Australian Atheists Forum

wadaye wrote: ↑Mon Oct 30, 2023 11:49 amIsrael specifically categorises itself by race, specifically the Jewish race

Palestine on the other hand has no such racial definition.

That's a moral plus for Palestine while Israel is considered a special case

Irrev-Black wrote: ↑Wed Nov 01, 2023 10:20 pm UN High Commissioner for Human Rights resigns.

By Ramzy Baroud
“(Tutsis) are cockroaches. We will kill you.”
Arabs are like “drugged cockroaches in a bottle.”
The first quote was a line repeated frequently by the Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines, a Rwandan radio station, which is largely blamed for inciting hatred towards the Tutsi people.
The second is by former Israeli army Chief-of-Staff, Gen. Rafael Eitan, in 1983, speaking at an Israeli parliament’s committee.
Rwanda’s hate-filled radio station operated for only one year (1993-94), yet the outcome of its incitement resulted in one of the saddest and most tragic episodes in modern human history: the genocide of the Tutsis.
Compare ‘Radio Genocide’ to the massive Israeli-US-Western propaganda, dehumanising Palestinians almost with identical language to that used by Hutus media.
...
Ariel Kallner, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, explained Israel’s goal behind the Gaza war. “Right now, one goal: Nakba! A Nakba that will overshadow the Nakba of 1948,” he said.

The same sentiment was conveyed by Israeli Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant, the man responsible for translating Israel’s declaration of war into an action plan: “We are fighting human animals and we will act accordingly,” he said on 9 October. ‘Accordingly,’ here, meant that “there will be no electricity, no food, no fuel. Everything is closed.” And, of course, thousands of dead civilians.
Since Israel’s top political authorities have already declared that all Palestinians are collectively responsible for the 7 October events, this means that all Palestinians are, per Gallant’s assessment, ‘human animals’, deserving no mercy.
...
From Golda Meir’s “Palestinians did not exist” (1969) to Menachem Begin’s Palestinians are “beasts walking on two legs” (1982), to Eli Ben Dahan’s “Palestinians are like animals, they aren’t human” (2013), to numerous other racist and dehumanising references, the Zionist discourse remains unchanged.

Now, it is all coming together, the language and the action are in perfect alignment. Perhaps, it is time to start paying attention to how Israel’s genocidal language is translated to an actual genocide on the ground. Sadly, for thousands of Palestinian civilians, this awareness is simply too late.

A group of Jewish writers drafted this letter after seeing an old argument gain new power: the claim that critiquing Israel is antisemitic. Editors at a corporate-owned magazine were prepared to publish the letter, but their lawyers advised against it. The writers share this letter in solidarity with those who continue to speak out in support of Palestinian freedom.

We are Jewish writers, artists, and activists who wish to disavow the widespread narrative that any criticism of Israel is inherently antisemitic. Israel and its defenders have long used this rhetorical tactic to shield Israel from accountability, dignify the US’s multibillion-dollar investment in Israel’s military, obscure the deadly reality of occupation, and deny Palestinian sovereignty. Now, this insidious gagging of free speech is being used to justify Israel’s ongoing military bombardment of Gaza and to silence criticism from the international community.

We condemn the recent attacks on Israeli and Palestinian civilians and mourn such harrowing loss of life. In our grief, we are horrified to see the fight against antisemitism weaponized as a pretext for war crimes with stated genocidal intent.