No One Has Jurisdiction Over The Truth

Palestine: It's Time (Never Before Campaign)

2009-09-17T21:06:00.003-05:00

"There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come."

- Victor Hugo -

Israeli Settlers Move Into Palestinian Homes

2009-08-02T20:59:00.003-05:00

Israeli police have forcibly thrown out two Palestinian families at gunpoint from their homes while immediately moving in Israeli settlers.

At around 5:30 a.m. on Sunday, the Israeli police first demolished the gates of the two houses, rushed in and forced the two families out of their houses at gunpoint, without permitting them to remove their belongings or furniture.

The police threw out both families, among them many children, and arrested an Israeli and international activists who were staying with the Palestinians in their homes to support them.

The police tried to seal off the entire area from journalists but those who came near the evicted Sheikh Jarrah area homes, were pushed out.

As soon as the expulsion of the Palestinian families was completed, settlers arrived with a truck and began to move the possessions of the two families out of their homes. Hours later, settlers moved their families and belongings into the houses while the Israeli police stood guard to protect them.

The Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem (al-Quds) was built by the UN and the Jordanian government in 1956 to house Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war. With the start of the Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem (al-Quds), following the 1967 war, settlers began claiming ownership of the land the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood was built on.

Source

Jewish Fundamentalists Storm Al-Aqsa Mosque

2009-08-02T18:06:00.003-05:00

More than 200 Jewish extremists have reportedly entered al-Aqsa Mosque, positioning themselves inside the holy site, allegedly to perform religious rituals.

According to a statement released by the Al-Aqsa Foundation for Endowment and Heritage, the incursion was "significant". The foundation has called on Muslims, Arabs and all Palestinians to take action in support of the mosque.

The attack comes amidst Tisha B'Av, also known as "The Ninth of Av" -- a Jewish fasting day in commemoration of the destruction of the two Temples. The occasion falls on the ninth day of the Hebrew month of Av, which usually coincides with late July or mid-August.

The First Temple was built by King Solomon and was considered the most sacred site in ancient Judaism. It was destroyed when the Babylonians pillaged Jerusalem (al-Quds) in 586 BCE.

According to Jewish accounts, the construction of the Second Temple was completed in 516 BCE on the site of the First Temple but was destroyed during the Roman siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE.

The destruction of the two Temples allegedly took place on the same day -- the ninth of Av -- but about 656 years apart.

The storming of al-Aqsa Mosque -- a holy site in the eyes of many Muslims -- has drawn anti-Israeli condemnation.

Former Palestinian minister for al-Quds affairs, Hatem Abdel Qader, has warned that the Israeli government is "playing with fire" by allowing far-right Jewish groups to put the mosque in harm's way.

Abdel Qader resigned from his post last month after he censured the acting Palestinian Authority for neglecting al-Quds. He says the Salam Fayyad government refuses to uphold its commitments to the city, which is undergoing a difficult period.

According to Abdel Qader, the Palestinian Finance Ministry "contributes nothing to the effort to keep the residents on their land."

Source

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) 2008 Annual Report

2009-07-30T05:53:00.007-05:00

2008 Report

Established in 1995, PCHR functions independently in Gaza and enjoys "Consultative Status" with the UN's Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). It's also an affiliate of the International Commission of Jurists-Geneva, the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) in Paris, the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network in Copenhagen, the Arab Organization for Human Rights in Cairo, and the International Legal Assistance Consortium (ILAC) in Stockholm.

Palestinian lawyers and human rights activists established it to:

"protect human rights and promote the rule of law;"
create, develop and promote a democratic culture in Palestinian society; and
work for Palestinian self-determination and independence "in accordance with international law and UN resolutions."

PCHR is an "independent legal body dedicated to the protection of human rights, the promotion of the rule of law, and the upholding of democratic principles in the Occupied Territories." It issues documents, fact sheets, and reports like its latest 2008 Annual Report - divided in two parts.

Part One assesses the overall human rights situation in the Occupied Palestinians Territories (OPT) throughout 2008. Because they affect regional peace overall, this article focuses solely on Israeli crimes, not those committed by Palestinian elements in Gaza and the West Bank that pale by comparison. Part Two covers PCHR's local and international efforts over the same period.

Israeli Violations of Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law - Excessive Use of Force, Killings, and Other Violations of the Right to Life

Throughout 2008, the Israeli Occupation Force (IOF) repeatedly violated international law with regard to excessive force, willful killings, wanton destruction, and other right to life abuses against Palestinian civilians.

During the first five days of Operation Cast Lead alone, dozens of air strikes killed 411 Palestinians and wounded 996 others, many seriously. "Contrary to Israeli claims, the majority of victims were unarmed civilians," including 13 women and 38 children.

Over the entire 22-day period, the IOF killed 1417 Palestinians, including 1181 non-combatants. Of these, 926 were unarmed civilians (including 313 children and 116 women) and 255 police officers, 240 on the first day, including dozens in formation and vulnerable at their graduation ceremony. The number of wounded totaled 4336, the great majority being civilian men, women, and children.

Throughout 2008, the IOF committed willful killings and right to life violations, especially in the first six months. Numerous air strikes and incursions targeted civilians in Gaza. Extra-judicial assassinations also against persons accused of involvement in "hostilities against Israel," including anyone acting legitimately in self-defense as international law allows. From January through June, the IOF killed 409 Palestinians, including 225 civilians, 58 of whom were children and 16 women. Another 741 Palestinians were wounded.

On June 19, a six-month Tahdey'a (lull) was declared on the following terms:

Israel would stop attacking Palestinians, including shelling and extra-judicial assassinations; also, Gaza's border crossings would be gradually reopened to allow free movement in and out of people and goods; and
Palestinians would cease resistance attacks.

They complied but Israel reneged. The IOF greatly reduced its attacks but kept Gaza under siege. By October, Israeli incursions and targeted killings increased. Palestinians responded modestly in self-defense. By late December, Operation Cast Lead was launched, a clear case of premeditated, unprovoked aggression in violation of international law.

Throughout 2008 in the West Bank, repeated incursions and targeted executions continued, including during the Tahdey'a, mostly by IOF undercover units. In total, 42 Palestinian civilians, including 9 children, were killed.

PCHR 2008 tallies show 868 Palestinians died at the hands of the IOF and Israeli settlers - in Gaza and the West Bank combined. Another 2260 Palestinians were wounded. From the beginning of the September 2000 Intifada through 2008, Israel killed 5287 Palestinians, mostly civilian men, women and children. In addition, over the same period, "tens of thousands of Palestinians" were wounded, hundreds sustaining permanent disabilities.

According to eye-witness accounts, the IOF used excessive and disproportionate force against Palestinian civilians, a practice ongoing for over six decades through bombings, shellings, targeted killings, incursions, and attacks by Israeli settlers. In the first five days of Operation Cast Lead (and continuing for another 17 in 2009), Israel used massive air, ground, and sea power against a defenseless civilian population trapped inside Gaza under siege.

On the day after the Operation ended, attacks continued daily. One instance among many involved the IOF bombing of a five-story Gaza building near the Palestinian Governmental Complex in the densely populated Tal al-Hawa neighborhood - completely destroying it. Flying debris and shrapnel killed a woman on her way to a wedding and injured 46 others, including 19 children and three women. A large number of other houses and vehicles in the area were damaged.

Below are a few examples of 2008 attacks:

on February 5, a surface-to-surface missile targeting the Palestinian riot control police workplace in 'Abassan village, east of Khan Yunis, killed seven police officers and injured another; and
on February 7, 23, and March 1, the IOF killed eight members of one family, wounded another eight, and killed and wounded seven others.

Repeated attacks throughout the year were similar, mostly against civilian men, women and children.

Incursions into Palestinian Communities

Continuing its decades-long practice, Israel repeatedly conducted incursions into the OPT in 2008. In Gaza, they were particularly intensive from January through June, killing nearly 200 Palestinians before Operation Cast Lead began in December. Israel's pretext - to arrest wanted Palestinians and destroy home-made rocket launching sites and weapons. These are grievous war crimes for which Israel must be held responsible.

Significant examples:

From February 29 - March 2, the IOF conducted Operation Warm Winter, a wide scale offensive in Jabalya and surrounding areas using "their full-fledged arsenal and....excessive force without any consideration" for civilian Palestinian lives. Air strikes preceded a ground invasion. As a result, dozens of non-combatant lives were lost or wounded, including women and children. Also, ambulances and medical crews were attacked, and many houses and large areas of agricultural land destroyed - wantonly and maliciously.

The total death toll was 69, including 21 children and two women. Another 175 were wounded, including 44 children and six women.

On January 2, the IOF attacked the al-Shojaeya neighborhood in Gaza City. Clashes followed killing six Palestinian resistance fighters and wounding a seventh.

On January 3, the IOF killed seven Palestinians in al-Zanna and al-Qarara east of Khan Yunis, including a woman, her two sons, her daughter, and her nephew.

On January 15, the IOF killed 17 Palestinians and wounded another 30 during an incursion into the al-Shojaeya and al-Zaytoun neighborhoods in Gaza City.

In the West Bank on January 3, the IOF conducted a three day operation in Nablus and neighboring refugee camps, wounding 38 Palestinians and arresting 31 others. Indiscriminate firing occurred against "anything that moved," including medical crews, ambulances, and hospitals.

Repeated other incursions were made against numerous towns, villages and neighborhoods. Deaths and injuries resulted, including to innocent bystanders too close to the action, many of them women and children.

Extra-Judicial Assassinations

In 2008, the IOF committed them by bombing civilian establishments, houses and cars in Gaza and with West Bank undercover units. Israel's High Court and top government officials approved the practice in violation of international law.

Throughout the year, PCHR documented 53 assassinations, including 44 targeted persons - 31 in Gaza and 13 in the West Bank. In addition, dozens of civilians were wounded. From September 2000 through 2008, the IOF extra-judicially executed 743 Palestinians, including 513 targeted and 230 bystanders.

One example illustrates many. On March 12, four Palestinians in a car in the center of Bethlehem were intercepted by members of an IOF undercover unit. They opened fire at close range killing the four instantly and continued firing indiscriminately to secure their withdrawal.

In other cases, Israeli aircraft fire missiles at homes, vehicles, or other targets where wanted individuals are believed to be located. Often, innocent bystanders, including women and children, are killed or wounded and property destroyed.

Killing Palestinian Children

In 2008, the IOF killed 108 children, 99 in Gaza and nine in the West Bank. From September 2000 through 2008, the total was 919 children or nearly one-fourth of Palestinian deaths. The IOF has a history of willfully killing children and women - easy pickings for intrepid Israeli soldiers and airmen.

One instance is typical. On April 16, an Israeli aircraft fired two missiles at a number of Palestinian civilians gathered near al-Ihsan Mosque, about 300 meters away from where IOF troops were deployed. Nine deaths resulted, including six children, and 12 others were wounded.

Attacking Medical Crews

The IOF repeatedly attacks clearly marked ambulances and medical workers, grievously in violation of international law. PCHR documented three killings in 2008 and 27 since September 2000. Numerous others were wounded, some seriously - while they were carrying out their humanitarian mission to help the injured and dying.

Attacking Journalists

They're willfully targeted to prevent coverage of human rights violations, including killings, denial of access to certain areas, entry into Israel or territory under its control, detention, confiscation and destruction of property, beatings, harassment, and intimidation. An October 2008 Reporters without Borders report placed Israel among "countries that extensively violate press freedoms, especially in areas beyond its borders."

In 2008, one journalist was killed and another 28 wounded. Since September 2000, the toll was nine deaths and at least 170 injured.

Closure and Prevention of Free Movement

Throughout 2008, the West Bank remained militarily occupied and Gaza continued under a medieval siege with access to vital food, medicines, fuels, electricity, and other essentials denied beyond woefully spotty and limited amounts. The result has been a humanitarian disaster with no signs of abating well into the new year. Besides the effects of Operation Cast Lead, the toll includes:

80% of Gazans impoverished;
unemployment exceeding 55%;
movement in or out of the Territory denied even for emergency humanitarian needs;
permission denied to travel, work or study abroad;
Palestinians trapped on the Egyptian side of the Rafah International Crossing Point (into Gaza) refused reentry or restricted by long delays under severe humanitarian conditions;
intolerable shortages of everything; too little food to sustain nutrition; inadequate medicines and equipment for health and life; and fuel and power restrictions for heat, electricity, vehicles, hospitals, and workplaces;
severe movement restrictions in the West Bank by imposing hundreds of checkpoints, barriers, the Separation Wall built on stolen Palestinian land, and hundreds of kilometers of for-Jews only roads; overall, about one-third of the West Bank, including Occupied East Jerusalem, is inaccessible to Palestinians without IOF-issued permits that are extremely hard to get; the result is increasingly isolated Palestinian communities, cut off from each other, including farmers from their land; the sick from access to care; and everyone from family, friends, and a normal life people in the West take for granted;
the West Bank and Jerusalem totally cut off from Gaza;
Gazans denied essential industrial, agricultural, construction, transportation, fuel and power, and basic raw material needs; and
overall, the collective punishment of the civilian population causing "a chronic deterioration in all aspects of....life" that's decimating the lives of 1.5 million Gazans trapped in the world's largest open-air prison and being slowly suffocated.

Throughout 2008 and earlier, Gazan cities, villages, and refugee camps were paralyzed under a state of siege that continues unabated. Living conditions deteriorated steadily. UNRWA was forced to curtail its humanitarian and food distribution programs for days. Around 15 drinking water wells stopped, causing water shortages for more than 100,000 people. Another 125 water reservoirs were also affected. Transportation as well with 85% halted for lack of fuel. Wastewater treatment plants were forced to dump their untreated water in the sea. Additional environmental contamination occurred. Flour mills shut down. Warehouses ran out of flour and wheat. Most production stopped, and Gaza's economy collapsed.

Gaza's border crossings have been closed for over two years under Israel's collective punishment policy. The humanitarian effect is disastrous - against a civilian population oppressed for being Palestinians and for having elected the wrong government.

Throughout the year, hundreds of Gazans were denied access to Israeli and West Bank hospitals, including in Jerusalem. Nor to Arab ones in Egypt or elsewhere. As a result, 29 died and 50 since the tightened siege began in June 2007, including 17 women and 10 children.

International humanitarian law prohibits collective punishment, including closure. Artcle 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention "relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War" states:

"No protected person may be punished for an offense he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited."

Article 12(1) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights states that "everyone lawfully within the territory of a State shall, within that territory, have the right to liberty of movement and freedom to choose his residence."

For over 60 years, Israel repeatedly, systematically, and willfully flouted international laws and norms with impunity. The result has been incalculable numbers of human deaths, suffering, and destruction to many tens of thousands of innocent Arab people who when they resist in self-defense are called "terrorists."

Arrests, Torture and Other Forms of Cruel and Inhuman Treatment

At year end 2008, from 9000 - 12,000 or more Palestinians were in Israeli detention facilities (mostly inside Israel), including at least 248 children and 69 women - in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention that obligates an occupier to intern arrested persons inside the territory in question and only for just cause.

Israel continues to arrest anyone thought to represent a threat, including political leaders and ordinary civilian men, women and children. At year end 2008, at least 40 elected members of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) were imprisoned, mostly from Hamas' Change and Reform parliamentary bloc. Included are Dr. 'Aziz al-Dweik, PLC Speaker, and Dr. Mahmoud al-Ramahi, PLC Secretary. Many were tried and unjustly sentenced to months or years in prison for belonging to the wrong political party.

Torture and Ill-Treatment

International laws leave no ambiguity on torture. It's prohibited at all times, under all circumstances, against anyone for any reason, with no allowed exceptions ever. Article 13 of the Third Geneva Convention (on the Treatment of Prisoners of War) states:

Prisoners "must at all times be humanely treated. Any unlawful act or omission by the Detaining Power causing death or seriously endangering the health of a prisoner of war in its custody is prohibited...."

Third Geneva's Article 17 states:

"No physical or mental torture, nor any other form of coercion, may be inflicted on prisoners of war" for any reasons whatsoever.

Fourth Geneva's Article 27 states:

Protected persons under occupation "shall at all times be humanely treated, and shall be protected especially against all acts of (physical and mental) violence or threats thereof...."

Fourth Geneva's Articles 31 and 32 prohibit torture and other "measures of brutality...."

All four Geneva Conventions have a Common Article Three requiring all non-combatants to be treated humanely at all times.

Even Section 277 of Israel's 1977 Penal Law prohibits torture by providing criminal sanctions against its use. Its language is very similar to the UN Convention against Torture that bans force, violence, or threats against anyone for purposes of extracting a confession or to obtain information relating to an offense.

Nonetheless, torture and degrading treatment are official Israeli policy, freely practiced against most Palestinian detainees. PCHR cited numerous ways:

violent beatings and insults in detention and during interrogations;
blindfolding and hitting detainees, especially in the face and abdomen;
strangling to cause extreme breathing difficulties;
humiliations and insults;
forcibly removing hair and beards;
hanging detainees by their feet, then beating them on sensitive body parts such as the genital area;
bridging under which three interrogators carry a detainee using chains, with his or her face down;
sexually abusing detainees - in some cases raping them with iron bars;
Shabeh - the practice of tying prisoners so they can't sit, stand, or kneel, or tied to a chair with their arms pulled back for hours or days at a time; the pain and pressure on joints becomes excruciating;
handcuffing or other shackling tight enough to restrict circulation and inflict pain; also tying hands and legs with plastic chains to cause pain;
employing various stress positions, including:

(1) the forced "banana" one involving bending the back in a painful arch while the body is extended horizontally to the floor on a backless chair with arms and feet bound beneath it;

(2) forced "frog" crouching on tiptoes with cuffed hands behind the back accompanied by shoving or beating until detainees lose balance and fall forward or backward; and

(3) detainees made to stand on tiptoes for prolonged periods.

sleep deprivation for long hours; and
other abusive practices, clearly prohibited under international law and that no civilized society should practice, let alone routinely against most detainees - up to 80% or more by some estimates.

The Public Committee against Torture in Israel says that detainees are first examined by a doctor who certifies they're healthy enough to withstand harsh interrogation methods amounting to torture. The Israeli judiciary sanctions it, including the High Court and top government officials.

Abusive ill-treatment continues throughout detention during which necessary medical care is denied, access to legal counsel obstructed and limited, and family visitations severely restricted or not allowed.

Administrative Detention

Hundreds of innocent Palestinians are arrested and held without charge or trial in administrative detention - for up to 36 months, then indefinitely renewed. At year end 2008, it affected at least 900 Palestinians by IOF issued orders.

This practice violates Article 78 of the Fourth Geneva Convention that states:

"If the Occupying Power considers it necessary, for imperative reasons of security, to take safety measures concerning protected persons, it may, at the most, subject them to assigned residence or to internment (that) include(s) the right of appeal (to) be decided with the least possible delay."

Detention According to the "Illegitimate Combatants Law"

Following the IOF's summer 2005 Gaza redeployment, Israel enacted an "Illegitimate Combatant" law applying to protected Palestinian civilian prisoners to justify detaining them. It lets the IOF Chief of Staff issue an arrest warrant against anyone so designated.

It's the same idea as America's 2006 Military Commissions Act definition of an "unlawful enemy combatant," applied to anyone the president claims is "engaged in hostilities against the United States who is not a lawful enemy combatant." Neither the Israeli or US position has any legitimacy in international law.

Palestinian Detainee Deaths in Israeli Jails

In 2008, at least two occurred, likely from abuse and medical negligence. Detained Palestinians with chronic illnesses, like diabetes or heart conditions, deteriorate badly during prolonged incarcerations, especially when subjected to torture and other abusive treatment. The situation may be life threatening if proper medical care is denied or inadequate.

Settlement Activities and Attacks by Settlers against Palestinian Civilians and Property

Israeli settlements are illegal under international law. Expanding them compounds the problem. They continue nonetheless, and during 2008, the IOF and civil authorities, such as the Municipality of Jerusalem, Ministry of Housing, Ministry of Interior, and Higher Council of Organization, took bids for constructing 2400 West Bank housing units. Approval was also given for 6570 units in East Jerusalem and suburbs. In all, 8970 new units were approved and/or started in 2008, mostly in East Jerusalem on seized Palestinian land.

Confiscation of Palestinian Civilian Property

This longstanding practice continued throughout 2008 - for settlement expansions in violation of international law. Israel's High Court supports the practice, and in "PCHR's view....has turned (it) into a tool to legalize illegal Israeli measures and settlement activities in the OPT."

Judiazation of East Jerusalem

The practice remains ongoing - to replace an Arab population with a Jewish one. The Israeli government cut off the city from its Palestinian extension in the West Bank, expanded settlements inside and around the city, and used the Separation Wall to seize more land.

Throughout 2008, the Municipality of Jerusalem continued to demolish Palestinian homes under false claims of unlicensed construction - by people on their own land to make way for Jewish expansion.

Judaizing Arab East Jerusalem began by annexing it to Israel, confiscating Palestinian property, establishing Jewish settlements, building the Separation Wall, preventing new Palestinian home construction, and demolishing existing ones. The idea is to transform all of Jerusalem into a Jewish city with at most a small, marginalized and segregated Arab population denied all rights afforded Jews in hopes they'll leave voluntarily and make Israel's job easier.

Attacks by Israel Settlers against Palestinian Civilians and Property

Israeli settlers do it with near-impunity, including by shootings, running down civilians with vehicles, and destroying or damaging Palestinian property. In 2008, settlers killed five Palestinian civilians. Since September 2000, the total was 45.

"Attacks by Israeli settlers often take place before the eyes of IOF, which even protect them." Palestinian complaints get short shrift enough to encourage settlers to keep doing it, knowing they can get away with murder. In 2008, PCHR documented 170 settler attacks in the West Bank cities of Hebron, Nablus, Ramallah, Qalqilya, Jerusalem, Salfit, Bethlehem, and Jenin:

48 harassments;
36 against houses;
34 against farmers and shepherds and their property;
13 shootings;
seven against religious sites;
five involved vehicles running down Palestinians; and
27 others involved road closings, stone-throwing, and other abuses.

Israeli settlers openly carry (and use) automatic weapons like people in the West use cell phones.

Destruction of Houses and Other Civilian Property

For decades and throughout 2008, the IOF continued destroying Palestinian houses and property, especially in East Jerusalem. This constitutes a grave breach of Fourth Geneva's Article 53 that states:

"Any destruction by the Occupying Power of real or personal property belonging individually or collectively to private persons, or to the State, or to other public authorities, or to social or cooperative organizations, is prohibited, except where such destruction is rendered absolutely necessary by military operations."

In addition, Article 147 prohibits the "extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly."

Such attacks constitute illegal collective punishment as defined under Fourth Geneva's Article 33 that states: "No protected person may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed."

Nonetheless throughout 2008 and earlier, Israel wantonly and maliciously attacked civilian property, including homes, schools, industrial and commercial facilities, public buildings, and farmland using illegal pretexts as justification.

Last year, PCHR documented 216 houses destroyed prior to Operation Cast Lead - 107 in the West Bank and 109 in Gaza. Also, 680 houses were badly damaged and 3424 donums of agricultural land razed. Numerous other structures were also destroyed to make way for Jewish ones or in retaliation for claimed provocative Palestinian acts, either exaggerated or false.

The West Bank's Separation Wall

In June 2002, the Sharon government began constructing it as another form of land theft, harassment, and policy of containing Palestinians in isolated cantons under the false claim of security.

In the past seven years, construction proceeded inside the West Bank, rather than along the Green Line separating the Territory from Israel. On July 9, 2004, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled the construction violated international law. It ordered it halted, existing sections demolished, and for Palestinians to be compensated for harm done them. Israel ignored the ruling and continues new construction on annexed Palestinian land.

The Wall around Jerusalem

Construction in 2008 focused mainly around Jerusalem, according to Israeli Municipality of Jerusalem plans - building it along the city's municipal border. Work in the south, north, and east is part of a settlement project called the "Jerusalem envelope," running about 50 kilometers. In late December, prime minister Olmert ordered this portion completed by 2009 because it's "necessary for Israel's security." When finished, it will be 164.5 kilometers long, two-thirds of which was completed by year end. When completed, the entire Wall will exceed 700 kilometers.

Free Movement Restrictions Imposed on Palestinian Farmers

The IOF imposed severe restrictions on both sides of the Separation Wall, including limited gate opening hours that restrict farmers from free access to their land. They must also obtain permits to reach it on the other side of the barrier, and to get them, must be a registered owner - nearly impossible for many as most farmland is registered to deceased people, and their heirs don't all live in the West Bank or near the land in question.

As a result, thousands of Palestinians can't easily work their fields or market their crops when harvested. Farming is a major source of income in Palestinian communities along the Wall's route. Harming it has had an enormous detrimental affect to already beleaguered Palestinians, driving many more of them into poverty.

The Absence of Justice in Israeli Courts and Efforts to Prosecute Israeli War Criminals in International Ones

Justice for Palestinians in Israeli courts, especially military ones, is nearly impossible because of laws protecting Jews alone. "Through its long experience, PCHR has concluded that the Israeli judiciary is used to provide legal cover for the IOF to commit war crimes against Palestinian civilians, and that it is a means used to avoid resorting to the international justice directly under the pretext of the existence of a just Israeli national judiciary."

As a result, PCHR and other international legal and human rights organizations resort to "international legal means to prosecute Israeli war criminals." On June 24, 2008, PCHR filed a lawsuit at the National Court of Spain, the country's highest judicial council, against seven former senior Israeli military officials, all accused of committing war crimes in Gaza in July 2002. The Spanish Court accepted the case as a first step toward launching a formal prosecution.

In May 2008, PCHR worked with Dutch law firm Bohler Franken Koppe Wijngaarden (BFKW) to submit a complaint to the prosecutor's office asking that Ami Ayalon (currently Minister without Portfolio in Israel) be arrested and prosecuted in the Netherlands regarding the torture of Khaled al-Sharmi in 1999 - 2000 when he was Shin Bet Director, the Israeli General Security Service.

In October, PCHR petitioned the Court of Appeal in the Hague for an Order requiring the Prosecutor to start a criminal investigation and issue an extradition order or international arrest warrant. Getting any nation to challenge Israel is daunting at best. In all previous cases when arrest warrants were issued, executive bodies were so hesitant that no follow-through occurred in time, allowing suspects to flee to safe havens. PCHR and other committed groups continue pursuing justice anyway. It's just a matter of time before they and others succeed.

On June 30, 2009, a PCHR press release explained that the "the Spanish Appeals Court voted 14 - 4 in favor of closing the (National Court's) investigation into the" July 2002 attack. The resolution was voted on but not issued. It marks a "major setback in the pursuit of international justice and victims' rights....To date, neither the State of Israel nor individuals accused of committing war crimes have been brought" to justice. PCHR will appeal to the Spanish Supreme Court.

PCHR's Commitment to Human Rights and Social Justice

Throughout 2008 and currently, PCHR focused on the following issues:

stepped-up efforts to bring Israeli war criminals to justice before an international tribunal; as explained above, on June 24, 2008, PCHR filed a lawsuit at the National Court of Spain against seven senior Israeli military officials; also, an arrest application was submitted to Dutch authorities for Israel's former Shin Bet director;
cooperative efforts with civil society organizations over the deteriorating human rights situation in Occupied Palestine; in November, PCHR and other organizations co-hosted a human rights conference in Cairo - focused on extra-judicial assassinations and prosecuting Israeli war criminals; other efforts aim to restore Palestinian unity against a common adversary, getting political prisoners released, lifting Gaza's siege, ending the death penalty, and working for peace and Palestinian self-determination;
overall coordination and cooperation with other human rights organizations to make their combined efforts more effective;
overall cooperation with international civil society organizations; and
promoting activities related to gender issues that often get far too little attention.

PCHR also provides legal aid for Palestinian prisoners in spite of the enormous obstacles in doing it effectively given that Israel affords Palestinians no chance for justice. Still, PCHR represents them in court, visits them as able, submits complaints and appeals, and tries to stop torture and ensure medical aid and better detention conditions are provided. PCHR also seeks compensation for victims of injustice and represents them on numerous other issues such as denying them free movement, including for vital medical care.

Overall, PCHR and similar human rights organizations address the "essential (unresolved) elements of the Palestinian issue - the right to self-determination, the right to an independent Palestinian state with its capital in Jerusalem, the right of return for Palestinian refugees, and the right to remove illegal Israeli settlements from the Occupied Territories."

International laws affirm these rights, but for Palestinians they're unfulfilled. Peace, justice, and democratic freedom as well. As a result, PCHR and others keep working "to protect (and restore) Palestinian human rights from ongoing violations by the Israeli government and courts," and to demand that an uncaring world community address these issues.

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org at 10AM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on world and national issues. All programs are archived for easy listening.

Source

And the violence continues into 2009 -

A peaceful demonstration organized in Safa village, north of Hebron, in protest to attacks by Israeli settlers

Israeli Forces Continue Systematic Attacks against Palestinian Civilians and Property in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt) and Continue to Impose a Total Closure on the Gaza Strip

A mentally disabled Palestinian civilian was killed and another civilian was wounded by Israel forces in the Gaza Strip.
Israeli forces conducted 25 incursions into Palestinian communities in the West Bank, and two into the Gaza Strip.
Israeli forces arrested 21 Palestinian civilians, including two women and a child, in the West Bank.
Israeli naval troops continued to pursue and attack Palestinian fishers.
Israel has continued to impose a total closure on the oPt and have isolated the Gaza Strip from the outside world.
Israeli troops positioned at military checkpoints in the West Bank arrested 4 Palestinian civilians.
Israel has continued measures aimed at establish a Jewish majority in occupied east Jerusalem.
Israeli forces forced a Palestinian civilian to demolish his house in Sour Baher village near Jerusalem.
Israeli forces closed a development center in Jerusalem.
Israeli forces prevented the organization of a tourist show in Jerusalem.
Israel has continued settlement activities in the West Bank and Israeli settlers have continued to attack Palestinian civilians and property.
Israeli troops used force against peaceful protest against Israeli settlement activities in the West Bank.
Israeli settlers launched a series of attacks against Palestinian civilians and their property.

Source

WHO PROFITS: Exposing the Israeli Occupation Industry

2009-07-23T23:02:00.006-05:00

The Occupation Industry Research Project

This database reflects an on-going grassroots investigation effort by activists in The Coalition of Women for Peace, a leading Israeli feminist peace organization, dedicated to ending the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and the Golan Heights and reaching a just peace in Israel/ Palestine. In exposing companies and corporations involved in the occupation, we hope to promote a change in public opinion and corporate policies, leading to an end to the occupation.

Along with various political, religious and national interests, the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and the Golan Heights is fueled by corporate interests. Israeli companies and multinational corporations lead real estate deals, develop the Israeli infrastructure and settlements in the Palestinian occupied territories and the Golan Heights, contribute to the construction and operation of an ethnic separation system, including checkpoints, walls and roads, design and supply equipment and tools used in the control and repression of the civilian population under occupation.

Currently, we focus our attention on three main areas of corporate involvement in the occupation: The Settlement Industry, Economic Exploitation and Control of Population. At this stage in our project, we are not investigating the vast industry of military production and arms trade. The information we provide on the exploitation of Palestinian labor and production is also very limited. Other organizations (Kav LaOved, Adva Center, and The Alternative Information Center) have investigated these fields of involvement in depth, and wherever necessary, we show a link to their publications.

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Highlight on the Settlement Industry and current list of businesses and corporations involved:

Since the 1967 military occupation of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights, Israel has built in these occupied territories civilian colonies, or settlements, and encouraged Israeli citizens and industries to move into them. Presently there are 135 Israeli settlements in the occupied territories and dozens of additional “outposts” – settlements not yet officially recognized by the Israeli government. These house over 562,000 Jewish Israeli residents: 282,000 in the West Bank (excluding Jerusalem), 260,000 in neighborhoods built in Arab Jerusalem or annexed to Jerusalem, and 20,000 in the Golan Heights.

Settlements' Products

Israeli industrial zones within the occupied territories hold hundreds of companies, ranging from small businesses serving the local Israeli settlers to large factories which export their products worldwide. Several settlements, especially in the Jordan Valley and the Golan Heights, produce agricultural goods, such as fruits and flowers, and sell them in Israel and abroad.

Settlement production benefits from low rents, special tax incentives, lax enforcement of environmental and labor protection laws and other governmental supports. Palestinians employed in these industrial zones work under severe restrictions of movement or organization, and with hardly no governmental protections, this many times results in exploitative employment practices and labor rights violations.

The origin of exported settlement products is often intentionally obscured. Companies hold marketing addresses within Israel, or market their products under a label which mixes their products with products from within Israel.

Abadi Bakery ("Mizrahiot" Cookies)Ability Computer and Software Industries AdaFresh Adanim Tea Adumim Food Additives Afic Printing Products Agrexco Agricultural Export Company Ahava Dead Sea Laboratories Ahdut Factory for Tehina Halva and Sweets Almog Tradex Aluminum Construction C.L. Israel Amir Marketing and Investment in Agriculture Amnon and Tamar (Pyramid Herbal Seasonings)Apax Partners Arava Export Growers Aridan Printing Productions Aroma Nama Arza Wine Cellars T.R.Z.Assa Abloy Atid Packaging Avgol Nonwoven Industries Ayelet Barkan B. Gaon Holdings B.R.B. Industries, BarBur Laundry Bar Mazon Produce Barkan Wineries Beigel and Beigel Ben Hasharon Better and Different Blue Square Israel Caesarea Carpets California Shayish and Carpenters Carmel Carpets Carmel Holdings (E.L.) (formerly Beitili)Carmel Wineries Cemex Chen Eastern Industries Chic Design Ltd. G&o Harel Citybook Services Clima Israel Aluminum D.N.M Technical Equipment and Tools Danshar Holdings Distek E.P.R. Systems Eastern Lines Eden Springs Eitan and Inon Herbs El Ez Elyahu Zalman & Sons Metal Tubes Industries Elyakim Ben Ari Emilia Development (O.F.G.)Enter Net Computers and Equipment Ewyg Advanced Technology Extal FiberTech Field Produce Formula Systems Fried Brothers Feather Industries Fun Bak Furniture Designing Doron General Mills (Pillsbury)Golan Heights Winery Golden Ryd Dyl Greenkote (Summet Hitech Coatings)Gush Etzion Wines H. Wagshal (H. Vagshal)Ha'alonim Marble 2000 (Haalonim)Hacormim Vineyard Hadiklaim - Israel Date Growers� Cooperative Hamashbir Holdings Hanson Israel (formerly: Pioneer Concrete Israel)HeidelbergCement Hishtil Hofrey Hasharon Housing and Construction Holding Co.Idan Camping IDB Group Imagestore Systems Intercosma Israel Weg Engineering Israphot Industries Jordan Plains Development Corporation Jordan River Herbs Kerur Habikha Keter Plastic (Keter Group)Kfar Giladi Quarries Koralek Almog Sifting Machines and Production Systems Land of Choice Olive Oil (Meshek Achiya)Lithotech Medical Malam Team Mapal Plastic Products Matrix IT Maya Foods, The Jerusalem Spice of Life Medan General Contracting Earth Roads and Quarries Meitarim Quarry Menachem Wagshal Meytag High Tech Ventures Mofet B'Yehuda Mordechai Binyamin and Sons Earth Works Mortan Marketing and Trade Mul-T-Lock (formerly Rav Bariach)Neetuv Management and Development Co. New Noga Light Oppenheimer Manufacturing and Marketing Palphot Pereg United Industries, Otzma Pereg Plasto Polish (Barkan)Plustic Solutions Ramat Hagolan Dairies Readymix Industries Renaissan Rolbit Electronic Thermostats and Controllers RonoPolidan Packaging Rosentoys, Buba-Li Industries Royalife (formerly: Royalnight)Salit (Mishor Edomim) Quarry and Plant Shalgal (Food)Shamir Salads Shamrock Holding Shapir Civil and Marine Engineering Shomron Barkalit Tires Shufersal Si Kirsum Soda Club Spiral Glass Spray Metal Coatings Spyro Plastics Star Night Technologies Supergum Industries T.A.C. Accessory Corporation Israel Tayar Doors Teltone Electronics Tempo Beer Industries Tescom Software Systems Testing The Archivists The Trendlines Group Tip Top Toys Star Tishbi Estate Winery (Habaron Wine Cellars)Tnuva Top Greenhouses TopTrans Translation Services Tzarfati Metals Industries Unilever Villar International Yardeni Locks Holdings Yatir Quarry Zriha Hlavin Industries

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WE ARE ALL CRIMINALS NOW

2009-07-23T22:55:00.005-05:00

So, how do you like your handcuffs then? Soft and fuzzy or traditional steel?

Good morning fellow Criminals! Yes, that’s right, we are all criminals now claims Israel. Prepare to be prosecuted, hunted down like dogs and silenced. This is all due to the recent and no doubt Zionist arm twisting poxy ruling by the European Court of Human Rights that states: “Boycotting Israel is Illegal” There’s much more after this snippet below

European court: Israel boycotts are unlawful discrimination

On Thursday, the Council of Europe's European Court of Human Rights upheld a French ruling that it was illegal and discriminatory to boycott Israeli goods, and that making it illegal to call for a boycott of Israeli goods did not constitute a violation of one's freedom of expression.

The Council of Europe is based in Strasbourg, has some 47 member states and is independent of the European Union. The court is made up of one judge from each member state, and the rulings of the court carry moral weight throughout Europe.
"It is now clear that in every country in Europe there is a precedent for calling boycotts of Israeli goods a violation of the law,”

We Are Criminals, Pick Your Handcuffs NOW. So after getting past the insanity of this poxy ruling, which, in essence is a ruling that attempts to tell people they “must” support a racist Apartheid rogue state no less, I am left with several questions. If Israel makes the case that “boycotts” are discriminatory, then “Why Oh Why” did the Simon Wiesenthal Center have no problems calling for a boycott of France? Along with the American Jewish Congress, better get some handcuffs for them as well no? Pot-Kettle-Black scenario, see here:

Ooooh and looky here, the Zionist supporting mouth piece for Israel “Faux News” also calls for a boycott of France as well:

Renewed call to boycott France
By Bill O'Reilly

When are we Americans going to wise up? How many times does the French government, led by Jacques Chirac. Have to put all of us in danger before we get the picture? So I am again calling for all responsible people not to buy French products, not to travel to France, and to contact the French embassy in Washington, and let them know Chirac's conduct is unacceptable. And so, the boycott of France is on. Bumper stickers are available on www.billoreilly.com. Get a bunch of them. Spread the word

YES, SPREAD THE WORD, arrest O'Reilly NOW and all his fellow Israeli supporting cohorts.

There's more.....

And Fox News also calls for boycott of Spain here and video HERE of O'Reilly and his Zionist Pal Dennis Miller. Ah, but THOSE boycotts are "A-Ok" they're not against the Apartheid state of Israel.

What about America?? Yup, there’s a Boycott America Campaign, several of them:

CLIMATE CHANGE BOYCOTT AMERICA

and another here, here, here, and here.

And bringing up the rear we also have THESE Countries:

Boycott Canada and Boycott Italy and Boycott China and Boycott Iran and here and Boycott Libya and Boycott Africa and Boycott Russia

And of course there is South Africa boycott which the UN even endorsed See here:

United Nations
In 1980, the United Nations passed a resolution urging "all academic and cultural institutions to terminate all links with South Africa".

So there appears to be no problem boycotting non-Jewish racists obviously, but Israeli Zionist Racists are not only exempt from War Crimes investigations, UN Resolutions, now they are exempt from being boycotted by rational decent people the world over.

So the little Racist Apartheid Zionists are celebrating today, wringing their hands, giggling and plotting which site and organization they want to go after first on their “Happy Hit List.” Oh, and let’s not forget about all the Universities either, all those Professors will be forced to be nice to Israel now, and grace them with their presence (Don’t forget to bow to “God’s Chosen” when you are ordered to come) But, not so fast all you delusional happy Zio-Nazis, there are a few tiny problems.

It is 100% Obvious that this boycott of Israel is having a huge effect; otherwise the Zio-Nazi’s would not be expending so much energy into fighting it. So, fear not good people, they “may” be able to get a poxy ruling, but what they cannot get and control is our “free will” Last time I checked we still owned our own minds. So, people should continue this boycott, DON’T buy anything with bar code that begins with 729, and check the labels on everything. Avoid any and everything “Israeli” including books, movies, and all other goods and companies. They cannot MAKE us buy from them, and they cannot MAKE us support their evil rogue statelet. So, each time you shop send them a little message. Tell them they don’t own you and they cannot have YOUR Money!

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IT WASN'T MUSLIMS!

2009-05-19T20:20:00.003-05:00

With a peer-reviewed scientific journal having published "loaded gun" (i.e. unreacted nano-thermite) evidence finally proving beyond doubt that World Trade Center Buildings 1, 2 and 7 were brought down in a series of controlled demolitions, here are a few more facts to consider.

It wasn't Muslims in an Afghan cave who had access to highly energetic nano-thermites; it was the US military and government scientists such as those connected with NIST.

It wasn't Muslims who ran a construction company that was awarded a $124 million contract for construction of the Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) headquarters in Washington, DC, which oversees the Indian Head Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC-IH), which was described during the 1990s as the "National Center for Energetics", the military's term for "explosives work", and as of 1999-2000 the "only reliable source of aluminum nanopowders in the United States"; it was Tom Leppert who was CEO of Turner Construction as of 9/11/01, and who even writes parts of Presidential speeches.

It wasn't Muslims who ran a construction company that had supervised the 2000 demolition of the Seattle Kingdome, participated in the post 9/11 collection and disposal of the steel wreckage of the WTC towers, and carried out extensive renovations throughout the World Trade Center complex right up to the morning of 9/11 including fireproofing upgrades on the floors that were struck by planes and subsequently "failed", when the steel had already been certified to ASTM E119 by Universal Laboratories, and, in tests sponsored by NIST on corresponding floor assemblies subjected to greater heat exposure and protected with less fireproofing than was the case at the WTC, the test specimens "were able to sustain the maximum design load" without collapsing for as long as the tests were run (2 to 3 1/2 hours); it was Tom Leppert who was CEO of Turner Construction as of 9/11/01 and received a Torch of Conscience award from the American Jewish Congress.

It wasn't Muslims who trained their cameras on the World Trade Center Towers prior to the first aircraft impact, who danced and celebrated with high fives prior to the second impact as most onlookers still believed it had been a terrible accident rather than terrorism, and who were caught with foreign passports, $4,700 in cash hidden in a sock, maps highlighting certain places in the city, and a van that tested positive for traces of explosives; it was Israelis Sivan Kurzberg, Paul Kurzberg, Yaron Shmuel, Oded Ellner, and Omer Marmari, several of whom have been confirmed as Mossad agents, as part of their job in "documenting the event".

It wasn't Muslims who were caught on 9/11/01 operating in teams with vans full of explosives, including one team who attempted to blow up the George Washington Bridge with a truck packed with tons of explosives, and another who blew up a van between 6th and 7th on King Street with a mural painted of a remote controlled airplane diving into New York and blowing up; it was Israelis, which is why the authorities did their best to ignore and bury these reports which included a suspected van bomb driven into the WTC basement and exploded to weaken the structure.

It wasn't Muslims who were caught shortly after midnight on May 7, 2002 very close to the Whidbey Island Naval Air Station, Oak Harbor, Wash., (where the Navy conducts explosive ordnance training for bomb disposal mobile units to the consternation of local marine life) with a rental truck that tested positive for TNT and RDX plastic explosives; it was Israelis whose cover story was of "delivering furniture" but regarded by authorities as dubious because of the early morning hour, and the authorities' subsequent claim that the dog's reaction and initial tests for explosives were wrong is so full of holes that it merely demonstrates the power of the Israeli lobby.

It wasn't Muslims who were in New York on 9/11 and in London on the morning of the 7/7 attacks; it was Benjamin Netanyahu and Rudy Giuliani.

It wasn't Muslims who received advance warning of the London 7/7 attacks; it was Benjamin Netanyahu and the Mossad.

It wasn't Muslims who provided two hours' advance warning of an attack on the World Trade Center via an instant messaging company based in Herzliya; it was Israelis.

It wasn't a Muslim who fled the US on September 14, 2001; it was Dominick Suter of "Urban Moving Systems" who fled to Israel.

It wasn't over a hundred Muslims who, from around January 2000 to September 2001, posed as "art students" and attempted to penetrate US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) offices and other federal buildings including 36 sensitive Department of Defense (DoD) sites, were caught with diagrams of the interior of federal buildings and photographs of federal agents and often evaded security by entering through back doors or parking garages, and even visited the homes of senior federal officials but not those of their neighbors; it was Israelis, none of whom were "art students" but many of whom had backgrounds in Israeli military intelligence. Not surprisingly, the Press went for a limited hangout by trying to pretend the Israelis were merely shadowing "Arab hijackers" and either failed to pass on information, or "it was not treated seriously", the old canard about "intelligence failure". The operations of the Israeli fake "art students" is well documented, including plenty of names and even descriptions. An unusually large number of these Israelis were located in Irving, Dallas, TX (p.23, previous link), which is about ten miles west of Tom Leppert's Alva Court home, which is barely more than a mile north of the Dallas home that George W. Bush moved into after leaving office.

It isn't Muslim countries that have a massive spy ring in the USA capable of tapping into much of the telecoms network and using information obtained to blackmail Americans; it is Israel.

It wasn't Muslims who received advance warning on Monday September 10, 2001, against flying the next day; it was San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, and a group of top Pentagon officials.

It wasn't Muslims who acquired a 99-year lease on the World Trade Center's Twin Towers, Buildings Four and Five and approximately 400,000 square feet of retail space, and insured for billions of dollars against terror attacks a mere six weeks before terror attacks did in fact occur, and then employed (to press for the insurance claim) a 'structural engineer' who misleadingly asserts that steel loses half its strength at "400 degrees"; it was - in a deal negotiated by Lewis Eisenberg of the Port Authority - Benjamin Netanyahu's (and Ariel Sharon's and Ehud Barak's) friend Larry Silverstein and his partner Australian billionaire and "Holocaust survivor" Frank Lowy who fought "in the Jewish underground", was embroiled in a high-level bank corruption scandal with Israeli Premier Ehud Olmert and found to be making payments to Lord (Michael Abraham) Levy who was arrested several times in relation to a "cash for honors" scandal, Levy being a "tennis partner" and advisor of Tony Blair.

It isn't Muslims who have a reputation for perpetrating arson scams in order to claim off insurance companies as evidenced by any colloquial use of the term "Muslim lightning"; it is Jews as evidenced by the recognized term "Jewish lightning".

It wasn't Muslims who normally breakfasted at the Windows on the World restaurant on the 106th and 107th floors of the North Tower, but by some bizarre coincidence did not happen to be there on 9/11 and were thus spared the fate of occupants on that tragic day (none of whom escaped from the floors above the aircraft impact at 8:46 AM); it was Larry Silverstein who was spared due to having a "dermatologist's appointment", an event which also spared his two children who worked at Silverstein Properties.

It wasn't a Muslim who went on TV within hours of the attacks to tell everyone that "It... certainly has the fingerprints of somebody like bin Laden" and the World Trade Center had collapsed because of "the velocity of the plane" and "intense heat probably weakened the structure as well", and who reportedly on that very day advised the White House to take Cipro, an effective antibiotic against anthrax, seven days before the commencement of an anthrax letters terror campaign targeted at Democratic U.S. Senators and news media offices, who on 9/11/01 was a managing director of the crisis and consequence management group at Kroll Associates, who was an advisor to the Council of Foreign Relations (CFR) regarding "epidemiological surveillance" and national security advisor at the National Institute of Health (NIH), and who gave his 'friend' John O'Neill a job as Head Of Security at the World Trade Center; it was Jerome Hauer.

It wasn't Muslims who carried out a terror campaign mailing letters containing anthrax spores that had their electrostatic charge altered so that they would disperse more readily, anthrax that was traced to the weapons grade Ames strain originating at the US Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) at Fort Detrick, neither was it the FBI's final "suspect" Roman Catholic Bruce Ivins, who, unlike the true perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks, had no motive to target news media and Opposition Senators and thereby scare them into uncritical acceptance of the "Arab hijackers" conspiracy theory. Ivins died of an overdose and alleged "suicide" in July 2008 after the FBI gave up attempting to pin the blame on Steven Hatfill because there was not a scintilla of evidence against him; a logical suspect is Philip M. Zack who left Fort Detrick under a cloud in December 1991 after having headed a clique calling itself the "Camel Club" that was racially harassing Egyptian-born Dr. Ayaad Assaad. Zack was found by a 1992 inquiry to have been caught on surveillance camera being let into a Fort Detrick lab building at 8:40 p.m. on Jan. 23, 1992 apparently by Dr. Marian Rippy, a lab pathologist and close friend of Zack. The inquiry also found someone had been in a lab late at night secretly conducting unauthorised research, evidently on anthrax believed to include the Ames strain. Nearly ten years on, during the week between 9/11 and the commencement of the anthrax campaign, the FBI received an anonymous letter attempting to frame Dr. Assaad as a "bioterrorist". The anthrax letters seemed contrived so as to appear to have been written by a Muslim, and a New York Times writer told of a "Mr. Z." who failed some FBI polygraph tests and was once caught with a girlfriend at Fort Detrick "surrounded only by blushing germs".

It wasn't a Muslim who was claimed to have been killed on the alleged American Airlines "Flight 77", to have lived at Silver Spring, Maryland (as did a certain Rabbi Dr. Dov Zakheim), and to have worked on top-secret "deep-black" projects at the Indian Head Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC-IH), a "renowned leader in energetics" which operates an "Energetics Manufacturing Technology Center", carries out "advanced research in energetic systems" and "absorbed the function of the closed Naval Ordnance Laboratory, formerly in White Oak, MD" which is a couple miles from Silver Spring; it was William E. Caswell.

It wasn't Muslims who were claimed to have been killed on the alleged "Flight 77" and who worked for government or defense, particularly the Navy; it was John Yamnicky who, strangely, for the first time did not tell his daughter that he was going on travel, and who, like William Caswell, had worked for the Navy on top-secret "black" projects. Others included Charles Burlingame, a former Navy fighter pilot who used to work in the section of the Pentagon that was hit and who had formulated a response for the eventuality of an airliner being flown into the Pentagon and whose daughter Wendy subsequently died in a "suspicious fire" at a 50-story high-rise in New Jersey in December 2006, Wilson "Bud" Flagg, a retired American Airlines pilot and Navy Admiral, Stanley Hall, an expert in anti-radar technology and a director of program management at Raytheon, Bryan Jack, a senior executive and top budget analyst who worked at the Pentagon, Chandler Keller, a Boeing propulsion engineer, Dong Lee, a Boeing engineer who worked for their Integrated Defense Systems and who had worked for the National Security Agency (NSA) for 14 years, Barbara Olson, CNN commentator and wife of the US Solicitor General who claimed to have received cell phone calls from "Flight 77", Ruben Ornedo, a Boeing propulsion / satellite communications engineer, Robert Penniger, an electrical engineer with BAE Systems, and another dozen alleged "Flight 77 passengers" who were linked to defense and government who, we are told, all just happened to be on this unusually low occupancy flight. These people, well loved and respected as honest, decent heroes, are the very sort of characters whose work could have been horrifically exploited without their knowledge, and whom the 9/11 perpetrators would need to eliminate to prevent them speaking out after the attacks.

It wasn't Muslims who profited by speculating on airline and insurance stocks in advance of 9/11; it was Israelis.

It wasn't Muslims who concocted a hoax about pork-swilling, money-eschewing, celibate, truthful, courageous, pro-animal rights, "devout Jews" who were "suicide hijackers / pilots", almost half of whom later turned up alive and well; it was Jews who concocted a hoax about drinking, gambling, strip joint-frequenting, womanizing, "devout Muslims" who were "suicide hijackers / pilots", almost half of whom later turned up alive and well.

It wasn't a Muslim who was a former unit team leader in an elite special forces unit and whose father was a senior aide, secretary and pallbearer to a man who in 1937 was commander of the Irgun Tzvai Leumi, a Jewish terrorist organization responsible for atrocities such as the King David Hotel bombing; it was Benjamin Netanyahu.

It wasn't a Muslim who was the mentor of Benjamin Netanyahu's father Benzion and who wrote a column in the Revisionist Zionist magazine Doar Hayom under the title "From the Notebook of a Fascist", praising Mussolini and referring to one-time commander of the Irgun Ze'ev (Vladimir) Jabotinsky as "our Duce"; it was Abba Ahimeir the founder of Revisionist Maximalism, a Jewish fascist ideology.

It wasn't Muslim terrorists who plotted to assassinate British foreign secretary Ernest Bevin; it was Jewish terrorists.

It wasn't Muslims who orchestrated, and whose operatives were caught red-handed in, a failed false-flag terrorist campaign in Egypt; it was Israel.

It wasn't Muslims who attacked the USS Liberty killing 34 Americans, and had the US President saying "I don't give a damn if every man drowns and the ship sinks. I don't want to embarrass our allies"; it was Israel.

It wasn't Muslims who were evacuated "apparently due to a specific security threat" in advance of the Amman, Jordan terror attacks on November 9, 2005 (9/11 by Israeli and European calendars), which included a blast at the Radisson hotel that was known to have emanated from a bomb hidden in a false ceiling, even though the official story held that it was really the work of "suicide bombers" and therefore by some bizarre coincidence the ceiling bomb must have been placed there previously by someone else; it was Israelis who were evacuated in advance of these attacks in which there were no Jewish casualties, most of the dead were Jordanian Sunni Muslims, two Israeli casualties were both Arabs, and five Palestinians died including Major-General Bashir Nafeh, the head of military intelligence in the West Bank.

It wasn't Muslims who were caught and arrested inside the Mexican Congress chamber on October 10, 2001 in possession of guns, grenades, dynamite, detonators and wiring while posing as "press photographers"; it was Mossad agent Salvador Guersson Smecke and Israeli illegal immigrant Saur Ben Zvi at the very time that Zionists would obtain maximum benefit from a false-flag terror attack that would mobilize support for the war on "Muslim terrorists" in Afghanistan that had been launched only three days previously.

It wasn't Muslims who were convicted and jailed for six months in 2004 for fraudulently attempting to obtain a New Zealand passport in the name of a tetraplegic man; it was Mossad agents Uriel Kelman and Eli Cara who were seeking to create a false identity for Zev Barkan.

It wasn't Muslims who claimed to know the identity of "suicide hijackers" Abdulaziz al-Omari and Saeed al-Ghamdi when, since individuals with the exact same names and other personal details such as birth date, place and occupation subsequently turned up alive and well, the population of Saudi Arabia in 1975 was 7,180,000 and even given a high annual birth rate of 30 per 1,000 and ignoring infant mortality the daily birth rate was only 590 and so it is highly improbable that individuals would share the exact same name, birth date, place and occupation, al-Omari's passport had been stolen in 1995 when his apartment was burgled in Denver, Colorado (a state where Mossad agents have been active), and only utter cretins would steal the identities of people with a different appearance but having their exact same name, place, date of birth and occupation, ergo those hypothetical "suicide hijackers" would have had entirely different names; it was the FBI who published a list claiming that the 9/11 perpetrators included Abdulaziz al-Omari and Saeed al-Ghamdi in addition to several others who had turned up alive and well, and even though the FBI admitted that some hijackers may have used stolen identities and that there is "no legal proof to prove the identities of the suicidal hijackers," they denied having misidentified the alleged "suicide hijackers" and refused to change the names, photographs or backgrounds on their list - albeit obfuscating and trying to cover themselves by including multiple spellings and aliases.

It wasn't Muslims who were behind a failed coup in Turkey; it was crypto-Jew and Mossad agent pseudo-Rabbi Tuncay Guney, who fled to Canada in 2004, and who in 2001 lived in New Jersey towns that were centers of activity for Mossad Urban Moving Systems operatives.

It wasn't Muslims who set up an "al Qaeda cell" in Palestine; it was the Israeli Mossad.

It wasn't Muslims who had established a reputation for having the capability to stage false-flag terror attacks, i.e., to target U.S. forces and make it look like the act of a third party, prior to 9/11; it was the Mossad.

It wasn't a Muslim who infiltrated the Pentagon and betrayed his country of birth by selling classified documents to another country that were then traded to the USSR; it was convicted spy Jonathan Pollard whose treachery resulted in stolen nuclear secrets being passed on to the USSR with Israel as the paying intermediary.

It wasn't Muslims who were running an exercise commencing at 9:00 a.m. on the morning of 9/11 involving a plane crashing into a tower; it was officials at the National Reconnaissance Office, Chantilly, VA.

It wasn't a Muslim who, in response to the question "Do the orders still stand?" regarding the response - or more precisely, the lack of response - to an aircraft that was rapidly homing in on the Pentagon and ten miles out after both of the Twin Towers had already been hit by planes more than half an hour previously, whipped his neck around and replied "Of course the orders still stand. Have you heard anything to the contrary?"; it was Dick Cheney.

It wasn't a Muslim who was CEO of a company that made remote control "Flight Termination Systems" that could electronically hijack in-flight aircraft and steer them into targets by means of a "Command Transmitter System"; it was Rabbi Dov Zakheim.

It wasn't a Muslim who, well aware that a percentage of trillions of dollars is still hundreds of billions of dollars, took a position as Comptroller of the Pentagon in May 2001 when it was already public knowledge that the Pentagon's accounting systems were in complete disarray with $6.9 trillion of "adjustments" having been required in an attempt to make the figures add up, and with no receipts for $2.3 trillion of these hard to track changes on non-integrated computer systems and antiquated paperwork that could be readily taken out by a missile or plane strike on the relevant auditing section at the Pentagon, and who subsequently delivered a commemorative sermon on the Pentagon lawn to hundreds of co-religionists from 40 countries six months after such a terror strike did in fact occur killing at least 34 budget analysts / accountants / financial experts; it was Rabbi Dov Zakheim.

It wasn't a Muslim who was at a breakfast meeting with Donald Rumsfeld when the first plane hit the WTC, and was at the Army Navy Country Club "when the plane that hit the Pentagon came right over the top of the Army Navy Club and bounced down the hill and hit the side of the Pentagon"; it was Thomas E. White, who is linked to the Enron fraud, who participated in JINSA trips to Israel, e.g. with his wife Susan in 1997, and who was sworn in as Secretary of the Army on May 31, 2001 which is 27 days after George W Bush appointed Rabbi Dov Zakheim as Undersecretary of Defense and Comptroller of the Pentagon, both White and Zakheim having been placed by Bush at the Pentagon where more than $2 trillion of transactions had no receipts and Pentagon finances were vulnerable to a "terror attack" that would target the appropriate auditing section.

It wasn't Muslims who in 2000 co-authored a document which called for a "new Pearl Harbor"; it was Roger Barnett, Alvin Bernstein, Stephen Cambone, Eliot Cohen, Devon Gaffney Cross, Thomas Donnelly, David Epstein, David Fautua, Dan Goure, Donald Kagan, Fred Kagan, Robert Kagan, Robert Killebrew, William Kristol, Mark Lagon, James Lasswell, I. Lewis Libby, Robert Martinage, Phil Meilinger, Mackubin Owens, Steve Rosen, Gary Schmitt, Abram Shulsky, Michael Vickers, Barry Watts, Paul Wolfowitz, and Rabbi Dov Zakheim.

It wasn't Muslims who had a motive for employing a "Flight Termination System" to take control of EgyptAir Flight 990 - a Boeing 767 - on October 31, 1999 (after a bizarre coincidence in which "air crash victims grief counselor" Ed McLaughlin of the Family Enterprise Institute was the only person to board the ill-fated plane in Los Angeles and get off at New York), send it plunging into the Atlantic 60 miles south of Nantucket killing all 217 on board, none of whom were Israelis but 33 of the casualties were Egyptian army officers including two Air Force brigadier generals and two army major generals, and promote the concept of "Muslim suicide pilots" to a gullible public; it was Jews who would have needed to conduct a trial run of electronically hijacking in-flight Boeing aircraft for their imminent false-flag terror operation that was to be blamed on "Muslim suicide pilots / hijackers", with the EgyptAir Flight 990 "inquiry" being overseen by Zionist Jew Bernard Loeb who had Jewish translators transcribe the cockpit recordings, and the FBI conducting a character assassination to smear the alleged "suicidal" co-pilot.

It wasn't Muslims who wrote in 1998 of a "transforming event" rather like "Pearl Harbor"; it was John Deutsch, Ashton Carter and Philip Zelikow.

It wasn't a Muslim who served as Executive Director of the 9/11 Commission, whose expertise and job entailed the creation and maintenance of public myths or "presumptions", and who confirmed that the Iraq war had been for Israel's benefit; it was Philip Zelikow.

It wasn't Muslims who published a paper in 1996 entitled A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm, which mentioned "removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq" and introduced the concept of pre-emptive strikes for which some phony pretext such as halting drug money or striking counterfeiting infrastructure or "weapons of mass destruction" could be devised that Americans would sympathise with; it was The Institute for Advanced Strategic & Political Studies (IASPS) of Jerusalem and Washington which, for new Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu, discussed how such a policy would benefit Israel.

It wasn't a Muslim who, in a 1995 book, predicted that "if the West doesn’t wake up to the suicidal nature of militant Islam, the next thing you will see is militant Islam is bringing down the World Trade Center"; it was Benjamin Netanyahu.

It wasn't Muslim security officials who, in 1991, inspected the garage of a Muslim shipping company in the World Trade Center and concluded that the WTC garage was vulnerable to a car bomb, two years before the WTC garage was in fact hit by a car bomb and the FBI were aware of the plot yet let it go ahead killing six people and injuring more than a thousand, and ten years before the WTC was demolished one week after the very same shipping company had moved out of the WTC; it was Israeli security officials and an Israeli shipping company.

It wasn't Muslims who paid Ali al-Jarrah more than $300,000 for services rendered, i.e., posing as a "supporter" of the Palestinian cause while betraying his country to an enemy state, and who was a cousin of Ziad al-Jarrah who was alleged to be one of nineteen 9/11 "suicide hijackers"; it was Israel that paid this Mossad asset.

It wasn't Muslims who 1) broadcast the pilot episode on March 4, 2001 of The Lone Gunmen TV series, an episode about a plot by a secret cabal within the US government to electronically hijack by remote control a Boeing heading for Boston and divert it to crash into the World Trade Center 2) said in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks that no one had ever conceived of aircraft being used by terrorists as missiles to target buildings; it was 1) Fox TV, owned by Rupert Murdoch, a long-time friend of Benjamin Netanyahu 2) National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice / acting Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard Myers / President George W. Bush / Vice President Dick Cheney / White House spokesman Ari Fleischer.

It wasn't a Muslim who said he'd seen the (first) plane hit the (North) Tower and reckoned it must have been "one terrible pilot" and "a horrible accident" before going into a classroom and subsequently being informed of the second impact when the first impact was not broadcast live on TV; it was George W. Bush.

It wasn't Muslims who, on Tuesday, October 2 through Friday, October 5, 2001: 1) met with, and 2) received $3 million in gifts for "funds for victims" from Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifah Al-Thani, the Emir of Qatar who started the Al Jazeera channel in 1996 with a $150 million grant, the channel which broadcasts audios and videos purporting to be of "Osama bin Laden" aka Emmanuel Goldstein; it was: 1) George W. Bush, Dick Cheney (an "old friend") - Cheney also met the Emir on October 20, 2001 to discuss the "Osama" interviews, Rudy Giuliani, Colin Powell, Paul Wolfowitz, and Richard Myers 2) Rudy Giuliani, Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Myers.

It wasn't Muslims who fabricated a fairy story about Pfc. Jessica Lynch being ambushed, stabbed, shot, bravely continuing to shoot Iraqis, being abused, raped, and held captive in a hospital by Iraqi guards, and later rescued by elite US forces; it was "unnamed US officials" who lied, since in fact there was no "rescue", Lynch's gun had jammed with sand, she was being cared for by the Iraqis after being injured in a car crash, she had no "bullet holes" or "knife wounds", the hospital was not "under guard", and doctors had even tried to return Lynch to US forces themselves.

It wasn't Muslims who conspired to invade a defenseless nation by lying about "weapons of mass destruction" ("WMDs") when they had already made up their minds to invade for "regime change", resulting in excess Iraqi deaths estimated at 655,000 to one million, the displacement of more than four million, the sacrifice of thousands of troops and throwing away of $3 trillion to no avail save for enriching a few war criminals and profiteers to the tune of billions of dollars in this proxy war for Israel; it was George W. Bush and Tony Blair.

It wasn't a Muslim who ordered aides to plan for striking Iraq barely five hours after the Pentagon was attacked on 9/11; it was Donald Rumsfeld.

It wasn't Muslims who ordered 250 police to smash their way into a house in Forest Gate, London, in the middle of the night and arrest two brothers after shooting one of them in the shoulder, on the basis of intelligence said to be from a "reliable", single source regarding a conspiracy involving a "cyanide bomb", with the brothers being released without charge several days later before it was subsequently revealed that the source was a man with an IQ of 69 who was already in jail on a terror conviction; it was Jewish supremacist lackeys MI5, Tony Blair and John Reid.

It isn't Muslim countries that have hundreds of nuclear warheads and submarines equipped with cruise missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads with a 900-mile range; it is Israel.

It isn't Muslims that have a powerful political lobby capable of extorting vast sums; it is Israel.

It wasn't a Muslim who boasted "We Muslims control America, and the Americans know it"; it was Ariel Sharon who boasted "We, the Jewish people, control America, and the Americans know it".

It isn't Muslims who fake phony "hate crimes" against themselves, such as vandalising their own cars or graves, or poisoning their dogs and defacing their houses with swastikas, or cutting their clothes and drawing swastikas on their stomachs; it is Jews.

It wasn't Muslims who took control of The New York Times in 1896, or who indeed own and control much of the mainstream media today; it was and is Jews.

It isn't a Muslim country that crushes peace protesters to death with bulldozers or shoots them, or shells a picnicking family on a beach (and then refuses to own up) when it wants to launch a war within the next three weeks, or warns civilians to flee after blowing up bridges so it can target them like sitting ducks, or shoots at Red Cross ambulances or UN observers after promising they would be safe, or bombs a power station so that more than ten thousand tonnes of crude oil leaks into the Mediterranean as a "collective punishment"; it is Israel.

It isn't Muslims who routinely employ weapons such as phosphorus shells to inflict grave and horrific injuries on civilians, and who deliberately fire more than a million cluster bomblets of which 40% fail to detonate on impact and 90% are employed in the final three days before a ceasefire so they can "get them all in while the going is good"; it is Israel.

It isn't a Muslim nation that holds the world record for defying UN resolutions; it is Israel.

It wasn't Muslims who ganged up on a handicapped Jew for hiking on his own land, beat him with clubs, dragged him along the ground, tied him to a power pole and continued to beat and kick him as Muslim soldiers did nothing to stop it and police merely advised the thugs to pour water on the victim's head to wash away the blood before journalists and photographers arrived; it was a gang of four cowardly, bigoted Jewish settlers who beat up a handicapped Palestinian with impunity, basking in the knowledge that Jewish soldiers and police would not act impartially, and even returning a week later to torment the neighbors, ransacking their home and destroying their few possessions.

It wasn't Muslim soldiers who beat up and killed a Jew with clubs and rifle butts and kicks to the head and then, after an 'investigation', concluded that the soldiers had "acted properly"; it was the Israeli "Defense" Forces who smashed three holes in a Palestinian teenager's skull killing him as he merely waited at a bus stop, continuing to beat him as he lay unconscious, then made up a story about him "pulling a knife" and suggested that he was "mentally unstable" in a case that is sadly all too typical of violence perpetrated by racist, bigoted right-wing extremist Jewish supremacists upon those whom they perceive as "animals in human form".

It wasn't Muslims who created a global organization named the "Anti Defamation League" in order to defend Muslim criminals by playing the race card and accusing their pursuers of being "racists" and "anti-Semites" who were guilty of "hate crimes"; it was Jews who set up the Anti Defamation League of B'nai B'rith in response to the lynching of Leo Frank, president of the Atlanta chapter of the B'nai B'rith Jewish secret society who had been convicted of murdering 13-year-old Mary Phagan who worked at Frank's pencil factory, with the lynching of Frank being in response to the commuting of his death sentence to life imprisonment after organized Jewry had tried to cast doubt on Frank's conviction by shifting the blame to a black man even though ritual murder is a known Jewish tradition, the ADL being used thereafter to denounce anti-criminals as "anti-Semites" whenever the criminals happened to be Jews.

It isn't Muslims who, for political and financial gain, demolished the World Trade Center with nano-thermite and crashed remote-controlled planes into it in order to set up a hoax about "Jewish kamikaze pilots" and then attempt to throw researchers off the scent by pretending to "investigate" the demolitions whilst 'accidentally' plumping for the wrong hypothesis (e.g. H-bombs rather than thermite), and then stubbornly refuse to change to a hypothesis that is in accordance with the evidence; it is Jews who set up a hoax about "Muslim kamikaze pilots" and have their deliberately misleading 'work' about the demolitions hosted at sites that are owned and edited by Jews.

It wasn't Muslims who practised pseudo-science by refusing to look for Iron Blue at Auschwitz or explosives at the World Trade Center, in order that their 'investigation' would come up with the required financially and politically motivated result; it was Jan Markiewicz, Wojciech Gubala, and Jerzy Labedz of the Jan Sehn Institute at Krakow (Auschwitz fraud), and "scientists" and "engineers" at NIST (WTC fraud).

It wasn't Muslims who took over the "investigation" of the World Trade Center collapses when FEMA were making a hash of the cover up, mixed up Figures 11-51 and 11-52 in NCSTAR1-9Vol2 on their WTC7 report which was published two days after the mysterious death of eyewitness Barry Jennings whose testimony of explosions in WTC7 before either Tower had collapsed - note he specifically says (4:43) "I was trapped in there when both buildings came down" - blew their politically motivated assumptions and conclusions apart, failed to spot their mistake in their accompanying description, assumed unrealistically high gas temperatures in order to derive their required unrealistically high steel temperatures, published a preposterous hypothesis of a "thermal-expansion"-based collapse with the logical conclusion that the 180 kip shear capacity of four bolts in a seated connection would be exceeded if the steel heated up from 20 C to 32 C making the force to completely resist the thermal expansion 191 kip, irrespective of the fact that no steel-framed high-rises had ever collapsed due to "fires" or "impacts" apart from the three that allegedly did so on 9/11, claimed inward bowing of the WTC1 perimeter columns between floors 94 to 100 peaking at 55 inches at column 316 on the 96th floor which could not be reconciled with the fact that the columns' moment of inertia or second moment of area was at least 342 ins^4 along the minor axis and a maximum deflection of 55 inches given fixed - fixed boundary conditions and a distributed load would have required the failure within 102 minutes of at least ten consecutive floors, many of which did not have any fireproofing 'dislodged' by a plane and did not even experience substantial fires; it was NIST, whose top scientists and engineers have extensive knowledge of nano-thermites, but said they had found "no evidence" of explosives at the WTC and later admitted that they had not bothered to look for any. The 9/11 perpetrators had to ensure those in charge of the "investigation" were aware of that which they must not find.

It wasn't a Muslim who announced on Sunday September 16, 2001 that a "hijacker's passport" (allegedly that of Satam al Suqami) had been found "several blocks from the ruins of the World Trade Center", with other reports asserting that the passport was found "in the vicinity of Vesey Street"; it was former Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik who was indicted November 2007 on multiple counts including lying, fraud and conspiracy, which is consistent with the fact that the laws of aerodynamics dictate that the passport should have been found in the vicinity of Liberty Street, the scriptwriter forgot that Suqami was supposed to be on Flight AA11 approaching from the north, and, of several attempts made by the authorities to guess where the passport should have been found, not one of them was correct!

It wasn't Muslims who had JFK killed; it was Jews.

It wasn't Muslims who stole elections by exploiting electronic voting machines that biased the results such that the odds for several swing states to swing as much as they did from the exit polls was 250 million to one against; it was George W. Bush.

It isn't Muslims who exhibit traits of supremacist megalomaniacs by referring to their enemies as "grasshoppers", "beasts", "crocodiles" and "cockroaches"; it is Jews.

It wasn't a Muslim who set up a Ponzi scheme that netted $50 billion; it was a Jew.

It wasn't Muslims who made a record about doing "The Wall Street Shuffle" and whose other songs included scatological references; it was Jews.

It isn't Muslims who rule the world by proxy and get others to fight and die for them in wars; it is Jews, whose modus operandi is to select rich host populations that will let them in, pose as their "ally" whilst draining them of hard-earned wealth, employ deception to trick the hosts into fighting poorer nations, and reap the spoils of war such as Afghan opium trafficking, missing Pentagon funds, looting of oil-for-food funds, etc, along with other opportunistic scams such as the $550 billion electronic run on the banks. Note: some reports incorrectly state Thursday September "15", 2008 for the latter; it should of course be September 11, the Thursday prior to September 15.

It isn't Muslims who have been expelled from countries on numerous occasions, it is Jews who keep getting kicked out as soon as the host gets wise to the fact that Jews' only loyalty is to their own tribe, rather than the host nation to whom Jews pose as an "ally".

It wasn't Muslims who started a World War in 1914 in the hope that they could successfully launch a hoax about "six million" of their number being killed in order to obtain their own country and net a substantial fraction of global wealth in "reparations", failed, but also exploited the opportunity to annex and loot Russia and indulge in horrific blood-letting and oppression as a means of settling old scores with the Rus who had chased them westwards from former Khazaria; it was Khazar (fake) 'Jews'.

It wasn't Muslims who blew up Francois Duprat's car killing him and maiming his wife, beat up Dr. Robert Faurisson at least ten times in which his jaw was broken / teeth knocked out / nearly killed several times / hospitalized for weeks and was persecuted in legal battles and had his home raided by police, tried to kill Ernst Zundel on at least three occasions in arson and pipe bomb attacks and had him and Germar Rudolf deported to Germany and jailed for years, beat Jurgen Rieger unconscious and blew up his car, beat up David Cole and threatened to kill him and his family, persecuted and beat Joseph Burg, attacked Frank Walus seven times and nearly killed him in an acid attack, forced Ivan Lagace to resign from his job as a crematory expert after endless threats from thugs claiming to be from the Jewish Defense League, perpetrated numerous terrorist attacks in France including sulfuric acid sprayed into faces / attacks with iron bars / baseball bats / gas sprayed / excrement strewn around, had historian David Irving spend 400 days in jail before being released on Appeal from a three year sentence which was for two speeches and a newspaper interview he gave 16 years earlier, had Dr. Frederick Toben jailed in Germany for ten months for using his Australian website to express his views, and who had dozens more jailed, fined, and financially ruined by character assassination and legal battles; it was Jews attempting to prop up their idiosyncratic brand of "truth" which profited them handsomely for decades.

It wasn't Muslims who fabricated a hoax about "six million" of their people being "murdered" involving an evidence-free conspiracy theory about a plot to exterminate them in "gas chambers" which netted them - by way of a huge, illegitimate land grab - their own sovereign state, colossal profits in "reparations", hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign "aid" and "loan guarantees" and waiving / subsidizing of interest payments, etc, and now serves as their "sword and shield" to practice apartheid and kill and oppress their enemies with impunity; it was Jews.

It wasn't Muslims who were caught red-handed forging fake "smoke" onto wartime photographs of Auschwitz; it was the Simon Wiesenthal Center, whose suitability as guardians of truth is comparable to a choice of Count Dracula as a maintainer of blood banks.

It isn't Muslim mathematics that holds that the sum of a set of variables a + b + c + d + e... remains constant, e.g. at "six million", when several variables fluctuate downwards by, say, nearly three million and about half of that, in the absence of any corresponding upwards revision; it is financially and politically motivated Jewish "mathematics".

It isn't Muslim physics and chemistry that holds that corpses may be rapidly and economically cremated with between a pound and a kilogram of coke per body when the firebricks of the cremation ovens are not even replaced after some 20,000 cremations (which is rather like expecting a Trabant to be capable of doing 100,000 miles non-stop at 100 mph on 100 gallons of gasoline and a couple of cans of motor oil); it is politically and financially motivated Jewish "physics" and Jewish "chemistry".

It wasn't Muslims - or even the "Russian police" - who behave as if they authored The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion; it is International Jewry, and if it hisses like a snake and rattles like a rattlesnake, it isn't exactly benign.

It is not the "international Muslim" who has much to answer for; it is the international Jew.

The mainstream media’s conspicuous silence over the collapse of the official 9/11 conspiracy theory has clearly exposed them as "the dogs that didn’t bark".

This was inspired by an excellent piece from back in November 2003: It Wasn't Arabs by Edgar J. Steele

http://www.conspiracypenpal.com/columns/arabs.htm

Source of article:

http://www.takeourworldback.com/

The Laws of Compensation Regarding Conservatives and Zionism

2009-05-12T23:49:00.006-05:00

You cannot gain national power in this country without the approval or consent of Jewish power. You’re best off if the Jews fully support you. But, if the Jews don’t like you or your views, you must at least win their consent or mild approval. And for conservatives the only way to win this approval is by supporting Zionism 100%. Doing so the conservative candidate will win support from conservative Jews, who though outnumbered by liberal Jews, are very rich and influential. He will also face less hostility from liberal Jews who, though opposed to conservative values and policies, are pro-Zionist and would know that the conservative goy politician at least knows how to kiss Jewish ass. Liberal Jews may be more critical of Israel than conservative Jews are, but liberal Jews range from the likes of Alan Dershawitz, an ardent Israel Hawk, to the Nation magazine which, despite its harsh criticism of Israel, believes in the ‘right of Israel to exist’(which means no ‘right of return’ for displaced Palestinians and no right for Palestine to exist on the land which Israel now occupies).

Anyway, the point is gaining national power is impossible without either the support or some degree of approval of the Jews. Since most Jews(oligarchs of the media and academia)are opposed to conservative values and policies, how may conservatives reduces the hostility from the vastly powerful Jewish community? Zionism is the only answer. Since even liberal Jews love Zionism, conservatives can make themselves acceptable, if not exactly appealing, to the Jewish power brokers who pull the purse strings and run much of the academia/media.

The Law of Compensation says THE MORE CONSERVATIVE A CANDIDATE IS ON SOCIAL ISSUES, THE MORE ZIONIST HE MUST BE ON THE ISSUE OF ISRAEL. The more a candidate opposes stuff like ‘gay marriage’, open door immigration policy, affirmative discrimination, miscegenation(or miscegenation of the white race), gun restrictions, and multiculturalism, the more he must embrace Israel dearly and nearly and early and curly. That is the nature of the bargain in current politics. If you oppose the social or political policies that Jews favor in America, you must compensate by supporting Israel 100%, 200%, or 300%.

Even among ‘conservative’ Jews, a good many support GOP mainly for the reason that it happens to be more pro-Zionist than the Democratic Party. If Zionism were to go away as an issue, I suspect half the Jewish Republicans would join the Democratic Party. So, even though 18% of Jews voted for McCain in 2008, if the issue of Zionism were taken off the table, it probably would have been 90%. Jews are 2-3% of the US population, but 60% of donations to the Democratic Party come from Jews, and 35% of donations to the Republican Party comes from Jews. Even though Republicans receive less from Jews than do Democrats, Jews are still the biggest donor group for the GOP. If Jews are 2% of the US population, then conservative Jews are .4% of the US population. Yet, 35% of the donation to McCain’s campaign came from Jews. So, both parties are beholden to Jewish money and power. People think Mitt Romney is a rich guy, but he only made $250 million, which is laughable chump change to Jews who make up over 48% of all the billionaires in this country.

So, sucking up to Jews is an absolute necessity in this country. Meritocracy is a good thing, but it doesn’t just favor the most qualified individuals; it favors certain groups over others because certain groups have more individuals possessed of certain talents. For example, meritocracy in sports had led to domination by blacks. And, meritocracy in academics and business had led to the domination of Jews. Yes, individual blacks and Jews succeeded above the rest–and there are plenty of blacks who failed in sports and plenty of Jews who never grew rich. But, the fact is certain sectors do become dominated by individuals who share a common background, common race or ethnicity. Since people of the same ethnicity or race tend to share similar values, assumptions, and ideas, the end result of meritocracy is not the triumph of individualism but the triumph of certain groups over others. Sports is about triumph of black power over non-black power. As such, blacks are worshiped by white boys and white girls as the alpha-male race. White men have become sheepish white boys groveling before the big tough cool black dudes, and white girls wanna put out to black studs and give birth to little Obamas.

Business world has seen the triumph of Jewish power. Jews get to own and control business, come up with financial tricks, and make billions; when the system collapses due to their financial crookedness, they use the government to bail them out. Since media operations require lots of talent and brain power–and lots of money–, Jews were bound to gobble up all the media as well. Some say there’s Fox TV and point out that Murdoch isn’t Jewish, but the cultural department of Fox Inc. has been headed by a liberal Jew. Also, Fox has been as corrupting as Hollywood with little in the way of conservative values. Also, Sean Hannity and those Talk Show conservatives are a bunch of blowhard idiots who suck up to Israel night and day. They are all a bunch of slaves to Jewish power just the same.

This is why Ayn Rand-ism is worthless to the white gentile race. It doesn’t help us. In sports and pop culture(which has become a kind of pornographic gladiator sports), blacks rule totally thanks to meritocracy. In business, Jews rule. There’s nothing left in it for us. In Ayn Rand fantasies, the great titans are usually tall, handsome goy men, but look at our society, look at reality. The titans of culture and business are funny looking Jews. And, though they make their fortunes through the cutthroat Ayn Rand way, they hold and push leftist or liberal views that empower them even further.

Their leftism is opportunistic, tribal, and idealistic. It’s opportunistic because bigger government is simply another means for rich folks and their kids to rule society politically as well as economically. It’s tribal because it’s in the Jewish interest to make US more diverse so that Jews can play different groups against one another like Jerry Springer plays white and black trash guests on his show. (This is why Mel Gibson said, "Jews start all wars"). . Also, it’s in the Jewish interest to castrate white men into white boys and to divide white women and white men. Destroy the cultural, sexual, and historical unity of white men and white women, and the white race is finished. This is the REAL aim of feminism. It’s not about women power. It’s about brainwashing white women to side with Jews, blacks, Hispanics, Asians, gays, and other ‘victim’ groups against the Evil White Male. Notice that feminists go easy on instances of non-white male oppression of women. Indeed, feminists get more worked up about white conservative males who believe in full freedom for women than against Muslim males who treat their women like property or against black males who treat their women like whores.

Anyway, the Law of Compensation is something we must be aware of because it has poisoned the well of conservative politics. And, no one was a bigger poster boy of the danger of this rule than George W. Bush. We know that Bush’s social policies were detested by the Jewish community. I didn’t like some of them myself as the Christian Right is pretty stupid. Anyway, the fact is Bush’s social policies were very conservative in certain areas. Jews in this country are mainly interested in social and domestic issues, even more so than in Israel. Jews want us to accept ‘gay marriage’, open borders(and illegal ‘immigration’), multiculturalism which blames white people for all the problem of the world(Jews excepted of course), radical feminism(which divides white man and white woman), gun restrictions, and interracism(whereby white women are goaded and encouraged to give birth to black babies). Many white conservatives are opposed to these Jewish policies. As such, the Jews denounce white conservatives as ‘racists’, ‘xenophobes’, ‘homophobes’, ‘sexists’, and other stupid slurs they pulled out of their hairy arses. Since Jews are so powerful, how can conservatives hope to succeed on the national political stage against the might of the Jewish controlled liberal media? The only way is to woo the Jew is by being even more Zionist than the Jews themselves. And that was the essence of Bush’s foreign policy.

Jews hated Bush, but they tolerated him because he was a foreign policy puppet of Neocon Zionists. Though neocons and liberal Jews don’t see eye to eye on many issues, there is a Jewish camaraderie between the two groups. And, both sides agree mostly if not 100% on Israel. Though liberal Jews at NY Times, CNN, ABC News, New Republic, Time, and Newsweek will insist that they were duped into supporting the Iraq War because the Bush administration lied about intelligence reports, they really supported Bush’s war because they thought it would be good for Israel. Neocons and Jewish liberals came together to support Bush’s war in the hope of re-making the Middle East so that Israel will be safer. And if Iraq War had turned out well, liberal Jews would not be complaining that no WMD were found. They would be happy that the Middle East had been made safe for Israel. They would have lauded Bush on the war. Of course, they would still hate Bush on social issues and look for some other reason than the war to unseat him. But, the fact is Bush won some degree of Jewish consent if not support when his foreign policy turned out to be overwhelmingly pro-Israel.

And, we see this over and over among nearly all national conservative politicians. The more they espouse conservative social values and policies, the louder they scream about how Israel is dear to us, precious to us, close to us, and blah blah. You’d think they care more for Israel than for the US. This is why Ron Paul never had a chance. Whatever his faults and merits, he stood for policies at odds with the Jewish community and had the guts to criticize Israel. He violated the Law of Compensation. So did Pat Buchanan. If you’re gonna go against the Jews on social policy, you MUST compensate by groveling before the Jews on the issue of Israel. Ron Paul and Buchanan violated the Law.

Problem with Bush is he took this too far and embarrassed the Jews. He was such an ass-kisser of the Jews on the issue of Israel that more and more people around the world began to think, "JEWS REALLY DO CONTROL AMERICA." People on both the Right and Left all over the world saw Bush as a toady of Israel and American Jews. They saw Bush’s strings pulled by Neocon Jews.

Jews are always hungry for more power in reality, but they want to appear powerless in public. They want to own billions but want to act like they just walked out of a shtetl or a Nazi death camp. But, Bush’s slavishness to Jews on foreign policy made Jews look very powerful. A book like "Israel Lobby" would have been dismissed at any other time, but it received a degree of positive attention because it became obvious who holds the REAL power and wealth in America during the Bush era.

It must be said the ‘Israel Lobby’ is a misnomer. It should be called the USrael lobby as there is no distinct barrier between Israel and the US. Jews go back and forth from NY, LA, or Washington DC to Israel. Israel is more powerful in Washington DC than all the other countries combined. It is more powerful and influential than any of the 50 American states. This is not because US is under Israeli occupation but because it’s under Jewish-American occupation. Israel is powerful in the US because Jewish Americans are powerful. If US had no Jews, Israel would have no power over us. But, American Jews hold the media, academia, and the purse strings.

They’ve been telling us over and over that Israel is special to us. We didn’t decide this on our own. No, Israel’s importance to us was fed to us by the Jewish media and academia. We’ve told that we love Israel because Israel is a democracy like ours, Israel was founded much like the US was, Israel has been a staunch ally during the Cold War, etc. These are not OUR thoughts and sentiments. No, they are thoughts and feeling dictated to us by the Jewish media. Following the logic and reasons given by Jews as to why we love Israel, we can make a counter-argument on the same grounds. If US was founded upon rebellion against oppressive authority, we could just as well side with Palestinians who could be compared to American colonialists and minutemen. If democracy is so dear to us, we can say Palestinians are fighting for equal rights, equal dignity, and equal claim to their ancestral land. If the issue of Cold War allegiance is what makes Israel dear to us, then let us remember that NO GROUP in the US did more to spy for the USSR, aid and abet radical leftist groups, stir up black rage and hatred against whites, supported Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, and undermine our efforts in Vietnam than Jewish-Americans. Jews were the biggest thorn on our side during the Cold War era. Jews were by far the most radical, most anti-American, the most communist-sympathizing group in America. So, the reasons that are given as to why we love Israel are not our own reasons; they are reasons foisted upon us by the Jewish media. If we need to understand anything, it’s that we must stop allowing Jews to think for us. We must think on our own according to what’s good for OUR interests. Jews in America and Israel are not good for our interests.

Anyway, Bush went overboard with the Law of Compensation. Jews want politicians to support Jewish interests but don’t want them to look beholden to Jews. That would mean that Jews are indeed powerful. Bush made Jews look all-powerful. Much of the Bush hatred around the world had an element of distrust, resentment, and even hatred of Jewish-American power. Many Europeans envy and hate Hollywood and American pop culture’s control over the world. Their criticism of American policies is often really an attack on Jewish-American power. But, as Jews are linked to the Holocaust and due to Europe’s long history of antisemitism, Europeans would rather not say it so openly. Europeans did notice that Bush was 200% pro-Israel and his foreign policy seemed guided and controlled by neocon Jews. Also, the world wondered why liberal Jewish institutions supported the war. Why did NY Times and New Republic give their thumbs up and fan the war fever? Why was much of the liberal Jewish media coverage of the war so favorable(in the early stages)? We know why. The Jews thought the war would stabilize the Middle East and that it would be good for Israel. Jews, both neocons and liberals, wanted to show the world how an America-guided-by-Jewish-power could fix the world’s problems. But, the war went very badly. The world began to say ‘we told you so’ and started to blame America for its arrogance and hubris. This is when liberal Jews all jumped ship and tried to put all the blame on Bush. They acted all innocent and said they’d been duped by Bush the liar. The neocons couldn’t jump ship so easily as they had positioned themselves within the GOP power structure. But, even neocons who had been behind the war found various excuses to support Obama in 2008. Yep, it’s the Jewish way. No principles, no loyalty. Just their conniving self-interest.

Iraq War or no Iraq War(and its political fallout), the Jews would have supported Obama anyway. Obama is their boy. He’s the child of black male/white female sexual union. He is the template of what Jews want to happen to all of white America. Jews want white males to be emasculated into metrosexual quasi-homos and white females to open throw themselves at black men. This will destroy white power forever, and Jews will be All-Powerful forever. Jews want to control a black guy who would morally and spiritually lord over a bunch of pussified, sappy, dorky, and self-loathing white boys and jungle-feverish girls. Jews also want to remake the black community. Jews want blacks as moral allies–Jews, victims of Holocaust, linked with blacks, victims of slavery(both victims of white racial oppression). But, too many blacks resent Jewish success and blame Jews for a lot of black problems. Many blacks also side with Palestinians against Israel. So, it was in the interest of Jews to prop up a clean-cut black guy who would challenge the crazy styles of Al Sharpton and his ilk who are hostile to Jews. But, Jews were careful to make sure that Obama didn’t appear totally pro-Jewish as that would make Obama seem like a puppet of Jews. So, Obama has been allowed to associate with some Palestinian-Americans and dilly-dally with the likes of Wright and Nation of Islam followers. This would give cover to Obama’s dependence on the Jews.

Obama is useful to the Jews because it gives the false impression that US is no longer presided by a Jewish puppet–Bush. Many idiots actually think Obama is his own man when he’s really beholden to Jews even more than Bush ever was. Bush was beholden only to neocon Jews whereas Obama is beholden to both neocon and liberal Jews. And, record amount of Jewish money went to supporting Obama. And the Jew-run media gave Obama favorable cult-like coverage like you wouldn’t believe. Now, some people will say that many Obama supporters in the media are non-Jews, but as Jews own all those media outlets, Jews have hired mostly liberal pro-Jewish gentiles over the yrs. So, even gentiles in the media were handpicked by the Jews. (And, as a disproportionate number of "conservatives" on TV and radio are Jews, even they will never ever criticize Jewish power. Jewish conservatives will rail against the Left, but never against the Jewish Left–despite the fact that Jews pretty much define and control the Left. Jewish conservatives will specifically go after Mexican power, Chinese power, Saudi power, or Muslim power, but they’ll never attack Jewish power–despite the fact that Left in this country is largely Jewish, especially at the top.)

Obama is also useful to Jews because Bush’s aggressive Zionism has failed. Bush ended up destabilizing the Middle East and only increased the ire of many Muslims who came to see US as a totally Jew-controlled nation. Though Bush was 200% pro-Israel, this backfired on the Jews. It made it seem as though Bush was doing EVERYTHING for Israel. So, the cunning Jews decided to go with Obama, supposedly a fair-minded person because of his multi-racial and multi-religious background. But, it is all a sham. The only thing about Obama that isn’t pro-Jewish is his ideology of black identity. There is indeed an element of Black Power-ism in Obama, but Obama the sly fox is as cunning as the Jews. He knows that Jews have all the money and power in the US. He always knew that he had to play along to Jewish interests and power. So, Obama has suppressed his black power side of his ideology.

Other than black power ideology, Obama’s influences are all Jewish. He came under the influence of Marxism, a Jewish theory. He went to Ivy League schools and hung around radicals, a good many of them Jews. And, his spiritual mentor was Saul Alinsky, another dirty left-wing Jew. His professors were Jewish. His associates were Jewish. His big money men have been Jewish.

But, Jews don’t want Obama to act totally beholden to the Jews. Bush did that, and it actually made it worse for the Jews because world came to see who has the real power in America. So, Obama is supposed to act like he is independent, is his own man, a brilliant thinker of staggering intellect(though Jews do all the thinking for him), and fair-minded to all peoples. And, so many people have fallen for this crap, which goes to show how stupid the world is.

But, even foreign people who see through this charade like the fact that Obama is president because they want US to be humiliated. The idea of a black guy becoming president means, for many people around the world, that the evil whites are losing grip of their country. Whites are now ruled by a black man who belongs to the race that had once served as slaves in America; whites have now become the spiritual and moral slaves of blacks(and financial and political slaves of Jews).

Another reason why Obama doesn’t have to be slavish to Jewish interests(at least publicly) is that he supports the social policies that Jews want. Deep down inside, Obama is for ‘gay marriage’, open borders for illegal invasion, taking guns away from whites, multiculturalism which blames whites for all the problems in the world, global welfare, radical feminism which divides and weakens the white race(as only white males are routinely attacked by feminism while non-white men still qualify as ‘victims’ under the ‘people of color’ banner). Since Obama is for all the social policies that Jews want to push on us, the Law of Compensation doesn’t apply to him. The Law only applies to conservatives because they must make up for angering Jews on social issues. Again, the only way conservatives can make up for pissing off the Jews on issues like ‘gay marriage’ is by supporting Zionism 100%. Bush took this to the logical limit, and Jews got burned because it made Jews look too powerful(which they really are). These are things we must understand if we are to confront Jewish power and see it for what it.

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Israel's Right to Exist

2009-05-12T22:21:00.006-05:00

Why does Israel have a right to exist, but Palestine doesn't?

This is the question of our time.

For sixty years Israelis have been stealing Palestine from Palestinians. There are maps available on the Internet and in Israeli publications showing the shrinkage over time of what was once Palestine into what Palestine is today--a small number of unconnected ghettos or bantustans.

Palestine became "the occupied territory" from which Palestinians were ejected and Israeli settlements built for "settlers." Jordan, Syria and Lebanon are full of refugee camps in which Palestinians driven off their lands by Israeli force have been living for decades.

Driving people off their land is strictly illegal under international law, but Israel has been getting away with it for decades.

Gaza is a concentration camp of 1.5 million Palestinians who were driven from their homes and villages and collected in the Gaza Ghetto.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency was created 60 years ago in 1949 to administer refugee camps for Palestinians driven from their lands by Israel. As of 2002, the registered Palestinian refugee population was 3.9 million.

Caterpillar Tractor makes a special bulldozer for Israel that is designed to knock down Palestinian homes and to uproot their orchards. In 2003 an American protester, Rachel Corrie, stood in front of one of these Caterpillars and was run over and crushed.

Nothing happened. The Israelis can kill whomever they want whenever they want.

They have been doing so for 60 years, and they show no sign of stopping.

Currently they are murdering women and children in the ghetto that they have created for Palestinians in Gaza. The entire world knows this. The Red Cross protests it. But the Israelis brazenly claim that they are killing "Hamas terrorists who are a threat to Israel's existence."

The American media knows that this is a lie, but does not say so.

Israel has been able to slowly exterminate a people for sixty years without provoking sufficient outrage to stop it.

The United States, "Christian America," has been Israel's greatest enabler in its long-term murder of the Palestinian people. Millions of "evangelical Christians" endorse Israel's ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

The rest of the world condemns the Israeli military attack on the Gaza Ghetto. Last week the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution requiring a ceasefire and the withdrawal of the Israeli SS from Gaza.

The United States abstained.

While the rest of the world condemns Israel's inhumanity, the US Congress--I should say the US Knesset--rushed to endorse the Israeli slaughter of the Palestinians in Gaza.

The US Senate endorsed Israel's massacre of Palestinians with a vote of 100-0.

The US House of Representatives voted 430-5 to endorse Israel's massacre of Palestinians.

The resolutions endorsed by 100% of the US Senate and 99% of the House were written by AIPAC, as were the speeches praising Israel for its inhumanity.

The US Congress was proud to show that it is Israel's puppet even when it comes to murdering women and children.

The President of the United States was proud to block effective action by the UN Security Council by ordering the Secretary of State to abstain.

Be a Proud American. Swagger and strut. Pretend that you are not besmirched by the shame that your government has heaped upon you. Take refuge in your ignorance, fostered by 60 years of Israeli lies, that the murder of Palestinians and the theft of their lands is "Israel's right of self-defense."

Written by: Paul Craig Roberts, a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, has held numerous academic appointments. He has been reporting shocking cases of prosecutorial abuse for two decades.

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In Ireland or Palestine, strength in unity

2009-05-12T21:21:00.004-05:00

"There is no such thing as a power struggle while under occupation." (Mamoun Wazwaz/MaanImages)

The recent Israeli actions in Gaza demonstrated not only the brutal nature of the occupation and the ideology behind it, but also the deep internal division within the Palestinian body politic. It was already common knowledge that Israel had effectively ended the ceasefire on 4 November with an attack that left six members of Hamas dead. Yet, as pictures of dead, dying and wounded Palestinian police cadets flashed through the world's television screens, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was busy toeing the Israeli line that Hamas was responsible for the ending of ceasefire. He said this, not because it was true, but as a way of undermining the political authority of Hamas in Gaza and increasing his own. Ordinary Palestinians saw through the quite crude and transparent attempt, forcing Abbas to backtrack on his earlier assertion.

The now un-mandated Palestinian president has overseen a situation where his political legitimacy rests, not on his acceptance by the Palestinian people, but on his acceptance by Israel and the West as "a man we can do business with." Of course they mean business on their terms, not on terms that will bring about a lasting peace but on terms that will preserve Israeli hegemony and reinforce the notion among Palestinians that they are a defeated people. Coming from Ireland and understanding the nature of conflict resolution in the case of the Irish peace process, it is clear that peace is not achieved on such terms. Without justice there can be no peace.

Peace is sometimes defined as an absence of conflict. However, I would define it as an absence of injustice. In the years leading up to the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, the British government approached the concept of peace in the narrow terms of defeating and undermining armed resistance, primarily by the Irish Republican Army, against the British occupation of Ireland. For them, armed resistance was a direct challenge to their position of dominance and privilege.

The Good Friday Agreement was not the first attempt to end conflict in the north of Ireland. The Sunningdale and Anglo-Irish Agreements in the 1970s and '80s respectively were attempts to end conflict but also to preserve the status quo position of dominance and privilege. There was no acceptance that the armed conflict was the inevitable manifestation of the political conditions in which Nationalist Republicans found themselves. The institutionalized discrimination in areas such as jobs and housing were still a daily reality. In addition, there were concerted attempts to treat the situation in the north of Ireland as a simple security situation that could be defeated militarily. The aim was to reinforce in the minds of Irish Republicans that they were a defeated people. However, the resistance, both politically and militarily, continued against the politics of occupation, subjugation and discrimination until the more recent peace process began.

These days, the north of Ireland is a much different place than the "Protestant Parliament for a Protestant People." One Party Unionist rule in the interests of the British State is gone. The sectarian Royal Ulster Constabulary police force is gone and the British soldiers are no longer on the streets. The days of British Unionist domination over the Irish Nationalist community are gone and they are not coming back.

Although the peace process in Ireland still has a long road ahead in achieving its core political objectives from a Nationalist and Republican perspective, it is moving forward in the right direction. In contrast, the so-called Israeli-Palestinian "peace process" based on the Oslo accords of the mid-'90s and the more recent attempt to resuscitate it at the 2007 Annapolis conference has been an unmitigated disaster for Palestinians. The difference is clear. Israel's military occupation continues: the settlement-building, apartheid roads, the wall in the West Bank and army checkpoints continue to harass and oppress Palestinians more than ever before. Meanwhile, the Palestinian people are still subject to arbitrary arrest, deportation, internment without charge or trial and murder by the occupation forces contrary to every semblance of international law. The only "facts on the ground" in Palestine are those illegally imposed by Israel, once again in violation of international law, but also against the spirit of any viable process of genuine conflict resolution.

What is clear is that the road to a free Palestine is a long and arduous one. In terms of all of us who want justice for the Palestinian people, it is of vital importance that we redouble our collective efforts to work for this aim. One of the main differences between previous peace processes in Ireland and the most recent one was the formation of a united front on the part of Nationalist Ireland. The Irish Government, Sinn Fein and the Social Democratic and Labor Party formed a strategic alliance during the negotiations. This was of vital importance to the successful resolution of the talks in the years after. What was also of vital importance was the international aspect of the process. We were able to utilize the strength of the Irish Diaspora in the United States to act as a bulwark to those in the British establishment who were opposed to change. What this achieved was to take ownership of the process away from those who were direct participants to the conflict.

But this did not happen by accident. The political strength of the Irish lobby in America was built up over decades of activism at a time when successive US presidents and their administrations were close to the British. Although the Israel lobby is much more powerful than the British version we found ourselves dealing with, the principles for building political strength internationally are similar. Palestinian society itself has among its number some of the most highly educated individuals available. Also, the history of Palestine, tragic though it is, has provided the opportunity to utilize the sizable Diaspora communities in many countries around the world. The attack on Gaza and the public reaction throughout the world demonstrated the existence of an international activist base that has the potential to bring about real and genuine momentum in the struggle for a free Palestine if developed and used to bring pressure on the governments who ignored the protests and absolved themselves of any responsibility to implement any of the international legal and human rights standards that they themselves have signed up to in relation to Israel and its treatment of the Palestinians.

However, in order to maximize political strength, there is also a need for political and strategic unity on the part of Palestinian and international solidarity activists. It would be an obvious assumption that this unity must begin in Palestine itself. In order to have the widest possible section of Palestinian society represented, it is vital that all mandates as expressed by the Palestinian people are respected.

There is no such thing as a power struggle while under occupation. Does the Palestinian minister for tourism have more power to decide tourism policy in the West Bank or Gaza than an Israeli army chief of staff who decides that "security considerations" are paramount? Can a Palestinian minister with responsibility for natural resources preserve water resources whenever the Israeli government decides that the water should be used for the settlements? National self-determination for Palestine will not come from the "power struggle" between Fatah and Hamas. It will come from the ending once and for all of the occupation. This must be the focus in the time ahead.

Ken Foley is from Ireland and is a member of the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign in Dublin and also a member of Sinn Fein.

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"Not the Right Kind of Jew"

2009-05-12T19:48:00.004-05:00

The Majority of the world views Israel and its supporters as a giant "collective" like the borg. They are viewed and perceived this way because they behave this way. I remember during the recent holocaust in Gaza, watching many Israeli spokesmen/women and various talking head Jews, regular "man on the street" interviews. And to my utter and sheer amazement, it was as if they were all singing from the same "hymn sheet" almost word for word. I noticed this was also taking place across the Internet on messages boards, blogs and news sites. Why is that? Why is it that they adhere to this collective mentality, like the Borg (Star Trek: The Next Generation)? Resistance is futile, one would think after watching countless news programs and just about any US channel. All for one, and one for all, this is the image Israel wants the world to see, and this is the image the Zionist controlled media feeds the world. But, there is something happening, something Israel cannot control (yet anyway!) and that is the Internet, personal videos, news channels from countries not in Israel’s pocket. Some Jews are beginning to wake up, some Jews are capable of having human emotions, human empathy, capable of placing themselves in someone else's shoes. This is unheard of in the majority of Jews, something they'd never remotely consider; after all, they are right, everyone else is wrong.

So, what happens when Jews no longer buy the Israeli propaganda? What happens when a Jew feels compassion for Palestinians? What happens when they allow their human feelings to override the Zionist line? What happens to them when they dare to speak out? They are no longer welcomed in the "collective" they are from that moment on, considered to be a "self hating Jew" that is the term used. So I found this post from a wonderful "self hating Jew" who dared to feel compassion. Followed by one of the many Pro-Zionist “official” explanations for why these Jews dare to speak out against the “collective”

Who Will Stop the AIPAC Jews Before it is Too Late?
By MEDEA BENJAMIN

While I was being tackled by security guards at Washington's Convention Center during the AIPAC conference for unfurling a banner that asked "What about Gaza?," my heart was aching.

"Shut the f--- up. Shut the f--- up." one staffer yelled, red-faced and sweating as he ran beside me. "This is not the place to be saying that shit. Get the f--- out of here."

What makes my heart ache is thinking about the traumatized children I met on my recent trip to Gaza, and how their suffering is denied by the 6,000 AIPAC conventioneers who are living in a bubble-a bubble where Israel is the victim and all critics are anti-Semitic, terrorist lovers or, as in my case, self-hating Jews.

I found it fascinating that AIPAC's executive director Howard Kohr opened the conference admitting that there was now a huge, international campaign against the policies of Israel. He painted a picture of 30,000 people marching in Spain, Italian trade unionists calling for a boycott of Israeli products, the UN Human Rights Council passing 26 resolutions condemning Israel, an Israeli Apartheid Week that is building a global boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign.

This global movement, he warned, emanates from the Middle East, echoes in the halls of the United Nations and the capitals of Europe, is voiced in meetings of international peace organizations, and is spreading throughout the United States-from the media to town hall meetings, from campuses to city squares. "No longer is this campaign confined to the ravings of the political far left or far right," he lamented, "but increasingly it is entering the American mainstream."

But Kohr failed to explain why there has been such an explosion in this movement, even among the American Jewish community. Read more here

Now clearly, the majority of Jews in the "collective" simply cannot come to terms with one of their own speaking against the “collective” It is like a cult, it is simply “not done”, simply “not allowed” under penalty of defamation, smearing campaign or worse. Now here below begins the "official" Zionist explanation of these so-called "self Hating Jews"or as I like to call them, compassionate free thinking Jews,(NOTE: here comes the Jewish Holy Grail of guilt trips, the Holocaust. Notice how everything MUST revert back to “The Holocaust” it is even used to help explain away Jews who speak against the “collective”)

"How is one to explain these Jews who work to hurt Jews?" I think the primary explanations are psychological it is almost impossible to overstate the pathological effects of thousands of years of murder of Jews — culminating in the Nazi Holocaust, when nearly all Jews on the European continent were murdered — have had on most Jews.

It is not coincidental that Norman Finkelstein's parents went through the Holocaust or that Yisroel Dovid Weiss's grandparents were murdered in the Holocaust. But even Jews who lost no relatives in the Holocaust fear another outbreak of anti-Jewish violence, and given the Nazi-like anti-Semitism in the Muslim world today, that is not exactly paranoia.

One way to deal with this is to side with the enemy. Consciously or not, the Jew who sides with those dedicated to murdering Jews feels that he will be spared. He becomes the "good Jew" in the anti-Semites' eyes.

The other psychological explanation is related. The Jew — specifically the radical Jew — who sympathizes with Jew-haters wishes to announce to the world that he is not really like other Jews. While the other Jews are moored in provincial Jewish ethnic or religious identity, he is a world citizen who no more identifies with the Jews' fate than with the fate of Iroquois Indians. source

So what we have here is the explanation that the Jews who speak against the “collective” are somehow “psychologically damaged goods”, they can’t help themselves because of the “guilt of the holocaust” and “paranoia coupled with fear of it happening again.”

The notion that these Jews who speak out are thinking rationally is never entertained. Nor is the foreign concept that Israel's own actions have created this so called "anti-semitism" and hatred it speaks of today. No, it is never Israel's fault, the holocaust gives Israel the right to be above the law and abandon morality. Because to think otherwise would mean these Jews would then have to examine their own actions and reactions, along with the real reasons for those actions. And to allow that process would begin the slippery slope of change. Change cannot be allowed in Israel, change is very dangerous to the Zionists in control of the State of Israel.

So, the "collective" must always be protected, even against others of their own faith and kind. And that is the core problem with Israel. Because should free thought prevail the Zionist dream of ethnically cleansing Arabs can never take place.

Here are some of my favourite sites written by those who have left the “collective” And unknown to these wonderful people who write these blogs, they have in their own small way helped my heart and soul to have hope for change. God bless them all.

Steve Amsel at Desertpeace

Norman G. Finkelstein

Philip Weiss & Adam Horowitz from mondoweiss

Noam Chomsky

Jeremiah Haber-The Magnes Zionist

The Anti-Zionist Jew

Israel’s Backyard

Breaking the Silence

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Pope's Visit - The Wall Will be Seen

2009-05-12T19:41:00.003-05:00

Pope Visit Update:
Israel has done what it can in its attempt to cover up its racist apartheid behaviour. They have attempted to keep any and all photographs of their illegal wall out of the lime light during the Pope's visit. Additionally they have attempted to keep the Pope from seeing or commenting on any of the recent Gaza holocaust. However, it now looks as if all of Israels feeble attempts to hide it's dirty secrets, the wall will be seen after all. Israel would have been better off ringing David Copperfield and asking him to make the wall disappear during the Pope's visit, Ah well, too late...........

AIDA REFUGEE CAMP, West Bank — Palestinian Christians want Pope Benedict XVI to bear witness to a symbol of their daily sufferings; Israel’s towering apartheid wall that is eating up their land.

"We want the world to see him with the wall and the Israeli army watchtower behind him," Adnan Ajarmeh, a member of the committee that will welcome the pontiff in his visit to Aida refugee camp outside the West Bank city of Bethlehem, told Agence France Press (AFP) on Monday, May 11.

The committee hopes that when he comes on Wednesday, May 13, Pope Benedict would put the Israeli separation wall erected illegally on their land under the international spotlight.

Pope Snub Upsets Gaza Christians

The steel and concrete wall is snaking some 900 kilometers along the occupied West Bank, leaving larger swathes of it on the Israeli side.

The barrier leaves many Palestinian families cut off and deprived of their livelihoods.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has issued a landmark ruling branding the wall as illegal and asking Israel to compensate affected Palestinians.

The welcoming committee initially wanted to receive the pope on a specially built stage right against the imposing wall that snakes around much of the traditional birthplace of Jesus Christ.

But after Israel banned the platform construction, the committee bowed to organize the event at a UN-run school nearby.

Nevertheless, the stage on which the pope will stand beside Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will be sufficiently elevated that cameras recording the visit will capture the separation wall.

Coming and going from the Church of Nativity in Bethlehem, Pope Benedict will move through a checkpoint in the steel and concrete wall.

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The Arrest of Ezra Nawi ... for Protecting Peoples' Homes

2009-05-12T00:27:00.003-05:00

Jailed for Caring

By NEVE GORDON

Without international intervention, Israeli human rights activist Ezra Nawi will most likely be sent to jail.

Nawi is not a typical rights activist. A member of Ta'ayush Arab-Jewish Partnership he is a Jewish Israeli of Iraqi descent who speaks fluent Arabic. He is a gay man in his fifties and a plumber by trade. Perhaps because he himself comes from the margins, he empathises with others who have been marginalised – often violently.

His "crime" was trying to stop a military bulldozer from destroying the homes of Palestinian Bedouins from Um El Hir in the South Hebron region. These Palestinians have been under Israeli occupation for almost 42 years; they still live without electricity, running water and other basic services and are continuously harassed by Jewish settlers and the military – two groups that have united to expropriate Palestinian land and that clearly have received the government's blessing to do so.

As chance would have it, the demolition and the resistance to it were captured on film and broadcast on Israel's Channel 1. The three-minute film – a must see – shows Nawi, the man dressed in a green jacket, not only courageously protesting against the demolition but, after the bulldozer destroys the buildings, also telling the border policemen what he thinks of their actions. Sitting handcuffed in a military vehicle following his arrest, he exclaims: "Yes, I was also a soldier, but I did not demolish houses … The only thing that will be left here is hatred."

The film then shows the police laughing at Nawi. But in dealing with his audacity, they were not content with mere ridicule and decided also to accuse him of assaulting a policeman. Notwithstanding the very clear evidence (captured on film), an Israeli court recently found Nawi guilty of assault in connection with the incident, which happened in 2007, and this coming July he will be sent to prison. Unless, perhaps, there is a public outcry.

Nawi's case is not only about Nawi. It is also about Israel and Israeli society, if only because one can learn a great deal about a country from the way it treats its human rights and pro-democracy activists.

Most people are not really surprised when they read that human rights activists are routinely arrested, prosecuted, imprisoned and harassed in Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco and several other Middle Eastern countries. Indeed, it has become common knowledge that the authoritarian nature of these regimes renders it dangerous for their citizens to actively fight for human rights.

In this sense, Israel is different from most of its neighbours. Unlike their counterparts in Egypt and Syria, Israeli rights activists, particularly Jewish ones, have been able to criticise the policies of their rights-abusive government without fear of incarceration. Up until now, the undemocratic tendencies of Israeli society manifested themselves, for the most part, in the state's relation to its Palestinian citizens, the occupied Palestinian inhabitants and a small group of Jewish conscientious objectors.

People might assume that Nawi's impending imprisonment as well as other alarming developments (like the recent arrest of New Profile and Target 21 activists, who are suspected of abetting draft-dodgers) are due to the establishment of an extreme rightwing government in Israel. If truth be told, however, the rise of the extreme right merely reflects the growing presence of proto-fascist elements in Israeli society, elements that have been gaining ground and legitimacy for many years now.

Nawi's case, for what it symbolises on both an individual and societal level, encapsulates the current reality in Israel. His friends have launched a campaign, and are asking people to write letters to Israeli embassies around the world. At this point, only international attention and intervention can make a difference.

Neve Gordon is chair of the department of politics and government at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and author of Israel’s Occupation (University of California Press, 2008).

Source

The Ideal Israeli Solider - Killer and Thief

2009-05-10T11:19:00.005-05:00

(In the photo at the left: same story over and over again, in Hebron as in Gaza, IDF soldiers do not respect the homes of Palestinians.)

The old man sat in the light of a kerosene lamp and looked bleakly ahead. His wife sat in the opposite corner, crying loudly "They soiled our sheets, haram, they broke our bed, fired guns in our bed' 'and', the old man said 'they took all our money. The day after we left we found a 100shekel note in the garden, that's all'

He was talking about the Israeli occupation of his house to a foreign photographer who had come to film the destruction in North of the Gaza Strip. Sa'ad Al Atar lived in a line of houses along a high ridge overlooking Gaza city in Atatra district. It was the part of Gaza nearest the Israeli border, and it also commanded long views of Gaza city, so it was bombed repeatedly in the first few days, and most of the houses were destroyed. Then the Apaches fired rockets at what was left and machine gunned anything that moved. Mr Al Atar stayed home with his family, even when machine gun fire came through the window and sprayed the wall behind them. The foreign Journalist put his fingers in the big holes in the plaster, but to him they were just dents in the wall; to Mr Al Atar they represented fear and salvation at the same time. But there was an even closer miss in the next dark room, where there were no lights. A row of smaller bullet holes at a lower level.

"We were eating our meal on the floor when these came. If we were sitting on a chair they would have gone through our heads. I am lucky that I cannot afford to put chairs in both my rooms" said Mr Al Atar.

What happened next? "The Israelis came and pointed their guns at us. they told us to get into the back room, where the shots had been fired, and to stay there, and they went on to the roof. They told us that if we moved, they would shoot us. They went upstairs, they stole my money, soiled the beds, left condoms everywhere. They fired holes in the bed - for what?' While people were dying they were making love with each other in our bed, and then they destroyed it. All our money was in the mattress, everything for the whole family, and they took it all. then after 3 days, they left. Just left"

His family of seven children and his wife listened in the gloomy light. "There is no glass in the windows, and we cannot afford even to buy plastic sheets' said Mrs Al Atar. "The UN gave us some blankets, but we have no money to repair anything and no one helps us. No one. And it is cold, even our clothes they cut up and soiled - look, look at these cuts, why, why they do this, why?"

They drank their tea in silence, the foreign photographer left, and the light went out.

http://www.peaceforgaza.blogspot.com/

Mrs. Al Atar

The Israelis have left us nothing, destroying our housed, stole our money and killed our young kids

We were all in one room when the bullets stated targeted us randomly

Source

Lieberman: Wishing for World War III?

2009-05-10T10:49:00.004-05:00

We have already become accustomed to the brazen statements of Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman. And it is certainly no surprise that Israel considers the US to be firmly in its political pocket. So it is but a mild irritation to read Haaretz reporting that Lieberman, confident that “the Obama administration will put forth new peace initiatives only if Israel wants it to,” has stated publicly “Believe me, America accepts all our decisions.” (Lieberman: U.S. to accept any Israeli policy decision)

What is most interesting about Lieberman’s first comprehensive interview on foreign policy since taking office is his view of Russia. Lieberman, Haaretz points out, granted his first major interview not to an Israeli newspaper, but to Alexander Rosensaft, the Israel correspondent of one of the oldest Russian dailies, Moskovskiy Komosolets. Courting favour with the Slavic world power?

Russian immigrants are a dominant part of Israeli society. And Russia, according to the Jewish Virtual Library, is ranked number six in “Countries with Largest Jewish Populations.”* Countries ranked 2—5 (US, France, Canada, UK) are already reliable friends of Israel. On the other hand, Russia has in recent years demonstrated an independent character in its foreign relations.

Lieberman is looking for another ally. In his interview, he stated “Russia has a special influence in the Muslim world, and I consider it a strategic partner that should play a key role in the Middle East. I have argued for some time that Israel has insufficient appreciation for the ‘Kremlin factor’; I intend to mend this gap.”

Another openly brazen admission to manipulating others for the sake of Israel. When coupled with another assertion made by Lieberman, though, we begin to see what he means by “key role.” Lieberman proclaimed that Afghanistan and Pakistan are now considered jointly as the greatest strategic threat to Israel. Iran has been downgraded to second place threat, and Iraq falls in third place. Afghanistan and Pakistan “form a contiguous area of radicalism ruled in the spirit of Bin Laden,” says Lieberman, and “are a threat not only to Israel, but to the global order as a whole.”

Now take a good look at the regional map below. View map: http://www.friendsoflebanon.org/index_files/News82.htm And think of President Obama’s recently announced Afghanistan-Pakistan (AFPAK) Strategy (27/03/09)—two countries, one challenge, Al Qaida, more American troops, bringing Russia on board—and Lieberman’s cheerful offer of Israel’s role of bringing the US and Russia closer. With the US already having rendered Iraq ineffectual and vulnerable, the envisaged key role of Russia—big, big Russia—would be to assist in crushing Afghanistan and Pakistan as well . . . in order to maintain “global order,” of course.

The Iranian borders would then offer not obstacles, but exploitables. Iraqi, Afghani and Pakistani borders would be under the watchful eye of US/Israel and their would-be partner-Russia. That leaves just Turkey and Turkmenistan. Despite a few public tiffs, Turkey and Israel maintain a working relationship and military cooperation. And as troubled Turkmenistan is of little threat to anyone but itself, this new state of political power would enable Israel to more realistically envisage overwhelming its formerly declared arch nemesis. Once Israel and its partners were able to break Iran, they could, they presume, cut off the lifeblood to Hezbollah in Lebanon, thus killing two birds with one proverbial stone.

Is it over-reaching to imagine such map-sweeping military operations? Consider the size of Hamas. Look at the map again just to keep perspective fresh—right, Hamas is not even on the map. What was Lieberman’s proposal (13/01/09) for quieting this thorn in his side? “We must continue to fight Hamas just like the United States did with the Japanese in World War II. Then, too, the occupation of the country was unnecessary.”

What, then, was the secret to US success? After having already killed over a million Japanese 1941—1945, the US was able to set aside its plans for a ground invasion and occupation of Japan because the Japanese surrendered. They relented because the US carried out atomic bomb attacks on the cities of Hiroshima (killing 140,000 Japanese) and three days later on Nagasaki (killing 80,000 more Japanese). Quicker and cheaper than an occupation, says the businessman. Lieberman apparently appreciates the logic. A chilling thought, considering that for all its finger-pointing accusations, Israel is the Middle Eastern power that has maintained nuclear weapons and has consistently demonstrated its willingness to use “disproportionate force.”

But Russia is no one’s fool. With a long, difficult history stretching back nearly 500 years, the Russians have proven their ability to endure. They haven’t succeeded by catering to someone else’s interests. By way of example, Russia may have recently purchased surveillance drones from Israel, but it is also still considering selling a strategic air-defense system to Iran, despite Israel’s clear objections to the deal. Said one Israeli official on the Russian rejection of conditions, “the Russians don’t make promises of this kind.” The Russians will, however, stand their ground.

Even as the UN Durban Review Conference on Racism drew criticism from some (primarily from the Israeli camp), Russia accepted the position of vice-chair of the Preparatory Committee working on the declaration and the conference’s agenda. Russia maintained its high profile participation, regardless of the boycotting actions taken by others. As Andrei Podoplekin, political scientist at the leading Russian school Pomor State University, said, “This is a way for Russia to show that it can be an independent player. By agreeing to participate and serve as a moderator at an event boycotted by others, it proved that it could act independently, most importantly from the Western states.”

Where does Lebanon fit into all this? As always, there is a political and military tug-of-war. Four months ago, for instance, Moscow gave 10 MiG-29 fighter jets to Lebanon, free of charge, as assistance in building the Lebanon Army. The New York Times was quick to characterise the gesture as a “slap to the United States.” Not to be outdone then, the US has announced (14/04/09) that it “will provide the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) with twelve Raven unmanned aircraft in the coming months.” This comes with a training course, “funded by the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD), [and] is one part of the comprehensive, robust U.S. military assistance program to Lebanon.

It must be remembered, though, that the Obama administration has confirmed that the world financial crisis would not jeopardise its promise of $30 billion in military aid alone to Israel over the next 10 years. In 2007 the US had announced that it would continue military aid to Egypt at $13 billion from 2009 to 2018, and would increase military aid to Israel by 25% — $ 30 billion from 2009 to 2018. US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns, who signed the memorandum of understanding governing the aid package, stated the aid would

“allow Israel to plan its defense expenditures in a way that’s rational, in a way that takes into account its own appreciation of its situation in this region. So we look at this region and understand that a secure and strong Israel is in the interest of the US.”

As the Jerusalem Post paraphrases, this means that “there were no strings attached to the aid – no special annexes – and that it was not dependent on Israeli policy. Burns underlined that the aid was coming at a time when Iran ‘is resurgent,’ and was both seeking nuclear weapons and expanding its conventional power in the region. He said Iran and Syria were funding and arming terrorist organizations fomenting violence in every part of the Middle East, be it Hamas, Hizbullah or Shi’ite groups in Iraq.” Perhaps Burns, back in August 2007, didn’t think Afghanistan would hold out as long as it has, or that Pakistan would be a nice addition to the target list.

On 22 April 2009, Foreign Minister Lieberman cemented another “strategic partner”: Egypt. Despite tensions due to Lieberman’s past offensive statements regarding Egypt, diplomatic relations seem to be improving between the formerly warring countries. Egyptian Intelligence Chief Omar Suleiman met with PM Netanyahu, President Peres and FM Lieberman. According to Israeli media, Lieberman “repeatedly stressed his appreciation of Egypt as a strategic partner.”

Meanwhile, relations between Egypt—Palestine and Egypt—Lebanon have been strained. Perhaps that is what a “strategic partner” is for: reinforcement of Israel’s game plan. Perhaps that is what Lieberman has in mind as he courts such a partnership with Russia. Stack up the friends on one side, the enemies on the other. But in the end, you don’t get a gang war. When you add billions of dollars worth of weaponry, you get world war.

The irony is, though, that amid all the massive global players in this drama, the sticking point for Israel is that it has never been able to defeat Lebanon. Israel has tried and tried to pound Lebanon into submission and has failed, no matter how many strategic partners it stacks up. Look at the map again. You need a magnifying glass to see the two of them. Yet the world seems intent on setting their agendas by what transpires there. A bit ridiculous, really.

Russia is not apt to fall for Lieberman’s lure. Again, Russia is no one’s fool. It has been less than a year since Russia resolutely quashed an aggression by Georgia—backed by US-Israel—to overtake South Ossetia. Israel may now be anxious to have Russia as a partner; however, it is highly unlikely that Russia will find itself needing Israel as a partner. And Russia does stand its ground.

Like Russia, Lebanon, for all its faults, knows how to stand its ground as well. Every Lebanese child knows the politics of being Lebanese. Every adult has lived through the wars and the global chicanery. Who else but Lebanon could manage to defeat Israel and then still rake in $1 billion total post-2006 conflict assistance and $410 million post-2006 in military aid from America, Israel’s favourite ally? The Lebanese might just be more clever than Lieberman is counting on.

Lebanon will not be intimidated. Syria will not be schmoozed. Russia cannot be reduced to what Lieberman has dubbed the ”Kremlin Factor,” as though he fancies himself a Jason Bourne. Lieberman stated that he intends to mend the gap between the Knesset and the Kremlin. But a gap is mended at both ends. In half a century, Russia has weathered wars far worse than those plotted by Lieberman. If Russia decides to adjust its alliances, it will do so not at the behest of tiny Tel Aviv, but when and if it chooses, on its own Russian terms.

*Please note that it is Israel’s own insistence on distinguishing people by their faith, Jewish or otherwise, that necessitates the topic. FOL prefers to view people as individuals—not as representatives of a particular religion.

Source

Palestinian Prisoners: Imprisoned for their Love of Freedom

2009-05-10T09:57:00.005-05:00

Every year, on April 17, Palestinians commemorate the Palestinian Political Prisoners Day. On 17.4.1974 the first Palestinian political prisoner, Mahmoud Baker Hijazi, was released from Israeli prisons in the first prisoner exchange deal with Israel. That same year, the Palestinian National Council declared the 17th of April a day of solidarity with Palestinian political prisoners, to be commemorated every year. In Occupied Palestine prison and imprisonment are as common as sunrise and sunset. There is almost no family that had not been subjected to Israeli imprisonment one way or the other. Palestinians are being detained on a daily basis, making them the most imprisoned people on earth. It is difficult to estimate their number, but several sources put the number of Palestinians detained or imprisoned by Israel since 1967 at over 750,000 Palestinians, making 20% of the total Palestinian population in the Occupied Territories, and approximately 40% of the total Palestinian male population. With the outbreak of the 2nd Intifada in September 2000 until September 2008 some 65,000 men, 750 women and 7,500 children were arrested by Israel. According to the ICRC, in October 2008 there were 10,500 Palestinians in Israeli prisons. Addammeer puts the number at 9,493, 750 of which are administrative detainees, 349 aged 18 and under, and 75 are females. Among those detained are political figures and some 47 Palestinians parliamentarians.

The IOF can arrest anyone and anywhere, without giving a reason. Palestinians are arrested at home, on the way to school or work, at universities, in hospitals, at checkpoints. Mass arrests, as form of collective punishment, are also very common. Curfews would be imposed on villages, towns or refugees camps, houses would be raided and Palestinians arrested. I have witnesses a number of these mass arrests, but never did the IOF bother to tell the residents why they were forced to leave their homes in the middle of the night and stand in the cold and the darkness for long hours. Under the cover of darkness and the curfew, the IOF would demand with loudspeakers that all men, usually those between 16 and 45, gather in the school yard or on the main street. We used to sit in the darkness at the windows and try and recognize the men standing in line and questioned by the IOF; relatives, friends and neighbours. Sometimes the men are blindfolded and handcuffed. They would wait for this to end, while being harassed, shouted at and kicked by the Israeli soldiers. We would wait with them, behind windows, hoping that they would all be released soon and come home safe. Sometimes, they are all sent back home after a night of harassment, but often this ends with mass arrest for no given reason.

Another form of collective punishment is house arrests. I have witnessed so many house arrests, and all were accompanied by violence and harassment and the wilful destruction of property by the IOF. They would turn the house over, destroying the furniture and even the food, as if the person they are searching for would be hiding in the wheat or the sugar, and if there was any money or valuables in the house, it was sure they would never be found again after the IOF had left the house. Family members trying to protect their home or their children are beaten. We would tell them that the person they are looking for is not in the house, we would try and reason with them, but it is all useless. They come on a mission to harass, destroy and arrest. Often I thought they knew they wouldn’t find what or who they are looking for, and that the whole operation of house raid is purely to punish the family and pressure it to hand over their son. During such house searches, the IOF would push us against the wall, kick us with their boots and beat us with the butts of their rifles. They didn’t care that they were beating children and elderly.

Upon arrest, detainees are often blindfolded and handcuffed. Not only is the detainee physically abused and humiliated, but other members of the family as well. Also, it is common practice by the IOF to use family members as human shields during such raids. The detainee is taken without informing the family about where he is taken to. Usually it takes days, if not more, before the family finds out where a detainee is. There are many incidents where families realized that their sons were in a certain prison months after they were arrested, and only after another detainee was released and informed that family about their son. One summer afternoon, my uncle and I were playing football in the garden. He was on the IOF list of wanted persons and was staying in our house. Nearby, there was a huge fruit tree, and when I was a child my father told me as way of a joke that a soldier was buried under that tree. At nights, when the leaves of the tree would move with the wind, I used to imagine the sound they made the murmuring of that soldier, and with all the Russian books we had in our library, I gave that imaginary soldier the name Yuri. My uncle and I made bets as to who would win the football game, we joked and laughed and I remember telling my uncle that Yuri would come and take him. After I explained to him what I was talking about, he said: I think you mean Uri and not Yuri, meaning that if any soldier came to take him away, it would be an Israeli soldier, not a Russian. That night at 2 in the morning, I was awakened by hurrying footsteps outside the window. The minute I fully woke up and stood, there was loud knocking on the front door. My father asked who it was, and removed the side of the curtain to see who stood outside. Standing near him, I could see the face of my grandfather and behind him nothing but darkness, complete darkness. The minute my grandfather said it was him, my father opened the door immediately, only to see grandfather practically thrown inside the house. In a matter of seconds, the house was full of IOF soldiers, some in army uniform, others in civil uniform. They had finally figured out were my uncle was hiding and had come to arrest him. They brought my grandfather, an old man, in the middle of the night as a human shield, in case anything happened. My uncle was still in bed, and the minute the Bethlehem area commander saw him, he jumped on the bed and held his throat in his arms, wanting to strangle him, shouting repeatedly: you were here the whole time. My mother tried to get them off my uncle, but the commander pushed her away. And while my uncle was putting on his clothes and shoes, the commander was slapping him and kicking him. The other area commander, responsible for Sawahreh and the surroundings, told his colleague not to do any beating in his area, meaning that since the prisoner was from the Bethlehem area, the beating was okay once they reached that area. I remember we had a huge poster on the wall, one of “Guevara Gaza”, and the commander asked my sister if she knew who it was. The name was written on the poster for all to see, so when she replied yes, he ordered her to remove the poster. When they left, we realized that they had surrounded the whole area around our house. IOF vehicles had blocked the way in case anyone thought of escaping, and I am sure that if an ant moved in the darkness that night, it would have been shot dead immediately. My uncle was taken to interrogation and tortured to confess to things he never did, and when they failed to get a confession from him, he was held in administrative detention, which is a detention without trial or charge, often used by Israel. When he was finally released, he told us that they couldn’t wait for the interrogation to start the torture, and that he was beaten by the soldiers all the way from Sawahreh till they reached the Israeli detention facility.

Sometimes, injured or sick prisoners are taken from their homes, from hospitals, or after being wounded in a demonstration. They rarely get the needed medical help, and often get Aspirin as treatment for everything. Health examinations are conducted through a fence and additional medical treatment or hospital transfers are often postponed for long periods of time. Withholding medical treatment is one method used to pressure detainees into collaboration. There are more than 800 Palestinian detainees who suffer from bad health conditions, much of which as a result of the arrest or the interrogation. According to Palestinian researcher Abdul-Naser Farawna, 196 Palestinian detainees have died in Israeli prisons since 1967 due to medical negligence and torture, 49 of whom died due to medical negligence. Alone last year, 2 detainees died because they were not given the needed medical assistance. During the 2nd Intifada 72 Palestinian detainees have died in detention, 17 due to medical negligence, 3 as a result of torture, 51 were executed by the IOF after being arrested and 1 prisoner was killed during prison protests.

Often Palestinians are arrested for breaking one of the over 2,000 military orders governing the Occupied Palestinian Territories, some of which they have never heard of before their arrest. Women and children are often arrested to pressure detained family members into confessing or pressure other family members wanted by Israel to hand themselves in. The Palestinian Prisoners Society reports that between September 2000 and September 2008 some 750 women and 7,500 Palestinian children were arrested by Israel. In September 2008 there were 69 Palestinian female political prisoners held in Israeli prisons, 2 of them in solitary confinement and 5 in administrative detention. There are 6 female child prisoners and 4 detainees imprisoned as well as their husbands. One detainee has her baby with her who was born in prison. Palestinian female prisoners are placed in 2 Israeli prisons: Hasharon-Telmond and Neve Tertza prison, where they are detained in the same section as Israeli female criminals accused of murder, drug use and prostitution. Like Palestinian male prisoners, Palestinian female prisoners face torture and humiliation. Strip search, brutal body searches and sexual harassment are frequent.

Contrary to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which defines a child as being under 18, Israeli military orders consider a child over 16 an adult, to be treated, tried and sentenced as such. In practice, Palestinian children as young as 12 may be arrested, charged and sentenced in Israeli military courts, since there are no juvenile courts. According to several reports, there are over 400 Palestinian children in Israeli prisons today, including 7 girls and 6 administrative detainees. These child detainees are aged between 13 and 18, more than 54 of whom are not older than 16. They are detained in Israeli prisons together with adults. 50 of these child prisoners are held in Ofer, 100 in Magiddo, 7 in Atzion, 22 in the Negev, 105 in Hasharon-Telmond and the rest in other prison facilities. Today, more than 450 Palestinian adult prisoners were children upon arrest and turned 18 in Israeli prisons. Like adult prisoners, Palestinian child prisoners are subjected to physical and psychological torture to extract confessions from them. During interrogation, they are not allowed to have any family member or a lawyer attending. Although I was practically a child when arrested, I was placed in a small empty room. I had been separated from my sister, and didn’t know where they had taken her. I stood waiting for a life sign from anyone, and I didn’t know how long I stood there, but I remember well how tired I was of standing and how thirsty I was. After some time, I could hear the cries of a boy in the room next to where I was. I thought, they were either torturing him or someone was making these noises to make me scared before it was my turn to be interrogated. I kept thinking of everything I ever heard, of how to keep still, stay brave and remember that they are only playing games with us to scare us into confessing to things we didn’t do. When I was finally led into a room with a number of IOF soldiers, all males, the soldier in charge checked my school bag and found my biology textbook. He looked through the book and saw a drawing of the anatomy of a human tooth. He showed it to me and asked smirking in a disgusting way if I knew what it was. I knew what it was and knew what he thought it was and what his plan was by asking me about it. At that moment I didn’t feel scared anymore, because I realized how stupid they are. Not only didn’t he know it was a tooth, the textbook was in English and it was written below the drawing what it was, but most probably he didn’t know a word of English and was acting so superior. I looked at him and said: yes, this is a tooth. My suspicions were confirmed when, upon not believing me, he asked one of the other soldiers in the room and the other confirmed what I said.

Child prisoners are held up in overcrowded cells, face torture and solitary confinement and don’t receive the needed medical treatment. In the last couple of months there has been an increase in the number of Palestinian children arrested. They are either arrested at home, at checkpoints or in streets, and are often accused of throwing stones without any proof. DCI-Palestine reports that the number of children brought before Israeli military courts in pre-trial hearing in the first two weeks of January was twice as high as in 2008. It added that its legal department receives a monthly average of 10 to 15 new cases of children for legal representation in Military courts, and that alone for the first two weeks of January 2009 it received 10 new cases. In one incident, 7 children were arrested in Toura Al Gharbieh in Jenin on 20.1.2009 and were detained at the Salim detention and interrogation centre. Two of the children were 12, two 13, two were 15 and the last 17 years old. Under pressure and with no lawyer present, the children confessed they had thrown stones at the Apartheid Wall. In another incident, during an invasion of Hares in the West Bank on the night of 12/13.3.2009, the IOF arrested a 17 year old boy suffering from kidney malfunction.

Palestinians prisoners are held in facilities run by the Israeli Prison Services (IPS) or the IDF. There are 30 detention centres that include 21 prisons and military camps, 5 detention and holding centres and 4 interrogation centres. Also, there is at least one known secret prison, Facility 1391, which is renowned for its severe torture methods. The exact location of this prison is unknown and lawyers and the ICRC have no access to it. The majority of these facilities are located outside the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and transferring Palestinian prisoners to these facilities constitutes a violation of the 4th Geneva Convention, and making family visits almost impossible. Some of these facilities are buildings while others are tents within military camps like the Ketzion Military prison camp in the Negev, exposing detainees to harsh weather conditions. They are all overcrowded, with little hygiene, prisoners have to sleep on wooden planks and covers are often provided by the families or human rights organizations. The food provided is insufficient and of poor quality. Palestinian detainees have to live in appalling conditions in these facilities, are humiliated and subjected to inhuman treatment. In some cases, detainees are deported, either abroad or to the Gaza Strip. After the siege of the Nativity Church in 2003, Israel deported 13 Palestinian detainees to Europe and 26 to the Gaza Strip. During the Gaza war, hundreds of Palestinian civilians were arrested, including minors. They were handcuffed and blindfolded, and had nothing to shelter them from the harsh weather. Many held for days in pits dug in the ground. Reports added that some of the detainees were held near tanks and in combat area, making them human shields for the IOF.

Prison visits usually take the whole day, although the visit itself lasts less than an hour. We would set off in the very early morning, when it was dark outside and everyone else was still sleeping. The bus of the ICRC would be full with Palestinians from everywhere, mostly elderly women and children, all anxious to see their relatives. And before we would finally be able to see our loved ones, we would undergo one checkpoint after the other and one search after the other. I remember during one visit, when we were finally allowed into the visit room, I walked quickly looking for my uncle. I hadn’t seen him in years, and after I finally sat opposite him, we started talking through the barbed wire. We were both so happy. It was after a few minutes that someone from my family came and told me to come and say hello to my uncle. I was talking to the wrong person, and I was so embarrassed I didn’t even say goodbye or look back to see if that prisoner had any visitors that day. Later, I thought he too might have not seen his family since so long that he too mistook me for a relative, or maybe he was just anxious to speak to someone. During another visit, I remember sitting and talking to my uncle and at the same time trying to ignore the rain drops that were seeping through the roof and hitting me on the head and running down my face. My uncle must have found it amusing, because every time a raindrop would hit me in the face he would smile, but I would ignore it and continue talking, and by the end of the visit my hair was totally soaked and I was freezing. There was no possibility of kissing or hugging a relative, and the only thing we could do in way of shaking hands was to stretch our fingers through the barbed net separating us. Saying goodbye was always difficult, because we knew we were going back to our homes, to the relatively bigger prison, while leaving them behind in the small overcrowded cells. And when we finally reached home, it would be dark again and most people would be sleeping, a day spent between checkpoints and searches for a 45 minute visit of loved ones.

One time, on the way to my aunt’s house in Dheisheh, a friend of mine and I passed a young man, who was walking up and down one narrow alley of the refugee camp. The man was most probably mid twenty and was good looking. He was walking that alley and was arguing with someone. I looked around and saw no one in the whole area. I looked up to see if he was addressing someone sitting at a window or on the roof, but could see no one. I pointed the man to my friend, who told me not to worry. She said the young man had been recently released from an Israeli prison, where he was tortured. Since then he had been roaming the streets of Dheisheh, arguing with an invisible friend. As I listened closer, I realized he was talking politics with himself, discussing the occupation and life in prison. They had not released him, for he was still in that Israeli cell, being tortured every minute. Last winter when I was in Palestine, I wanted to take some photos of old UNRWA rooms, built for the Palestinians in 1949. Most old UNRWA rooms were being destroyed to build new houses, and I wanted to keep a record of the last remaining rooms that are a synonym to the Nakba and refugee camps. The wife of one of my uncles accompanied me in my search since she was born and grew up in Dheisheh and knew where to find a few old rooms. Most of these tiny rooms are deserted now, standing empty near larger family houses. I would take photos from the outside and if the room had no door or the door was open, I would take photos from the inside. As we came to inspect one room, we were surprised to find an old man lying on the ground, wrapped in a torn out winter coat. The old man opened his eyes as he saw us, he made a move as if to stand up, but my uncle’s wife told him not to leave and apologized for disturbing him, since we thought the room was deserted. A few minutes later, my mother’s aunt saw us invited us for some tea. Inside, we told her about the old man, and as she and my uncle’s wife talked about the old man and giving him something to eat and warm himself, since they knew who he was, I realized it must be the young man I saw long time ago. He was still imprisoned in that cell, a whole life wasted, and all I could do was to shake my head at the injustice of it all.

Under international humanitarian law, torture is strictly forbidden. The world was shocked when the torture in Abu Ghreib came to light, there were condemnations from everywhere and demands were made to close that prison. But the Zionist state, which conducts one war crime after the other, never hesitates in using torture. The forms of torture used in Abu Ghreib were not new to Palestinians, because they have been used since decades by the IPS against Palestinians. Was it not revealed that Israeli IOF and Shin Bet interrogators were hired by the Pentagon to brutally interrogate prisoners in Abu Ghreib? Was it not revealed that the American interrogates implicated in the torture had attended an “anti terror” training camp in Israel, and that many of the torture methods used in Abu Ghreib resembled those applied by Israel against Palestinian detainees? Much is documented about torture in Israeli prisons, but we rarely hear of any condemnation or demand to close these torture facilities. According to B’Tselem, 85% of the Palestinian detainees have been subjected to torture, adding that “Since 1987, the GSS (Israeli General Security Service) interrogated at least 850 Palestinians a year by means of torture …. (a)ll governmental authorities - from the Israeli army to the Supreme court - take part in approving torture, in developing new methods, and in supervising them.” In 1999 the Israeli High Court superficially outlawed the use of arbitrary torture as an interrogation method, but in reality it did not ban it and till today torture is still used by Israel. Physical ill treatment combined with humiliation begins with the arrest, whether at home or in the street. Palestinian detainees can be interrogated for 180 days, and can be denied a lawyer for a period of 60 days. During interrogation, torture is used and has led to the death of the detainee in some cases and confessions extracted under torture are admissible in Israeli courts.

Palestinians may be held for days without being brought before a judge or informed of the reason for the arrest, during which they are interrogated, which can last up to 180 days, or are administratively detained. Administrative detention is a detention without trial or charge or the continuation of imprisonment after the completion of a sentence. It is often used by Israel and is authorized by an administrative order of the IOF rather than by a judicial decree. Israeli Military Order 1229 of 1988 empowers IOF military commanders to detain Palestinians for up to 6 months, which can be extended indefinitely. Over the years, thousands of Palestinians, men and women and of all ages, have been held in administrative detention for periods ranging from 6 months to over 8 years, without being tried or charged. Families of detainees are not informed of a person’s arrest or the arrest location. Theoretically, detainees can appeal, but in reality neither they nor their lawyers are informed of the reason for the detention or examine the evidence, which makes defending their clients very difficult. The Orders governing administrative detention were also modified in 1999. MO 1466 - Temporary Order, Modification 13 states that a detainee must be brought before a military judge within 10 days of his arrest, and authorizing the military judge to approve, cancel or decrease the time of administrative detention order. This modification is also superficial, since the judges are military personnel who give legal legitimacy to the illegal actions of the IOF and the IPS. In reality, Palestinians are tried by Israeli military courts consisting of a panel of 3 judges appointed by the IOF. These judges often have no legal background and thus don’t fulfil international standards of a fair trial. Since the beginning of the 2nd intifada in September 2000 some 20,000 Palestinians were held in administrative detention. By April 2009 there were more than 560 Palestinian administrative detainees, held in Israeli prisons without trial. 372 of these detainees have been held without trial or charge for at least two consecutive periods, 47 of them for over two years, and 23 for over two and a half years including two who have been imprisoned for over four and a half years.

While a Palestinian may be held in custody for 18 days before being brought to a judge, an Israeli can be held in custody for a maximum of 48 hours before being brought before a judge. While a Palestinian can be held for 30 days without charges which can be extended indefinitely, an Israeli can be held for 15 days without a charge which can be extended for only another 15 days. Palestinians brought to court on accusation of murder are always convicted, even without evidence, and are always sentenced to life imprisonment. Most cases against Israeli soldiers or illegal Jewish settlers accused of murdering Palestinians are closed without any charges, even with the existence of evidence or witnesses. The few who do get sentenced are imprisoned for short periods ranging from 6 months to 7 and a half years or to community service. Palestinian Prisoners have been used by Israel at politically convenient moments, whereby Palestinians who had already served out their sentences with only a few days remaining would be released as “gestures of good will”. At the same time hundreds others would be arrested. For example, on 25.8.2008 Israel released 198 prisoners as a “gesture of good will”, however statistics for August 2008 show that another 338 Palestinians were arrested. Today there are some 81 “old detainees” i.e., detainees who are in continuous imprisonment since over 20 years, 2 of whom since over 30 years, and some 290 prisoners who have been in prison since over 15 years.

Although they have modern deadly weapons, are top recipients of military assistance, have their war crimes justified by a biased western media, and their interests protected by Zionist lobbies all over the world, the Zionists still fear us because they know we are the rightful owners of the land and that alone by existing we are defying them and their power and countering the myths and lies on which their state is built. Israeli Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman said on the release of Palestinian prisoners: “It would be better to drown these prisoners, in the Dead Sea if possible, since that’s the lowest point in the world.” They not only deny us our rights and our freedom, they want to kill our spirit and see us dead. What they haven’t understood by now is that the more they humiliate us, harass us, imprison us, take away our freedom from us, the more we value that freedom and the stronger becomes our belief in our just cause and our will to be free.

Sources:

www.palestinemonitor.org

Jewish Identity: From Victimhood to Aggression

2009-05-10T09:02:00.002-05:00

Gilad Atzmon - From Victimhood to Aggression: Jewish Identity in the light of Caryl Churchill’s Seven Jewish Children

Identity is a very tricky concept. It can very mean many opposing things and at the same time it can mean nothing. One may start to wonder about one’s identity only when one feels he is under the threat of losing it. The case of Jewish identity is a very good example. Judging by the literature and history textbooks, Jews started to explore the notion of their identity following the emancipation, assimilation and the collapse of the rabbinical authority. In short, Jews started to wonder who they were once their collective self-notion was already melting down. Seemingly, the notion of ‘Jewish identity’ was there to replace the tribal, rabbinical and racially orientated notion of the ‘Jew’ with a tolerant acceptable ‘liberal’ discourse that aims at a universal awareness.

In the post-modern era, Identity is regarded as a means to impose a sort of legitimacy to separateness as a decent civil political collective consciousness. Generally speaking, identity is a social concept that allows the figure that may be considered as marginal to celebrate his unique symptoms while at the same time regarding himself as a perfectly qualified member of an extended open society. Identity Politics, accordingly, is a concept that integrates the different margins into an ideal phantasmic image of multicultural and multiethnic society.

As much as identity politics refers to an imaginary celebration of differences in a world that regards itself as a cosmopolitan global village, Jewish identity (whether it locates itself politically on the left, right or centre) is a unique setting that aims to enjoy it all while giving very little in return. Jewish Identity Politics is there to maintain legitimately that the Jews must be accepted and respected by others for what they are: their history, their suffering, their religious belief, their culture, yet, within this call for others to recognise their identity claims, they somehow surprisingly fail to assimilate any notion of tolerance towards others. All forms of Jewish identity political schools maintain some elementary and fundamental tribal exclusivist code of engagement. Whether it is the rightwing Zionist who celebrates Jewish identity at the expense of the Palestinian people, or the Lefty Jew for Justice who, for some reason, celebrates his craving for peace in a ‘Jews only club’, it seems as if the entire spectrum of Jewish political identity is a tribally orientated exclusivist practice. It seems as if the entire spectrum of Jewish identity politics lacks the true awareness and acceptance of universal attitudes as an acknowledgment of being amongst others.

This behavioural pattern can be easily grasped in historical retrospective. Bearing in mind that the discourse of identity arose as a reaction to 20th century disastrous nationalist reality, identity was an outlet that allowed a sense of belonging in a newly formed tolerant civic reality. However, the course of Jewish identity politics was very different. Within the concept of Jewish identity, Jewish suffering and victimhood are set as unique Jewish symptoms. For a Jew to celebrate his identity means to celebrate Jewish pain, to visit and to revisit the agony. To be a Jew is to religiously believe in the Holocaust. To be a Jew is to be chased. To be a Jew is to be able to find an anti-Semite under every stone and behind every corner. To be a Jew is to chase senile Nazis into their graves. Forgiveness doesn’t seem to attract the leading proponent of Jewish identity politics.

Within such a notion of Jewish identity and bearing in mind the Zionist expansionist project, it is hardly surprising that Jewish collective ideology had become a bipolar schizophrenic volley between Victimhood and Aggression.

True Lies

Caryl Churchill’s play Seven Jewish Children, http://royalcourttheatre.com that was written and performed in the light of the last Israeli military devastating campaign in Gaza, turns the floodlights on the confusion within Jewish identity.

On the face of it, the short play is an historical journey form victimhood into aggression. In just nine minutes we are joining an expedition that departs in the horror of the Shoah:

“Don’t tell her they’ll kill her..
Tell her it’s important to be quiet..

Tell her to curl up as if she’s in bed..”

and eventually ends up with the Israelis taking the role of the Nazis

“Tell her they (the Palestinians) are animals
living in rubble now, tell her I wouldn’t care if we wiped them out,
….tell her I look at one of their children covered in
blood and what do I feel? Tell her all I feel is happy it’s not her…”

As much as Churchill’s reading of Jewish’s recent history as a transformation from innocence into ruthless barbarism is not a revelation, the message is delivered in a rather profound and sensitive manner.

But there is a far deeper layer in Churchill’s play that is hardly discussed or addressed. Churchill, like other commentators engaged in issues to do with Jewish identity, is highly observant of the elastic qualities of Jewish identity, history and reality. Jews can be whatever they want to be as long as it serves one cause or another. The Jewish narrative is obviously neither coherent nor consistent.

“Tell her it’s a game”, as if we (the Jews) are on the top of it all.
“Tell her it’s serious”, as if we are actually going down.
“But don’t frighten her”, as if we are somehow on top of it all again.
“Don’t tell her they’ll kill her”, as if we it all about to end in a matter of seconds.

The Israeli Historian Shlomo Sand elaborated on the phantasmic qualities within the Jewish historical discourse in his recent book ‘When And How The Jewish People Was Invented’. Sand manages to demonstrate beyond any reasonable doubt that the Jewish people never existed as a 'nation-race', they never shared a common origin. Instead they are a colourful mix of groups that at various stages in history adopted the Jewish religion. Similarly, at a certain stage in history they had invented their national identity. As we sadly realise, the phantasmic qualities at the core of Jewish identity politics do not stop Jews from celebrating their aspiration at the expense of the Palestinian people. The reason is simple, as Sand proves in a scholarly way and as Churchill conveys theatrically, Jewish identity is a very flexible realm.

“Tell her her uncles died
Don't tell her they were killed
Tell her they were killed
Don’t frighten her.”

The Jewish narrative is the art of making a story. It has no commitment to facts or truth. Accordingly, you make sure that you “don’t tell her they were killed”, so she can keep up the cosmopolitan dream. Or maybe, you better “tell her they were killed”, so she can rush back to the Ghetto and stay with us. Alternatively she may learn the ‘necessary’ lesson and join the IDF so she can spread death amongst the enemies of Israel. Anyhow, make sure you “don’t frighten her”, as if she isn’t frightened enough already.

The Jewish identity is a form of tactical detachment. It is a methodical strategy that creates an imaginary symbolic order with a clear pragmatic agenda.

"Tell her for miles and miles all round they (the Arabs) have lands of their own.” Misleading her to think that Palestinians and Arabs are literally the same thing.

“Tell her again this is our promised land.” As if the Jews are people, as if their origin is in Zion, as if the biblical promise has any legal validity, as if they actually believe in the Torah.

Churchill, like Sand, is eloquently exposing the zero integrity at the core of the Jewish national cause, discourse and narrative. The Jewish historical plot is not about telling the truth. Instead, it is all about the making up a ‘truth’ that would fit the current tribal needs. There is an old joke about Marxist ideologists. It tells that once the facts do not fit into the Marxist determinist textbook, all you have to do is to change the facts. Jewish identity discourse is employing exactly the same strategy. Facts and lies are produced as we move along. In short, all you have to ‘tell her’ is that sometimes we need to be innocent victims, other times we plunder, kill, throw WMDs. It all depends what serves our tribal interests best at a given time.

Victimhood - the Birth of the Collective

Churchill seems to be very observant tracing the disastrous toll Jewish identity politics achieved in turning the Jewish state into a cold blooded murderer.

“Tell her I don’t care if the world hates us
Tell her we’re better haters”, as if she has to be told after what she saw in Gaza.
“Tell her we’re chosen people”, as if she doesn’t realise by now.

And yet, one may wonder, who is that young innocent girl whom Caryl Churchill referring to. Who is the protagonist at the receiving end of the text, who is the hidden ‘her’ that is referred to in each line of this interesting play?

The image of an innocent young female victim is one of the pillars of the Jewish identity and the post-Shoah Jewish victim self image. Anna Frank is probably the most famous literary character within that very genre. As much as Frank is an innocent victim, she is also very effective in inflicting guilt on the Goyim.

As we know, Anna Frank tragically perished at the end of WW2. She didn’t make it to the newly born ‘Jews only’ state. Yet, within the context of Jewish identity politics Anna Frank had been adopted as a Jewish cultural icon by means of collective transference. In practice she had successfully settled in the heart of every subject who identifies as a Jew. Those who succumb to the notion of Jewish identity insist upon regarding themselves as innocent and blamelessness. From a Jewish identity political perspective, the Jewish nation is a tribe of very many innocent Anna Franks.

I allow myself to guess that Churchill’s little girl refers metaphorically to the ‘people of Israel’. The newly born Jewish nation is indeed a very young concept that is submerged with righteousness and innocence. The little girl at the receiving end of the play is there to convey an image of naivety and blamelessness. But it is also that little girl’s metaphorical innocence that makes Israel’s crimes so sinister. In the light of the Israeli propaganda that presents the Jewish state as a vulnerable innocent blameless entity, the devastating reality of Israeli brutality leads towards the inevitable cognitive dissonance.

The reality of the racist ethnic cleansing ‘Jews only state’ together with the images of the Israeli war machine pouring tons of white phosphorous on Gazans does not leave much room for doubt. Israel has nothing to do with the phantasmic self-image of a ‘little blameless girl’. If anything, the image of the naïve girl makes things worse for the Israeli Hasbara project. We are dealing here with a horribly naughty child who was despised first then ‘she’ turned into a bully and soon after proved to be ruthless, sadistic and monstrous with no comparison.

"Tell her we're the iron fist now,
tell her it's the fog of war.
Tell her we won't stop killing them till we're safe,

tell her I laughed when I saw the dead policemen…
tell her I wouldn’t care if we wiped them out.”

Seemingly we are dealing here with a uniquely and seriously disturbed immature nation. We are dealing with a self-loving narcissistic child who is terrorised by ‘her’ own cruelty. It is the sadistic youngster who is horrified by the demons ‘she’ finds in herself. The more the Israelis love themselves and their delusional phantasmic innocence, the more they are frightened that people out there may be as sadistic as they themselves proved to be. This behavioral mode is called projection.

“Tell her we love her.
Don’t frighten her.”

So ends Churchill’s play. Seemingly, Jews have a very good reason to be frightened. Their national state is a racist genocidal entity.

After the Shoah, Jews had an opportunity to transform their fate, to turn a new page. They could even explore collectively the notion of forgiveness and mercy. A few Jewish intellectuals insisted that Jews must locate themselves at the forefront of the battle against racism and oppression. As it happened, it took just six decades for the Jewish national state to establish its primacy as the ultimate racist nation state that employs the ultimate sadistic ruthless oppressive tactics. ”Don’t frighten her,” says Churchill. If to be honest, the young girl must be frightened for a very good reason. If she ever would be courageous enough to look in the mirror, she would be gravely devastated.

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Zionists: We hate you because you are evil, not because you are Jewish

2009-05-10T08:54:00.004-05:00

By Khalid Amayreh

Zionist massacres then and now. I have been under fire of late from two diametrically opposite quarters. First, the fanatical, self-worshipping Zionists who think that non-Jewish suffering should never ever be compared with Jewish suffering.

Needless to say, this psychotic attitude stems from deep-seated convictions that a Jew is a special creature whose life is worth more than the rest of humanity. Haven’t we noticed, for example, how Israel has made “Gilad Shalit”, the Israeli soldier imprisoned by Hamas, a household name all over the world, while next to nothing is mentioned about the estimated 10,000 Palestinian political and resistance prisoners languishing in Israeli dungeons and concentration camps?

And, second, some pro-Palestinian activists who believe that I should avoid invoking the holocaust in my writings lest this help legitimize the Zionist narrative and inadvertently justify Israeli crimes against the Palestinian people.

To our pro-Palestinian activists, I, with all due respect, would like to say the following. I sincerely believe that we would be walking in the path of immorality if we denied or belittled other people’s suffering. Indeed, it is imperative that we retain our humanity and moral fabric in the course of this legitimate struggle against the evil state. We must never imitate or emulate their ways and tactics. This would be self-defeating, self-destructive and immensely demoralizing.

Moreover, we must refrain from saying or doing things that would make others portray us as inherent enemies of Jews, because we are not.

We also need to be constantly vigilant and cautious about what we say and how we say it, lest we inadvertently besmirch the legitimacy of our just cause.

Israel is so manifestly criminal and ugly that we don’t need to deny anyone’s suffering to prove this plain fact.

In short, we don’t have to shoot ourselves in the foot. It is wrong and it hurts us a lot.

Obviously, the Zionists’ “arguments” are motivated, as always, by ill-will and a malicious desire to silence critics of Israeli criminality whose phantasmagoric expressions we all witnessed recently in the Gaza Strip.

The subject of contention this time has been an article I published a few days ago, entitled “Shame on us,” in which I strongly criticized efforts by some dubious “peace activists” to bamboozle some innocent Palestinian children from some impoverished localities into playing music before “holocaust survivors.”

This is what happened last week when a dozen young musicians from the Jenin Refugee Camp, in the northern West Bank, were taken surreptitiously to Tel Aviv where they were made to play a serenade before some elderly Zionists, some of whom veterans from the many criminal wars Israel had waged on our people. And as I said in the article, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine was not carried out by UFOs but by the very people our children are now being asked to cheer up.

Understandably, the not-so-innocent event left many Palestinians infuriated by the cheap exploitation of these kids for Israeli hasbara purposes. As one who lost three uncles in one day to Zionist murderers in 1954, I felt deeply wounded and humiliated by that event.

I am actually not against reconciliation between Palestinians and Jews. I don’t and never will view Jews as our inherent enemies. Some Jews are actually among the most effective supporters of our national cause. Those we salute for their honesty and morality.

However, it is obvious that true reconciliation in this part of the world requires that the slate be made thoroughly clean. Usurped rights must be returned to rightful owners, and wrongs must be rectified. This I say to honest and conscientious Jews who are genuinely interested in justice and peace.

But to the Zionists I would like to say that the following: the latest point of contention is not about music or even peace. This is first and foremost about human dignity of which the children of the holocaust and their children and grand children and great grandchildren have been trying to rob us.

And whether you like it or not, for us, at least, you represent the real Wehrmacht, the real SS and real Gestapo. You are the Nazis of our time. This is what we see from our vantage point. This is what much of the world sees. This is what many honest and conscientious Jews see.

You stole our country, you murdered our people, you destroyed our homes, and you expelled and dispersed the bulk of our people to the four corners of the world. And after all of this, you have audacity to dupe our children to sing and play music to you? This is simply beyond, far beyond, Chutzpah.

Some of you habitually babble the word “hatred” whenever a Palestinian asserts his people’s humanity and dignity.

Well, you are really sick to the bone if you think Palestinians must sacrifice their dignity in order to become a hate-free people according to the Zionist lexicon. We will not pay tribute to the killers of our children, we will not show respect to those who murder us.

Besides, who do you think you are anyway to lecture us on hatred? After all, you represent and embody hatred in its ugliest form. The extirpation of a people from its ancestral homeland from time immemorial is a satanic act par excellence. The destruction and obliteration of hundreds of Palestinian towns and villages to fulfill Jewish nationalism is diabolical act of the highest order.

Your recent blitzkrieg in Gaza during which your Nazi-like army ganged up on a helpless, unprotected civilian population, exterminating them with bombs and missiles and incinerating their children with White Phosphorus proved once again that you are no better than the hateful Nazis you curse day and night for what they did to you sixty years ago.

Well, try to get yourselves out of this cocoon of self-denial. The Palestinian people don’t hate music nor do they teach their kids to hate Jews or non-Jews, it is your evil and murderous actions that generate hatred against you not only among Palestinians and Muslims but among many other people around the world.

Just look at your ugly faces in the mirror.

US Air Raids Killed Mostly Women and Children

2009-04-30T15:30:00.003-05:00

Report urges review of military strategy when targeting urban areas

By Kim Sengupta, Defence correspondent

Air strikes and artillery barrages have taken a heavy toll among the most vulnerable of the Iraqi people, with children and women forming a disproportionate number of the dead.

Analysis carried out for the research group Iraq Body Count (IBC) found that 39 per cent of those killed in air raids by the US-led coalition were children and 46 per cent were women. Fatalities caused by mortars, used by American and Iraqi government forces as well as insurgents, were 42 per cent children and 44 per cent women.

Twelve per cent of those killed by suicide bombings, mainly the tool of militant Sunni groups, were children and 16 per cent were females. One in five (21 per cent) of those killed by car bombs, used by both Shia and Sunni fighters, was a child; one in four (28 per cent) was a woman.

The figures, compiled by academics at King’s College and Royal Holloway, University of London, show that hi-tech weaponry has caused lethal damage to those in the population who would be furthest away from the conflict.

The victims of one of the most brutal and common types of killings in the war – abduction and execution by death squad – were 95 per cent men, many of them bearing marks of torture.

The report, The Weapons That Kill Civilians, Deaths of Children and Noncombatants in Iraq, was compiled from a sample of 60,481 deaths in 14,196 events over a five-year period since the 2003 invasion. Civilian casualties from concentrated bouts of violence, such as the two sieges of Fallujah, were excluded.

IBC estimates that the total deaths in the conflict so far number 99,774. The medical journal The Lancet has maintained in another study that more than 600,000 people were killed in the first three years of the war. IBC holds that the indiscriminate nature of the fatalities caused by air strikes shows they should not be used in urban areas.

Growing anger over civilian casualties caused by air raids in another front of the “war on terror”, Afghanistan, has led to the US, UK and their Nato partners reviewing their policy of using warplanes. Hamid Karzai, the Afghan President, recently said this had become the most contentious issue between him and Western powers.

From 2004 to 2007, the overall tonnage of munition dropped from planes in the Afghan conflict rose from 163 tonnes a year to 1,956 tonnes, an increase of 1,100 per cent. Since 2001 the US air force has dropped 14,049 tonnes of bombs in Afghanistan and 18,858 in Iraq.

Professor John Sloboda, of Royal Holloway, co-author of the report, said: “Our weapon-specific findings have implications for a wide range of conflicts, because the patterns found in this study are likely to be replicated for these weapons whenever they are used.

*Last night a US army sergeant was facing life imprisonment after being found guilty of executing four Iraqi detainees in 2007. Master Sgt John Hartley shot four men in the head and dumped their bodies in a canal in West Rasheed area of Baghdad. He is due to be sentenced today.

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Al-Qaeda Chief In Iraq: Captured, Killed, Never Actually Existed, Now Captured Again

2009-04-30T14:58:00.003-05:00

Back story of Abu Omar al-Baghdadi betrays meaninglessness of “war on terror”
Steve Watson

You couldn’t make it up if you tried. AFP today reports that Al-Qaeda chief in Iraq, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, has been captured and arrested. The problem with this is that al-Baghdadi has already been reported captured, previously reported killed and even said to have never actually existed by the U.S. military.

“Abu Omar al-Baghdadi was arrested today in Baghdad,” Baghdad security spokesman Major General Qasim Atta told AFP.

“It was Iraqi forces who arrested him based on an intelligence tip off from someone,” he added.

Also known as Abu Hamza al-Baghdadi and Abu Abdullah al-Rashid al-Baghdadi, many questions have surrounded the so called leader of al Qaeda’s political front organization the “Islamic State of Iraq”.

He was thought to have been one of the figures to succeed the equally shadowy Abu Musab al-Zarqawi as a leader of insurgent forces in Iraq in 2006, after al Zarqawi, who was also previously reported captured and killed on several occasions, was laid to rest for good by the PR arm of the Pentagon.

The announcement of al-Baghdadi’s capture today jars with multiple previous reports from up to two years ago, detailing his arrest, his death and even questioning his existence altogether.

In March 2007, the Interior Ministry of Iraq claimed that al-Baghdadi had been captured in Baghdad. This was reported by AP and picked up by the likes of CNN, whose report stated that another insurgent had positively confirmed al-Baghdadi’s identity.

The U.S. military denied that al-Baghdadi was in their custody, however, and one day later Iraqi officials retracted their statements regarding his arrest.

Indeed this back and forth announcement of capture and later retraction occurred three times in the space of one week.

Then one month later, on May 3, 2007, the Iraqi Interior Ministry announced that al-Baghdadi had been killed by American and Iraqi forces north of Baghdad.

However, in July 2007, the U.S. military reported that al-Baghdadi had never actually existed and was, for all intents and purposes, a myth.

A reportedly high ranking “Al Qaeda in Iraq” detainee identified as Khaled al-Mashhadani, then claimed that al-Baghdadi was a fictional character created to give an Iraqi face to a foreign-run terror group, and that the “Islamic State of Iraq” was a “virtual organization in cyberspace” created by al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Ayub al Masri.

The person claiming to be Baghdadi continued to release video and audiotapes attacking U.S. occupation of Iraq, but refused to show his face.

The U.S. military’s claim that Baghdadi is a fictitious character was then challenged in May 2008 after a police chief in Haditha said Baghdadi’s real identity is Hamed Dawood Mohammed Khalil al Zawi. “He was an officer in the security services and was dismissed from the army because of his extremism,” the police chief told al Arabiya television.

Now Baghdadi has been reported captured again!

This saga is another example of how a manufactured smoke and mirrors propaganda veils reality. The “war on terror” mantra continues to be propagated as justification to wage permanent occupation and control over the middle east by the global elite.

Al Qaeda in Iraq, al Zarqawi, al Baghdadi and the legions of other al qaeda operatives who have been reportedly captured and killed over and over are used as interchangeable PR tools.

Are or were any of them ever real? Possibly. However that matters little now.

Once again 99% of the corporate media will no doubt enthusiastically champion this latest arrest as a key victory in the continuing war on terror, and the majority of Americans who even notice will not take a second glance at the ludicrous back story.

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The false "profits" of Christian Zionism

2009-04-29T23:42:00.002-05:00

Anyone who's spent anytime watching a Pat Robertson or John Hagee thundering out apocalyptic scenarios involving the "Rapture," Jesus Christ and Israel will quickly realize that these false prophets are scaring their flock into worshipping a false idol, Israel. Never mind the fact the word "Rapture" doesn't appear in the KJV of the Bible or that Judaism not only doesn't recognize JC, but has some rather nasty things to say about Christ and his mother.

But these false prophets are making big profits sowing fear and confusion, whether it's Israel making a gift of a customized Lear Jet to Jerry Falwell or John Hagee paying himself over a million dollars a year in TAX FREE money while having several palaces to live in, like the $2.1 million 7,969-acre ranch outside Brackettville, Texas , with five lodges, including a "main lodge" and a gun locker. It also includes a manager's house, a smokehouse, a skeet range and three barns or the six-bedroom, 5,275-square-foot house in one of San Antonio's most exclusive gated communities, The Dominion. The house, similar in architectural style to the building at Cornerstone Church - classical Greek revival and white with tall pillars reaching from the ground to the roof - is appraised at $688,900.

It's obvious to many what gods these jokers serve.

Christian Zionists believe that in order to fulfill Biblical prophecy, Israel must conquer most of the Middle East. They are a growing force in American politics with ties to many powerful pro-Israel groups in Washington. Once considered a marginal doctrine among evangelicals, the dispensationalist theology of Christian Zionism includes a belief in the rapture, when the faithful are to be lifted up to Heaven while the rest of humanity—including most of the Jews—will perish.

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Physicians offer chilling account of Gaza atrocities

2009-04-29T21:20:00.004-05:00

BEIRUT: Renowned Chinese-English physician Dr. Swee Ang gave a moving testimony on Saturday of Israel's destruction in the Gaza Strip as witnessed in her recent trip to the tiny Palestinian enclave. "Cluster bombs, deliberate assassinations of whole families that they would line up and shoot," Ang said as she listed a number of acts committed by Israel during its 22-day assault on Gaza in December and January that left over 1,400 Palestinians dead.

"The Israelis would wait until the ambulances got the wounded and then attack them, killing and injuring the drivers," she continued.

Ang and Norwegian physician Hans Husum were invited to offer an assessment of the situation in Gaza during the "Wounds of Gaza" lecture at the UNESCO Palace organized by the Sabra Shatila Foundation.

Ang, who bears distinct Asian features, also remarked that Israelis couldn't distinguish her from the Palestinians during her visit - a fact that made her proud.

"The Israelis attacked me in London for saying that 1.5 million tons of bombs had been dropped on Gaza, but I will show you the evidence," she said while presenting nauseating photographs taken during her visit of charred victims burned with phosphorous and large civilian buildings collapsed with vacuum bombs.

"I was very angry when I learned that Israeli tanks would come in front of a house and first fire a normal shell to break open the wall, then shoot a phosphorous shell into it," she said.

Husum, equally angered by the war in Gaza, lashed out at the United States which he said provided Israel with the experimental Dense Inert Metal Explosives, or DIME weapons, to test on the Palestinians.

"This weapon tears the flesh off the bone, it opens up the chest, ... it kills a lot of people," he said, adding that the "new kind of wars" like in Gaza and Israel's summer 2006 war on Lebanon were launched not to make conventional military advancements, but rather with the aim of breaking the will of the people.

He went on to predict that the next war in Lebanon would be an urban one, systematically targeting cities in order to "break society" because, as he put, "humanitarian law is dead - it's out."

"I've been a war surgeon for 30 years. I've seen a lot, but I am shocked," he said. "If the aim of the enemy is to scare us into subjugation and to put us down on our knees, then we have to stand up - we do not bend down."

Source

Gaza again on brink of disaster

2009-04-29T21:15:00.003-05:00

Palestinians participate in a marathon in Gaza City calling for reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas

By SHÂN ROSS AND BEN LYNFIELD IN JERUSALEM

TENS of thousands of people struggling to rebuild their lives in the Gaza Strip after Israel's 22-day military offensive this year will face a second humanitarian disaster within weeks, because aid is not getting through, the Scot heading the British Red Cross international relief effort has warned.

Moira Reddick, the charity's head of disaster management, said blockages at the Israeli border meant civilians were facing spending the summer with its soaring temperatures sheltering under rotting plastic and tents with little or no sanitation, increasing the threat of disease and risk of infection.

Ms Reddick, who visited Gaza last month, said: "We will be looking at a new humanitarian crisis. Right now we have assistance which we are trying to get in. The situation is that aid is not getting through. It is piling up on the other side of the border.

"As summer comes on, the risk to health increases. It is difficult enough in winter, but it will be impossible in the heat and the risk to health increases."

The 22 days of hostilities, which ended on 18 January, left at least 1,300 Palestinian civilians dead and 5,500 injured. Thirteen Israelis were killed, three of them civilians.

Ms Reddick, originally from Ayr, said there were also major problems with lack of reconstruction work, because building materials such as steel, as well as fuel, were being prevented from entering the territory.

Israel has said Hamas could use materials like concrete for military purposes.

Ms Reddick, who deals with an annual budget of tens of millions of pounds, added: "The situation in Gaza has a political cause and therefore needs a political solution. This needs to happen to make it easier to move goods across the border."

Last month, the UK government pledged £30 million for reconstruction of the Gaza Strip. About £4 billion has been promised by foreign donors.

Sir Nick Young, chief executive of the British Red Cross, said: "This is not a job for aid agencies alone. Humanitarian action is vital, but insufficient to resolve the crisis.

"Ordinary Gazans have struggled under 18 months of restrictions, making daily life almost impossible – access to healthcare, petrol, electricity, secure food supplies – things we take for granted.

"The task of reconstruction is daunting. However, the truth is that efforts to rebuild Gaza can only succeed if accompanied by credible political steps to resolve the crisis."

Last week, a spokesman for the White House in the United States announced that the leaders of Israel, Egypt and the Palestinians have been invited for talks in Washington in a new push for peace. The talks are likely to take place by early June.

Ahmed Youssef, a senior adviser to Ismail Haniye, the Hamas prime minister, described as "accurate" Ms Reddick's assessment that Gaza is on the verge of humanitarian disaster because of Israeli strictures.

"Sometimes the Israelis try to deceive the world community by letting some lorries cross, but their policy is to keep us on the brink of collapse all of the time," said Mr Youssef.

However, Yariv Ovadia, a spokesman for the Israeli foreign ministry, denied this, saying: "We closely monitor the humanitarian situation in Gaza and we don't see the situation getting close to a crisis."

About 120 lorry loads of humanitarian supplies cross into Gaza on a daily basis, according to the defence ministry.

Mr Ovadia said the restrictions "are mostly on equipment that is not used for humanitarian aid".

Source

J-wish Moral Blindspot: Zionist Genocide in Iraq

2009-04-29T20:45:00.002-05:00

Iraqi Holocaust Perpetrated by “Holocaust Victims”

Colter: A Moral Blindspot

The Zionist J-ws you see pontificating and bloviating (while wildly gesticulating) about the “New Antisemitism^TM“(like CIA employee and PM of Isr-el Benjamin Netanyahu and his Canadian mini-me Irwin Cotler) bringing on a new J-wish Holocaust seem have a moral blind spot when it comes to what Isr-eli interests have wrought.

The genocide in Iraq was brought on by Isr-eli Zionists(in the Bush admin most of the warmongering neocons were dual Isr-elis), following Isr-eli/CIA/Zionist strategic goals for the middle east as outlined in the PNAC documents.

If the real worry was about anti-semitism, why not work to expose the ongoing neocon/CIA/Isr-eli generated Holocausts in Iraq and Palestine? People are finding out about it despite their efforts to ignore existing ongoing genocides and concentrate on a hypothetical threat posed by Iran.

The internet is providing an antidote to the Israel Lobby monoculture of opinion so wouldn’t it be prudent to acknowledge J-wish perpetrated terrorism and genocides? Why do the J-wish groups want to generate distrust and emnity between J-ws and those who rightfully criticize Isr-el, Zionism, and those forcing the Zionist paradigm on our countries via deceptions like the War on Terror(sic).

Moral Blindspot, or hypocrisy?

Powerful J-ws and their allies in politics and the media seem to have a moral blindspot when it comes to genocides of non-J-ws, which becomes glaringly apparent when one compares the heavily padded and spun news we get on the TV to the actual facts available on the internet.

Where are Irwin Cotler and Anne Bayefsky(see previous post)- Zionists with esteemed ‘Human Rights’ credentials and letters from Ivy League schools- when it comes to depleted uranium poisoning of Iraq’s future generations and the soldiers currently deployed there? Where are they when it comes to the genocide in Iraq?

Disloyalty to Zionism is Loyalty to Humanity

You want to talk about a J-wish Holocaust, here you go:

http://www.countercurrents.org/polya210309.htm

Iraqi Holocaust : 2.3 Million Iraqi Excess Deaths

By Gideon Polya

21 March, 2009
Mwcnews.net
March 20, 2009 marks the 6th anniversary of the illegal, utterly unjustified, war criminal invasion of Iraq by US, UK and Australian forces. Post-invasion violent and non-violent excess deaths total 2.3 million and refugees total 6 million in a continuing Iraqi Holocaust and Genocide.
Continue reading J-wish Moral Blindspot: Zionist Genocide in Iraq

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Israel Ups Military Campaign Against Children

2009-04-29T20:38:00.001-05:00

Number of 12 year olds arrested and imprisoned by Israeli forces on sharp incline this year

Palestine News Network

Nablus / Amin Abu Wardeh - The Global Movement for the Defense of Children’s Palestine Branch reports that Israeli imprisonment of Palestinian children is up.

Over the past two months Israeli forces have increased campaigns against children. At the end of February 2009 the number of Palestinian children detained in Israeli prisons was up to 423. This is the highest number since the beginning of the Al Aqsa Intifada in 2000.

It is not just that the number is increasing, reports Defense of Children, the age is getting younger.

During the first two months of the year 2009 the arrest of 10 children aged 12 and 13 is documented. Throughout 2008 three Palestinians aged 12 and 13 were arrested. Defense of Children says there is a “dangerous escalation in Israeli policy of targeting younger Palestinian children.”

Since the beginning of the Al Aqsa Intifada, the occupying Israeli authorities arrested approximately 6,700 Palestinian children. Currently there are 423 still in Israeli prisons. Their ages range from 12 through 17. Among the kids are six girls and six being held under Administrative Detention, meaning without charge or trial.

Detained children are subjected to torture, humiliation and cruel treatment during arrest and interrogation, states Defense of Children. These patterns are being employed to destroy the morale of child Palestinian prisoners and to extract quick confessions to use for convictions in military courts which do not abide guarantees of fair trials.

The international organization continues to back-up prisoner rights reports by stating that children are deprived the right to receive appropriate medical treatment, are subjected to extortion when seeking treatment and also deprived family visits. Palestinian children in Israeli prisons are also deprived of the right to education while their mental health is comprised in both the short and long terms. The same is true of physical health which remains compromised due to solitary confinement, beatings and the confiscation of funds for the prison store where the children might be able to purchase supplemental food.

The Palestine Branch of Defense of Children added that the policy of arbitrary arrest of Palestinian children must be stopped while at the same time called on the international community to pressure the occupying state’s commitment to standards set forth in the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Convention against Torture.

The occupying power must be compelled to put an end to Administrative Detention and release the children being held, said Defense of Children. The global organization also called for an immediate end to violations of human rights principles and full investigation into torture and mistreatment of the youngest Palestinian political prisoners.

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