Reviving Resistance in Palestine

[shira]

At the Cinema Cafe in Nablus, hiply dressed youth sip coffee drinks, surrounded by a flashy mall and blaring pop music. It's an odd place to have an existential discussion about revolution, but, well, this is the West Bank.

Beesan Ramadan, a young activist I met during a volunteer teaching stint at a local university, is up front about her views: "I'm not against armed struggle, but I don't like to see people dying for no reason."

The young cafe patrons don't look terribly interested in warfare, except maybe the kind in the movies shown at the adjacent theater. But a few years ago, Nablus itself was a warzone of cinematic proportions. Today it is a stage for a mix of political tragedy and romance.

Palestine, long the real and symbolic focal point of the Arab people's freedom struggles, is stirring with the winds of change wafting in from the uprisings among its neighbors. But even in an increasingly interconnected and globalized Arab world, peace still looks perilously distant from the occupied territories, and even youth activism feels fatigued.

more...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michelle-chen/reviving-resistance-in-pa_b_893768.html

Oh for the glorious days of more terror and bloodshed, child combatants, "resisting" against a racist ideology. A "progressive" writer not particularly satisfied with non-violence, itching for revolution Breivik style, down to the last Palestinian....

[shira]

1. Now here's the Guardian giving a platform to a "progressive" bigoted warmonger...

The chance of Ramadan
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jul/31/chance-ramadan-islam-conquests-libya

=========

He's recorded as saying he'd dance at Trafalgar Square if Iran attacked Israel...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E93DaFoXx7w&feature=player_embedded

And here's the bigot accusing non-Israeli Jews of bombing Gaza...
http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/42342/police-probe-antisemitic-speech-lse

And saving the best for last, here he is saying the Mercaz Harav terror attack killing high schoolers was justified...
http://www.jpost.com/International/Article.aspx?id=95074

[shira]

2. And yet another "progressive" view from Aug 4, 2011

According to the author, Israel is...

"a settler, colonial, apartheid movement clinging to a racialist, exclusivist ideology that neither wishes nor intends to allow another state to emerge between the Mediterranean sea and the Jordan river, let alone allowing Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and be compensated for their hardships, as was stipulated as a condition when the UN accepted Israel as a member state on 11 May 1949.

and...


“As if the forced dispossession from 78% of their homeland was not enough, the Israeli military occupied the remaining parts of Palestine in 1967. Israel had planned for that occupation long before the war.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/04/palestinians-secular-state

In other words, the great "progressive" view that Israel has no right to exist.

Yet another example of the EUMC working definition of antisemitism (which is rejected by antisemites) sold as conventional - and kosher - progressive thought.