COULD ISRAEL'S ARROGANCE LEAD TO ITS DOWNFALL?
There are many who believe that the way Israel is going it may very well be sowing the seeds for its own downfall. Prof.Rodney Shakespeare in an article last year warned that Israel's own mistakes and arrogance will lead to its ruin..see below:
http://www.presstv.com/detail/2013/08/03/316932/israels-mistakes-will-bring-its-downfall/
Tom Pessah is an Israeli graduate and he had this to say " For Israelis wishing to participate in a common struggle, relieving ourselves of our ignorance and arrogance should be the top priority. Not for the sake of the Palestinians - for our own sake, to restore our humanity" read more:
http://972mag.com/the-nakba-addressing-israeli-arrogance/71504/
Read also this very enlightening article by Rabbi Michael Lerner who leads a Jewish Synagogue in the San Francisco Bay area in which he reveals that Israeli PM Netanyahu never intended and never will negotiate an independent Palestinian State.. read more:
Amnon Shamosh is an Israeli author and poet who founded a kibbutz in Israel and still lives there. Shamosh wrote this very interesting piece "Tragedy of Arrogance". He pulls no punches when he says that "arrogance is built-into the people of Israel from its very inception with the belief that they are "the chosen people". Shamosh believes that Israel's troubles are rooted in the belief that they are better and wiser than both Arabs and Gentiles. Read fruther:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/O,7340,L-3924014,OO.html
These are only a few who feel ashamed and fearful of the way Israel is heading..there are many, many more who live in Israel and oveseas. Some Israelis I have met say they are leaving the country because they have no desire to be part of such a culture.
The email photos and text. Source: TheAustralian
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THE activist group Australians for Palestine has prompted outrage by misrepresenting an image of children killed in Syria as young victims of the conflict in Gaza in an email to MPs that attacked Israel’s operations.
The group, whose August 10 email compared those killed in Gaza to victims of the Holocaust, has declined to correct the error or apologise, even after the deceptive use of the image was exposed.
Underneath the image of dead children, Australians for Palestine editor Sonja Karkar wrote that “some people may find the above photo disturbing and we hope it is”.
“It is not being shown gratuitously, but to bring home the true awfulness of what is happening in Gaza,” she wrote.
“We cannot shed tears over yesteryear’s Holocaust victims when reading books, seeing films or visiting museums and not see that these innocent Palestinian children today are just as deserving of your sorrow and outrage.”
Liberal MP Luke Simpkins told The Australian he believed he had seen the photo before. The former long-serving army officer raised the picture’s provenance with Ms Karkar.
Mr Simpkins discovered the same image had appeared in a Canadian online news site in May this year and an Israeli website last November, well before the current fighting in Gaza began early last month.
Mr Simpkins said there was no comparison between the civil war in Syria, unfolding events in Iraq and the most recent round of action in Gaza targeting Hamas.
“Hamas is a terrorist organisation that uses public television to encourage and indoctrinate children to aspire to kill Jewish people,” he said. “For years Hamas have fired rockets into Israeli suburbs and towns, all from civilian areas. They are cowards that hide behind innocent people.”
Allegations that confronting images of conflict in the Middle East found on social media or the internet are staged, mislabelled or misattributed have become so widespread a derogatory name has been coined for them — Pallywood, a contraction of Palestine and Hollywood.
Despite the mocking title, Jewish leaders around the world are deeply concerned by the proliferation of the pictures. There are fears the images are licensing anti-Semitism and provoking violence and abuse directed at their communities.
Jeremy Jones from the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council said graphic images “which are purportedly from Gaza which have later been authoritatively identified as coming from Syria, Iraq or Egypt, proliferate on social media”.
“In addition, photographs which have been shown to be staged and images which have been manipulated for dramatic effect spread virally through Facebook and Twitter,” he said.
Mr Jones warned against the abuse of photographs.
“Individuals and organisations which want to be treated as serious contributors to policy development need to exercise as much caution with images as they do with text,” he said. “To distribute an inaccurately labelled image, which is not only unverified but which could have been easily identified, is as bad as circulating outright errors of fact.”
Mr Jones hit out at Australians for Palestine over the episode.
“In this situation, the image was challenged, but when the person distributing it admitted it was not from Gaza she did not honour a commitment to publicise and correct the error,” he said. “It would appear that bad judgment was supplemented by bad faith.”
A wave of anti-Semitic incidents has occurred since the outbreak of fighting in Gaza last month.
In the most recent incident, anti-Semitic flyers saying “Wake up white Australia” were distributed in Bondi, in Sydney’s eastern suburbs.