I posted something similar yesterday in Spanish, but this is for my non-Spanish speaking friends: The apologists for Israeli military action seem to believe (yes, because its matter of faith not a fact) that Palestinian Arabs (both in Israel, and the Palestinian territories) are simply refusing to assimilate and accept Israeli society and that Hamas just appeared out of thin air to oppose Israel. Israeli Arabs are denied fundamental freedoms and rights that are not denied to Israeli Jews, from owning land to the right to marry. Israeli Arabs are treated like second-class citizens in their own land. For more on Hamas, courtesy of Jewish Voices for Peace: ...major Western powers, as well as Israel, have worked to counter secular Arab nationalism for decades. One of the ways they pursued their opposition to Arab nationalism was by strengthening, or at the very least ignoring the growth of, religious opposition groups. In Hamas’ case, they certainly benefited from a general rise in religious militarism. But Israel also helped them by allowing the Islamic groups that preceded Hamas to flourish with relatively little harassment in the 70s and most of the 80s. Israel saw the religious groups opposing the secular nationalists, like the PLO, that Israel was more concerned with. They believed that allowing, and even encouraging Hamas to flower would create a thorn in the side of secular Palestinian nationalism, leading to infighting and blunting the Palestinians’ ability to mount resistance.
Posted on: Thu, 10 Jul 2014 13:48:41 +0000
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