy will blockade it from the sea so that no unauthorized person can enter. Rroadblocks will be erected about 40 days prior to the beginning of the evacuation. Read More:http://www.revelations.org.za/Gush_Katif.htm

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