I really don’t know why our disgusting government is supporting Israel
Published:
July 27, 2014 at 7:30pm
Joseph Muscat and the Labour government: always on the side of the oppressor. It’s remarkable how that lot can’t or won’t break away from their sorry history of cosying up to human rights violators, dictators and bastards generally.
I imagine it’s a case of self-identification. The only reason Muscat scuttles around Cameron whenever he sees him is because he has a quite obvious almighty man-crush on him. Nothing to do with his being the leader of the world’s first and greatest proper democracy.
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I’m confused by what you understand as ‘supporting Israel.’ I don’t think that any of the government’s (or the EU’s) statements about what is going on in Gaza can be reasonably understood as supporting one side or the other – unless you construe a lack of screaming bloody murder as tacit support for Israel?
The right-about-turn in Malta’s position on Middle East actors coinciding with Muscat’s election, Muscat’s visit to Israel where he looked completely blank but went along with the programme, Malta’s support for Israel’s seat on the UN security council, Malta’s absolute silence on the carnage on Gaza.
How many more reasons do you want?
There is no reversal of the Maltese government’s position.
Maltese foreign policy is basically a constant sucking up to someone. Malta still sucks up to the Palestinian lobby, for ideological reasons (Left-Wing third-worldism) and because of the Guido Demarco legacy. For a few years now it has also been sucking up to Israel.
Opposition to something or someone is outside the Maltese paradigm.
“Private jet belonging to Libyan government carrying six crew members and no passengers.”
http://www.maltatoday.com.mt/news/national/41645/only_one_maltese_among_155_passengers_arriving_from_libya#.U9VBNSjBV6M
Now can anyone tell me which Libyan government official won’t prefer coming to Malta disguised as a crew member on an empty plane?
Six crew members! Where they serving each other on the “private” plane?
Well spotted.
The story went on to say that the aircraft landed here ‘for repairs’.
Who will pay for the repairs? The Libyan government, or will the bill be paid in the form of ‘cheaper oil’ for Malta, which, incidentally may be in that oil depot set on fire by our brothers, the rebels?
Could it be that Israel was a source of funds for the PL before the elections as rumour has it? It is rather odd that one of Muscat’s first official visits – with a heavy contingent – was to Israel. Does Shiv Nair have any ties with Israel once he is friendly with the Barzanis of Kurdistan who are on cosy terms with that country?
At a time when the states is discussing its relationship with Israel, Malta supports them with no consideration. I am sure Bibi was really waiting on Muscat’s support.
The oppressor of the Palestinian people is Hamas. And that ‘leader of the world’s first and greatest proper democracy’ also supported Israel, together with Hague.
Israel is NOT the oppressor. Hamas is as Marlowe rightly said.
Remember “If Arabs stops shooting at Israel there will be no war but if Israel stops defending itself there will be no Israel”
Stop blaming Israel please.
I think you’re spot on there .
@ Yigael BC:
There are not twenty solutions to the conflict. There are three: 1) two separate states living next to each other in peace and security (with a viable and contiguous territory for the Palestinians); 2) one democratic Israelo-Palestinian state, which is not the best solution for the Israelis as they will soon be outnumbered by the Palestinians; 3) kill all the 6 million Palestinians or throw them into the sea, if you can.
And yet who gives people over to Hamas to support? Israel, with its flagrant disregard for the rights of the Palestinian people.
I’m not even talking about just their legitimate political aspiration for statehood, but more on-the-ground elements of everyday life. Israel is encroaching on Palestinian land with illegal settlements; going to school and work every day or reaching family members is an obstacle due to Israeli checkpoints on Palestinian territory. One acquaintance of mine has had his family home destroyed at least three times by Israeli soldiers just because he lives near the border.
These conditions create the kind of desperation that keeps something like Hamas alive. As long as Israel keeps thinking of its security exclusively in terms of hard power, it will create enemies among those it tramples on.
It is unusual of Daphne to be choosing the cool side to be on as opposed to the right side, that being that of the Palestinians held hostage by an Islamo-fascist dictatorship that saw fit to assassinate the opposition, El Fateh, and commit all manner of atrocities to those they purport to represent, the Palestinians.
I read a very good article on La Repubblica detailing the funds that Hamas has received over the past year from the likes of Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia – most of which, clearly out of intense love for their people they deemed fit to spend on drones, long-range missiles and other arms instead of, I don’t know, building school, hospitals or hey maybe even feedin the starving. By the way, they received 1 billion euros from those three countries alone.
Israel has the right to protect itself and Hamas and all its members should let their people live in liberty, not oppress them like animals under the pretext that it is in their best interest. To somehow put Israel in the same light as Hamas is not right at all.
Ring a bell?
[Daphne – Once more I have picked the side of right, rather than the side of cool: the full force of the organised military shelling civilians can never be right. Israel is a far-right, fascist state and I can’t approve of that, either. The tone of coverage in its newspapers is shocking: the kind of racism, sexism and all the other backward isms that Europe hasn’t seen since the 1950s. It is not only Palestinians who are badly treated. African immigrants have the status of animals there. And the place is crawling with soldiers carrying machine guns, even in the shopping centre.]
Two words, in response to Daphne’s follow up not your comment albona. Beta Israel.
And if I may ask, what newspapers did you have in mind? Sure there are the nutter ones with a circulation in the thousands, but Haaretz among others is the exact opposite of what you said.
Israel is not a fascist state. Honestly you are beginning to sound like some far-Left rebel without a cause here. Israel is the only truly multi-ethnic, liberal democracy in the Middle East and that is just a matter of fact, not opinion.
[Daphne – I’m afraid you are wrong, possibly because you think, as many do, that the essential element of fascism is totalitarianism. It is not; it is the exaltation of nation and race above the individual. Totalitarianism grows out of that. Israel does not have a dictator, but all the other elements are there. We are not talking Nazi Germany or Mussolini’s Italy here – that’s not what I meant. Israeli society, law and culture do not grow out of the European respect for the autonomy of the individual, and the difference is perceptible. There is huge emphasis on the collective. I don’t know why you should consider this such an unusual statement to make. There is a similar problem in Russia. Though technically a democracy and multi-ethnic with religious diversity, it has the main elements of fascism and a cultural mindset that allows for it.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/israels-evolution-towards-a-fascist-racist-state/5359389 ]
If Israel is militarised, a point you make by saying that it is ‘crawling with soldiers carrying machine guns’ it is by force of necessity. When every state in your region has as its main goal the destruction of your own and when you as an individual are a target merely by virtue of your religion/race, you need to take preventive measures.
[Daphne – Again, you are wrong. The soldiers parading around with machine-guns are just a show of force and military authority: fascism. If somebody wanted to blow up a shopping centre, the fact that there are gun-toting soldiers walking around the shopping streets is not going to stop them. They can hardly search everyone, can they. At the height of IRA violence in the 1970s and 1980s, did the British government pack the streets of London with soldiers carrying machine-guns, despite the bombs going off regularly? No. There were just a few more policemen at strategic locations. Those soldiers are used to create a threatening environment, in much the same way they were used in Malta with those army roadblocks all over the island at night in the 1980s, stopping and searching people just for the hell of it.]
If Gozo were run by an Islamo-fascist militia and were raining bombs on Malta and burrowing hundreds of tunnels to undermine its security, trust me when I say that Malta too would retaliate and try to stem the tide.
[Daphne – Yes, because Maltese society has all the cultural elements that make for fascism, too, which is why people like me generally feel completely at odds with it. The United States, interestingly, has those elements too – hence the siege mentality that comes into play when there is a real or perceived threat.]
When you say that Africans are treated as animals did you perhaps mean the many subsaharan Africans who were given Israeli citizenship and fully incorportated into the Jewish state as Jews?
[Daphne – No, I don’t mean the Ethiopian Jews of the 1980s and 1990s, who were given Israeli citizenship DESPITE being African because of they are Jewish and could not be refused. And look what they did to them too, in any case: http://www.forbes.com/sites/eliseknutsen/2013/01/28/israel-foribly-injected-african-immigrant-women-with-birth-control/
I mean the African immigrants who escape overland into Israel for the same reasons they are escaping over the sea to Malta. Yes, they are treated like scum. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/08/israeli-parliament-protest-african-refugees
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/israels-african-asylum-seekers-go-on-strike ]
Fascism is not just collectivism; in fact if anything Fascism is less collectivist than Communism for example. Fascism has a tendency to put emphasis on the individual but in a more elitist, poetic sense of leadership. Fascism was a very complex system and the term Fascist is bandied about whenever someone does not agree with someone else’s point these days. I too have done this, and regretted it, in the past. The reason I have regretted it is because it is simplistic and completely devoid of any meaning.
True, the show of force is horrible and I find it hard to stomach, particularly when I have someone waving a machine-gun around in my presence. It is something you will often see on borders, in the case of Europe we are not talking about many years ago; nor are we talking about Fascist states. Even little-used border checkpoints of European countries were manned with a border guards carrying rather exaggeratedly large machine guards seemingly not in step with any actual need for an imprecise gun of war where spraying bullets can be effective. Yes, they are used to cause fear and in turn encourage caution or respect if you like. Does that preventive psychological effect justify their use? I cannot answer that.
As for the USA, they have that siege mentaility because the criminals often have bigger and better guns than the Police do. Gun ownership, originally intended as a counterweight to abusive government and the potential for its overthrow, means that that show of force will persist there for the forseeable future. To compare even just a few elements of US society to Fascism is not rational, nor factual.
In the meantime from Channel 7 the propaganda is follows: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=2xboa3odbKs
While I do agree that many things could have of been managed better, and some are downright deplorable, (which country has a spotless record anyway?) I still think it’s a far stretch to label Israel as a fascist country.
Yes there are Orthodox elements that may tick the boxes, but these make up a relatively small portion of the overall population. And these right-wing groups are often investigated and prosecuted.
It is worth remembering that 20% of Israelis are Arab, who elect Arab parties to the Knesset. Israel is also the country with an Arab Supreme Justice and a Druze General.
The majority of the secular Israelis tend to be level headed, sane individuals who just want to get on with life. I very much doubt that in a truly fascist country you’d have all that angst and self reflection that you find in contemporary Israeli literature and cinema, which coincidentally, often makes fun of the rampant gun parading.
One last point if I may. People often tend to see the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as an assault by an Israeli Goliath on a Palestinian David. But fundamentally it is still the Israeli David against a much larger Arab Goliath, and a substantial part of that quite vocal in its desire of annihilate Israel.
Gaza has more than one oppressor. For them the Hamas are even worse then Israel. They place missile launchers in school and hospital yards and force civilians not to flee bombarded sites.
I don’t even consider Israel a country. It is an illegal Jewish state on land they stole from Palestine.
The illegal Israeli ‘government’ treat the Palestinian people worse than the white South African government did to the black people during the apartheid in SA.
That’s not what you say in that vicious group run by Lowell’s acolytes. There it’s all jaqq is-suwed, sink their boats, etc.
If your heart bleeds for Palestinians, why are you averse to their seeking refuge in Malta?
@Not Sandy:P
Because in Malta we do not have the space or the resources.
This is obvious.
You do realise that the decision to partition Palestine was passed by the UN General Assembly, right? And you do realise that there are Palestinians living within the borders of what you refuse to call Israel?
Also, regarding the ‘illegal state’ canard: quick, provide the name of a state that was founded ‘legally’ and not built on the dispossession and misery of others?
That’s too much to ask of a chest-waxer.
Malta.
The Palestinians are segregated and treated like second class citizens in their own homeland. They are oppressed by the Jewish state.
@Chris M
Have you visited Israel, Gaza and the West BanK?
I have, and it’s fantastic, because the Israelis would have one look at me, and they’d have me down as Jewish. As soon as they saw my passport though, they got nasty.
Oh you forget 2000 years back – Israel was a Jewish state and a very strong one at that until the Romans destroyed it!
You need to read the Bible which is 2000 years old and you will find Israel mentioned there quite a few times.
Go on read it.
That’s right. All territory from Morocco to the Euphrates, and from Sudan to the North Sea should be returned to Roman rule.
Israel in Biblical times was the name of a man not of a country
The government, opposition and other institutions as the local Catholic Church should condemn the senseless violence in Gaza and Israel. However the foreign minister has already spoken and condemned the carnage.
http://www.maltatoday.com.mt/news/national/41505/george_vella_calls_for_an_end_to_gaza_carnage
Besides in the current Libya conflict the government appears to support the democratically elected government.
The foreign minister got things back to front. A ceasefire provides context. Negotiations are foregrounded, not a backdrop. An agreement on two states is an anticipated outcome, not a point of departure.
No. He did not condemn the carnage. He called for it to end, sounding more like a bossy inept matron than a foreign minister.
As long as Hamas continues using civilians as human shields, the casualties will carry on piling up.Israel has a right to protect itself and its people.
It would be fair to say that this present crises was kickstarted by the abduction and murder of three innocent Jewish teenagers.
The state of Israel was born after a legal and valid UN resolution and has more right to exist then the state of Kosovo that was carved out of Christian Orthodox Serbia.No where in the history of mankind was there ever a country called Kosovo until NATO went shelling civilians in Belgrade. into submission.
One thing I don’t understand about Gaza is why the residents do not dig air-raid shelters beneath their homes, like the Maltese used to do during the war. And like the Israelis do today.
It would not stop the destruction of buildings but would save hundreds of lives.
Probably because there are so many bloody tunnels leading to Israel that the whole thing would collapse.
It would be a pointless exercise. Contrary to what most people believe, Israel doesn’t go bombing on a whim. They call and drop leaflets from hours, even days prior and fire a non-lethal mortar warning shot 5 minutes before the actual airstrike.
Hamas on the other hand forces people to stay in their homes, or otherwise face the repercussions, in some cases even execution. Since Israel has been known to abort strikes altogether if they see genuine civilians caught in the cross fire, they reason that this is probably safer. Israel cares more for the Palestinian civilians than Hamas does, but of course that’s not vogue for all the leftie anti-semites.
That’s obviously not news value. Somehow neither this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VtENBF_yjo
Egypt blames Hamas for all lives lost to date. Yesterday was supposed to be another cease fire, obviously Hamas launching rockets like there’s literally no tomorrow.
Over two thousand rockets fired into Israel just this month.
We were busy watching the World Cup and then the BBC had no story.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjzS27ylCZ8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57Q8K5TmivM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJM_fPlWFgI
Here’s the reason.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCAOUlF-nAg
Muscat mentioned drone R&D a number of times, linking this to the airstrip in Gozo.
Whether the intention is search and rescue operations at sea or seek and destroy on land isn’t clear.
As to the reason, I was thinking more along the lines of the ongoing construction of the Oncology center. Israel happens to be the world leader in both medical equipment and human resources in the field.
It looks simple enough. They support the US and the US supports Israel. So why put on a charade which is what every other government does. I don’t think Muscat really cares about what people think anymore, at least not until there’s another election around the corner.
For once I disagree.
While Israel is nowhere near perfect, Hamas are truly beyond the pale. A nihilistic, theocratic bunch of gangsters who think nothing of sheltering behind civilians. Indeed, they actively encourage this as the more casualties there are, the more anti-Israeli hatred is whipped up by the useful idiots in the Western world.
I’m actually quite pleased to see that most of the readership of this blog is clear-headed enough not to be taken in by propaganda. We can leave the irrational anti-Israeli bigotry to the slavering Lowellites and their strange bedfellows (on this subject) in Graffiti and Alternattiva – Truly, both extremes of the political spectrum seem to meet at some point.
[Daphne – Norman Lowell hates the Palestinians even more. They’re ‘black’, Muslim and ‘Arab’. And he hates the Israelis because he hates Jews, which is actually an irrelevance in this debate. The religion or ethnicity of Israel is certainly not the reason why sane people oppose its practices.]
Norman Lowell’s got a problem. Many Palestinians are blond and blue-eyed and many are Christian.
A good article about Hamas:
http://www.ilpost.it/2014/07/27/hamas/
What really upsets me is that people find it so hard to totally disagree and yet live side by side. That seems to be the crux of most of the fighting, bombing, and killing that is going on everywhere around us. What a great pity. No tolerance anywhere.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/jon-snow-gaza-video-watch-the-channel-4-news-presenters-heartbreaking-plea-to-end-child-violence-9632434.html
Doesn’t the US government also support Israel?
Is that a serious question?
Much has been said and written and it is easy to favour one side when ignoring the other.
Who started this latest conflict?
Am I wrong to say that all this started when the Palestinians kidnapped and murdered three Israelis? Would the Palestinians have investigated and punished those responsible? No!
So when Israeli soldiers shot one Palestinian, rockets rained on Israel and had it not been equipped with rocket interceptors, hundreds of Israelis would have perished.
The problem is that the Palestinians know very well that they could be wiped out by Israel before any of their allies could even agree with each other, to intervene.
One has to be objective and see what the situation really is. The Palestinians (Hamas) take every opportunity to create havoc in spite of knowing very well that the overwhelming casualties will be on their own side, even in a limited war. But they continue to do it.
It is not true that the conflict is regarding ‘occupied land’. They should have adjusted to it since 1967, although truth be told, I would not hesitate to criticize Israel for continuing to build on disputed territory.
The problem is even deeper than economic or boundaries. It is twofold – (1) it is a religious and (2) the inadmissible right of Israel to exist!
Unless Hamas recognizes Israel’s right to exist and forget that distorted interpretation of the Koran, advocating violence and the promise of virgins greeting martyrs (murderers), then they will always receive much less sympathy.
Maybe you can explain to us your visit to Israel just one week before Dr. Gonzi’s planned visit (that had to be cancelled because of Libya’s unrest).
[Daphne – One of my sons lived there at the time. He was working for the EU Delegation as an intern. I wasn’t visiting Israel. I was visiting him. Not that I need to justify any visit I make anywhere, but you people are spectacularly stupid.]