Facebook Shuts Down Palestinian Solidarity Group
Facebook Shuts Down Palestinian Solidarity Group
Press Release: Workers Party of New Zealand
The US-based social networking site Facebook has shut down a New Zealand based PFLP Solidarity group, as well as permanently closing the accounts of all four group administrators with no right of appeal. The group, which had approximately 500 members, was established after the recent Flotilla attacks to show solidarity with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and raise awareness of the solidarity campaign led by the Workers Party of New Zealand, who are fundraising for the PFLP.
None of the administrators of the PFLP Solidarity group were given any notice from Facebook that they had violated terms or conditions, and were given no direct reason as to why they had had their accounts disabled. “They did not even send an email to me explaining why my account was disabled”, said one of the group’s administrators.
Marika Pratley, PFLP Solidarity Campaign coordinator and group administrator in Wellington said, “This was clearly a political attack against the PFLP and an attempt by Facebook to censor and shut down the solidarity campaign”.
The PFLP advocates a single secular state in all of Palestine, with equal rights for all, regardless of race or religion, and is the second largest group in the PLO. Facebook have deemed that support for the PFLP violates its terms and conditions while allowing many blatantly racist anti-Palestinian groups to continue to exist without such censorship.
The Workers Party believes that all political ideas and discussion should be free of censorship on the internet, but wishes to expose this hypocrisy, which often surrounds debate of the Palestine issue. Palestinian groups are frequently censored and branded as terrorists while supporters of the racist state of Israel are not.
The PFLP Solidarity Campaign is determined to continue on, despite Facebook's censorship. “We have already raised over $1000 through selling T Shirts. Deleting a Facebook group is not going to stop us showing solidarity with Palestine or the PFLP”, said Christchurch administrator Mike Walker.
http://wpnz-pflp-solidarity.blogspot...lestinian.html
The best way you can help fight this, and help fight Israel at the same time, is to go to the website and order one of the t-shirts. All the proceeds go directly to the PFLP to fund their struggle against the Zionist occupation.
We have two designs - below is the latest. Leila Khaled sent us her signature to use on the front.
Below is the other design:
Comments
Another good reason to leave facebook...
Another good reason to leave facebook...
101 Good Reasons to Leave FaeceBook
True, and there are *many* good reasons to leave FeaceBook. I was one of 30,000 or so who signed up to Quit FaceBook Day. I haven't successfully deleted my profile yet (doing so makes the 12 tasks of Asterix look easy by comparison), but I sent a message to every one of my FB contacts telling them I was quitting and why, and I haven't been back since then. See my article on Disintermedia, 'Transition To Web Free' for more info:
http://www.coactivate.org/projects/disintermedia/blog/2010/05/24/transit...
Alternative hosting
BTW If PFLP are looking for another host for their group site, I can personally recommend CoActivate.org, or We.RiseUp.net. You could also check out these autonomous tech collectives (list thanks to RiseUp.net):
aktivix.org antifa.net autistici.org boum.org cat.org.au ecn.org espora.org enzyme.org.nz guardachuva.org interactivist.net linefeed.org moviments.net mutualaid.org nadir.org nodo50.org poivron.org resist.ca sarava.org sindominio.net so36.net squat.net tachanka.org taharar.org taktic.org tao.ca kariva.org
Radical Hosting
A good bunch of those no longer exist including:
http://axxs.org.nz/
http://www.antifa.net/
http://www.cat.org.au/
http://www.guardachuva.org/
http://taktic.org/
and possibly:
http://www.taharar.org/
http://nodo50.org/
For community hosting I would recommend http://axxs.org.au/
Thanks for the update
@ Kerry
Thanks for the update bro. I'll get onto RiseUp about updating the list on their front page.
Maybe..
Maybe it had something to do with the fact that the PFLP likes to blow up and machine gun jews, perhaps?
And really, how is hijacking
And really, how is hijacking planes and blowing up markets not terrorism? The whole point of these acts are to spread terror.
And really, how is hijacking
I don't think it is that straight forward. Few terror acts are motivated by the pure want to spread terrorism, Al Qaeda for example have promoted terror in the past specifically for that reason. Much of what has happened in the middle east has been almost tit for tat rather than 'art for arts sake...'
On May 30, 1972, 28
On May 30, 1972, 28 passengers were gunned down at Ben Gurion International Airport by members of the Japanese Red Army in collaboration with the PFLP in what became known as the Lod Airport massacre.
Oh yeah, shooting 28 plane passengers at random, what better way to spread your message. Still, what more can you expect from a bunch of Marxist-Leninist Arab Nationalists who had close links with a Nazi like Genoud (the executor of Joseph Goebbel's Will).
Why is anyone bothered about the PFLP getting banned from Facebook? If a bunch of white power goons with a history of murdering random passengers got banned from Facebook, would anyone on Indymedia start crying about Facebook being cops and censors? I doubt it!
Oh yeah, shooting 28 plane
Like I was saying and even your partisan recollection of history agrees, its not terrorism for terrorism sake as is often the case with Al Qaeda.
It was and in some ways it still is in a kind of hammer (Israel/US) versus the nail (Palestinians) type tit for tat even today. You've listed some of the tit, now the challenge is, can you list the tat to give a fuller picture (not that it really matters, but you did open the door on this one). Let me give you a help up on this one. Remember the bombing of Palestinian refugee camps ordered by the PM of Israel after the Munich hostage crisis? Hope that helps.
Yeah, the situation is often
Yeah, the situation is often tit for tat. My problem with the issue is this: people on the left will rightly condemn Israel for its actions such as bombing refugee camps, but when some bunch of nutcases such as PFLP respond by executing the pilot of a Lufthansa aircraft, or shooting dead random El Al passengers we get piss-weak responses such as t-shirtssales for the PFLP declaring "Resistance is not terrorism". The truth of that statement really does depend on what the act of resistance is. Attacking armed Israeli troops could be declarared "resistance". Shooting dead innocent civilians is NOT and never will be. Elements of the left need to be consistant with their thoughts. But the highly authoritarian attitudes of some left groups will never allow them to do so. Plus it's easy to sit back in a nice safe country like Aotearoa and cheerlead for authoritarian murderers when there is just no chance in hell that you will be caught up in one of their "resistance" attacks.
PFLP
Does "Anti-authority (including red fascists)" support the Palestinian resistance? Because if s/he does, it's a question of what support people "in a nice safe country like Aotearoa" can or should give in solidarity with that struggle. If s/he doesn't, then it's a completely different discussion that we're having.
If "Anti-authority (including red fascists)" has any good suggestions on how to liberate Palestine, I'm sure they could be posted here, because s/he apparently feels that it's OK to sit in judgement of the Palestinian struggle from the safety of "a nice safe country like Aotearoa".
Cheers,
John
The "palestinian restistance"
The "palestinian restistance" is not one single united mass movement. It's comprised by many groups with different ways of obtaining liberation. Some are nasty authoritarian bastards who think firing missiles at random into Israel will achieve "liberation". From what I understand, the last person killed by a missle attack on Israel was a person from Thailand. Wow, that'll teach them!
Some groups who want to achieve liberation engage in USEFUL activity. Whether it is Israelis and/or foreigners uniting with Palestinians to stop the eviction or demolition of the homes of Palestinians, or in the case of Palestinian militants, it can be argued that their armed resistance to attacks by the Israeli army is resistance.
I have no problem with sitting here in nice safe Aotearoa passing judgement on arseholes who murder civilians at random claiming it is all part of a 'greater good'. I'll give support to those engaged in constructive liberatory activities, rather than cheerlead anyone who fights with the reasoning that ANY action is justified, no matter what the target, no matter who gets killed.
Militant authoritarian groups tend to lack moral scruples, no matter whether they be groups of the left or right. Only fools think that the ends and the means are two entirely seperate things. Anyway, I got better things to do than argue here. Will anyone here be whooping for joy next time some 'militant' blows up a bus full of workers in Israel/Palestine? And if you do, be prepared to question your humanity, or lack thereof.
From my point of view I see
From my point of view I see it as similar to some of the acts of 'resistance' committed by guerilla fighters against the germans during world war two. While these is deeds were often deplorable even at the time, they pale in comparison to the handiwork of their aggressors.
In that era, acts of armed resistance were the primary means of opposition against oppressive regimes, but oddly enough many groups like the FLN of Algiers got a lot of their inspiration to shift to terror type tactics from the terrorist activities of Menachem Begin who was the big cheese of the Zionist terror cell the Irgun who bombed the King David Hotel in an attack against the British.
That one is the most famous of Begins terrorist attacks, of course there were many earlier terrorist operations resulting in the deaths of close to 1000 Arabs, but you mostly hear about the attacks against the Brits. Earlier versions of the Irgun also fought the Germans using similar tactics.
From that point on it seems that insurgent groups uprising around the world split into two strains, either following the Castro model of armed insurgency or the Zionist/FLN model to bomb their oppressors until they leave.....
So in a ironic twist, the deplorable tactics that terror cells are using against Israel had their origins in the founding of the Israeli state.
But all in all I support the actions the Irgun took against the Germans except for the terror actions against German civies. It is no different for me with the Palestinian insurgents who find themselves in the Irguns shoes, except its not the Nazis trying to toss them in mass walled ghettos...reason being is nothing is as black and white as we want it to be or else there would be little in the world to support.
For instance I am anti-war, but I support the Palestinian struggle against their occupying oppressors even when the main occupation of the insurgency in Palestine is war. Same goes for being anti-terrorism.
It is also good to discuss these things as it is sometimes often easier to deny, abstract, ironise and distance ourselves from the dualities (if in fact this is an issue of duality) in our convictions rather than to confront them with openess.
PFLP
We may both be anti-war in a similar sense. I am completely opposed to any form of imperialist war (eg NZ and other Western countries' war in Afghanistan), but I am not a pacifist and have no objection to the Palestinian right to resist the occupation. Nor did I object to the right of the Sandinistas to fight Somoza, of the anti-apartheid movement to fight the South African state etc.
"Anti-authority (including red fascists)" questioned the integrity of "the left" for "rightly condemn[ing] Israel for its actions" while ignoring a nearly forty year old incident committed by the Japanese Red Army and linked to a (shortly after, expelled) member of the PFLP. But s/he ignores a really important issue.
The violence of the occupied can be justifiable, while the violence of the occupier never can. This is fundamental. Of course it does not mean that any action any occupied movement carries out is by definition acceptable, but it means the notion of "equivalence" or neutrality is irrelevant. I am not neutral and I do not pretend to be. If the IDF kill a member of the PFLP, I will be angry. If the PFLP kill a member of the IDF, I will be pleased. Because the IDF are an occupying army, oppressing the Palestinian people, while the PFLP are a force for liberation. And I am on the side of the Palestinians. Does that mean I would support anything the PFLP did? Of course not. But it means I feel no compunction to feign neutrality as "Anti-authority (including red fascists)" appears to be asking.
Perhaps "Anti-authority (including red fascists)" is simply opposed to violence and wishes the various people in the Middle East could just sort out their differences and live in harmony together. Well fair enough. I want that too but I don't see it being possible as long as the Zionist State exists. Therefore I don't object to the PFLP or other Palestinian factions fighting back. I don't agree with the idea of suicide bombings and Islamism so I don't support Hamas or Al Jihad, but I support their right to resist too. And while I wouldn't celebrate the deaths of Israeli civilians (and I don't include armed gangs of settler thugs in that definition, they're the stormtroopers for the Israeli state), I wouldn't condemn the Palestinian movement as a result. If the Israelis commit an atrocity against the Palestinians I will condemn them.
It's a case of knowing who's side you're on.
Cheers,
John
Highest regards. but you will be in the books of the SIS now
John, with all respect, and I would agree with most of what you said. Yet we have the SIS on our tail, and you can be sure that they have now opened a file on you, provided they have not already done so.
That is the state of affairs in Aotearoa NZ, make no doubt about it!
SIS
Yeah well, I don't imagine we can avoid them forever. I wouldn't go out of my way to attract their attention but I'm not about to become too paranoid either. If I come to their attention over anything I've written here, the irony would be that international law, in which I have little faith, would agree with me on the right to resistance by occupied peoples...
It does no harm to be aware though of the fact that places like this probably are monitored.
Cheers,
John
The cops are the ones to
The cops are the ones to watch for, theyre twice as paranoid as the SIS, and have zip experience in how to process stuff they have acquired from bugging, or say from googling you, and unlike the SIS, they have no history or experience in interpretting the types of language that lefties commonly use, and cannot comprehend humour (to understand humour one must have a soul), or revolutionary type language within its context, therefore take everything you say on face value, their face value.
I don't think it is that
Sure, I meant terror as a strategy. Not just because they are super evil bad guys living on some mountaintop castle somewhere.
And what the fuck, why have my comments been hidden?
Well - who founded Facebook? Maybe explains a few things?
Mark Zuckerberg -
some information about him and his background:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_Epsilon_Pi
To the mods
Why are all the comments critical of the PFLP being hidden?
Ok, so they've been unhidden.
Ok, so they've been unhidden. No explanation?
Apologies, I hid them
Apologies, I hid them assuming it was zionist trolling - took another look and realised they weren't so unhid them.
Kerry
A-IMC ed
"Zionist trolling"
Sorry, but before you assume that kind of thing perhaps do a bit of back-grond research before you take action. What sometimes may appear to be "Zionist" may not be so. What appears to be the opposite extreme may also be an attempt of argument, but not necessarily "anti Zionist". It pays to examine, discern and be a bit more careful, I would suggest.
where have all the flowers
where have all the flowers gone ,long time passing ,where have all the flowers gone ,long long time ago...............
FUCK THE ARABS LONG LIVE
FUCK THE ARABS LONG LIVE ISREAL
Another failed thread hijacked by extremists from both sides!
Indymedia do not seem to get things running well at times, I regret. Some questionable posts should perhaps not be hidden but confronted and argued against.
The hiding policy is a display of weakness.
And re those pro Israeli spammers, we know what goes on. They are onto it and will try whatever they can to rubbish the Palestinians and their cause.
So let us expose them and their policies instead of showing weakness or pretending ignorance. They just love it when the editorial team shuts their comments out, because it proves their arguments anyway.
Hence everybody who is truly interested should shoot back at them with the same fire power and argue the true cause! Fight fire with fire is the best solution to those bastards!