Palestine's partisans (Extreme barf alert)

The unquenchable defiance of the Palestinian people inspired the furious speech from the dock last week by the handcuffed Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti. In a single sentence, repeated with great passion, he summed up the one absolutely undeniable truth about Palestine: that there can be "no peace with occupation". In other words, whatever the vacillations of Zionist intellectuals in the west, whatever the reactions to the suicide bombings, the plain fact remains that there is no hope for peace in the region as long as Israel maintains its illegal and brutal occupation of other people's territory.

Mr Barghouti was seized by military force in Ramallah, where, even according to the miserable treaties already agreed, criminal justice is a matter for the Palestinian authority. His illegal capture and trial is yet another pathetic attempt by the Israeli authorities to pretend that their military occupation and enforced settlement of other people's land has something to do with justice and democracy.

While Mr Barghouti waits for his trial to start, two other powerful voices have been raised to haunt the Israeli authorities. The first is that of Nelson Mandela, who says he will be closely following the trial proceedings. His involvement is a reminder of the similarities between the bantustans for South African black people under apartheid, and the occupied territories in the West Bank and Gaza. The other voice was that of Marek Edelman, who was deputy commander of the historic Warsaw ghetto uprising of the Jews against the Nazis in 1943.

Now in his 80s, Mr Edelman wrote a letter early this month to Palestinian leaders. Though the letter criticised the suicide bombers, its tone infuriated the Israeli government and its press. He wrote in a spirit of solidarity from a fellow resistance fighter, as a former leader of a Jewish uprising not dissimilar in desperation to the Palestinian uprising in the occupied territories. He addressed his letter to "commanders of the Palestinian military, paramilitary and partisan operations - to all the soldiers of the Palestinian fighting organisations".

This set up a howl of rage in the Zionist press, who reminded their readers that Mr Edelman, despite his heroism in the 1940s, is a former supporter of the anti-Zionist socialist Bund, and can therefore not be trusted. Nothing infuriates Zionists more than the arguments of anti-Zionist Jews, who have such a courageous and principled history. The essence of the intellectual case for Zionism is that its opponents are anti-semitic. But when Jews, especially heroic Jews such as Marek Edelman, speak out against Zionism, and especially if they denounce Israeli imperialism and defend the victims of it, how can they be accused of anti-semitism? What a boost it would be for the Palestinians and their cause - and for peace in the Middle East - if Marek Edelman could attend the Barghouti trial.

· "Only the death penalty would properly satisfy our ultimate need for justice" was the sensitive headline in Monday's Daily Mail over an article by Mary Kenny about the awful discovery of the bodies believed to be those of the two murdered girls from Soham. "This is not a crude, 'hang-em high' plea," she explains, at the end of what was, well, a crude plea to hang-em high. I remember Mary Kenny as a fervent campaigner for leftwing causes in her youth, and am puzzled by her conversion to the extraordinary view that "our ultimate need for justice" is in any way satisfied by responding to one hideous, deliberate killing by incriminating the state (and therefore all of us) in another one.

· I confess to a lifetime's devotion to liquorice, and was therefore rather dismayed the other day, during a standard family liquorice feeding frenzy, to discover in the allsorts packet a dead beetle. We sent the beetle off to the manufacturers, Trebor Bassett in Birmingham, and got a polite letter back from Patricia Lovell, of the company's consumer relations department. "After careful examination", she conceded, "we can confirm the insect was identified as a beetle." She went on: "The bags are flow-wrapped and would not harbour insects during production. Our products are manufactured in the most modern environment and an incident such as this has never been reported to us previously. We would seek to reassure you that the product left us in perfect condition." She apologised, and enclosed £10 "to purchase and enjoy further supplies of Trebor Bassett's confectionery".

It is not every day that I witness a miracle, so I would love to hear from any reader who has come across a dead (or even a live) creature that somehow managed to creep into a flow-wrapped Trebor Bassett confectionery bag after the product had been manufactured in the most modern environment and had left the firm in perfect condition.

The Guardian's usual anti-Zionism stuff.

even according to the miserable treaties already agreed, criminal justice is a matter for the Palestinian authority. His illegal capture..

Why does the PA not arrest terrorists as they promised?

to do with justice and democracy

How come lefties always pretend the PA and Arafat have got something to do with democracy?

absolutely undeniable truth about Palestine: that there can be "no peace with occupation"

This guy wouldn't even know the truth if it would bite him in the leg. He needs to read about the Palestinian vision of peace:

The Palestinian Authorities like you never heard them (PA: the Jews are to be exterminated)

Marwan Barghouti, the Guardian's latest hero, another 'freedom fighter' drenched in innocent blood. The Guardian swoons over monsters like Pol Pot, Arafat, Stalin and Mao. I'd love to see their staff get a 'Robert Fisk welcome' from some friendly neighborhood Jihadis. They'd still say it was somebody else's fault (guess who).

Pardon me, but after reading this swill, I have only one thing to say about Paul Foot's article:

Sieg F^&king Heil!

Not only does he praise Barghouti, a terrorist par excellence, he does not appear to mind that this terrorist kills Jews and only Jews.

Not because they are occupying his land, mind you. But because they are Jews.

This is the kind of bullcrap that we, as Americans, must deal with in Europe as we gird ourselves against Saddam.

This guy picks out a socialist member of the old Jewish Labor Bund and uses him as the Conscience of the Jewish People? People at The Guardian are very sensitive to charges of anti-Semitism, so to protect themselves, they trot out some anti-Zionist Jew to grant legitimacy to the editorial staff's most deeply held beliefs.....

If I may steal a phrase from Molly Ivins and use it to my own ends against these Jew-baiting editors and their assorted sumbitchery, I might recommend that The Guardian, The Independent, and The Daily Mirror read much better in the Original German.

Be Seeing You,

Chris

This set up a howl of rage in the Zionist press, who reminded their readers that Mr Edelman, despite his heroism in the 1940s, is a former supporter of the anti-Zionist socialist Bund, and can therefore not be trusted. Nothing infuriates Zionists more than the arguments of anti-Zionist Jews, who have such a courageous and principled history.

Edelman, a cardiologist by profession, is now in his eighties. He was a member of the Bund, the Marxist-Jewish party that opposed Zionism, and represented the movement within the Jewish Fighting Organization (ZOB) (the Warsaw Resistance Movement) when he joined it in 1942.

From: Warsaw Ghetto leader's letter to `Palestinian partisans' raises a storm among uprising survivors and Zionists by Yair Sheleg

It would appear that the author has not quite accurately represented Mr. Edelman's politics. Wonder why...

military occupation and enforced settlement of other people's land has something to do with justice and democracy.

It has everything to do with justice and democracy.

Military occupation=the just result of instigating a war against another nation and losing.

Enforced settlement=the Arabs keep insisting they are entitled to a 100% JEW-FREE ethnically cleansed "Palestinian state." Even though this is the ultimate of "apartheid" which they are always accusing the Israelis of.

I am so sick of hearing these two BIG LIES repeated over and over and over and over...

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