From "The Local"

Swedes who demonstrate over Israeli attacks are not anti-Semites. Calling them names is an attempt to silence criticism of Israeli policies, argues Stockholm-based Palestinian Alaa Kullab.

[No it would be far fetched to call Hamas and Hezbollah hang- ons anti semites considering that they almost exclusevily are semites themselves! Not hard to denie any anti- semitism then! What they are is anti jewish and anti israelian. That's racism and nothing else]

In an article published on The Local this week, Israeli journalist David Stavrou argued that much Swedish criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza had turned anti-Semitic. Politicians and demonstrators who gathered in Stockholm’s Sergels Torg did not understand the reality of the Middle East, he claims.

[And right he are. People actually believe that the only democracy in the area are to be blamed for the so called "palestinians" hardships when it in reality their own "governments" are to be blamed.]

Slinging accusations of anti-Semitism is easy. But why do people in any part of the world need to be professors of political science to go out and demonstrate against the killing of civilians, when they see it happening and broadcast live on their TVs?

[And it does not take a professor of political science to understand that most of those "civilians" are not civilians at all. Just because you does not weare an uniform does not make you a "civilian", and let's not forget all those human shields that are so popular in use within hamas. There are irrefutable evidence for this!]

Let’s be clear – hatred and agitation should not be tolerated, but people should also beware of how they describe events in the Middle East. The following statement from Stavrou’s article could also be seen as a subtle form of agitation: “Swedes, as lovers of peace and freedom, would be wise to encourage those who fight these forces of evil thousands of miles away or they might find them in their back yard. If they're not there already.”

[Oh they are here in our back yard all ready!]

Accusations of anti-Semitism are a tool used to silence anyone who criticizes Israeli policies. But would any one criticizing the policy of Iran be labeled as anti-Muslim or anti-Persian? Are critics of the Chinese Government routinely described as anti-Chinese? Is condemning the Saudi Arabian government anti-Arab? Surely aggression, military occupation and violations of human and political rights should not be put beyond criticism?

[Are people that critizises arab and islamic politics anti arab or anti islamic? I bet that in your eyes they are. "Surely agression, military occupation and violation of human and political rights should not be put beyond critisism?". Ah, here you put the hammer on the nails head. You just described just about every islamic state on earth and a few more that are not states at all (like the gaza strip and the west bank), we can even chuck in some none islamic states like Zimbabwe and Venezuela and the likes. The common factor is that they are all theological or socialist states- or both. The fact is that Israel STILL is the only state in the area that can be described as a democracy.

Stavrou’s article also claimed: “there is no Israeli occupation in Gaza”. This is technically true - there were no Israeli forces inside Gaza – but it ignores the wider reality. Israel controls the air space, sea coast and land borders; the people of Gaza are prisoners, - within their prison they may have internal self-rule, but they are not free

[There is no Israeli occupation in Gaza. - That is not only "technically" true, it's true period. For a state to be occupied, there has to be a state to begin with! Why does not the people of Gaza concentrate on building or buying airplanes boats instead of spending billion of dollars on rockets and mortars that they fire in to Israel? Let's not forget that the people in the Gaza strip allmost exclusively consists of Egyptian arabs. Egypt who has built their own wall bordering Gaza. THEY does not want to have anything to do with their own kin. Why would Israel? And still, the Gazans reliy allmost exclusively on Israel to get in goods, power and water in to the strip. And they repay it by sending suicide bombers in to Israel (when they can) and on a daily basis shoot rockets and mortars on to Israelian soil. Shees!]

Since June 2006, the Palestinians have been paying an unimaginable social cost as they are collectively punished for electing Hamas as their government. This despite the fact that Western monitors agreed that the election was free and fair.

[Ahh, but the nazi regime was elected "free and fair", that does not mean that the nazis brought about anything good! Another thing- under twenty days of barrage and land operations "only" 1500 people died (4-500 according to independent sources). If Israel had wanted to, Gaza would have been a parking strip right now. That -in my eyes- shows how exquisitely the IDF did do, not to harm any civilians. Mailbombing to let people know which places to avoid, even sending out SMS:s and calling up people to warn them. If you are a true civilian and still lingers around hamas facilities after that- then you deserve what's coming.]

Since Hamas has been in power, Gaza has been sealed and no one is allowed to enter or to exit for any reason. The people of Gaza have been put on what Dov Weisglass, an adviser to Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister, mockingly describes as ‘a diet’. Palestinians, he was quoted by The Observer as saying, will be kept thin, but not be made to die of hunger.

[Yes and rightly so! After the walls sealed Gaza off the suicide bombings have gone down almost to nil. I also remember a TV report showing a family in Gaza sitting on the kitchen floor saying they were starving, but when the camera panned through the kitchen it zoomed in on a big pile of food stuff and botteled water on the floor of the kitchen. Needless to say that it was all of Israelian brands. Before "Molten Lead" there were some 1300 trucks passing over the Israelian border in to Gaza with supplies and goods every week and to my knowledge that is the case now too, save for UN trucks that has stopped going in to Gaza because they are being robbed by hamas men repidetly. Also, 92% of all the power in Gaza are distributed and delivered from Israel; power that the hamas "government" repidetily has not payed for!]

The only way people have been able to survive this far has been due to the tunnels that smuggle food and goods from Egypt. The illegal blockade was enforced to keep Gaza under siege - starving, humiliated, diseased, and exposed to selective assassination. The place was effectively turned into an open air prison. Only barely enough food and fuel was allowed to enter to hinder mass disease and death.

[So one and a half million people can't subside themselves! There are almost no farms, no live stock farms and no other industry to speak about. Their only export are figs, but the Israelians yields ten times the amount of figs from a comparable area. 90% of the tunnels to Egypt was used for smuggeling weapons and explosives- something that there seems to be no shortage of in Gaza. Hamas let their people starve while spending Europeian and American tax money on quassam rockets!]

Richard Falk, the United Nations Special Reporter for human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, said the blockade subjected "an entire human community to life-endangering conditions of utmost cruelty." Falk called it "a holocaust-in-the-making" and appealed to world governments and international public opinion "to act urgently to prevent these current genocidal tendencies from culminating in a collective tragedy". One can agree or disagree with this statement, but can not label it as anti-Semitism; at least he, Richard Falk himself, is Jewish.

[Once again. There are no blockade against food water and medicine! There are however a blockade against free movement of people, something that is sad but a reality that have almost to a hundred per cent stopped suicide bombings inside Israel! And once again. Why does the writer not condemn the Egyptian wall and the Egyptian policy of shooting every Gazan that tries to enter Egypt?

That Falk is Jewish does not proove or mean a thing. There are ceartinly miljons of muslims in the world that are deascent peacful people- that does not mean that they all are- or that the core problem does not lie in islamistic violent teatching, something that is extencivelly being taught in the schools in Gaza.]

Let us forget about Gaza for a while, and assume - since it is ruled by Hamas -, the people there “deserve” what happened to them.

Let us instead talk about the West Bank ruled - theoretically - by Mahmoud Abbas, “the man of Peace.” The crucial fact to remember here is that the whole West Bank has been under military occupation for almost forty two years, forty percent of its territory is occupied by illegal settlements which have been built since the 1970s (before Hamas even existed) and almost six hundred road blocks separate cities and villages from each other.

[Oh come on! The west bank is indeed occupied.- By arabs! The West Bank was Israelian territory thousands of years before anyone ever had heard of arabs, or "palestinians" a constructed people of 6/4 1967. Get it! On the West Bank allmost all (besides the Jews) are Jordanian arabs! THEY are the occupiers.]

Blaargh I could go on and on debuncing this article but there is just so much space in this forum. Please read the rest here.

Please also read Michael J. Totten's report over here. (February 8 2009- A dispatch from the border with Gaza) and This.