sorry, this is part of the previous post

I accidentally hit the 'post' button before I meant to.  The following continues my last post:

"One will never know as most seem to be silent on the appointment of Lieberman as Israel’s new Foreign Minister. It is now an established fact that one does not criticise anything that goes on in Israel for fear of being labeled an anti Semite….. So I guess it’s up to us Israelis ourselves to do the condemning….. WHICH WE WILL!"

This cartoon and comment beneath it were also on this "Desert Peace" blog that I mentioned as the source to the Palestinian poster.  

This is related to my post before about the seeming unacceptability of criticizing Israel, at least by a politician.  It is interesting to see an Israeli acknowledge this fear of being labeled an Anti-Semite, and scream in its face (at least in this case).  I am not sure how common it is, but I certainly haven't seen much of it.  Does this come up often/with even more controversial issues?  Is a truly open and honest discussion taking place?  If not, is this why?  If this fear is a roadblock, what is being done to change this?

[note: Although my last couple of posts seem pro-Palestinian, I am not trying to propagandize.]

Palestinian poster

http://desertpeace.wordpress.com/

Posted on a self-proclaimed peace-maker's blog.  He lives in Jerusalem.

Politicians muckin it up / Apartheid

This post is connected to Jacque's post about the internet being a key to opening dialogue between Palestinians and Isrealis.  After Jacque emphasized the importance of the perspectives and opinions of the people actually involved in the conflict, I wondered what that would mean.  I imagined great progress in the peace process due to people's general good nature, abillity for compromise, empathy, and respect for one another.  But then I imagined how so many differing political agendas would get in the way of this.  Even if Israelis and Palestinians opened up a waterfall of dialogue and made real solution progress in the blogosphere, I fear that politicians would surely muck it up in the execution.

So, I searched "political motives in Israel Palestine solution."  It brought me to a basic blog titled "From Occupied Palestine," which had posted an article from a November article of Haaretz about the UN General Assembly President's comments likening Israel's policies towards Palestinians as a newer version of apartheid.  See the article here.  He went on to say that he felt it necessary to use such a heavily charged term, as it was the UN itself who passed a resolution against apartheid.  Then Israel's ambassador to the UN called him an "Israel-hater" because he hugged Iran's president, an outspoken critic/enemy of Israel.

So, does Israel enforce apartheid-esque policies (did you catch in the video about black market aid that 85% of Gazans are living below the poverty line?)?  Why is it so unique for an international official to criticize Israel (remember Brennan's post on Turkey's PM?)?  What about the politicality of the issue?  Perhaps blogging will be/is an immense aid to bringing together Israeli and Palestinian neighbors, but what are we to do with our politic(ician)s?