deLiberation on 86% of mobile phones
Just a quick tech update from the deliberation R&D department. We have added a new plugin which now detects mobile phones or smart phones and gives them a more friendly browsing experience. In tests conducted at our secret laboratories it checked ok on 86% of mobile devices.
BTW… I have also optimised the loading speed significantly by trimming the front page.
That is all.
Here is a random picture.
Deir Yassin Day in London
(With thanks to Stuart Littlewood http://www.deliberation.info/flying-into-tel-aviv-then-its-welcome-to-palestine/)
Deir Yassin Memorial, Finger Lake, Geneva, New York
On April 23 inLondon, Deir Yassin Remembered and The General Union of Palestinian Students will be commemorating Deir Yassin Day 2012.
Deir Yassin Day commemorates the Deir Yassin massacre of April 9th 1948.
Not the only massacre at that time and by no means the worst, Deir Yassin signalled and has come to symbolise, the dispossession of the Palestinian people and their continuing exile.
April 23 is also the birthday of Miguel Cervantes creator of Don Quixote and of Roy Orbison creator of “Only the Lonely” – and a man who, just when you thought he could go no higher – up an octave he’d go. It’s also the birth- and death day of William Shakespeare – highly appropriate for a man known for his immaculate dramatic structure and pleasing endings.
But in England April 23rd is above all, St. George’s Day. St George is the patron Saint ofEngland and strangely, St George was a Palestinian.
George hailed from the Palestinian town of Lydda, turned into an airport in 1948 and named Lod, and named again after the great ethnic-cleanser David Ben Gurion. Like Deir Yassin itself, the story of Lydda could serve as a template for all the expulsions and massacres of 1948.
At Deir Yassin the perpetrators massacred over a hundred villagers and burned their bodies. Others were loaded onto trucks and paraded through the streets of Jewish Jerusalem, then taken to a nearby quarry and shot. Orphaned children of Deir Yassin, dragged from under the bodies of their dead and dying relatives were taken and dumped, dazed and bleeding, in a Jerusalem alley.
At Lydda the Israelis massacred 426 men, women, and children; 176 slaughtered in the town’s main mosque and the remainder driven into exile. Forced to walk in the summer heat, they left behind them a trail of bodies – men, women and children. It was the Palestinians’ very own ‘Trail of Tears’.
And, just like at Deir Yassin, the town of Lydda was repopulated with Jewish immigrants, the name Hebraised to Lod and, like the name Deir Yassin, the name Lydda was wiped off the map.
At our commemoration DYR and GUPS will be joined by the Palestinian Delegation, the Palestinian community of the U.K. and many British and other supporters. We will also be joined by Abu Ashraf, now of Azaria but once of Deir Yassin - because in April 1948 Abu Ashraf lived in Deir Yassin and, on April 9th at the time of the massacre, was a few days short of his eighth birthday.
So, it’s fitting that our commemoration be held on April 23rd, St. George’s Day; inLondon, the capital ofEngland, and led by Abu Ashraf of Deir Yassin.
Reponse Letter to the Call for Disavowal for Gilad Atzmon
Greetings Mr. Abunimah and fellow signatories of your statement titled: ”Granting No Quarter: A Call for the Disavowal of the Racism and Antisemitism of Gilad Atzmon.”,
As someone who both respects and admires much of your work, it’s with disappointment and regret that I read this demand for Mr. Atzmon’s disavowal. It is acknowledged that the chief grounds upon which said call is predicated, involve allegations of anti-semitism and racism within his views. These charges are serious and require equally serious examination. Unfortunately, many of the premises therein comprised reductivism and misrepresentation of what are originally more complex accounts. This occludes truth and ends up offering a sideways engagement with the subject matter concerned. Via a few quoted words uprooted from context, very serious charges were made against Mr. Atzmon concerning racism, anti-semitism, as well as implied, (though, not substantiated) Holocaust denial. For a cursory yet a comparably more substantive engagement, the following URL provides adequate illustration: http://www.salem-news.com/articles/march182012/disavowal-perceptionbc.php
Be that as it may, the aim here is to defend Mr. Atzmon’s full right to freedom of expression. Those who think this is intrinsic to total agreement with all his opinions, need read no further. In a democracy, all share the right to freedom of expression, and from what I understand, you claim to support democracy with equal rights for all, where all are welcome. To do so whilst publicly insisting unreservedly on the repudiation of Mr. Atzmon entails a basic contradiction. This is not plausible. To declare outright one’s dissociation from Atzmon’s opinions, is a legitimate move. To go beyond, making normative claims, stipulating who should disavow whom, trying to excommunicate a prolific musician and independent thinker, raises serious questions concerning one’s integrity of position.
This sort of offensive manoeuvre whereby you publicly prescribe his disavowal by others in the absence of carefully presented evidence, displaces you from equal human rights defenders into a camp that’s closer to the so-called democratic state against which you claim to be campaigning. Moreover, it betrays a sense of intolerance, something which has no place in any truly democratic and just world. A traditional chorus now includes: ”Gilad’s politics are very divisive.” Yet the divisiveness actualized seems to come from one side. If one genuinely takes issue with the substance of his claims and findings, then, the reasonable recourse is to support a free, open, and meaningful exchange with Mr. Atzmon.
If others wish to express their positions for or against Mr. Atzmon, they can easily do so via mechanisms democratically available to them, without need for your behests or calls. Human history has had more than its share of people telling others where their allegiances should lie.
There is no need for this kind of intra-activist conflict. It misses the mark, diverting much-needed attention from the original struggle, and gives Zionist opposition more grist for their mill.
The human species is in jeopardy and the Israel-Palestine conflict is just one of many that mark our dying planet. In taking this sort of action you subdivide into greater finitude and make this to be about you and Mr. Atzmon, when it’s not about either of you. It’s about the Palestinian struggle for restitution, and ultimately, the defense and upholding of truth and justice for every human being in the world.
Hopefully we can all move forward and waste no further time on such counterproductive distractions.
Best wishes,
