Dissident Veteran For Peace: We Are All Hamas!

Dissident Veteran For Peace

"I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America." —Alexis de Tocquevile. Democracy in America, Book I, Chapter XV.

With a nod to the Most Rev. Dom Helder Camara: When I support Palestinians some call me an 'anti-Semite', when I try to explain why I stand in solidarity with Palestinians they call me a Nazi.

"WAR is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives." —Major General Smedley Butler, USMC (ret.)

"... no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end." —character of O'Brien in 1984, part 3, ch. 3 by George Orwell.

"Every prophet has realized that nobody loves you for being the enemy of their illusions. Every prophet has realized that most of us want peace at any price as long as the peace is ours and somebody else pays the price. That is why the prophet Jeremiah said, ' "Peace, peace," they say, when there is no peace,' ..." —The Rev. William Sloane Coffin. "Not to Bring Peace, But a Sword."

Saturday, January 10, 2009

We Are All Hamas!

As the Jewish state continues to rain bombs, missiles, artillery rounds, white phosphorus, and bullets down upon the people of Gaza, Palestinians are expressing and calling for unity and that includes unity with "the Hamas government -- the only democratically elected government in the entire Arab world." And all over the world people of conscience are answering that call and expressing their solidarity with the Islamic Resistance Movement, better known as Hamas.

Writing from Gaza (5 Jan 09), Safa Joudeh says:

Israel has come into our homes, is fighting us in our streets and is expressing its brutality against us in full force. ...

All Palestinian factions have united and are out facing the enemy, using all of their military capabilities that they collectively have. Although these capabilities are incomparable to the military strength exerted by Israel, yet it has made us more certain than ever that Palestinians will fight to the very end to protect their own. It has shown us that resistance, courage and love are an integral part of the Palestinian identity that will never change despite all the hardships we endure. It has given us a moral boost, which comes at a time when we need it most.

The Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades of The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the al-Quds Brigades of the Islamic Jihad movement, The Izzedin al-Qassam brigades of Hamas, the Salah al-Din Brigades of the Popular Resistance Committees, the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades of Fatah have all come together as one united front and at a high, almost affirmed risk of peril, are out protecting our streets and our homes, ready to die if that means preventing the death of one more helpless child. We are united and we have accepted our fate recurrently, but the people of Gaza -- almost 80 percent of them refugees -- will not be massacred and displaced yet again by people from the outside guided by tyranny and greed.

The New York Times reports (5 Jan 09) that the support extends to the West Bank, which is in the grip of the traitorous Fatah faction:

In a series of interviews, people here [in Nablus] said they were enraged by the photographs and television images of the Palestinian dead in Hamas-controlled Gaza, which they consider part of themselves.
They said that support for Hamas would grow as this conflict went on, and that they were intimidated by the Palestinian security forces of Mr. Abbas and his appointed prime minister, Salam Fayyad — forces subsidized by the United States and trained by Jordan — which have cracked down on a series of demonstrations and banned the showing of the Hamas flag. ...

On Monday afternoon, for example, a march of several hundred students from Birzeit University outside Ramallah toward the nearby Atarot checkpoint was broken up by Palestinian security forces wielding clubs. The students wanted to confront Israeli soldiers at Atarot, and the security forces wanted to prevent the confrontation.
Last Friday, security forces broke up larger demonstrations in Hebron and Ramallah, arresting Hamas supporters, confiscating Hamas flags and ripping up placards with pro-Hamas slogans. For the first time in memory, the Palestinian police used tear gas against their own people.

The Jerusalem Post, covering the same story (5 Jan 09), reports:

The Palestinian Authority Police has proven capable of quelling violent protests and maintaining law and order in the West Bank during Israel's military offensive against Hamas in Gaza, Israeli security officials said Sunday.

"The Palestinian police have succeeded in dealing with the demonstrations in the West Bank over the last week," Judea and Samaria Police spokesman Ch.-Supt. Danny Poleg said.

The PA police, which recently received training from the Americans, had largely been able to contain violent protests in Palestinian-controlled cities, so they didn't spill over into Israeli-controlled areas, Poleg said."They are under the same high alert as we are," he said.

On the instructions of PA President Mahmoud Abbas,the Fatah-controlled security forces have banned pro-Hamas demonstrations.

Hamas supporters in the West Bank said the PA's security forces threatened to arrest them if they raised Hamas flags or chanted slogans in favor of the Islamist movement. ...

"Our security forces have instructions to use an iron fist against anyone who incites and expresses support for Hamas," the [senior PA official in Ramallah] official said.

In "The West Bank: We're all Hamas now - supporters of Fatah unite behind enemy," Ben Lynfield writes (9 Jan 09) in The Independent (UK):

Palestinian Authority security forces are keeping a tight lid on protests, preventing confrontations with Israeli troops and arresting anyone raising Hamas banners at rallies. But displays of identification with the beleaguered Gazans are everywhere. Nine-year-old green-kerchiefed girl Scouts, their foreheads marked with the word Gaza in red ink, were among those who marched through the main al-Manara square in a protest. They held up pictures of bandaged toddlers, and dozens of demonstrators chanted, "With blood and spirit, we will redeem you, O Gaza".

The Daily News of Egypt reports (29 Dec 09): "On Monday between 4,000–5,000 demonstrators carrying Hamas flags chanted 'We are all Hamas' ..." The display of a sign saying "We are Hamas" on the streets of London has set the teeth of quislings and Zionists alike to gnashing. In Vancouver, BC, a Zionist spying on anti-Israel protests "was shocked," shocked, I tell you, at what happened there. Adam Carroll of the Canada-Israel Committee says:

I've probably gone to more anti-Israel protests than most anti-Israel protesters, because I go to them for my job just to keep tabs on what's happening, ... I don't think I've ever been to one as radical and as vicious as the one I went to yesterday. There was a bile in the air that I'd never, never seen before. There's always been "Free, free Palestine" and some of the more benign chants, but "Viva, viva intifada", you know, and those sorts of armed resistance calls, no. Those are new. For me, anyway. And hearing individuals chanting "We are all Hamas" and things along those lines was a bit unsettling.

I'll bet it was unsettling, Adam, that people momentarily threw off the mental shackles to make solidarity with the popular, democratic resistance movement known as Hamas, even though it has been incessantly drilled into our heads that Hamas are "terrorists"--Koran-toting (gasp!) terrorists at that. Maybe, we'll wake up and realize the real problem is the Jewish and Christian terrorists and their enablers and they kill a lot more people.

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