Εβδομάδα Είναι … Και Κυλάει

evdomada.net

Archive for January, 2009

Next Entries »

Robert Fisk: Why do they hate the West so much, we will ask

Posted by evdomada on January 9, 2009

January 7, 2009

Robert Fisk: Why do they hate the West so much, we will ask

So once again, Israel has opened the gates of hell to the Palestinians. Forty civilian refugees dead in a United Nations school, three more in another. Not bad for a night’s work in Gaza by the army that believes in “purity of arms”. But why should we be surprised?
A child injured in the Israeli bombardment of a UN school yesterday is taken to Shifa hospital in Gaza City

A child injured in the Israeli bombardment of a UN school yesterday is taken to Shifa hospital in Gaza City

Have we forgotten the 17,500 dead – almost all civilians, most of them children and women – in Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon; the 1,700 Palestinian civilian dead in the Sabra-Chatila massacre; the 1996 Qana massacre of 106 Lebanese civilian refugees, more than half of them children, at a UN base; the massacre of the Marwahin refugees who were ordered from their homes by the Israelis in 2006 then slaughtered by an Israeli helicopter crew; the 1,000 dead of that same 2006 bombardment and Lebanese invasion, almost all of them civilians?

What is amazing is that so many Western leaders, so many presidents and prime ministers and, I fear, so many editors and journalists, bought the old lie; that Israelis take such great care to avoid civilian casualties. “Israel makes every possible effort to avoid civilian casualties,” yet another Israeli ambassador said only hours before the Gaza massacre. And every president and prime minister who repeated this mendacity as an excuse to avoid a ceasefire has the blood of last night’s butchery on their hands. Had George Bush had the courage to demand an immediate ceasefire 48 hours earlier, those 40 civilians, the old and the women and children, would be alive.

What happened was not just shameful. It was a disgrace. Would war crime be too strong a description? For that is what we would call this atrocity if it had been committed by Hamas. So a war crime, I’m afraid, it was. After covering so many mass murders by the armies of the Middle East – by Syrian troops, by Iraqi troops, by Iranian troops, by Israeli troops – I suppose cynicism should be my reaction. But Israel claims it is fighting our war against “international terror”. The Israelis claim they are fighting in Gaza for us, for our Western ideals, for our security, for our safety, by our standards. And so we are also complicit in the savagery now being visited upon Gaza.

I’ve reported the excuses the Israeli army has served up in the past for these outrages. Since they may well be reheated in the coming hours, here are some of them: that the Palestinians killed their own refugees, that the Palestinians dug up bodies from cemeteries and planted them in the ruins, that ultimately the Palestinians are to blame because they supported an armed faction, or because armed Palestinians deliberately used the innocent refugees as cover.

The Sabra and Chatila massacre was committed by Israel’s right-wing Lebanese Phalangist allies while Israeli troops, as Israel’s own commission of inquiry revealed, watched for 48 hours and did nothing. When Israel was blamed, Menachem Begin’s government accused the world of a blood libel. After Israeli artillery had fired shells into the UN base at Qana in 1996, the Israelis claimed that Hizbollah gunmen were also sheltering in the base. It was a lie. The more than 1,000 dead of 2006 – a war started when Hizbollah captured two Israeli soldiers on the border – were simply dismissed as the responsibility of the Hizbollah. Israel claimed the bodies of children killed in a second Qana massacre may have been taken from a graveyard. It was another lie. The Marwahin massacre was never excused. The people of the village were ordered to flee, obeyed Israeli orders and were then attacked by an Israeli gunship. The refugees took their children and stood them around the truck in which they were travelling so that Israeli pilots would see they were innocents. Then the Israeli helicopter mowed them down at close range. Only two survived, by playing dead. Israel didn’t even apologise.

Twelve years earlier, another Israeli helicopter attacked an ambulance carrying civilians from a neighbouring village – again after they were ordered to leave by Israel – and killed three children and two women. The Israelis claimed that a Hizbollah fighter was in the ambulance. It was untrue. I covered all these atrocities, I investigated them all, talked to the survivors. So did a number of my colleagues. Our fate, of course, was that most slanderous of libels: we were accused of being anti-Semitic.

And I write the following without the slightest doubt: we’ll hear all these scandalous fabrications again. We’ll have the Hamas-to-blame lie – heaven knows, there is enough to blame them for without adding this crime – and we may well have the bodies-from-the-cemetery lie and we’ll almost certainly have the Hamas-was-in-the-UN-school lie and we will very definitely have the anti-Semitism lie. And our leaders will huff and puff and remind the world that Hamas originally broke the ceasefire. It didn’t. Israel broke it, first on 4 November when its bombardment killed six Palestinians in Gaza and again on 17 November when another bombardment killed four more Palestinians.

Yes, Israelis deserve security. Twenty Israelis dead in 10 years around Gaza is a grim figure indeed. But 600 Palestinians dead in just over a week, thousands over the years since 1948 – when the Israeli massacre at Deir Yassin helped to kick-start the flight of Palestinians from that part of Palestine that was to become Israel – is on a quite different scale. This recalls not a normal Middle East bloodletting but an atrocity on the level of the Balkan wars of the 1990s. And of course, when an Arab bestirs himself with unrestrained fury and takes out his incendiary, blind anger on the West, we will say it has nothing to do with us. Why do they hate us, we will ask? But let us not say we do not know the answer.

Posted in News | Tagged: , , | Leave a Comment »

SMH: Shocking cynicism of a poisoned homeland

Posted by evdomada on January 8, 2009

Sydney Morning Herald – Sara Dowse – January 8, 2009

It has taken me days to begin writing this, so horrified have I been by Israel’s latest actions. My sense of justice, however – as a mother, a Jew, and above all as a human being – impels me to try.

The massacre in Gaza has its roots in virulent European anti-Semitism and the 1917 Balfour declaration, when the British government promised Zionists that Jewish people would have a homeland in Palestine if Britain was victorious in World War I.

The key word here is homeland, and it should be remembered that the promise was qualified by the condition that such a homeland would “not be to the detriment” of the Palestinians. The steady increase in Jewish immigration under the British mandate provoked riots and protests, but Palestinians were still in majority until, in the aftermath of the Holocaust, the Zionists unilaterally declared an Israeli state.

Despite the suffering of the Palestinians, whose land was taken from them, for many years the sympathy of the developed world was with Israel, refuge for the survivors of the Nazi slaughter of European Jews, and beleaguered by surrounding hostile Arab states.

With the 1967 occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, Israel could no longer be accepted as a victim. Yet it has continued to play on the sympathies of Western governments, most particularly the US, and Jews of the diaspora. In reality, Israel has been a colonising state, masquerading as the most democratic, most humane, most modern nation in the region. It has served the Western powers to have such a proxy in the Middle East, and most recently, under the Bush Administration and in concert with the Israelis, they have played a cynical game of divide and rule, encouraging the Israelis in their blind refusal to negotiate with Hamas, just as for years Israel refused to negotiate with the Palestine Liberation Organisation, the forerunners of Fatah, whom they now support.

Hamas is not a terrorist organisation, but the legitimate, democratically elected government of the Palestinian Authority. We may not like what it stands for, but that is no reason for sidelining it. Undermining that government by Israel and the West is but one of a string of cynical actions on their part.

The rationale that Hamas has refused to accept Israel’s existence or to eschew violence is yet another example of how the truth has been twisted. What Hamas rejected was the continued, barbaric Israeli occupation of the West Bank, and the laying down of arms against an aggressive military occupation. I have heard with my own ears the Hamas Prime Minister, Ismail Haniyeh, say exactly that. Is he to be trusted? It would have been worth a try.

And who now would trust Israel?

So here we have it: a tough, technocratically savvy, nuclear power with the backing of the largest military power the world has known, bombing, then invading, a territory the size of a small city, with a population of 1.5 million, most of whom are civilians, to “defend our citizens”.

The ceasefire was meant to lift the Israeli blockade on Gaza, but it didn’t. It was meant to facilitate the release of Palestinian prisoners, many of whom were members of the elected Hamas Government, but it didn’t.

Israeli planes raided southern Gaza in November. The Hamas rockets continued. Which side broke the ceasefire? Hamas may not be blameless, but the situation is far more complex than Israel claims. The fact that more than 600 people have died because in a couple of weeks the US will have a new government and next month Israel will have an election, is the most shocking form of cynicism the Palestinian people have yet faced.

Since the 2006 invasion of Lebanon I have undergone what for me, as a Jew, has been an agonising realignment of my feelings about Israel. I have come to believe that a specifically Jewish state has been a terrible mistake.

A homeland is different from a state. There have been examples throughout history and there are in our own time polities with mixed ethnic populations and official sanction for their living in harmony together. Australia is one.

I don’t know how it will come about – I hope with as little bloodshed as possible – but I look forward to the distant day when the land becomes a multicultural country again, perhaps as a federation, perhaps in another form, but similar to what it was before it was destroyed with the poison of ethnic territorial nationalism.

Sara Dowse is an author who wrote Sapphires, a novel about three generations of Jewish women.

Source: www.smh.com.au

Posted in News | Tagged: , , , | 1 Comment »

What’s going on in Gaza?

Posted by evdomada on January 7, 2009

I will admit to the fact that I have not investigated in detail what has been going on in Gaza between the Israeli’s and the Palestinians.

At a high level the “popular” media sources have reported that Hamas rocketed missiles into Israel between 27th and 29th December.  In response to these attacks Israel decided to commence an operation aimed at disabling Hamas’ capability to fire missiles into Israel.  The response has been fierce resulting in many Palestinian deaths, among them many children.

Instead of me providing the commentary, I recommend that you click on the link below.

It’s a great commentary post that has gathered reports globally that are covering the events in Gaza.

“This is an all-out war against the civilian Palestinian population in Gaza” 06Jan09

Posted in News | Tagged: , , | Leave a Comment »

Evdomada Poll: Should Church and State be separated in Greece?

Posted by evdomada on January 6, 2009

Archibishop Ieronimos suggested that the religious oaths be abolished, in particular by politicians.

Have a read of the article (click here) and let us know what you think about it in our Evdomada Poll located on the left-hand side of the evdomada.net web page.

Posted in Greek News | Tagged: , | Leave a Comment »

Far-left extremists’ gun used in Greek police attack

Posted by evdomada on January 6, 2009

ATHENS (AFP) — A Greek policeman was seriously injured Monday in a shooting that police say marks the return of the country’s most dangerous extremist group following nearly a month of youth unrest.

A caller to a Greek television station Monday night claimed responsibility for the shooting in the name of a local far-left group Revolutionary Struggle which figures on the European Union’s list of terrorist organisations.

Police had earlier said that a submachine gun used in the early morning attack had been used in a previous action claimed by Revolutionary Struggle, which in 2007 had fired a rocket at the US embassy.

Police were examining the authenticity of the call to the television station, where staff were inclined to dismiss it as a hoax. The caller said there would be no written claim of responsibility and that other actions would follow.

Officer Diamantis Matzounis was seriously wounded Monday when unknown gunmen opened fire on his patrol with weapons including a Kalashnikov rifle, a submachine gun and a grenade, said Greek police chief Vassilis Tsiatouras.

Matzounis was in “critical but stable” condition after an emergency operation for multiple injuries, Greek Health Minister Dimitris Avramopoulos told reporters.

The investigation has been assigned to Greece’s anti-terror squad who found some 40 cartridge cases at the scene, including 27 from a Kalashnikov rifle and four from the submachine gun linked to Revolutionary Struggle.

The nine-millimetre submachine gun was used in an April 2007 attack on a police station in the northern Athens district of Nea Ionia, three months after an anti-tank rocket strike against the US embassy in January. Nobody was injured in the two 2007 attacks.

The police-issue submachine gun had been snatched earlier in April from a policeman guarding the home of then Supreme Court president Romylos Kedikoglou.

“The four nine-millimetre shells come from the weapon that fired on the Nea Ionia police station,” the police said.

“This is a group clearly trying to murder police,” Tsiatouras said, noting that the Kalashnikov had also been used to fire shots at a riot police van recently, following weeks of unrest over a teenager’s killing by police.

The December 23 attack on the van was initially claimed by a previously unknown group calling itself “Popular Action”.

In Monday’s attack, 21-year-old Matzounis — part of a three-man patrol in the district of Exarchia where unrest flared last month over the boy’s death — was struck in the chest, stomach and thigh.

The police patrol came under fire at 3:05 am (0105 GMT) behind the culture ministry, a few blocks away from where the unrest began when 15-year-old Alexis Grigoropoulos was fatally shot by a police officer on December 6.

The gunmen escaped and no one has so far claimed responsibility for the attack.

“Bullets against (police) mainly harm democracy and society,” Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis said after visiting Matzounis in hospital.

“Our democracy is strong,” added Karamanlis, whose administration was tested by the unrest.

Both Greek President Karolos Papoulias and Interior Minister Prokopis Pavlopoulos condemned the policeman’s shooting as an attack on democracy.

“Today’s attempted murder of the three officers aims to undermine our country’s democratic stability,” Papoulias said in a statement.

The assailants “will soon understand that our democracy is strong and our society is fortified,” Pavlopoulos told reporters.

Considered Greece’s most dangerous active extremist group, Revolutionary Struggle first appeared in 2003 and has claimed responsibility for several attacks that have left three people slightly injured.

Greece and the United States have offered a combined two-million-dollar reward for information leading to the capture of the group.

Revolutionary Struggle is considered the successor of November 17, the country’s deadliest extremist organisation that killed 23 people between 1975 and 2000 before its demise in 2002.

Monday’s attack came nearly exactly a month after the killing of Grigoropoulos. His death unleashed a wave of anger that degenerated into the worst violence Greece has seen in decades with hundreds of stores in several cities vandalised and dozens looted.

Source: AFP

Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved.

Posted in Greek News | Leave a Comment »

Gunmen shoot policeman in Athens

Posted by evdomada on January 6, 2009

Published: 2009/01/05 14:02:06 GMT

A Greek riot policeman has been left seriously injured after being shot in central Athens.

Greece’s police chief says bullet cases matched the Kalashnikov rifle used in another attack on police in December.

The officer, 21-year-old Diamandis Matzounis, was part of a unit guarding the culture ministry when the pre-dawn attack took place.

Last month Greece saw its worst riots in decades after the fatal shooting by police of a teenager in Athens.

A huge manhunt is under way, following the latest attack.

A number of people have been taken in for questioning.

‘Gunmen spotted’

The victim was on a life support machine on Monday after spending five hours in surgery. He lost several litres of blood after being hit in the body and the leg, and is described as being in a critical condition.

The officer had apparently spotted the gunmen and warned his colleagues shortly before he was hit.

Greece’s police chief, Lt Gen Vassilis Tsiatouras, said an automatic rifle and a handgun were used, and that a hand grenade was also thrown during the attack.

He said the rifle was the same as that used on 23 December, when two gunmen hidden within the grounds of Athens University opened fire at a riot police bus as it passed by.

None of about 20 police on board the bus at the time were injured.

A group calling itself Popular Action claimed to be behind that attack.

But General Tsiatouras played down suggestions that the shootings were carried out by a terrorist organisation, saying he thought they were the work of a group of people who had “lost their senses” following the police killing of 15-year-old Alexis Grigoropoulos.

Daily attacks

The incident took place in the Exarchia district, close to where Grigoropoulos was shot last month.

His death sparked weeks of clashes between rioters and security forces.

The policeman accused of shooting the teenager has been charged with murder.

The BBC’s Malcolm Brabant in Athens says police have been subjected to almost daily attacks from rioters since Grigoropoulos was killed.

Our correspondent says there is a fear that the current vehement anti-establishment climate in Greece may lead to a resurgence in domestic terrorism.

Source: BBC NEWS  http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/7810972.stm
© BBC MMIX

Posted in Greek News | Leave a Comment »

Greece: Support for move to scrap oath-taking

Posted by evdomada on January 6, 2009

Copyright:  http://www.ekathimerini.com
Date :  5/1/09

A suggestion by Archbishop Ieronymos, the head of the Church of Greece, in last Sunday’s Kathimerini that the taking of religious oaths – particularly by politicians – should be abolished, has received the support of several bishops and political parties.

Ieronymos drew some criticism for his comment that the “abolition of the religious oath does not create any problems for the Church.” The archbishop was not specific about which swearing-in ceremonies he would be content to see scrapped, but it has been interpreted that he was mainly referring to MPs and ministers taking oaths. Civil servants are also sworn in.

Despite some opposition, one of the Church’s hardliners, Bishop Anthimos of Thessaloniki told Sunday’s Kathimerini that he “did not disagree” with Ieronymos’s position, although he went on to argue that if the oath had no importance, the state would have already done away with it.

Bishop Chrysostomos of Messenia, Ignatios of Dimitrias and Chrysostomos of Zakynthos said that Ieronymos was correct to raise the issue.

“It is not right that we accept some people toying with us when they take an oath in which they do not believe … for example, they cannot swear on the bible to uphold the Constitution and then not abide by it,” said Bishop Chrysostomos.

The government has not commented on Ieronymos’s proposal, but several conservative deputies have expressed support for the move, which has also been welcomed by PASOK, the Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) and the Communist Party.

The right-wing Popular Orthodox Rally (LAOS) opposes the suggestion put forward by the archbishop.

Source: e-Kathimerini

Posted in Greek News | Tagged: , | 1 Comment »

Tarpon Springs, where abundant sponge beds nurtured a Greek-American community, dives into its Epiphany celebration with grand pageantry

Posted by evdomada on January 6, 2009

Special to the Star-Telegram – Posted on Sun, Jan. 04, 2009
By KATHY PINTO

TARPON SPRINGS, Fla.—In the late 1800s, local entrepreneur John Cheyney encouraged Greek divers to investigate the fertile sponge beds off the Gulf Coast of Florida. He hired John Corcoris, a Greek sponge buyer who created a diving suit that made it possible to spend hours at a time underwater to harvest more sponges.

Tampa Bay, with a series of bayous feeding into the Gulf of Mexico, is a mythic place for Greeks, most of whom were from the Dodecanese Islands and began arriving here in the early 1900s to take advantage of the area’s rich sponge beds.

Today, primarily a Greek-American community and well-known tourist destination, Tarpon Springs centers on the sponge docks and St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Cathedral — a replica of the Cathedral of St. Sophia in Istanbul.

Every Jan. 6 since 1906, Tarpon Springs has hosted the largest Epiphany celebration in the U.S., drawing record crowds from across the country.

Known as Three Kings Day or Twelfth Night by other Christians to mark the end of the Christmas season, Epiphany is a sacred holiday on the Orthodox calendar. It commemorates the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan River by John the Baptist, when, according to Christian belief, the Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus in the form of a dove.

On this day, priests lead the faithful to rivers, lakes and seas, splashing holy water to commemorate the event.

Although it is re-enacted throughout Greece, nowhere else does this ancient ritual take on the pageantry and scale that it does in Tarpon Springs, earning it the title of Epiphany City.

After a church service at the cathedral, Archbishop Demetrios — spiritual head of the Greek Orthodox Church in the United States — and Metropolitan Alexios of Atlanta lead a procession to the waterfront to board the sponge boats and bless the fleet

The procession continues to Spring Bayou and the ritual dive for an anointed wooden cross tossed into the waters, preceded by the release of a white dove. Divers, who have been eagerly waiting in dinghies circling the area, jump in to retrieve the cross.

Since 1920, teenage boys, mostly of Greek descent and between the ages of 16 and 18, have braved the chilly waters of the bayou. A tradition among generations of fathers and sons, retrieving the Epiphany cross is a great honor and has special meaning for them. Whoever recovers the cross is said to be blessed for a year.

“I had been looking forward to this my whole life,” said Chris Kavouklis, last year’s winner. “It was a year full of blessings.”

Afterward, the festivities begin with a parade to Craig Park near the sponge docks. Greek dance troupes from around the United States and Canada perform. Visitors are invited to participate, sampling food, dancing and rejoicing at the festival.

The Greek culture celebrated here is as absorbing as the sponges first harvested more than 100 years ago. For the thousands attending, the atmosphere is more Mediterranean than Floridian.

But you don’t have to wait for Epiphany to enjoy this distinctive part of Florida.

Named after a giant tarpon that jumped and splashed in the bayou, Tarpon Springs — with 51 miles of waterfront and a historic downtown center — draws visitors from around the world. You can shop, dine, cruise down the Anclote River or go deep-sea fishing. Stroll down Dodecanese Boulevard along the marina and take in the sights and smells. The streets around the old sponge docks are perfumed with the aromas of Greece.

Much of the wave of Greek immigrants that settled in Tarpon Springs around the beginning of the 20th century came from the islands of Kalymnos and Halki, two of 12 islands in the Dodecanese chain on the eastern Aegean Sea, off the coast of Turkey.

Now Tarpon Springs maintains a connection to these islands through its sister cities program. “This is something we have wanted to do for a long time,” Mayor Beverly Billiris said. “Through the sister city relationship, we are able to maintain an important cultural connection and encourage tourism.”

Source: Star-Telegram.com

Posted in Greek Culture | Tagged: , , | Leave a Comment »

Next Entries »
 
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 67 other followers