Have you folks seen this? If you haven't, you have to see this.. Galloway may not be the most credible person, having previously expressed admiration for the Syrian and Iraqi totalitarian Baath regimes, and having a history of being a bit too chummy with Saddam Hussein, but there is no doubt that the man is a master rhetorician. He knows how to debate and orate. He knows that when you appear on the Western media and try to debate the other side, you are starting at a disadvantage because they always start with a pro-Israeli premise that displays remarkable amnesia and remarkable insidious racist and cultural bias that are so ingrained in their viewpoint and worldview that they don't even seem to be aware of the absurdity and bias of some of their coverage. So Galloway refuses to accept that false starting premise and goes on the attack immediately here, refusing to accept what the US and British media are accepting as their dishonest and grotesquely biased starting points. He administers a thorough bitch-slapping of this Murdoch-shill of a reporter. It is a thing of beauty to watch.

The problem is that on Western media outlets, and especially the US media, if you are trying to debate against Israeli actions, you have already lost the debate from the start because you are debating on the terms set by them.. case in point, the current Israeli/Lebanese conflict, which all Western media have "decided" began with the "terrorist" acts committed by Hezbollah that saw the killing and capture of Israeli soldiers. Now, putting aside the fact that Hezbollah attacked the Israeli military, not civilians, and therefore it was NOT a "terrorist" attack according to any honest definition of the term "terrorism" (although in Western eyes, terrorism equals a darkie fighting back or blowing himself up, whatever the context of the conflict: so Israel deliberately attacking civilians and attacking hospitals and the Red Cross and civilian infrastructure that have nothing to do with Hezebollah is "self-defense" while Palestinians or Hezbollah attacking and capturing Israeli soldiers after suffering through years of Israeli brutality is "terrorism". Only according to the twisted, racist logic of US and British media!), it is simply dishonest to claim this relatively minor incident was the starting point of this conflict when you have Israel still occupying parts of Lebanon, i.e, Sheba farms, and you have the history of the murderous invasion of Lebanon by Israel that saw 20,000 Lebanese killed and hundreds of Lebanese captured who are languishing to this day in Israeli prisons, and saw the country of Lebanon destroyed and devastated, much like you are seeing Israel do to Lebanon today. Look, I don't care if you support Israel or not. Anyone who is even closely reasonable and who views the current conflict through a purely objective and unbiased viewpoint has to arrive at the conclusion that Israel's targetting of destroying the whole of Lebanon, and its blatant attacking of Lebanon's infrastucture and civilians, attacking of Red Cross ambulances, attacking of Lebanon hospitals and power-plants, roads, bridges, and other civilian infrastructure, is a barbaric over-reaction to a relatively minor incident by Hezbollah against an Israeli military target. And even if you are pro-Israeli shill, there is a strong case to be made that Israel's barbaric and wholesale destruction of Lebanon will weaken completely the already pro-American Lebanese government, and will only help radicalize the Lebanese population in favour of Hezbollah, as polls of Lebanese are revealing already. So Israel's actions in Lebanon, apart from being grotesquely vicious and disproportionate, are simply stupid and bad strategy if Israel's real objectives are stability in Lebanon and the weakening of Hezbollah.

There is just no way to justify this kind of reprehensible behaviour by Israel. NO FUCKING WAY AT ALL. Period. I repeat.. Hezbollah did NOT start firing rockets into Israel until Israel went batshit crazy and started destroying Lebanon and attacking Lebanese civlians and Lebanese infrastructure. The fact that US and British media are actually able to gloss over this fact and pretend Israel's actions are actually justifiable in response to a relatively minor incident is proof of the utter sick and rotten racist undercore of those societies and the obvious and blatant bias of their media institutions.

The pro-Israeli Western media, and especially the US and British media, will always view Israel through a cultural, religious and racial bias that will always identify more with Israelis than those ethnic, swarthy Ay-rabs and Muslims. Israelis look and sound more like Americans and Westerners than those brown "ragheads" and "sub-humans". This is why there has always been such a bias against Arabs (note how easy it was to persuade large numbers of Americans initially to go to war against Iraq and bomb 'em ragheads for 9/11 despite how weak the case for war really was: don't you f*cking tell me racist tendencies among large numbers of Americans had nothing to do with that!) and over the Israeli/Palestinian issue in the US: it isn't simply because of the American Jewish factor. American Jews make up a very small percentage of the population, and even if there seems to be a disproportionate number of American Jews controlling major US media outlets, that by itself, would not be sufficient enough to garner the kind of pro-Israeli bias in American media and policy. No, to a large extent, most Americans immediately sympathize with Israelis because of this racist, religious, and cultural lens that allows them to identify more with white Israelis who get killed in "pizza joints" and "discos" than with Palestinians, who get killed in overcrowded refugee camps. And a lot of Americans are ignorant about history.. and about how Israel was created. They think Israel was always there, and poor Israel is getting attacked by Palestinian terrorists for no reason. We can argue that Jews deserved a homeland after what they went through during WW-II, but to gloss over the injustice the Palestinians had to suffer through and the lands they were forced out of to ensure the creation of a Jewish state, not to mention the subsequent occupation of Gaza and West Bank and the annexion of Palestinian lands and resources by Israel after 1967, and Israel's illegal settlements and brutal occupation of those Palestinian territories, is to be either completely ignorant of history or a lying, blatant propagandist, or a racist who thinks Muslims and Ay-rabs are sub-humans whose lives are not worth as much as American and Isreali lives. Then you have the disturbingly large levels of religious fundamentalism in the US, and subsquently, the large percentage of the Christian Zionists and Christian religious fundamentalists in the US who will always support Israel unconditonally because of Biblical prophecy and belief in imminent Rapture. There are quite a number of different and varied politically, religiously, racially, and culturally motivated reasons for the pro-Israeli bias in American.

It always used to make me furious to hear hypocrital American pundits lamenting about "Israeli kids" getting killed in "discos" while conveniently omitting the question of a 35 year old brutal and illegal occupation of Palestinian land, and omitting how Palestinians kids don't have the luxury to die in "pizza joints" or "discos" but rather die in the unglamorous squalor of refugee camps, courtesy of American-manufactured Israeli missiles and Apache helicopters. But hey: I guess Israeli kids getting blown up "discos" gets more sympathy from the West than "dirty", sub-human Ay-rab and Muslim kids who get their limbs blown up by IDF soldiers or by an Israeli missile deliberately aimed at a high-density civilian refugee camp that will ensure large loss of innocent civilian life. This level of abject racism and cultural bias over the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is so endemic in Western media, especially American, Canadian, and British media (although it is much, much worse in the US media for obvious reasons) that most people don't even realize it, and their entire understanding of this conflict starts off on a false premise that is grosquetely ignorant and racist.

why do you think this grotesque biasness exists?

kalani wrote:why do you think this grotesque biasness exists?

LOL.. ok.. I guess I am saying things most people here are already aware of, but I am stewing over the US media coverage of this current Isreali/Lebanese conflict, and I am just furious about what is being done to Lebanon and how easily American politicians and the US media seems willing to excuse Israel's actions, which are plainly criminal and acts of state-terrorism and war crimes. Even if you believe in the existence of Isreal, and believe in its right to defend itself, there is no way to justify Israel's current actions. These actions are blatantly criminal, and completely disproportionate. And even if you're a pro-Israel American racist shill who doesn't care about the large numbers of swarthy, ethnic Ay-rabs and Muslim civilian deaths, this is still very poor strategy if Israel really wants real long-term security and relative peace. And I say "relative" peace because there will never be full peace for Israel in that region. It is a hostile neighborhood, to put it midly, and Israel should grow up and realize that and act maturely. Israel is mistaking the right to exist with the right to dominate, and that's the problem. As much as the American and Isreali propagandists like to portray this current crisis as an existential crisis that jeapordizes the "existence of Israel", it is nothing of the sort. This is just Israel engaging in a dick-swinging exercise to show everyone in the region "who is boss" by letting loose this kind of complete destruction of a country as a response to a relatively minor incident against the Israeli military. Israel knows it can get away with anything thanks to the USA providing unconditonal diplomatic, financial, and military cover regardless of how reprehensible Israel behaves.

This was indeed a satisfying view, to see Galloway point out the hypocrisy of media coverage. The fact that the "interviewer" felt the need to yell over his answers and form long-winded statements only shows her desperation.

And to split the screen with shots of injured Israeli soldiers being carted to-and-fro only proves the bias. Where were the shots of any of the ~1000 killed Lebanese, 100's of Palestinians or 100,000's displaced? The message is clear: "We care about the life of an Israeli soldier, but not of a Lebanese child."

Wow... It's been a few years since i've watched tv and i must admit shit is fucked up.. so much fear and hatred on the news, it's messed up.
I'm also really confused about Israel's motives, it seems obvious that what they're doing is not self defence, and is not stabilizing anything. I have a feeling that maybe they want the 'arab world' to strike back so that they have a justification for an all out war. It feels way too planned, the way afghanistan and iraq felt planned.

I get the feeling that Israel is trying to cause civil war within Lebanon and Palestine. They would much prefer Hamas and Fetah to be fighting, and the Lebanese army fighting with Hezbollah, in the hope that Israel would be spared most of the bloodshed. So far, this has (largely) failed to materialize.

This might even be what the neo-cons wanted for Iraq, for Shia and Sunni to be locked in endless conflict. It's inconcievable that they couldn't have forseen this possibility. In a way, it's even worked to their advantage, since far more Iraqi's have died at the hands of Iraqi's than have American soldiers been killed by Iraqi's.

In both cases, the aggressors are freed to persue their own agendas (land/water or oil, as the case may be).

you guys need to see manufacturing consent


and i'm pretty confident iran's next,and when that happend i'm moving out of here because the u.s. is gonna get nuked.

I doubt the U.S. will get nuked, at least not by Iran. However, if they (or Israel) do attack Iran, there would almost certainly be some sort of response. The striking difference between Iran and Iraq is that Iran has a large, modern, military including fighter jets.

The only way the U.S. would get nuked, I believe, would be for them to do something overt against a known nuclear power such as North Korea or China. That is why the U.S. gov't will almost certainly never be so foolish (I hope).

The consensus seems to be that Iran is years away from developing any nuclear weapons capability, if they're even intent on achieving it. The more immediate danger is whether their claimed intent to develop nuclear power (which is not illegal) will be used to convince the world they're actually trying to build "the bomb." If the U.N. worked, the solution would be to permit them to develop nuclear power under the watchful eye of inspectors. This has been shown to work in Iraq.

I guess it comes down to the preferred approach: carrot or stick.

btw, I have seen Manufacturing Consent, as well as a healthy variety of Chomsky's other work. That stuff should be taught in schools, but probably never will out of fear of creating a generation of anarchists.

kalani wrote: i'm pretty confident iran's next,and when that happend i'm moving out of here because the u.s. is gonna get nuked.

Well, if you do you'r very welcome over to europe. Ofcourse we got our shares of assholes, but no oil and no Bush

Going to watch that Galloway piece now, sounds interesting.

Watch the video here.

I would love to see this guy with O'Realey! That would be something!!

A while back, Democracy Now aired a debate between Galloway and Hitchens called "the Grapple in the Big Apple".

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl? ... ead&tid=25

Also well worth a listen, especially if you appreciate Galloway's no-nonsense style.

HAHAHA Funny how they turned down his mic just as he was wrecking up the interviewer.

Too bad that there are people as blind as that woman...

to all responders

before everything, read all the post, before you comment.

i have another clip of galloway-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZwWta92 ... ed&search=

thats for laughs, lets get sirious.

as the first post says, galloway was a strong supporter of sadam of iraq, and assad of syria.
2 oppressive regimes, you know alot about saddam, but little on assad. in another arguement i posted about assad killing 30000 of his own pepole, and about the assasinataion of the lebanese prime minister hariri only a year ago.
after this incident lebanonians stood up against syrian occupation of lebanon, until they took all thier soldiers back to syria.
hizbullah were against syrian withdrawl. i suspect they were involved in hariri assasination.
did you hear mr galloway talk about it? nada.
did you hear galloway go against syrian occupation of lebanon? no, he is a friend of syria rulers. but israel respondes to attack on israeli is unpermitted by the "moralist" galloway. double standarts...

what he says? lies. israel dont hold 3000 kidnapped pepole from lebanon, only 3. and israel didnt have to kiddnap them, they did terrorist actions in israel against civilians, and they serve time in prison because of it.

all of you will not belive me, so here is somthing from a site hizbullah made for thier prime prisoner, samir kuntar, which speaks of 4 detainees in israel (the fourth is israeli that was born in lebanon and was charged of giving them data about israels army etc)-
http://www.samirkuntar.org/files/News_0 ... 06_Eng.htm

now to thier hero prisoner samir quntar- look why he is in prison- killing of 4 pepole, one of them alittle child who was killed by him with the blows to her skull with the gun. another child died in this incident, when the mother hide from them, and silenced her not to shout by putting a hand on her mouth. it all happend in 1978, 4 years before israels war with lebanon-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGFpdtaigPg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samir_Kuntar

if you will look next to the movie about quntar, there are other films, that clearly show, hizbullah now!! fires missiles that are against the jeneva conventiom(katyusha filled with bolts and iron balls) from civilian neigborhoods, to civilian population in israel.

about sheeba farms.
that is an excuse, used by hizbbulah to justify keeping firing into israel, in an excuse that israel didnt redrawl to the end. however, as you will see in the link i'll post, sheeba farms were capturd by israel in 1967, in the war with syria, that lebanon was not involed in.
syria says now its lebanonian land, wanting to give hizbullah thier allies in lebanon, the excuse they needed.
israel has no need of sheeba farms, but if israel wants to return it, it would be to the lebanon government of lebanon, not to a terrorist organization. hizbullah wanted it, because its a high point, controling israel cities below, a good place to target israeli cities.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shebaa_Farms

the last piece,
a captive that participated in the kidnapp of the israeli soldiers. he speaks of his training, since the age 0f 15 by hizbullah, as a warrior. he speaks of training in iran, with free pass from syria military airport, he speaks of a prior kidnap attempt, that failed 8 months before thier success in capturing the 2 soldiers, and killing the others. he says in the end, that he trained on it in satureday, when all of us were preparing to the world cup finals, they were preparing for the attack. he says, that he expected israel will bomb all thier posts, but he didnt think israel will attack thier main base in southern beirut, a dahia quarter, the part of beirut israel crushed into rubble. the only part of beirut attacked by israel.

in a prior posts, i used unifil documents pangea posted, to show how hizbullah were building heavy construction, bases and posts, even near un posts, so surely posts near civilian lebanese population, how the un commander askes government of lebanon to deploy thier army in southern lebanon, but nothing is done.
here is the interview with the captive-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kAkQAvC ... ed&search=

suddenly last week, lebanese government decided to deploy thier troops. to late. too fuckin' late, for us and for them.

i saw a lot of ignorance on the part of the pepole debating the issue here.
they did not know tht israel, mostly in the galilee, the region who is attacked in israel, has 20% of its population, israeli arabs, who participate in the election(they are 10% of the parliament, the other voted to jewish parties), who are having thier full civil liberties, including cursing the army and government of israel, and nothing is done to them. israel has arabs in the supreme court, an arab system of courts, they can practice thier religion, and economically, israeli arab makes in a year, what other arab in the region makes in 14 year.
thats why, even though israel is at war with the palestinians(parts of their families are there) and lebanon, they are still loyal to israel.

today we had 2 victims in the katyusha rockets attack, a mother and a child 5 years ols, and 2 siriously wounded from the same family, another child, and his grandmother. they are all arab!! and we have about third of the civilian victims israeli arabs.

israeli press and tv could have shown gore pictures like lebanese do, but israel has censorship, and want use gore pictures.
israel has 20% of its population now refugees, my family and friends host families from the north in tel aviv. not only the lebanese are refugees.

non of us in israel wanted the war. israels army was restraining itself for the last six years since the withdrawl, because tourism was booming in the last 6 years in the galilee. even the attack 8 monts ago, which was another try of them to capture soldiers, was ended with israel returning the bodies of thier warriors to unifil, because of this reason.

you got to understand, that when i say boom of tourism, all enjoyed it- jews and muslims, druze and beduians and christians.
while israel was building for peace, hizbullah was building for war, arming themselves with syrian and iranian missiles and no one on the other side did nothing to stop it.

about the palestinians.
israel redrawled from gaza, few months ago, paying alot of internal price, with the settlers of gaza. palestinians should have used it to show to israel and to the world, that instead of firing missiles from gaza to israel, they are rebuilding gaza, tearing down the refugee camps, and building new houses. instead, they used the teritory to attack israeli cities.

in the last election in israel, the party that won, said clearly it will withdrawl from the west bank as well, through a peace agreement( prefared ) or one sided withdrawl, if we have no partner. the second largest party, which i voted for, wants peace process.

a majority in israel is ready for peace. i am a member of israeli peace groups, my friends are at the ISM protesting against the seperation wall (but as long as terror strikes will come from palestinian authority most israelis will support this wall), when i was born i spent alot with my grandparents in ramla, which is a mixed city, half jews half arabs, and thier neigbours were arabs, i have palestinian and arab israeli friends, some things i am not sure you all have...

yesterday my favorite football team, which i'm a fan of, maccabi haifa played with liverpool fc, for the champion league.

haifa is another mixed city, jewish moslem and christian population, a city that was very much hurt by hizbullah katyushas this late month. the 3 last pepole that died there were arab israeli. in the football team, we also have jews, christian and arab players.
if hizbullah didnt start this war, we would have enjoyed a game with liverpool in israel. now we will play in cyprus.

so dont compare whas happening here to what us and england do in iraq. this was war for oil, far away from USA and england.
if english and usa homes were hurt by missiles, you would do what israel is doing...

israel is a superpower in the region, so those who try to attack israel, palestinians or lebanese, do that on the expanse of thier own pepole, with all the sorrow about the loss of every dead human.

I've not yet read this thread, but just saw the "interview" of Galloway. Holy hell that guy got Balls!

I wholeheartedly support his views, and support him 100%

:applause: at Galloway

I've read your message, copyleft, and felt the need to address some of your points.

First, I'm encouraged to hear that Israeli peace activists frequent these forums. And I wish you luck in your efforts.

However, I fear our definitions of "peace" may differ. If by "peace" you mean the mutual agreement between Israel and its neighbors to put an end to mutual violence and atone for past wrongs , then we can agree. However, I hope we can also agree that there can be no lasting peace if its conditions are imposed by one party on another.

copyleft wrote:i saw a lot of ignorance on the part of the pepole debating the issue here.
they did not know tht israel, mostly in the galilee, the region who is attacked in israel, has 20% of its population, israeli arabs, who participate in the election(they are 10% of the parliament, the other voted to jewish parties), who are having thier full civil liberties, including cursing the army and government of israel, and nothing is done to them. israel has arabs in the supreme court, an arab system of courts, they can practice thier religion, ...

While it's laudible that Arab Israli citizens have rights in Israel, they do not have equal rights with Jewish Israelis, do they? For example, freedom of movement, freedom to live with their families (if married to non-Israelis aka Palestinians) in Israel, freedom to build (if permits are not granted to them).

Israel still holds Arabs (Israeli, Lebanese and Palestinian), some officially, but many without charge. "Security Certificates" are convenient for shutting away dissidents, but paint a less liberal view of Israel than you might like us to think.

copyleft wrote:... and economically, israeli arab makes in a year, what other arab in the region makes in 14 year.
thats why, even though israel is at war with the palestinians(parts of their families are there) and lebanon, they are still loyal to israel.

Even limitted freedoms must be preferable to the suffering being imposed on their families (as you point out) in Gaza, the West Bank or Lebanon.

copyleft wrote:today we had 2 victims in the katyusha rockets attack, a mother and a child 5 years ols, and 2 siriously wounded from the same family, another child, and his grandmother. they are all arab!! and we have about third of the civilian victims israeli arabs.

Any loss of life is a crime. Israeli or Lebanese or Palestinian. Do you believe all, or even most, of those killed by Israel in this latest crisis had anything to do with this conflict?

One thing I find striking is that more Israeli soldiers have died in this conflict than Israeli civilians. Conversely, the vast majority of the ~1000 Lebanese dead were civilians. This desparity might be due to the fact that putting Israeli soldiers on foreign soil puts them in greater danger. But I also believe the weapons used (such as cluster bombs) demonstrate an unwillingness or inability to differenciate a militant from an innocent.

copyleft wrote:non of us in israel wanted the war. israels army was restraining itself for the last six years since the withdrawl

If the past six years are a demonstration of Israel's restraint, I don't want to see Israel angry.

copyleft wrote:about the palestinians.
israel redrawled from gaza, few months ago, paying alot of internal price, with the settlers of gaza. palestinians should have used it to show to israel and to the world, that instead of firing missiles from gaza to israel, they are rebuilding gaza, tearing down the refugee camps, and building new houses. instead, they used the teritory to attack israeli cities.

Since the withdrawal, as I'm sure you know, Gaza hase been cordoned off with no access to the outside world and the West Bank is being increasingly disintegrated by the continued construction of the Wall. Israel even controls its borders and airspace. The recent flattening of any infrastructure in Gaza (electricity, bridges, bulldozing of crops and demolition of houses) does not allow, let alone encourage, Palestinians to seek peace. It replaces their stuggle for subsistence with an even more desperate stuggle for survival.

copyleft wrote:in the last election in israel, the party that won, said clearly it will withdrawl from the west bank as well, through a peace agreement( prefared ) or one sided withdrawl, if we have no partner. the second largest party, which i voted for, wants peace process.

I still hold out hope that they do. But believe there's more to achieving peace than saying you want it. One must also be willing to sit down at the table and try to find middle ground. I have not seen the present Israeli leadership remotely willing to do this. I believe they don't think they have to. As long as you can kill your enemies, who needs to negotiate, right?

copyleft wrote:israel is a superpower in the region, so those who try to attack israel, palestinians or lebanese, do that on the expanse of thier own pepole, with all the sorrow about the loss of every dead human.

See my previous paragraph.

copyleft wrote:a majority in israel is ready for peace. i am a member of israeli peace groups, my friends are at the ISM protesting against the seperation wall (but as long as terror strikes will come from palestinian authority most israelis will support this wall), when i was born i spent alot with my grandparents in ramla, which is a mixed city, half jews half arabs, and thier neigbours were arabs, i have palestinian and arab israeli friends, some things i am not sure you all have...

I admit I'm not so fortunate to have any Israeli or Palestinian friends. But I can still empathize with both sides. So yes, to some degree I am "ignorant" but not willfully.

copyleft wrote:so dont compare whas happening here to what us and england do in iraq. this was war for oil, far away from USA and england.

I think you misunderstood. I didn't say that Israel's present actions were for oil. I said that the stronger party in any conflict will attempt to achieve its ambitions. In Iraq, the U.S. and Blair sought oil. In the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Lebanon, I believe Isreal is attempting to grab and keep as much land and resources (water) as they can.

So the goal in both cases are economic / strategic, and maybe to a lesser degree political.

copyleft wrote:if english and usa homes were hurt by missiles, you would do what israel is doing...

I hope not.

I'm reminded of a quote from Schindler's List: "who saves one man saves the world entire".

I believe it's from the Talmud. But I'm "ignorant" of such things.