Gaza youth manifesto says fuck Israel AND Hamas

[tolpuddlemartyr]

The Guardian website has a piece on some Gazan students who have launched a verbal volley at all sides in the ongoing bloody Palestinian/Israeli conflict. I'll let these guys speak for themselves.

Gaza Youth's Manifesto for Change is an extraordinary, impassioned cyber-scream in which young men and women from Gaza – where more than half the 1.5 million population is under 18 – make it clear that they've had enough. "Fuck Hamas..." begins the text. "Fuck Israel. Fuck Fatah. Fuck UN. Fuck UNWRA. Fuck USA! We, the youth in Gaza, are so fed up with Israel, Hamas, the occupation, the violations of human rights and the indifference of the international community!"

"Here in Gaza we are scared of being incarcerated, interrogated, hit, tortured, bombed, killed," reads the extraordinary document. "We are afraid of living, because every single step we take has to be considered and well-thought, there are limitations everywhere, we cannot move as we want, say what we want, do what we want, sometimes we even can't think what we want because the occupation has occupied our brains and hearts so terrible that it hurts and it makes us want to shed endless tears of frustration and rage!"

The text ends with a triple demand: "We want three things. We want to be free. We want to be able to live a normal life. We want peace. Is that too much to ask?"

I don't think it is, and I applaud these folks for their sanity and clarity!

[ltfred]

How, exactly, do they propose to achieve that? Nice letters? What mixture of non-violent, violent and diplomatic responses will they use? Are they planning to challenge Israel, or to work with them? Are they friends with Hamas, Israel, Fatah or none? What's the long-term goal they'd like to see? How about short-term goals? What rallies, attacks, programes or meetings have they organised? What's the strategy, and which tactics will be used to pursue that strategy? What response do they expect from Israel, Hamas, Fatah and the Quartet?

Actual social movements answer these questions before they do anything else. Until they do so, this is a joke in bad taste.

[askold]

What do you mean by bad taste?

These kids are disappointed in the way things are. This manifesto might not solve the problems in Gaza, but neither has any of the groups struggling over Gaza.

When Hamas and Israel look for an answer to the Gaza problem it always seems to include guns, exposives and death. These kids wrote a letter. It might not be the most effective attempt to improve the situation, but atleast noone died because of it.

[canadian mojo]

Gee Fred, do you think that maybe the goal in writing letters is to put a human face on an almost entirely faceless and demonized group of people? Let the world know that they are sick of the death and bullshit being spewed by both sides and that it is time to actually start doing something about it because the framework that used to support the Palestinian side is beginning to change?

Hamas has to worry because a popular movement needs to be, you know, popular in order to work. Israel needs to worry because hatred can be focused and 750000 makes for a good zerg rush. Putting both sides on notice that it is time to cut the bullshit is actually a pretty good strategy.

[Art Vandelay]

Jan 2, 2011 8:05:13 GMT -5 ltfred said:

How, exactly, do they propose to achieve that? Nice letters? What mixture of non-violent, violent and diplomatic responses will they use? Are they planning to challenge Israel, or to work with them? Are they friends with Hamas, Israel, Fatah or none? What's the long-term goal they'd like to see? How about short-term goals? What rallies, attacks, programes or meetings have they organised? What's the strategy, and which tactics will be used to pursue that strategy? What response do they expect from Israel, Hamas, Fatah and the Quartet?

Actual social movements answer these questions before they do anything else. Until they do so, this is a joke in bad taste.

Yeah, I don't think it's really a social movement, per se. Just some kids on the internet saying all major players in the Israel/Palestine conflict are purely self-serving and don't actually give two fucks about the average Gaza resident, to which I would respond with "no shit Sherlock".

[m52nickerson]

Jan 2, 2011 8:05:13 GMT -5 ltfred said:

Actual social movements answer these questions before they do anything else. Until they do so, this is a joke in bad taste.

What is wrong ltfred, the US not high enough on their "fuck you" list?

[malicious_bloke]

"We want three things. We want to be free. We want to be able to live a normal life. We want peace. Is that too much to ask?"

Read some extra guff about how if you want peace you need to be proper tooled up like and the above seems like any other call to start torching shit.

[Admiral Lithp]

Is it wrong that my thoughts immediately went to, "What would RR say about this?"

[Julian]

Fred. It was a cry for help from a group that's barely represented in the global consciousness or media noise and it got heard. That's where it had to start. You do know what amnesty international's logo is don't you, and why?

[Jodie]

Ltfred, considering it states right in the letter that these kids fear for their lives, demonstrating, nay saying all of this openly would probably gotten them incarerated and tortured, or killed. Hence the letter. Anonymity on the internet is a blessing sometimes.

[tolpuddlemartyr]

Jan 2, 2011 8:05:13 GMT -5 ltfred said:

How, exactly, do they propose to achieve that? Nice letters? What mixture of non-violent, violent and diplomatic responses will they use? Are they planning to challenge Israel, or to work with them? Are they friends with Hamas, Israel, Fatah or none? What's the long-term goal they'd like to see? How about short-term goals? What rallies, attacks, programes or meetings have they organised? What's the strategy, and which tactics will be used to pursue that strategy? What response do they expect from Israel, Hamas, Fatah and the Quartet?

Actual social movements answer these questions before they do anything else. Until they do so, this is a joke in bad taste.

It's easy to deconstruct this entirely human expression of frustration from the safety of ones armchair and declare it to be non-constructive.

A couple of things, their audience isn't necessarily just the powers that be in Israel or Palestine, but ordinary people in Israel, Palestine and the wider world and that is a powerful thing. It reminds everyone that Palestinians are like the rest of us, normal people that want to live normal lives. Exactly the kind of folks that get sidelined in the endless horsetrading between the big shots in Israel, Hamas, Fatah and the Quartet.

Personally it reminded me of the message put out by the Stiff Little Fingers in Northern Ireland decades ago-a band that got both Catholic and Protestant kids coming to their gigs when people thought that was impossible. Their songs condemned the men of violence on all sides and called for an "Alternative Ulster". That didn't stop the Northern Ireland conflict either but it help put a human face on it.

[JamaicanJesus]

it really doesn't surprise me that a gaza youth would say that. if you watched international news, you'd see stuff that israel does to the palestenians over there. stuff you certainly won't find on american news.

[shadoom]

Jan 2, 2011 16:06:04 GMT -5 JamaicanJesus said:

it really doesn't surprise me that a gaza youth would say that. if you watched international news, you'd see stuff that israel does to the palestenians over there. stuff you certainly won't find on american news.

Like what? Stopping them from firing missiles into civilian areas?

Israel is simply putting the safety of its own citizens above the safety of Palestinians. What they do is no worse than a Western government would do were it in a similar situation.
The constant demonisation of Israel by leftists is unfair, uninformed and borders on anti-Semitic.

[MaybeNever]

"Leftists"? Seriously? I wasn't aware that word was used non-ironically since it's not, you know, 1954.

[tolpuddlemartyr]

Covered that little canard a year ago Shadoom, check this out.



See, that handy little graph is from an Israeli government website covering a period where they broke a truce with Hamas and restarted preemptive operations against Hamas, look what happens to the rocket attacks-they go up, not down! More information and links here.

Israel's strikes into Palestine don't decrease rocket attacks, they increase them which has the incidental side effect of keeping terrified Israeli voters backing paleoconservative politicians who sell the idea that you can get rid of a political problem by blowing it up!

As for the suggestion that criticism of Israel is in any way equivalent to anti semitism, what steaming load! It has as much validity as Robert Mugabe's claim that western censure of his regime is "racist".

Frankly I'll stick with the line of the Gazan youth who penned the manifesto in the OP, all of the "sides" in this conflict - referring specifically to the old men of violence who run said "sides" are equally corrupt and inhuman, fuck 'em!