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this is the spot of fundamental disagreement, idyllic.
i see no comparison at all between israel--a regional military superpower--and the people of gaza. the siege--and it's nothing short of that--is barbaric to my mind. and i've done ALOT of research on this, have worked out alot of about what's happening on the ground there.
and i have no problem with any and all international pressure that could bring an end to that siege.
i also knew that when netanyahu was elected with a small enough majority that he had to form a coalition with the extreme right that things would not go well for palestinians in general and for the people of gaza in particular. and they haven't---working out a deal with egypt on the principle of the enemy of my enemy is my friend, so based on mutual distrust of hamas, resulted in the shutting down of the tunnel systems that made life bearable under israeli occuption.
and don't forget about the consequences of the israeli massacre in gaza of last winter.
and the fact that israel has prevented rebuilding.
the **whole** of which was predicated on some harebrained idea that hamas could be undermined the way the plo was undermined, by a colonialism that made it almost impossible to deliver basic services. that's the strategy.
and you have to swallow alot of nonsense to get around that basic reality.
one spigot of nonsense is the old frame-switch. the usual likud-y settler-party story about poor persecuted israel and those nasty rockets. which i am not condoning btw--but let's be real. hamas launches most of its rockets into fields. they don't do anything like the damage the israelis do to gazans.
factor in last year's massacre and you'll get the picture.
the flotilla was designed to create a pr problem for the israeli siege.
the netanyahu government's bungled attempt to manage that resulted in a success beyond the activitist's wildest expectation.
it is a p.r. fiasco for israel.
and there's no unanimity about this action inside israel at all. at. all. where there's a sense of unanimity is amongst conservative american commentators who rarely let reality get in the way when it comes to israel.
personally, i think they should have let the ship land and allowed the media rituals to happen. one of netanyahu's 7 idiot cabinet ministers made this argument. that woulda been the smart way to deal with it. let it happen, let the attention come and blow over. people forget.
but instead, the idf fucked up. a big big big mistake. i havent any idea what the consequences will be, but i think it'd sure be nice for the rightwing government that's responsible for this to fall, don't you?
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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