No Freedom of Expression at Daily Kos
..(Ben Heine © Cartoons)

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Daily KOS silences international
activist Ben Heine for "antiSemitism"

By Tinoire (*)
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Amazing. Watch how it was done. Ben Heine, a respected political cartoonist and well-known international activist was invited to Daily Kos this week. He made two first posts lambasting Bush which were very well received with kudos, high fives and all that: Mom Would Have Spanked George W Bush\'s Butt & Bushisms

At his third post, the drama started:

Within seconds, the racist war-loving megaphone lobbyists from Little Green Footballs and their Heil Lieberman counterparts on the, *cough*, Left inundated Heine’s diary with hysterical screeching and melodramatic hand-wringing about how could anyone morph a Jewish face with Hitler's. What a chorus of imbeciles. As if being Jewish is some sort of a talisman against being a dangerous fascist politician with aims and ideas sharply aligned with Hitler's.

Within minutes, KOS removed the article one the shaky grounds of copyright violation despite the original author’s permission to repost. To KOS’ credit, they left the cartoons up and did not immediately deactivate the poster’s account the way that other Left Gate-keeper, www.democraticunderground.com, does. They waited until the right-wing Israeli newspaper ArutzSheva/Israeli National News published their article to do that.

(Here is the link to the excellent article: Zionism and the creation of Israel that was yanked after the well-coordinated attack from the land-o-theft crowd.)

Bottom line. Don't like being compared to Nazis? Quit defending them and thin them from your ranks.

DesertPeace, based in Jerusalem, wrote an excellent piece called IN DEFENSE OF BENJAMIN HEINE and posted an update that his KOS account has been deactivated.

Is Avigdor Lieberman the man the megaphone crowd is outraged about when his face is morphed with Hitler’s? Spare me the hypocritical outrage. Worse than watching that chorus goosestep and Seig Heil as their heroes continue with the genocide of the Palestinians is watching how willingly the Left gate-keepers enable them.

SHAME ON sites like KOS and democraticunderground for caving in to fascist pressure and being complicit in the crimes perpetrated against the Palestinians. In a few years, you will NOT be allowed to wring your hands for a repeat performance of "We didn't know".

"In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends." -- Martin Luther King Jr.
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(*) Tinoire is a Peace worker based in San Francisco. She is the founder of Progressive Independent
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--> Progressive Independent is a member-moderated leftist site created to combat the growing propaganda from the corporate-owned Republicans and New Democrats who have been selling the people down the river. The PI members have no party allegiance preferring independent thought based on issues to vacuous cheerleading.

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For those of you who don't know who Avigdor Lieberman is, the following will give you a general idea:

• Lieberman’s idea of diplomacy with Palestinians is "At 8am we'll bomb all the commercial centers...at noon we'll bomb their gas stations...at two we'll bomb their banks....”
  
  We risk charges of war crimes, Peres tells Cabinet
  
  
• In 2003, Ha'aretz reported that Lieberman called for the 10,000 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel to be drowned in the Dead Sea and offered to provide the buses to take them there.
  
  
  A storm erupted in the Knesset plenum yesterday, following Transport Minister Avigdor Lieberman's reported proposal to provide buses to take the Palestinian prisoners that Israel releases to a place "whence they will not return."
  
  According to another report, Lieberman said the prisoners should be drowned in the Dead Sea and he would provide the buses to take them there.
  Lieberman blasted for suggesting drowning Palestinian prisoners
  
  
  
• In May 2004, he said that 90 percent of Israel's one million Arabs would "have to find a new Arab entity" in which to live beyond Israel's borders. "They have no place here. They can take their bundles and get lost," he said.
  
  Avigdor Lieberman: Olmert\'s newest colleague
  
  
  In November 2006 Lieberman called for the execution of any Arab Members of Knesset who meet with representatives of the Palestinian government, saying, "World War II ended with the Nurenberg trials. The heads of the Nazi regime, along with their collaborators, were executed. I hope this will be the fate of the collaborators in ."<11> In response, Arab Israeli Knesset member Ahmed Tibi, demanded that "a criminal investigation be initiated against Lieberman for violating the law against incitement and racism".<12>
  
  He called Lieberman "a very dangerous and sophisticated politician who has won his support through race hatred." Lieberman was cleared of racism charges by the Israeli Deputy State prosecutor, while admitting that the office objected to the content of his statement. Tibi strongly objected to Lieberman's ministerial appointment, describing him as "a racist and a fascist". Labour minister Ophir Pines-Paz, who resigned over Lieberman's appointment, echoed Tibi's remarks, saying that Lieberman was tainted "by racist declarations and declarations that harm the democratic character of Israel".
  
  In 1998, Lieberman called for the flooding of Egypt by bombing the Aswan Dam in retaliation for Egyptian support for Yasser Arafat.
  
  In 2001, as Minister of National Infrastructure, Lieberman proposed that the West Bank be divided into four cantons, with no central Palestinian government and no possibility for Palestinians to travel between the cantons.
  
  
  
• “There is nothing undemocratic about transfer. Even in Europe millions were transferred from one place to another and it helped to bring peace...The separation, like surgery, helps healing.” - Avigdor Lieberman –
  
  The Shrinking Space of Citizenship: Ethnocratic Politics in Israel
  
  
• On February 14, 2002, the Israeli government sent several light planes to spray 12,000 dunams of crops in the southern Negev region with poisonous chemicals. The destroyed fields had been cultivated for years by Bedouin Arabs, on ancestral lands they claim as their own. The minister responsible for land management, Avigdor Lieberman, explained:
  
  
  We must stop their illegal invasion of state land by all means possible. The Bedouins have no regard for our laws; in the process we are losing the last resources of state lands. One of my main missions is to return to the power of the Land Authority in dealing with the non-Jewish threat to our lands.
  
  
  The Shrinking Space of Citizenship: Ethnocratic Politics in Israel
  
  
• In May 2004, for example, he told a crowd of his supporters, in Russian, that 90 per cent of the country’s Arab citizens should be expelled. “They have no place here. They can take their bundles and get lost.” His speech could have had second billing with one by Adolf Hitler at a Nuremberg Rally.
  
  Out of the shadows: Israel\'s Minister of Strategic Threats
  
  
• In May 2006, Lieberman called for the killing of Arab members of Knesset who meet with members of the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority.
  
  Lieberman calls Arab MKs who meet with Hamas \'collaborators\'
  
  
  'At the end of the Second World War not only criminals were killed in Nuremberg but also those who collaborated with them. I hope this will be the fate of the collaborators in this house.'
  
  We demanded in that in the basic principles it be written: All those who incite and cooperate with terror and who sit in this house – should be punished. All those who continue to freely meet with Hamas, with Hizbullah, who go to make visits in Lebanon.
  
  “Just two days ago they declared Israel's Independence Day as Nakba day (day of disaster) and raised black flags. There is a directive on terrorism, according to which those who collaborate with it must face the law,"
  
  http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3247068,...
  
  
  
  
• In 2002, Lieberman declared, "I would not hesitate to send the Israeli army into all of Area A (the area of the West Bank ostensibly under Palestinian Authority control) for 48 hours. Destroy the foundation of all the authority's military infrastructure ... not leave one stone on another. Destroy everything." He also suggested to the Israeli cabinet that the air force systematically bomb all the commercial centers, gas stations and banks in the occupied territories (The Independent, March 7, 2002).
  
  
• His entry into the government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, in coalition with Kadima and Labor, marks an ominous shift in the stance of the Jewish state. As Ha'aretz put it:
  "The choice of the most unrestrained and irresponsible man around for this job constitutes a strategic threat in its own right. Lieberman's lack of restraint and his unbridled tongue, comparable only to those of Iran's president, are liable to bring disaster down upon the entire region."
  http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/778468.html

• (snip) the Lieberman that has joined the Olmert government is something else: the leader of a strong party that is getting stronger, under a Prime Minister who is a small party functionary, with whom most of the public is fed up.
  
  The Lieberman party is quite different from the fictitious Kadima Party and the decomposing Labor Party. It is organized on military lines, with Lieberman as its one, unquestioned leader. It has organized most of the immigrants from the former Soviet Union, and is expanding into other communities, too. It appeals to the poor and downtrodden. It resembles the Bolshevik party that Lieberman knew as a young man in the Soviet Union. (To coin a formula: Bolshevism minus Marxism equals Fascism.)
  
  When the democratic system arouses public contempt, and when the view that "all politicians are crooks" and "the system is rotten to the core" is gaining ground, such a person is a real danger to democracy.
  
  AN OLD maxim says that Israel can fulfill only two of its three desires: to be a Jewish state, to be a democratic state and to hold on to all of the territory between the Mediterranean and the Jordan. It can hold on to the whole territory and be democratic - but then it will not be a Jewish state. It can hold on to the territory and be Jewish - but than it will not be a democratic state. It can be a Jewish and democratic state - but then it cannot hold on to all the territory.
  
  This has been the basis of Israeli policy from the very beginning. The main argument for Sharon's "Separation" and Olmert's "Convergence" was exactly this: that in order for Israel to remain Jewish and democratic, it must give up those parts of the occupied Palestinian territories with a dense Arab population.
  
  The extreme Right has an answer that resembles the egg of Columbus: all three aims can indeed be attained. The solution is ethnic cleansing - the expulsion of the whole of the Arab population.
  
  That is difficult to carry out in a democratic system. Therefore, this aim almost automatically means that there must be a "strong leader". Meaning: an overt or disguised dictatorship.
  
  (snip)
  THE MOST depressing phenomenon at this moment is the lack of public reaction.
  
  The betrayal of the Labor Party could have been expected. Amir Peretz did indeed swear that he would never sit in a government with Lieberman, but in order to remain a minister he is quite prepared to sell his principles. No great outcry could be expected from Meretz either, after Yossi Beilin had his well publicized breakfast with Lieberman and heaped praise on him and his herrings.
  
  But the general public does not seem shocked, either. Here and there some articles did appear, but they did not point out the existential danger threatening the Israeli republic. Even the Arab public in Israel, whose very existence is menaced by Lieberman, has not set in motion a real protest. On the 1976 "Land Day", when the Arab citizens protested against the expropriation of their land, it looked different. As it did in October 2000, when the Israeli Arab public protested against a suspected threat to the al Aqsa mosque.
  
  What is the reason for this weak reaction, which is so like the last days of the Weimar republic?
  
  There is a growing disdain for the democratic system. There is a general fatigue after the shocks of the last year. There is a withdrawal into private cares. For the "persons in the street", it is difficult to imagine the dangers. He and she are so used to democracy, that they cannot imagine what it means to live without it. They are sure that "It Can't Happen Here".
  
  (snip)
  
  Uri Avnery: Avigdor Lieberman: Lovable Man!
  
  
  
• 10/24/06 – World silent as fascists join Israel government
  
  In a frightening but long expected move, Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert has brought the Yisrael Beitenu party into his coalition government. The party's leader, Avigdor Lieberman, is to be vice prime minister and, as "Minister for Strategic Threats," a key member of Israel's "security cabinet" in charge of the Iran portfolio.
  
  Hebrew University professor Ze'ev Sternhell, a leading Israeli academic specialist on fascism and totalitarianism, was quoted by the Scotsman newspaper as terming Lieberman "perhaps the most dangerous politician in the history of the state of Israel."
  
  (snip)
  
  In this moral and political vacuum, it is ever more urgent to heed the call of Palestinian civil society to join the growing global campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions.
  
  http://peaceandjustice.org/article.php?story=20061...

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(Ben Heine © Cartoons)
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