But as Kotatsu mentioned, you guys also are well informed and knew of the flotilla's intention to force against the blocade last week.
I still sort of get the impression that this is at least mildly surprising to you. Getting these boats and the volunteers and the money needed and the material and everything has taken a long time, and I know all the Swedes aboard had regular contact with people back home throughout the trip until the Israeli came, so I would be extremely surprised if the people who had organised all this and all the people who have in some way contributed would be entirely clueless about what day the ships would approach Israeli territorial waters and make for Gaza. The intention to get to Gaza -- and thus to break the blockade -- has, as far as I can remember, been at least implicit in the project since at least First of May last year (perhaps even further back, because I can't remember when I first heard about it).
The left -- and everyone else who supported this convoy -- were well aware of where the ship was and what its intent was. The wildcard was the Israeli military; there was no way to tell what they would do. A friend of mine actually hoped that they would sort of give in to some form of vague international pressure and just let the ship pass and thus lift the blockade, but that seemed to me to be somewhat naïve even before yesterday.
Not in Canada. The demonstrations were international. It's not Memorial Day everywhere.
The demonstrations in Sweden that I know of were held after working hours. In my case, it was two hours after I finish work. I don't know about demonstrations in other countries, though.
Go to the local Hillel Jewish pro-Israel meeting. Find an opportunity to ask them: "how many of you would accept a Palestinian state if it indeed recognizes and lives in peace with the Jewish state"?
I am willing to bet that, at least, 90% of the hands will go up.
Go to your local "Palestinian solidarity group" meeting and ask the same question (in reverse) -- how many would be willing to accept a Jewish state if it does, in fact, live in peace with a Palestinian state.
I am willing to bet less than 10% of the hands would go up.
I don't recall a single organisation speaking at the protest yesterday -- including the three Muslim ones -- who didn't advocate some form of two-state solution, and this was applauded by the entire audience every time. Maybe Sweden is aberrant, but I have never met anyone on the left here who has actually advocated anything other than either a two-state solution, or a solution in which there is only one state, but where the Israeli and the Palestinians coexist peacefully side by side.
But unfortunately, you wouldn't have been able to attend massive protests about it, because such protests don't exist.
And like Skeptic (or whoever it was), I think that is a pity. I see no reason there shouldn't be any such protests. Could it be because the political right generally don't do protests, and the political left would never stage such a thing because of dogma?
I'm not saying it's a conspiracy, I'm just amazed at how extremely fast these groups can be channelled, organized on short notice and sprung into action whenever Israel is to blame.
I would say, based on my experience from Sweden, that protests against government murders of civilians in Iran, in Kurdistan and so on can be arranged as quickly. I will concede that they are not as numerous, and never as well-attended, but I have seen several large protests against the government in Iran the same day, or the day after, it has performed some atrocity.
To some extent, I do believe most of the people organising these latter events seem to be older, and belonging to interest groups rather than "proper" organisations, meaning that they would be forced to plan these protests after work hours, whereas many of the Palestine solidarity groups seem to consist of younger people, who may for instance have shorter work hours and so on. This could well be a factor in why other kinds of protests are sometimes delayed.
Only they never bother to demonstrate when dictatorships engage in war.
Except, of course, for Iran, Iraq, Chile, Franco's Spain, and so on.
Well, did you demonstrate when a Palestinian mob massacred reservist soldiers in Ramallah? No? Didn't think so.
I can give a few other examples when just what you said -- Palestinian mob killing soldiers (or civilians) -- occurred.
I'm willing to bet very good money you didn't demonstrate in any of those cases, either.
Thank you for letting me answer before you put words in my mouth. It appears, however, that you have made the wrong deduction. While, as Pardalis points out, there are no large-scale protests against Palestinian aggression, I have repeatedly protested in conversations with friends on the left whenever these things have happened. I have repeatedly made it clear to my leftist friends that I find the killings of Israeli civilians as despicable as the killings of Palestinian civilians. I have repeatedly challenged my friends on the left on what I perceive to be some sort of mindless censoring of Israeli activities, but an equally mindless acceptance of Palestinian guiltlessness.
If there were large-scale protests against Palestinian murders of Israeli civilians, I would be as likely to participate as I am in pro-Palestinian protests. What matters is whether or not someone has been killed, not who has killed her. But, again, there are no such protests.
Here is a clip from MEMRI.org that shows at least one woman talking about martyrdom.
http://www.memri.org/clip/en/0/0/0/0/239/0/2489.htm
Sorry, but when I click that, I get an error message saying that I need a certain plug-in, and when I click the link to get that plug-in, nothing happens. Do you know if the same clip is available at, for instance, YouTube?
I’m looking at this list and I don’t know what you consider to be conservative. Can you identify which ones you consider to be conservative and which you consider neutral?
Certainly:
Politically conservative groups:
The Conservative party
The People's Party
The Centre party
The Church of Sweden
Politically neutral:
- Amnesty International
- Ship to Gaza
- The Swedish-Turkish Society
- The Palestine Group
- The Union of Swedish Muslims
- JIPS
However, I would like to correct myself. I was not very familiar with Emmaus before, and having checked, I realise that they cannot be described as "conservative", and thus I retract their inclusion in that list. On the other hand, I understand that JIPS
is politically neutral (according to a friend; I haven't checked it myself).
