This might just be the root of her problems …

June 23, 2015 at 13:14 (Adult Content, Cartoons, Humour)
July 26, 2014 at 21:23 (Adult Content, Israel)
What’s a ‘nice Jewish girl’ doing in a place like this?
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A new Facebook page showcases a new way for Israeli women to support the troops — by stripping down practically to their birthday suit.
“Standing With the IDF” calls on Israel women to raise morale (so to speak) by uploading sexy pictures of the their bodies, upon which uplifting messages have been scrawled. The page’s intro is pretty self-explanatory: “You keep us safe from above, and we will watch you from below!”
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Much too rude to post ….. so click HERE at your own risk.
(It seems that the page has been taken down …. Sorry)
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Here’ just one example of what you will find …
Thank goodness there are women with healthier outlooks ….
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Israel denies Palestinian women their basic right to freedom of movement. (Issam Rimawi / APA images)
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As Israel’s assault on the besieged Palestinian population in Gaza approaches its third week, we continue to hear about the “disproportionate number” of women and children victims. This expression begs the question: what is a proportionate number of women and children killed in a genocide?
As Jadaliyya’s Maya Mikdashi asks in her op-ed titled “Can Palestinian men be victims?”, if a significant majority of the killed were adult men, would Israel’s crimes be lesser?
A different analysis of gendered violence is necessary: one that recognizes that no “proportions” are acceptable because all deaths should be mourned, while providing the tools for a differential understanding of the manifestations of violence.
The feminist network INCITE! Women and Trans People of Color Against Violence has always understood that state violence is both racialized and gendered.
Zionism is a prime example of that; it is a racist ideology grounded in the privileging of one ethno-religious group over all others.
When a state views a population — its dispossessed, disenfranchised and occupied indigenous population — as a ”demographic threat,” that view is fundamentally both racist and gendered.
Racist population control relies specifically on violence against women. So it is not surprising that Mordechai Kedar, an Israeli military intelligence officer turned academic, would matter-of-factly suggest this week that “raping the wives and mothers of Palestinian combatants” would deter attacks by Hamas militants.
Similarly, Israeli lawmaker Ayelet Shaked did not attempt to present the murder of Palestinian children and their mothers as unfortunate, disproportionate “collateral damage” — she openly called for it by asserting that Palestinian women must be killed too, because they give birth to “little snakes.”
This comment reflects an Israeli infrastructure designed to sustain high rates of miscarriages by blocking basic resources such as water and medical supplies, forcing women in labor to wait at military checkpoints on their way to a hospital, and generally creating inhumane and unlivable conditions for Palestinians.
This latest murderous attack on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip has not only taken the lives of hundreds of Palestinians, but it has also increased miscarriages, pre-term labor and stillbirths.
Ethiopian-Israeli women, most of them Jewish, have also been subject to mandatory contraceptive injections without their consent.
Ending Zionism is a feminist and a reproductive justice issue.
Of course, gendered violence as a tool for settler-colonialism is not a new strategy; settler-colonialism, patriarchy and official hypocrisy usually go hand in hand.
Nineteenth-century France claimed to be liberating Algerian women even as it torched entire villages and towns. The proverbial colonial white man would have us believe that he was acting on the selfless impulse to save brown women from brown men, even as the colonial power he served impoverished entire countries.
Algerian women were certainly no better off as result of French colonialism; in fact, their circumstances deteriorated significantly.
The George W. Bush administration gave itself a pat on the back for supposedly liberating women in Afghanistan from the Taliban. Yet we see throughout history, and not just inAfghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Algeria or Palestine, that wars have never liberated women and gender nonconforming people of color.
Today, Israel has developed a new brand of this hypocrisy, as it claims that it is more civilized than the Palestinian people because it is supposedly a more “gay-friendly” country. This is pinkwashing, Israel’s attempt to distract from its ongoing human rights violations by pointing to its supposedly better gay rights record.
But that record, once again, is racist.
Any Jewish citizen of Israel can and must serve in the Israeli occupation forces, but these are the murderous forces engaging in the genocide of the Palestinian people.
Does it make for a more moral army if some of its killer soldiers are openly gay? Stop to think of who the purveyor of the greater violence is. Who is denying Palestinian women, children, gays, lesbians, trans people and straight men their most basic rights — freedom of movement, safety, shelter, food, a home, life? One has to acknowledge that the guilty party is “civilized” Israel, not Palestinian heteropatriarchy.
War — militarism — is a hyper-masculinist activity that glorifies and rewards all violence, including gendered violence, and a soldier trained in violence cannot put that violence aside when he or she gets home.
All of Israeli society is trained in violence. And violence is not a pair of combat boots one can leave at the door; violence becomes second nature (unless it was first nature, in which case it is further aggravated) and the entire community that engages in warfare is a more violent community — not just at the war front.
This is what we are witnessing today, as we have observed it again and again every time Israel escalates its assault on the Palestinian people.
As for Palestinians, there are no battlefronts, no “war zones.” All of historic Palestine is the battlefront as mobs of Israelis take to the streets in violent rampages.
This realization has always been at the very core of INCITE’s analysis. We understand that in situations of settler-colonialism, indigenous women, trans people and gender non-conforming people bear the brunt of a nexus of racism and sexism. We are engaging in a joint struggle, from India to the Arab world to South West Asia, to Africa and the Americas, for the dignity and full sovereignty of indigenous people.
This is why INCITE! endorsed, in 2010, the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel and remains committed to the grassroots struggle against state-sponsored violence against the entire Palestinian people.
Nada Elia served on the Steering Collective of INCITE! Women and Trans People of Color Against Violence when it endorsed boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel and is currently serving on the organizing collective of the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI).
February 18, 2013 at 08:27 (Activism, Adult Content, Boycott Israel, Gay Rights, International Solidarity, Israel, Palestine, zionist harassment)
Lucas, a vocal opponent of Palestinian rights, is a pornographer whose work includes Men of Israel, a film featuring men having sex against the backdrop of the ruins of ethnically cleansed Palestinian villages.
Members of NYC Queers Against Israeli Apartheid staged a sit-in at the New York LGBT Center to protest ban on Palestine events, 8 June 2011 (source).
Queer activists in New York City have welcomed a decision by the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center (LGBT Center) to end a two-year ban on events related to Palestine.
The LGBT Center announced the end of the “moratorium” and a new “space use” policy in a statement on 15 February.
But NYC Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QAIA) cautioned in a response posted onlinethat, “we in QAIA believe that the true test of the Center’s new space usage policy will come when we request space at the Center.”
QAIA pointed to a clause in the LGBT Center’s new policy emphasizing that “no group utilizing space at the Center shall engage in hate speech or bigotry of any kind.”
“We completely deplore bigotry of any kind,” QAIA said, “but we cannot help but wonder who will define ‘hate speech” and/or ‘bigotry of any kind.’”
“Such open-ended policies have frequently been used to silence critics of Israel, most often when anti-Arab/anti-Muslim forces conflate criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism,” QAIA added.
Managers at the LGBT Center imposed the ban two years ago, succumbing to the threat of a donor boycott orchestrated by Michael Lucas, after Siege Busters, a group that had been meeting at the center for over a year, requested space to hold an Israeli Apartheid Week event.
Lucas, a vocal opponent of Palestinian rights, is a pornographer whose work includes Men of Israel, a film featuring men having sex against the backdrop of the ruins of ethnically cleansed Palestinian villages.
QAIA has spearheaded a determined two-year campaign to open the center back up to Palestine solidarity groups.
Matters came to a head last week after it was revealed in Gay City News that the LGBT Center had refused a request for space for Sarah Schulman to do a reading from her new book Israel/Palestine and the Queer International.
In an interview with Saeed Jones of BuzzFeed, Schulman called the ban a “weird kind of anti-semitism,” where LGBT Center managers held “cliched and stereotyped beliefs about punitive rich Jews who will pull out their Jew-money if anyone criticizes Israel.”
Amid rising controversy about what now effectively amounted to book-banning, the LGBT Center’s decision to lift the ban is a clear indication that intimidation, threats and bullying from donors cannot make the issue of Palestine disappear or silence Queer activists.
From: NYC Queers Against Israeli Apartheid:
15 February 2013
The New York City Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center issued a statement lifting the moratorium on Palestine solidarity organizing and discussion of Israel/Palestine. While we are pleased to see the Center’s announcement, we in QAIA believe that the true test of the Center’s new space usage policy will come when we request space at the Center. We are also concerned that the Center’s guidelines for using space there says “no group utilizing space at the Center shall engage in hate speech or bigotry of any kind.” We completely deplore bigotry of any kind, but we cannot help but wonder who will define “hate speech” and/or “bigotry of any kind.” There needs to be more clarification on this issue. Such open-ended policies have frequently been used to silence critics of Israel, most often when anti-Arab/anti-Muslim forces conflate criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism.
In spite of lifting the moratorium, the Center appears to be positioning itself to police and shut down queer organizing in support of Palestinian queers, and Palestinian civil and human rights. A statement issued by pro-Israel elected NYC officials just minutes after the Center’s announcement, clearly coordinated with the Center, “reject[s] attempts by any organization to use the Center to delegitimize Israel and promote an anti-Israel agenda” and dismisses this burgeoning queer movement as “politics that are not the core of [the Center’s] important mission.” The elected officials’ makes clear, both to the Center and to the queer community, that the Center’s ban on mentioning Palestinians, queer or otherwise, has its source in powerful political circles. The bigotry institutionalized in New York City’s politics, which has chained our community center for the past two years, must still be challenged.
Regardless of how the Center implements this decision and regardless of the misguided and uninformed opinions of these elected officials, we in QAIA are committed to continuing to organize around our mission to help end Israeli apartheid, the system of control exercised over the lives of Palestinians living under the illegal Israeli occupation. We expect a prompt issuance of detailed guidelines for the use of space at the Center as well as the formal complaint procedure mentioned in the Center’s statement on the rescission of the ban; such guidelines should be free from any ambiguity on the question of the right of individuals as well as organizations such as QAIA to engage in discussion of Israel/Palestine and organizing in solidarity with the people of Palestine. We will remain vigilant in responding to any attempts by either elected officials, Center donors, other organizations, or the Center itself to modify or interpret the new policy in such a way as to preclude free and genuine discussion of the Israel/Palestine issue on the Center’s premises.
We are pleased that our two years of organizing is beginning to have positive results, but the LGBT Center is not in the clear yet and our work is not yet complete.
Written FOR
June 1, 2012 at 14:02 (Adult Content, DesertPeace Exclusive, Humour, Israel, Photography, Sarcasm)
March 9, 2012 at 13:13 (Activism, Adult Content, Associate Post, Class Struggle, Photography)
December 11, 2011 at 08:31 ('Christian' Right, Adult Content, Corrupt Politics, Ignorance, Israel, Palestine, Videos, zionism)
U.S. Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich thrust himself into controversy on Friday by declaring that the Palestinians are an “invented” people who want to destroy Israel.
The former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives predictably sided with Israel in its decades-old dispute with the Palestinians but took it a step further in an interview with the Jewish Channel.
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The cable station posted online its interview with Gingrich, who has risen to the top of Republican polls with voting to start early next year to pick a nominee to challenge Democratic President Barack Obama in the November 2012 election.
Gingrich differed with official U.S. policy that respects the Palestinians as a people deserving of their own state based on negotiations with Israel.
“Remember, there was no Palestine as a state. It was part of the Ottoman Empire” until the early 20th century, Gingrich said.
“I think that we’ve had an invented Palestinian people who are in fact Arabs, and who were historically part of the Arab community. And they had a chance to go many places, and for a variety of political reasons we have sustained this war against Israel now since the 1940s, and it’s tragic,” he said.
Gingrich along with other Republican candidates are seeking to attract Jewish support by vowing to bolster U.S. ties with Israel if elected.
Gingrich said the Hamas militant group, which controls the Gaza Strip, and the Palestinians’ governing body, the Palestinian Authority, which controls the West Bank, represent “an enormous desire to destroy Israel.”
The U.S. government has sought to encourage the Palestinian Authority to negotiate with Israel but has labeled Hamas as a terrorist group.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has long forsworn violence against Israel as a means to secure an independent state, pinning his hopes first on negotiations and more recently on a unilateral bid for statehood via the United Nations.
Gingrich said he would be willing to consider granting clemency to Jonathan Jay Pollard, who has been serving a life prison term since 1987 for passing U.S. secrets to Israel. Successive U.S. presidents have refused Israeli entreaties to free him.
“If we can get to a point where I’m satisfied that there’s no national security threat, and if he’s in fact served within the range of people who’ve had a similar problem, then I’d be inclined to consider clemency,” Gingrich said.
Gingrich sharply criticized the Obama administration’s approach to Middle East diplomacy, saying it is “so out of touch with reality that it would be like taking your child to the zoo and explaining that a lion was a bunny rabbit.”
December 6, 2011 at 09:53 (Adult Content, DesertPeace Editorial, Entertainment, Humour, Israel, Palestine)
November 3, 2011 at 15:02 (Adult Content, Humour, Occupy Wall Street, Photography, Police Brutality)
September 18, 2011 at 14:55 (Adult Content, DesertPeace Editorial, Israel)
Dawn over the lowest spot on earth illuminated a Dead Sea very much alive on Saturday, as more than 1,000 floating nude Israelis posed for a mass shoot by US photographer Spencer Tunick.
The project, Tunick’s first in the Middle East, is part of a bid to boost Israel’s campaign to have the salt-saturated feature recognised as one of the world’s seven natural wonders in a global online vote in November.
Experts warn that the Dead Sea could dry out by 2050 unless urgent steps are taken to halt its demise.
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Read the report HERE
June 16, 2011 at 11:28 (Adult Content, Corrupt Politics, Humour)
Shall we add to Anthony Weiner’s listofsins the mispronunciation of his own name?
“It’s pronounced ‘wy-ner’ or ‘way-ner,’” my Austrian grandmother insisted, when I asked her what she thought about the scandal engulfing the New York representative. “Wiener” — pronounced wee-ner — “like my cousin, Herbert, that means Viennese; Weiner, like the congressman, that’s Eastern-European.
Curious about my grandmother’s assertion, I asked the Forward’s language columnist, Philologos, to weigh in on the derivation of these common, if unfortunate-sounding, Jewish last names. (There are some 17,211 U.S. residents with the last name Weiner, and 6,027 with the last name Wiener, according to this website, which draws on data from the 2000 census.
Here’s what Philologos had to say:
“Wiener” probably indeed referred to someone who came from Vienna (German “Wien,” pronounced ‘Veen”), although as I once pointed out in a Forward column, one was only likely to be named for a town or locality after leaving or traveling away from it. (The fact of your hailing from Vienna would hardly have been noteworthy in Vienna itself, but if you moved from Vienna to Warsaw, you might very well have been called “der Wiener,” the Viennese.)
But “Weiner” — pronounced “veiner,” although the linguistically accepted English transcription is “vayner” — means a wine merchant or owner of a wine shop in Yiddish, and since this was a common Jewish occupation in Eastern Europe, it would have been natural for quite a few Jews to be given this name.
And although in the course of time a few Wieners may have become Weiners and a few Weiners may have become Wieners, my guess is that even today, the great majority of Wieners are descendants of Viennese Jews and the great majority of Weiners are descendants of Jewish wine merchants.
Let’s just say that if the disgraced congressman pronounced his name as it is apparently supposed to be pronounced — that is, vay-ner in Europe, or wy-ner or way-ner in America — this whole sorry chapter would not have yielded such funny headlines and punch lines.