Injustice_exposed

Jewish settler terrorists rampage at Arab village, casualties reported

2009-04-09T14:22:00.003+01:00

The Beit Ayn settlement outpost near Hebron

WRITTEN BY Khalid Amayreh in al-Khalil

8 April, 2009

Religious Jewish terrorists on Thursday attacked a small Arab village north of al Khalil (Hebron), shooting randomly on civilians and vandalizing homes and businesses.

Eyewitnesses said as many as a hundred settler terrorists descended on the small village of Safa, 10 kilometers north west of al-Khalil, with the purpose of carrying out a pogrom against local inhabitants.

The terrorists were escorted by several Israeli army soldiers who reportedly made no effort to stop the terrorists who were shouting “death to the Arabs.”

The Palestinians, fearing for their lives, hurled stones at the rampaging settlers to prevent them from setting fire to Palestinian property, prompting Israeli soldiers to open fire at the Palestinians.

At least 28 people were reportedly wounded with live ammunition, including a boy who was shot in the chest.

Medical sources said Thaer Nasser Adi, 17, was in serious but stable condition at the Ahli hospital in al–Khalil.

The mayor of the nearby town of Beit Ummar, Nasri Sabarna, described the settler rampage as “an unprovoked criminal act against innocent and peaceable people.”

Sabarna said the settlers wanted to terrorize the Palestinian villagers in order to take over their land and property.

He accused the right-wing Israeli government of giving Jewish terrorists a green light to attack Palestinians and vandalize their property.

“The present government is a government of settlers, by the settlers, for the settlers. I believe there is a full coordination between the settlers and the army.”

Muhammed, a local villager, called the settlers “savages and Nazis.”

“These people go to their religious Talmudic schools in the morning, and in the afternoon they come here to attack us, terrorize our women and children and sabotage our property. What kind of religion are they following?”

Muhammed called on the international community to provide protection against “these barbarians who want to kill us and expel us from our land.”

He lashed out at the Israeli army for its “connivance and collusion” with the settlers, saying that the army and the settlers were “two sides of the same coin.”

Al-Khalil Governor Hussein al Araj, who arrived at the village soon after the disturbances, accused the Israeli army of failing to protect Palestinians from the settlers.

“I believe the settlers wouldn’t dare attack the village without at least a tacit approval from the Israeli army.”

Al-Araj held the Israeli army fully responsible for this “pogrom,” saying that Palestinians in the occupied territories needed international protection.

He added that settler attacks and terror would continue as long as “these criminal squatters remain here.”

The small settlement outpost, known as Beit Ayn, is home to extremist settlers who are indoctrinated in Jewish supremacy.

A few years ago, some of the settlers from Beit Ayn were caught implanting a large explosive charge at a Palestinian school near Jerusalem.

The explosion would have killed and injured dozens of Palestinian children.

Last week, a settler was killed, ostensibly in retaliation for the murder of Palestinians by settler terrorists.

Normally, the Israeli justice system deals extremely lightly with settlers who murder Palestinians.

During the al-Qsa intifada, the Israeli army and paramilitary Jewish terrorists killed thousands of Palestinians, the vast majority of whom innocent civilians, to suppress Palestinian aspirations for freedom from decades of the Nazi-like Israeli military occupation.

According to an Israeli human rights organization, only a handful of cases of murder were investigated.

Israel to deny prisoners their rights

2009-03-30T00:10:00.000+01:00

Israel has approved legislation to deny Palestinian prisoners their rights as a last ditch effort to free captured soldier Gilad Shalit.

The cabinet voted for proposals presented by Justice Minister Daniel Friedmann calling for cutting back on Palestinian prisoners' visitation rights, academic studies and means of communication, The Jerusalem Post reported Sunday.

In addition to sanctions on entertainment media, the prisoners will be subject to stricter guidelines regarding the transfer of money for use at the prison canteen.

The recommendations were made during the weekly cabinet meeting which was the final meeting of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's government.

Friedmann briefed the cabinet on legislature that would have to be instituted in order to take further steps.

"It is true that we are the only democracy in the Middle East, but we can't let ourselves become the only suckers and we mustn't show weakness," he claimed.

The Prisons service announced that the recommendations will go into effect in the near future.

The move is expected to raise strong criticism among the human rights groups, which have been increasing mounting pressure on Tel Aviv over its disregard for human rights during the war on Gaza.

Israeli forces targeted numerous civilian buildings including homes, mosques, media centers and even UN schools, during three weeks of non-stop fire on the Gaza Strip.

There is also evidence proving that Tel Aviv has resorted to unconventional weapons - including depleted uranium and white phosphorus -- during the onslaught.

Following the war on Gaza Hamas and Israel engaged in negotiations but failed to reach a prisoner swap deal in Egypt earlier this month.

The two sides have been negotiating an agreement under which hundreds of Palestinian prisoners would be released in exchange for the release of Shalit -- captured in a cross border operation by Palestinian fighters in 2006.

Israel has been insisting that high profile prisoners must be expelled from Palestinian territories upon their release - a request strongly opposed to by Hamas.

- PRESS TV

Israel soldiers tear gas al-Khalil demo

2009-03-30T00:08:00.000+01:00

Israeli soldiers use tear gas and shock grenades to disperse demonstrators protesting against Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

An Israeli army spokeswoman said soldiers dispersed the Palestinian and Israeli protesters in al-Khalil's (Hebron) Old City on Saturday after they disturbed public order in an area under Israeli control.

A video footage from the scene showed Israeli soldiers pushing demonstrators, including Israeli Arab lawmaker Mohammad Barakeh. A number of foreign peace activists were also present at the protest, Reuters reported.

Israeli and Palestinian demonstrators said the protest was part of several events aimed at marking Land Day, the annual commemoration of protests in 1976 against Israel's occupation of Arab-owned land in al-Jaleel (Galilee).

The demonstrators were also demanding that Palestinians be allowed to use a road in the old town of al-Khalil after they were denied access by the Israeli military for what it called 'security reasons'.

Some 600 illegal settlers live under Israeli military protection in the heart of the West Bank city of al-Khalil that is inhabited by 180,000 Palestinians.

- PRESS TV

France calls Gaza 'open-air prison'

2009-03-30T00:07:00.000+01:00

France has warned that the Gaza Strip cannot remain an 'open-air prison' forever, urging Israel to lift the blockade on the territory.

Tel Aviv should 'permanently' open Gaza's border-crossings, said French Foreign Ministry Spokesman Eric Chevallier, IRNA repored.

The lifting of the Gaza blockade is a fundamental key to a long-lasting ceasefire and ending the crisis in the territory, he went on to say.

The French spokesman further urged Israel to permit the entry of humanitarian aid and merchandise so that the Gaza inhabitants could lead a normal life.

According to Chevallier, the European Union and France have been in contact with the Israeli authorities to convince them to open Gaza to humanitarian aid.

Israel has enforced a 20-month blockade on the Gaza Strip and has managed to cripple the costal strip's economy with its recent war that inflicted over USD 1.6 billion in damage on the Gazans.

On December 27, Tel Aviv launched an all-out military strike on Gaza. Three weeks of constant air strikes and a ground incursion left over 1,350 Palestinians -- mostly civilians -- dead and around 5,450 people injured.

- PRESS TV

Cartoon of the Day.

2009-03-30T00:03:00.001+01:00

US Army Confirms Israeli Nukes; Israeli Aid At Stake

2009-03-30T00:02:00.001+01:00

The Army has let slip one of the worst-kept secrets in the world — that Israel has the bomb.

Officially, the United States has a policy of “ambiguity” regarding Israel’s nuclear capability. Essentially, it has played a game by which it neither acknowledges nor denies that Israel is a nuclear power.

But a Defense Department study completed last year offers what may be the first time in a unclassified report that Israel is a nuclear power. On page 37 of the U.S. Joint Forces Command report, the Army includes Israel within "a growing arc of nuclear powers running from Israel in the west through an emerging Iran to Pakistan, India, and on to China, North Korea, and Russia in the east."

The single reference is far more than the U.S. usually would state publicly about Israel, even though the world knew Israel to be a nuclear power years before former nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu went public with facts on its weapons program in 1986.

Several years later investigative reporter Seymour Hersh published "The Samson Option," detailing Israel’s strategy of massive nuclear retaliation against Arab states in the event it felt its very existence was threatened. Israel’s nuclear arsenal has been estimated to range from 200 to 400 warheads.

Yet Israel has refused to confirm or deny it’s nuclear capabilities, and the U.S. has gone along with the charade.

As recently as Feb. 9 President Barack Obama ducked the question when asked pointedly by White House correspondent Helen Thomas whether he knew of any country in the Middle East that has nuclear weapons. Keeping the blinders on is necessary politically in order to avoid a policy confrontation with Israel.

By law, the U.S. would have to cease providing billions of dollars in foreign aid to Israel if it determined the country had a nuclear weapons program. That’s because the so-called Symington Amendment, passed in 1976, bars assistance to countries developing technology for nuclear weapons proliferation.

Given the U.S.’s long history of selective blindness when it comes to Israeli nukes, it’s unlikely that the Joint Operating Environment 2008 report compiled by the Army amount to much more than a minor faux pas.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz, in a March 8 article on the report, observed: "It is virtually unheard of for a senior military commander, while in office, to refer to Israel’s nuclear status. In December 2006, during his confirmation hearings as Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates referred to Israel as one of the powers seen by Iran as surrounding it with nuclear weapons. But once in office, Gates refused to repeat this allusion to Israel, noting that when he used it he was 'a private citizen.'"

– Bryant Jordan

SOURCE: http://www.defensetech.org/archives/004749.html

Devouring Jerusalem

2009-03-29T23:59:00.000+01:00

Khalid Amayreh

In its increasingly rabid efforts to consolidate control of traditionally Arab-East Jerusalem, Israel this week moved to suppress Palestinian cultural activities associated with the city being declared the capital of Arab culture for 2009.

On 19 March heavily armed paramilitary police violently dispersed a meeting at the Ambassador Hotel in East Jerusalem, confiscating posters, leaflets, placards and computers.

Israeli police also raided schools, social clubs and community centres to foil activities celebrating Arab culture in the occupied city which Israel considers its "united and undivided capital".

Several organisers, including East Jerusalem lawmaker Hatem Abdel-Qader, were arrested on charges of disturbing peace.

Israeli security forces cordoned off East Jerusalem by deploying soldiers at all entrances to the city. They turned back visitors, including several delegations from Arabian Gulf states, including Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.

Frustrated by the draconian Israeli measures the Palestinian Authority, the main organiser of the festivities, decided to transfer the main event to Bethlehem, a few kilometres south of Jerusalem. Hundreds of PA officials, foreign dignitaries, religious leaders and diplomats arrived on 21 March to listen to a speech by PA President Mahmoud Abbas.

Abbas reasserted his commitment to establishing a viable Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital, on all Palestinian land Israel occupied in 1967.

"We will continue to reject the Israeli policy of Judaising Al-Quds Al-Sharif [Jerusalem]. And we will not hold peace talks with any Israeli government that rejects the two-state solution," said Abbas, alluding to Israeli designate-Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu.

The Palestinian leader, who recited a few verses of the Quran pertaining to the status of Jerusalem in Islam, pointed out that Jerusalem was the key to peace in the region and the world, saying that peace will not prevail unless and until the Israeli occupation ends completely.

Addressing the Arab-Muslim world, Abbas said: "I urge our Arab and Muslim brothers to come to the rescue of Jerusalem, protect Jerusalem from the act of rape to which the city is being subjected… Jerusalem is being Judaised by force, its Arab identity is being obliterated, its history is being falsified, its people are being oppressed and tormented. Its homes are being demolished. Jerusalem is the beginning and the end, it is the ultimate address of peace. Jerusalem is the capital of Palestine."

Addressing Israel, Abbas said: "Peace can't be made through the building and expansion of settlements, brute force and military insolence. What happened in Gaza recently reflects the Israeli mindset, and with such a mindset, it is clear there can be no peace."

Abbas's desperate but defiant words epitomised the situation across the occupied Palestinian territories but especially in Jerusalem, where Israel is planning to destroy hundreds of Palestinian homes.

The planned destruction of the Silwan neighbourhood in the heart of the city has been described by PA officials as "demographic decapitation".

"They are indulging in ethnic cleansing in broad daylight. They are chasing Palestinians out of their homes. They are trying to decapitate Arab existence in East Jerusalem, step by step, home by home, neighbourhood by neighbourhood, while they continue to lie about their desire for peace," said Rafiq Al-Husseini, a senior aide to Abbas.

Asked by Al-Ahram Weekly what the PA was going to do to prevent Israel from carrying out the wholesale destruction of the Silwan neighbourhood [the goal is to build a park and recreational facilities for Jewish settlers in the surrounding areas], Al-Husseini said the PA would try to mobilise the international community to stop Israeli crimes.

During her recent visit to the occupied territories US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton described the planned demolitions as "unhelpful" and "incompatible with Israeli commitments under the roadmap".

Israeli officials were unimpressed by Clinton's warnings. Jerusalem's Jewish mayor, Nir Barkat, described her words as "a lot of air", claiming she had been misled by the Palestinians.

Barkat, an extreme right-winger, vowed to destroy Arab homes en masse, saying that "what we do in our capital is none of America's business".

Israeli efforts to obliterate the Arab-Islamic-Christian identity of Jerusalem began immediately after 1967. Four days after seizing the city Israeli army bulldozers razed the Maghariba and Sharaf neighbourhoods. The Palestinian inhabitants of the two neighbourhoods were expelled at gunpoint. Two mosques, two religious schools or Zawiyas and 135 houses were destroyed.

Several months later Israel seized the Harat Al-Maghariba for "public use" and built a large plaza in front of the Buraq — the Wailing or Western — Wall. The heart of Al-Maghariba and the adjacent, smaller Harat Al-Sharaf were both Islamic Waqf (religious endowment) properties dating back to the time of Salaheddin Al-Ayoubi (Saladin).

According to Palestinian sources Israel has demolished as many as 700 homes in the old town alone, forcing many inhabitants to seek shelter outside the boundaries of the city, e.g. in the West Bank.

Since 1967 Israel has confiscated 34 per cent of East Jerusalem for "public benefit" and designated 44 per cent of the occupied Arab town as "green space". Nine per cent of the city was confiscated for the purpose of building settlements, leaving only 13 per cent of the original, built up Arab area, for the Palestinians.

In addition Israel has adopted a number of aggressive measures aimed at forcing the town's Arab inhabitants to leave. These include imposing excessive taxes on real estate, including homes, withholding vital municipal services from Jerusalem's Arabs in order to force them to relocate and denying residency rights to as many as 20,000 Arabs living in the city.

The Israeli authorities have continued to deny Arabs building licences, exacerbating a housing crisis in the Old Town and surrounding Arab neighbourhoods.

The systematic destruction by Israeli municipal authority of "illegally-built" homes pushed thousands of Jerusalemites to the brink of despair.

Adnan Al-Husseini, the nominal Palestinian governor of Jerusalem, described Israeli measures in Jerusalem as a "full fledged demographic war".

"The Israeli goal is very clear. It is to force as many Palestinians as possible to leave the city and sell their property to Jewish interests."

Al-Husseini said Israel was following a variety of tactics to achieve its strategy, including psychological and economic pressure, heavy taxation, physical coercion and harassment and financial incentives to force Arabs to sell their properties. Jerusalemite Arabs were clinging to their city, he said, despite Israeli efforts to curtail Arab demographic growth.

The Palestinian population of Jerusalem has grown extensively since the beginning of the occupation in 1967. Today, the total population of Jerusalem (East and West) is estimated at 720,000, including 475,000 Jews (66 per cent) and 245,000 Arabs (34 per cent).

As many as 260,000 of the Jewish population of the city (54.7 per cent) are living in 34 colonies established in and around East Jerusalem since 1967.

Maali Adomim, Pisgat Zeev, Har Homa and Gush Itzion are among the largest of these settlements.

Israeli demographic experts predict the Palestinian population will make up 40 per cent of the town's total population by the 2020. It is to forestall this possibility that Israel has been making frantic efforts to confiscate more Arab land in order to build Jewish settler units.

According Israeli sources tenders for building more than 25,000 settler units have been issued since the Annapolis conference in 2007.

Earlier this month the Israeli group Peace Now revealed that the Israeli government was planning to build more than 73,000 units in the occupied West Bank, most of them in existing settlements surrounding East Jerusalem.

The group, which monitors settlement expansion in the West Bank, said the new plans would lead to the doubling of the Israeli settler population and scuttle any prospects for the creation of a viable and contiguous Palestinian state.

Among the most dangerous and explosive aspects of Israel's efforts to Judaise East Jerusalem is the ongoing excavation and digging beneath the Al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam's third holiest shrine.

According to Waqf officials, digging beneath the Al-Aqsa Mosque is seriously undermining the foundations of Islamic shrine and the nearby Dome of the Rock.

Sheikh Mohamed Hussein, head of the Supreme Muslim Council in Jerusalem, warned that it was only a matter of time before a "major disaster" occurred as a result of Israeli diggings in the vicinity of the Haram Al-Sharif (Al-Aqsa Mosque) esplanade. He accused the Israeli authorities of constructing subterranean tunnels beneath Islamic holy places without any consideration for the safety of Islamic shrines. "I can say without the slightest exaggeration that the Al-Aqsa Mosque is facing the danger of collapse as a result of these excavations."

Islamic Palestinian leader Raed Salah was even more dramatic in voicing his concerns. "The Al-Aqsa Mosque is facing urgent danger. A medium earthquake could cause the collapse of the mosque."

Salah was arrested by Israeli police on Monday, 23 March, charged with "disturbing the peace" and "inciting against Israel".

In recent years the Israeli security authorities have allowed extremist Jews to enter the Haram esplanade and perform Jewish prayers and other rituals.

In 1967 the Israeli army chief rabbi, General Shlomo Goren, tried to convince a commander of the conquering forces, Uzi Narkis, to blow up the mosque "once and for all".

The story was told by Narkis shortly before his death in 1997 and quoted by Avi Shlaim, an Israeli historian, in The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World.

"There was an atmosphere of spiritual elation. Paratroopers were milling around in a daze. Narkis was standing for a moment on his own, deep in thought, when Goren went up to him and said 'Uzi, this is the time to put a hundred kilograms of explosives in the Mosque of Omar and that's it, we'll get rid of it once and for all.' Narkis said 'Rabbi, stop it." Goren then said to him, 'Uzi, you'll enter the history books by virtue of this deed.' Narkis replied, 'I have already recorded my name in the pages of the history of Jerusalem.' Goren walked away without saying another word."

Two weeks later the Israeli occupation army seized the key to one of the gates of Al-Aqsa Mosque (the Moroccan Gate).

Numerous efforts by Jewish extremists to destroy the Islamic shrine have been reported over the years.

They can't take that away from me: "settlers" stealing Palestinian land from under our feet

2009-03-29T23:22:00.005+01:00

Commemorating 60+ Years of the Systematic Murder of Palestinian Land. The first part of a three part series for Land Day

Reham Alhelsi

As I stood on the roof and watched Jerusalem stretch in front of me, with the sun reflecting on the golden Dome, I felt angry and felt how unfair the world is. I was born in Jerusalem, went to school there and practically grew up there knowing almost every corner, every street and every alley in it. I have more memories in Jerusalem than any other place in the world, all cherished ones. But now, I am not allowed into the city anymore because I am Palestinian. As I stood there, with tears in my eyes, I envied every Palestinian with an American or European passport, because they can come and visit Jerusalem. I envied every foreigner who can visit the city whenever they choose. I even envied the birds singing on the cypresses before me, because they could fly over Jerusalem and fill their eyes with its beauty and their lungs with its air. In my childhood, Jerusalem was the only major Palestinian city I knew well and loved. In the eyes and mind of a child, to me Ramallah was a cold city, Bethlehem was the “village” nearby, Nablus and Hebron were the places “to visit my uncles in Israeli prisons” and Jericho was too hot. Only Jerusalem was perfect: with its bustling Old City, the old bus station, Salah Al-Deen Street, Al Musrarah, the walk to the Notre Dame, the walk down Wadi Al-Joz and up to Al-Tur and the walk up to Ras El Amoud. I walked on the roof and saw the mountains on the Jordanian side, clearly visible during mild weather. Late afternoons, coming back home from school, one would witness a breathtaking sight going down the steep street in Sawahreh: a marvellous mixture of simple houses, some with old traditional domed roofs, barley fields or olive groves spreading against a curtain of mountains. Between the mountains and the last of the houses a strip of blue was visible. We always thought it to be the Dead Sea. Well, I personally still like to think of it as the Dead Sea. It was a combination of colours that rarely showed itself, but when it did, it was truly breathtaking.

To the south I could see Mount Herod in the distance. I have watched this artificial mountain since my childhood and always wondered at its shape. It always looked far away to be reached, but at the same time so close, an integral part of the view surrounding my home. I used to think about the impossibility of climbing that mountain, because it had steep sides, one would keep slipping and would never reach the top. I did “climb” that mountain years later, during the work on a TV documentary on Bethlehem. During the 2002 IOF invasion of the West Bank, my parents told me that Israeli fighter jets used to pass over Sawahreh on their way to Bethlehem. After a few minutes, the sound of explosions would rock the sky, as the IOF bombarded Bethlehem and the surrounding towns, villages and refugee camps. Since hearing this, every time I see Mount Herod I can’t help thinking of Israeli jets on their way to destroying yet another part of Palestine and kill innocent unarmed civilians. In Sawahreh, Israeli jets roaring in the sky were always a common thing. Some of Sawahreh’s vast lands had been confiscated for so-called “security reasons” and were used as a training area for the IOF. We would often hear sounds of explosions and the house would shake, or hear Israeli jets coming and going. One time, my sister, my brother and I thought that they were preparing for war, and since we had no army of our own, had no jets or tanks or bombs to protect ourselves, we held a meeting to decide on the best way to protect the family. The only solution we could think of was to build an underground shelter. I don’t know where we got the idea of a shelter from, since Palestinians have no shelters, but most probably from one of those WWII films the Israeli TV kept showing. We did start digging, using our hands and small pointy stones, but realized after a while what a lengthy and hard process that was, and instead decided that in case a war does break out we would use the water well as a shelter, i.e., after removing all the water.

One would think what a beautiful view, Jerusalem on one side, Bethlehem on the other with mountains and an imaginary sea in the background. Unfortunately, this scenery is interrupted by the Jewish illegal settlements Maale Adumim and Kidar, spreading themselves on Palestinian hills. Many Palestinian villages and town are surrounded by illegal Jewish settlements. Some are surrounded by settlements from one, two or three sides. Others are surrounded by illegal settlements and the Apartheid Wall. Sawahreh is surrounded by the illegal settlements of Maale Adumim from the northeast and Kidar from the east and by the Apartheid Wall from the west. Kidar settlement is the closest to us. Before the first intifada, Kidar settlers used to come and walk through our main street, among Palestinian houses. So sure they were of themselves, acting as if the land belonged to them. I remember once we were playing in the land, when a group of settlers walked up the street. We stopped playing and just watched them. I didn’t understand settlers and settlements much at the time, but I remember knowing that these people had no right to walk on our streets. We used to spend our holidays in Dheisheh refugee camp, where the IOF would shoot to kill little children, and then we would come back to Sawahreh, where settlers were walking our street. Those close to Kidar used to sell home-made white cheese and yoghurt to the settlers, who thought us too quiet and peaceful, so they called us “Kiryat Shalom” or the village of peace. It was something I always felt ashamed of, knowing that the settlers thought us too peaceful to bother with, while their army and their fellow fanatic settlers were attacking Dheisheh and killing people there. If the illegal settlers of Kidar were so very interested in peace with us, why did they steal our lands to expand their settlement, knowing that our livelihood depended on these lands? You can’t have peace with your occupier, because the only peace they will offer you is a masquerade, not a real and just peace. In Palestine, power cuts are a regular thing, and whenever we had no electricity and had to study using candle light, which often hurt our eyes, I used to look through the window and watch Sawahreh, Abu Dees and Ezariyyeh drown in complete darkness, while Kidar and Maale Adumim would be lighted like a Christmas tree. Even as a child this made me think of how unfair the situation was and that these settlers and these settlements don’t belong here.

I remember as a child how “far away” Maale Adumim seemed. But as I grew up, so did the illegal settlement. The danger of this expansion never really registered in my mind until one night I dreamt that I opened the window of my bedroom to find myself looking into the courtyard of a Jewish house. The settlement had eaten the land all the way from where it stood till our house, and our house and the land surrounding it was next. I woke up sweating and my heart beating fast. So real was the threat, I realized at the time, that I knew it was not a mere nightmare. The next day I went at the back of the house to the spot where one could get a direct view of Maale Adumim and tried to calculate how much time we had before my nightmare became reality. I thought we still had time to act, but I was mistaken. Since the 1990’s the settlements have been expanding and are eating more Palestinian land at an unprecedented pace. In this area there are several illegal Jewish settlements such as Maale Adumim, Alon, Almon, Kidar, Kefar Adumim and Mishor Adumim, with a combined population of some 40,000 settlers. The largest, Maale Adumim was established in 1975 on confiscated Palestinian land and lies 14 km to the east of Jerusalem. It has a population of 35,000 illegal Jewish settlers and a jurisdictional area of 50 km². Road networks have been also established to connect Maale Adumim and neighboring settlements with Jerusalem and with the Jordan Valley. Palestinian land would be confiscated, declared a “closed military zone” and later used for illegal settlement expansions.

On the day of my arrival to Palestine for a short visit, I watched in shock as I passed Maale Adumim at how huge it has become. Within the space of two years, since my last visit, it had doubled in size, to say the least. Standing there on the mountain top, with a wall surrounding parts of it, it reminded me of a fortress from the middle ages. Although I am a fan of fortresses, this one brought only anger and disgust. The lands opposite it, which I distinctly remember were planted with olive trees, had become bare land, the trees uprooted and the land destroyed to make way for more illegal settler houses and roads. At the entrance to Maale Adumim stood a single olive tree, as huge as life and older than any illegal settler on this land. It was clear that this tree had been uprooted from some Palestinian field, maybe even from our confiscated land, and replanted here. Macabre, I thought and could only shake my head at the sad view of that lonely olive tree. Olive trees are like Palestinians, they grow in groups, surrounded by family and friends. That tree stood there alone, a reminder to every Palestinian that this is what the so-called peace process had done to us, and that if this process is allowed to go on, every single Palestinian will end up like that tree, alone and uprooted.

The plan to expand Maale Adumim, known as the “E-1” Plan, which was initiated by Rabin in 1994 and approved in 1999, led to the confiscation of yet more Palestinian land. This Plan is an important part of the “Greater Jerusalem” scheme, which includes Maale Adumim, Beitar, H´Givat Ze’ev, Gush Etzion, the Ariel bloc, the Hashmonain bloc and the Jordan Rift, and aims at annexing large areas of the West Bank to Jerusalem. This plan expands the jurisdictional boundaries of Maale Adumim and its satellite settlements to the Israeli Jerusalem municipal boundaries, linking Jerusalem with surrounding settlement blocs and linking the Maale Adumim bloc with with other settlement blocs such as Pisgat Ze’ev, Pisgat Omer, Neve Ya’acov and the French Hill. Also, a wall is being built around Maale Adumim and its satellite settlements, which will completely encircle East Jerusalem and 61 km² of Palestinian land. The “E-1” Plan aims to completely cut off Jerusalem from the rest of the Palestinian Territories, disconnecting the geographic contiguity of Palestinian Territories by dividing the West Bank into two parts, thus ensuring that no viable Palestinian state would ever come to existence. Last year, roads were paved and a bridge, main junctions, public squares, police stations, checkpoints and side walls were built in the “E-1” area. This area will cover some 13,000 dunums confiscated from Palestinian villages around Jerusalem and is to house an additional 15,000 illegal settlers. Two Israeli-only roads will connect settler roads southeast of Bethlehem with roads to the northeast, including connecting Maale Adumim and other Jerusalem settlements with the Ramot Ashkol settlement. For the construction of these roads, tens of houses in Sawahreh, Abu Dees and Al Tour are to be demolished. To prevent Palestinians from entering Jerusalem or using Road Nr. 1 that passes through the E-1 and Road Nr. 60 that passes through East Jerusalem, an “alternative” road is being constructed for Palestinian use and is to connect the Southern West Bank with its Northern part. For the construction of this road, the IOF issued a military order in 2007 confiscating 1,128 dunums of Palestinian land from villages between Jerusalem and Maale Adumim, i.e. Sawahreh, Abu Dees, Nebi Musa and Al Khan Al Ahmar.

Blocking the southern entrance of Sawahreh is the “Container” checkpoint, which is now being expanded to become a permanent border-like crossing. Passing the checkpoint, one would not imagine what beautiful landscape lies behind the Israeli stone blocks and control tower. Locally, we call it “Barriyeh”, the wilderness or the prairies. Green meadows decorated with red poppies wherever one looks. My favourite spot there is a low area, surrounded by hills and naturally-formed stone structures. Here, running was not possible because of the tall vegetation that covered the place. We would imagine ourselves swimming and race each other or play hide and seek. Then, when we would feel hungry, we would have something to eat under the olive trees. Relics of family history decorate caves in that area and cherished memories of childhood lie behind the checkpoint, making them off-limit to us. The last time I went there was just before leaving for Germany and I had not set foot again. Our lands there, including the olive fields, which were a source of income for my family, were confiscated in 2003. Today, only those few who originally had their houses behind the checkpoint are allowed in, but no one knows how long before their houses will be demolished for some reason or other so as to close the area completely.

The “Container” checkpoint is a passage between the north and the south of the West Bank. It is one of more than 630 Israeli checkpoints and road barriers all over the West Bank, aiming to restrict Palestinian movement on Palestinian land. Travelling to the south, one would have to take the “Wadi Al-Nar” road. Wadi Al-Nar, the Valley of Fire, is most probably called so because of its steepness and the danger of driving there. It was a dirt road connecting Sawahreh with Ubediyyeh, rarely used except maybe by villagers travelling on donkeys. With the signing of the so-called peace process, Jerusalem was closed to most Palestinians and this road was used instead as a link left between the south and the north. If one is stuck behind a truck on that road, the meaning of “Valley of Fire” becomes clear, for when driving up the road, one has the continuous feeling that the truck will turn over any minute and everything behind that truck would be squeezed underneath it. As children we would follow the shepherds with their herds whenever we could. We would eat figs, search for snake nests in caves and play at the old ottoman stone circles. Every time we were there on the hills, we would go exploring a bit further. It was mostly steep hills, where we learned to slide slowly down a hill, using our left foot as a break. Here, there were no illegal settlements and no IOF soldiers, or at least they were not visible. When it was time to go home, instead of taking the direct way, we would go all around the hills, passing the “sacred river” to the old Sawahreh houses and further back home. The “sacred river” as we called it, was a small “river” running through the Wadi Al-Nar. Greenery was along both sides of this river, giving it a genuine river look, like those we used to see in cartoons. The vegetables growing around the riverbanks were double the size of the ordinary vegetables we would buy from the supermarket. Later, and to our great disappoint, we found out that the reason for the extraordinary growth of these vegetables was the waste water. This “sacred river” was actually the flow of waste water from Maale Adumim and other settlements in the area. Not only was their waste water contaminating our lands, their solid waste was being dumped and burned on our lands as well. Several studies have shown that illegal Settlements comprise a major environmental threat. Waste water and industrial waste from settlements is dumped on Palestinian lands, contaminating the soil and the water supply. Palestinian plans to treat waste water are usually rejected by Israel, and in one incident Israel insisted that a treatment facility for Tulkarem be built on the other side of the Green line, for no other reason than to use the treated water for its own interest.

During my last visit to Palestine, I wanted to see these hills again and enjoy the beauty of a Palestine that was free of illegal settlements and IOF checkpoints. It was late afternoon and as I looked around me I saw Mount Herod in the distance, with Palestinian villages decorating the hills all the way from there to Jerusalem. And opposite them, Palestinian hills extended all the way to meet the Jordanian mountains in the horizon. There was no Apartheid Wall, no IOF checkpoints and no settlements. Although I knew they were there, breaking the natural bond between Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank, they were not visible from where I stood. I saw the old stone houses with the traditional domed roof, a herd of sheep with a shepherd who was playing the flute, the sunset adding a magical touch to the whole landscape, and there, at that moment I felt what it would feel to live in a truly free Palestine. I started taking photos and wondering how long before the Israelis would wipe out this landscape and all traces of Palestinian existence here. I went home, thinking that the Palestine I grew up in is not the Palestine of today. The Palestine of today is the rest of the so-called peace process with its illegal settlements, the Apartheid Wall, the IOF checkpoints and “Herrenstraßen” that are eating Palestine from inside, like a cancer, destroying the land piece by piece. I remembered that lonely olive tree in front of Maale Adumim and hoped that those still disillusioned by the “peace process” would wake up and act before it was too late.

Sources:

www.arij.org
www.peacenow.org
www.poica.org
www.btselem.org
www.imemc.org

Shame on us!

2009-03-29T23:18:00.002+01:00

What will happen next? Will Palestinian kids be duped into playing music to Israeli pilots who exterminated Gaza children with White Phosphorus?

By Khalid Amayreh in Occupied East Jerusalem

It is really hard to write on this subject without getting angry. We all know the extent to which Israel can be evil and satanic. After all, we Palestinians have been on the receiving end of Israeli savagery for decades.

In fact, being thoroughly tormented and killed by the children, grandchildren and great grandchildren of the holocaust has always been and continues to be “the” Palestinians’ way of life.

However, for some Palestinians to allow themselves to be duped to sing and play music to their oppressors and child-killers is simply beyond the pale of human dignity.

It is at least as insulting and humiliating as some Jews were forced or duped to play music to SS, Gestapo and Wehrmacht soldiers during the Second World War. In both cases, the act was meant to humiliate the victims and rob them of the last visages of human dignity.

And now, Jews in Israel are doing the same thing to Palestinians, Nazism’s vicarious victims.

Last week, a few innocent kids from the Jenin refugee camp were surreptiously taken to Tel Aviv to “cheer up and take part in peace-promoting activities.”

However, once there the kids were unceremoniously driven to a reception where they were made to play music and sing to “holocaust survivors,” some of them are former members of the Hagana and Irgun terrorist gangs who had taken part in the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and expulsion of Palestinians form their homeland.

God knows how much Palestinian blood did these so-called “holocaust survivors” shed in 1948 and subsequent years. Certainly, Deir Yasin, Tantura, Dawaymeh, and the numerous other massacres were not committed by UFOs. They were committed in cold blood by these very people our children are now cheering up.

Shame on us a thousand times!

Some of the kids were instructed to utter words that should never be uttered by the victims of Zionism. One of the participants reportedly dedicated a special song to Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier taken prisoner by Palestinian fighters in Gaza nearly three years ago. No mention, not even an allusion, was made of the estimated 10,000 Palestinian political and resistance prisoners languishing in Israeli dungeons and concentration camps.

But the kids apparently felt they had to say anything they were asked to say in order to show gratitude for the Jewish “peace contractor” who got them out of the ghetto, otherwise known as Jenin refugee camp, even for a six-our outing in Tel Aviv.

I am not against showing genuine sympathy with the victims of the holocaust. However, a sympathy that is manipulated to justify, rationalize or even extenuate the crime against humanity that is Israel is worse than a crime if only because it serves to promote and perpetuate oppression.

As human beings, we Palestinians do sympathize with all victims of Nazism, Stalinism and imperialism, the wept, the over-wept, and especially the unwept who constitute the vast majority of victims.

Having said that, however, I strongly believe that no honest person under the sun has the slightest right to demand that we pay the price for what the Nazis did or may have done to European Jews nearly 70 years ago.

We didn’t send Jews to the ovens. The Germans did. We didn’t starve Jews to death as Jews are doing to us today in the Gaza Strip.

We didn’t incinerate Jews in Gas chambers as Jews have recently incinerated Palestinian children with White Phosphorus.

Hence, of all people in this world, Palestinians must never be made to feel guilty for what the Nazis and other Europeans did to Jews. I say so because a feeling of guilt, even a modicum of guilt, on our part, would be construed or misconstrued as a vindication of Zionism, the Nazism of our time.

There are additional reasons that make the latest insensitive manipulation of Palestinian suffering especially ugly and dishonorable.

First, nearly all the young musicians who were taken to Tel Aviv came from the Jenin Refugee camp. For those who have forgotten, this is the very same refugee camp that Israeli tanks pulverized in 2002. According to eyewitnesses, Israeli tanks and bulldozers destroyed homes right on top of innocent civilians, including the physically handicapped, while dozens of innocent civilians were systematically massacred, very much like Jews were at Ghetto Warsaw. The massacre at the camp was so hideous that Israel refused to allow UN officials to access the camp to inspect what happened.

Well, again the Nazi analogy is inescapable. Just imagine surviving Jewish children from Treblinka or Bergen Belsen made to sing to SS soldiers!!

Second, the disgraceful concert in Tel Aviv comes on the heel of Israel’s genocidal assault in Gaza where Israeli warplanes showered the children, women and men of coastal enclave with White Phosphorus and other missiles and bombs of death while Israeli Jews were gleefully celebrating the “victory on Hamas” and Israeli rabbis preoccupied with classifying gentiles into “children of light” and “children of darkness.”

In Gaza, the Zionist Jews exposed their shame to all the people of the world by acting like primitive barbarians and murderous savages.

Hence, the utter shamefulness of sending Palestinian children to Tel Aviv to help Israel’s hasbara efforts whitewash Israel’s pornographic barbarianism in Gaza.

Finally, it is obvious that the PA bears much of the blame for this disgraceful event. The PA should never allow so called “cultural exchanges” and “cultural normalization” with the murderers of our children, the very state whose leaders and military commanders view us as “scum, vermin and animals” that ought to be exterminated.

Unfortunately, the PA itself encourages some demoralized Palestinians to endear themselves to Israel, even in the cheapest of manners.

The often cordial meetings and exchanging of kisses between Mahmoud Abbas and Ehud Olmert, the butcher of Gaza, leave one and only impression, not only on the children of the refugee camp in Jenin, but also on TV viewers around the world.

Perhaps the Israel artillery and war planes were showering Gaza with candy, not White Phosphorus!!!

This is probably the main message the organizers of the Jenin-Tel Aviv tour wanted to communicate to these miserable kids who are obviously having a hard time recognizing their fathers’ killers.

Illegal settlements: Israel plans to build another 73,000 houses in occupied territory

2009-03-21T23:39:00.000Z

A report about Israel and it's plans for an expansion of their illegal settlements on the West Bank. The US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, on her first trip to the Middle East, is meeting Israeli leaders in the hope of making some progress on peace talks.

While one of the main issues is Israel's building of settlements in the West Bank, the Israeli organisation 'Peace Now' has released a report suggesting Israel plans to build another 73,000 houses in occupied territory.

http://www.youtube.com/user/setfree68

UK Baroness: "The constant accusation of Anti-Semitism to silence Israels critics is vindictive"

2009-03-21T23:27:00.000Z

Baroness Tongue rips into the Israel Lobby, AIPAC, Friends of Israel and the Board of Deputies accusing them of constantly using the accusation of Anti-Semitism to silence Israels Critics where no intention of Anti-Semitism exists.

http://www.youtube.com/user/setfree68

Israeli Soldiers admit WAR CRIMES in Gaza (inc Interview with Major Avital Leibovich)

2009-03-21T23:26:00.000Z

Evidence is emerging from the testimonies of Israeli Soldiers who admit WARCRIMES took place in Gaza. The Israeli Government have said they will investigate the allegations themselves, but surely this demands the attention of the UNITED NATIONS

http://www.youtube.com/user/setfree68

Canada ban: Galloway faces his accusers a Jewish Defence League (JDL) "Terrorist"

2009-03-21T23:23:00.000Z

Palestinian Mothers: Homage to Steadfastness and Sacrifice

2009-03-21T23:15:00.002Z

Reham Alhelsi

When the women came and told her to leave what she was doing and come and sit in front of the house with them, my grandmother knew what was to come. They sat outside and didn’t talk much. My uncle had been shot in the chest by the IOF that afternoon, and was at that moment being operated. He was in a critical condition, the doctors had told the men who had brought him to the hospital. Some were sent back home to prepare the family for the news and to prepare the refugee camp to welcome the hero, in case the worst happened. Although hope dies last, it was a necessity to prepare everything for a quick funeral and a quick burial. The Israeli army had been known to take bodies of Palestinian martyrs and steal their organs without the Palestinian family’s consent. The organs would then be given to Israelis who needed them. So a Palestinian killed by the IOF, mostly for no reason at all or for defending his country, would be labelled as terrorist by Israel and the biased media, while his organs would be used to save Israeli lives. In other countries, stealing the organs of dead people is considered a crime, but as usual, it doesn’t apply to Israel.

My grandmother sat quiet the whole time, no tears and no words. It was her youngest son, they said. His elder brothers had one time after another been imprisoned for everything that Israel considered “terror”, that she decided at least to spare the youngest the inside of an Israeli prison. Every day she would tell him to go to school and come back directly. “don’t go here or there”. I heard my mother say one time “she thought this way she was keeping him safe from the Israelis; everyday coming back from school after classes were over, and keeping him at her side most of the time.” Till one day, the boys came and told my grandmother that her son had been arrested. ”Arrested for what?” “he was throwing stones.” He hadn’t even bothered to go to school that day.” One of my other uncles said laughingly when the story was brought up once: but we had prepared him for this. And everyone laughed. I laughed too, because I have been though this process as well. Actually, to us kids, it was just another game. One of those bizarre refugee camp games, like the “UNRWA restaurant” game, where we would play little refugee kids standing in line and waiting for our daily portion of a slice of bread and small slice of tomato with salt, and being shouted at by the “UNRWA employee”. The other game, which was to prepare us for future imprisonment by the IOF was the “confession game”. Each one of us would be “tortured” to strengthen our resistance and prevent us from confessing anything in case we are interrogated by the IOF. There was really no “torture” in this game, because there was no real beating. We would be shouted at in a funny way, and the one among us to act the “IOF soldier” would be mimicking Israeli soldiers trying to be brave, but who are in fact afraid of us, little children. We would laugh while being “tortured”, for it was mostly fun for us. Although the game would not really prepare anyone for the barbaric Israeli interrogation and torture, in some way, the game was educational. It gave us the feeling that we are stronger than the IOF and that despite all their weapons, they feared us. So, we would just play being beaten by the IOF, and the one playing the IOF soldier would ask us continuously to confess and we would refuse. He would slash us, though not harshly, on the soles, and demand we confess. We would refuse, laughingly, because for us it was a game, a game that would prove useful one day.

That day, no funeral took place, for my uncle had made it. He had a strong will to live. But every time I think of that moment, I think about my grandmother. The 60 year old woman, who used to divide her week according to visiting days in Israeli prisons. Before one of them was released, another would be arrested, so that they rarely gathered at a dinner table. We were all used to it, not seeing all my uncles at the same time. I rarely heard my grandmother complain, but it was clear to everyone how much she loved her family and how sad she was that they weren’t all around her. She didn’t have to tell her children to go and demonstrate. It was a natural reaction to what these children themselves saw and went through, and it was the love of the land planted in their heart by my grandmother. She would often talk about Jrash, the village from which she and her family and all the residents were ethnically cleansed by the Zionist terror organizations. They were forced to move from one place to another, until they finally reached what is now Dheisheh refugee camp. There she tried to reconstruct her original home by planting some trees in the small piece of land near the UNRWA rooms they were to live in.

The life of my grandmother is typical of the lives of many Palestinian mothers. She was born in a small picturesque village in Palestine, where she grew up, got married and started a family. She would take care of her home, and help the family with the fields. She would care for her small garden and the apple trees which she loved most and would make marmalade for the winter. When the Zionist terror organizations started implementing their plan of ethnically cleansing the Palestinian population, Palestinian villages were attacked one after the other, and horrific massacres took place. The residents of Jrash were finally forced to leave, but not before they fought heroically. My grandparents often talked about these days. During my last visit to Palestine a couple of months ago, I listened to my grandfather as he talked about the fight with the Zionist groups. With sharp memory, he mentioned such details, that for a few seconds I could feel myself there, with them, 60 years ago.

A number of times my grandmother was beaten by the IOF soldiers, some of whom were younger than her own sons and who didn’t care that she was an elderly woman. When IOF soldiers would attempt to arrest someone in the refugee camp, she would hurry with the other women and try and stop them. When Zionist settlers would attack the refugee camp, she would carry the tree stem she hides behind the couch and go protect the camp alongside the men and women. And in the early mornings of the day, when everyone is still fast asleep, after finishing the morning prayer I would hear her asking God to protect her family, her relatives, her neighbours, the refugee camp, the Palestinians and the whole world. I heard her day after day asking forgiveness for the whole world.

In Palestine mothers are sacred. Every one of us has several mothers: the mother that gave birth to us, the olive tree, the land and the mother of all: Palestine. And a Palestinian mother isn’t just a mother to the children she gives birth to, she is mother to all Palestinians. When a Palestinian is being arrested by the IOF, women of all ages will be surrounding the soldiers within seconds, trying to free the prisoner. And for that, sometimes they pay a heavy price, like the 60 year old Mariam Ayyad from Abu Dees. On the night of 20th of September 2008, IOF soldiers broke into her house. After arguing with her, the old woman was repeatedly hit and thrown on the ground by the soldiers until she died in front of her children and grandchildren. During curfews, it is mostly women who would move carefully from one house corner to another and from one street to the other and distribute wheat and milk. When young masked men wanted to go from one place to another, they would be assisted by these mothers, who would check that the roads were clear of IOF soldiers. And when one of their millions of children gets killed by the IOF, they all gather and mourn as one single mother, that it becomes difficult to figure out which one of these mothers is the martyr’s mother. They are the protectors, the helpers and the witnesses of Israeli brutality, for many of them not only carry the pain of losing their children, they carry the scars of more than 60 years of Zionist terror and destruction.

During the Nakba of 1948, Zionist terrorists massacred Palestinians indiscriminately. Even women and children, who are protected during wars under all human laws, were killed in a brutal way. Accounts of the Deir Yassin massacre mention that among the 254 Palestinians victims were 25 pregnant women who were bayoneted in the abdomen while still alive. Another 52 children were maimed in front of their mothers before having their heads cut off by the Zionist terrorists. After the village of Beit Darras had been surrounded by Zionist terror groups and further Zionist mobilization was on the way to occupy the village, the Zionist terror groups called on the Palestinian residents to leave the village safely from the south side. The villagers decided that it was safer for the women and children to leave, since it was the village the Zionists wanted. Upon leaving the village, all the women and children were massacred by the Zionist terrorists. Kafr Qasim, Qibya and many other massacres carry the same pattern of killing unarmed mothers and their children. Other mothers lost their children, and many their lives, after being forced out of their homes to wander the hills of Palestine in search of a safe spot.

The suffering and pain of Palestinian mothers continues till today. Palestinian mothers, including the elderly and the sick among them, are often humiliated at checkpoints in front of their children, and pregnant women are delayed, causing many to give birth at these checkpoint. Women are not only delayed at checkpoints, they are often prevented from reaching hospitals, causing miscarriages and even the death of some of women and infants. Many unnamed children are stillborn at Israeli checkpoints after unnecessary delays or after their mothers were forced to deliver on the dirt road or inside cars at the checkpoint. A report of the Palestinian Ministry of Health published in October 2006 states that since the beginning of the second Intifada in September 2000 some 68 pregnant women gave birth at Israeli checkpoints, leading to 34 miscarriages and the death of four women. In 2002, in two consecutive days two pregnant women on their way to hospital were shot and injured by the IOF soldiers at a checkpoint in the Nablus area. One of the women lost her husband who was shot on the neck and the chest. Others are forced to give birth at home, despite fear of complications because they fear they will be stopped at checkpoints and won’t make it in time to the hospital. In Azzun Atma near Qalqilya pregnant women are even forced to take up residence outside the village until they deliver out of fear that they might not be able to get the necessary medical treatment. The village, encircled by the apartheid wall, is separated by a gate from the rest of the West Bank. This gate is not manned at night, making the village a prison to its residents. According to a B’Tselem report, alone during 2006 some 20 out of 30 pregnant women from Azzun Atma were forced to relocate outside of the village because of their pregnancy.

IOF soldiers don’t hesitate in arresting Palestinian mothers to be used as hostages to pressure wanted Palestinians to give themselves up. In its report “Behind the Bars: Palestinian Women in Israeli Prisons” published in June 2008, Addammeer, Mandela Institute and the Palestinian Counselling Centre state that “As of May 2008, over 9.080 Palestinian political prisoners remain in Israeli prisons, detention facilities and camps; of those 73 Palestinian women (including 2 girls aged 16 and 17 of a total of 327 minors, and 24 mothers with a total number of 68 children.” Many of the prisoners are held without any charges, and are subjected to torture, humiliation and intimidation. There were four cases of women giving birth inside Israeli prisons under difficult conditions. These women had their hands and feet shackled to their beds. They remain so until they enter the delivery room and are chained again after they deliver.

Palestinian mothers are not only to suffer the loss of their children, husbands and other family members, they themselves are also targeted by the IOF. According to Miftah 7141 Palestinians had been killed by the IOF during the period from 28th September 2000 till 28th February 2009, 1138 of whom were children and 581 were women. A recent report of the Palestine Centre for Human Rights on Israel’s war on Gaza confirms that “Over the course of the 22 day Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip, a total of 1,434 Palestinians were killed. Of these, 235 were combatants. The vast majority of the dead, however, were civilians and non-combatants: protected persons according to the principles of IHL. PCHR investigations confirm that, in total, 960 civilians lost their lives, including 288 children and 121 women. 239 police officers were also killed; the majority (235) in air strikes carried out on the first day of the attacks. The Ministry of Health has also confirmed that a total of 5,303 Palestinians were injured in the assault, including 1,606 children and 828 women.” Every single child killed had a mother. Human rights organization talked in their reports about mothers being killed together with their children, others witnessing the killing of their children and not able to prevent it, while others died in front of their children. Some of these mothers lost not only one child, but several. Of the many war crimes committed by Israel in Gaza, one horrific story tells the fate of a Palestinian mother of 10. While sitting with her children, the IOF soldiers entered her house and demanded she choose five of her children to “give as a gift to Israel”. After the woman screamed in horror, the IOF soldiers told her they would choose themselves and then killed five of her children in front of her.

Palestinian mothers have been actively participating in resisting the occupation. They are the first to organize sit-ins in front of international organizations and hold marches demanding the release of their children from Israeli prisons or protesting the brutality of the Israeli military occupation. They visit their sons in hospitals and in jails, despite the long wait and the humiliation they endure on the hands of the Israelis jailers. Also, many of these mothers are the supporters of their families. When the father or son is arrested or killed by the IOF, it is the mothers who take on the burden of providing for their families. Those among them who have a piece of land would plant it with vegetables and herbs, to be later sold to neighbours or at the local market. Others use their embroidery skills to stitch Palestinian tradition dresses “thob”, scarves, shawls and pillow covers. They hold their families together, particularly in difficult times.

Biased media, serving only Zionist propaganda, ignores the suffering of Palestinian mothers under Israeli occupation and instead often portrays them as heartless women, who send these children to the streets and encourage them to throw stones so be killed and then celebrate their death. Palestinian parents encourage their children to study and get a good education and build a better future for themselves. Some parents even lock their children inside the house to prevent them from participating in demonstration or any other kind of activity against the IOF because they know the brutality of the IOF and out of fear they might be killed by Israeli soldiers or settlers. Parents work hard to spare their children the suffering they themselves endured under the Israeli occupation. But as long as the Zionists occupy Palestine, Palestinian suffering will continue, and generation after generation will seek to get themselves rid of this brutal occupation, no matter how hard the parents try to keep their children away from it. Living in Palestine, and being confronted with Zionist terror every day, one is not in need of parents or teachers to form an idea about this Zionist state and decide to demonstrate for a better future. That is why many join demonstrations or get politically active without telling their parents. In many cases it is when the children get arrested or are killed that the parents first know of their children’s involvement in resisting the occupation. Palestinian mothers who lose their children often appear composed on TV and in the news, and if asked, most of them talk about their martyred children in pride and calm and without shedding a tear. It is behind the camera that they show their sorrow and anger at the loss of their beloved ones. Palestinians know that these mothers want to send a message to Israel: despite the suffering and the pain, you won’t break us, ever. Few journalists bother to visit these mothers days after their children have been killed. Many of them visit the grave of their killed child daily, and others keep their room as it was when they still lived there. Few reporters bother asking these mothers what memoires they have kept of their children. If they did, they would be shown clothes, hair brushes, notebooks and pictures, all soaked in tears. These mothers would have freely sacrificed their lives to save their children from death on the hands of the IOF and give them a future empty of Zionist occupation.

Mothers are sacred in Palestine because they are the personification of Palestine: the homeland and the mother of all Palestinians. It is the love of this land that is handed over from one generation to the next. Whenever in Dheisheh, we often sat with grandmother as children, listening to her talking about Palestine, the Nakba, the Naksa and the life in a refugee camp. She would talk about her mother and her grandmother, about her brothers and sisters, about my grandfather, and about her children. She was strong and was always there for her family, even at times when she herself was very weak. She was the safe island everyone seeks and the cave that sheltered us from the storm. Even long after her death, I still often think of her and ask for her guidance. She passed down her strength, steadfastness and kindness to her children. My mother continued the tradition of connecting us to the Palestinian landscape. As children, she and my father used to sit with us and tell us stories about Palestine, the history that one would not find in book, the history of the real people who lived on this land and appreciated it. For me, the personal experiences of my grandmother and mother are priceless. I am thankful to my grandmother and my mother for introducing me to a Palestine that was unknown to me, to parts of our history that others work hard to delete, to a heritage that is mine forever. Through our mothers Palestine is celebrated every single day.

In his poem “My Mother”, late Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish said:

I must be worth my life

At the hour of my death

Worth the tears of my mother

Sources:

www.pchrgaza.org/h
www.miftah.org
www.imemc.org
http://mecaforpeace.blogspot.com/2009/01/in-gaza.html

Israeli Army's Heart of Darkness

2009-03-21T22:13:00.005Z

News has come out, which normal people with eyes have seen anyway, that some IDF soldiers have admitted that killing civilians was routine and they knew it. Haaretz has started a series of the accounts, but I urge you to visit Richard Silverstein's blog*, where he translates the bits the English Edition didn't really want others to see, the worst parts, obviously...and they are revolting.

Yet, for the moment, I'm not going to address this issue. I'll wait until the MFA lie factory comes out with their excuses. In the meantime, I present another side to the fun and games that is life as an Israel soldier, and that is, the company unit t-shirts that they wear for bonding reasons. If anyone has any doubts about the Morals of this Moral Army, read this article from Haaretz written by Uri Blau. No Virgins No Terror Attacks** shows the utter banality of evil.

'No virgins, no terror attacks'

The office at the Adiv fabric-printing shop in south Tel Aviv handles a constant stream of customers, many of them soldiers in uniform, who come to order custom clothing featuring their unit's insignia, usually accompanied by a slogan and drawing of their choosing. Elsewhere on the premises, the sketches are turned into plates used for imprinting the ordered items, mainly T-shirts and baseball caps, but also hoodies, fleece jackets and pants. A young Arab man from Jaffa supervises the workers who imprint the words and pictures, and afterward hands over the finished product.

Dead babies, mothers weeping on their children's graves, a gun aimed at a child and bombed-out mosques - these are a few examples of the images Israel Defense Forces soldiers design these days to print on shirts they order to mark the end of training, or of field duty. The slogans accompanying the drawings are not exactly anemic either: A T-shirt for infantry snipers bears the inscription "Better use Durex," next to a picture of a dead Palestinian baby, with his weeping mother and a teddy bear beside him. A sharpshooter's T-shirt from the Givati Brigade's Shaked battalion shows a pregnant Palestinian woman with a bull's-eye superimposed on her belly, with the slogan, in English, "1 shot, 2 kills." A "graduation" shirt for those who have completed another snipers course depicts a Palestinian baby, who grows into a combative boy and then an armed adult, with the inscription, "No matter how it begins, we'll put an end to it."

There are also plenty of shirts with blatant sexual messages. For example, the Lavi battalion produced a shirt featuring a drawing of a soldier next to a young woman with bruises, and the slogan, "Bet you got raped!" A few of the images underscore actions whose existence the army officially denies - such as "confirming the kill" (shooting a bullet into an enemy victim's head from close range, to ensure he is dead), or harming religious sites, or female or child non-combatants.

In many cases, the content is submitted for approval to one of the unit's commanders. The latter, however, do not always have control over what gets printed, because the artwork is a private initiative of soldiers that they never hear about. Drawings or slogans previously banned in certain units have been approved for distribution elsewhere. For example, shirts declaring, "We won't chill 'til we confirm the kill" were banned in the past (the IDF claims that the practice doesn't exist), yet the Haruv battalion printed some last year.

The slogan "Let every Arab mother know that her son's fate is in my hands!" had previously been banned for use on another infantry unit's shirt. A Givati soldier said this week, however, that at the end of last year, his platoon printed up dozens of shirts, fleece jackets and pants bearing this slogan.

"It has a drawing depicting a soldier as the Angel of Death, next to a gun and an Arab town," he explains. "The text was very powerful. The funniest part was that when our soldier came to get the shirts, the man who printed them was an Arab, and the soldier felt so bad that he told the girl at the counter to bring them to him."

Does the design go to the commanders for approval?

The Givati soldier: "Usually the shirts undergo a selection process by some officer, but in this case, they were approved at the level of platoon sergeant. We ordered shirts for 30 soldiers and they were really into it, and everyone wanted several items and paid NIS 200 on average."

What do you think of the slogan that was printed?

"I didn't like it so much, but most of the soldiers wanted it."

Many controversial shirts have been ordered by graduates of snipers courses, which bring together soldiers from various units. In 2006, soldiers from the "Carmon Team" course for elite-unit marksmen printed a shirt with a drawing of a knife-wielding Palestinian in the crosshairs of a gun sight, and the slogan, "You've got to run fast, run fast, run fast, before it's all over." Below is a drawing of Arab women weeping over a grave and the words: "And afterward they cry, and afterward they cry." [The inscriptions are riffs on a popular song.] Another sniper's shirt also features an Arab man in the crosshairs, and the announcement, "Everything is with the best of intentions."

G., a soldier in an elite unit who has done a snipers course, explained that, "it's a type of bonding process, and also it's well known that anyone who is a sniper is messed up in the head. Our shirts have a lot of double entendres, for example: 'Bad people with good aims.' Every group that finishes a course puts out stuff like that."

When are these shirts worn?

G. "These are shirts for around the house, for jogging, in the army. Not for going out. Sometimes people will ask you what it's about."

Of the shirt depicting a bull's-eye on a pregnant woman, he said: "There are people who think it's not right, and I think so as well, but it doesn't really mean anything. I mean it's not like someone is gonna go and shoot a pregnant woman."

What is the idea behind the shirt from July 2007, which has an image of a child with the slogan "Smaller - harder!"?

"It's a kid, so you've got a little more of a problem, morally, and also the target is smaller."

Do your superiors approve the shirts before printing?

"Yes, although one time they rejected some shirt that was too extreme. I don't remember what was on it."

These shirts also seem pretty extreme. Why draw crosshairs over a child - do you shoot kids?

'We came, we saw'

"As a sniper, you get a lot of extreme situations. You suddenly see a small boy who picks up a weapon and it's up to you to decide whether to shoot. These shirts are half-facetious, bordering on the truth, and they reflect the extreme situations you might encounter. The one who-honest-to-God sees the target with his own eyes - that's the sniper."

Have you encountered a situation like that?

"Fortunately, not involving a kid, but involving a woman - yes. There was someone who wasn't holding a weapon, but she was near a prohibited area and could have posed a threat."

What did you do?

"I didn't take it" (i.e., shoot).

You don't regret that, I imagine.

"No. Whomever I had to shoot, I shot."

A shirt printed up just this week for soldiers of the Lavi battalion, who spent three years in the West Bank, reads: "We came, we saw, we destroyed!" - alongside images of weapons, an angry soldier and a Palestinian village with a ruined mosque in the center.

A shirt printed after Operation Cast Lead in Gaza for Battalion 890 of the Paratroops depicts a King Kong-like soldier in a city under attack. The slogan is unambiguous: "If you believe it can be fixed, then believe it can be destroyed!"

Y., a soldier/yeshiva student, designed the shirt. "You take whoever [in the unit] knows how to draw and then you give it to the commanders before printing," he explained.

What is the soldier holding in his hand?

Y. "A mosque. Before I drew the shirt I had some misgivings, because I wanted it to be like King Kong, but not too monstrous. The one holding the mosque - I wanted him to have a more normal-looking face, so it wouldn't look like an anti-Semitic cartoon. Some of the people who saw it told me, 'Is that what you've got to show for the IDF? That it destroys homes?' I can understand people who look at this from outside and see it that way, but I was in Gaza and they kept emphasizing that the object of the operation was to wreak destruction on the infrastructure, so that the price the Palestinians and the leadership pay will make them realize that it isn't worth it for them to go on shooting. So that's the idea of 'we're coming to destroy' in the drawing."

According to Y., most of these shirts are worn strictly in an army context, not in civilian life. "And within the army people look at it differently," he added. "I don't think I would walk down the street in this shirt, because it would draw fire. Even at my yeshiva I don't think people would like it."

Y. also came up with a design for the shirt his unit printed at the end of basic training. It shows a clenched fist shattering the symbol of the Paratroops Corps.

Where does the fist come from?

"It's reminiscent of [Rabbi Meir] Kahane's symbol. I borrowed it from an emblem for something in Russia, but basically it's supposed to look like Kahane's symbol, the one from 'Kahane Was Right' - it's a sort of joke. Our company commander is kind of gung-ho."

Was the shirt printed?

"Yes. It was a company shirt. We printed about 100 like that."

This past January, the "Night Predators" demolitions platoon from Golani's Battalion 13 ordered a T-shirt showing a Golani devil detonating a charge that destroys a mosque. An inscription above it says, "Only God forgives."

One of the soldiers in the platoon downplays it: "It doesn't mean much, it's just a T-shirt from our platoon. It's not a big deal. A friend of mine drew a picture and we made it into a shirt."

What's the idea behind "Only God forgives"?

The soldier: "It's just a saying."

No one had a problem with the fact that a mosque gets blown up in the picture?

"I don't see what you're getting at. I don't like the way you're going with this. Don't take this somewhere you're not supposed to, as though we hate Arabs."

After Operation Cast Lead, soldiers from that battalion printed a T-shirt depicting a vulture sexually penetrating Hamas' prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, accompanied by a particularly graphic slogan.

S., a soldier in the platoon that ordered the shirt, said the idea came from a similar shirt, printed after the Second Lebanon War, that featured Hassan Nasrallah instead of Haniyeh.

"They don't okay things like that at the company level. It's a shirt we put out just for the platoon," S. explained.

What's the problem with this shirt?

S.: "It bothers some people to see these things, from a religious standpoint..."

How did people who saw it respond?

"We don't have that many Orthodox people in the platoon, so it wasn't a problem. It's just something the guys want to put out. It's more for wearing around the house, and not within the companies, because it bothers people. The Orthodox mainly. The officers tell us it's best not to wear shirts like this on the base."

The sketches printed in recent years at the Adiv factory, one of the largest of its kind in the country, are arranged in drawers according to the names of the units placing the orders: Paratroops, Golani, air force, sharpshooters and so on. Each drawer contains hundreds of drawings, filed by year. Many of the prints are cartoons and slogans relating to life in the unit, or inside jokes that outsiders wouldn't get (and might not care to, either), but a handful reflect particular aggressiveness, violence and vulgarity.

Print-shop manager Haim Yisrael, who has worked there since the early 1980s, said Adiv prints around 1,000 different patterns each month, with soldiers accounting for about half. Yisrael recalled that when he started out, there were hardly any orders from the army.

"The first ones to do it were from the Nahal brigade," he said. "Later on other infantry units started printing up shirts, and nowadays any course with 15 participants prints up shirts."

From time to time, officers complain. "Sometimes the soldiers do things that are inside jokes that only they get, and sometimes they do something foolish that they take to an extreme," Yisrael explained. "There have been a few times when commanding officers called and said, 'How can you print things like that for soldiers?' For example, with shirts that trashed the Arabs too much. I told them it's a private company, and I'm not interested in the content. I can print whatever I like. We're neutral. There have always been some more extreme and some less so. It's just that now more people are making shirts."

Race to be unique

Evyatar Ben-Tzedef, a research associate at the International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism and former editor of the IDF publication Maarachot, said the phenomenon of custom-made T-shirts is a product of "the infantry's insane race to be unique. I, for example, had only one shirt that I received after the Yom Kippur War. It said on it, 'The School for Officers,' and that was it. What happened since then is a product of the decision to assign every unit an emblem and a beret. After all, there used to be very few berets: black, red or green. This changed in the 1990s. [The shirts] developed because of the fact that for bonding purposes, each unit created something that was unique to it.

"These days the content on shirts is sometimes deplorable," Ben-Tzedef explained. "It stems from the fact that profanity is very acceptable and normative in Israel, and that there is a lack of respect for human beings and their environment, which includes racism aimed in every direction."

Yossi Kaufman, who moderates the army and defense forum on the Web site Fresh, served in the Armored Corps from 1996 to 1999. "I also drew shirts, and I remember the first one," he said. "It had a small emblem on the front and some inside joke, like, 'When we die, we'll go to heaven, because we've already been through hell.'"

Kaufman has also been exposed to T-shirts of the sort described here. "I know there are shirts like these," he says. "I've heard and also seen a little. These are not shirts that soldiers can wear in civilian life, because they would get stoned, nor at a battalion get-together, because the battalion commander would be pissed off. They wear them on very rare occasions. There's all sorts of black humor stuff, mainly from snipers, such as, 'Don't bother running because you'll die tired' - with a drawing of a Palestinian boy, not a terrorist. There's a Golani or Givati shirt of a soldier raping a girl, and underneath it says, 'No virgins, no terror attacks.' I laughed, but it was pretty awful. When I was asked once to draw things like that, I said it wasn't appropriate."

The IDF Spokesman's Office comments on the phenomenon: "Military regulations do not apply to civilian clothing, including shirts produced at the end of basic training and various courses. The designs are printed at the soldiers' private initiative, and on civilian shirts. The examples raised by Haaretz are not in keeping with the values of the IDF spirit, not representative of IDF life, and are in poor taste. Humor of this kind deserves every condemnation and excoriation. The IDF intends to take action for the immediate eradication of this phenomenon. To this end, it is emphasizing to commanding officers that it is appropriate, among other things, to take discretionary and disciplinary measures against those involved in acts of this sort."

Shlomo Tzipori, a lieutenant colonel in the reserves and a lawyer specializing in martial law, said the army does bring soldiers up on charges for offenses that occur outside the base and during their free time. According to Tzipori, slogans that constitute an "insult to the army or to those in uniform" are grounds for court-martial, on charges of "shameful conduct" or "disciplinary infraction," which are general clauses in judicial martial law.

Sociologist Dr. Orna Sasson-Levy, of Bar-Ilan University, author of "Identities in Uniform: Masculinities and Femininities in the Israeli Military," said that the phenomenon is "part of a radicalization process the entire country is undergoing, and the soldiers are at its forefront. I think that ever since the second intifada there has been a continual shift to the right. The pullout from Gaza and its outcome - the calm that never arrived - led to a further shift rightward.

"This tendency is most strikingly evident among soldiers who encounter various situations in the territories on a daily basis. There is less meticulousness than in the past, and increasing callousness. There is a perception that the Palestinian is not a person, a human being entitled to basic rights, and therefore anything may be done to him."

Could the printing of clothing be viewed also as a means of venting aggression?

Sasson-Levy: "No. I think it strengthens and stimulates aggression and legitimizes it. What disturbs me is that a shirt is something that has permanence. The soldiers later wear it in civilian life; their girlfriends wear it afterward. It is not a statement, but rather something physical that remains, that is out there in the world. Beyond that, I think the link made between sexist views and nationalist views, as in the 'Screw Haniyeh' shirt, is interesting. National chauvinism and gender chauvinism combine and strengthen one another. It establishes a masculinity shaped by violent aggression toward women and Arabs; a masculinity that considers it legitimate to speak in a crude and violent manner toward women and Arabs."

Col. (res.) Ron Levy began his military service in the Sayeret Matkal elite commando force before the Six-Day War. He was the IDF's chief psychologist, and headed the army's mental health department in the 1980s.

Levy: "I'm familiar with things of this sort going back 40, 50 years, and each time they take a different form. Psychologically speaking, this is one of the ways in which soldiers project their anger, frustration and violence. It is a certain expression of things, which I call 'below the belt.'"

Do you think this a good way to vent anger?

Levy: "It's safe. But there are also things here that deviate from the norm, and you could say that whoever is creating these things has reached some level of normality. He gives expression to the fact that what is considered abnormal today might no longer be so tomorrow."

* http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2009/03/18/idf-soldiers-admit-shoot-to-kill-orders-against-gaza-civilians/

** http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1072466.html

Cartoon of the Day.

2009-03-21T22:13:00.001Z

Obama: the problem is the malignant tumor called Israel

2009-03-21T22:02:00.002Z

"...Shame on America for prostituting herself before the Nazis of our time..."

WRITTEN BY Khalid Amayreh

One of the most scandalous aspects of US foreign policy towards the Middle East is the shocking dishonesty inherent in the American approach regarding the Palestinian plight.

The US often watches Israel indulge in pornographic criminal acts against Palestinian civilians, acts that contradict the most fundamental American ideals and norms.

However, instead of condemning these evil crimes, successive American administrations have either kept silent or given Israeli the benefit of the doubt.

Take for example the recent Israeli blitz in Gaza. Everyone under the sun knows by now that Israeli forces committed outrageous massacres of innocent civilians in Gaza.

And every honest person knows that these crimes were carried out knowingly and deliberately, often using American-supplied weapons, such as F-16 fighter planes, White Phosphorus bombs, dart shells and anti-personnel chemical agents that eat through the body, causing indescribable suffering, leading to death.

So, could it be possible that the US, with all its intelligence capabilities, doesn’t really know that Israel committed these massacres against innocent civilians whose only “crime” was their enduring determination to be free from Judeo-Nazi persecution and oppression?

This week, the United Nations human rights investigator Richard Falk pointed out that the Israeli blitz against the Gaza Strip in December and January constituted a clear-cut war crime of the “greatest magnitude.”

Falk said Israel clearly violated the Geneva Conventions which require warring forces to distinguish between military targets and surrounding civilians.

“If it is not possible to do so, then launching the attack is inherently unlawful and would seem to constitute a war crime of the greatest magnitude under international law.”

Falk, a Jew, argued convincingly that on the basis of the preliminary evidence available there is reason to reach this conclusion: that Israel carried out deliberate massacres against innocent civilians.

“Some of these criminal violations included the targeting of schools, mosques and ambulances and the use of internationally prohibited weapons such as White Phosphorus, in civilian areas.”

Falk’s remarks have been perfectly corroborated by irrefutable evidence produced and gathered by numerous human rights groups, including Israeli groups such as B’Tselem.

Indeed, even Israeli soldiers and officers who took part in that genocidal onslaught are now making testimonies acknowledging that the Israeli army committed indiscriminate and wanton murder of innocent civilians and that everyone was aware of this reality.

According to these testimonies, published by the Israeli newspaper, Ha’aretz, “Israeli forces killed Palestinian civilians under permissive rules of engagement and intentionally destroyed their property.” (Ha’aretz, March 19, 2009)

According to Ha’aretz, the testimonies include a description by an infantry squad leader of an “incident” where an IDF sharpshooter “mistakenly” shot a Palestinian mother and her two children.

“There was a house with a family inside, we put them in a room. Later, we left the house and another platoon entered, and a few days after that there was an order to release the family. They had set up positions upstairs. There was a sniper position on the roof.

“The platoon commander let the family go and told them to go to the right. One mother and her two children didn’t understand and went to the left, but they forgot to tell the sharpshooter on the roof they had let them go and it was okay, and he should hold fire and he…he did what he was supposed to do….!!

“I don’t think he felt too bad about it, because after all, as far as he was concerned, he did his job according to the orders he was given. And the atmosphere in general, from what I understood from most of my men who I talked to…I don’t know how to describe it….The lives of Palestinians, let’s say, is something very, very less important than the lives of the soldiers. So, as far as they are concerned, they can justify it that way.”

Some Israeli officials and mouthpieces of Zionist propaganda would claim that these criminal acts of premeditated murder were merely “individual aberrations.”

This is a big and most likely malicious lie (a malicious lie occurs when the liar knows he is lying). After all, an aberration doesn’t happen 1,500 times in 22 days.

In short, Israeli soldiers and pilots were given clear and unmistakable instructions to murder civilians, to destroy their homes and to thoroughly terrorize them.

Well, things are clear enough for all those honestly interested in knowing the truth.

Regrettably, however, it is amply clear that the Obama administration, along with most European governments, are not really interested in pursuing this matter, not because they don’t know the truth about Israel and its hideous crimes in Gaza, but rather because the truth is too inconvenient for them.

Indeed, it is highly inconceivable that western governments don’t know the truth about the recent genocide that Israel perpetrated in Gaza. They know it, probably too well.

The problem with these military and political powers, but moral midgets, is that they don’t want to act on their knowledge. They don’t want to look Israel in the eye and tell her Nazi-minded leaders that they are murderous thugs and ought to be thrown behind bars or at least be shipped, like drugged wild animals, to the Hague to be prosecuted for their crimes. Indeed, had the Obama administration had a semblance of moral ethics, it would have refused to receive Gabi Ashkenazi, the Chief of Staff of the Israeli Army, the man who supervised all the wanton killings and destruction in Gaza.

That man is a war criminal pursuant the laws of man and the laws of heaven. His hands are stained with the blood of 400 children, many of whom were exterminated with White Phosphorous shells.

However, instead of arresting him, or at least denying him an entry visa, America received him with all the trappings and pleasantries befitting a venerable statesman. Shame on America for prostituting herself before the Nazis of our time.

Well, this is the crux of the matter that the Obama administration is reluctant to face for fear of upsetting the powerful Jewish lobby in America, which is trying apparently successful in forcing the new American leadership to be at AIPAC’s beck and call.

In short, if the Obama administration wants to be sincere and honest about peace in the Middle East, it should stop preoccupying itself with secondary and symptomatic matters such as Palestinian “terror” and Hamas’ “non-recognition” of Israel, and the so-called “Iranian threat.”

The real problem impeding peace and stability in the Middle East is simply the malignant tumor known as Israel, a bellicose, militaristic, arrogant and paranoid state that has lost all claim to decency, dignity and respect, a state whose modus operandi is based on murder, dishonesty and theft.

Hence, it is imperative that the Obama administration abandon, once and for all, its hopelessly impotent stance vis-à-vis Israel and its powerful agents in America.

This is if Obama truly wants to succeed and save his country and the world from the huge turbulence and chaos now looming over the horizon.

The statesman Winston Churchill once was heard to say, “Never hold discussions with the monkey when the organ grinder is in the room.” Surely, his experience in international relations would lead him to have had a clear understanding of who is sitting at the helm in the decision room, and who simply dances to someone else’s music.

Well, Mr. Obama, assume the position of leadership that everyone expects, rather than jumping to the orders of the Jewish lobby. This is how they are accustomed to treating American presidents, from Lyndon Johnson to George W. Bush.

This is certainly what they want you to be. The way the lobby handled the recent “Freeman affair” is a stigma of shame on America’s forehead. It leaves no doubt as to that lobby’s rapacity, meanness and hell-bent determination to enslave America for Israel’s sake.

Don’t surrender to them. American is too important for the world to be handed over to the Satanic lobby.

Lancet Removes Gaza Article, Author responds

2009-03-19T20:33:00.002Z

On 2 February 2009, The Lancet Medical Journal's Global Health Network online published Dr Swee Ang and Dr Ghassan Abu Sitta's `The Wounds of Gaza', first published here at PULSE. It introduced the article by stating:

Two Surgeons from the UK, Dr Ghassan Abu Sittah and Dr Swee Ang, managed to get into Gaza during the Israeli invasion. Here they describe their experiences, share their views, and conclude that the people of Gaza are extremely vulnerable and defenseless in the event of another attack.

On 2 March 09 the Journal removed the article (though The Lancet Student still has it), stating: "We have taken down the blog post The Wounds of Gaza because of factual inaccuracies."

No specific faults or amendments to the alleged inaccuracies are suggested. The reader comments, overwhelmingly in support, remain posted. A letter penned by four israelis (surprise, surprise!) that objects to the article was published on February 18. Our friend Dr Swee responds to this development and elaborates on the figures.

Dr Swee Ang on reporting from Palestine and Lebanon

Many of us are afraid to put numbers down because the pro-Israel Lobby will inundate us with emails and complaints. This has gone to the extent that only figures sanctioned by the Israelis are credible. Everything else is viewed as suspect!

Over the last twenty-six and a half years, I have taken many blows over this kind of issue. The only question I ask myself when writing is - when is the version according to the victims going to be articulated? The people of Gaza knew that 5,000 were killed in the Khan Younis massacre in 1956; 100,000 gone missing in 1967 of which 35,000 were murdered - just because they cannot go to the Sinai and take pictures, or dig up the mass graves, does not mean we refuse to let them state their case.

I looked at Northern Gaza - how often have I driven down Sala -Uddin Road in 1988 and 1989. I remember every turn and corner- I know the citrus orchards, the farms and the homes. Often I would stop my ambulance to give a ride to the farm workers and they in return would give me freshly picked lemons and oranges. I now see it completely laid waste by Israeli explosives like the nuclear holocaust of Hiroshima, and yet we were called liars when we put forward the figure of one and a half million tons of explosives. We have seen apartment blocks not only reduced to rubble but incinerated - how many kilotons of explosives are responsible for this kind of damage?

The Lancet Global Health Network withdrawing `The Wounds of Gaza' is not a problem at all. The wonder is how it even got to be published in the first instance.

My book From Beirut to Jerusalem, when first published in 1989, was reprinted hard back and then paperback within 2 months, as it was sold out on publication, and again sold out as soon as reprinted. Then Tom Friedman came out with a book with exactly the same title half a year later and by the same publisher. My book was withdrawn from the shelves. It went out of print for many years.

But the truth has to come out. Most times at great inconvenience to some of us as we well know.

I just want you to know that I am not afraid to believe the Palestinians. It is a scandal that the extent of the Khan Younis massacre had not come to light for all these years. It is a scandal that what happened in the Six Day War was not published. The intimidation to silence witnesses has to stop. We cannot allow the case to be stated only by the perpetrators of the killings.

Like the Palestinians in Gaza - I am also not afraid. My witness of Gaza counts. So does your witness. We should not be afraid of saying what the Palestinians told us. They are the ones whose families were killed, who bear the wounds of violence, who are dispossessed and persecuted. Their voices must be heard.

Dr. Swee Ang on the explosives used in Gaza

The actual tonnage of the explosives dropped on Gaza can only be accurately known to the IDF themselves. So other figures can only be estimates. However some of us have many years of experience looking at bombed out countries.

Over the 22 days, Gaza was intensely bombed from land, air and sea. The bombs dropped from the air are large, and most of them are more than a ton on average. In the south the bombs used to destroy the tunnels and structures around them are large heavy bombs.

Of the 21,000 buildings destroyed, 4000 of them are completely demolished. Some believe that these are by small nuclear fission bombs. However there is no proof and it is impossible to tell, though the effect of all structures, especially concrete, being incinerated, would suggest that the size of these bombs are of the order of kilotonswhether they are conventional explosives or otherwise. If you were to look at the effect of the atom bomb on Hiroshima (about 15 - 20 kilotons), you would see the incineration of concrete similar to that of that seen in these 4,000 buildings. These 4,000 buildings would have been destroyed by 4,000 kilotons of explosives. The other 17,000 destroyed buildings are the result of bombs of single figure tonnage judging from the kind of destruction. Apart from bombs being dropped on buildings reducing them to rubble, bombs were also dropped on fields, orchards, farms and roads.

We do not know enough of the explosive values of DIME to comment and hence have not speculated on it. They have been used in Gaza. But from what is commonly known about them, they are very heavy bombs, more so than conventional.

As to the person who queried the "million and a half tons of explosives dropped in 22 days" as such an amount would have obliterated Gaza [a question put forward to www.womenforpalestine.org, a site which carried Dr Ang's article] we can safely answer him that the whole of Northern Gaza has indeed been obliterated - he or she is most welcome to see for themselves! The whole stretch of Northern Gaza has been converted to a complete wasteland. In the South again vast stretches of agricultural areas have also been demolished.

The figure of one and a half million tons of explosives in our view is a conservative estimate. Those who are sceptical about it need to see it for themselves.

Dr Swee Ang on the figure of 35,000 political prisoners being executed during the 1967 Six Day war

The number 35,000 was from the International Co-operation Department (ICD) of Gaza. Within the first 2 hours of the attack on Egypt, 11,000 Egyptian soldiers were killed. But we are not talking about them, as they would be those killed in action.

After the first 2 hours till the end of the 6-Day War, about 100,000 Egyptian and Palestinian combatants were missing and never found. These included many young men in Gaza who had joined the Egyptians and the early PLA (of Nasser) to fight the Israelis. There are at least 2 mass graves in El-Arish on the edge of the Sinai desert, and the Israelis themselves had admitted to killing those captured, but had not admitted to killing so many. The Gaza information had stated 35,000 executed, but we had not asked them the whereabouts of the remaining 65,000. Many of the missing still have surviving relatives living in Gaza. The names of those executed could be traced from the ICD in Gaza. 1967 is a long time ago, and I do not see what advantage it is to the ICD in Gaza to make up these figures.

As many of you will be aware, a similar situation occurred with the Sabra and Shatilla massacre, where Palestinian sources believed that 3,000 were killed and IDF only admitted to over 300. Bayan Al-Hout had compiled at least one and a half thousand names to date, and the list is still increasing. We still do not know the whereabouts of the men murdered in the Stadium, now that some soldiers of the Phalange have admitted to executing people there. The bodies buried in Martyr's Square were from within the camp itself, and not those abducted to the Stadium.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE, NOW REMOVED from Lancet, but always on PTT
http://palestinethinktank.com/2009/02/04/the-wounds-of-gaza/

From - http://pulsemedia.org/2009/03/04/lancet-withdraws-gaza-article/
email: meca@mecaforpeace.org
web: http://www.mecaforpeace.org

FOR A TALK AND PRESENTATION SEE ALSO URL: http://www.inminds.com/from-beirut-to-jerusalem.html

Hatred has turned him into a Jew - Deconstructing Nick Cohen

2009-03-19T20:19:00.002Z

WRITTEN BY GILAD ATZMON

In an article published by the Jewish Chronicle, Observer columnist Nick Cohen argued that ‘Hatred turned him into a Jew’. Initially, I was rather amused by the revealing confession. Cohen must have a lot of hatred in him. He was one of the very few supporters of the illegal war against Iraq within the British media. He really believed that liberating the Iraqis was the way forward. Incidentally he also possesses an incredible record of Islamophobic ranting. Hence, I at first tended to interpret Cohen’s declaration as an acknowledgment that it was the loathing towards others which he finds in himself that made him into a Jew.

I was obviously wrong, Cohen was quick to clarify that it is actually other people’s hatred, specifically that of the ‘British Left’ that ‘indulges antisemitism’, which made him ‘feel Kosher’.

As we noticed many times before, it is always someone or something else that transforms the ‘innocent’, ‘atheist’, ‘cosmopolitan’, ‘secularist’, ‘egalitarian’ person into a ‘Jew’. I have previously heard Jewish leftists arguing that it was Hitler who made them into Jews, now we have Nick Cohen of the Observer who claims that it is actually the ‘Left’ that makes him ‘feel Kosher’. If it wasn’t very funny, it would be very sad, may even be tragic.

One again I find myself admitting that the more I elaborate on issues concerning contemporary Jewish Identity, the more I realise that it is actually the so-called ‘secular’, ‘enlightened’, ‘emancipated’, ‘assimilated’, ‘cosmopolitan’ Jew who provides us with a real meaningful insight into the subject of Zionism, Israeli genocidal policies, Jewish lobbying and Jewish institutional support of the Zionist crime.

Cohen’s JC article is an exemplary case study of the Zionisation of world Jewry and the transition of Jewish identity into a hawkish carrier of brutal, expansionist, murderous ideologies.

Let’s Take It From the Kosher Horse’s Mouth

“My name is Nick Cohen, and I think I’m turning into a Jew,” Cohen tells his British Jewish readers. “Despite being called ‘Cohen’, I’ve never been Jewish before. It’s not simply that I am an atheist. My Jewish friends tell me that it is hard to find an educated London Jew who is not an atheist, but that I have no connection with Jewish culture.”

For years I had been following Cohen defusing his Jewishness repeatedly. This time Cohen seems to surrender, he lets go, he’s let himself be a Jew. Yet, for some reason he insists upon untangling the notion of Jewishness, elaborating on religious perspective as if Jewishness has something to do with being observant. This tendency is rather bizarre. Cohen must be familiar enough with the subject to know that one does not have to be an observant Jew in order to consider oneself as a Jew. Unlike Islam and Christianity, Jewishness is not a belief system at all. While Muslims believe in Allah and Christians believe that Jesus is God, the Jew can believe in almost everything without ceasing to be a Jew. A Jew could believe in Marx, Bolshevism, Holocaust, secularism, democracy and even Lizards. Consequently, what makes a Jew into a Jew is the belief in ‘the Jew’, in Jewish suffering and in Jewish uniqueness

While talking to a strictly Jewish audience, Cohen tends to celebrate his ‘exceptional Jewish circumstances’ with his readers. “The Jewish side of my family is my father’s (which is not a help, I gather).” A friend pointed out me a while ago that somehow only with her Jewish friends she always happens to know where Papa’le and Mama’le are from, she always knows how the Grandparents managed to survive the big war. Cohen is apparently no different. As we launch into Cohen identity expedition we are getting familiar with Papa’le and Mama’le racial background. Cohen is also a dedicated protagonist of the kosher victim historical narrative. “My great grandparents fled from the Tsarist Empire at the time of the pogroms.” Not only did they flee, they even became communists. Indeed a common Jewish political choice at the turn of the 20th Century.

One may wonder at this stage what lead Cohen the ‘pro-war secularist atheist’, to admit that he had become a ‘Kosher’ subject after so many years of relentless denial. “My sole interest in Jewish concerns came from being a left-wing opponent of the far Right and the blood-soaked antisemitic superstitions which turned Europe into a graveyard.”

Certainly, Cohen starts to come up with the goods. We now learn that when Cohen was a ‘leftist’, so to say, it was because the left was serving the Jewish tribal interests fighting ‘far right antisemitic superstitions’.

But these days seem to have passed. According to Cohen, the Left fails to do its job, it does not work for the Jews anymore. “Today the old certainties have gone because there are two far-right movements: the white neo-Nazi parties that the Left still opposes; and the clerical fascists of radical Islam which, extraordinarily, the modern left succours and indulges.”

Seemingly, according to Cohen, the Leftists have shunned the Jews and support the clerical fascists of radical Islam. “I am not only talking about Ken Livingstone, George Galloway and their gruesome accomplices in the intelligentsia. Wider liberal society is almost as complicit.”

At this point Cohen’s list of Judeophobes is growing by the second. It is actually not only the Leftists and liberals, it’s apparently the entire world that’s leaving the Jews to face for their doomed fate. “From the broadcasters, through the liberal press, the Civil Service, the Metropolitan Police, the bench of bishops and the judiciary, antisemitism is no longer an unthinkable mental deformation.”

Cohen’s take on the subject is rather illuminating. Yet I wonder - if Cohen believes in what he says, the most rational and reasonable thing to do would be to run as far as possible away from Judaism, Jewishness and the Jews. But as it seems, Cohen is doing the opposite, he runs straight into the cage, he rushes to the shtetl as if he tries to seek shelter in a synagogue. This is indeed a very Jewish thing to do. Yet, this very behaviour deserves some intellectual attention because this exact pattern can be seen as essential to the understanding of Jewish suicidal collectivism detected in Israel and its supportive lobbies and agents.

Noticeably, when writing to Jews, Cohen allows himself to employ the most racist ideas and expressions. “As long as the conspiracy theories of the counter-enlightenment come from ideologues with dark rather than white skins, nominally liberal men and women will not speak out.” Someone should remind the Observer columnist that ideologies do not have ‘skin’ and ideologues cannot choose the colour of their skin either. Hence, referring to ideologues with dark skin is far beyond bigotry. It is racism per se. And yet, Cohen will get away with it because he is ‘Kosher’ as he himself admitted. In contemporary Britain a Dutch right-wing racist MP is deported for making a film, yet a racist can be a prominent columnist for the Observer. This is actually a good thing. It is probably the last remnant of Britain’s legendary liberalism. In the UK bigotry and racism is becoming a Jews-only territory. You might want to ask yourself why we stop a Dutch MP yet we let Melanie Philips and Nick Cohen celebrate their symptoms on paper. One possible answer is that we expect a Dutch Christian to be a Humanist, yet we allow the racially orientated tribal campaigner to be a racist bigot. We expect them to advocate wars, we expect them to refer to people’s skin and colour.

Cohen says about himself. “My experience of left-wing anti-Semitism has changed the way I think and made me, if you like, more Jewish.” While a Rabbi may be inclined to take advantage of this revelation and rush to Cohen’s dwelling, equipped with the necessary gear to kosherly modify the tip of his manhood, I may admit that I just happen to be slightly confused. What is it that Cohen refers to when claiming to be ‘more Jewish’? Is Jewishness a matter of degree or quantity? As far as I understand it, Jewishness, as opposed to Judaism (religion) and the Jews (the people), is a matter of ideology. In fact no one can really be more Jewish than Cohen. He possesses all the elementary ideological ingredients, he differentiates the value of people’s ideas based on the colour of their skin. He promotes war as a valid resolution to international problems. Yes, he may not be religious at this stage of his article. But surely most of those who follow the Jewish ideology have nothing to do with Judaism either.

Cohen is convinced that he may be able to fool some people with a minor lefty cliché statement against Israeli settlements. “Although I want to see every Israeli settlement on the West Bank dismantled, it was clear to me that when Hamas fired thousands of rockets into Israel it had declared war and had to accept the consequences.” Cohen doesn’t realise that after Gaza, we do not differentiate between the West Bank and Tel Aviv. Israel is basically a big occupied territory that is stretched over historic Palestine. The Jews-only state will have to go. It simply doesn’t have the right to exist. If it ever had a justification, it lost it a long time ago. With 94% of Israeli Jews supporting the massacre in Gaza, with Cohen advocating in favour of the Iraq war and justifying the slaughter of civilians in Gaza we are left with no other option but to expect some growing resentment towards Israel, the Jewish state and Jewish interests in general.

Interestingly enough, Cohen is already preparing his Jewish readers for the coming inevitable pogrom. “If a synagogue is attacked,” says Cohen, “I guarantee that within minutes the airwaves will be filled with insinuating voices insisting that the ‘root cause’ of the crime was a rational anger at the behaviour of Israel or the Jewish diaspora.” Cohen is probably right. Without justifying any violent act whatsoever, the reasoning behind resentment towards Israel and Jews is rational. In fact, Cohen is himself a ‘root cause’ for such hatred. Cohen, who supported the illegal war in Iraq, a war that lead to the death of 1.3 million innocent civilians and millions of refugees, should have long stood up a time ago and said: I was wrong, I was a fool, I regret it all. Cohen failed to do so. Instead, he runs back to the Ghetto and succumbs to the most radical form of Jewish tribal ideology. In favour of Cohen it must be said that at least the man is genuine and authentic. Tony Blair and George Bush do not have a community that would embrace them that warmly. Except of course the Jewish State.*

Cohen concludes his JC article stating his Judeo-centric hostile mantra. “I believe that I can see some being pushed into taking the same journey I have taken and finding their views towards Judaism and Israel softening as they realise that antisemitism helps drive the fascistic ideologies of the 21st century just as it drove the Nazism of the 20th.”

In his final paragraph, for the alleged secularist atheist and egalitarian who’s reverted to Judaism, it is not about being an ethnic Jew anymore, it is not about being a cultural Jew anymore, it is not even about being a secular tribal Jew. It is now all about ‘Judaism’. Cohen expects people out there to find their “views towards Judaism”. Seemingly, Cohen who starts his JC journey by taking issues with identity, sums it up preaching religion. Quite a substantial leap I would say. The Observer columnist who claimed to be an atheist secularist ends up taking the role of a radical messianic Rabbi admitting a homogenous bond between Jews, Judaism and Israel.

Such a declaration is actually symptomatic to the most radical Zionist within the far right Messianic school. It is no wonder Cohen is writing for the JC. Yet one may wonder how come such a Judeo-centric fundamentalist cleric still holds a regular column in the Observer. It must be that British freedom of speech again that is apparently reserved for self-loving Jews, and to them alone.

* Tel Aviv based Dan David Foundation just awarded Blair with one million dollars, an award for his “leadership on the world stage”. Indeed, not many world leaders were as committed to killing so many innocent civilians in the name of democracy. Not many world leaders agreed to recruit their armies for fighting Israeli wars.*

Cartoon of the day

2009-03-19T20:17:00.000Z

The Hell with Israel, Open the Sea Port of Gaza!

2009-03-19T20:14:00.001Z

Sami Jamil Jadallah

The Gaza donor conference concluded a couple of days ago in the Egyptian city of Sharm-El-Sheik and was attended by more than 70 countries, pledging more than $5 Billion, exceeding any and all expectations. Of course this sum of money and the US pledge of $300 million is dwarfed by the $30 Billion George Bush pledged to Israel in arms and weapons.

Nevertheless, I think the attendance and the generous amounts contributed shows finally how much the world cares about the people of Gaza and is an indirect indictment of the crimes committed by Israel during its 22 days of 24/7 assault on the Gaza Strip. Of course very few heads of states or government officials dare to criticize Israel as it went ahead with its war crimes on Gaza, but the world rallied around to bandage the wounds of the more than 1.5 million Palestinians who had to endure the most criminal war assault since the closing days of WWII perhaps with the exception of Israel’s summer war on Lebanon a couple of years ago when some 1.5 million cluster bombs, gift from George Bush to the Lebanese people, were dropped in the last 10 days of the war.

The Gaza Reconstruction Conference in its closing statement called on Israel to open with immediate effect all crossings for all humanitarian aids and for conareuction materials needed for the massive work ahead. Somehow everyone forgot the geography of Gaza and that Gaza has some 50 km of shoreline and has a sea port.

However Israel, given the angry unhappy nation it is, full of hate and contempt for the world and human values, is a country that will not even consider world opinion because it does not give a damn about the world public opinion to begin with, and is unlikely to open the border crossing with Gaza for pasta, let alone a front loader.

The newspapers carried accounts of the secret list of forbidden or restricted items Israel concluded as threats to its own security including “pasta, pasta sauce, lentil and hearing aids”. Senator John Kerry, the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relation Committee had to inquire with Ehud Barak, Israel’s Defense Minister why “pasta” is a restricted item? This should tell you and the world how pitiful this nation is, “the only killing democracy in the Middle East” and I will not be surprised if Israel added Humus, fool, falafel and kinafeh to the list of forbidden items. One has to imagine if the Palestinians want to import heavy construction material or cement. Perhaps Israel has new building technology made up of bagels, motzaballs or corn beef as construction material. Israel needs serious mental help.

What I am most surprised about is the call by almost everyone, from Mahmoud Abbas, to Hillary Clinton, to Nicolas Sarkozy, to Husni Mubarak and their calls, almost begging calls for Israel to open the border crossing, I say, the hell with Israel and its border crossing with Gaza. Let Israel build a 1000 meter high Apartheid Wall between it and Gaza. Who needs Israel and who needs its products and services? Israel is giving the impression to the world it is doing the Palestinians a big favor when it allows fuels and food supplies to come into Gaza, For Gods sake Israel and Jewish suppliers get paid for everything that comes through to Gaza, at much higher prices, nothing is for free, so why bother with Israel when Gaza has access to the sea and has a port much older than any ports in Israel?

Let Israel go to hell, and let Israel keep its border crossings closed and let the people of Gaza open their port and import everything they need and want through the Port of Gaza. No need to reward Israeli suppliers with billions of supply contracts. I know the world is concerned about Hamas smuggling weapons, and all I can say is that Hamas is simply too stupid to smuggle anything of significant threat to Israel such at RPJs and other serious weapons of significant risk to Israel. In more than 2 years under siege Hamas has managed to smuggle enough material to produce useless, and militarily insignificant Qassam rockets that some 15,000 of these failed to even totally destroy one single house. Though I believe the issue of weapon smuggling is more political and a powerful propaganda tool than a strategic issue for Israel, nevertheless I concede that something has to be done to make sure that Hamas or anyone else does not use the opening of the Port of Gaza for weapons smuggling. Besides, I am not convinced that armed struggle Hamas style is the answer to liberation.

I am sure the Americans and the Europeans will be very pleased if Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas announced to the world their willingness to entrust the management and operation including security operation of the Port of Gaza to the Americans and perhaps some European partners. Let America manage and operate the port making sure only constructions materials, food suppliers and consumers goods comes through the port. Let Americans and the Europeans break the siege of Gaza and end once and for all the Israeli Occupation of Gaza that has lasted some 42 years. Let America and Europe operate all of the security measures, not to Israel’s satisfaction but to the American and European satisfaction that all materials coming through are for civil purposes and nothing to make atomic weapons out of. And yes, let Egypt close the Rafah Crossing for all goods but allow it for people to cross if they choose to travel through Egypt. Let the US and Europe open and operate both the Sea Port and Airport of Gaza. Let the world this time end the siege of Gaza. Hamas must not hold the people hostage to its own agenda. And yes, let the US Navy and US Coast Guard patrol the coast lines off Gaza for good measure.

http://www.jeffersoncorner.com/the-hell-with-israel-open-the-sea-port-of-gaza/

No Dancing on Gaza's Graves - Boycott and Protest Batsheva Dance Company

2009-02-06T00:05:00.002Z

An Israeli apartheid dance troupe started its North America tour in Houston on Wednesday, January 28, 2009. Between then and March 1, 2009 it will go to fourteen more American and Canadian cities. That troupe, the Batsheva Dance Company, is currently scheduled to perform in Purchase, NY on January 30-31 and then it's on to (in order): Princeton, NJ; Philadelphia, PA; Pittsburgh, PA; Chicago, IL; Columbus, OH; Ottawa, ON; Ann Arbor, MI; Minneapolis, MN; Vancouver, BC; Santa Barbara, CA; San Diego, CA; Los Angeles, CA; and New York, NY.

As I wrote in The Electronic Intifada last November, the Batsheva Dance Company has been a recipient of Israeli public financing since the 1990s. According to a report in The Independent of London, the dance company has no Arab performers and is "proud to be considered Israel's leading ambassador." As I also wrote, "Ohad Naharin, the dance company's current Director, served in the Israeli army. In a 2005 interview with a Canadian newspaper, Naharin stated that 'I continue to do my work, while 20 km from me people are participating in war crimes … the ability to detach oneself from the situation — that is what allows one to go on.' Needless to say, the victims of Israeli 'war crimes' cannot avail themselves of the luxury of detachment." It is particularly egregious that the Batsheva Dance Company is scheduled to perform in Vancouver, British Columbia as part of the 2009 Cultural Olympiad in the run up to the 2010 Olympic Games. Since when is polishing the image of a violent, racist state part of the Olympic spirit?

As Omar Barghouti, a Jerusalem-based freelance choreographer, cultural analyst, and founding member of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (www.PACBI.org) said last month in The Dance Insider: No Israeli dance company "has ever taken a position calling for an end to the occupation, not to mention recognizing UN-sanctioned rights of the refugees or ending racial discrimination against the state's 'non-Jewish' citizens...none of [the dance companies] has ever challenged reserve service in the occupation army, despite the fact that punishment for doing so is minimal in Israel (unlike Germany in the '30s, say)...Those same dancers are part-time occupation soldiers, manning roadblocks, protecting colonies, evacuating homes and demolishing them, killing children and letting pregnant women die at checkpoints by preventing ambulances [from passing through], letting young bleeding youth bleed to death without medical aid, etcetera. What a bunch of liberal dancers! And what do their institutions do? Nothing."

I urge American and Canadian Palestinian solidarity activists to use
letters, petitions, leaflets, demonstrations, signs, and other nonviolent means to encourage cultural organizations and their patrons to boycott the Batsheva Dance Company and to raise awareness of Israel's crimes and the BDS campaign to liberate the Palestinian people. Local campaigns are already well underway in Ann Arbor, Pittsburgh, Chicago,
and other cities, plus the newly formed U.S. Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel is spreading the word, too. As Desmond Tutu used to say during the struggle against South African apartheid–which also employed BDS, including cultural boycotts–it's time join the winning side, the side of justice. Today, that side is the side of the Palestinian people.

For more details on the dance company's performance schedule please go here (http://mailhide.recaptcha.net/d?k=01C54-iIZ0lmVBDECxk4FBsA==&c=C4rEjwvIBOMLsVD6ZfokMhuf9LQ0lnZdFCvCRCYMmoo=) or check the web site of their North American booking agent, H-Art Management, at www.h-artmanagement.com/calendar.html.

Alarabiya TV and its USA agenda of media manipulations

2009-02-06T00:00:00.002Z

Iqbal Tamimi

The latest of Al Arabiya TV series of betrayals to the ethics of journalism and another move of manipulations of the media came today with a report it has published on its news website.

Al Arabiya claims that Palestinian Mothers are requesting NOT to broadcast images of children killed in Gaza because it causes fear and panic amongst the children in Gaza.

What A heap of Bull media Sh-t.

Before going to disintegrate Al Arabiya’s method of handling the coverage of Current Affairs, I would like to mention that the Foreign Ministry of Israel hailed on its website by Israel’s Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni a number of Arab journalists and recommend reading their articles regularly, and have their list of names available on the official website of the Ministry as a reference because she considers them as Israel’s ambassadors in the Arab world, for they follow exactly the Israeli line and defend its point of view to the letter. She recommended not only publishing their present articles during the last war, but all their old ones - especially the ones they wrote against Hamas, and guess what? Abdul Rahman al-Rashed, General Manager, Al Arabiya Channel and the former editor-in-chief of Asharq Al- Awsat who happens to hold a US post-graduate degree in mass communications from USA, is on this so-called Honour list.

Regarding Al Arabiya’s report claiming that the women of Gaza complained that what their children see on TV screens of bodies or parts of bodies of Gaza children became a worrying concern and that it should be stopped.

I would like to borrow an old saying of my Palestinian culture book of sarcastic quotes that can be applied in this case, we were told since we were young, ‘if you want to find if a certain claim is a lie, just look how big it is’ and sure enough this lie is extra large, for everybody around the world knows that Gaza still does not have electricity to connect TV sets to, and almost the majority of the homes in Gaza have no living room or TV sets left to watch TV, let alone the fact that most of the families are left with no mothers to complain, and the mothers who were lucky to escape death are preoccupied by other concerns like finding some clean water to drink, or finding a way to visit a half burned child at hospitals, and what piece of furniture to burn next to boil some roots to eat after 19 months of siege and after Israel forces have blown up all the UN buildings that used to have some stored food. All the pictures we received are still excellent evidence that all the dishes that used to capture the signals from TV stations are on the ground half buried under the rubble with the dead bodies. What kind of false media message is Al Arabiya trying to send the world?

This is clearly a desperate attempt to dilute the pain and misery of the people of Gaza for they have committed the sin of choosing Hamas as their political representative which is considered as an anti-USA.

The mothers and children of Gaza are claimed to complain of airing their need and despair and the injustice fallen upon them, but it seems that no Palestinian mother is complaining about the collaboration of the Arab states against them and siding with the Israel and USA.

Since when Al Arabiya has worried about the emotions of women in Gaza or been concerned that the children can’t sleep? How else would the people around the world would know the scale of cruelty and destruction caused by the Israeli state, and how ugly the war was? Is Al Arabiya advising us to create an entertainment program backed with animation and soft music when we scream about such a huge scale of massacres? 60 years of occupation and massacres had no effect on the international conscience because of the media manipulations Al Arabiya and other media adopting Western agenda means of reporting, by considering the dead are no longer important, and only worrying about the preferences of the fragile sensitive emotions of the living. I bet Al Arabiya would prefer a little entertainment instead to wash away the blood of hundreds of children killed without any crime committed but being born Palestinians. Al Arabiya has been reporting about the handmade rockets that fell on Sderot killing nobody but injuring a worktop of a kitchen, but not once it has mentioned that Sderot was the original home for those who were desperately firing homemade rockets more like fireworks because they were desperate after 19 months of siege and being forced to live packed like sardines and pickled in their own sweat together in the most populated area in the world.

Al Arabiya claimed that Palestinian women (generalising as usual) do not want any pictures of the massacred, let’s see who they have claimed they were representing the Palestinian mothers in Gaza and how did they came up with such report, and who were there references...?

They mention two persons, this was not the Gaza mothers point of view, but one person (a male) not a mother as claimed by the article, and one journalist.

So...how can Al Arabiya lie and claim something the mothers of Gaza never said? The manipulations of the media seem to underestimate the intelligence of the viewer and insult Palestinian women who are still mourning their lost ones in the shadows of their wrecked homes, holding tight to bits and pieces of their lost ones, sniffing the scent of their children’s bodies mixed with the smell of white phosphorus.

The article in question:
http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2009/02/02/65521.htm

They never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity: Secular "Anti-Zionist" Jewish groups echo Zionist groups

2009-02-05T23:45:00.003Z

"...There is a rottenness of the "movement" if it does not recognise when the moment to put aside their personal qualms or conflicts with Atzmon and accept that something magnificent has happened, and the humanitarians of the world feel it and know it. Persisting in the campaign to silence Atzmon now would not only be LESS effective than it was before, but it drops down the final mask, that these people operate as crypto Zionists. Their agenda, and the agenda of the American Jewish Committee is one and the same..."

WRITTEN BY MARY RIZZO

A very strange thing is happening at this moment within a circle of people who like to consider themselves at the cutting edge of the struggle for the Palestine, and we are referring to the individuals who classify themselves as Secular Anti-Zionist Jews, and consider themselves to be the "independent" Jewish voices, and as thus, the avant-garde of "the Pro-Palestinian movement". Following what can only be classified as a unique international event of major media importance, and perhaps also of a certain historical significance, they are protesting and stomping their feet in anger at the intervention of Erdogan on a stage shared by the General Secretary of the UN, the leader of the Arab League and the President of Israel.

These unhappy critics are in a few marginal sites and tiny discussion groups to practically take up the cause of the American Jewish Committee in criticising Erdogan. The interesting and very positive fact that Erdogan would not allow the stream of lies uttered by Shimon Peres to go unchallenged in the World Economic Forum (Davos) Conference on Gaza seems to have eluded them all. They hardly seem to notice that Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan obviously had come prepared for the sort of arguments he would be hearing, the kind of justifications that Israel gives for its killing sprees, as he took paper from his folder and read off of a sheet, (or tried hard to before the moderator attempted to stifle the Prime Minister and whisk the waiting public to their dinner) three quotes: the first, from the Jewish Torah, the second, from Gilad Atzmon and the third from Avi Shlaim.

Obviously, the Torah is quite authoritative, and even if some atheist Jews don’t mind that God, someone they claim does not exist, is being quoted, what counts is the message, after all. They have decided that Erdogan did something terrible in quoting Gilad Atzmon. What is their problem, with the message or the messenger?

First of all, the message: It stated pretty much the facts that everyone who claims they are for the Palestinians should know by now: "Israel’s barbarity exceeds ordinary cruelty." If anyone is ready to state that Israel used anything less than the most crude disproportionate force, may they speak now or forever hope for "peace".

It is also surprising that rather than state what Erdogan did "right", they are bringing up Kurds, Armenia and other atrocious aspects of Turkish affairs, past or present. This is true of the attacks on Erdogan in the Zionist media right now, and it’s being echoed by those who for a long time have been claiming they are the forefront of the movement, even without the credentials for it, unless their being Jewish so they can add their name to an appeal is the dubious credential. It does seem odd that while the discourse is Palestine, they are very happy to drag it to Anti-Semitism, which obviously did not appear at all in what they are trying to destroy, or to geo-political arenas far from Israel and Palestine. There is NO difference between the Zionist campaign and the anti-Zionist Jewish campaign. Both are to decide what the parameters of discourse are and to destroy the messenger, while making the issue of how Jews feel about themselves and how they think the world should speak about them THE issue.

The messenger: Erdogan is being scoffed at for his belonging to an Islamist party. Well, why should anyone be surprised that this is a deadly sin for Jews who are Zionists and anti-Zionists alike. It is as if it automatically means totalitarian religious regime that is the enemy, and thus, the conditional support or the open criticism of Hamas and Hezbollah. Whether or not that is the case of Turkey, one has only to go there to find out. Women there are actually prohibited from wearing hijab (how fundamentalist is that?) in public offices, to cite but one example of the secular character of this state. Oh, the other problem, that he’s bourgeois. Well, it seems that the only ones acceptable are ones that are just like them, Secular Marxists. Or Secular Liberals. Or Jewish Atheists. Or secular Jewish Liberals… well, you get the picture.

Well, they wonder, how could Erdogan have gotten such an "obscure" writer fall into his folder and be carried from Ankara to Davos and directly to the stage? The critics maybe don’t know that papers by Gilad Atzmon are widely circulated, and not only in the alternative media, but actually they have entered the public discourse through the front door. One of his recent papers was read aloud in full on SkyTurk. Walking around Florence, today we found his papers in Italian stuck under windscreen wipers, turn on your radio and you are hearing him interviewed about Gaza. I suppose it is great to be published in Socialist Unity, but if the argument used is that Atzmon is fringe, margin, obscure, well, that argument once and for all has bit the dust. It is not out of a sense of pride, and we admit, it is indeed a matter of pride to hear your words or words of your friends and allies used to tear down the shameful wall of lies by Peres, while he can just sit and take it. It feels incredibly good. It is enabling. If we can do it, not financed by anyone or doing anyone’s business, everyone’s voice can be heard. As a matter of fact, Erdogan made a lot of people happy. Almost across the board Palestinians and Turks admired his bravery and determination. When he returned home, he was welcomed "As a World Leader". Yet, some will try to undermine that by calling it demagogy, with Turkey nearing elections.

Let’s stop to think for a moment. If it is an electoral tactic to be as bloodthirsty as possible to win votes in Israel, and expressing the humanitarian cries for a beleaguered people in Turkey is the "winning choice". Which country would you rather live in?

And if it is indeed so that the people as a whole believe that Israel is killing and killing in a way that exceeds anything necessary, then the discourse of Atzmon is by no means marginal or fringe, it is at the heart of the discourse. No one has to bombard people with information or letters or campaigns to know how to call things as they see it. They don’t need this Jewish organisation or that one to tell them who to listen to and how to think, cornering them into some kind of bizarre admission that identifying with these words is in some way damaging to Jews and anti-Semitic and some of these movement "leaders" will say, damaging to the movement or cause. In fact, the conclusion to draw is that these writings must be touching nerves, touching the deepest feelings of humanitarian concern and not ones of political or personal expediency. The diffusion of these writings has been by spontaneous proliferation, there is no press office or political group lobbying, there’s just a person at his own computer and the spread of information from there.

There is a rottenness of the "movement" if it does not recognise when the moment to put aside their personal qualms or conflicts with Atzmon and accept that something magnificent has happened, and the humanitarians of the world feel it and know it. Persisting in the campaign to silence Atzmon now would not only be LESS effective than it was before, but it drops down the final mask, that these people operate as crypto Zionists. Their agenda, and the agenda of the American Jewish Committee is one and the same.

Is an Israeli Jewish sense of victimization perpetuating the conflict with Palestinians?

2009-02-05T23:30:00.002Z

By Akiva Eldar

A new study of Jewish Israelis shows that most accept the 'official version' of the history of the conflict with the Palestinians. Is it any wonder, then, that the same public also buys the establishment explanation of the operation in Gaza?

A pioneering research study dealing with Israeli Jews' memory of the conflict with the Arabs, from its inception to the present, came into the world together with the war in Gaza. The sweeping support for Operation Cast Lead confirmed the main diagnosis that arises from the study, conducted by Daniel Bar-Tal, one of the world's leading political psychologists, and Rafi Nets-Zehngut, a doctoral student: Israeli Jews' consciousness is characterized by a sense of victimization, a siege mentality, blind patriotism, belligerence, self-righteousness, dehumanization of the Palestinians and insensitivity to their suffering. The fighting in Gaza dashed the little hope Bar-Tal had left - that this public would exchange the drums of war for the cooing of doves.

"Most of the nation retains a simplistic collective memory of the conflict, a black-and-white memory that portrays us in a very positive light and the Arabs in a very negative one," says the professor from Tel Aviv University. This memory, along with the ethos of the conflict and collective emotions such as fear, hatred and anger, turns into a psycho-social infrastructure of the kind experienced by nations that have been involved in a long-term violent conflict. This infrastructure gives rise to the culture of conflict in which we and the Palestinians are deeply immersed, fanning the flames and preventing progress toward peace. Bar-Tal claims that in such a situation, it is hard even to imagine a possibility that the two nations will be capable of overcoming the psychological obstacles without outside help.

Scholars the world over distinguish between two types of collective memory: popular collective memory - that is, representations of the past that have been adopted by the general public; and official collective memory, or representations of the past that have been adopted by the country's official institutions in the form of publications, books or textbooks.

The idea for researching the popular collective memory of Israeli Jews was raised by Nets-Zehngut, a Tel Aviv lawyer who decided to return to the academic world. At present he is completing his doctoral thesis in the International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution at Columbia University's Teachers College. The study, by him and Bar-Tal, entitled "The Israeli-Jewish Collective Memory of the Israeli-Arab/Palestinian Conflict," examines how official collective memory in the State of Israel regarding the creation of the 1948 refugee problem has changed over time.

Bar-Tal became enthusiastic about the idea and, with funding from the International Peace Research Association Foundation, he conducted a survey in the summer of 2008 among a representative sample of 500 Jewish Israeli adults. The study demonstrated that widespread support for the official memory testifies to a lower level of critical thinking, as well as belief in traditional values, high identification with Jewish identity, a tendency to delegitimize the Arabs, and support for taking aggressive steps against the Palestinians.

In a telephone interview from New York, Nets-Zehngut says it is very clear that those with a "Zionist memory" see Israel and the Jews as the victims in the conflict, and do not tend to support agreements or compromises with the enemy in order to achieve peace. This finding, he explains, demonstrates the importance of changing the collective memory of conflicts, making it less biased and more objective - on condition, of course, that there is a factual basis for such a change.

Bar-Tal, who has won international awards for his scientific work, immigrated to Israel from Poland as a child in the 1950s.

"I grew up in a society that for the most part did not accept the reality that the authorities tried to portray, and fought for a different future," he says. "I have melancholy thoughts about nations where there is an almost total identity between the agents of a conflict, on the one hand, who nurture the siege mentality and the existential fear, and various parts of society, on the other. Nations that respond so easily to battle cries and hesitate to enlist in favor of peace do not leave room for building a better future."

Bar-Tal emphasizes that the Israeli awareness of reality was also forged in the context of Palestinian violence against Israeli citizens, but relies primarily on prolonged indoctrination that is based on ignorance and even nurtures it. In his opinion, an analysis of the present situation indicates that with the exception of a small minority, which is capable of looking at the past with an open mind, the general public is not interested in knowing what Israel did in Gaza for many years; how the disengagement was carried out and why, or what its outcome was for the Palestinians; why Hamas came to power in democratic elections; how many people were killed in Gaza from the disengagement until the start of the recent war; and whether it was possible to extend the recent cease-fire or even who violated it first.

"Although there are accessible sources, where it is possible to find the answers to those questions, the public practices self-censorship and accepts the establishment version, out of an unwillingness to open up to alternative information - they don't want to be confused with the facts. We are a nation that lives in the past, suffused with anxiety and suffering from chronic closed-mindedness," charges Bar-Tal.

That describes the state of mind in 2000, when most of the pubic accepted the simplistic version of then-prime minister Ehud Barak regarding the failure of the Camp David summit and the outbreak of the second intifada, and reached what seemed like the obvious conclusion that "there is no partner" with whom to negotiate.

Bar-Tal: "After the bitter experience of the Second Lebanon War, during which the memory of the war was taken out of their hands and allowed to be formed freely, the country's leaders learned their lesson, and decided that they wouldn't let that happen again. They were not satisfied with attempts to inculcate Palestinian awareness and tried to influence Jewish awareness in Israel as well. For that purpose, heavy censorship and monitoring of information were imposed" during the Gaza campaign.

The professor believes that politicians would not have been successful in formulating the collective memory of such a large public without the willing enlistment of the media. Almost all the media focused only on the sense of victimization of the residents of the so-called "Gaza envelope" and the south. They did not provide the broader context of the military operation and almost completely ignored - before and during the fighting - the situation of the residents of besieged Gaza. The human stories from Sderot and the dehumanization of Hamas and the Palestinians provided the motivation for striking at Gaza with full force.

Nets-Zehngut and Bar-Tal find a close connection between the collective memory and the memory of "past persecutions of Jews" ("the whole world is against us," and the Holocaust). The more significant the memory of persecution, the stronger the tendency to adopt Zionist narratives. From this we can understand the finding that adults, the religious public and those with more right-wing political views tend to adopt the Zionist version of the conflict, while young people, the secular public and those with left-wing views tend more to adopt critical narratives.

The atmosphere in the street and in the media during the weeks of the Gaza war seems to have confirmed the central finding of the study: "The ethos of the conflict is deeply implanted in Jewish society in Israel. It is a strongly rooted ideology that justifies the goals of the Jews, adopts their version, presents them in a very positive light and rejects the legitimacy of the Arabs, and primarily of the Palestinians," notes Bar-Tal.

For example, when asked the question, "What were the reasons for the failure of the negotiations between [Ehud] Barak and [Yasser] Arafat in summer 2000?" 55.6 percent of the respondents selected the following answer: "Barak offered Arafat a very generous peace agreement, but Arafat declined mainly because he did not want peace." Another 25.4 percent believed that both parties were responsible for the failure, and about 3 percent replied that Arafat did want peace, but Barak was not forthcoming enough in meeting the needs of the Palestinians. (Sixteen percent replied that they didn't know the answer.)

Over 45 percent of Israeli Jews have imprinted on their memories the version that the second intifada broke out only, or principally, because Arafat planned the conflict in advance. Only 15 percent of them believe the viewpoint presented by three heads of the Shin Bet security services: that the intifada was mainly the eruption of a popular protest. Over half those polled hold the Palestinians responsible for the failure of the Oslo process, 6 percent hold Israel responsible, and 28.4 percent said both sides were equally responsible.

Among the same Jewish public, 40 percent are unaware that at the end of the 19th century, the Arabs were an absolute majority among the inhabitants of the Land of Israel. Over half of respondents replied that in the United Nations partition plan, which was rejected by the Arabs, the Arabs received an equal or larger part of the territory of the Land of Israel, relative to their numbers; 26.6 percent did not know that the plan offered the 1.3 million Arabs a smaller part of the territory (44 percent) than was offered to 600,000 Jews (55 percent).

Bar-Tal claims that this distortion of memory is no coincidence. He says that the details of the plan do not appear in any textbook, and this is a deliberate omission. "Knowledge of how the land was divided could arouse questions regarding the reason why the Arabs rejected the plan and make it possible to question the simplistic version: We accepted the partition plan, they didn't."

However, his study shows that a larger percentage of the Jewish population in Israel believes that in 1948, the refugees were expelled (47.2 percent of respondents), than those who still retain the old Zionist version (40.8 percent), according to which the refugees left on their own initiative. On this point, not only do almost all the history books provide up-to-date information, but some local school textbooks do as well. Even on the television program "Tekuma" ("Rebirth," a 1998 documentary series about Israel's first 50 years), the expulsion of the Arabs was mentioned.

Nets-Zehngut also finds a degree of self-criticism in the answers relating to the question of overall responsibility for the conflict. Of those surveyed, 46 percent think that the responsibility is more or less evenly divided between Jews and Arabs, 4.3 percent think that the Jews are mainly to blame, and 43 percent think that the Arabs and the Palestinians are mainly to blame for the outbreak and continuation of the conflict. It turns out, therefore, that when the country's education system and media are willing to deal with distorted narratives, even a collective memory that has been etched into people's minds for years can be changed.

Bar-Tal says he takes no comfort in the knowledge that Palestinian collective memory suffers from similar ills, and that it is also in need of a profound change - a change that would help future generations on both sides to regard one another in a more balanced, and mainly a more humane manner. This process took many decades for the French and the Germans, and for the Protestants and the Catholics in Northern Ireland. When will it finally begin here, too?

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/objects/pages/PrintArticleEn.jhtml?itemNo=1060061

They Shoot Children from Womb to Cradle to Grave

2009-02-05T23:08:00.002Z

"...Zionism is a political, moral, and spiritual corruption of Judaism. Like Nazism it's based on the supremacy of one race above another. Like Nazism, genocide, ethnic cleansing, and theft of property is a de facto ideology to create a "Jewish Only" State at the expense of expelling Muslims and Christians from the Holy Land. Like Nazism, its power stems from a powerful military and a most powerful propaganda machine that indoctrinates the masses with the ideology that killing a people is an act of self defense that ultimately will benefit the world and protect western civilization..."

Mohamed Khodr

"There are only two powers in the world…the sword of the oppressor and the spirit of the oppressed. In the long run, the sword is always defeated by the spirit." - Napoleon Bonaparte

"It is the duty of Israeli leaders to explain to public opinion, clearly and courageously, a certain number of facts that are forgotten with time. The first of these is that there is no Zionism, colonization or Jewish State without the eviction of the Arabs and the expropriation of their lands." – Yoram Bar Porath, Yediot Aahronot, of 14 July 1972.

"May the Holy Name visit retribution on the Arabs' heads, and cause their seed to be lost, and annihilate them, and cause them to be vanquished and cause them to be cast from the world. It is forbidden to be merciful to them, you must give them missiles, with relish - annihilate them. Evil ones, damnable ones." – Ultra-Orthodox Shas Party spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, in a sermon discussing Passover and God's wrath at Israel's enemies, 8 April 2001. Some months ago he distinguished himself by describing Arabs as "snakes" whom "God regrets having created".

"On the morrow of a persecution in Europe in which they had been the victims of the worst atrocities ever known… the Jews' immediate reaction to their own experience was to become persecutors in their turn… In 1948, the Jews knew, from personal experience, what they were doing; and it was their supreme tragedy that the lessons learnt by them from their encounter with the Nazi German Gentiles should have been not to eschew but to initiate some of the evil deeds that the Nazis had committed against the Jews…." "Right and wrong are the same in Palestine as anywhere else. What is peculiar about the Palestine conflict is that the world has listened to the party that has committed the offence and has turned a deaf ear to the victims." – Professor Arnold Toynbee, famed British Historian, in "A Study of HIstory"

Note:

Israel and its subservient American supporters always and deliberately sabotage and embarrass U.S. Presidents, U.N. officials, and American or European peace envoys, whenever they visit Israel or the region or placate and appease the Arab world that they're looking to jump start the "thief of land piece by piece peace process".

Last night, January 28, ABCNEWS reported that a CIA chief in Algeria drugged and raped two Muslim women. What was most curious was the timing of the story given that the investigation began last fall. It smacks of a conspiracy to embarrass Obama's outreach to the Muslim world and the fact that he gave his first TV interview to an Arab Satellite network where he spoke fondly of his family's Muslim heritage, his respect for the Muslim world and his desire to develop a harmonious relationship between the U.S. and Muslims worldwide.

So Obama thinks he can bypass Israel and reach out directly to the Muslim world. Not a chance. Many Presidents have tried and failed. These American Presidents just don't get it.

As soon as Obama's MidEast envoy arrived in Israel, Israel launched a massive naval and air strike on Gaza hoping to derail his mission even before it began. He was asking for a forceful ceasefire and his answer was more dead Palestinians.

While UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon was in Israel for ceasefire talks Israel deliberately bombed the U.N. headquarters of its Relief Agency burning it and its warehouses stocked with food supplies. All he could do was express outrage and leave deeply embarrassed knowing full well he's impotent to deal with Israel. Israel doesn't just kill Palestinian children it demands the rest starve to death.

An example from the past is the experience of Former Secretary of State James Baker's deep frustration that whenever he visited Israel for peace discussions he would always be met with a new illegal settlement in the occupied territories.

On May 22, 1992 he expressed his anger by saying:

"Every time I have gone to Israel in connection with the peace process on each of my trips I have been met with the announcement of new settlement activity. This does violate United States policy…. I don't think there is any greater obstacle to peace than settlement activity that continues not only unabated but at an advanced pace."

Not even an American President can face down Israel given its ownership of Congress, the massive Jewish ownership and directorship of the media, and a tsunami of a well funded, organized, rapid response attack army spread across all institutions and in every state. It's become shamefully apparent that Washington D.C. is the capitol of Israel not of America.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Two days ago The Guardian newspaper had a story entitled "Fuelling the Cycle of Hate" The first paragraph of the article reads:

"Israeli soccer matches were suspended during the assault on Gaza. When the games resumed last week, the fans had come up with a new chant: "Why have the schools in Gaza been shut down?" sang the crowd. "Because all the children were gunned down!" came the answer."

Such is the nurtured hate among Israel's youth by a nation that can only see its worth, value, and supremacy in the cold blooded genocide and murder of little children. A rogue nation of mostly vampires who vote with blood stained ballots dipped in the hearts and minds of innocent children who find no safety from bombs, rockets, missiles, and bullets whether they are in their homes, schools, hospitals; and most shockingly, not even in their graves, for they bomb graves too. What kind of a people are capable of bombing little graves?

Never in the sixty years since Israel's genocidal establishment and massive ethnic cleansing of Palestinians has the world, especially the western world that gave birth to this illegitimate nation, been given the opportunity to study and understand the historical context of Israel's formation and the dispossession of millions of Palestinians from their homes and land to be condemned to live in refugee camps and tents for decades.

Israel's military prowess unleashed at opportune times to kill, destroy, bulldoze, and sabotage every U.N. Resolution, every peace effort, every aspect of humanitarian law and respect for the life of the "other" be it an American, European, or Palestinian is only exceeded by its media, public relations, propaganda machine, and it powerfully intimidating lobbies, like AIPAC, that have silenced the conscience of governments and western citizenry.

It is the untouchable nation, a nation above all divine and human law, a nation that can drop with total impunity a white phosphorous missile upon a U.N. school massacring children who'll never see daylight again.

We're all complicit and guilty in our fear, silence, and aversion to face an aggressive intimidating political and media power that slimes those who dare to speak for peace, justice, and the sanctity of all lives. We seek comfort and security in our cowardly silence. We wish to avoid the career ending smear of the Neo-Scarlet Letter: A for Anti Semite, although hardly any Jew living today is a Semite.

We must find our voice, we must find our courage to fight the corruption of truth, history, and establish our commitment that all lives are sacred and equal; that there are no chosen people, no supremacy or superiority of one race to another, that all mankind is treated equally under divine and human laws; that the white man's superiority complex doesn't become the dark man's eternal burden.

I congratulate and respect Professor Tariq Ramadan's initiative and all who support it around the world.

See:
http://www.tariqramadan.com/spip.php?article10497< =en#pagination_signatures
Please sign this laudable effort, it's the least we can do to regain some semblance of our humanity. In addition please boycott all Israeli goods products. If you can, complain to the store owners and managers that you won't be buying such products. To identify products from Israel look at the BAR CODE on the product and look for the number "729", usually precedes the remaining numbers)

It's shocking but not unexpected that the most impotent, incompetent, and corrupt governments toward the massacre and suffering of the Palestinians are the Arab leaders themselves; none more so than the "moderates" who'd rather fight their fellow Muslims than switch from their subservience to the Israeli American axis.

Zionism is a political, moral, and spiritual corruption of Judaism. Like Nazism it's based on the supremacy of one race above another. Like Nazism, genocide, ethnic cleansing, and theft of property is a de facto ideology to create a "Jewish Only" State at the expense of expelling Muslims and Christians from the Holy Land. Like Nazism, its power stems from a powerful military and a most powerful propaganda machine that indoctrinates the masses with the ideology that killing a people is an act of self defense that ultimately will benefit the world and protect western civilization.

Zionism is pure unadulterated racism and a system of Apartheid that many morally courageous Jews in and out of Israel believe has threatened not only Israel but Jews around the world and for generations to come. God forbid, one can blame Zionism for any future persecution of Jews.

Has the west lost its conscience? Has its threshold for inquisitiveness, knowledge and reasoned study been lost? Has its threshold for empathy and caring for the less fortunate, the oppressed, the killed, the homeless, the injured, the hungry, the poor, sick, and the hungry been sabotaged by the daily bombardment of noise that our brains become teflonish or simply tabula rasas for the lie du jour.

We shall all die. The ultimate question upon our death would be—did we see an evil and tried to stop it; did we see a chance to do good and not do it.

The Holy Land is worthy of our love, caring, and any sacrifice that will bring peace and justice to all who claim it Holy.

Count me among those who've found the courage and voice of my conviction that Israel's atrocities must stop, that we do all we can in civil disobedience to change the policies of our paralyzed governments, and that we spread the word to Jews and gentiles around the world—Join us to Free Palestine—Join us to save the world
from its inhumanity.

God bless, Amen.

Source for James Baker Quote:

http://www.liberationgraphics.com/ppp/Stop_Israeli_Settlements.html

PTT pride: Erdogan at World Economic Forum cites our editor Gilad Atzmon

2009-02-05T22:54:00.002Z

By Mary Rizzo

The World Economic Forum at Davos had an incredible moment of truth...After Shimon Peres was allowed to justify the wanton killing that the Jewish State engaged in over the territory they have strangled with their inhumane blockade, (and received applause for it by the men and women waiting for their champaign glasses to be filled after the dinner that of course was more important to them than hearing the words of the Prime Minister of the largest European State with a Muslim majority and one of the most strategic areas on the face of the earth), Tayyip Erdogan begins to respond to the barrage of filth poured out by Peres.

At the moment, our Turkish translators in www.tlaxcala.es are getting a verbatim translation of the intervention, which we will post up here as soon as it is available, but in the meantime,

Here is a translation found here: http://video.aol.com/video-detail/turkish-prime-minister-erdogan-leaves-the-debate-in-davos-translation/3833761515/?icid=VIDURVNWS06

Moderator: There was a heated debate here. This is a discussion that can last for hours. We are already out of time.
Erdogan: One minute.
Moderator: Mr. President, well, you know
Erdodan: One minute, one minute! No! One minute.
Moderator: Ok, but I want you not to speak more than one minute.
Erdogan: Mr. Peres, you are older than me. Your voice is very loud. I know that you are speaking aloud because of the requirement of a sense of guilt. My voice will not be that loud. About murdering, you know killing very well. I am well aware how you murdered children on beaches. Two former prime ministers of your country had important sayings to me. You have former prime ministers who say When I entered Palestine over armed combat cars, I consider myself more and more pleased. I can give their names, maybe some of you wonder. Besides, I condemn those of you who applaud this persecution. Because applauding these killers who murdered those children, who massacred those people is, I believe, also another crime committed against humanity. Look, we cannot disregard a reality here. Here, I jotted down a lot of notes, but I dont have time to answer all of them. But, I will say you only two things:
Moderator: Excuse me Prime Minister, we can't start the debate again.
Erdogan: Excuse me. First, excuse me, do NOT interrupt me! First, The Old Testament says in the 6th commandment: You shall not kill! But there is murder here. Second, this is also very interesting. Gilad Atzmon, a Jew himself, says: Israeli barbarity is far beyond even ordinary cruelty. Besides, Avi Shlaim, Professor of Oxford who performed his military duty in Israeli army, says in the Guardian the following:
Moderator: Prime Minister, Prime Minister. I wanna ask to our host.
Erdogan: Israel became a gangster state. (to the moderator) I thank you, too. For me, Davos is done for me from now on. I will not come again. You all know this in this way. You are not letting us speak. (Showing Peres) He spoke for 25 minutes, but you let e speak 12 minutes. No way!

********************

Well, we at PTT think several things must be said:

1) More leaders should have the courage to speak out about the atrocities and to isolate Israel from sitting on a stage and endorsing their violence, which has no justification. That Erdogan did this, (and used also as his source writing by one of our editors, Gilad Atzmon), can only encourage us in our belief that sooner or later even people responsible for the guiding of a country numbering almost 63 million people, will stand up to Israel and say enough is enough. We are waiting for other Leaders to follow, the ice has been broken.

2) To state the obvious is no longer verboten. Things have to be called with their names, a State that is a menace to humanity and violent beyond all decency MUST be denounced in the loudest terms possible. We can't walk on eggshells anymore. For a leader to express the thoughts of his people (finally) rather than to kowtow to some impossible situation of sitting on the fence (and Turkey in many ways is a nation that has a lot to answer for in past and recent atrocities, as well as its position of support for the invasion of Iraq) moves a step in the right direction. It is NOT in the interests of Turkey to acquiesce all horrors and violence just to stay in the club. It is sometimes BEST to walk off when you realise the platform is there to present a justification for what cannot be justified. We believe that this brave action, widely appreciated by millions, is the first of a series. Of the entire Davos Forum, this was the moment cited in the news.. It is food for thought.

3) NO normalisation with Israel until they accept the rules of International Law. Thank you PM Erdogan, for listening to us, for using our words, and for using that international platform for expressing the views that we know millions of humanitarian people hold. You are enabling all of us.
Palestine Think Tank

Erdogan gets hero's welcome upon his return to Turkey

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE50T20E20090130?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=0

(excerpt)

By Paul de Bendern

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan received a hero's welcome on his return to Istanbul on Friday after accusing Israel of "knowing very well how to kill" during a heated debate at the World Economic Forum.

Erdogan stormed out of a debate on Israel's Gaza offensive on Thursday, and vowed he might never return to the annual gathering of the rich and powerful in Davos.

President Shimon Peres had launched a fiery defense of his country's offensive in Gaza over the past month, and with a raised voice and pointed finger, questioned what Erdogan would do if rockets were fired at Istanbul every night.

"When it comes to killing, you know very well how to kill," Erdogan, visibly angry, responded as he sat next to Peres at the debate, which also included United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon and Arab League chief Amr Moussa.

Turkey, a predominantly Muslim but secular country that historically has had good ties with Israel and the Arab world, played a role in helping broker an end to the Gaza offensive this month, particularly by lobbying the Islamist Hamas group to declare a ceasefire.

Thousands of people gathered at Istanbul's Ataturk airport to greet Erdogan when he returned, waving Turkish and Palestinian flags and chanting "Turkey is proud of you."

"Our people would have expected the same reaction from any Turkish prime minister," he told a news conference at Ataturk airport on Friday morning after speaking to the crowd.

"This was a matter of the esteem and prestige of my country. Hence, my reaction had to be clear. I could not have allowed anyone to poison the prestige and in particular the honor of my country," he said.

"Our reproaches are not against the Israeli people or Jews. Our reproach is totally against the Israeli administration," Erdogan said.

Political Correctness - Rules of Democracy

2009-02-05T22:42:00.002Z

(Author unknown)

Rule #1: In the Middle East, it is always the Palestinians that attack first, and it's always Israel who defends itself. The name of this is "retaliation".

Rule #2: The Palestinians are not allowed to kill Israelis. The name of this is "terrorism".

Rule #3: Israel has the right to kill Palestinian civilians; the name of this is "self-defense" or "collateral damage".

Rule #4: When Israel kills too many Palestinian civilians, the Western world calls for restraint. This is called the "reaction of the international community".

Rule #5: Palestinians do not have the right to capture Israeli military, not even 1 or 2.

Rule #6: Israel has the right to capture as many Palestinians as they want (around 10,000 to date being held without trial). There is no limit; there is no need for proof of guilt or a trial. All that is needed is the magic word: "terrorism".

Rule #7: When you say "Hamas", always be sure to add "supported by Hezbollah, Syria and Iran".

Rule #8: When you say "Israel", never say "supported by the USA, the UK, European countries and even some Arab regimes", for people (God forbid) might believe this is not an equal conflict.

Rule #9: When it comes to Israel, don't mention the words "occupied territories", "UN resolutions", "Geneva Conventions". This could distress the audience of Fox, CNN, etc.

Rule # 10: The Palestinians are always "cowards" who hide behind a civilian population that "they don't care about". If they (militants) sleep in houses with their families, the name of this is: "cowardice". Israel has the right to annihilate the towns where they sleep using bombs and missiles. The name of this is "high precision surgical action".

Rule #11: Israelis speak better English than Arabs. This is why we let them speak out as much as possible, so that they can explain rules 1 through 9. The name of this is "neutral journalism".

Rule #12: If you don't agree with these rules or if you favor the Palestinian side over the Israeli side, you must be a very dangerous anti-Semite. You may even have to make a public apology if you express your honest opinion.

THIS NAME OF THIS IS: DEMOCRACY!!
(Isn't democracy wonderful?)

Now that you have read the rules (a Spanish language version of them says the author was God, and I've translated an Italian version you can read tomorrow on www.tlaxcala.es), see what the Ministry of Foreign Affairs [Lies and Deception] has issued in today’s briefing. It's their denouncement of War Crimes and Death of civilians, of thievery and use of weaponry. Obviously, they project all evil onto their enemies, and here is a classic example of the Hasbara of Israel's “Good War in a Nutshell”. If you read it, you will see that they are accusing Hamas of all and sundry, War Crimes, even! See how well they apply these rules, going beyond the beyond! They tout about words such as “Truth”, the use of exaggeration and hyperbole alone is staggering, “Eight years of constant rocket barrages”, "I don't think there's ever been a time in the history of warfare when any army has made more efforts to reduce civilian casualties and deaths of innocent people than the IDF is doing today in Gaza.", and the whopper, “...I was struck by how cosmetically unchanged Gaza appeared to be.”

Count how many times they use each rule and share your results with the rest of us! Find a few rules that were hidden… in essence, for lovers of science fiction or fairy tales, this genre will be right up your alley.

National Palestinian Unity to Isolate the Traitors

2009-01-28T10:43:00.004Z

WRITTEN BY KHALID AMAYREH

The meeting in Cairo on Monday 26 January, between a Hamas representative and Fatah leader Azzam al Ahmed is a glimmer of hope for millions of Palestinians and their allies who are hoping and praying for a speedy end of the enduring rift between the two biggest political camps in the Palestinian arena.

Though symbolic and procedural in nature, the meeting shows that the problems between the two sides can be overcome if both sides display good-will and especially if the Ramallah regime ends its ignominious subservience to Israel and the United States.

Needless to say, the rift has wreaked havoc on the reputation of the just Palestinian cause and caused many bleeding wounds to our people, the scars of which will take a long time to heal.

However, we are still one people, feeling the same pain, languishing under the same hateful occupation, and harboring the same hopes for freedom and justice.

But in order to reach a lasting national harmony, we need to be honest and frank, and refrain from trying to negate the other side. This is so because neither Hamas nor Fatah will go away or evaporate into nonexistence.

There is no doubt that a great calamity has hit our people in the Gaza Strip. But by no means was that evil aggression a victory for Israel unless the Zio-Nazi entity views the mass killing of innocent civilians and the mass destruction of residential homes and public buildings as an act of heroism.

Well, if so, then we would have to view Adolf Hitler as the greatest hero of all times.

Nonetheless, we should refrain from whipping ourselves too much or trying to score propaganda points one against the other.

Israel did try to decapitate Hamas, destroy its legitimate government (legitimate because Hamas was elected by the Palestinian people) and give the Gaza Strip back to PA leader Mahmoud Abbas on a sliver platter.

The fact that Israel couldn’t achieve the criminal goal was not due to Israeli magnanimity. Zionists are too thuggish and too criminal minded to know the meaning of magnanimity. After all, magnanimity requires at least a modicum of humanity and Zionism has none of that.

In truth, Hamas and other Palestinian resistance factions earned this spectacular steadfastness, this legendary resoluteness, in the face of overwhelming criminality, hideousness and firepower.

Hence, one can only view with utter contempt the cheap canards and calumnies coming out of Ramallah and accusing the resistance of responsibility for the widespread death and destruction in Gaza, as if the murderous pilots who were raining bombs and missiles and white phosphorous on the heads of our children and civilians were members of Hamas, not Israeli war criminals.

To be sure, such cheap accusations are made by two categories of people, ignoramuses who don’t know the facts, and bona fide traitors who are doing Israel’s work.

The former can be somehow forgiven by virtue of their ignorance or stupidity. However, the latter are willful Judases who ought to be silenced and punished. And if the time is not conducive to dealing with them the proper way, they should be isolated in disgrace.

This should be one of Hamas’s key tasks in the coming weeks and months. Otherwise, the Fifth columnists within Fatah and the PA, the very people who committed national adultery in broad daylight by collaborating with the Shin Beth and the CIA for the purpose of raping the Palestinian people’s will and achieving America’s morbid goals in this tortured part of the world, will continue to create mischief and try to rock the collective Palestinian boat.

These must be ejected, isolated, exposed, disgraced, and made to pay for their treachery and perfidy.

But Fatah is not a movement of traitors, and it is not in the Palestinian people’s interests to see Fatah catapulted into the laps of the likes of Muhammed Dahlan, Nimr Hammad and al-Tayeb Abdul Rahim who probably were dreaming, even loudly, of an Israeli victory in Gaza.

Hence, it is both right and wise for Hamas to get closer to true patriots within Fatah. And the time to do that is now.

There is no doubt that despite the enormity of the genocidal Zionist blitzkrieg against our people in Gaza, Hamas has not only managed to remain intact, but has also earned overwhelming respect and admiration from around the world.

Hamas shouldn’t treat lightly this earned outpouring of support which many movements, parties and governments even dream of receiving a fraction of.

In this light, Hamas should show enlightened flexibility toward re-establishing national unity.

It is this national unity that will eventually dump the government of Fayadh into the dustbin of history and do away with the whoring practice known as “security coordination.”

The restoration of national unity will also impose an early retirement on people like Keith Dayton and other CIA officers who have taught hundreds, if not thousands, of our beguiled and naïve young sons that the enemy is Hamas, not the Zionist thugs who have just murdered and maimed thousands of our children and civilians in the Gaza Strip and who have been stealing our land and narrowing our horizons.

In the Quran, God orders Muslims to refrain from falling into disunity and internal conflicts.

In Surat al Anfal, God says: “ And obey God and His Messenger and fall not into disputes, lest you lose heart and your power depart; and be patient and persevering: For God stands with those who patiently persevere.” Of all Palestinian factions, Hamas should understand this best.

Amen!

Cartoon.

2009-01-28T10:42:00.000Z

The BBC and the transformation of suffering into propaganda

2009-01-28T10:40:00.003Z

WRITTEN BY Sarah Gillepsie

'What impartiality requires is not that everyone receive equal treatment, but rather that everyone be treated as an equal.’ Ronald Dworkin Taking Rights Seriously. Harvard University Press. 1977, p. 227).

BBC director general Mark Thomson can not screen footage of Palestinian suffering in Gaza without compromising his cooperation’s impartiality. At the heart of his obfuscation lays a belief that Palestinian pain is not an objective reality. It is, at best, a subjective possibility, one loaded with the potential to burst into a subversive, destabilizing force.

For activists and supporters who are frequently asked why they devote more energy to Palestine than Darfur or the Congo (the implication being of course that they are anti-Semites) Mark Thomson provides the most succinct answer. For Thomson has no problem whatsoever screening Disaster Emergency Committee films on behalf of Darfur and the Congo. The suffering endured by people in these regions is endorsed by the BBC as a universally acknowledged fact. Screening footage of the humanitarian disaster in Palestine though, sabotages Sky and the BBC’s obligation to be ‘balanced.’ If this was indeed a war, and not genocidal attack, then the BBC could counter their depictions of carnage in Gaza with images of the horrors endured in Sderot. But this is of course impossible. The visual impact of a damaged kitchen doesn’t quite cut it next to the apocalyptic hell hole that is Gaza.

Problematically, for a Zionist broadcaster who wants to appear ‘fair’, the humanitarian appeal does not come across as 'balanced' because the conflict is not 'balanced'. Again, the Palestinians are collectively punished for this annoying glitch in egalitarian reporting. Rather than responsibly portray a reality that inevitably induces a condemnation of Israel, these corporations re-brand Palestinian reality as’ journalistic bias.'

Thus, the BBC’s refusal to air this film suggests that Palestinian suffering is itself a form of propaganda. Through the lens of the BBC, the screams of kids riddled with phosphorus become anti Israeli screams. The piles of burning concrete become anti-Semitic piles of burning concrete. The howls of grief are Islamist and undemocratic. The lives of children snubbed out in an instant by Israeli bombs may have grown into adults who failed to recognize Israel’s right to exist; that is if Israel had not had the foresight to violate their right to grow up.

Perhaps the most menacing aspect of this tragic debacle is Mark Thomson himself. A quick bit of research online ploughs up a surfeit of information proving the man is far from 'impartial'. His Jewish wife, the scholar Jane Blumfeild, hails from an American family that attends Yeshivas. Evidence suggests that she recently signed a petition campaigning against the anti-Israeli content of the Washington Post. In 2005 she traveled together with her husband to Jerusalem to engage in talks with Ariel Sharon in an attempt to build bridges between the BBC and Israel. According to the Independent , this was an unprecedented gesture by any serving BBC director general. 'He has a far greater regard for the Israeli cause than some of his predecessors’ a BBC source said. All in all, it is infuriatingly impossible to imagine the reverse; a BBC director general married to a woman from a Wahabi background who petitions news organizations to write pro-Palestinian copy and visits Khaled Meshaal in an attempt to help him out with his PR.

The implausible tone of this scenario betrays the catastrophic reality behind Sky and the BBC's position. It is very clear that, as much as these media institutions champion their Voltaire-esque spiel about covering both sides of every story, at the end of the day their 'objectivity' is merely Israeli objectivity.

Gerard Kaufman MP elaborates ‘Probably the (BBC's) attitude has been: 'Oh this is just too much trouble and it's too much trouble because of the pressure of the Israelis. This very active and not very pleasant Israeli diplomatic representation in Britain’.

With over a million people dependent on aid to survive, the decisions of both corporations, continues the legacy of pathological barbarism carried out by the Jewish state. The Jerusalem Post and some other editorials go slightly further and refer to the DEC film as an 'advert' as if just trying to save lives were a sales tactic. Thankfully ordinary human beings are finally able to see through their transparent rhetoric and are doing to their TV licenses what Israel did to Gaza, burning them into obliteration.

Amnesty International Calls on Israel to Urgently Disclose Weapons and Munitions Used in Gaza

2009-01-24T22:12:00.007Z

Doctors Are Having Difficulty Treating Wounded with Unexplained Charred and Severed Limbs

Amnesty International Press Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

15 year-old Ayman al-Najar at the Al-Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis. He has severe injuries, including chemical burns, after Israeli bombing in the village of Khoza'a, Gaza.

(New York) -- Saying doctors are finding new and unexplained patterns of injury among the wounded in Gaza, Amnesty International today called on the Israeli authorities to urgently disclose all weapons and munitions their forces used during military operations to prevent the loss of more lives.

"It is vital and urgent that the Israeli authorities disclose all relevant information including what weapons and munitions they used," said Donatella Rovera, who is leading Amnesty International's investigations team in Gaza. "More lives must not be lost because doctors do not know what caused their patients' injuries and what medical complications may occur. They have to be fully informed so that they can provide life-saving care."

Rovera said doctors are telling Amnesty International they are encountering new and unexplained patterns of injury among some of the Palestinians injured. "Some victims of Israeli air strikes were brought in with charred and sharply severed limbs and doctors treating them need to know what weapons were used," she said.

Dr. Subhi Skeik, head of the Surgical Department at al-Shifa Hospital, told Amnesty International delegates: “We have many cases of amputations and vascular reconstructions where patients would be expected to recover in the normal way. But to our surprise many of them died an hour or two after operation. It is dramatic.”

Rovera said the human rights organization has irrefutable evidence of the use of white phosphorous munitions in civilian areas, although the Israeli authorities previously denied using this munition.

Israel's earlier refusal to confirm that its troops had used white phosphorus meant that doctors were unable to provide correct treatment. White phosphorous particles embedded in the flesh can continue to burn, causing intense pain as the burns grow wider and deeper, and can result in irreparable damage to internal organs. It can contaminate other parts of the patient's body or even those treating the injuries.

“We noticed burns different from anything we had ever dealt with before,” one burns specialist at Gaza's al-Shifa Hospital told Amnesty International. “After some hours the burns became wider and deeper, gave off an offensive odor and then they began to smoke.”

The condition of people with burns caused by white phosphorus can deteriorate rapidly. Even those with burns that cover a relatively small area of the body – ten to fifteen percent – who would normally survive, can deteriorate and die. Only after a number of foreign doctors arrived in the Gaza Strip, days after they had seen the first casualties of white phosphorus, did local doctors learn what had caused the wounds and how to treat them.

A 16-year-old girl, Samia Salman Al-Manay'a, was asleep in her home in the Jabalia refugee camp, north of Gaza City, when a phosphorous shell landed on the first floor of the house on Jan. 10. Ten days later, from her hospital bed, she told Amnesty International that she was still experiencing intense pain due to the burns to her face and legs. “The pain is piercing. It's as though a fire is burning in my body. It's too much for me to bear. In spite of all the medicine they are giving me the pain is still so strong.”

Without knowing what they were, Palestinians whose houses were hit by phosphorous shells or burning debris from them, mistakenly threw water on the flames, only for the fire to intensify. When doctors, seemingly unaware, tried to wash patients' wounds with saline solutions, they screamed in pain. And when they changed the dressings on patients' burns they were shocked to see smoke rise from the wound. When they conducted investigative operations, they extracted small pieces of felt which started to burn immediately when they were exposed to the air.

“There can be no excuse for continuing to withhold information vital to effective treatment of people wounded in Israeli attacks. Lack of cooperation by Israel is leading to needless deaths and unnecessary suffering," said Rovera. "The Israeli authorities should fulfil their obligation to ensure prompt and adequate care for the wounded by making a full disclosure of the weapons and munitions they used in Gaza and provide any other relevant information that may help medical teams."

Background

Some 1,300 Palestinians were killed between Dec. 27, 2008 and the ceasefire declared by Israel on Jan. 18, 2009, including more than 400 children and over 100 women. More than 5,300 Palestinians were injured; many will be disabled for the rest of their lives. In the same period, 13 Israelis were killed in attacks by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups, including three civilians.

Amnesty International is a Nobel Peace Prize-winning grassroots activist organization with more than 2.2 million supporters, activists and volunteers in more than 150 countries campaigning for human rights worldwide. The organization investigates and exposes abuses, educates and mobilizes the public, and works to protect people wherever justice, freedom, truth and dignity are denied.

Photos of Ayman al-Najar injuries.

http://www.amnestyusa.org/document.php?id=ENGUSA20090122004&lang=e

Contact: Suzanne Trimel, 212-633-4150, strimel@aiusa.org

Israel Has Fewer Friends Than Ever, Even In America

2009-01-24T17:30:00.000Z

By Rod Nordland | NEWSWEEK

Israel has never been more isolated. Its best friend, the United States, had vetoed 41 Security Council resolutions condemning Israel in the past three decades, but was about to vote for the Jan. 8 resolution denouncing the attack on Gaza when President Bush intervened, at the behest of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Still, in the face of unprecedented global criticism, the U.S. didn't dare veto, but merely abstained. Europe, never Israel's close ally, erupted in near unanimous outrage over Gaza, with fits of anti-Semitic violence in France, Sweden and Belgium.

Israel is accustomed to attacks from the left and the U.N. This time, though, Amnesty International has accused Israel of war crimes (using white phosphorus against civilians), and the secretary-general was unusually outspoken. After Israel bombed five U.N. compounds, Ban Ki-moon called the attack "heartbreaking … outrageous and unacceptable." His condemnation of Hamas rocket attacks came later, in milder terms.

Israel's last major military excursion, into Lebanon in 2006, aroused less anger. Its closest European ally is Britain, where Tony Blair initially refused to call for a ceasefire in Lebanon. By day two in Gaza, his Labour successors were pushing for a ceasefire; one M.P. called Israel's leaders "mass murderers." The global outcry in 2006 was tempered by disgust at Hizbullah's rocket campaign, which killed 43 in heavily populated northern Israel. This time, Hamas rockets hit a patch of sparsely populated southern Israel, killing three, while the Israeli response has been far more deadly. Some 1,300 Palestinians have been killed—compared with 500 Shiites in Lebanon.

The one region where Israel is arguably not more isolated is the Middle East. Israel's push for Arab recognition suffered a setback when Mauritania and Qatar severed relations, but four Arab summits have reached no consensus on how to respond to Gaza. Major states, led by Jordan and Egypt, want to lend no comfort to their Persian rival, Iran, the backer of Hamas. Moreover, Hamas has not emerged as a plucky hero to the Arab world, the way Hizbullah did in 2006. When the fighting quieted last week, Hamas held a "victory" parade in Gaza City, and it fizzled.

Israel has just one key friend. Could Obama, who promised the Muslim world "a new way forward" in his Inaugural Address, loosen the bond? A recent Pew poll shows 55 percent of U.S. Republicans, but only 45 percent of Democrats, approve of Israel's actions in Gaza. Given that Democrats now rule, Israel may need to worry more about the mood on Main Street than on the Arab Street.

With Christopher Dickey in Doha and Sophie Grove in London

Patrick Cockburn: In Israel, detachment from reality is now the norm

2009-01-24T16:58:00.002Z

All these years on from Sabra and Chatila, has anything changed?

I was watching the superb animated documentary Waltz with Bashir about the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. It culminates in the massacre of some 1,700 Palestinians in the Sabra and Chatila refugee camps in south Beirut by Christian militiamen introduced there by the Israeli army which observed the butchery from close range.

In the last few minutes the film switches from animation to graphic news footage showing Palestinian women screaming with grief and horror as they discover the bullet-riddled bodies of their families. Then, just behind the women, I saw myself walking with a small group of journalists who had arrived in the camp soon after the killings had stopped.

The film is about how the director, Ari Folman, who knew he was at Sabra and Chatila as an Israeli soldier, tried to discover both why he had repressed all memory of what happened to him and the degree of Israeli complicity in the massacre.

Walking out of the cinema, I realised that I had largely repressed my own memories of that ghastly day. I could not even find a clipping in old scrapbooks of the article I had written about what I had seen for the Financial Times for whom I then worked. Even now my memory is hazy and episodic, though I can clearly recall the sickly sweet smell of bodies beginning to decompose, the flies clustering around the eyes of the dead women and children, and the blood-smeared limbs and heads sticking out of banks of brown earth heaped up by bulldozers in a half-hearted attempt to bury the corpses.

Soon after seeing Waltz with Bashir I saw TV pictures of the broken bodies of the Palestinians killed by Israeli bombs and shells in Gaza during the 22-day bombardment. At first I thought that little had changed since Sabra and Chatila. Once again there were the same tired and offensive excuses that Israel was somehow not to blame. Hamas was using civilians as human shields, and in any case – this argument produced more furtively – two-thirds of people in Gaza had voted for Hamas so they deserved whatever happened to them.

But on returning to Jerusalem 10 years after I was stationed here as The Independent's correspondent between 1995 and 1999 I find that Israel has changed significantly for the worse. There is far less dissent than there used to be and such dissent is more often treated as disloyalty.

Israeli society was always introverted but these days it reminds me more than ever of the Unionists in Northern Ireland in the late 1960s or the Lebanese Christians in the 1970s. Like Israel, both were communities with a highly developed siege mentality which led them always to see themselves as victims even when they were killing other people. There were no regrets or even knowledge of what they inflicted on others and therefore any retaliation by the other side appeared as unprovoked aggression inspired by unreasoning hate.

At Sabra and Chatila the first journalist to find out about the massacre was an Israeli and he desperately tried to get it stopped. This would not happen today because Israeli journalists, along with all foreign journalists, were banned from entering Gaza before the Israeli bombardment started. This has made it far easier for the government to sell the official line about what a great success the operation has been.

Nobody believes propaganda so much as the propagandist so Israel's view of the outside world is increasingly detached from reality. One academic was quoted as saying that Arabs took all their views about was happening in Israel from what Israelis said about themselves. So if Israelis said they had won in Gaza, unlike Lebanon in 2006, Arabs would believe this and Israeli deterrence would thereby be magically restored.

Intolerance of dissent has grown and may soon get a great deal worse. Benjamin Netanyahu, who helped bury the Oslo accords with the Palestinians when he was last prime minister from 1996 to 1999, is likely to win the Israeli election on 10 February. The only issue still in doubt is the extent of the gains of the extreme right.

The views of these were on display this week as Avigdor Lieberman, the chairman of the Ysrael Beitenu party, which, according to the polls will do particularly well in the election, was supporting the disqualification of two Israeli Arab parties from standing in the election. "For the first time we are examining the boundary between loyalty and disloyalty," he threatened their representatives. "We'll deal with you like we dealt with Hamas."

Robert Fisk: So far, Obama's missed the point on Gaza...

2009-01-24T16:53:00.001Z

It would have helped if Obama had the courage to talk about what everyone in the Middle East was talking about. No, it wasn't the US withdrawal from Iraq. They knew about that. They expected the beginning of the end of Guantanamo and the probable appointment of George Mitchell as a Middle East envoy was the least that was expected. Of course, Obama did refer to "slaughtered innocents", but these were not quite the "slaughtered innocents" the Arabs had in mind.

There was the phone call yesterday to Mahmoud Abbas. Maybe Obama thinks he's the leader of the Palestinians, but as every Arab knows, except perhaps Mr Abbas, he is the leader of a ghost government, a near-corpse only kept alive with the blood transfusion of international support and the "full partnership" Obama has apparently offered him, whatever "full" means. And it was no surprise to anyone that Obama also made the obligatory call to the Israelis.

But for the people of the Middle East, the absence of the word "Gaza" – indeed, the word "Israel" as well – was the dark shadow over Obama's inaugural address. Didn't he care? Was he frightened? Did Obama's young speech-writer not realise that talking about black rights – why a black man's father might not have been served in a restaurant 60 years ago – would concentrate Arab minds on the fate of a people who gained the vote only three years ago but were then punished because they voted for the wrong people? It wasn't a question of the elephant in the china shop. It was the sheer amount of corpses heaped up on the floor of the china shop.

Sure, it's easy to be cynical. Arab rhetoric has something in common with Obama's clichés: "hard work and honesty, courage and fair play ... loyalty and patriotism". But however much distance the new President put between himself and the vicious regime he was replacing, 9/11 still hung like a cloud over New York. We had to remember "the firefighter's courage to storm a stairway filled with smoke". Indeed, for Arabs, the "our nation is at war against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred" was pure Bush; the one reference to "terror", the old Bush and Israeli fear word, was a worrying sign that the new White House still hasn't got the message. Hence we had Obama, apparently talking about Islamist groups such as the Taliban who were "slaughtering innocents" but who "cannot outlast us". As for those in the speech who are corrupt and who "silence dissent", presumably intended to be the Iranian government, most Arabs would associate this habit with President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt (who also, of course, received a phone call from Obama yesterday), King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and a host of other autocrats and head-choppers who are supposed to be America's friends in the Middle East.

Hanan Ashrawi got it right. The changes in the Middle East – justice for the Palestinians, security for the Palestinians as well as for the Israelis, an end to the illegal building of settlements for Jews and Jews only on Arab land, an end to all violence, not just the Arab variety – had to be "immediate" she said, at once. But if the gentle George Mitchell's appointment was meant to answer this demand, the inaugural speech, a real "B-minus" in the Middle East, did not.

The friendly message to Muslims, "a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect", simply did not address the pictures of the Gaza bloodbath at which the world has been staring in outrage. Yes, the Arabs and many other Muslim nations, and, of course, most of the world, can rejoice that the awful Bush has gone. So, too, Guantanamo. But will Bush's torturers and Rumsfeld's torturers be punished? Or quietly promoted to a job where they don't have to use water and cloths, and listen to men screaming?

Sure, give the man a chance. Maybe George Mitchell will talk to Hamas – he's just the man to try – but what will the old failures such as Denis Ross have to say, and Rahm Emanuel and, indeed, Robert Gates and Hillary Clinton? More a sermon than an Obama inaugural, even the Palestinians in Damascus spotted the absence of those two words: Palestine and Israel. So hot to touch they were, and on a freezing Washington day, Obama wasn't even wearing gloves.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-so-far-obamas-missed-the-point-on-gaza-1488632.html

Fascist Israeli Parties Gain From War

2009-01-24T16:52:00.000Z

The massacre in Gaza has boosted the election prospects for Israel's two most fascist right-wing parties, especially Likud which looks like it will easily win the Feb. 10 elections. Also popular now after the slaughter is an even more radical party which is pushing for violent laws to repress Israel's Arab population.

Israel’s 22-day war in the Gaza Strip may have saved the Labor Party of Defense Minister Ehud Barak from the indignity of falling to single-digit representation in the Knesset in next month’s elections, but recent polls suggest it has also assured that the next coalition government will have no need of Labor as a partner.

Indeed, the biggest winners in the post-war polls were not the leftist Labor Party but the right wing opposition, who cheered the popular war on and lamented its ending. And while before the Gaza flareup the ruling Kadima Party and the rival Likud Party were virtually neck-and-neck, Likud now seems to be coasting to an easy victory.

But the benefit isn’t all Likud’s. Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu really cashed in on their leaders staunch anti-Arab comments at a time when the nation’s Arab minority was being publicly reviled for opposing the war. His repeated calls to require Arabs to take a loyalty oath or lose their citizenship seems to have really connected with the war-time mentality of the population.

Likud is eying the far-right Yisrael Beiteinu as a coalition partner (to the point of ordering activists not to publicly criticize Lieberman). If the polls prove sound, those two and the Shas Party, which forced the new elections by abandoning the Kadima coalition amid rumors of a back-door deal with Likud, will be within a handful of seats of an unprecedentedly hawkish tripartite coalition.

Video: Clear off all the city!

2009-01-24T16:41:00.002Z

Haitham Sabbah

We've seen a lot of clips that have been showing Israeli war crimes within Gaza over the last 24 days. What we didn't have chance to look at was the reaction of the occupiers of Palestine (a.k.a Zionists-Israelis) and what they were doing on the other side of the borders of Occupied Gaza?

I can't say I'm surprised by what I saw in the following videos because I know what Zionists are made of. I can only say that I was disgusted and sick to my stomach.

What you are going to see is a sample of the overwhelming majority that voted FOR the Jewish state's war crimes and supported it day after day. These warmongers form the majority of Israel too, so no wonder.

After all that they have done, after all the war crimes they have committed, they are still asking "why do they hate us?"

Well, this is why (listen carefully to the bitch in the first video, close to 58 sec):

Jewish war-crimes-dance over innocent Palestinian bodies:

And finally, a holocaust survivor protests Israeli War Crimes in Occupied Gaza:

Zionism is an incurable disease of the mind

2009-01-24T16:36:00.002Z

By Zaid Nabulsi

I lost my gloves one day in a coffee shop in Geneva, and I tell you, it's difficult to ride without them when it's really cold. So as I was paying for a new pair with a credit card, the salesman, whom I knew was from Israel, tried to start some small talk by asking me what my family name means. I told him that it relates to the city of Nablus where my family is originally from.

Suddenly, the most bewildered look was plastered on his face. "Where is Nablus?" he asked, "I've never heard of it." Then, after realizing that I knew he was bullshitting me, he pretended to remember, "Ah, Shkheim you mean?"With my insistence not to learn these ugly names that the deranged Zionists have dug up from oblivion to erase our identity, that name certainly didn't ring a bell. But now it was my turn. Although I knew where he was from, I asked "And you're… from?" As he smiled while reminding me, I replicated the same look on his face moments ago. "Israel? Where is that?" Then after a brief pause, "Ah, the land of Canaan you mean. Palestine".

You see if you want to get biblical on me, there is no such thing as Israel either, and I made that clear to this smartass. Here we were all of a sudden; my family descended from a place called Shkheim, and this guy a Palestinian. God does work in mysterious ways, but I still thanked Him for His small mercies that at least my name was not Zaid Shkheimy. "Have a nice day", I told my Israeli friend. It was in fact a very cold, but still magnificently sunny day to hit the roads. The gloves warmed up my grip on the bike, but my heart was still frozen. I just cannot stand thieves who steal your gloves, or any other kind of thieves.

It was then that it finally occurred to me. Zionism is a sickness, for it takes much more than just a twisted ideology to make people think like that. It requires a profound leap of immorality of a higher order to instill this mentality in your followers. Zionism is not merely a political movement, but in its essence represents a deeply disturbed view of the world, which is a reflection of a terrible disease of the mind.

Indeed, to deny the existence of a vibrant community such as the Palestinian society in the early twentieth century and describe Palestine as "a land without a people for a people without a land" is a disease of the mind.

To assert property claims over real estate after the lapse of more than 2000 years with the same certainty of title as if one resided there yesterday is a disease of the mind.

To describe the colonial immigration to Palestine of a European people with no proven historical link to the ancient Israelites – and whose great, great recorded ancestors have never set foot there – as some kind of a "return" to that land is indicative of a perverted misunderstanding and misapplication of the verb to "return" and can only be a result of a disease of the mind.

To blame the Palestinians for being unreasonable in rejecting a partition plan in 1947 which gave the Jews, who only owned 7 percent of the land, an astonishing half of Palestine, is a disease of the mind.

To demand of the Arabs at the time to peacefully succumb to such partition, where 86 percent of the land designated for the proposed Jewish state was Palestinian-inhabited and owned land, is a disease of the mind.

To eventually grab 78 percent of Palestine through war and to force the flight of the population through deliberate massacres and then call it a war of independence is a disease of the mind.

To deny the orchestrated massacres and eradications of hundreds of Palestinian villages in 1948 and then denounce the Israeli historians who later exposed this truth as self-hating Jews is a disease of the mind.

To claim that having escaped the horrors of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, and Dachau is a justification for the murder, expulsion, and occupation of another guiltless people is a disease of the mind.

To legislate that any resident of Poland, Hungary, New York, Brazil, Australia, Iceland, or even Planet Mars, who happens to be blessed with a Jewish mother (yet cannot point to Palestine on the map) has a superior right to "return" and settle in Palestine to someone who has been expelled from his very own land, confined to a squalid refugee camp, and still holds the keys to his house, is a disease of the mind.

To blame God for the theft and occupation of someone else's land by claiming that it was He who had pledged this land exclusively to the Jews, and to seriously promote the myth of a land promised by the Almighty to His favorite children as an excuse for this crime, is a disease of the mind.

To milk the pockets of the world for the atrocities of the Nazis, while stubbornly refusing a simple admission of guilt, let alone compensation or repatriation, for the catastrophe that befell the Palestinian people is a disease of the mind.

To keep reminding and blackmailing the world of the plight of the Jews under Hitler 70 years ago, while at the same time inflicting on the Palestinians today the same fate of the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto, is a disease of the mind.

To impose a collective guilt overshadowing Western civilization for the Holocaust and then to criminalize all legitimate historical debate of the nature and extent of that horrific event is a disease of the mind.

To virtually incarcerate the Palestinian people inside degrading cages, destroying their livelihoods, confiscating their lands, stealing their water and uprooting their trees, and then to condemn their legitimate resistance as terrorism is a disease of the mind.

To believe you have the right to chase the Palestinians into an Arab capital city in 1982 and to indiscriminately bombard its civilians for a relentless three months, murdering thousands of innocent people is a disease of the mind.

To encircle the civilian camps of Sabra and Chatila after evacuating the fighters and to unleash on them trained dogs (while providing them with night-illuminating flares for efficiency) and then deny culpability for the carnage is a disease of the mind.

To publicly declare a policy of breaking the bones of Palestinian stone-throwers to prevent them from lifting stones again and to enact this policy is a disease of the mind.

To have the sadistic streak of exacting vengeance on the innocent families of suicide bombers by punishing them with the dynamiting of their home is a disease of the mind.

To describe the offer of giving the Palestinians 80 percent of 22 percent of 100 percent of what is originally their own land as a "generous" offer is a disease of the mind.

To believe that you have the right to continue to humiliate the Palestinians at gun point by making them queue for hours to move between their villages, forcing mothers to give birth at check-points is a disease of the mind.

To flatten the camp of Jenin on its inhabitants and deny any wrongdoing is a delusional condition which is symptomatic of a serious disease of the mind.

To build a huge separation wall under the pretext of security, which disconnects farmers from their farms and children from their schools, while stealing even more territory as the wall freely zigzags and encroaches on Palestinian land is a disease of the mind.

To leave behind, in the last 10 days of a losing war in Lebanon, more than one million cluster bombs which have no purpose except to murder and maim unsuspecting civilians is a product of an evil disease of the mind.

To believe that the entire world is out to get you and to denounce any critic of the racist policies of the State of Israel as an anti-Semite, the latest victim being none other than peace-making Jimmy Carter, is an acute stage of mass paranoia, which is a disease of the mind.

To possess, in the midst of a non-nuclear Arab world, more than 200 nuclear warheads capable of incinerating the whole planet in addition to having the most advanced arsenal of weaponry in the world while continuing to play the role of a victim is a disease of the mind.

Yes, and for that salesman in peaceful Geneva to be so insecure as to refuse to acknowledge the name of the largest West Bank city under his country's brutal military occupation is, sadly, nothing but an infectious disease of the mind.

That's all what it is, ladies and gentlemen: Zionism is an incurable disease of the mind.

Take care, and if you ride, do it safely.

Zaid Nabulsi is a lawyer. He spent many years working for the United Nations in Geneva. He has a passion for (glorious) Harley Davidson bikes.

Cartoon.

2009-01-24T16:34:00.000Z

Finkelstein to face more US teaching restrictions?

2009-01-24T16:21:00.001Z

Outspoken academic Norman Finkelstein has stepped up his criticism of Israel in spite of being banned by the US freedom of speech system.

Finkelstein's sharp criticism of the Zionist occupation of the native lands of the Palestinians has left him without tenure in the DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois despite his exemplary academic record.

Following the 27 December launch of Israel's Operation Cast Lead on Gaza, universities across America have come under increasing pressure to cancel Finkelstein's fiery lectures on Tel Aviv's war on Gaza.

The outspoken academic nevertheless continues to speak his mind on the latest Israeli military action against the Gaza Strip -- which has left some 1,340 people dead and thousands of others hospitalized.

In a Thursday speech at the University of British Columbia in Canada, the American-Jewish political scientist took his criticism of the Israeli war on Gaza to a new level.

"As Israel targeted schools, mosques, hospitals, ambulances, UN sanctuaries, as it flattened entire neighborhoods, as it slaughtered and incinerated Gaza's defenseless Gaza civilians, Israeli commentators gloated," said Finkelstein.

Many Pals in Gaza Hospitals in Danger of Dying from Wounds

2009-01-24T16:20:00.002Z

A large number of Palestinians listed in serious condition in Gaza hospitals are in danger of dying from their wounds, a group of 12 Arab-Israeli doctors said Friday.

The doctors were sent by the organization "Doctors for Human Rights" and are scheduled to return to the occupied territories on Sunday.

Dr. Agbariah, the manager of a hospital in the Arab-Israeli city of Umm al-Fahm, said Friday, "Each hospital is full of wounded. There are wounded in serious condition and the treatment they are given is very basic because of the lack of medical supplies."

Dr. Agbariah added that the hospitals are not set up "to receive so many patients at the same time," adding that the high concentration will lead to fatalities.

The doctor added that the situation is worsened by the lack of reliable electricity and the high level of poverty in the strip, with trash and the carcasses of dead animals strewn about in many areas, which pose a contamination risk.

UN Schools Reopen in the Wake of Gaza War

2009-01-24T16:16:00.001Z

Around 200 UN-run schools in Gaza opened their doors Saturday for the first time since Israel's largest-ever assault on the Gaza Strip ended.

Some 200,000 children attend schools run by the UN refugee agency, which operates 221 schools in the impoverished territory where more than 1,330 people, including 437 children, were killed. Many of the schools had been used as shelters for some of the 100,000 people displaced during the war, and at least three were hit by Israeli fire, prompting a wave of international criticism.

In the deadliest bombing more than 40 people were killed when an Israeli shell struck a crowd of people sheltering in a UN school in Gaza's Jabaliya refugee camp on January 6.

Christopher Gunness, a spokesman for the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), said 53 UN installations had been damaged or destroyed in the conflict, including more than 30 schools. But he said the agency hoped to restore a "sense of normalcy" by reopening the schools, many of which have not been completely repaired.

"UNRWA's commitment to restoring a sense of normalcy for the next generation in Gaza is a test of our humanity and we are determined to rise to the challenge," Gunness said.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon has called for those responsible for bombing UN compounds and buildings to be held accountable and accused Israel of using "excessive force."

Haykal Unveils Plot to "Dissolve" Hamas Resistance

2009-01-24T16:14:00.001Z

Egyptian prominent journalist Mohamad Hassanein Haykal said that the next stage would witness an attempt to dissolve the Palestinian Resistance movement of Hamas through the "weapon" of the re-construction of the Gaza Strip following the Israeli 23-day aggression.

In a program broadcasted by Al-Jazeera, Haykal said that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) would play the major role in the next stage in which a status-quo would be imposed on Arabs "who didn't play any role in ending the Israeli aggression."

According to Haykal, the Middle East peace envoy Tony Blair is the "architect" of involving the NATO in the Arab region. He said that the construction loans would be given under NATO patronage, noting that there would be huge quantities of money which would be spent at the aim of bypassing the political side of the Palestinian cause.

Haykal urged Arabs to perceive the dangers that are being schemed against the region, noting that the Arab world was already witnessing very difficult times. He said that the most dangerous thing in the whole issue were the compromises that would be imposed on the region.

Meanwhile, Haykal revealed that the United States was the country which pushed Israel to end its offensive against the Gaza Strip to prevent it from spoiling the inauguration of the new US President Barack Obama. He ruled out any possibility of suing the Zionist entity over the massacres it has committed in the besieged strip before any international tribunal.

The Egyptian journalist noted that hitting Hamas was one of the goals of the Gaza war because it has been armed and it was considered an obstacle that prevented the reaching of a so-called "compromise" in the region. He said that some Arabs were urging Israel to hit the Palestinian group. However, he noted that the killing spree in Gaza was intended to serve as a "lesson" to others, pointing out that Syria was the concerned one at this stage, not Iran.

Hamas: Obama Represents No Change to Bush

2009-01-24T16:12:00.001Z

The Palestinian resistance movement Hamas said on Thursday that US President Barack Obama does not represent a change from former President George W. Bush and is repeating his same failed policies in the Middle East.

"Obama insists that no change will happen. He is trying to move along the same path that previous US presidents have followed," Hamas' representative in Lebanon, Osama Hamdan, told Al Jazeera television.

"It seems that Obama is trying to repeat the same mistakes that George Bush made without taking into consideration Bush's experience that resulted in the explosion of the region instead of reaching stability and peace in it."

Earlier on Thursday, Obama said an outline for a "durable ceasefire" included Hamas stopping its rocket fire and Israel completing its troop withdrawal from Gaza.
Obama has so far declined to take any position as to the Israeli offensive on Gaza that killed over 1,300 people and injured more than 5,000 others many with banned white phosphorus burns.

"I think this is an unfortunate start for President Obama in the region and the Middle East issue. And it looks like the next four years, if it continues with the same tone, will be a total failure," Hamdan said.

He added that Obama's declaration that Hamas must stop firing rockets into Israel only served to hinder his envoy George Mitchell's mission. "Some were optimistic when Mitchell was nominated as a Middle East envoy but it looks like even before Obama appointed him officially, he tried to put a spoke in the wheel, maybe so that he (Mitchell) doesn't succeed," Hamdan said.

Israeli forces arrest seven children in West Bank

2009-01-24T16:02:00.000Z

Seven children from Toura al-Gharbeiah village (near the West Bank city of Jenin) were arrested on Tuesday by the Israeli authorities; they are currently detained in Salim detention and interrogation center, in the northern West Bank. Two of the children are only 12 years old; two are 13; another two are aged 15; and the seventh is 17.

A Defense for Children International (DCI)-Palestine lawyer yesterday visited the children. According to information collected by the lawyer, between midnight and 4:00am on Tuesday 20 January, the Israeli intelligence, police and army entered Toura al-Gharbeiah village and arrested the seven children from their respective homes.

The children were then assembled in a public building in the village, and interrogated there. They were alleged to have thrown stones at the Wall and were intimidated into confessing. The eldest, Murad (17), was accused of possessing weapons, but he denied the allegation. Murad told the DCI-Palestine lawyer what happened on Tuesday morning.

Shortly after midnight, Murad was watching television at home when he heard noise outside. He got up to look through the window and saw four jeeps belonging to the Israeli police guards.

Less than a minute later, someone knocked and Murad opened the door. An Israeli police officer, accompanied by two soldiers, asked Murad his name and told him "Do not try to escape, the house is surrounded." He asked him to wake up other family members.

After the rest of the family was up, the soldiers took Murad outside, laid him on the ground, tied his hands behind his back with plastic cords, and blindfolded him. Murad lay on the ground for half an hour while the soldiers searched the house. Then, they walked him to the military jeep. While they were walking, a soldier started beating him on the face and hands. Murad reported that one of his fingers started to swell as a result of the beating.

They shoved him into the jeep, and drove for 20 minutes. Then Murad was taken out of the jeep and brought to a billiards room. He was still in the village. His blindfold was removed and an interrogator told him that they had found weapons in his house. He pressured Murad to confess to owning them; all the while screaming at him and threatening him. The interrogation went on for 40 minutes. Murad did not confess.

When the interrogation was over, Murad was blindfolded again, and left in the room until 9:00am. ... During that time, he heard the voices of other young detainees, including his brother Bashir (15). Some of the children were crying.

At 9:00am Murad was transferred to Salim detention and interrogation center. During the journey, a soldier was shouting at him and insulting him; he felt very scared.

After being interrogated in the billiards room in the village, the children were transferred to Salim detention and interrogation centre, near Jenin. When the DCI-Palestine lawyer met them on Wednesday, 21 January, the children had already confessed, under duress, to throwing stones at the Wall. Murad had still not confessed.

DCI-Palestine and their partners Addameer believe that such young children are particularly vulnerable to abuse in the Israeli military justice system and should be released immediately, all the more so, in light of the trivial nature of the alleged offense. The children's lawyer has requested a hearing today, Thursday 22 January, in order to ask the military judge for the release of the young children.

The children are: Morad Q. (17), Bashir Q. (15), Osaid Q. (12), Subhi A. H. (12), Amer Q. (13), Mohammad A. (13) and Emad A. (15).

At the end of December 2008, there were 342 Palestinian children held in Israeli prisons and detention/interrogation centers, including seven girls, and five administrative detainees. The December 2008 figures reveal the highest reported numbers of child detainees in 2008. In addition, on 17 January, DCI-Palestine issued a statement expressing concern that numbers of children arrested by the Israeli authorities in the West Bank has doubled in the first two weeks of January.

Gaza’s survivors (Video)

2009-01-24T15:58:00.001Z

GAZA Palestinian Girl Victim of israeli crimes. Her story.

UN Expert: Compelling Evidence of Israeli War Crimes in Gaza

2009-01-24T15:54:00.000Z

UN human rights expert and retired Princeton law professor Richard Falk said today that there is compelling evidence that Israel violated the laws of war by “conducting a large-scale military operation against an essentially defenseless population.”

“There needs to be an investigation carried out under independent auspices as to whether these grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions should be treated as war crimes,” the professor said, adding that he believes “that there is the prima facie case for reaching that conclusion.”

“This is the first time I know of where a civilian population has been essentially locked into the war zone, not allowed to leave it despite the dense population and the obvious risks that were entailed,” Falk pointed out, “the civilians in Gaza were denied the option of becoming a refugee.”

Professor Falk made international news when, less than two weeks before Israel began the war on the Gaza Strip, he was detained by Israeli officials for over 20 hours at a Tel Aviv airport while trying to enter the country as the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories. He was eventually expelled from the country, provoking an angry response from the United Nations and human rights groups.

Unsurprisingly, Israeli Ambassador to the United States Aharon Leshno-Yaar made no attempt to answer the charges, choosing rather to attack Professor Falk’s history of criticism for Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, insisting “Professor Falk’s bias against Israel is well known.”

Israeli gunboat targets Gaza civilians

2009-01-24T15:53:00.000Z

A Palestinian medical official says an Israeli gunboat off the shores of Gaza City has opened fire on Gaza, wounding at least five people.

Dr. Moaiya Hassanain said Thursday that a shell fired by the gunboat hit a house in a beachside refugee camp. He said the wounded were passersby in the street, AP reported.

Gunboats off Gaza have been firing for several days despite a cease-fire, which ended a three-week Israeli offensive, being in place.

The humanitarian situation in the besieged strip has not changed as the Gaza blockade continues.

Israeli military operations have exacerbated the already dire humanitarian crisis in Gaza by destroying civilian infrastructures during the invasion. Gazans are facing harsh conditions without food, water, fuel and electricity.

The hospitals and other medical facilities suffer from severe shortages of medical supplies and electricity. The crossings into the Gaza Strip still remain closed and the humanitarian aid permitted to enter the besieged strip is below the survival levels.

Nearly 5,000 houses were destroyed and hundreds of people have become homeless in the coastal sliver, which has been under an 18-month Israeli blockade.

Israel announced a unilateral ceasefire on Sunday, to which Hamas responded positively by giving Tel Aviv a one-week ultimatum to withdraw all its forces from the area and end its 18-month blockade of the coastal enclave.

Israel Recruits Bloggers to Combat 'Anti-Zionist Websites'

2009-01-20T18:03:00.001Z

The Zionist entity seems to engage into a new kind of war: the electronic war against the "anti-Zionist" websites.

In this context, the Immigrant Absorption Ministry announced on Sunday it was setting up an "army of bloggers," to be made up of Israelis who speak a second language, to represent the Zionist entity in "anti-Zionist blogs" in English, French, Spanish and German.

"During the war, we looked for a way to contribute to the effort," the ministry's director general, Erez Halfon, told Israeli daily Haaretz. "We turned to this enormous reservoir of more than a million people with a second mother tongue." Other languages in which bloggers are sought include Russian and Portuguese.

Halfon said volunteers who send the Absorption Ministry their contact details will be registered according to language, and then passed on to the Foreign Ministry's media department, whose personnel will direct the volunteers to Web sites deemed "problematic."

Meanwhile, hackers managed to take over the Web site of Israeli Radio on Sunday. Clicking on one of the Website's tabs brings up a message condemning the war in the Gaza Strip and calling for Israel's destruction. The message is decorated by the image of a burning combined Israeli and U.S. flag, and pictures of Palestinian children injured during the war.

Israel 'can be tried for war crimes'

2009-01-20T18:01:00.001Z

Human rights group Amnesty International accuses Israel of war crimes, saying its use of white phosphorus shells in Gaza was indiscriminate.

"Such extensive use of this weapon in Gaza's densely populated residential neighborhoods is inherently indiscriminate," Donatella Rovera, a Middle East researcher with Amnesty International, said in a statement on Monday.

"Its repeated use in this manner, despite evidence of its indiscriminate effects and its toll on civilians, is a war crime," she charged.

The statement was released after British weapons expert Chris Cobb-Smith found widespread evidence of the use of the incendiary material in an on-the-ground study on Sunday.

"We saw streets and alleyways littered with evidence of the use of white phosphorus, including still-burning wedges and the remnants of the shells and canisters fired by the Israeli army," he said in a statement.

"It is highly incendiary, air burst and its spread effect is such that it should never be used on civilian areas," he explained.

While international law permits the use of white phosphorus as an obscurant to conceal troop movement and prevent the enemy from using certain guided weapons, its use remains controversial, as white phosphorous can burn through flesh to the bone or cause liver, kidney, heart, lung or bone damage and even lead to death.

Amnesty is not the first group to accuse Israel of using white phosphorus during its three-week onslaught on Gaza -- Human Rights Watch and the United Nations are also among the international bodies that charged the Israeli army with using such munitions.

Israel's shelling of the UN Relief and Works Agency headquarters in Gaza on Jan 15 left the UN compound among the places worst-affected by the use of the controversial chemical, Amnesty said.

The attack plunged Israel's relations with the world body to a new low with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon demanding an investigation into the shelling.

According to medical experts, white phosphorus -- also known by the military as WP or Willie Pete - is not the only controversial weapon used against Gazans.

After working for 10 days at the Shifa Hospital in the war-torn Palestinian territory, Doctors Mads Gilbert and Erik Fosse -- members of a Norwegian triage medical team in Gaza -- said the Palestinian territory is now being used by Israel "as a test laboratory for new weapons."

The Norwegian doctors said the kinds of injuries they had witnessed proved that Dense Inert Metal Explosives (DIME) was being used in the embattled territory.

Survivors close to the lethal range of the DIME weapon may have their limbs amputated as their soft tissues and bones are shredded to pieces. The victims may also subsequently contract cancer from the micro-shrapnel embedded in their body tissue within just four to six months.

Statistics released by the Palestinian bureau of statistics further prove the humanitarian crisis in the region, as it shows that some 4,100 homes were totally destroyed and 17,000 others damaged in the three-week war.

After 22 days of intense Israeli military operations in Gaza, and the death of nearly 1,300 Palestinians and 13 Israelis, Tel Aviv declared a unilateral ceasefire late Saturday, but added that its forces would remain in place for the time being.

Hamas later on Sunday announced a ceasefire in Gaza and gave Israel a one-week ultimatum to completely withdraw its troops from the Palestinian territory.

Analysts believe the Israeli military operation has imperiled the so-called two-state solution of the Middle East peace process.

PRESS TV!

Arabs fail to reach consensus on Gaza

2009-01-20T17:59:00.000Z

Arab countries have failed to reach an agreement over the Gaza Strip following a three-week long Israeli offensive against the region.

At the end of a two-day Arab economic summit which was held in Kuwait City to set out "practical steps to stabilize the ceasefire" in the Gaza Strip, the Arab foreign ministers failed to reach consensus on a final statement on the battered region.

"Unfortunately, we didn't reach a final result because of time limits and because some are entrenched in their positions," Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari told Kuwait Television Tuesday, according to The Associated Press.

"Under these circumstances, it is supposed that all should make concessions for the sake of Arab reconciliation ... Efforts are still being made to hammer out a united position," said Zebari.

Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal al-Meqdad also said: "Realistically speaking, there are differences among Arab brothers."

Arab nations have been at loggerheads over the Israeli offensive which according to Tel Aviv was launched to halt Palestinian rocket attacks into Israel.

Israel launched Operation Cast Lead on December 22 but halted the bloody campaign after failing to reach its goals after 22 days. Israel's military campaign has so far killed at least 1,300 people including women and children.

The conflict injured about 6000 others many of them in critical conditions.

Palestinian rockets kept hitting Israeli cities until the last day of the war.

PRESS TV!

Obama feels for us Israelis: Netanyahu

2009-01-20T17:56:00.000Z

Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu says Barack Obama is silent on the issue of Gaza because of his understanding of the "distress" of Israelis.

In his comments on Tuesday, the Israeli opposition leader strengthened the widely held belief in the Middle East that the US president-elect's silence on the Israeli war on Gaza shows his tacit agreement with President George W. Bush's stance toward the issue.

The United States, which blocked a UN Security Council resolution in the opening days of the recent war on Gaza, claims that Israeli military operations have been carried out in self-defense against the homemade missiles launched into Israel by Hamas as part of its "resistance to occupation".

"I took away the impression that Barack Obama understood our distress very well as well as the cruelty of the enemies we face," said Netanyahu, who has been tipped in the polls to become the next prime minister.

The remarks were made after the devastating 23-day Israeli incursion left nearly 1,340 Palestinians and 13 Israelis dead.

Israel embarked on its military campaign at a time that was widely believed to have been determined by "political expediency".

With Israel's general election scheduled for February 10, all the main contenders were seeking an opportunity to prove their "hard-line stance".

Three weeks of operations against Gaza, which have caused acute human suffering, secured Kadima's Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Defense Minister Ehud Barak a rise in polls.

Yet the scandal-hit Kadima is still lagging behind Netanyahu, popularly known by his childhood nickname, "Bibi".

Hours ahead of Obama's inauguration, the polls' favorite Likud Party leader pushed forward the Israeli agenda and repeated allegations against Iran's nuclear program.

"He (Obama) also understands the dangers that Iranian nuclear armaments would represent," Netanyahu said.

Israel, considered as the Middle East's sole nuclear power, along with the US and its European allies accuse Iran of having military objectives in pursuing its enrichment program and claim that the amount of UF6 at the country's disposal is "enough for a bomb".

This is while the UN nuclear watchdog conceded in its November report that Iran has managed to enrich uranium-235 to a level "less than 5 percent" -- a rate consistent with the development of a nuclear power plant. Nuclear arms production requires an enrichment level of above 90 percent.

In the opening days of the war on Gaza, former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton said the Israeli offensive would ignite a multi-front war which could lead to a military attack on Iran over its nuclear program.

"So while our focus obviously is on Gaza right now, this could turn out to be a much larger conflict," the hawkish US official told FOXNews, adding, "We're looking at potentially a multi-front war."

Amid widespread speculation that the conflict in the Palestinian territory could spill over to other parts of the Middle East, Bolton added that there is "the possibility of the use of military force possibly by the United States, possibly by Israel," on Iran after the Gaza war.

Netanyahu, who threw his support behind the Gaza offensive, is to decide how to face "a growing threat from Iran" as the likely incoming Israeli prime minister.

PRESS TV!

The Unilateral People

2009-01-20T17:44:00.002Z

Gilad Atzmon

They withdraw unilaterally
They ceasefire unilaterally
They invade unilaterally
They win unilaterally
They destroy unilaterally
They massacre unilaterally
They bathe in blood unilaterally
They spread white phosphorus unilaterally
They kill women and children unilaterally
They drop bombs unilaterally
They live on stolen land unilaterally
They support their homicidal leaders unilaterally
They love their ‘Jewish Only State’ unilaterally
Their democracy is unilateral
They love themselves unilaterally
They are the unilateral people.
Living behind walls of concrete, hatred and arrogance
They are still united and lateral failing to love their neighbours

After Sderot, Will President Barak Obama Visit Gaza?

2009-01-20T17:38:00.002Z

"...Someday America will wake up and discover perhaps a little late that Israel is a clear and present danger to America and Americans and the source of all of America's ills and hate around the world..."

WRITTEN BY SAMI JAMIL JADALLAH

Candidate Barack Obama visited the southern Israeli city of Sderot to express his support to the town’s people. Sderot has been marketed by the powerful Jewish media machine in the US as suffering a great deal from Hamas’ ballistic and nuclear missiles. I wonder if President Obama will make a similar visit and see for himself what America's real missiles, real jets and real bombs and rockets did to Gaza and the people of Gaza. Candidate Obama on his visit to Sderot was reaching low to win A few more Jewish votes. Would President Obama reach as high and reach the hundreds of millions around the world who condemned the war crimes committed in Gaza?

Candidate Obama expressed great support for the residents of Sderot and appreciated that the people could not have peaceful nights and could not enjoy quiet dinners with wine and music. Now that Israel has leveled Gaza, destroying its entire infrastructure, killed more than a thousand and injured several thousands and made homeless hundreds of thousands, using the latest weapons American could muster. Would President Obama visit Gaza to express his support for the hundreds of thousands of the people and visit the graves of all of the children and women deliberately killed by Israel? Witness devastation and total destruction, victims of a criminal partnership between Israel and the US. During his visit to Sderot, candidate Obama was accompanied by Israel's Tzipi Livni, Ehud Barak and Avi Dichter. Perhaps President Obama will be accompanied during his tour of Gaza by the parents of all those who lost their loved ones, by the doctors who treated the tens of thousands, by the UN relief workers who witnessed the cold blooded murder of women and children as they sought shelter.

Candidate Barack Obama went further by recording a special YouTube message to the people and residents of Sderot. Candidate Obama declared during his visit, "I think no country would accept missiles landing on their citizens". Barack continued to say," I came to Sderot with commitments to Israeli security. Israel has the right to defend itself. Peace should not undermine security." I wonder what would President Obama says to the people of Gaza as he surveys the total destruction of Gaza and witnesses the destruction of hospitals, schools, mosques, stadiums, food supplies centers, UN relief depots, the deliberate targeting of children and parents as they sough shelter from one place to another? Would President Obama express the same rights for the people of Gaza, that they too have every right to be free, every right to be safe, every right to be secure and every right to have enough food to have 3 meals a day, to have cooking oil, to have gas and heat, to have water, to have access to their sea and to connect to the outside world. The people of Gaza may not need wine for their dinners; they only need to be alive to have dinner.

I wonder what kind of YouTube message President Barack Obama would send to the people of Gaza as they see the "only democracy" in the Middle East commit one war crime after another, using with generosity the free weapons supplied by the "greatest democracy in the world" such as; F-15s, F-16s, Apache and Cobra helicopters and phosphorous bombs destroying and killing everything in Gaza. I am sure he will see and appreciate the difference between the ballistic missiles of Hamas and the paper missiles of Israel.

Israel, for many years since its creation, is a terrorist state that has been committing war crimes and terrorism, and has used death and destruction as a way of life, part of the cultural and religious value system that does not respect the human life of others. It has a value system and culture that has nothing but contempt for the lives of others, especially the Palestinians who simply refuse to go down and let go of their rights in Palestine. Israel’s history of war crimes and terrorism is long and well documented; Deir Yassin, Qibya, Souk Albaqar school, Sabra and Shatilla, Qana 1 and Qana II, Jenin, Nablus, Hebron and the list goes on and on. If war crimes qualify for Nobel Prizes, Israelis will win 9 out of 10 such prizes.

Israel is unlike any other country in the world, it has no respect and no value for human lives, especially the lives of others. It has no respect for international organizations; in fact it has nothing but contempt for the UN. Bombing and destroying a UN compound at the very moment Pank Ki Moon arrived in Israel. Israel is the only country that never respected any UN resolutions and has no respect for anyone in the world. It is a country and people unlike any thing we have seen in the last few centuries.

Someday America will wake up and discover perhaps a little late that Israel is a clear and present danger to America and Americans and the source of all of America's ills and hate around the world. America and President Obama may discover and hopefully sooner rather than later that America's total and unconditional support for Israel is wrong politics and that the views and the joy, dancing in the streets of New York City by American Jews and unconditional support by our Congress does not express the anger felt across America against Israel and its war crimes in Gaza. Perhaps President Obama and American should redefine its definition of terrorism making sure that Israel's state terrorism is terrorism even if its instruments are not explosive belts but jets, tanks, helicopters, and cluster bombs. That terrorism includes not only Palestinians attacks against restaurants and buses but Jewish terrorism directed against schools, hospitals and UN compounds.

Name and Shame British Friends of Israel

2009-01-20T17:02:00.005Z

By Redress Information & Analysis,19 January 2009

Redress Information & Analysis names and shames members of Israel’s network of stooges in the British Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democratic parties; it calls on its readers to challenge these stooges and to help it expose apologists for Israeli murder by supplying it with verified information about other Friends of Israel.

In the 23 days of the Israeli war on Gaza that began on 27 December 2008, 1300 Palestinians have been killed by the Zionist war machine, including 417 children and 108 women, and a further 5320 have been injured. In the same period, 13 Israelis were killed. That is a ratio of 100:1, excluding the injured.

In the meantime, Israel’s network of stooges in the British Parliament have been fighting a rear-guard action to justify the slaughter of Palestinians. You will find them justifying Israeli crimes at every opportunity and prevaricating to avoid action against Israel, such as sanctions in the wake of Israel’s targeting of United Nations compounds in Gaza, for example. They are apologists for murder.

Israel’s stooges in Britain are spread far and wide and can be found at every tier of the British establishment. They include Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Foreign Secretary David Miliband, former Prime Minister Tony Blair and many other serving and former holders of political office.

At the core of Israel’s network of stooges are the “Friends of Israel” groups in the three main political parties:

- Labour Friends of Israel
- Conservative Friends of Israel and
- Liberal Democrat Friends of Israel.

Below is a list of officials of the “Friends of Israel” groups in the Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democratic parties. It is by no means exhaustive. Conservative Friends of Israel, for example, say that about 80 per cent of the party’s MPs and MEPs belong to the group.

Labour Friends of Israel

Chair
Andrew Gwynne MP

Vice Chairs
Andrew Dismore MP
Louise Ellman MP
Gary Titley MEP

Policy Council
Stephen Byers MP (Chair)
David Blunkett MP
Lord Foster of Bishop Auckland
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
Adam Ingram MP
Denis MacShane MP
Alun Michael MP
Don Touhig MP

Convenor
Anne Snelgrove MP

Parliamentary Executive
Fabian Hamilton MP
Sharon Hodgson MP
Joan Humble MP
Eric Joyce MP
Ashok Kumar MP
Stephen Ladyman MP
Andrew Miller MP
Dan Norris MP
Nick Palmer MP
Terry Rooney MP
Dari Taylor MP

Chair (House of Lords)
Baroness Ramsay of Cartvale

Peers
Lord Archer of Sandwell
Lord Clarke of Hampstead
Lord Clinton-Davis
Lord Davies of Coity
Lord Glenamara
Lord Haskel
Lord Janner of Braunstone
Lord Macdonald of Tradeston
Lord Mitchell
Lord Turnberg
Professor Lord Winston
Lord Wedderburn of Charlton QC

Conservative Friends of Israel

Director
Stuart Polak

Political Director
Robert Halfon

Projects Director
Stephanie Leven,

Research Manager
Nathalie Tamam,

Secretary
Julie Tamir,

Membership Secretary
Charlotte Polak,

Parliamentary Group
Chairman
James Arbuthnot MP

Vice Chairmen
Sir John Butterfill
James Clappison MP

Secretary
David Amess MP

Officers
Alistair Burt MP
Lee Scott MP
Theresa Villiers MP

Chairman of Conservative Friends of Israel Europe
Timothy Kirkhope MEP

Honorary Officers
President
Baroness Shephard of Northwold

Vice Chairmen
Jeremy Galbraith
Betty Geller
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
Stanley Cohen
Michael Heller

Vice Presidents
Sir Timothy Sainsbury
Lord Lane of Horsell
Sir Michael Latham
Lord Sanderson of Bowden
Lord Steinberg
Lord Thomas of Gwydir

Executive Board
Richard Harrington (Chairman)
Lance Anisfeld
Lorraine da Costa
Jonathan Gough
Andrew Heller (Hon. Treasurer)
Steven Kaye
Edward Lee
Howard Leigh
Stephen Massey
David Meller
Jonathan Metliss
Gary Mond
Stephan Shakespeare
Barry Welck Hilda Worth

Liberal Democrat Friends of Israel

President
Sir Alan Beith MP

Chair
Cllr Monroe Palmer

Vice-Chair
Gavin Stollar

Secretary
Matthew Harris

Treasurer
Alexander Gilbert

We call on our readers to do the following

-->Contact the above-mentioned Friends of Israel and ask them to justify their support for Israel’s murder of Palestinian civilians, its occupation of Palestinian territory, its blockade of Gaza in order to bring down the democratically elected representative of the Palestinians, Hamas, and its continuous colonization of occupied territories with American, European, Russian and other Jewish settlers. You can find out the contact details of MPs by going here http://www.writetothem.com or here http://www.theyworkforyou.com

-->Be prepared with facts, figures and arguments – read our website to remind yourself; be succinct and try not to be emotional, aggressive or rude.

-->Name and shame the above-mentioned Friends of Israel, and other Friends of Israel not listed here, by exposing them to your local media, your friends, colleagues and other contacts – and urge them to expose these apologists for murder to their friends, colleagues and other contacts, and to ask why these agents of a foreign power hold positions of political influence in Britain.

-->Help us to name and shame other Friends of Israel not listed here by letting us know who they and how you found out that they are Friends of Israel.

How long will people allow Israel and its elaborate network of stooges in the “Friends of Israel” lobby groups to morally blackmail them into silence over Israel’s crimes by abusing the memory of the Holocaust?

As the Irish philosopher and political scientist Edmund Burke said, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”

Do not let evil triumph.

http://www.redress.cc/global/redress20090119

In Memory of Martin Luther King

2009-01-20T16:51:00.003Z

"...Today, it is the much-sought- after equality, freedom, and morality in policy that are glaringly missing in the US political system, particularly towards the Palestinians. It is a policy driven by the same racism and greed that enslaved Africans and segregated against them, obliterated Native Americans, interned Japanese Americans, nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and conquered so many around the world. For there to be "Hope", and for the incoming president to assume the moral position set forth by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., it is incumbent upon him to rise to the challenge of those who swept him into office - the millions of shoulders injured by colonial bigotry and hate – who especially today continue to challenge that same hate as it destroys the lives of the Palestinians in the most vicious manner..."

Yousef Abudayyeh

Today, as the Palestinian people continue to search for their dead in the Gaza Strip and bury their scorched children, mothers, and fathers, the United States as whole, the very custodian of Zionist bigotry and colonial malice, is recognizing a champion of civil rights, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. This is a man that the US imprisoned, beat, accused of treason, and ridiculed before it celebrated, and only after he was assassinated. He is a preacher of a people whose churches were firebombed and burned to the ground, just like Palestinian mosques and churches; and against whom the US segregated, on whom it set vicious dogs, beat with batons, rifles and fire hoses. This is a people whose leadership and everyday activists in the struggle for equality were shot at, assassinated, and indeed, lynched by mindless mobs supported by public policy. They are a people whose history is relegated to the margins, whose art and cultural expressions robbed by others, whose youth remain subject to the combined brutalities of poverty, wretch racism, and police powers.

In the context of the amplified suffering of the past 23 days and in recognition of the proud resilience of the Palestinian people, sadly yet proudly, the likeness to the Palestinian struggle is enormous. Be it African American or Palestinian, geography is perhaps the only difference.

Today, on Tuesday, January 20, and as displaced Palestinians continue to return to homes bombed by US Apaches and F-16 fighter jets, these same United States will be inaugurating the first African American president. The US will do so as it hangs a faulty façade to hide away the long and brutal legacy of slavery, butchery, and institutional bigotry – perhaps in an attempt to wish it all away, if only for a day, lest it is remembered by its recipients. But make no mistake about it, this is a president who stands squarely and totally on the immeasurable dignified shoulders of all those who braved the viciousness, cruelty, institutional racism and overt bigotry of Jim Crow, Joseph McCarthy, J. Edgar Hoover, George Wallace, and so many more like them, including George W. Bush - just as the Palestinians today brave the cruelty imposed by the institutional racism and system of Apartheid that constitute the very essence of Zionism.

For President Obama to stand on these dignified shoulders, he now has an obligation to do what is right – to take even the smallest steps in that direction, all while he remembers that "yes, he can". This is not a choice in any way. Obama has an obligation to place equality in morality; and to place morality in public policy, both foreign and domestic. And when he finds out that the US system of government and geopolitical interests do not allow him so, he must make the change he championed. To this day, he has been a follower not a leader on these critical issues.

Today, it is the much-sought- after equality, freedom, and morality in policy that are glaringly missing in the US political system, particularly towards the Palestinians. It is a policy driven by the same racism and greed that enslaved Africans and segregated against them, obliterated Native Americans, interned Japanese Americans, nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and conquered so many around the world. For there to be "Hope", and for the incoming president to assume the moral position set forth by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., it is incumbent upon him to rise to the challenge of those who swept him into office - the millions of shoulders injured by colonial bigotry and hate – who especially today continue to challenge that same hate as it destroys the lives of the Palestinians in the most vicious manner.

Today and tomorrow, the Palestinians will be burying their dead with endless tears and anguish, but they too will also be celebrating their journey - for they will continue to rise from the ashes of a firebomb, hurled by Zionists or the KKK – it is all the same - to continue their march forward to liberation. And the remains of the dead will undoubtedly evolve into a monument of steadfast and a memorial of emancipation for generations to come.

The Destruction:

At the conclusion of 22 days of a murderous campaign in the Gaza Strip by the Zionist army paid for by US tax dollars, the Zionist polity announced a "unilateral cease fire." Utilizing a diplomatic cover by the US, Arab regimes, and Western Europe, the defeated Zionists are setting a trap and are spreading a dangerous lie. Having achieved not even one of its goals, the Israeli leadership is opting for a change in tactic.

As of today, at least 1,300 Palestinians have been murdered and more than 5,500 have been injured, with a minimum of 500 in very critical conditions, including severe phosphorous burns. The number of killed Palestinians is expected to continue to rise as more decomposed and dismembered bodies of family members are uncovered from under the destruction, similar to the 100 bodies already uncovered yesterday. Children comprise at least 420 of the murdered and 2,000 of the injured, many are infants and toddlers. Many families were wiped in their entirety, as they were huddled together to escape the indiscriminate bombings.

More than 20,000 buildings have been damaged with over 4,000 fully destroyed. Mosques, churches, schools, hospitals, UN compounds, most streets, sport clubs and stadiums, ports, and the Gaza beach were shelled with high impact conventional explosives and white phosphorous bombs. At least 50 UN facilities sustained damage. The UN alone is currently operating 50 emergency shelters for more than 50,000 displaced people. The actual number of displaced is unknown as many are with families, or have refused to go to shelters lest they are attacked. Gaza City's wastewater treatment facility was shelled, causing the lagoon that holds 2 million liters of sewage to leak to surrounding agricultural and other sensitive areas.

In 22 days, at least 2,500 air strikes were carried out, not including the continuous sea and land artillery shelling from gunboats and tanks, with no less than 1,000 tons of explosives dropped on a tiny area of land. This estimate is certain to be revised upward once an investigation is completed in the sort of firepower used. It is estimated that no less than $1.6 billion would be needed to bring the Gaza Strip to an operating minimum.

The Cease Fire:

Astonishingly enough, the Israeli Zionist leadership did exactly what was expected: attack a civilian population for 3 solid weeks, pull back when it can't go forward due to a solid resistance, and race to declare victory despite defeat. Never mind that not only none of its goals were met, not one, but also the reversal actually occurred.

Victory of what, we ask? The resistance forces are that much stronger politically, and that much more supported nationally and internationally. The ability of the resistance remains fully intact, albeit affected by the assault. The Palestinian people embraced rather than turn against the resistance, with an unbelievable display of solidarity, dignity and order even in the face of destruction. In fact, while the Israelis and Abbas were hoping for looting, robbery, and chaos following the attacks, the exact opposite took place – mutual solidarity and popular support on a scale not seen before. The Arab regimes are increasingly weak and embarrassed and are no longer able to sustain the mandated obedient functionary role. The US is at odds with its Arab allies, particularly Egypt. Monarchs are racing to pump financial support. Resistance parties occupied center stage at a major emergency Arab Summit while Abbas would not dare to attend. Mahmud Abbas has been made much weaker. His henchmen are nearly disappearing. And his ability to speak of the Oslo package is significantly challenged. Nations have begun to cut relations with the Israeli polity, and war crime charges are about to fill courts on an unprecedented scale.

Consider the Economic Summit held in Kuwait yesterday which was supposed to include those with allegiance to the US. The Israeli polity had expected that the participants of that summit would go to political and economic war against the participants of the Qatar emergency Gaza Summit, which featured the resistance parties, Syria, and Iran. Nothing of the sort took place. The two flanks of the Arab political spectrum announced that they are unified, and the Saudis even started speaking of withdrawing the Arab Initiative. Essentially, Zionist brutality is embarrassing Arab despotic regimes to a point that they could no longer go on with business as usual without some movement to absorb the boiling popular anger. At this point, one of the main areas where the Israeli atrocities precipitated a major loss for the Zionist is the end of the normalization process on a popular level. For many years, Arab regimes, namely Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, and the Palestinian Authority under Abbas, have attempted to implement a long term Zionist normalization process on all levels, including economic, political, cultural, and security. This process is now faced with major challenges making it impossible to implement.

On a military level, the Israeli invading forces could not once display areas and instances where they have captured prisoners, confiscated arms, or imprisoned leadership. There was no surrender by anyone. There were no scenes of defection. There were no scenes of capture of command centers. The only scenes were of massive destruction and murdered children, elderly and families. While the leadership of some of the resistance forces sustained casualties in terms of injury and death, such did not impact the level of resistance to a point that until the day Israel announced its cease fire, the Palestinians were responding at the same level. The resistance movement never accepted any conditions, regardless of who delivered or attempted to market these conditions, be it Egyptian intelligence officers or otherwise. It never accepted to cease responding to the brutality and suffocation of the Israeli Zionist polity.

Even the agreement between the US and Israel on joint control of the Palestinian- Egyptian border was rejected by the Egyptian regime, which found itself fully humiliated and marginalized. This was to a point that the Egyptian regime had to hold its own summit with European powers and the Jordanian monarch to salvage whatever it had left of credibility as the prime obedient functionary of the region. Another sign of the defeated Zionist forces, as these summits and meetings serve to provide Arab regimes and the Israeli political establishment with a means to unilaterally quit the campaign using some forum of political cover, never mind the fact that none of the intended goals were achieved

So we ask: What victory? It is a Zionist defeat if there was ever one, similar to that in Lebanon in 2006. Gone forever are the days when the Israeli army was seen as unbeatable. Gone are the days when those beating the drums of surrender could be heard or even entertained for a moment. Gone are the days when it was thought that savagery of attacks would ever bring the Palestinians and Arabs to their knees. This is a time of dignity and resilience, not of capitulation and surrender. What Zionist victory, we ask? It is a defeat if there was ever one!

Here, the FPA is clear that the so-called cease fire is nothing but a charade to allow future assaults to take place under the guise that it is the Palestinians who are violating the terms of the so-called cease fire. Let it be clear to all that the blockade and siege were not lifted. The starvation and suffocation continue. The imprisonment of 1.5 millions has not changed, and the crossings were not opened. Lest some are misguided by the announcements by Israel - no, the occupation was not ended. A political discourse has not been set in place to allow for a realization of liberation, return, and independence. In that regards, the cease fire amounts to an attempt by the Zionists to regroup for a come-back at a later day. We are under no illusion that this will not be the last massacre, so long as Zionist armament remains aimed at the Palestinian people. The tanks pulled to the boundary of the tiny Gaza Strip of 365 square kilometers, ready to return for another failed attempt, just as they have done in the past in South Lebanon.

Once again, we remind all that the same areas that were bombed by the Zionist army were also bombed and destroyed in the early seventies. Yet, the Palestinians remained strong. In fact, the people at the receiving end of this latest assault are the same ones that were expelled first in 1948 from their homes, then again in 1967, and later attacked in the early seventies and into the eighties and beyond.

This latest cease fire exposed the failure of the US-Israeli-Arab regime axis in destroying the Palestinian resistance, just as it failed in 1948, then in 1970 in Jordan, in 1978 and 1982 in Lebanon, during the eighties and early nineties during the 1987 Intifada, and throughout the years of the most recent Intifada into the Janine and Gaza massacres. Hence, while colonial projects kept creeping onto the Palestinians, the conscience of the people and their ability to withstand massive destruction has been monumental. It continues on!

To this day, 60 years into conquest and the Zionist polity is unable to extract the national belonging of the Palestinian Arab people, especially within 1948 borders. This is true to a point that recently the Zionist polity had to ban Arab parties from running in Israeli parliamentary elections, hence once and for all dropping even the feeble fig leaf the Zionists once had. This occurred as a testament to the sharpness of the dichotomy between the Zionist movement and the Palestinian liberation movement – A dichotomy that has reached an apex and is headed to a new beginning.

Of major concern is the price of the financial support the Saudis and other Gulf countries will attempt to extract from the resistance. As has always been the case, despotic Arab regimes never act in favor of freedom and liberation, only in favor of sustaining their ability to rule. It is critical at this stage not to be fooled by promises and side deals with dictators and functionaries. The Palestinian resistance has the upper political hand and must materialize that into real political power. The Palestinian people cannot barter their freedom for political expediency.

For instance, the need for humanitarian relief should be recognized as an obligation on the part of the Arab and international community. It is not a substitute for the political national demands that could dangerously transform the Palestinian national liberation movement into a humanitarian crisis campaign needing pity and aid. This is very dangerous. Many organizations are already falling in that trap, and are being leveraged for the purpose of marginalizing the recently achieved political victory in favor of a campaign of pity and humanitarian aid. This should be rejected by all of us.

The Palestinian movement is not about a group of dispossessed refugees seeking food and shelter. It is about a movement for liberation by a people robbed of their land and who are determined to emerge victorious against their colonists. The Palestinian people do not need handouts. We reject them and return them to the sender. We demand and expect solidarity and reciprocate it in kind.

What Now?

This is the time to translate political victory to organizational gains. The Palestinian and Arab people must seize this opportunity to reorganize and position the movement on its proper track. For one thing, this is not the time to sweep under the rug the "political garbage" that has helped the Zionists over the past several years. They must be exposed and expelled from the Arab collective. All those who have stood in favor of surrender and normalization, those who have not stopped denigrating Arab resistance, and those who have become enablers for the Zionists, must be exposed in every locality and every area. They are the rot that is destroying what our people build. They exist in every realm. They are regimes and they are organizations. They are writers and they are activists. You know them from their slogans, and from their opportunistic behavior and political positions. Their discourse is a danger to our youth and to our future.

This is also the time for the Palestinian left to examine its ranks. It is time to self-clean. Those who have given cover to the PA and who enjoy the political comfort of their relationship with the likes of Abbas and his henchmen should not be setting policy for the left. Clearly, they are a failure like their sponsors. They have damaged the Palestinian left enough. The egalitarian and revolutionary perspective that is rooted in a democratic pan-Arab alternative should remain as the unifying slogan for the Palestinian left.

This is the time to strengthen our movement by giving it a program of solidarity that involves boycotts, divestment, and sanctions. This is the time for war crime tribunals to be enacted everywhere, and for war criminals to be apprehended and brought to justice. This is a time to expose the sadistic nature of the weaponry used by the Zionist, paid for by US taxpayers. This is a time to end all support to Israel, in every way, to properly position it as the Apartheid regime of today, and to isolate it economically, culturally, and diplomatically. This is a time to once and for all recognize that Zionism is nothing but a colonial ideology rooted in racism and hate.

In essence, we can build on this victory and the steadfast of the Palestinian people, by building on our own small victories in our workplace, towns, and universities.

The Free Palestine Alliance
January 19, 2009
Yousef

Please visit
http://wewillreturn.blogspot.com

Cartoon.

2009-01-18T11:22:00.002Z

Pro-Israel Rally in NYC (please watch video)

2009-01-16T19:04:00.002Z

Shocking video where Pro-Israel Americans take to the streets in NYC and Alternet interviews them to hear their views on why it is right to "Wipe Gaza off the Map". If any of these comments were made regarding Jews or Israel, there would be an uproar. But...we know all of that by now.

On January 11, an estimated 10,000 people rallied in front of the Israeli consulate in midtown New York in support of Israel’s attack on the Gaza Strip. The rally, which was organized by UJA-Federation of New York and the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York in cooperation with the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, featured speeches by New York’s most senior lawmakers. While the crowd was riled to righteous anger by speeches about Hamas evildoers, the event was a festive affair that began and ended with singing and joyous dancing.

Sen. Chuck Schumer highlighted Israel’s supposed humanitarian methods of warfare by pointing to its text messaging of certain Gaza Strip residents urging them to vacate their homes before Israeli forces bombed them. “What other country would do that?” Schumer shouted from the podium. Gov. David Paterson appeared on stage wearing one of the red hats distributed to demonstrators as symbols of the red alerts some residents of Israel endure when Palestinian groups fire rockets their way. Paterson cited the many Qasam rockets that have fallen on Israel as a justification for the country’s operations in Gaza, a military assault that has resulted in over 800 casualties and thousands of injuries.

Then Paterson highlighted the anti-Semitism that has followed in the wake of Israel’s attack on Gaza, highlighting the beating of a teen-age girl in France. “This kind of anger and hatred spreads like a disease,” Paterson said, “and one thing I've always pointed out is there's no place for hate in the Empire State.”

But hatred was plentiful at the rally Paterson addressed. Right in front of the stage, a man held a banner reading, “Islam Is A Death Cult.” Rally attendees described the people of Gaza to me as a “cancer,” called for Israel to “wipe them all out,” insisting, “They are forcing us to kill their children in order to defend our own children.” A young woman told me, “Those who die are suffering God’s wrath.” “They are not distinguishing between civilians and military, so why should we?” said a member of the group of messianic Orthodox Jewish Chabad-Lubavitch group that flocked to the rally.

No one I spoke to could seem to find any circumstance in which they would begin to question Israel’s war. No number of civilian deaths, no displays of extreme suffering — nothing could deter their enthusiasm for attacking one of the most vulnerable populations in the world with the world’s most advanced weaponry. There are no limits, no matter what Israel does, no matter how it does it.

The rally made me think of a passage in “The Holocaust Is Over, We Must Rise From Its Ashes,” a powerful new book by former Israeli Knesset speaker and Jewish National Fund chairman Avraham Burg:

“If you are a bad person, a whining enemy or a strong-arm occupier, you are not my brother, even if you are circumcised, observe the Sabbath, and do mitzvahs. If your scarf covers every hair on your head for modest, you give alms and do charity, but what is under your scarf is dedicated to the sanctity of Jewish land, taking precedence over the sanctity of human life, whosever life that is, then your are not my sister. You might be my enemy. A good Arab or a righteous gentile will be a brother or sister to me. A wicked man, even of Jewish descent, is my adversary, and I would stand on the other side of the barricade and fight him to the end."

http://www.alternet.org/audits/119372

Gaza: The Tip of an Iceberg

2009-01-16T18:53:00.002Z

WRITTEN BY Francis Clark-Lowes

What is happening in Gaza today is the tip of an iceberg. That iceberg is the genocide of the Palestinian people. It is a slow genocide, just slow enough for the world to look the other way most of the time. Occasionally, as at present, it speeds up and we see its tip.

Such genocides are a common accompaniment of exclusive colonial projects. The Spanish committed genocide against the Incas, the British committed genocide against the Aboriginal and Maori people, the Americans committed genocide against the Native Americans, the Belgians killed 10 million Congolese. Now the Jews are trying to wipe out the Palestinians.

You may say that I should moderate my language and say only that we are witness to an unfortunate war in which people are getting killed. But this is part of an intentional war on the part of Israel, and, moreover, it clearly coincides with the international legal definition of genocide. Let us not, therefore mince our words.

Perhaps you will also say that only some Jews are involved in this crime, that I should hold ‘Israel’ or ‘the Zionists’ responsible. But do you ask me to say that only some Spanish, or some British, or some Americans, or some Belgians committed genocides?

Perhaps you will now ask me to do this, but if I hadn’t said that ‘the Jews’ were trying to wipe out the Palestinians you would probably have been quite happy with my generalisations.

For we recognise that although not even a fraction of British people, for instance, were directly involved in the genocides of the nineteenth century, and clearly those who were born after those atrocities could not have been directly involved, yet we admit that this is a stain on our national consciousness which affects all of us, in so far as we identify as being British.

Do we not say that all Germans must accept responsibility for what was done by the Nazis? If not, then why does the international community continue to insist that Germany pay reparations to Jews – with German taxpayers’ money – for what happened in the time of their parents and grandparents.

You may protest that Jews are not a nation or state like the Spanish, or the British, or the Americans or the Belgians. But who says that we cannot hold a group, however it may have constituted itself, responsible for crimes? Marxists, for example, hold ‘the capitalist class’ responsible for crimes against the working class, yet ‘the capitalist class’ is not incorporated.

And of course people have no difficulty in holding Muslims responsible for ‘extremism’ although since the abolition of the caliphate there has been no world-wide Muslim organisation. I don’t agree with this particular representation, by the way, but I mention it to show how inconsistent our thinking is.

There is little evidence that Al-Qaeda really exists in a corporate sense. It is probably more the notion of resistance to Western imperialism in the Muslim world than an identifiable organisation. And yet it is constantly held responsible for ‘terrorist’ actions.

I am well aware that to say anything against Jews, as a group, is to cross a red line. I am doing so deliberately. The present conflict in Israel-Palestine may well lead us to Armageddon. I believe plain speaking could save us and our children, not the mention the Palestinians and the Jews.

If I thought it could be done otherwise, as many of my colleagues in the solidarity movement believe, then I would not take this course. There are, however, a number or actions by Jews which, if they were to take place on a sufficient scale, could make me change my mind:

- A recognition that Jewish identity has become inextricably linked with Zionism.

- An acceptance that Jews are collectively responsible for what is happening in Israel/Palestine, just as we, as a nation, accept our responsibility for the empire and slavery.

- A renunciation of the right of return and the right to Israeli nationality.

- An acceptance that ‘the Holocaust’ (in inverted commas and with a capital H) has become a kind of religion, an instrument of propaganda, an abusive mythology.

- A recognition that accusing people of hating Jews is usually a way of stopping them speaking.

- A recognition that the Zionist project is incompatible with respect for the human rights of Palestinians. Israel has got to go.

- A recognition that Jews, as a collective, exercise immense, and quite disproportionate, power in the world, and that this power is being abused.

I acknowledge that a small number of Jews have done some or all of the above. For example, Gerald Kaufman, MP, said in Parliament on 12th January 2009: “Olmert, Livni and Barak are mass murderers, war criminals and bring shame on the Jewish people whose Star of David they use as a badge in Gaza.” In doing so, however much he might disagree with other points above, he clearly acknowledged that this is a Jewish, not just an Israeli responsibility.

But until a majority turn against the supremacist culture which supports Israel’s actions I will continue to hold Jews collectively responsible for what is happening in the Middle East. This is a very uncomfortable position. I really do have many Jewish friends, and I know that what I have said today will shock some of them. I hope that our friendship is strong enough to withstand it. But I believe Jews, above all, need to be shocked into a recognition of their own complicity in this crime against humanity.

All of which is not to forget our own (British) national complicity, starting with the Balfour Declaration. In so far as we (Westerners) have been persuaded to accept the dangerous current mainstream Jewish view of the world, we also are responsible for what is happening in Gaza. And this makes us ‘the enemy’ in terms of those who identify with the Muslim victims of Jewish power.

Gaza, A New Middle East Indeed

2009-01-16T18:45:00.004Z

Ramzy Baroud

As Israel unleashed its military fury against Lebanon for several weeks in July-August 2006, it had one major objective: to permanently ‘extract’ Hezbollah from the South as a fighting force, and to undermine it as a rising political movement, capable of disrupting, if not overshadowing the ‘friendly’ and ‘moderate’ political regime in Beirut.

As Israeli bombs fell, and with them hundreds of Lebanese civilians, and much of the country’s infrastructure, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sprung into action. She too had one major objective: to delay a ceasefire, which the rest of the international community, save the US and Britain, desperately demanded. Rice, who is merely, but faithfully reiterating the Bush Administration’s policy, hoped that the Israeli bombs would succeed in achieving what her government’s grand policies failed to achieve, namely a New Middle East.

In a friendly meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in Jerusalem, on July 25, 2006, Rice eagerly, although rashly wished to interpret to equally eager journalists the political promise that lies within the Israeli onslaught. "As we deal with the current circumstances, we need always to be cognizant of and looking to what kind of Middle East we are trying to build. It is time for a new Middle East," she said. Olmert nodded.

Neither Rice, nor Bush, nor Olmert were indeed interested in shifting the status quo in the Middle East in anyway that might jeopardize Israel’s regional standing, as a powerful ally with astounding military outreach. Indeed, there was hardly anything new in the New Middle East. Like the old one, the New Middle East was also meant to be achieved from behind the barrel of a gun. But why the element of ‘newness’?

It was very clear to both Israel and the United States that their Middle East policies were failing, and miserably so; but both governments were still insistent that the problem is not in the use of force, but rather, not using enough of it. It’s, perhaps, the kind of arrogance that accompanies power. But arrogance can also be the powerful downfall.

As world patience began running out, especially following the second Qana Massacre of July 2006, Rice still insisted on beautifying the horror in Lebanon. The Israeli war against Lebanon, despite the tremendous hurt it caused was, according to Rice, the "birth pangs of a new Middle East".

And a New Middle East it was, although not the one that Rice and Olmert reflectively envisioned in Jerusalem; a different one, which changed the political landscape in Lebanon in favor of Hezbollah, and denied Israel any sense of victory.

In fact, the new ‘New Middle East’ did more than that. It once more renewed a long abandoned idea in the minds of many Arabs, especially Palestinians, that resistance was not futile after all.

Hezbollah’s triumph, and its ability to thwart various attempts at igniting a civil war in Lebanon, accompanied by the group’s leader, Hasan Nasrallah’s fiery speeches began penetrating the Arab psyche, defeated and accustomed to defeat. Nasrallah became the new Jamal Abdul Nasser, and like Abdul Nasser of Egypt, he too polarized Arabs: peoples vs. regimes.

New terminology also sprung. Words that were not uttered, at least not in any realistic context, in decades, began encroaching into Arab vocabulary: ‘victory’, ‘resistance’, ‘Arab nation’ with ‘one fate’, ‘one future’, and so on. The language and the culture it espoused proved immensely threatening to the US camp, which too enjoyed its own language and designations: ‘friendly’, ‘moderate’, etc.

Rice’s New Middle East has failed. It has failed because the representatives of the old Middle East prevailed: Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, but most importantly the people through the region, which began once again, constructing a sense of collective identity. The new ‘axis of evil’, somehow managed to withstand immense pressures, and in the case of Hezbollah and Hamas in Gaza, numerous bombs. Israel’s pressure on the US to go after Iran failed for various reasons. Israel’s own Middle East project remains on hold, jeopardized by Iran’s rising influence in the region, Hezbollah’s proven formidability in the north, and Hamas’ irritating ability to hold onto power, and its insistence to govern by its democratic mandate, even if in besieged Gaza.

As both Olmert and Bush were readying to hand over the torch to their successors, and as folders of the New Middle East project were about to be tossed into the recycle bin, Israel opted for one last chance at proving the viability of its military prowess, for force is the only language that Israel is capable of thoroughly communicating, and is under the odd impression that it’s also the only language that its enemies understand. Olmert, once again unleashed his country’s military fury, this time against Gaza. The Strip was supposedly an easy target, for the tiny stretch of land, blocked from all directions, lacks everything. It is home to a largely young population, the majority of whom are malnourished as a result of the Israeli siege.

Israel hoped that Gaza would grant it a victory, any victory, even if a small token of triumph. Starting December 27 and for many days, Israel pulverized entire neighborhoods, killed and wounded thousands, mostly civilians, mostly children and women. Another New Middle East was in the making with its own “birth pangs.” Entire families perished; children died in droves, in their homes, in schools; a panicking population ran in circles, hopelessly trying to flee the death machines that hovered everywhere, but there was no escape. Borders remained sealed as the region’s ‘moderates’ watched the demise of the ‘extremists.’ Rice, again, grinned, brazenly justifying Israel’s new war. The world watched in horror as the drama unfolded. But Gaza fought back, withstood, resisted, and the language once again was altered. Arabs are now speaking of ‘victory’, hailing the ‘resistance’, singing the praise of the Palestinians in Gaza.

Gaza’s resistance is nothing short of a ‘miracle’, said Aljazeera’s military expert. Millions of Arabs around the world agree. The New Middle East defined in Lebanon in July-August 2006, was confirmed in Palestine in December-January 2008-2009. A new language with new terminology and a new culture is springing up from the ashes and the rubble of Gaza. Arabs are eager to define themselves and shed years of defeat and defeatism. A New Middle East, indeed.

- Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net ) is an author and editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His work has been published in many newspapers, journals and anthologies around the world. His latest book is, "The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle" (Pluto Press, London).

Cartoon.

2009-01-16T18:44:00.000Z

Still Breathing, A Report from Gaza

2009-01-16T18:38:00.004Z

"...in the face of so much desecration, this community has remained intact. The social solidarity and support between people is inspiring, and the steadfastness of Gaza continues to humble and inspire all those who witness it. Their level of sacrifice demands our collective response- and recognition that demonstrations are not enough. Gaza, Palestine and its people continue to live, breathe, resist and remain intact and this refusal to be broken is a call and challenge to us all..."

WRITTEN BY Caoimhe Butterly (in the picture, medical staff of a Gazan hospital shows one of the shells that struck there)

The morgues of Gaza's hospitals are over-flowing. The bodies in their blood-soaked white shrouds cover the entire floor space of the Shifa hospital morgue. Some are intact, most horribly deformed, limbs twisted into unnatural positions, chest cavities exposed, heads blown off, skulls crushed in. Family members wait outside to identify and claim a brother, husband, father, mother, wife, child. Many of those who wait their turn have lost numerous family members and loved ones.

Blood is everywhere. Hospital orderlies hose down the floors of operating rooms, bloodied bandages lie discarded in corners, and the injured continue to pour in: bodies lacerated by shrapnel, burns, bullet wounds. Medical workers, exhausted and under siege, work day and night and each life saved is seen as a victory over the predominance of death.

The streets of Gaza are eerily silent- the pulsing life and rhythm of markets, children, fishermen walking down to the sea at dawn brutally stilled and replaced by an atmosphere of uncertainty, isolation and fear. The ever-present sounds of surveillance drones, F16s, tanks and apaches are listened to acutely as residents try to guess where the next deadly strike will be- which house, school, clinic, mosque, governmental building or community centre will be hit next and how to move before it does. That there are no safe places- no refuge for vulnerable human bodies- is felt acutely. It is a devastating awareness for parents- that there is no way to keep their children safe.

As we continue to accompany the ambulances, joining Palestinian paramedics as they risk their lives, daily, to respond to calls from those with no other life-line, our existence becomes temporarily narrowed down and focused on the few precious minutes that make the difference between life and death. With each new call received as we ride in ambulances that careen down broken, silent roads, sirens and lights blaring, there exists a battle of life over death. We have learned the language of the war that the Israelis are waging on the collective captive population of Gaza- to distinguish between the sounds of the weaponry used, the timing between the first missile strikes and the inevitable second- targeting those that rush to tend to and evacuate the wounded, to recognize the signs of the different chemical weapons being used in this onslaught, to overcome the initial vulnerability of recognizing our own mortality.

Though many of the calls received are to pick up bodies, not the wounded, the necessity of affording the dead a dignified burial drives the paramedics to face the deliberate targeting of their colleagues and comrades- thirteen killed while evacuating the wounded, fourteen ambulances destroyed- and to continue to search for the shattered bodies of the dead to bring home to their families.

Last night, while sitting with paramedics in Jabaliya refugee camp, drinking tea and listening to their stories, we received a call to respond to the aftermath of a missile strike. When we arrived at the outskirts of the camp where the attack had taken place the area was filled with clouds of dust, torn electricity lines, slabs of concrete and open water pipes gushing water into the street. Amongst the carnage of severed limbs and blood we pulled out the body of a young man, his chest and face lacerated by shrapnel wounds, but alive- conscious and moaning.

As the ambulance sped him through the cold night we applied pressure to his wounds, the warmth of his blood seeping through the bandages reminder of the life still in him. He opened his eyes in answer to my questions and closed them again as Muhammud, a volunteer paramedic, murmured "ayeesh, nufuss"- live, breathe- over and over to him. He lost consciousness as we arrived at the hospital, received into the arms of friends who carried him into the emergency room. He, Majid, lived and is recovering.

A few minutes later there was another missile strike, this time on a residential house. As we arrived a crowd had rushed to the ruins of the four story home in an attempt to drag survivors out from under the rubble. The family the house belonged to had evacuated the area the day before and the only person in it at the time of the strike was 17 year old Muhammud who had gone back to collect clothes for his family. He was dragged out from under the rubble still breathing- his legs twisted in unnatural directions and with a head wound, but alive. There was no choice but to move him, with the imminence of a possible second strike, and he lay in the ambulance moaning with pain and calling for his mother. We thought he would live, he was conscious though in intense pain and with the rest of the night consumed with call after call to pick up the wounded and the dead, I forgot to check on him. This morning we were called to pick up a body from Shifa hospital to take back to Jabaliya. We carried a body wrapped in a blood-soaked white shroud into the ambulance, and it wasn't until we were on the road that we realized that it was Muhammud's body. His brother rode with us, opening the shroud to tenderly kiss Muhammud's forehead.

This morning we received news that Al-Quds hospital in Gaza City was under siege. We tried unsuccessfully for hours to gain access to the hospital, trying to organize co-ordination to get the ambulances past Israeli tanks and snipers to evacuate the wounded and dead. Hours of unsuccessful attempts later we received a call from the Shujahiya neighborhood, describing a house where there were both dead and wounded patients to pick up. The area was deserted, many families having fled as Israeli tanks and snipers took up position amongst their homes, other silent in the dark, cold confines of their homes, crawling from room to room to avoid sniper fire through their windows.

As we drove slowly around the area, we heard women's cries for help. We approached their house on foot, followed by the ambulances and as we came to the threshold of their home, they rushed towards us with their children, shaking and crying with shock. At the door of the house the ambulance lights exposed the bodies of four men, lacerated by shrapnel wounds- the skull and brains of one exposed, others whose limbs had been severed off. The four were the husbands and brothers of the women, who had ventured out to search for bread and food for their families. Their bodies were still warm as we struggled to carry them on stretchers over the uneven ground, their blood staining the earth and our clothes. As we prepared to leave the area our torches illuminated the slumped figure of another man, his abdomen and chest shredded by shrapnel. With no space in the other ambulances, and the imminent possibility of sniper fire, we were forced to take his body in the back of the ambulance carrying the women and children. One of the little girls stared at me before coming into my arms and telling me her name- Fidaa', which means to sacrifice. She stared at the body bag, asking when he would wake up.

Once back at the hospital we received word that the Israeli army had shelled Al Quds hospital, that the ensuing fire risked spreading and that there had been a 20-minute time-frame negotiated to evacuate patients, doctors and residents in the surrounding houses. By the time we got up there in a convoy of ambulances, hundreds of people had gathered. With the shelling of the UNRWA compound and the hospital there was a deep awareness that nowhere in Gaza is safe, or sacred.

We helped evacuate those assembled to near-by hospitals and schools that have been opened to receive the displaced. The scenes were deeply saddening- families, desperate and carrying their children, blankets and bags of their possessions venturing out in the cold night to try to find a corner of a school or hospital to shelter in. The paramedic we were with referred to the displacement of the over 46,000 Gazan Palestinians now on the move as a continuation of the ongoing Nakba of dispossession and exile seen through generation after generation enduring massacre after massacre.

Today's death toll was over 75, one of the bloodiest days since the start of this carnage. Over 1,110 Palestinians have been killed in the past 21 days. 367 of those have been children. The humanitarian infrastructure of Gaza is on its knees- already devastated by years of comprehensive siege. There has been a deliberate, systematic destruction of all places of refuge. There are no safe places here, for anyone.

And yet, in the face of so much desecration, this community has remained intact. The social solidarity and support between people is inspiring, and the steadfastness of Gaza continues to humble and inspire all those who witness it. Their level of sacrifice demands our collective response- and recognition that demonstrations are not enough. Gaza, Palestine and its people continue to live, breathe, resist and remain intact and this refusal to be broken is a call and challenge to us all.

Caoimhe Butterly is an Irish human rights activist working in Jabaliya and
Gaza City as a volunteer with ambulance services and as co-coordinator for
the Free Gaza Movement, She can be contacted on 00972-598273960 or at
sahara78@hotmail.co.uk

Farewell Party in Gaza?

2009-01-15T18:00:00.002Z

WRITTEN BY Lev Grinberg

Israel’s offensive in Gaza is the government of Israel’s farewell present to outgoing US president George W. Bush. ‘Israel’s best friend ever’ has supported it through every conflict and war, justified its aggressive moves, and prevented any international intervention against it. Bush awarded Israel the position of a central forward striker in his war on terror, thereby strengthening its most extreme right wing. With real friends like these, who needs illusionary enemies?

But Israel is not a satellite state of the US. It does try to accommodate US policy, but also to lead according to its own agenda. Thus, for example, the eight years of ‘peace process’ during Clinton’s administration (1992-2000) were an Israeli initiative which bypassed and neutralized Clinton's mediation, just as the eight years of war and unilateral policy of the Bush era (2000-2008) began in Israel before Bush’s inauguration. Now too, Israel initiated the escalation in Gaza without anyone noticing, on November 4th, 2008, Election Day in the US. Israel’s present aggression cannot be understood without considering its timing, i.e., the ‘window of opportunity’ between Obama’s election and swearing in.

I remember a conversation I had with the renowned late American scholar Charles Tilly, during his visit to Israel in May 2000. He asked me what is the political logic of the then Prime Minister Ehud Barak ? I told him about his political ‘schedule’: withdrawal from Lebanon in July, negotiations with the Palestinians completed in September, US elections in November. Tilly halted my speech arguing that this is not a political behavior, this is a military logic: giving ultimatums, avoiding negotiations, and then unilateral actions. He was right, in the peculiar democratic/military regime in Israel the politician/generals have acted unilaterally since then: Withdrawal (from Lebanon, 2000) and redeployment (in Gaza, 2005), non-proportional violent reactions (In the occupied territories in 2000-2004 against the Intifada, in Lebanon and Gaza after the soldiers abductions in 2006, and now in Gaza), and building illegally the separation wall. All these are unilateral military moves, without recognition of the other, without negotiations. The US support is crucial; hence the presidential elections are part of the military plan schedule in Israel.

The attack on Gaza is a continuation of the unilateral and aggressive policy of the last eight years, aiming to exploit the support of Bush administration while forcing President-elect Obama to take a position under crisis, immediately as he enters office. The move began on November 4th, 2008, when the IDF entered the Gaza Strip, blew up a tunnel and killed six Hamas men, thereby breaking four and a half months of Tahadia (ceasefire). The Palestinians responded by firing Kasam missiles at Israel; in response, IDF closed the border crossings and tightened the siege over the Strip. The siege has been kept ever since, so the Hamas government announced that the condition for renewing the ceasefire was lifting the siege and opening the crossings. Israel chose to regard the condition of opening the crossings as a refusal by the Hamas to renew the ceasefire.

Israel calls this ‘self-defense’. But President Bush, the president of France, the Prime Minister of Germany and the President of Egypt too, keep repeating this mantra of ‘self-defense’. Israel’s argument is that “no sovereign nation could put up with being fired at by a neighboring state”, ignoring the fact that the Gaza Strip is not a “neighboring state”. This is the heart of the conflict: Gaza is a huge prison controlled by the Israeli army, which prevents entry and exit of persons and goods, not only from the border crossings with Israel, but also from the Egyptian border, as well as by sea and air.

This deception by the government of Israel could not have been accepted if it wasn’t for the era of war on terror by President Bush, with the deception of the invasion of Iraq and the mass killing of civilians at its core. Prior to the occupation of Iraq in April 2002, when the IDF recaptured the towns of the West Bank, killing hundreds of Palestinians and taking apart the institutions of the Palestinian Authority, there was harsh international criticism of Israel, and it was only at the Bush administration’s intervention that a UN commission was prevented from arriving to investigate the massacre in Jenin. Who is going to establish an investigative commission now? The Bush administration has managed to impose the war on terror over the entire world by bluntly ignoring global public opinion, but since then, Bush has remained in Iraq while Europe and the conservative Arab countries have gradually aligned with his policy. If there is anything resembling Israel’s invasion of Gaza, it is the US occupation of Iraq, and if Israel manages to crush Hamas rule, as Bush has crushed Sadam Hussein’s rule, it will not be able to get out of Gaza.

Many around the world were disappointed with Obama’s silence on the Israeli aggression. Such disappointment may be justified, from the US policy in the Middle East since Carter's administration one cannot expect too much. If the President-elect continues Bush’s policy, only with a Clinton style improved image, it would be disastrous. There is a strong link between Iraq and Gaza, and if the US’s withdrawal from Iraq is not accompanied by a honest and viable Israeli-Palestinian agreement, then the threat of radical Islam could indeed reach Cairo, Tel-Aviv, Paris and London.

But there is another, more positive possibility. It’s possible that Barack Obama understands the trick Israel is trying to pull, and therefore opts to be silent for as long as he has no executive powers. I hope that this is the case, and that upon beginning his office, Obama would behave as a true friend to Israel and save it from itself. He must stop Israeli aggression. Israel’s problem is an excess of military power stemming from the trauma of the Holocaust. Israel is behaving like the neighborhood bully expecting someone to stop him, because it does have the power to destroy everything around it, while destroying itself in the process. Anyone who sincerely wishes to help Israel must release it from its position as the central forward striker in the war on Islam, in which the Bush era of war on terror has framed it. Let us all hope that the war in Gaza is a farewell ceremony marking the end of President Bush’s destructive era. It is indeed high time for the promised "change". Obama, yes YOU can.

How Israel Gets Away With Murder

2009-01-15T17:55:00.002Z

"...Anyone who thought that there would be a change of heart and direction after the last American election hasn't been concentrating. The Senate in question is the newly elected, strongly Democratic one, which has just met for the first time. During the presidential campaign Barack Obama went out of his way to endorse Israel. He has appointed in the form of Hillary Clinton perhaps the strongest supporter of Israel ever to serve as Secretary of State, not excluding Henry Kissinger, a Jewish refugee from Hitler, though even she is surpassed in her commitment by Rahm Emanuel, Obama's chief of staff..."

WRITTEN BY GEOFFREY WHEATCROFT
Indifference to criticism of the bombing and invasion of Gaza is the result of indulgence by the West

When Lord Derby asked Sir Lewis Namier, the great historian of Georgian England, why he, as a Jew, didn't write Jewish history, Namier replied: "There is no modern Jewish history, only a Jewish martyrology, and that is not amusing enough for me." It might be said that the underlying purpose of the Zionist project – which Namier passionately supported – was to reject Jewish martyrology, and to turn the Jews from passive victims to active makers of their destiny.

That has been accomplished to a fault, many would say as they watch the news from Gaza, where one image after another has caused deep revulsion. But then that rejection of martyrdom and victimhood may also explain what has puzzled as well as dismayed onlookers – the fact that Israel seems to be quite oblivious to international opinion.

In Muslim countries there is, of course, intense hostility to Israel, which, in return, has long since followed the Latin principle oderint dum metuant towards her neighbours: Let them hate us, so long as they fear us. Since there's no point in even trying to win their hearts and minds, they should be taught to respect brute force, a precept which, it should be admitted, has enjoyed considerable practical success.

The West is different, and European sentiment can be changed by events, as indeed it has been. Israel and Zionism were once very popular causes in Europe, not least on the liberal left, until the 1967 Six Day War and after. Since then, European sympathy has steadily ebbed away as Israel attacked Lebanon in 1982, and again in 2006, with the suppression of the intifadas between. And yet Israel shrugs off all strictures and rebukes. No criticism from relief agencies or the Red Cross makes any difference.

Even more strikingly, Israel has ignored the Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire. One reason for this is that the only Western country that really counts is the United States, and Israel has for many years been able to rely on unconditional American support. Having threated to veto previous draft resolutions, the US took part in drafting the security council resolution calling for a ceasefire, and was evidently going to vote for it.

Then late on Thursday the American representative shocked other council members by abstaining. This volte face came on direct orders from the White House, after president Bush had spoken to Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, and the Israelis have taken abstention as permission to continue their action. "Israel is not going to show restraint," Tzipi Livni, the Israeli Foreign Minister, told The Washington Post yesterday, understandably enough in the circumstances.

Although Israel is sometimes described as an American client state, which receives huge financial subsidy from Washington, she is unique as a client state: she can do exactly as she likes in the knowledge that she will never be seriously restrained by her sponsor. Even when the White House is privately irritated by Israeli actions, Congress is absolutely reliable, never knowingly outbid in its unswerving loyalty. During the bombardment of Lebanon in the summer of 2006, the House of Representatives passed a resolution of total solidarity with Israel by 410 votes to eight, and the Senate has just passed another on a hand vote, not even bothering to take a formal tally.

Anyone who thought that there would be a change of heart and direction after the last American election hasn't been concentrating. The Senate in question is the newly elected, strongly Democratic one, which has just met for the first time. During the presidential campaign Barack Obama went out of his way to endorse Israel. He has appointed in the form of Hillary Clinton perhaps the strongest supporter of Israel ever to serve as Secretary of State, not excluding Henry Kissinger, a Jewish refugee from Hitler, though even she is surpassed in her commitment by Rahm Emanuel, Obama's chief of staff.

But there is more to it, and Israeli intransigence or indifference to outside opinion goes back before the birth of the state. As it happens, Emanuel has something in common with Ehud Olmert and Tzipi Livni: their fathers all served in the Irgun. This was the intransigent Zionist militia – described as terrorists by Isaiah Berlin among others, and as fascists by Albert Einstein among others – which waged a campaign of violence against the British, and the Palestinian Arabs, in the last years of the British Mandate in 1946-48. Its exploits included the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, with great loss of life, the hanging of two captured British sergeants in reprisal, and the massacre of villagers at Deir Yassin.

Behind that brutality lay something else. Men take revenge for small wrongs, Machiavelli said, unable to avenge the larger, and the Irgun was avenging an incomparably and unimaginably greater crime just suffered by the European Jews. The Jews had tried to be nice to the goyim, Zionism said in effect, and see where it had got them. A Jewish state would now be created and guarded with all necessary force, indifferent to what the outside world thought. If need be, Israel will borrow the old chant of the Millwall fans, "No one likes us, we don't care"– and no more Jewish martyrology.

Not that Namier was the only Zionist to use "Jewish" in a derisive sense. When someone mentioned Trotsky's phrase "No war, no peace", David Ben-Gurion said that it was "some stupid Jewish idea", and there is a well-known Israeli story about Moshe Dayan, the military hero of the Six Day War. When he taught at the Israeli staff college, Dayan used to expound a problem, ending with the words, "And I want no Jewish solutions here."

He meant that, on the sand table or the field, he expected his battles to be won by dash and ferocity, rather than than by the traditional Jewish virtues of subtlety and patience. Zionist toughness has worked for a long time, but it could be that Israel will one day discover that there's something to be said for Jewish solutions.

Geoffrey Wheatcroft's books include 'The Controversy of Zion: Jewish Nationalism, the Jewish State, and the Unresolved Jewish Dilemma'

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/geoffrey-wheatcroft-how-israel-gets-away-with-murder-1299401.html

Cartoon.

2009-01-15T17:52:00.002Z

Israel Has Managed to Lose Again

2009-01-15T17:32:00.003Z

"...In an ideal ethical world, Israel would have let the Gazans go back to their land. But ethics and Israel are very much like parallel lines. They somehow never meet. As much as it is clear that Palestinians will come back to their land, it won't be Israel that that will welcome the inevitable returning Palestinians..."

Haaretz reported today that IDF Senior officials "believe that Israel should strive to reach an immediate cease-fire with Hamas, and not expand its offensive against the Palestinian Islamist group in Gaza."

This shouldn't take us by great surprise. Though Israel has proved beyond doubt that it is rather capable of conducting large-scale genocide, it also proved that its military forces do not have the answer to Islamic resistance. The Israeli chief military officials admitted as well that "Israel achieved several days ago all that it possibly could in Gaza." The IDF, so it seems, finished its role in Gaza. It turned its neighbourhoods into piles of rubble. Relentlessly, it even murdered the civilian population in broad daylight by means of air raids and attacks from warships. Images of white phosphorus artillery shells bursting over schools and hospitals are now part of our collective memory. Tanks firing into schools loaded with evacuees seeking refuge from the bombing of their buildings is now the image associated with the Hebraic soldier and yet, the Israelis failed to achieve any of their objectives. I must admit that it must take a special talent to be an Israeli general. As much as they are good in committing war crimes, they somehow fail in everything else.

The Israeli politicians initially swore to destroy Hamas, they then lowered their expectations, they promised just to destroy Hamas' rocket launching capabilities, all the while reassuring their excited Israeli voters that this time the Jewish State will fight till the bitter end. Seemingly, their promises fell too short once again.

Hamas is still there; its support within the Palestinian street is stronger than ever. But it is not only the Palestinian street. Hamas' message of defiance is spreading all over the Muslim world and beyond. Last week I was marching in London together with another 100,000 protesters. The support for Hamas was all around. It was on placards, flags, headbands and loudspeakers. Not only is Hamas far from being defeated, its rocket launching capability seems to be unaffected. Day after day Hamas combatants manage to remind Israelis in Ashdod, Ashkelon and Sderot that they actually live on stolen Palestinian land. Give Hamas the necessary time and the ballistic message will be carried to every corner of stolen Palestine.

Israel is desperate for an exit strategy. I learned today that Defence Minister Barak is looking for a week long humanitarian ceasefire. Please do not hold your breath, the notorious mass murderer didn't change his spots all of a sudden. Being a veteran general, Barak realises very well that his soldiers on the ground need a break and they need it now. Being that they are gathered together in a few scattered open areas, they are currently exposed to Hamas' snipers and mortar fire. In the last few days, Israeli forces started to suffer a growing number of causalities. The attempt to step up the battle into Gaza's neighbourhood met with some severe resistance. The Israeli army is stuck once again.

If this is not enough, within a few days Obama is going to reside in the White House and the Israelis are not totally convinced that the new American president will blindly support their murderous strategy. Defence Minister Barak realizes that his window of opportunity might be closing down. He realises that IDF soldiers may have to dig in Gaza city outskirts without achieving any of the war's military objectives. Barak needs a few days of ceasefire to create a new reality on the ground. He obviously prefers to hide behind a humanitarian effort. This is far easier than admitting that once again the IDF was caught unprepared. Olmert aids, however were stupid enough to admit the lie. Apparently one of them slammed Barak earlier on today suggesting that "Hamas sees the scenes and hears the voices, these comments are a shot in the arm for Hamas and its leaders."

As things stand, IDF soldiers are now stranded in Gaza. Don't misinterpret me, they are still capable of spreading death and inflicting carnage, yet they cannot win this war. The IAF ran out of ˜military" targets a week ago and the artillery is probably facing the same situation. As news floods in it becomes evident that once Israeli soldiers leave their armoured vehicles and Merkava tanks they are subject to the mercy of Hamas. I have read today on Ynet that some IDF soldiers reported that they "don't really see the enemy", "we get hit and we do not know by who and how."

As things stand, Hamas is becoming a symbol of heroic persistence. Its combatants on the ground fight almost with bare hands against America's most lethal technology. Similarly, Hamas'political leadership has managed to set itself as the key to any possible resolution of the current conflict. The hope that Hamas would be toppled or discredited proved to be just another Jewish wet dream. Hamas is now becoming a widely accepted entity by the international community. It is regarded as an elementary ingredient in any possible solution. Israel, on the other hand, is seen for what it is for real, a murderous criminal state involved in genocidal war crimes of the worst order.

However, there is a new reality that we have to bear in mind. The damage Israel is leaving behind in Gaza is horrific. It has flattened neighbourhoods, it has spread white phosphorus in populated areas. As if this is not enough, the many tons of bunker buster bombs which Israel was using day and night have shaken the foundations of every building in Gaza and the question looms large as to whether Gazan houses that are still standing will be safe to live in. EU officials raised the question today wondering who is going to pay for the reconstruction of these eradicated towns, camps and villages.

In an ideal ethical world, Israel would have let the Gazans go back to their land. But ethics and Israel are very much like parallel lines. They somehow never meet. As much as it is clear that Palestinians will come back to their land, it won't be Israel that that will welcome the inevitable returning Palestinians.

Someone will have to rebuild Gaza, and the only name that comes to mind is the democratically elected Hamas. Such a huge project maintained by Hamas will be the right answer to Israel's criminal war and its murderous objectives.

BBC: Israelis 'Shot at Fleeing Gazans'

2009-01-15T12:21:00.001Z

The BBC said it received claims that Israeli troops have fired on Gaza residents trying to escape the conflict area.
It also said that its journalists “in Gaza and Israel” have compiled detailed accounts of the claims.

One testimony, BBC said, describes Israeli forces shooting a woman in the head after she stepped out of her house carrying a piece of white cloth, in response to an Israeli loudhailer announcement. Munir Shafik al-Najar, of Khouza village in the south-east of the Gaza Strip, told BBC that some 75 members of his extended family had ended up huddled in a house, surrounded by Israeli forces, after troops shelled the area and destroyed his brother's home on Sunday night.
On Monday morning, “the Israeli army was saying: 'This is the Israeli Defence Forces, we are asking all the people to leave their homes and go to the school. Ladies first, then men.' We decided to send the women first, two by two," he said. First to step outside was the wife of his cousin, Rawhiya al-Najar, 48. They shot her in the head," he said.

The Israeli military has dismissed the report as "without foundation,” according to the British Broadcasting Corporation.

The BBC said it also spoke to Marwan Abu Rida, a paramedic with the Palestinian Red Crescent, who says he was called to the site at 0810 local time (0610 GMT). But he says he came under fire as he tried to reach it, and was trapped in a house nearby until 2000 (1800 GMT) because of Israeli shooting.
He said that when he reached the location he found the dead woman, Rawhiya, who appeared to have been shot in the head, as well as the younger woman who was injured.

Israel Hits UNRWA, Hospital, Media Complexes; Toll: 1060 Martyrs

2009-01-15T12:09:00.001Z

As Arabs are still divided on whether to hold an “emergency session” to discuss the Israeli war on Gaza, 20 days after it started, the death toll of Palestinian civilians has reached 1060 martyrs and the number of injured is nearing 5,000.

On the 20th day, fighting between advancing Israeli forces and the Palestinian resistance centered around Tal el-Hawa south of Gaza.
Reports from the strip said that Wednesday night saw the fiercest fighting yet and the bombardment of populated areas across Gaza was the harshest. Gripping their wailing children, terrified Gaza civilians scuttled for any shelter they could find.

As it’s becoming clear, Israel is intensifying its military operations to achieve something concrete as its envoy Amos Gilad arrived in Cairo to hear Hamas’s reservations on the proposal for a ceasefire.
Ehud Olmert’s security cabinet is due to decide Friday on whether to expand the operation or not, amid divisions between Defense Minister Ehud Barak and FM Tsibi Livni one side favoring an end to the war and Olmert on the other side favoring moving forward.

On Thursday, the United Nations headquarters in Gaza City (UNRWA) was hit by three Israeli tank shells. Three UN workers were injured. One of the buildings, containing "hundreds of tons" of humanitarian aid, was on fire, while other parts of the compound sustained shrapnel damage. Israel committed, days earlier, a massacre when it bombed two UNRWA schools killing at least 45 people, mostly children.
The UN agency suspended its operations inside Gaza.

Also on Thursday, a Red Crescent hospital (Al-Quds) in the Tal el-Hawa neighborhood, south of Gaza, was hit by Israeli shells and caught fire. Hundreds of people are being treated in this hospital from injuries sustained from Israel’s indiscriminate fire. Other people have taken shelter there from advancing Israeli tanks in the early morning
hours.

Targeting the UN headquarters and the Red Crescent hospital was followed by targeting a media building in Gaza City.
Two cameramen were wounded when an Israeli strike hit the building housing several international and Arab media outlets.
The two cameramen worked for Abu Dhabi television.
The Al-Shuruq tower, located in the Rimal neighborhood in the centre of Gaza City, houses several media outlets including the Reuters news agency and television stations Fox, Sky and Al-Arabiya

Kitties are worth more than babies??

2009-01-14T21:37:00.002Z

WRITTEN BY Vittorio Arrigoni in Gaza

Take some kittens, some tender little moggies in a box", said Jamal, a surgeon at the Al Shifa, Gaza's main hospital, while a nurse actually placed a couple of blood-stained cardboard boxes in front of us. "Seal up the box, then jump on it with all your weight and might, until you feel their little bones crunching, and you hear the last muffled little mew." I stared at the boxes in astonishment, and the doctor continued: "Try to imagine what would happen after such images were circulated. The righteous outrage of public opinion, the complaints of the animal rights organisations…" The doctors went on in this vein, and I was unable to take my eyes off those boxes, sitting at our feet. "Israel trapped hundreds of civilians inside a school as if in a box, including many children, and then crushed them with all the might of its bombs.

What were the world's reactions? Almost nothing. We would have been better off as animals rather than Palestinians, we would have been more protected."

At this point the doctor leans towards one of the boxes, and takes its lid off in front of me. Inside it are the amputated limbs, legs and arms, some from the knee down, others with the entire femur attached, amputated from the injured at the Al Fakhura United Nations school in Jabalia, which resulted in more than fifity casualties. Pretending to be taking an urgent call, I took my leave of Jamal, actually rushing to the bathroom to bend over and throw up.

A little earlier I'd been involved in a conversation with Dr. Abdel, an ophtalmologist, regarding the rumours that the Israeli Army had been showering us with non-conventional weapons, forbidden by the Geneva Convention, such as cluster bombs and white phosphorous. The very same that the Tsahal Army used in the last Lebanese war, as well as the US air force in Falluja, still violating international norms. In front of Al Auda hospital we witnessed and filmed white phosphorous bombs being used about five hundred metres from where we were, too far to be absolutely certain there were any civilians underneath the Israeli Apaches, but so terribly close to us all the same.The Geneva Treaty of 1980 forbids white phosphorous being used directly as a war weapon in civilian areas, allowing it only as a smoke screen or for lighting.

There's no doubt that using this weapon in Gaza, a strip of land concentrating the highest population rate in the world, is a crime all on its own. Doctor Abdel told me that at Al Shifa hospital they don't have the medical and military competence to say for sure whether the wounds they examined on certain corpses were indeed provoked by white phosphorous bullets.But on his word, in twenty years on the job he had never seen casualties like those now being carried into the ward.

He told me about the traumas to the skull, with the fractures to the vomer bone, the jaw, the cheekbones, tear duct, nasal and palatine bones showed signs of the collision of an immense force against the victim's face.

What he finds inexplicable is the total lack of eyeballs, which ought to leave a trace somewhere within the skull even in case of such a violent impact. Instead, we see Palestinian corpses coming into the hospitals without eyes at all, as if someone had removed them surgically before handing them over to the coroner. Israel has let us know that we've been granted a daily 3-hour truce, from 1:00 to 4:00 PM.

These statements from the Israeli military summit are considered by the people of Gaza as having the same reliability as the Hamas leaders' declarations that they've just provoked a massacre of enemy soldiers. Just to be clear on this point, the soldiers of Tel Aviv's worse enemy are the very same who fight under the Star of David. Yesterday a war ship off the coast of Gaza's port picked out a large group of alleged guerrilla fighters from the Palestinian Resistance, moving as a united front around Jabalia. They shot their cannons at them. But as it turned out, they were their own fellow soldiers, with the shooting resulting in three being killed and about twenty injured. No one here believes in the truces that Israel declares, and as it happens, today at 2:00 PM Rafah was under attack by the Israeli helicopters.

There was also yet another massacre of children in Jabalia: three little sisters aged 2, 4 and 6 from the Abed Rabbu family were slaughtered. Just half an hour earlier in Jabalia, once again the Red Crescent hospital's ambulances were under attack. Eva and Alberto, my ISM colleagues were on board that ambulance and managed to film everything, passing those videos and photos on to all the major media.Hassan was kneecapped, fresh from mourning the death of his friend Araf, a paramedic who was killed two days ago as he came in aid of the injured in Gaza City. They had stopped to pick up the body of a man languishing in agony in the middle of the road, when they were under fire by about ten shots from an Israeli sniper. One bullet hit Hassan in the knee and the ambulance was filled with holes.

We're now at a death toll of 688, in addition to 3,070 injured, 158 dead children and countless missing. Only yesterday, we counted 83 dead, 80 of which were civilians. Thankfully, the death toll on the Israeli side is still only at 4.Travelling towards Al Quds hospital, where I'll be working all night on the ambulances, as I raced along on board one of the very few fearless taxis left, zig-zagging to avoid the bombs, on the corner of one street I saw a group of dirty street urchins with tattered clothes, looking exactly like the "sciuscià" kids of the Italian afterwar period. They threw stones towards the sky with slingshots, at far away and unapproachable enemy who was toying with their lives.

Israel accused of Gaza 'genocide'

2009-01-14T21:33:00.002Z

The president of the UN General Assembly has condemned Israel's killings of Palestinians in its Gaza offensive as "genocide".

Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann also told Al Jazeera he had never believed that the UN Security Council would be able to stop the violence in Gaza and that Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, had practically told the UN to "mind their own business" by continuing the offensive.

"The number of victims in Gaza is increasing by the day... The situation is untenable. It's genocide," d'Escoto said at the UN in New York.

About 970 Palestinians have been killed and 4,300 injured since Israel began its Gaza offensive on December 27, which it says is to stop Palestinian fighters attacking Israel with rockets.

Emergency session

The UN General Assembly said on Tuesday that it was set to hold an emergency session on Thursday to discuss the crisis after a previous session was postponed last week ahead of a UN Security Council vote on the issue.

The Security Council adopted a resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, but Israel has escalated its offensive and Palestinian rocket fire has also continued.

"There have been some who were under the illusion that the Security Council would do something that could help the situation," d'Escoto said. "I never thought so.

"Now we're faced with not only with a lack of compliance but with a prime minister of Israel who has practically responded to the Security Council by saying 'mind your own business'.

"It's unbelievable that a country that owes its existence to a general assembly resolution could be so disdainful of the resolutions that emanate from the UN."

D'Escoto, a former Roman Catholic priest and Nicaragua foreign minister, is known for his outspoken criticism of Israel and last year likened Israel's treatment of the Palestinians to the racist apartheid system previously used in South Africa.

Gabriela Shalev, Israel's ambassador to the UN, called d'Escoto an "Israel hater" for having hugged Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president and a vocal critic of Israel.

D'Escoto also said the UN had to bear some responsibility for the long-standing conflict in the Middle East as it had allowed the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, leaving the Palestinians stateless.

"You have to attack problems at their root cause and the Palestinian people have been subjected to subhuman treatment for decades and this [the Israeli offensive] is going to make matters worse."

250,000 Spaniards denounce Israel's bloodshed

2009-01-14T21:31:00.000Z

In the largest pro-Palestinian demonstration in Europe so far, over 250,000 Spaniards denounce Israel's bloodshed in Gaza and call for ceasefire.

Protesters in Spain's capital Madrid and in other cities, including Seville, Malaga,Oviedo, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and Ourense, carried banners saying 'Peace', 'SOS Gaza' and placards with the word 'Gaza' above a red-stained hand and mock blood-spattered bodies of children.

Police declined to give a figure but the organizers, which included the Socialist Party and trade unions, estimated the Sunday turnout at 250,000.

"It is my duty to call on Israel to implement an immediate cease-fire," Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, who had attended the rally, told protesters in Ourense.

Oscar-winning actor Javier Bardem's mother Pilar, also an actress, was among the speakers who addressed the crowd.

"The Spanish government has to do something. The Gaza Strip is now practically a concentration camp," AP quoted her as saying.

Sunday's protests are a follow-up of Barcelona's mass demonstration the previous day, where police estimated the crowd around 30,000 but according to organizers accounts, 100,000 people took to the streets. The demonstration was organized by an alliance of groups, which in the past had organized mass protests against the US-led invasion of Iraq.

Spain has a Muslim community of around 800,000 out of a 46.1 million population.

Meanwhile, 30,000 people protested in Brussels on Sunday denouncing the Israeli carnage in Gaza. Children carrying effigies of dead and bloodied babies were at the head of the procession.

Also in the Italian cities of Rome, Naples and Verona, thousands of people marched in pro-Palestinian rallies.

In Athens, Greece, dozens of children and their parents, carrying effigies and photos of bloodied children, marched to protest Israel's incursion and bloodshed in Gaza.

Latest figures show 900 Palestinians and 33 Israelis have been killed since Israel's onslaught on Gaza that began on December 27. More than 276 of the Palestinians killed are children. Over 4,000 Palestinians and 80 Israeli have also been wounded.

Press TV

Israeli intel targets Israeli protesters (Video)

2009-01-14T21:27:00.000Z

From Vancouver, with Love: a prayer for Gaza from Elders of the Coast Salish Territory

2009-01-14T21:25:00.000Z

Chycho

Peace Rally, 10 January 2009, Vancouver, Canada (Coast Salish Territory).

www.chycho.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coast_Salish_Territory