Palestinians as Native Americans, The Dispossessed Natives Canard, an unfounded analogy

A reoccurring lie regarding the Israeli Palestinian conflict is the false analogy between Palestinians and Native Americans and Australian Aborigines. This analogy claims that the Palestinians are like the Native Americans, an indigenous population dispossessed by people who came to their land by ships. In fact there is not a single comparable point between the Palestinian story and that of the Native Americans and the Australian Aborigines.

To begin with Native Americans and Australian Aborigines never kept white Europeans in ghettos like quarters and taxed them for having a different religion then they had. On the contrary, they welcomed the new arrivals, and helped them adjust to their new surroundings.

However some of those new arrivals did not acknowledge the humanity of their new neighbors and preformed horrific mass murder attacks on them, such as pogroms and massacres.

This kind of behavior is something they brought from Europe. There the ruling/dominant religion or nationality oppressed violently other religions and nationalities. In this Europe the perpetrators and the victims were diverse. Protestants persecuted Catholics and Jews, Catholics persecuted Protestants, Jews, Muslims and Eastern Orthodox, and Eastern Orthodox persecuted Jews, Catholics, and Muslims.

The Muslim world, which ruled parts of Europe for the greater part of the last 1300 years, was no different. It treated minorities and conquered population in the same manner, subjecting Christian, Jews and other branches of Islam, to intolerance, backed on more than one occasion by brutal violence. Violence that was no different then the brutal violence Europeans inflicted on the native populations of the Americas, Africa, and Australia.

Both the Christian world and the Muslim world had produced kingdoms and empires that were authoritarian theocracies, and therefore intolerant and brutal towards those who were different. When nation states emerged from those kingdoms and empires, many of them inherited this conduct, implementing it on neighboring nationalities and conquered nations. Europe’s first colonies were in Europe. And the Ottoman Empire had its colonies in the Balkans, as well as in the Middle East.

Zionism, as the national liberation movement of the Jewish people, took the Jews from this vulnerable position, and gave them national sovereignty in their national homeland. There, Jews are able to protect themselves from such violence. In doing so Zionism was a part a world wide anti imperialist effort. One, which included the liberated nations of Europe, de-colonialism, and civil rights movements across the world.
Like all liberation movements, Zionism faced its enemies, as it does today; Enemies that are not much different than past repressors, as the hallmark of deliberately targeting and killing civilians, men, women, and children, repeatedly testifies.

Israel is a racial, apartheid, colonial, Nazi, genocidal state

Israel is a democracy with equal rights for all. Fact of the matter – everyone can and does vote for the Israeli parliament – the Knesset. In Israel Jews and Arabs can vote and get elected to a legislative office, many of Israel’s parliamentarians are Arabs, even right wing parties have Arab representatives, such as Ayoob Kara from the Likud, and Hamad Amar from Israel Beitenu. There are also Arab mayors, businessman and businesswomen; sports clubs owners and managers, newspapers owners, reporters and editors and so on. All these and more are a part of a rich Arab culture that thrives along side the Jewish one in Israel. In a racist, apartheid, colonial, genocidal Nazi state, none of these would have existed.

So why is this accusation, this lie been made?

Just what are apartheid, colonialism, and Nazism?

These are not mere accusation. Apartheid, colonialism, and Nazism are the most monstrous evils of our times. Evils so great they had to be abolished. And those who hate Israel describe the very existence of the state of Israel and its society as evil to be abolished.

And what to they want to abolish?

Israel is the some of its parts, a regime, which is a democracy.
A culture and society based on the Hebrew language, Jewish traditions, and openness to the outside world.
It is made out of a people, individuals, old and young, women and children and men of all sorts of height and color and personality; and all that is labeled loudly apartheid, colonialism, Nazism. All that essence, which every society, country and state on this Earth has and no one denies its right to have. All that wonder we call humanity is labeled as an evil that must be abolished when it comes to Israel.

Racism on all its forms was never the mere existence of a society; that never was and never will be racism. Racism is about the mistreatment of others – from oppression to annihilation, abolishment. Racism is about the abolishment of a society.

An abolishment of what?
An abolishment of everything humanity represents: culture, society, language, the freedom to choose and the freedom to be. All of which lives in Israel today.

In today’s world a smart racist knows that advocating white supremacy or saying that Jews drink the blood of children for Passover won’t attract a lot of respect, let alone believers. So instead he or she shouts loudly at Israel and at everything Jewish the words racist, nazi, zionazi trying to demonize the very existence of a society. Just like racist do. Deferent technique – same purpose.


So when someone calls someone else a Nazi, what are they referring to?
The treatment of others by that someone or the mere existence of that someone??
Because if it is the mere existence of someone that infuriates them, then they are racist as racist could possibly get.

Sometimes these sorts of ‘critiques’ get creative and say that it is not Israel that is racist but the treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, which is racist. If the security measures that Israel implemented in the territories, the security barrier, the check points, the on going military operation against terror cells hiding in civilian communities and others, all of which had reduced the success of Palestinian mass murder operations against Israeli civilians into a near zero, if all these measures are apartheid, racism, then the very lives of each and every Israeli citizens that are saved every day and every minute by those measures are also apartheid and racism, an evil to abolish. Thus this creativity only proves the true intentions of those ‘critiques’.

A much related info.

Gaza beach tragedy, June 9 2006, the anniversary of a blood libel

Three years ago on June 9th 2006 in the midst of exchange of fire between Israeli defense forces and Palestinian armed groups in the northern Gaza Strip, a tragedy struck the Ghalya family from Beit Lahiya, when explosive of an undetermined origin tore them apart killing 7 wounding many more, on beach not far from the battles zone.
The blame was instantly put on Israel by the international media the UN and ofcourse the Palestinians themselves, followed by a controversial and problematic Human Rights Watch report. Below is a critique of that report, which I wrote closer to the events. But a must see is also the second draft investigation.
It is important to note that since then they had amended somewhat their report, putting emphasis on the ability of the 155mm shell to cause upper body injuries, but avoided the main points of the criticism leveled at them including their own admission in their inability to challenge IDF findings.



Gaza beach blast:
Critical review of the HRW statement.

Four emerging holes regarding HRW statement on the Ghalya family tragedy of June 9th 2006.

On June 9th 2006, during an ex change of fire between armed Palestinian forces, who fired Qassam rockets at Israeli civilian targets, and the Israeli forces firing back at them in order to protect those Israeli communities, a blast on the beach destroyed the Ghalya family of Beit Lahiya. The source of the blast was unknown, both sides accused each other, those supporting the Palestinian side rely on a report made by Human Rights Watch, HRW. But how reliable is that report?

It has without doubt four holes; the last three of them are quite disturbing:

1 - The fragment of the 155mm
This fragment, found 200 meters from the scene of the blast, is used to argue that an Israeli shell was responsible, but this finding can also serves to affirm the IDF claim that the shell that fell closest to the Ghalya family fell 250 meters from them.

2 - Upper body injuries.
The statement, which says that outside of a shell only a bounding mine can cause upper body injuries, is plain wrong. The explosive belt of the suicide bomber with it's shrapnel jacket, which the Palestinians armed organizations had used constantly throughout this round of hostilities, is specifically designed to maximize injuries, upper body injuries included.
There are hundreds of Israelis who are walking evidence as to how untrue that statement is.







On this matter see also the film "In the mind of a suicide bomber" from the History Channel, also the x ray project.

3 - The shell's blast.
Examining the blast from behind the desk can get very limited results, but by comparison with similar incidents an assessment can be made, one that raises some doubts over the 155mm charge.
This however is Going down Gruesome Lane; and as such is an emotionally excruciating undertaking. But the truth is in the details, and in this case the details are heart braking. Turning horrific tragedies into mere indicators is an uncomfortable experience to any normal person on this earth, but without indicators to the strength the blasts there is no way to make comparison. And on the web most of the information available from which we can learn or assess strength of such blasts is about their victims. Therefore I apologize for any inconvenience that will be caused by the next paragraphs. There is simply no other way. This is going to be extremely uneasy.
According to HRW the culprit responsible for the Gaza beach blast is a 155mm Israeli shell.
On February 5th 1994 a 120mm mortar shell hit the open market in Sarajevo, killing 66 to 68 people and wounding around 200. According to testimony the main cause of death was the blast and not the shrapnel. One testimony from this link says:

"There are trucks of dead, there are legs, arms, heads -- as many as you want," said a wounded young man while waiting for care at Kosevo Hospital.
And from this link:

"Some people were literally torn apart. Heads and limbs were ripped off bodies," said one eyewitness.
Now, there are differences between this case and the Gaza beach blast, an open beach setting versus an open urban settings, and far more people, hundreds of them, in Sarajevo. Which is why we turn to a third tragedy:
On Saturday March 2nd, 2002 a suicide bomber from the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, (Fatah affiliate) blow himself among the crowds of worshipers attending a bar - mitzvah ceremony and other pedestrians, at the ultra orthodox neighborhood of Beit - Yiszrael in Jerusalem. The setting is similar to Sarajevo, open urban with crowds of people on the street. The results are different, 9 dead and 51 wounded.

The thunderous blast shook downtown Jerusalem and sent flames leaping from a car that caught fire. Blood covered a wall of stone at the nearby Mahane Israel seminary; where up to 1,000 Jews gather every Saturday evening. "I heard an explosion, and I went down and saw a baby carriage with a dead baby beside it and other dead people," said Shlomi, who was in Mahane Israel when the bomb exploded. "We arrived at the site and saw scenes of horror: young children, old people, women, lying in the road without hands, without legs, blood everywhere and enormous destruction all about," said Eitan, a volunteer with Magen David Adom who helped evacuate the wounded. "Only some had the strength to scream or cry. The quiet was the thing I remember most... This was one of the worst attacks I can remember."
The blast in this horror, though powerful, was unable to rip off heads and produce "a truck load of dead and body parts", which suggests that it was less powerful then 120mm shell, 9 dead versus 68 is a huge difference even if there were less people on the street during the Jerusalem blast. It was powerful enough though to throw babies of their carriages, as indicated from the testimony above and the headlines in other Israeli newspapers of the day, such as Yediot Achronot, and to throw them from their parents arms, see here:

Ronit Ilan, Ezra's sister, decided to change her dress before the journey home, and so went back inside Mahane Israel, taking her six-year-old daughter with her. Her husband Shimon was standing outside, with their 12-year-old boy Lidor; the father was holding their 18-month-old daughter Oriah. Lidor was about to give his father the keys to the family car when the blast went off. The baby girl went flying in the air. Both children were killed.
Yet the testimony from the Gaza beach blast suggests that that blast, which was supposed to have been more powerful then the Sarajevo blast, was unable to throw a baby of his carriage:

"Their legs I could see inside. Their intestines I could see spilling out," said Mohammed Sawarka, 28, who rushed to the scene to help. "A 1-month-old child was dead inside its carriage." He also found a hand in the sand.

An infant slain in his carriage by a bomb is as horrific and heart breaking as that of an infant slain and thrown from his carriage by another bomb. But from the physical point of view these are different stories, different effects, suggest different causes. And what this gruesome indicator, a baby in or out of his carriage, tell us is that the Gaza beach blast was unable to throw a baby of his carriage, though both blasts were able to decimate an entire family, the Nehmad family in Jerusalem and Ghalya family in the Gaza beach; and with similar injuries, turn limbs and shrapnel.
The most powerful blast, a 155mm shell, had produced the least powerful result, horrific as it is. The simplest explanation is that it wasn't the most powerful blast of the three, but the lesser one, hence not a 155mm shell.
Could other factors in the different settings have affected the results so dramatically, as to have the most powerful blast produce the lesser result? Theoretically it is possible, but what could that be?
Crowded open urban settings are different then that of open beach settings. But are they that different as to affect those closest to the blast?
The Israeli experience suggests that is not the case.
When buses and restaurants blow up - closed crowded settings, people flow out throw the windows and doors. When streets blow up by similar bombs - people flow everywhere.
So the question remains:
What could have spared a 1-year-old child in his carriage from a nearby blast of a 155mm shell but not from the shrapnel of that shell, which had killed him?
What measurements of the blast's strength HRW took?
Or have they skipped that?
When investigating a blast, finding its strength is the most elementary part of the investigation, and it has to be a thorough one; yet HRW makes no reference to that and no indication that a thorough examination had taken place. If this is indeed the case it is an incompetence rivaling the unfortunate shrapnel statement.

4 - The Independence of the HRW report.
HRW calls for an independent inquiry into the tragedy at the Gaza beach, yet it's own investigation relies a lot on Palestinian sources, Palestinian Doctors who gave them the shrapnel, or what was supposed to be the shrapnel, and bomb disposal experts from the PA.
Shouldn't an independent inquiry suggests that it is HRW own experts who must review each of the details, medical, physical, chemical, etc., and not just review the scene after it had been cleaned?

Supplement.
In a supplement to that report HRW added two more arguments for their accusation. The first is a computer log from the Kamal Adwan Hospital, which counters, challenges the IDF computer log, but does not disprove it; it is simply a case of one computer versus another. And even if we are to accept the Palestinian computer log, what’s in it to exclude the possibility that during that time a Palestinian bomb had also exploded on that beach? Nothing.
The second is a piece of shrapnel given by the father of one of the victims, which they determined it to be of a piece of a fuse from an artillery shell. This can also point both ways because it can also be a part of debris gathered from passed shelling and turned into shrapnel in a Palestinian made bomb.

Conclusion:
Is it possible that Israel was responsible for this tragedy? Yes!
Just as possible as the Palestinians - the HRW report is simply too flawed to be considered reliable.
It uses evidences that can go both ways; its opening statement is completely void from reality, so much so that it makes hundreds of Israelis, victims of Palestinians violence, nonexistent. Because if the weapons that killed and maimed them do not exist, how can they exist?
And there is no indication that a thorough investigation was conducted, not of the strength of the blast, not medical, the Israeli claim that shrapnel was removed from the wounded needlessly was ignored. The fuse fragment mentioned above, is another piece of evidence that requires a follow-up. Even without the evident lack of independency, this report is completely incompetent.

Final words:
All this can be ignored or it can be answered, it's up to HRW and their supporters and followers.
But we must all understand and internalize this: human rights are the most fundamental core values for a healthy human society. Values we must all aspire to regardless of our political views, trusts and mistrusts. To ensure that we must regard human rights organizations as critical to our well-being - and so to their credibility. And when that credibility is tainted, be it a small taint or large one, it must be answered by those who truly value human rights, or else the cause sufferers and with it the rest of us. And when a human rights organization forgets its own values, forgets the hundreds of Israeli victims, violated deliberately by a Palestinian fragmentation weapon, that cannot be a small taint.


More criticism of Human Rights Watch:
Lebanon.

Jenin.

The Israelis claim of superiority

Whenever Israelis mention the historic fact that the Jews developed the land while the Arabs neglected it, Palestinian and Arab propagandists use that to suggest that the Jews are claming superiority over them, as if we’re saying that we are better. Here they use a hole in Israeli advocacy efforts, which do not introduce the historic reasons for this Arab and Islamic neglect of the holy land during Ottoman times.

The historic background is simple: with our back to the pogroms and persecution of the Diaspora, the forced exile, we had a powerful incentive to develop the land in spite of tremendous difficulties, to gain our freedom and develop the land and our lives. The Arabs on the other hand, where apart of the Ottoman empire, which found neglect useful to keep invaders out, while the block of their forces where engaged in the Balkans.

The neglect created malaria infested swamps along the coast, which kept most invaders out but also depleted much of the population. The small elite of the thinly Arab population didn't wish to change that because they where apart of the empire's elite and had incentives into other directions, such as the empire’s regional centers in Beirut and Damascus; and the capitol itself – Istanbul.

The Palestinians had accepted Israel's existence.

True, they did, the pragmatics did, but not Hamas, not the Islamic Jihad and not other rejectionist factions, which all together make up half of the Palestinian people. As for the “moderate” they had indeed accepted the FACT that Israel exists. But did they accept the RIGHT of that FACT to exist?
When it comes to Palestinian propaganda, beware of words added and words omitted. And here the omitted word is 'RIGHT'. Even as recently as early 2009 Palestinian President Mahmood Abbas refused to accept Israel as a Jewish state.

The Israeli flag stand for the Nile and the Euphrates

This is the most sinister of all the lies.
Its target audience is the Arab and Islamic peoples, and it is relatively unknown among Israelis and the rest of the world. The common reaction by Israelis and Jews when first hearing this grotesque is either to correct it, as if it was an innocent mistake, or simply to laugh at what is indeed a ridiculous idea. Both reactions underestimate the purpose of this lie, and that purpose is simple, to create an animosity towards Israel in the heart and mind of every Arab and Muslim. So whenever they see the Israeli flag, they'll see it as if Israel and the Jews are declaring ownership on the entire land between the Nile and the Euphrates.
The actual inspiration for the Israeli flag is the Tallit, the religious cloth, and prayer shawl, in which Jews cover themselves while praying, and it represents the connection with our past. And any one who knows a little bit of Jewish history, knows that both the Nile and the Euphrates are places which the fathers of the nation, Moses and Abraham, left in order to go to the promised land. Due to the sinister intentions of this lie, it is critically important to correct it on every opportunity. Study this link.

Israel is a land just for Jews

This lie is the most devilish of them all. It is apart of the Zionism racism libel, simple yet sophisticated, and highly effective.
All they did was just to add the word just. A simple, harmless little word, which changed the meaning from one end to the other:

Zionism describes Israel as a state for the Jews, a place where Jews can rule themselves by being a majority, a place which contains their national history the way all national homelands do.
In order to dehumanize Zionism, Palestinian and Arab propaganda added the word 'JUST'. By just adding the word JUST, they made Israel and Zionism look like something exclusive. While in fact, Theodore Hertzl, founder of Political Zionism and visionary of the state of Israel, made it very clear in the segment about law and constitution in his book 'The Jewish state', that "no minority living among us shell suffer intolerance, religious or national".

Since the Zionist idea, like all national liberation movements, deals with the liberation of a specific nation, the Jews, the word 'JUST' doesn't seem like a big change to an Israeli or a Jew, but when faced with the new meaning of the sentence, the common reaction is confusion; confusion which help sell the lie.
It is also important to note, that the word 'JUSTt' in regard to racism is connected not to the access to a land, but to the system of power, where the right to vote is exclusively held by one group. In Israel there is one person one vote system, for Jews and Arabs citizens alike, and both have representatives at the legislative assembly.