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Tag Archives: starvation

Yarmouk Camp – Played for Human Shields and Siege

29 Wednesday Jan 2014

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, Politics, Syria

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ethics, morality, political, political psychology, politics, refugees, starvation, war crimes, Yarmouk Camp

‫ weeping parents, and anger. Yarmouk refugee camp in the funeral of the martyrs of hunger. 11-1-2014 ‬ – YouTube

On YouTube, “TeachESL” noted (two days ago), “the man at 0:53 says: “We do not want Palestine or something. We want them to get us out here. We ask for Israeli citizenship, we do not want the right of return, we have sold Palestine. We do not even know anything about Palestine! We do not want Mahmoud Abbas. There are 1 billion and 300 million Muslims and they can do nothing! If there were even a single Israeli child in the Yarmuk camp, the problem would have been solved a long time ago.”

______

So what may the Jews do, whether of Israel or the Diaspora?

I know: these are the sworn enemies of Israel, determined to overlook the defeat of Arab armies in a war of annihilation (of the Jews, period) in 1948; brainwashed to believe the Land of Israel magically, innately Arab when the ground itself tells of the continuance presence of Jewry on the land for more than 3,000 years and beyond; and trained by anti-Semitic image, lies (like “The Protocols”), by bombastic and narcissistic and manipulative power to hate Jews and erase Judaism, which is more a world to discover than extinguish, and a good and great world at that.  And yet there they are, the residents of Yarmouk Camp, trapped between a tyrant and his equally tyrannical opponents.

Neither Bashar al-Assad nor al-Nusra could give a flying crap about what they — no one else, not Israelis, not Russians, not Americans, God forbid — are doing to the humanity they have overrun and subjugated for the amusement of their own immense and unbridled egos.

Jews have stood against that kind of tyranny since the Exodus from Egypt, and whether in fact or in our heads makes no difference.

Jewish ethical universalism, whether joined by hand-wringing Christians or forward-looking Islamic Humanists, cannot today — and as too many among the powerful may do — look away from Yarmouk Camp.

The twisted rhetoric of The Palestine Chronicle (the fulcrum for that in language behavior splits loyalty away from integrity) notes the following:

There is no doubt that the Yarmoukian Palestinians are in Syria because of a historic injustice imposed upon them by a settler-colonial enemy that does not spare any effort to exacerbate their suffering and prolong their exile. However, this indisputable historic occurrence should not blind us from the fact that independent of what Israel has planned to increase Palestinian suffering, the party responsible for the current crisis (and here I must reiterate my emphasis on the word ‘current’) is the brutal and inhuman Syrian regime and its leader Bashar El-Assad.

How Not to Be in Solidarity with Palestinian Refugees in Yarmouk? | Palestine Chronicle – 1/17/2014.

It’s good to see someone wising up.

It’s late in the day but welcomed, if with a grain of salt, nonetheless.

* * *

In the Yarmouk camp, more than 55 people have died from hunger and the majority of children are suffering from malnutrition, according to Abdullah al-Khatib, a Palestinian activist living there. Most people are consuming soup made from water and spices, Khatib said, and some are reportedly eating grass for survival.

Starving to death in Syria’s Yarmouk camp – Features – Al Jazeera English – 1/29/2014.

Reminder: Russian President Vladimir Putin means to keep Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in business (possibly unless or until he runs out of money or his sponsor in Tehran, that kindly smiling white bearded sower of sorrows, does — and that’s not going to happen in the foreseeable future).

* * *

I have long believed that that I’d engage Gideon Levy’s discourse in its disingenuous Israel-bashing facet, and so I might do so here with suggestion that the IDF — who else? — magically and miraculously transport the Yarmouk Camp to someplace peaceful like Judea and Samaria.

Bar’el was restrained as he referred to Yarmouk as resembling a World War II ghetto, and even this description fell on deaf ears. Only 20,000 people remain in the camp, where 150,000 lived before the civil war. Only the weak and helpless remain – to live in destruction under siege. The rest have suffered their second expulsion . . . . After the terror of Yarmouk, Israel should show a measure of humanity. It should try to save the 20,000 besieged residents – natives of this land, remember – and declare that its gates are open to them to reunite with their families.

Israel, save the Palestinians in Syria’s Yarmouk refugee camp – Opinion Israel News | Haaretz – 1/22/2014.

Nonetheless, disagree though we may — and as may the Yarmouk Camp resident quoted — we are all standing by watching a war crime in the making.

* * *

What is remarkable is that the save Yarmouk initiative has infiltrated all fields and has been adopted and picked up by political groups that have not seen eye to eye.

Crisis in Yarmouk camp in Syria unites Palestinians – Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East – 1/27/2014.

I’ll say!

Although the Al-Monitor article confines itself to telling of the in-solidarity feelings inspired between Fatah and Hamas and pro-Palestinian groups, that I’ve played up this story tells that our barriers may not be as strong as we believe.

Crime is crime.

Yarmouk surviving off stray animals: resident | Al Akhbar English – 1/29/2014.

20,000 people in Yarmouk camp face starvation | GulfNews.com – 1/29/2014.

# # #

 

FTAC – Syria’s Agony and Related Misperception

19 Sunday Jan 2014

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Jordan, Lebanon, Middle East, Politics, Psychology, Syria

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Tags

commentary, Jordan, Lebanon, middle east, Palestinian refugees, political psychology, politics, relief, starvation, Syria, Yarmouk

No. It’s a mess. Back in 2007, by prior agreement with the Arab League, Lebanese Defense Forces were denied entry into the Nahr al-Bared camp to suppress the presence of an independent but al-Qaeda-minded force that had infiltrated the camp. Instead, it bombarded the camp with tank fire, corralled the entire residential population through the main gates, and the bused them to other camps. The LDF then razed Nahr al-Bared. Toward the very end, a handful of family members surrendered, and escaped, and the remnant fighters holed up in tunnels were, finally, bombed from the air.

My impression is the wealthy enjoy extraordinary wealth in the middle east and the equivalent of fellaheen live primarily at the mercy of the powerful. The common thread of “malignant narcissism” that binds both despot and mad revolutionaries into one recognizable category applies well to the tragedy unfolding in the Yarmouk camp. If anyone has ever been sickened by the historic photographs of starving Nazi concentration camp residents, the same outrage should apply in light of starvation in the Palestinian camp, even thought in their confined minds they may blame the Jews for what’s being done to them by Assad’s army and the infiltration and partial control of the opposed al-Qaeda affiliates. To the warring parties, the humanity trapped in the camp is but a useful poker chip. These kids may one day understand that it hasn’t been the Jews of the west that has been killing them but rather the divided powers most identified with them but equally callous toward them and careless of them.

The prompt for the comment had to do with the Yarmouk Palestinian Refugee Camp and its being made to starve between armies.

There has been some relief: Besieged Yarmouk camp in Syria finally gets some food – Middle East Israel News | Haaretz – 1/18/2014: “The delivery was made possible after an agreement was reached on Friday between representatives of Palestinian factions and Syrian rebels in the camp.”

One may imagine the leverage involved in those negotiations.

In the surface rhetoric, the rebels may claim having been merciful, but the public would do well to keep in mind that get to this point, they had had to have been unmerciful, and that neither better nor worse than Assad’s forces attempting to subdue the infiltration within the camp by starvation in the first place.

* * *

To another correspondent asking about the fate of Hamas in Gaza given the mixed ambitions and messages carried forward by its membership, some, I hear, who have joined the rebels against Assad, I suggested the perception of the axis needs to shift in the middle east, maintaining that the fighting-minded on several sides are more similar to one another in their ambitions and expectations — in their essential psychology — than those who have had the misfortune of being caught between armies or of having been trapped in time by regional powers who, indeed, manipulate and treat them primarily as servants unto themselves.

Related Reference

Iran cuts Hamas’ funding for backing Syrian opposition – Washington Times – 6/2/2013.

Egypt to Hamas: We’re Coming for You – Israel Today | Israel News – 1/19/2014.

# # #

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Epigram

Hillel the Elder

"That which is distasteful to thee do not do to another. That is the whole of Torah. The rest is commentary. Now go and study."

"If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I? If not now, when?"

"Whosoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whosoever that saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world."

Oriana Fallaci
"Whether it comes from a despotic sovereign or an elected president, from a murderous general or a beloved leader, I see power as an inhuman and hateful phenomenon...I have always looked on disobedience toward the oppressive as the only way to use the miracle of having been born."

Talmud 7:16 as Quoted by Rishon Rishon in 2004
Qohelet Raba, 7:16

אכזרי סוף שנעשה אכזרי במקום רחמן

Kol mi shena`asa rahaman bimqom akhzari Sof shena`asa akhzari bimqom rahaman

All who are made to be compassionate in the place of the cruel In the end are made to be cruel in the place of the compassionate.

More colloquially translated: "Those who are kind to the cruel, in the end will be cruel to the kind."

Online Source: http://www.rishon-rishon.com/archives/044412.php

Abraham Isaac Kook

"The purely righteous do not complain about evil, rather they add justice.They do not complain about heresy, rather they add faith.They do not complain about ignorance, rather they add wisdom." From the pages of Arpilei Tohar.

Heinrich Heine
"Where books are burned, in the end people will be burned." -- From Almansor: A Tragedy (1823).

Simon Wiesenthal
Remark Made in the Ballroom of the Imperial Hotel, Vienna, Austria on the occasion of His 90th Birthday: "The Nazis are no more, but we are still here, singing and dancing."

Maimonides
"Truth does not become more true if the whole world were to accept it; nor does it become less true if the whole world were to reject it."

"The risk of a wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision."

Douglas Adams
"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?" Epigram appearing in the dedication of Richard Dawkins' The GOD Delusion.

Thucydides
"The Nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools."

Milan Kundera
"The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting."

Malala Yousafzai
“The terrorists thought that they would change our aims and stop our ambitions but nothing changed in my life except this: weakness, fear and hopelessness died. Strength, power and courage was born.”

Tanit Nima Tinat
"Who could die of love?"

What I Have Said About the Jews

My people, not that I speak for them, I nonetheless describe as a "global ethnic commune with its heart in Jerusalem and soul in the Land of Israel."

We have never given up on God, nor have we ever given up on one another.

Many things we have given up, but no one misses, say, animal sacrifice, and as many things we have kept, so we have still to welcome our Sabbath on Friday at sunset and to rest all of Saturday until three stars appear in the sky.

Most of all, through 5,773 years, wherever life has taken us, through the greatest triumphs and the most awful tragedies, we have preserved our tribal identity and soul, and so shall we continue eternally.

Anti-Semitism / Anti-Zionism = Signal of Fascism

I may suggest that anti-Zionism / anti-Semitism are signal (a little bit) of fascist urges, and the Left -- I'm an old liberal: I know my heart -- has been vulnerable to manipulation by what appears to me as a "Red Brown Green Alliance" driven by a handful of powerful autocrats intent on sustaining a medieval worldview in service to their own glorification. (And there I will stop).
One hopes for knowledge to allay fear; one hopes for love to overmatch hate.

Too often, the security found in the parroting of a loyal lie outweighs the integrity to be earned in confronting and voicing an uncomfortable truth.

Those who make their followers believe absurdities may also make them commit atrocities.

Positively Orwellian: Comment Responding to Claim that the Arab Assault on Israel in 1948 Had Not Intended Annihilation

“Revisionism” is the most contemptible path that power takes to abet theft and hide shame by attempting to alter public perception of past events.

On Press Freedom, Commentary, and Journalism

In the free world, talent -- editors, graphic artists, researchers, writers -- gravitate toward the organizations that suit their interests and values. The result: high integrity and highly reliable reportage and both responsible and thoughtful reasoning.

This is not to suggest that partisan presses don't exist or that propaganda doesn't exist in the west, but any reader possessed of critical thinking ability and genuine independence -- not bought, not programmed -- is certainly free to evaluate the works of earnest reporters and scholars.

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