seattle indymedia center

I was pleased to see this demonstration did have folks of various hues, as well as children, elders, and those in between. Along with Dixon, Malik Rahim spoke--a gentle-spoken force for change from New Orleans. He is building Common Ground (commongroundrelief.org)--and is a personal hero of mine. We left about 1:30pm (restless kids), and noticed that the streets all around were being "secured" by the police. What happened after the demonstration?

Nothing happened. At about 1:30 pm, the rap group Sons of Hajjar performed, and we concluded the rally when they were done. Some people hung around to help clean up and visit the tables. We had everything packed up and gone by 2:30 pm.

but WHERE WAS EVERYONE ELSE! I am simply sickened by the low turn out. 400???? Shame on the Northwest.

PEOPLE OF CONSCIENCE WERE ASKED TO ATTEND THIS RALLY. I MEET THAT REQUIREMENT. I STAND FOR ISRAEL.ONE QUESTION:IF YOU ARE SO SURE YOU ARE MORALLY CORRECT IN THIS BATTLE, WHY DO YOU ALWAYS HOLD YOUR RALLIES ON JEWISH SABBATH WHEN NO ONE CAN STAND AGAINST YOU IN A DEMOCRATIC FORUM? WHERE IS YOUR CONSCIENCE AND MORAL "CHUTSPAH"?

If you think you can get both supporters of Israel to show up go right ahead. Besides this rally was held after 12:00 when most services are over. And we had quite a few Jewish people attending our rally too. The nation ofIsreal has nothing to do with the religion of Judeaism it is about racism and conquest. As far as the slogan "Israel Forever", well nothing lasts forever, and Israel will only survive the next thirty years if it drops it's racism and militarism and returns to the human race the way South Africa did.

The saddest thing about this pathetic rally (I agree with the turnoutnumbers being far less than 400) was that there was NOT ONE American flag being flown on the anti-Isreal/US side....instead, the only one being flown was from one of the 4 or 5 Pro-Isreal supporters across the street... That pretty much sums up the quality of persons attending this nonsense gathering.... If you think Bush is bad...then you're all lucky I don't run this country....

The fact is it does not matter what religious day it happens to be, we still had more Jewish people on OUR side than yours. The Israeli war is indefensible genocide being waged in the name of Judeaism. If you are in fact Jewish as you suggest you are you should be very offended. As for alleged incidents of racist comments by members of Hezbollah. (just because it says so in the papers does not make it true) Well how would you feel if your entire nation was being destroyed, hundreds of children cluster bombed, your economy, your land and water stollen, because a bunch of people from another continent claim that the land is theirs because their religion says so. The truth is anger would probably get the best of you.

Will Red/White/Blue please explain why they think there should have been a U.S. imperialist flag at a rally condemning the brutal aggresstion of U.S. imperialism's Mideast attack-dog?

Of course there will be "stars 'n' stripes" at the pathetic "counter-demonstration" cheering on this mass slaughter. In fact, that's precisely where that stupid flag belongs.

That said, we are indeed "lucky" that Red/White/Blue's more-fascist-than-Bush program is not conducive, at the moment, to the needs of the U.S. ruling class.

By the way, support for the peoples of Palestine and Lebanon, their just national liberation struggle, and opposition to the racist Zionist project, are not the same thing as support for whatever political-military force happens to predominate in the Palestinian or Lebanese resistance at any given point in time. In other words, it doesn't mean supporters of Palestine and Lebanon necessarily support Hezbollah or Hamas.

As for the fact that it was on a Saturday...will someone please explain just what the 19 Zionist soliders killed in Lebanon on Saturday were up to when they came under fire? I suspect it was something besides observing the Sabbath. Please--enough with the fundamentalist hypocrisy.

Sure, I'd love to remind you of the obvious. Son, the fact that you rise and sleep under the blanket of the very freedom provided to you by the so-called imperialists and then question the manner in which it is provided is unequivocal evidence of your own hypocrisy and madness. We'd all rather you just said thank you and went on your way. Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon and stand a post or move to one of these foreign lands you seem willing to give a shyit about.

You’re either too young to understand the dark realities of the human condition or too stupid to appreciate them. Nobody wants war. We understand that war is ugly and kills innocent people. Good Americans believe that war is not an immediate response but rather a thoughtful submission to the greater good of humanity. It was Jefferson who said “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” Please tell me son, what is the name of the man today who walks this great land of ours with more political savvy than Thomas Jefferson?

The most important part of "fighting for freedom" is knowing when your government is fighting against freedom. , and deciding not to participate, or even work counter to what the government has in mind. Oh, and that quote from Jefferson was in reference to the Shay's rebellion, where farmers were rising up against the money lenders and the US national government that took their side in desputes. The US flag is a hopeless symbol. Using it is kind of like some African American people who use the n!$$@# word, thinking they can make it better somehow. The American Empire is thrashing in it's final death throughs. It is only a matter of when not if it will collaps. It is too corrupt and large to reform. The real question is what will "We the People" replace it with.

I couldn’t agree with you more about your statement that fighting for freedom “is knowing when your government is fighting against freedom.” That’s certainly a principle rooted in the bedrock of the Founder’s vision for this great democracy. The problem is that your compass does not point north. Your barometer is broken son and it is you that see the larger strategy for preserving our freedoms and stabilizing the world.

Googling a Jefferson quote and reading the cliff notes is no great feat my friend. The point Jefferson was making was the idea that freedom, liberty and democracy exact a cost in blood is second nature. Whether it be at home (civil war) or abroad against the Muslims in the North African coast (keep reading your history fella), Jefferson and the Founders understood this fact of the human condition with more clarity than the barely breathing socialist movement present at Saturday’s rally.

Your comments don't address Jefferson’s point but rather dance around it and pretend to contradict it. That's the whole strategy of moral relativism and it's a sad pathetic position to take. However, there are always benedicts amongst us and luckily for the state of the nation you people have little to no influence on world events (unless knifing Joe Liberman in the back for a bigger commie is your idea of influence).

Pointing out obvious facts like this nation will one day fall is hardly constructive, but rather defeatist which is the defining principle of your movement. Based on all historical evidence of man-made governments, of course it will. That’s about as smart as Christians stopping their lives because they know any day now that Jesus is going to descend any day now. Try improving the process through refinement rather than destroying it through blinded radicalism.

Again, the greatness of the tyrant you call American Freedom is that under its WILL it let’s you breathe each breathe of every day in your miserable life. Keep debate alive.

I see that your website deleted comments made,by me, on August 13th,2006, to Joe. Joe accused Israel of acts of racism and conquest. I responded,quoting,and listing sources, verififying Nasrallah as the spewer of anti- Jewish venom. I can verify every quote I cited. Yet this website is afraid to show both sides. It's funny that Alan and I were the only two writers deleted on this website, and that we were the only two to truly speak out against the people behind this rally. Joe.... You allege that I'm Jewish... I"m not...(1)...Why would you care if this wasn't about religion and racism? I'm curious to see how the Palestine Solidarity Committee feels about the freedom of opposing views,and how they would feel about the deletion of them. I would like to write back and NOT be censored. I'm sure other websites would support me

Your posts violated 5 & 12. I am assuming that is why they dropped them. Besides your views are already covered on Fox news.


The SEAIMC reserves the right to hide newswire posts that:

1. Advertise commercial services or products
2. Are repetitive or duplicates
3. Contain or link to pornographic content
4. Publicize or advocate actions that actively endanger human or animal safety
5. Use language, imagery or other forms of communication that promote bigotry and/or hatred based upon gender, ethnicity, race, sexual orientation, religion, class, age, physical or developmental ability, or national origin.
6. Contain content that has been published on multiple IMC newswires
7. Repostings of corporate media content that is available elsewhere on the internet, or excerpts of previously published material.
8. Appear in an unreadable format (e.g., posts posted as test) or are titled "test"
9. Are obviously false or misleading in terms of author, location, time, or actors. This includes attempts to spread disinformation or impersonate another individual.
10. Are unintelligible (e.g., containing numerous spelling or grammatical errors).
11. Are off-topic or are not news.
12. Are flamebaits made with the intention of provoking argument and/or limiting constructive dialog.
13. Are otherwise inconsistent with the general mission of this website, which is to use media production and distribution as tools for promoting social and economic justice in the Seattle-area and Washington State.

They weren't "defending their country", they were cannon fodder in a Zionist aggression against Lebanon. Of course Zionists will justify this in the name of "defence", as *all* aggressors do.

Tell me, "conscience", why can't Israel withdraw to its pre-1967 borders, release all the prisoners and allow the Palestinian refugees the right to return to the homes and villages the Zionists drove them out of? (Note: At this point, Israel would only occupy 78% of stolen Palestinian land, not essentially 100% the way they do right now.)

Obviously, these basic democratic steps would result in the aggressor Zionist state being voted out of existence. (In fact, this is the *real* peace process that Israeli Zionism refuses to accept!)

Israel can't exist without these basic deomocratic rights being violated every day. Acceptance of this daily injustice is precisely what recognizing Israel's "right to exist" means.

There is nothing "fanatical" about opposing the perpetuation of this gross injustice. Arguing for its continuation (and even expansion!) on the other hand...

Jews have lived in this region for over 3,000 years.Israel occupies 1% of the Arab Middle East, and less than 10% of the entire Palestine Mandate.Jordan occupies 80% of the landmass that made up the original Palestine Mandate, and 70% of their people are Palestinian Arabs..... As Israeli citizens,Arabs have more rights,privileges,and opportunities than inhabitants of any other Arab state in the Middle East. Palestinian refugees of the West Bank are barred from becoming citizens in 21 of 22 Arab nations.....Jews have lived in Judea Samaria throughout history. They have a claim to it. They left Gaza.... look what's become of it....Sinai was legally recovered by them in the war with Egypt,... and giving up the Golan Heights would would give them no line of defense....I find it interesting that you use the term: aggressor Zionist state.Do you mean the term in a bigoted way? I only ask because,according to JOE,that is cause for the deletion of a post.

“Joe accused Israel of acts of racism and conquest. I responded, quoting, and listing sources, verifying Nasrallah as the spewer of anti-Jewish venom. I can verify every quote I cited.”

But this “response” is a non-response. Who Nasrallah is has nothing to do with what Israel is. After all, when the PLO stood for a single secular and democratic state for all of Palestine (including present Israel) and preached unity with ordinary Jews, the Zionists still bombed and invaded Lebanon to drive it out. Joe is right, and it’s just an undeniable fact that the the Zionist project was racist and expansionist from its inception. After all, over 90% of Palestine was inhabited by Arabs, and they owned even more of the land. To have a Jewish state meant that the people who had inhabited the land for thousands of years would have to be “transferred" (“transferring” being the Zionist leaders’ polite term for ethnic cleansing).

Thus we have Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann saying the following at the 1919 Paris peace conference:

“The Arabs will be our problem for a long time. It's not going to be simple. One day they may have to leave and let us have the country. They're ten to one, but don't we Jews have ten times their intelligence?" (Quoted in Ella Winter’s "And Not To Yield")

This “leaving” was going to be a departure forced by the Zionist terrorist gangs and militias. And this is what Zionist terror leader Moshe Dayan had to say on the subject:

"Before [the Palestinians] very eyes we are possessing the land and the villages where they, and their ancestors, have lived...We are the generation of colonizers, and without the steel helmet and the gun barrel we cannot plant a tree and build a home." (Quoted in Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi‘s "Original Sins: Reflections on the History of Zionism and Israel")

And, after the Zionist state was founded, Israel’s P.M. and saint David Ben-Gurion said this:

“Why should the Arabs make peace? If I was an Arab leader, I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country..… We come from Israel, it's true, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we came here and stole their country. Why should they accept that?" (Quoted in "The Jewish Paradox" by Nathan Goldman, former president of the World Jewish Congress.)

Well, words are one thing, let’s see how they were implemented.

Ben-Gurion’s “stealing of the country” involved massacres at Deir Yassin and other towns and villages, depopulation and demolition of six hundred fifty Palestinian villages, and the eventual driving out of 700,000 Arabs according to he U.N. Moreover, in defiance of democratic world opinion (which U.N. resolutions uphold in this case---but only in word) the Zionists cannot let these refugees and their families (who now number 5 million) return because a Jewish state ruling over a population whose majority is not Jewish could not last. (This gives lie to the Zionist claims that Israel is democratic.) Moreover, since 1948 the Zionist overlords have unceasingly worked to drive the Arab Palestinians into smaller and smaller divided pockets (Bantustans), stolen their water, and brutally crushed resistance, assassinated leaders, imprisoned thousands of men, women and children, and even legalized torture.

It’s no accident that in the entire world, the state of Israel was one of the few allies of the South African apartheid regime.

In my view it’s in the interests of both the Arab Palestinians and the Jewish working people of Israel to overthrow this racist state and replace it with a secular democracy that would let the refugees return, give equal rights to Arabs and Jews, with no discrimination against Jews. In fact, this was the historic orientation of the Palestinian national movement up until the PLO leaders embraced the “two-state” solution.

But my opinion on the need to destroy the Zionist state is certainly not shared by everyone who was at the rally. Some think it can be reformed, and that a two-state solution is “just” and can work “somehow”, etc.

Nor is my stand toward Hezbollah and Nasrallah the same as everyone who was at the rally, although many share it. And this brings us to the issue that you and the Zionists mystify: opposition to the Israeli aggression against Lebanon, opposition to its Nazi-style collective punishment of the entire people, etc., does NOT automatically translate into support for Hezbollah.

The bastion against Zionist aggression in Lebanon and the entire Middle East is the masses of people. But Hezbollah represents a faction (Shia) of the Lebanese bourgeoisie, and it‘s politics are oppressive fundamentalism. This bourgeoisie has been getting more united in recent years, i.e. Nasrallah this year signing an agreement with Michel Aoun, the head of a Christian and secularist party---and it has it’s own class interests in not being dominated by Israel.

However, these interests vis-à-vis the domineering Zionists next door only run parallel with---are not identical with---those of the masses…and they’re not fundamental vis-à-vis the Zionists, i.e., sections of the Lebanese bourgeoisie actually united with the IDF during the previous occupation in order to strike at their rivals. During times of peace, war or occupation it’s in the interests of the masses to build up political organization and struggles in their own class interests. This requires fighting to overcome the sectarian divisions that the bourgeoisie uses to divide them, and which are amplified by the confessional system. (The Zionists tried to foment a new Lebanese civil war with their demands and attack, and this failed, but the sectarian divisions still weakened the resistance.) Successes in this fight which Hezbollah can not lead strengthen the hands of the masses against their domestic exploiters and oppressors, as well as against Zionist aggression. My stand is to support and encourage this fight.

(To be continued.)

So... Since people with red hair have lived in Ireland for 10,000 years that means any people with red hair can "return" to Ireland, take whatever land they want, kill anyone who gets in our way or refuses to leave, set up a society where people with red hair can go to the best schools get jobs and promotions above everyone else. The courts, the police and most of the government will be run by people with red hair, for the benifit of red haired individuals. We as red haired people...bla bla bla... ...you get the picture.
The fact is that during the time of ancient Rome Jewish people were living across the Mediteranian and Black Seas. As citizens of Rome they traveled more or less freely during most of Roman history.
Jewish people living in Europe or the US are not "entitled" to anyone's land or water in Palestine any more than I would be entitled to steal land in Ireland, Belgium, or Wales. I really wonder if Zionists actually went to kindergarten, you know, to learn fair play, sharing, getting along with others... or did they skip that & go straight to college physics to learn how to blow people up.

 http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2006/08/15/18297721.php