Reps. Ellison and Baird in Gaza: Absolutely Appalled
The world is changing.
Senator John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, went to Gaza with Congressmen Keith Ellison (D-MN) and Brian Baird(D-WA).
Here is what the two Congressmen said: "After spending the day visiting various locations within Gaza and meeting with civilians and relief workers, Baird and Ellison were deeply affected by what they had seen and heard.
"The stories about the children affected me the most," said Ellison. "No parent, or anyone who cares for kids, can remain unmoved by what Brian and I saw here.
"The amount of physical destruction and the depth of human suffering here is staggering" said Baird, "Entire neighborhoods have been destroyed, schools completely leveled, fundamental water, sewer, and electricity facilities hit and relief agencies heavily damaged. The personal stories of children being killed in their homes or schools, entire families wiped out, and relief workers prevented from evacuating the wounded are heart wrenching - what went on here, and what is continuing to go on, is shocking and troubling beyond words."
what happened to Kerry's comments? Or did I mis-read something? Sounded as if Kerry went along...?
February 20, 2009 10:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
I didn't have a statement from Kerry.
February 20, 2009 11:33 AM | Reply | Permalink
AP coverage of Kerry.... http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5i5jc2WonteZf6fupKX4PMwaZNsfAD96ERHJO1
this is kind of funny. Talk about doublespeak!
Were Ellison, Baird and Kerry even traveling together? Who can tell from the Ellison/Baird statement and the AP piece?
And here's interesting BBC coverage: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7898801.stm
February 20, 2009 5:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
the sad thing is all this killing and destruction is hidden to the people by the media.
yet when you point that obvious fact out and it becomes clear the control of this information is intentional you get called names.
i dont know anything about gods intentions but i do know once a certain point has been passed ,in anything in life, there is no turning back.
israel has passed that point.
to each and every action there is an = and opposite reaction.
February 20, 2009 12:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
People are still wasting their breath talking about peace in that pig pen over there ?
There is going to be NO peace, people, in that place. There will be hate, bombs, war, murder ...
The Americans will continue supplying white phosphorus and their allies will continue dropping it on civilians. Yawn.
Meanwhile Pakistan is swirling down the drain - anyone interested in Swat valley, for instance ?
February 20, 2009 12:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
If they think things in Gaza are bad, they should take a tour of Iraq.
February 20, 2009 3:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
Being from Minnesota originally, I always find the dichotomy of their politicians to be very illuminating, as in the difference between Paul Wellstone and Norm Coleman.
Keith Ellison has proven himself to be a credit to the State and the People with his actions in office, and especially by bearing witness to the devastation in Gaza. Compare this to the actions of his counterpart, Michelle Bachmann, whose time is spent going on talkshows and mindlessly spewing lies and demagoguery. They are indeed representatives of the state of their respective parties--res ipsa loquitor.
February 20, 2009 3:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
And, yet, Hamas declared it a great victory.
February 20, 2009 7:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
Reps Ellison and Baird have stressed that they are not representing the Obama administration. One report says the DoS cautioned against their visit to Gaza.
Kerry's tour was entirely separate and the accounts differ on whether or not he represents the administration. Kerry has said that his tour of Gaza does not represent any changes towards Hamas on the part of the administration or Congress.
As far as Kerry's reactions to what he has seen there, this is one of the most complete accounts I could find:
"Kerry, who inspected the ruins of a school destroyed in the Israeli offensive and toured a neighbourhood heavily damaged in the fighting, spoke to local residents.
Shaarhabel Alzeem, a prominent lawyer, told him: "We highly appreciate your visit here and hope you can talk to your colleagues and say that we want peace with Israel. But we also need to live respectable lives."
[The CSM reports that the attorney also told Kerry: "that long border closures were major problems, fueling frustrations and radicalism in Gaza. He said the opening of the borders would release tensions."]
Kerry replied: "Your political leadership needs to understand that any nation that has rockets hitting it for many years threatening its residents is going to respond.
"[Hamas] needs to make it clear how it is willing to move to make peace and those decisions have not been made yet."
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/02/2009219135025156298.html
Senator Kerry has also indicated that the administration wants Syria to help disarm Hezbollah while staying out of Lebanon's internal affairs. Evidently, Kerry sees no contradictions in the demands made of Syria.
George Mitchell's avoidance of Gaza is more troublesome given his brief and the fact that congressmen have made the effort.
February 20, 2009 7:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
Now that Israel has received widespread condemnation for its overwhelming use of force including white phosphorous fleschette shells and depleted uranium (which is still highly radioactive and carcenogenic) on innocent people in a locked-down prison whit nowhere to escape to, stand by for damage-control PR.
A nauseaus stream of Holocaust survivor stories and Hollywood movies is about to beseige us even more than the annual barrage of such propagandized tripe. Israel and the Israeli-U.S. Lobby (CAMERA, AIPAC, NACPAC and others) continues to rely on the Holocaust and our collective guilt so that Israel can do today to the Palestinians what was done to them in Europe 70 years ago. What is happening in Gaza today is no different than what happened in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943. Only this time it is Jews persecuting, murdering and imprisoning Palestinians instead of Nazis persecuting, murdering and imprisoning Jews. And this atrocity continues with full U.S. support because we believe in myths instead of truths.
February 22, 2009 11:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
One more thing. Please consider this:
That is why we cannot understand how victims of the Nazis and their ancestors could act so much like Nazis in their treatment of Palestinians. And it is an interesting historical footnote, that among the first Christian Zionists, the Pilgrims in 1620, who were more theo-fascist persecutors than persecuted, like present-day Zionists, they had the exact same saying as the present-day Zionists:
"A land with no people for a People with no land".
This is as if the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas or Palestine were either not people, or not people of whose humanity was worth considering, or that those coming and occupying had no alternative lands from which they came that they could stay in and build something where they came from and/or resist the evils terrorizing them.
The crimes being committed by the US in Iraq and Afghanistan (preemptive and aggressive wars founded on lies, phony intelligence and contrived pretexts) and elsewhere, along with the crimes being committed by the State of Israel and its supporters (also with lies, phony intelligence and contrived pretexts) are the exact same crimes for which Nazis were tried and properly hanged for at Nuremberg.
(http://wwwthesixthestate.blogspot.com/2007/07/just-war-interrelated-predicates-and.html)
And the violence of the Intifada and Palestinian Resistance, is of the same order, and has the same moral legitimacy, as the uprising of the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto against Nazi Occupiers. Only a moral eunuch could possibly see the violence of the occupied oppressed resisting illegal occupation and total extermination as on the same level as the violence of the illegally occupying oppressor seeking to do the exterminating. Or, to put it another way: Say a woman is at her home and a rapist attacks; say she is armed; say she shoots at the attacking rapist and misses and the bullet hits a child across the street. The moral culpability still rests with the rapist not the intended rape victim. The Palestinians are in the position of the rape victim and the Zionists are the rapist.
At the infamous Wannsee Conference on January 20, 1942, of the 15 high-level Nazis that met to authorize and plan "The Final Solution to the Jewish Problem", 8 of them held doctorates and 9 of them were lawyers. They were not there only to plan the mechanics and logistics of genocide, they were there to provide a legal rationale for genocide and indeed discuss methods to make genocide look like self-defense of the Reich and even gain mass acceptance--and culpability--for it; they were there to dress up in legal refinements, the ugliest of the ugly. This is precisely what the Zionists (Jewish and non-Jewish) are doing and what the righteous (Jewish and non-Jewish) are resisting and must resist.
James M. Craven/
Blackfoot Name: Omahkohkiaayo i'poyi
Member, Blackfoot Nation
Professor of Economics and Geography
Biographical Subject: Marquis "Who's Who in: The World; America; The West; Science and Engineering; Finance and Industry/Business; American Education
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February 23, 2009 2:25 AM | Reply | Permalink