Obama's Ear

13 Million Jews and 1 Billion Muslims

2009-05-27T13:08:00.000-07:00

There are 13 million Jews in the world.
There are 325 million Arabs in the world.
There are 1 billion Muslims in the world.

It is a Perfect Storm.

What I can only guess at however, is how many Muslims or Arabs hate Jews or Zionists or the Apartheid policies and War Criminal policies of Israel.
Try as I might, I have been unable to come up with any reason why any Arabs or Muslims should love Jews.

I would be afraid to be hated by a 25 to 1 ratio (Arab to Jew). Or, even worse, I would hate to be hated by a 77 to 1 ration (Muslim to Jew).

I can see why Israel and Jews say they fear Arabs and Muslims. What I see no evidence of, is that supposed fear, actually creating in Jews or Israeli's as a whole, a strong desire, coupled with actions that dramatically lessen the perceived threat.
If I were a Jew, I would be figuring out what pisses them off and both make amends for past offences and stop doing what currently offends.

This brings me to Palestine.
Setting aside the whole "Jews stole Palestine" thing, if I were a Jew, I would be treating the Palestinians as if they were an aggrieved member of my immediate family. I would be bending over backwards to make things right. I would be doing everything in my power to reduce the ratio of people who actually hated me enough to wipe my regime from the pages of history.

But instead they blunder on, seemingly oblivious to the fact that at a signal....every Jew on the planet could be wrestled to the ground by anywhere from 25 to 77 Muslims.
Unfortunately for the Palestinians, the Muslims don't seem to recognize their strength and their ability to help their brothers and sisters who are imprisoned in the largest prison in the world.

This works out well for Israel...
But, Israel also likes having the only bomb in the region. Iran's supposed pursuit of the bomb seems to be a big thing for Israel. I guess it is. It would make it awfully hard for Israel to continue to treat people as badly as they have.

Maybe Israel even feels they have passed the point of no return long ago and there is no way Muslims will let them get away without punishment. So, they have to keep Iran from getting the bomb.
Of course, most of the other Arab nations in the region are puppets of the USA, but once the actual people of these countries saw that Iran could stand up to the bully (Israel and USA), there would be a mass Islamic revolution and those puppet governments would fall and the people would seek revenge.

This is what Israel fears...and they are correct to fear it, because they are doing nothing to stop it. Fighting it won't stop it...just delay the inevitability of their own destruction. Giving in to it is the only possible way for Jews to remain in the middle east.

It is simply a matter of 4 things coming together in a perfect storm:
1. The illegality and crimes of a Rogue state.
2. Overwhelming numbers of opposing forces.
3. Growing awareness of the rest of the world.
4. One activist Muslim country acquiring the bomb.

Once Iran (or the rebels in Pakistan) acquires the bomb, the Muslim world will look to the man or woman who possesses it and ask that person for collective justice.

USA: The Stoopidist People in the World

2009-05-19T14:51:00.000-07:00

Please enjoy this video of American Cavemen and Cavewomen. It might be kind of hard to tell they are Cavepeople, since they are wearing clothing, but you take my word for it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJuNgBkloFE&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwhatreallyhappened.com%2F&feature=player_embedded

Commemoration of Palestinian Holocaust or "Al Nakba"

2009-05-15T11:33:00.000-07:00

"Al Nakba" means Disaster, Holocaust, Catastrophe, Cataclysm.

For Palestinians in 1948 it meant being driven violently and deceptively from their homes and country by the terroristic forces of the Israeli military.
Much like the "Trail of Tears" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trail_of_Tears in America, many Palestinians never made the journey to safe refuge. Many perished along the way.

Today is the 61st anniversary of an Israeli military terror campaign (Al Nakba) that forced 750,000 Palestinians to be expelled and/or flee Palestine for their lives. These people have never been allowed back into their country or their homes. The primarily live in countries surrounding "Israel", as refugee's. They have few rights...and no respected right to return to their homes...which were all confiscated or destroyed by the Israeli military.

Since that disaster/catastrophe or even "Holocaust, those 750,000 refugee's have grown to 4.9 million. If a Palestinian still living in Gaza or the West Bank leaves Israel to visit a refugee family member, they are not allowed to come back to Israel.

For personal stories on the "Nakba", www.bodyontheline@wordpress.com is a good place to start.

Of course, wikipedia makes an attempt at a fair history as well:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Palestinian_exodus

I urge everyone to spend the day in quiet reflection on the families who were separated and never again to be reunited. Think about the brutality of a military occupation...we do have plenty of examples, don't we?
I urge you to spend time looking at the photos of those who were displaced and imagine they are part of your family. Your Mother, your Children, your honored Elders, your Father who can do little to ease your sorrow...because he may have been in an Israeli prison or killed for resisting.

I urge you to reflect on the slaughter of whole villages. Every living thing killed.
Reflect on the barbarity that drove God's "Chosen People" to bulldoze 500 Palestinian villages into dust.

I urge everyone to close your eyes and slip into the shoes of a Palestinian family, walking down a dusty road, lined with Israeli military soldiers.
Walking down a road with their possessions on their back...toward a distant and unknown horizon.

Hopefully, a compassion will form and lodge permanently in your heart. And next time you hear a politician trying to stir your heart or your mind into hate for a fellow human being, you will pause and recall the images you have saved in your soul...and you will refuse to follow that kind of person and instead, reach out a helping hand, to the descendants of those road weary travellers...because instead of 750,000, there are now almost 5 million on that road. And they are still being starved and shot at and bombed and demonized.
They are still being denied hope. Hope for a future.

I have hope for these people, because I know it is against the nature of good people everywhere, to allow a nation of brutal occupiers to flourish for long, on the backs of those they oppress.

BOYCOTT APARTHEID ISRAEL - FREE PALESTINE

Personal Story of Life and Death in Gaza Tunnel

2009-05-13T08:32:00.000-07:00

It is best to go to the website at: http://www.gaza08.blogspot.com/ as this story is written in a prose that may be hard for some to follow. I have edited the article in an attempt to be helpful to my readers who may have a hard time following...as I did.

Student killed working in tunnel

Deprived of basic human needs, a student was student killed working in tunnel, I went into her house (Mothers house), the children were in front of the door... what door?! there was no door!

Rami, my friend also an ex-political prisoner released after the massacre, guided me into the modest space. Umm Mohammad was standing before me. As she looked into my eyes"ahlan wa sahlan" (welcome), she said...comrade George & I went in...

I sat close to Umm Mohammad, as i listened to her speak about her son. Mohammadmohammad abu m'aammar is the eldest of 9 children. He is 20 years old, & is a student at a college in khan younes. "He was obliged to go work in the tunnels, we are deprived of basic human needs...

"Umm mohammad insisted she was against this work from the start... "i told him not to go there! not to join the tunnels, it is a dangerous thing to go into... but, he couldn't see it that his sisters & brothers not be able to wear decent clothes, & eat healthy food"she pointed to a man, shorter than her, who looked as if he was in his late 30s. "this is abu mohammad. he suffered from schizophrenia ever since he was released from the Israeli prisons.

" abu mohammad comes close, his face grim, years of torture inscribed on his expressionless face... umm mohammad, & mohammad's grandmother, began talking to me about mohammad & this young man's insistence to work despite all danger threatening his life" he was not supposed to go in the tunnels. he was supposed to receive things from the opening & take them to respective clients."it was mohammad's first week, last week... & the day the IOF bombed a nearby tunnel was the day he had decided to go through to bring in some goods...

on the 30th of May, 2009Umm Mohammad spoke to me about an incident she encountered with the UNRWA"after the massacre, i went to get a coupon for food. the person managing the information about my household insisted that i had only 9 children & that one was killed during the attacks. but, i insisted otherwise. so, we have been receiving goods for only 9 children with two adults since the attacks... when, there were actually 10 children. mohammad tried his best with them. but, they insisted otherwise, & said they were too busy to check for themselves the accuracy of our sayings. the day mohammad was killed, the UNRWA guy changed our coupon from 9 to 10... how ironic... the day he was killed, when i had to get used to the number 9, he added mohammad in.

"Umm Mohammad's house is but an average room sized block. as you enter, there is no actual threshold, as it coincides with the ground level outside it. she told me how much she suffered from the flooding of the house each time it rained...her ceiling is not a cement ceiling, it is iron plated block tied into the concrete walls perpendicular to it..."

i pleaded with international organizations in the strip to give me a blanket... i was out of blankets during the attacks... i received no blankets! i didn't want money, i wanted to cover my children with a blanket! i found no blanket!"

this family is but a case of many in the extremely poverty stricken strip where around 80% of its inhabitants live under the poverty line according to the ministry of social affairs as a direct result of the siege..."lift up the siege, & the level will go down to below half that number!" an official at the ministry stressed.

the farmers in the strip are shot at as they harvest their crop & the fishermen are subject to IOF gunboats targeting them whilst at sea, fishing (please follow ISM gaza website for regular reportage http://fishingunderfire.blogspot.com/).

no export is allowed for surplus to be sold in export operation as export is not allowed due to the siege & the only export operation allowed druing the siege was in february on valentine's day where over twenty five thousand flower carnations were allowed out as farmers alongside the dutch government applied pressure on the israeli side (I wrote about this here)After twenty two days of intensive attacks on the inhabitants of the strip, over 1400 have been killed & over 5000 wounded accroding to the Palestinian Centre of Human Rights.

However, if you keep noting down the numbers of those who are killed after the attacks in human rights reports, local NGOs & local news agencies, you will notice that the slow motion genocide continues... with minimal mainstream media attention...

We need to build on the solidarity that occured during the attacks into long-term action plans, starting with having civil society organizations, movements & groups begin to endorse the Palestinian call for the boycotting of the state of Israel Also, calls for solidarity & NOT charity with the Palestinians.

Please sign the petition below, have your voice heard if you believe in the right of return & a one secular democratic state for ALL of its citizens disregarding race, colour, religion, gender & ethnicity on the historic land of palestine:http://www.odsg.org/co/index.php/petition-for-right-to-return.html

For NGOs & movements to endorse the Boycott Divestments and Sanctions global movement please email endorsements[at]bdsmovement.net

Thanks to: Natalie and Nader at http://www.gaza08.blogspot.com/

Palestine Has Become a Tropical Paradise

2009-05-12T09:39:00.000-07:00

There are several issues that require attention, but when I ran across this beautiful map of Palestine, I had to share it.

http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2009/03/30/270-palestines-island-paradise-now-with-a-word-from-its-creator/

Tomorrow: A personal account of the life and death of a young tunnel worker in Palestine.

88% Of Prisoners Held Without Trial

2009-05-11T07:54:00.000-07:00

These are the people Obama thinks can help bring justice to the Palestinian people.

Of course, support of the PA to suppress the people is consistent with also aiding Israel with 3 Billion in cash a year and several times that in "indirect" aid, such as the munitions ships recently sent to Israel to replenish the stocks that were used to Massacre Gaza, to the tune of 7000 casualities. Bombs, artillery shells, missles, vehicles, fighter jet parts...plus the new and deadly white phosphorous and "Dime" weapons.

So, knowingly or unknowingly, Obama supports the war against Palestine on several fronts: Massacres of the Palestinian population in order to kill as many "rebels" as possible, destruction of over 20,000 buildings. Blockage and starvation/deprivation of the population. The jailing without charge is another way to defang the people struggling to be free.

That Obama refuses to speak out about the ongoing seige in Gaza is proof of his priorities.

About 18 months ago, a European Union delegation arrived in the Palestinian Authority to evaluate the condition of prisoners in Palestinian prisons. The delegation, which was attached to the European Union Police Coordinating Office for Palestinian Police Support (Eupol Copps) - a group of European security experts who are involved in the restructuring of the Palestinian police force - was given a clear order: to bring about reforms in the Palestinian judiciary.

One of the astounding conclusions of the legal experts from Europe was that 88 percent of all those in jail were being held without trial, a hearing or any sentencing.

This one fact brought to the fore the reality of the problems in the field of law that the Palestinian Authority is dealing with. At a time when the Palestinian police force is beginning to show impressive signs of improvement, acting with determination to restore order throughout the West Bank, in great part thanks to a reshuffling of the top posts, those arrested are simply thrown in prison without legal proceedings. In an effort to amend the situation, the EU group was renamed the rule of law section.

"We are trying to complete the original task of the team which deals with rehabilitating the police force," said Kristoff Luktis, a 44-year old former Austrian judge who was chosen to head the group. He has been involved in similar work in other parts of the world, where violent conflict has been the norm. He refuses to sound pessimistic when he is asked to describe the situation of the Palestinian legal system. "Everyone can understand that in terms of law and order one needs more than a police force and we have identified many problems," he said. "For example, it has not been clear what to do with a suspect. Many of the suspects that were arrested were held in prison without a trial.
In a year and a half we have succeeded in lowering the numbers and now 'only' 80 percent of those in prison are held without trial. Normal figures are about 50 percent, and in Austria it is 40 percent."

Even before the Hamas takeover in the Gaza Strip in June 2007, the number of European legal experts as part of Eupol Copps was fairly limited, but after Prime Minister Salam Fayyad took over in the Palestinian Authority, the mandate of the group was expanded and the staff was bolstered with legal experts from all over Europe. They are working mostly on legislation in matters of defense of suspects, criminal investigations, regulations for police, etc. However the biggest problem Luktis and his staff face is the sorry state of the courts in the West Bank. Their ability to legislate new laws or to amend existing ones is very limited in view of the absence of a Palestinian legislature.

The parliament has not assembled since June 2007 - when Hamas took over in Gaza - and essentially it is impossible to pass laws. "We can assist and advise on legislation and even formulate laws, but there is no parliament to receive them," Luktis said. "We are sitting here and hoping that one of these days the legislature will resume function, because in the absence of legislation the path toward becoming effective is very limited. There is a possibility of using presidential edicts, but these are a tool for emergencies only. What can be passed are regulations and bylaws that are helpful in resolving complicated problems. We are now trying to build an entire organizational structure: train legal teams - not only judges but also administration staff.

There is also a need for missing equipment and there is still a long way to go." There are 24 courts functioning in the West Bank and of these 14 are reconciliation courts, which do very basic evaluations of cases; eight are "first instance" courts, which are like district courts; and there is a Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court, both in Ramallah. The Supreme Court has a panel of 15 justices.

Worlds Smartest Man Talks Palestine

2009-05-08T07:27:00.000-07:00

I stumbled across this youtube video of Stephen Hawking talking commonsense about the Gaza issue, massacre, etc.

I also included a wikipedia link on Palestine and the wiki for Stephen Hawking life and career.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1jjLRXmIck

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Hawking

AIPAC Lobbies To Prevent Peace Talks

2009-05-07T09:43:00.000-07:00

AIPAC Launches Campaign to Prevent Peace Talks

The pro-Israeli government lobby group AIPAC has launched a new campaign to prevent the Obama administration from pressuring Israel to engage in peace talks.

AIPAC is urging lawmakers to sign onto a congressional measure that urges Obama not to dictate how Israel negotiates with Palestinian leaders.

The administration says it supports a two-state solution, though it hasn’t called for a full Israeli withdrawal from the Occupied Territories where a Palestinian state would be created.

Israel opposes the two-state solution and wants to retain Jewish-only settlements in the occupied West Bank.

I found this on www.democracynow.org
I googled everywhere and search the major news sites and found no mention of it.

United Nations Kneels in Submission to Israel Coercion

2009-05-05T10:05:00.000-07:00

The United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, the Harvey Milquetoast (someone who whines about not getting respect) of the world body, on Tuesday said a damning UN report on Israel's conduct in its recent offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip was not legally binding…and in fact, they just wrote it as an internal exercise in case Israel’s defense forces ever really did anything wrong in the future…they would know how to write one without offending anybody.

The "practice" UN report accuses the Israel Defense Forces of deliberately firing at UN institutions as well as using disproportional force and causing unnecessary harm to civilians. “Death is actually only slightly more serious than an injury”, General Ban said and he “had no intention of seriously insinuating otherwise”.

Israel had rejected the make believe report Tuesday as being "tendentious" and "patently biased." General Ban agreed that 150 Israeli casualties equal 7000 Palestinian casualties because as everyone knows a Palestinian only equals 2% of an Israeli.

An interesting side note to this ratio was a side negotiation about the release of the Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit. The Israeli minister admitted Hamas had agreed to release the soldier based on that ratio, but stated: “We think we can get a better deal if we wait. After all, he is young”.

General Ban got down on his knees and made the comments in the special, kiss ass letter he agreed to attach to the make believe UN report after the humiliating arm twisting by Israeli Foreign Ministry director-general Yossi Gal, who traveled to New York on Monday for coercive meetings with Ban's aides on the matter.

Ban also commended the Israel Defense Forces for its close coordination with the world body during the 3-week operation, as well as the cooperation given by Israel with the report's authors. He said his representatives were holding meetings with the Israeli government so that any future reports would first be submitted to Israel for proper editing and added that he was sorry the Israel minister had been offended by the garlic odor on his breath.

The Israeli Foreign Minister noted that immediately upon the conclusion of Operation Cast Lead, the codename for the operation, Israel carried out independent, behind the closed doors of a dark basement, inquiries into the damage caused to the UN installations.
The secret report concluded that since the size of the Hamas military is estimated at 20,000 men, Israel’s destruction of 22,000 Gaza buildings was well within acceptable perimeters.

Regarding damage to UN installations: It said the findings of those inquiries proved "beyond doubt" that the IDF did not intentionally fire at all of the 50 UN installations in Gaza which suffered extensive damage and in which many children, patients and staff were wounded and killed.

“Contrary to the world’s opinion of the IOF, I mean the IDF, we are among the worst shots in the world.” To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, he said: “We just do the best we can with what we have to work with”.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1083191.html

Incredible Journey of Six Year Old Palestinian Girl

2009-05-01T07:57:00.000-07:00

Spending time with her dad requires that 6-year-old Jinan (Gee-non) undertake a bizarre and arduous odyssey. Usually she travels alone, but last Monday, the Palestinian girl with the rosebud smile and bouncing energy was accompanied by her younger sisters Dania, 4, and Noor, 2, on the journey to the Israeli prison that holds her father.

At home in the beleaguered West Bank town of Qalqilya (Call-key-a), as her mother dresses her before dawn in an almond-green blouse and jeans, Jinan asks the same question she always does: "Mommy, why does Daddy have to sleep on the Israeli side?" And her mother Salam Nazal comforts her by saying, "Because that's where the best Palestinian men go to sleep, and your father is one of them."

The town, which has elected a Hamas mayor, is known as a center of Palestinian militancy, and Israeli security forces conduct raids there on average five times a week.
Salam cannot accompany her daughters because she is on an Israeli security watch list, although she has never learned why she's on it. Her immediate family lives in Jordan, so she must put the girls on a bus bound for Chattah-Gilboa prison inside Israel and hope that one of the many Palestinian women on board will help Jinan wrangle her sisters. "I'm so worried about having them go without me," says Salam, as she hoists her girls onto the bus, organized by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). "But what can I do? This is their only chance to see their father."

Ali Nazal, 35, who sold clothes from a cart in the streets, is one of more than 10,300 Palestinian detainees currently inside Israeli prisons. Although he has yet to be tried, Nazal has been behind bars for the past two years. He faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted of possessing weapons and harboring a fugitive — charges the family insists are based on false evidence from anonymous informers working for the Israeli security services. Salam says no weapons were found in their home but says the Israeli military demolished it anyway. The Israelis maintain that Ali was an active member of a militant organization and part of a cell that had been planning a terrorist attack.

Under the Fourth Geneva Convention, Ali and his fellow detainees should never have been transferred to prisons outside the occupied territories. But since the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza began in June 1967, more than 650,000 Palestinians have passed through Israeli jails. Nearly every Palestinian family has someone who was locked up in Israel at some point. Prison has become a rite of passage for rebellious teens and, for families seeking to visit detained loved ones, a nightmare of permits, checkpoints and body searches.
It's not an easy journey for an adult, much less three unaccompanied tots carrying their lunch in a Barbie backpack.

Israel refuses to finance or arrange transportation for Palestinians making prison visits, leaving the task to the Red Cross. Every month, says Anne-Sophie Bonefeld, an ICRC spokeswoman in Jerusalem, her organization arranges the bus rides and bureaucratic paperwork that enable more than 20,000 Palestinians to visit relatives inside Israeli prisons. The Palestinian family-visitation program, which has been going on since 1967, is "the largest of its kind anywhere in the world," she says, although the number of visits has dropped slightly since 2007, when Israel barred families from the Hamas-controlled enclave of Gaza from making the trip.

For prisoner Ali, his daughters' visit is a rare treat. He last saw his youngest, Noor, when she was six months old. Now she walks and talks, and her moon-shaped, serene eyes seem to display perpetual bemusement over the whirlwind antics of her two sisters.

Qalqilya (Call-key-a) is encircled by Israel's security barrier, and at a checkpoint, the three girls dismount with the rest of the Palestinian passengers and are herded through a labyrinth of turnstiles, flashing lights, metal detectors and an X-ray machine that swallows up the Barbie backpack. Jinan and her sisters squirm through a turnstile too soon and are stranded in a security no-man's-land and yelled at by the disembodied voices of soldiers watching through closed-circuit cameras. When the girls finally emerge dazed from the checkpoint, Jinan runs over to a field of wildflowers and plucks a stem of Queen Anne's lace for her little sister.

Then the girls clamber aboard another ICRC bus, which is escorted to the prison by Israeli police. Skipping up the aisle, Jinan touches a man's bald head and asks, "What happened to your hair? Mine's soft and pretty." She snatches my cell phone and, within five seconds, has snapped a photo of a napping Palestinian woman and turned it into my screensaver.

Two hours later, the bus arrives at the high walls of Chattah-Gilboa prison. Nearly 1,000 Palestinians have been waiting up to five hours in shrinking shade for the 45 minutes they will spend speaking with their relatives on a telephone from behind thick glass. The glass has small holes that allow the prisoners to touch fingertips with their visitors. Jinan and Dania climb the metal bars of the turnstile as if it were a piece of playground equipment. A buzzer blares, and a light over the turnstile flashes from red to green. A guard calls out a few names, and the eager crowd pushes Jinan and her sisters aside.

Another hour will pass before the girls are let in. By then, Noor is hot and cranky, in tears, crying for her distant mother. Their pretty pink and green clothes are smeared with dirt. I volunteer to escort them inside, but the prison wardens refuse. Instead, a veiled young woman with pale-gray eyes agrees to escort them into the visiting room.

That morning, their mother had shown the girls a photo of their imprisoned father so the younger ones would recognize him. It showed a solemn, heavyset man in a training suit of the Spanish soccer team Real Madrid. "He's been memorizing the Koran. That, and lifting weights," Salam told me.

Jinan assumes her responsibility and grabs the hands of her two sisters. They vanish inside the prison, scared but eager, leaving me to wonder whether Jinan will remember any of the many earnest and loving messages entrusted to her by Salam to pass on to their father.

With so many Palestinians still locked up in Israel, demands for prisoner releases remain at the center of most Israeli-Palestinian political negotiations. Those behind bars are a lost generation of Palestinians, and it's a safe bet that their children, like Jinan and her sisters, will inherit their parents' bitterness toward Israel.

I guess I’m looking for positives in a bag that holds very few, but, I actually think it is a good commentary on the culture of the Palestinian people, that a 6 year old can go on a long journey with a 4 and a 2 year old in tow, with the somewhat hopeful expectation that they will be cared for by the community on the way, and get there safely.

To me, this act flies in the face of those who constantly try to value Arabs less than others. Especially, since I know of no mother or community that would feel it safe to do the same thing in the USA.

I can’t imagine any American reading this story and not feeling an empathy and attraction to that mother, community and culture.

Thanks to Tim MCGirk of Time and Marcy Newman of www.Bodyontheline.wordpress.com.

Zionists Attack Academic Freedom of Jewish Professor

2009-04-30T13:05:00.000-07:00

A Jewish Professor's comparison of Israelis to Nazis stirs furor.

The UC Santa Barbara sociologist, who is Jewish, sent images from the Holocaust and from Israel's Gaza offensive to students in his class. He has drawn denunciation and support.

Controversy has erupted at UC Santa Barbara over a professor's decision to send his students an e-mail in which he compared graphic images of Jews in the Holocaust to pictures of Palestinians caught up in Israel's recent Gaza offensive.

The e-mail by tenured sociology professor William I. Robinson has triggered a campus investigation and drawn accusations of anti-Semitism from two national Jewish groups, even as many students and faculty members have voiced support for him.

The uproar began in January when Robinson sent his message -- titled "parallel images of Nazis and Israelis" -- to the 80 students in his sociology of globalization class.
The e-mail contained more than two dozen photographs of Jewish victims of the Nazis, including those of dead children, juxtaposed with nearly identical images from the Gaza Strip.

It also included an article critical of Israel's treatment of the Palestinians and a note from Robinson."Gaza is Israel's Warsaw -- a vast concentration camp that confined and blockaded Palestinians," the professor wrote. "We are witness to a slow-motion process of genocide."

Two Jewish students dropped the class, saying they felt intimidated by the professor's message. They contacted the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which advised them to file formal complaints with the university. In their letters, senior Rebecca Joseph and junior Tova Hausman accused Robinson of violating the campus' faculty code of conduct by disseminating personal, political material unrelated to his course."
I was shocked," said Joseph, 22. "He overstepped his boundaries as a professor. He has his own freedom of speech, but he doesn't have the freedom to send his students his own opinion that is so strong."

Robinson, 50, who is Jewish, called the accusations and the campus investigation an attack on academic freedom. He said his former students, the Wiesenthal Center and the Anti-Defamation League had all confused his criticism of Israeli policies with anti-Semitism.
"That's like saying if I condemn the U.S. government for the invasion of Iraq, I'm anti-American," he said. "It's the most absurd, baseless argument."

Robinson said he regularly sends his students voluntary reading material about current events for the global affairs course, and that no one raised questions when he subsequently discussed his e-mail."

The whole nature of academic freedom is to introduce students to controversial material, to provoke students to think and make students uncomfortable," said Robinson, a UC Santa Barbara professor for nine years.

As the dispute over his e-mail plays out, UC Santa Barbara has become the most recent U.S. university to confront campus unrest over issues related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In recent years, Jewish and Muslim groups have quarreled repeatedly at UC Irvine about the Holocaust and Israeli policies toward the Palestinians. Professors and students at Columbia University have also argued over issues of intimidation and academic freedom amid debates on the Mideast.

In Robinson's case, reaction has been strong -- on both sides. Shortly after hearing from the two students in January, the Wiesenthal Center produced a YouTube video titled "Jewish Students Under Siege from Professor at UC Santa Barbara." The clip shows one of Robinson's former students, her face obscured to protect her identity, reading from his e-mail.

The head of the ADL's Santa Barbara region sent Robinson a letter in February calling on him to repudiate his statements about Israel. Last month, the ADL's national director, Abraham Foxman, in a meeting with faculty members at the campus, urged the university to conduct an investigation into Robinson. He was told that an inquiry was already underway.

"You can criticize Israel; you can criticize the war in Gaza," Foxman said. "But to compare what the Israelis are doing in defense of their citizens to what the Nazis did to the Jews is clearly anti-Semitism."

Robinson's supporters say the professor is being maligned for exercising his right to challenge his students to think critically about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Students on campus have formed a group, the Committee to Defend Academic Freedom at UCSB, which is chronicling the saga on its website.

Letters of support also have arrived from academics across the country, including one from California Scholars for Academic Freedom, which says it represents 100 professors at 20 college campuses. The group argues that the allegations have been raised against Robinson to "silence criticism of Israeli policies and practices."

Some UC Santa Barbara faculty members also are speaking up for Robinson. History professor Harold Marcuse, who attended the March meeting with the ADL's Foxman, said the pictures e-mailed by Robinson were "well within the bounds of appropriateness on campus. It's something I could have used in a course."
Marcuse, who is Jewish and teaches about the Holocaust in his world history and German history classes, said he would not have injected his own views into such a message to students, but added: "
I don't think Bill Robinson's e-mail is anti-Semitic in any way. I think criticism of Israel is OK."

One UC Santa Barbara official has already looked into the allegations against Robinson, and a faculty committee is being formed to decide whether to forward the case to UC Santa Barbara Chancellor Henry Yang. A university spokesman declined to comment on the case.

Robinson has hired an attorney, and the student committee supporting him has scheduled a May 14 campus forum on the matter. Joseph and Hausman, the students who filed the original complaints, said they plan to attend. So do Hausman's parents from Los Angeles and Rabbi Aron Hier, director of campus outreach for the Wiesenthal Center."

I just want to bring awareness," said Hausman, 20. "I want people to know that educators shouldn't be sending out something that is so disturbing."
duke.helfand@latimes.com

World's Longest Held Political Prisoner

2009-04-29T07:25:00.000-07:00

Bethlehem – Ma’an – On Friday, 1 May,

Palestinian Nael Barghouthi will become the world’s record-holder as the longest-held political prisoner. Barghouthi will have completed more than 31 years in Israeli custody by May, said Abd An-Nasser Farawna, a Palestinian specialist in prisoners affairs.

On Friday, Barghouthi will break the Guinness World Record, which is currently held by Sa'id Al-Ataba, a Palestinian who was also in Israeli custody. According to Farawna, Barghouthi was detained on 4 April 1978. He became the longest-serving Palestinian prisoner after his fellow prisoner, Sa’id Al-Ataba, was released on 25 August 2008 after efforts made by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Al-Ataba spent 31 years and 26 days in Israeli custody. Barghouthi was born in 1957 in Ramallah in the central West Bank. He was detained on 4 April 1978 at the age of 21, and an Israeli military court later sentenced him to life imprisonment. He has already been in prison ten years longer than he was free.

2008 Worst Year For Palestine Deaths Since 1948

2009-04-28T15:03:00.000-07:00

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) bases in Gaza, issued a report on Saturday revealing that the year 2008 is the bloodiest year for the Palestinians since the Nakba of 1948.

Date: 26 / 04 / 2009 Time: 10:11 Bethlehem – Ma’an/Agencies –

2008 was the deadliest year for Palestinians since the violent creation of Israel in 1948, the Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights reported (PCHR) on Saturday.

More than 1,000 were killed last year, including 820 killed by Israeli forces in Gaza and 40 in the west Bank. Another 143 Palestinians were killed in inter-Palestinian violence.

Presenting PCHR’s annual report to media in Gaza, the center’s director, director Raji Sourani, said, "2008 was the worst year and the deadliest for the Palestinians ... since 1948," according to AFP.

According to PCHR 1,417 Palestinians, including 926 civilians, were killed in the Israeli military offensive on Gaza in December and January.

Palestinians remember 1948 as the year of The Nakba (The Catastophe), marking the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of people and the massacre of many others from the historic land of Palestine.

The PCHR said that the number of Palestinians killed by the Israeli forces and the settlers in 2008 is 868, 820 (94.5%) of them were killed in the Gaza Strip, and 48 (5.5%) were killed in the West Bank.

The Center added that 414 of the slain Palestinian (47.6%) were civilians, and were killed in situations that did not pose any threat to the lives of Israeli troops.

Dr. Sourani further said that in 2008, Israeli soldiers kidnapped during repeated invasions 2433 Palestinians in the West Bank and 68 in the Gaza Strip. More than 9000 Palestinians are currently imprisoned by Israel.

Israeli Soldiers and settlers carried repeated attacks against Palestinian lands and homes in the West Bank, while the army also expropriated more Palestinian lands for settlement construction and expansion and for the construction of the Annexation Wall.

The PCHR reported that in 2008, Israeli soldiers destroyed 216 homes in the Palestinian territories, including 107 in the West Bank and 109 in the Gaza Strip.

Referring to internal Palestinian violations and unrest, the PCHR stated that 143 Palestinians, including 25 children and 13 women, were killed by Palestinian gunmen, and 411 Palestinians were injured. Two more residents were killed in cases of weapons misuse.

26 Palestinians, including two children, were killed and 170, including 20 children and seven women, were injured by members of the Palestinian security forces in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

Candidate for U.S. Envoy Calls for Unilateral WB Withdrawal.

2009-04-24T09:00:00.000-07:00

"The only alternative for Israel to save itself as a Jewish state is by unilaterally withdrawing from the West Bank and evacuating most of the settlements."
-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's candidate for Israeli ambassador to Washington, Dr. Michael Oren-

"Peace as a solution is not a question of next week but a generational issue," he said. "One of the lessons that the failed Oslo process has taught us is that peace must be built from the bottom up. We cannot impose peace from the top down, it doesn't percolate from the top down."
This certainly sounds to me like he is saying, it was a mistake to go against the will of the people when they democratically voted Hamas into power.
Earth to Hillary and Obama....

Oren said he does not believe that a solution to the conflict could be achieved at this stage. Instead we should find ways to "better manage the conflict, to relieve tensions and ameliorate the conditions under which people live to ensure against future flare ups."
Wow! This is too much commonsense all at one time.
I expect the Zionist Tar and Feather Brigade is surrounding his house and job, now.

Establishing a Palestinian state would require the evacuation of tens of thousands of Jewish settlers from the West Bank and from holy cities like Hebron, Oren said.
hmmmmm.....10's of thousands is not "most". Most is more like 300,000, isn't it?

To take such a traumatic step most Israelis must be convinced that they would be getting "absolute peace" and the "end of the conflict," he said.
Okay...now we are getting into Tin Foil Hat territory. This suggests that Palestine recognize Israel and that won't happen...on a promise of Israeli pull-out. Too many broken promises.

Full articel here: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1080695.html

Israel Ranked 38th as Flawed Democracy, 85th in Civil Liberties

2009-04-17T08:54:00.000-07:00

In 2008, Israel's democracy ranked 38th out of 168 in the world by the Economist Democracy Index...well below countries like Uruguay, Korea, Chile and Estonia.

Israel is defined as a "flawed" democracy, but their Civil Liberties ranking puts them deep into the "Authoritarian" group of countries. http://a330.g.akamai.net/7/330/25828/20081021185552/graphics.eiu.com/PDF/Democracy%20Index%202008.pdf

Israel's Civil Liberties rating is 85th out of 168. One notch ahead of the Palestinian Territories...which of course they control.

Israel's Civil Liberties rank puts them in the same class as:
Azerbaijan - 135th
Kazakhstan - 127th
Rwanda - 121st
Mauritania - 118th
Kyrgyz Republic - 114th
Pakistan - 108th
Russia - 107th

The above countries are classified as "Hybrid" or "Authoritarian" regimes.

The Economist is only interested in whether the conditions of a country are conducive to investment, so I assume the figures are fairly devoid of any personal politics.

In 2007, Israel had an overall ranking of 47th. It looks like they jumped 9 places in their 2008 ranking for some reason. No doubt this ranking gain was prior to the Gaza Massacre of December 2008/January 2009...and the continuing siege.

Here is a comparison of Israel's scores for 2007 and 2008:

2007
Rank Overall Score Elect. Proc. Functioning of Govt. Polit. Partic. Pol. Cult. Civ. Lib.
47 7.28 9.17 6.64 7.78 7.50 5.29

2008
38 7.48 8.75 7.50 8.33 7.50 5.29

Unless something dramatically positive happens in 2009, I expect the scores for Israel to drop into the basement. Of course this expectation does not take into account any lobbying pressure Israel may exert on those doing the next ranking.

Aren't numbers grand?

Israeli Army: Most Moral in the World

2009-04-15T10:39:00.000-07:00

This is a priceless jab, an eye crossing uppercut and a paralyzing knockout blow to the Israeli governments position that they have the most moral army in the world.

The most moral army in the world. Fact
By Yitzhak Laor

On June 19, 1977, the Sunday Times marked the 10-year anniversary of the occupation with a wide-ranging expose on the torture of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. The report concluded that torture was so widespread and systematic that it was impossible to dismiss these deeds as "'rogue' cops exceeding orders.

It appears to be sanctioned as deliberate policy." Israel's denial was, of course, adamant. No Israeli newspaper addressed the accusations directly.

Our ambassador in London said the morality of the prophets does not permit torture, and therefore these charges were baseless.
It was Menachem Begin of all people, who had just formed his government, who expressed shock and ordered the Shin Bet to cease and desist.

Yet the logic of occupation and the defense establishment were stronger than the shock of the former underground leader. Then came the Bus 300 affair and Izat Nafso, the Circassian Israel Defense Forces officer convicted of espionage in 1984, and it reminded all of us that the Sunday Times report was more accurate than the denials, and was more accurate even than Begin's good intentions.

On the other hand, every Israeli poll about torture or atrocities would reveal, beyond a shadow of a doubt, simple truths: first, this can't be so; second, it is right; third, they started it. Anyone who thinks this logic belongs solely to bizarre internet talkbackers needs to read Ehud Barak's initial reaction to the soldiers' testimonies from Gaza: "The IDF is the most moral army in the world." Fact.

Even the shelling of towns along the Suez Canal during the war of attrition, during bombardments of targets deep within Egyptian territory, included the destruction of a school during the school day and a steel factory during the workday, all under prime minister Golda Meir, and chiefs of staff and generals from the Labor movement.

Not even this changed Israel's self-image by one iota, and it is doubtful whether live Al-Jazeera broadcasts can do so, either. Aided by a carefully crafted narrative (by intellectuals on the Zionist left) we have been built as a nation that makes no room whatsoever for a contradictory private narrative, or at least an argument about sacred cows.

Everyone is marching to the same drummer. The symbols are always ready. Anything that did not fit the "nationalist" template was rejected. Exodus? Good enough for us. The Struma affair? Only for advanced researchers. Deir Yassin? It was not "us" who did it, but "dissidents." The massacre of Sasa, Tiberias or Lod? A non-sequitor. Qibya? Forget about it! Sabra and Chatila? That can be remembered (Christians killing Muslims).

Ehud Barak is right. By all measures, we are the most moral. Because we have no peers.
And yet, perhaps the defense minister is referring to acts committed by the Americans. Their army really committed more horrific atrocities in the last 60 years, from Korea to Vietnam, Panama and Iraq.

But it is in this context that the time has come to address the misdeeds taking place here, those committed by the state and its army against those it rules, including soldiers infected with a vicious virus, all with the approval of a collective unmatched in the democratic world. All the atrocities committed by the IDF always take place under the purview of "the compulsory conscription law," which is not only a law in the sense of income tax or driving on the right side of the road, but is a sanctified commandment.

Only "crazies" do not go to the army, do not dip their hands into the ceremonial blood. This is the supreme, traditional norm of Israeli society, and it covers up everything, both in denial and in acceptance of one's punishment. Not only does the entire system - education, the army, the Shin Bet and of course, the media and literature - rule out any talk of struggle or of being sane and not belonging, it even rejects the possibility that something within it is fundamentally immoral. Thus it is natural for the defense minister to sum up the current round of denial by praising the Military Advocate General: "I am happy that these are the findings, and it turns out once again we are correct when we say the IDF is the most moral army in the world, from the chief of staff to the last soldier."

Yes, this is the reality, one no satire can beat, even the words of Golda in Hanoch Levin's 1970 "Malkat Ha'ambatiya": "I've been examining myself for 71 years and God knows I discovered in myself a justice. And every day I am surprised anew. Right, right, right, and right once again. Once I took a nap in the afternoon and I said to myself, 'What if I do something stupid while napping? So did I do something stupid while napping? I'm the last person who does something stupid while napping!

I'm in Hot Water with Friends and Family over Jews

2009-04-14T09:50:00.000-07:00

Be careful in making any statements that could be possibly construed as critical of Jews or Israeli's.

In solidarity with people who support equality for all people, I posted a bumper sticker message that shows up at the end of all my emails.
It simply says: "Boycott APARTHEID Israel" and gives the United Nations definition of Apartheid and invites people to ignore the bumper sticker if it offends them.

Since then, I have received hate phone calls, hate mail, had things thrown at me, received demands to remove the bumper sticker from my email, and take them off my email distribution...personal, political or business and dis-invited to functions by both friends and family. Some refuse to respond to me, refuse to look at me and have either their husbands or wives call me to express their displeasure.

I decided to think about it. I re-read my bumper sticker and thought about it some more.
Here is the response I sent to my friends and family (some former friends and family).

4/12/09
Dear Friend or Family member,
I was very surprised and distressed at learning you felt my email bumper sticker in support of boycotting Israel, in protest of some Israeli policies, was somehow directed toward you, personally. or against Jews or Israeli's, personally.

This is certainly not the case. I made no reference in that regard, in any way.

I was especially distressed at your response, since my every action with you has been as a friend. Whenever you have called and asked my assistance for whatever purpose, I have been there for you. Broken down car, doctors, house sitting, computer help, emergencies, messes or whatever. I’m surprised, that given this history, you would not have called to talk about your concern.

While our some of our politics and our religious beliefs differ greatly, it has never been an issue in our friendship. I am at a loss as to understand why this has changed now. I can only assume it is a misunderstanding, since I have no other information to go on.

I take my activism on the subject of Middle East peace very seriously. I have no loyalty to any religious or ethnic group. My loyalty is to the right of all people to be respected in their culture, religion and country. As this right is regularly violated, I exercise my right to be critical of any action or policy of any party that threatens the right of peaceful existence for any party.

Putting an email bumper sticker at the bottom of all my emails, which gives the United Nations definition of Apartheid, is part of my effort to shine a light on policies that have not produced positive results for either party, in the hope that people of good faith will work for a change we can all believe in. This is part of who I am. This is part of what helps me feel I am doing something worthwhile in my life.

When one makes threats and takes actions against someone, it actually makes the threatening party less safe. When one opposes a policy that threatens one party, that opposition is automatically in solidarity with the threatening party…but not the actions. Israel’s Apartheid policy is a threat to Palestinian people, thus I oppose it. The policy incites a similar response toward Israeli people, thus I oppose it.

Had I been alive in Gandhi’s time, I would have opposed the Apartheid practiced by the British upon India. Had I been alive during the Indian Wars here is the USA, I would have opposed the unjust laws and practices. I was alive during the civil rights struggle in American and opposed USA policies that disadvantaged minorities. I was alive during South Africa Apartheid and actively boycotted their policies. Had I been alive when women in the USA were fighting for voting rights, I would have marched with them. I was alive for the ERA Amendment fight and did take an active part. As I have Gay friends who are subject to injustice, I stand with them. Had I been alive at the time the Jews were reputed to have been slaves in ancient Egypt, I would have been opposed to that oppression…and according to bible stories, the Jews were aided in their quest for freedom, by some of the local people, officials, friends, etc…who were not Jews. Had I been a German, I would have helped my Jewish friends. Opposition to what one sees as unjust policies was seen by our founding fathers as not just a right, but a duty.

Some of you, who are critical of me, are Mormons. That I disagree with Mormons on Prop 8 is irrelevant to your right to practice as you wish, yet some of you do not afford me the same respect.

To be against equality for Palestinians is also to be against the equality of Women, Native Americans, native people of India, Black Americans, Jews…and many other un-named groups.
The policies of the above listed governments and institutions actually did and do damage to the people of the countries and institutions, not just to the people they oppress. Thus, while in opposing bad policy, you can still support the people.

At no time have I ever failed to see the distinction between a government and the governed. Hating a policy enacted by a government has never caused me to hate the race or nationality of the people imposing the policy…or to wish for their genocide. Yet, some of you appear not to accept that distinction.

Unfortunately, with the aid of a media which prostitutes itself for ratings, instead of honest reporting, too many people are victims of polarized conditioning. Because of this, some people assume reacting is the same thing as thinking. This creates a chaotic environment where it is difficult for open minded people to create an orderly process for discovering the truths and the solutions. Too many people mistake the TV commercial or the governments PR department product, for reality…they mistake the TV commercial and PR product as information on which to base their ideologies, actions….and most often: reactions. People who control other people don’t want the people to have all the information and sure don’t want them to learn how to reason. So, they wave the red cape, they wave primitive and instilled fears. They wave disinformation. They incite hate.

My priority is not the truth. My interest is in the integrity of the process. If the process is honest, I will accept whatever truth is discovered…whether it comports with my conditioning, religious beliefs, prejudices, or ideologies.

As you know, I am a member of many groups working for the common good of all peoples in the Middle East. Perhaps, as I am, you also are a member of J Street. A group made up predominantly of Jews, but which also welcomes other thoughtful people. This group accepts Arabs and Muslims as well. As you know, I am also a member of International Solidarity Movement. There are many Jews and Israeli’s in this group also. These people know enough about the policy of Apartheid and the effects it has on both parties, to know it must be opposed…for the good of mankind.

Unfortunately, some people feel Jews, Israeli’s, Arab’s and Muslim’s are monolithic. People who believe this way are easily manipulated by the corporate media, corporate government and special interest groups. These are the same manipulators that try to define Republicans and Democrats as monolithic, so they can keep them polarized and at each other’s throats, so they are unable to see that they have more in common with each other than in opposition.

The manipulators scream the word “anti-Semitism” when anyone criticizes any Israeli or Jewish policy…as if Jews and Israeli’s are the only groups of people on the planet immune from making mistakes. What these people also fail to recognize, is that Arab’s are Semites, too. So using that logic (or more accurately, lack of logic) any criticism of Arab’s or Muslims could be called “anti-Semite” as well. People like this are obviously not ready to be part of any constructive solution. They try to discourage people who desire to find a fair life for both parties. They assail their politics, their activism, they deface their religious places, they try to demonize and silence any and all who think differently. They try to intimidate people from using their right to free speech and action. They burn books. Sounds strikingly like Nazi tactic’s, doesn’t it?

I’m a trivia buff. I’m also a statistics guy. I like numbers…they can tell an interesting story in a few words. It is interesting that out of the 13 million Jews in the world, 6 million live in the USA, 5 million live in Israel. It was also interesting to learn that only 65% of Jews believe in God (to me, that say’s 35% of Jews are smarter than Americans since 91% of Americans believe in God). There are also 500,000 citizens of Israel, who are neither, Arab, Jew or Muslim. Not all Israeli’s are Jews. Not all Arabs are Muslims. Israel also has 1.1 million Israeli citizens…which are Arab. There are also 2.5 million Palestinians who do not have citizenship.

I list this trivia to make the point with facts, that the people of Israel/Palestine are not just one monolithic citizenry. They are as varied in their lives as we are in ours. Unfortunately, 2.5 million Arab people in Israel/Palestine, are not allowed to vote.

If you are interested in learning more about the nature of Apartheid, there is a very good discussion here: http://www.badil.org/al-majdal/2008/summer/articles02.htm In easy to read charts and numbers, one can see some harsh realities that even the most hardened heart cannot justify.

Hopefully, you will find this letter helpful. I hope you will carefully consider it and agree that what you may have at first thought to be offensive was really only a misunderstanding…and in fact, is as supportive as one can be. That it really is supportive of people…all people, but not all people’s policies and actions or reactions. Hopefully, you will reflect on our friendship and find that the strength of it is in not only being there for each other when needed but in our diversity as well as our commonality.

Your friendship is very important to me.

Sincerely,
Terry

Palestinians and American Indians - Not much Difference

2009-04-06T11:12:00.000-07:00

As I have been following the latest seige of Palestine (you know it started on December 27, 2008 and has not stopped yet, right?), I have been awakening to the stark similarities of how the Native American Indian's were ethnically cleansed from their own country.

Following my short bit, I have included noteworthy quotes from well known Americans of the time...some justifying the destruction of a whole people.
I have also included more recent quotes from those who justify taking the land from the Palestinians as well as their justifications for massacring them.
I hope you will also see the similarities in the strategies and tactics.

Anyway, the Indians were pushed further and further west. They were pushed onto reservations (sounds like "camps" right?). White men ran the camps. Allowed or dis-allowed the flow of goods into the camps. Raided the camps. Punished those who resisted the camps. The poor living conditions resulted greatly diminished physiological development.

Soon other white men wanted the land the camps sat on, so they were moved onto other land...in thousand mile marches of death and disease. The new land was even less desireable land...land farther and farther from the land they were born on, their ancestors were born on, the land their ancestors graves were on.

Of course in the press, it was all the Indians fault...the white man was just defending themselves. Of course, who owned the press?

Yes, there were voices in support of the Indians among the white man, but the campaign by the land, railroad, timber, fur and munitions corporations in the halls of Congress and in the FOX News style media outlets of the day, was too great and those voices of opposition soon faded.

Some Indians escaped into exile in other lands...Canada and Mexico, but they were now refugees.

On guarded reservations in the United States, where "all men are created equal", the Indians lost their culture, their will and initiative.

Quotes about American Indians:

I believe in the policy that exterminates the Indians, drives them outside the boundaries of civilization, because you cannot civilize them.Congressman James M. Cavanaugh 1868
No State can achieve proper culture, civilization and progress…as long as Indians are permitted to remain.
U.S. President Martin Van Buren

The most vicious cowboy has more moral principle than the average Indian.... Reckless, revengeful, fiendishly cruel, they rob and murder, not the cowboys, who can take care of themselves, but the defenseless, lone settlers on the plains.
Future President Teddy Roosevelt, January 1886

They have neither the intelligence, the industry, the moral habits, nor the desire of improvement…Established in the midst of another and superior race…they must necessarily yield…and ere long disappear.
U.S. President Andrew Jackson, Message of the President to the Two Houses of Congress, 23rd Congress, 1833

We are not going to let a few thieving, ragged Indians stop and check the progress of the railroad. I regard the railroad as the most important element now in progress to facilitate the military interests of our Frontier....We must act with vindictive earnestness against the Sioux even to their extermination, men, women and children...they must feel the superior power of the Government. General Sherman - letter to General Grant) 1867

Not merely have all attempts to civilize them failed, but also every endeavor to enslave them. Our Indian tribes submit to extermination, rather than wear the yoke under which our Negro slaves fatten and multiply.
Ethnological researcher Josiah C. Nott

Intelligence, activity, ambition, progression, high anatomical development, characterize some races; stupidity, indolence, immobility, savagism, low anatomical development characterize others....our only safety depends upon the total extermination of the Indians. Having wronged them for centuries we had better, in order to protect our civilization, follow it up by one more wrong and wipe these untamed and untameable creatures from the face of the earth. In this lies safety for our settlers and the soldiers who are under incompetent commands. Otherwise, we may expect future years to be as full of trouble with the redskins as those have been in the past.
L. Frank Baum. Author of the Wizard of Oz

All history and honest observation will show that the Red Man is a skulking coward and a windy braggart, who strikes without warning—usually from an ambush or under cover of night, and nearly always bringing a force of about five or six to one against his enemy; kills helpless women and little children, and massacres the men in their beds; and then brags about it as long as he lives, and his son and his grandson and great-grandson after him glorify it among the "heroic deeds of their ancestors".
Mark Twain, 1870

The idea that a handful of wild, half-naked, thieving, plundering, murdering savages should be dignified with the sovereign attributes of nations, enter into solemn treaties, and claim a country 500 miles wide by 1,000 miles long as theirs in fee simple, because they hunted buffalo or antelope over it, might do for a beautiful reading of Hiawatha, but is unsuited to the intelligence and justice of this age, or the natural rights of mankind.
New Mexico Supreme Court, United States v. Lucero, 1 NM S. Ct. 422, 1869

Quotes about Palestinians:

“a Jewish state would not have come into being without the uprooting of 700,000 Palestinians. Therefore it was necessary to uproot them. There was no choice but to expel that population.” Israeli historian Benny Morris.

“We came to this country which was already populated by Arabs, and we are establishing a Hebrew, that is a Jewish state here. In considerable areas of the country [the total area was about 6%] we bought the lands from the Arabs. Jewish Villages were built in place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you, because these geography books no longer exist; not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahalal [Dayan’s own village] arose in the place of Mahalal, Gevat– in the place of Jibta, [Kibbutz] Sarid– in the place of Haneifs and Kefar Yehoshua– in the place of Tell Shaman. There is not one place in the country that did not have a former Arab population.” Moshe Dayan

But the native never lost his “last spark of hope”. The spark was not extinguished in 1948, when 750,000 Palestinians were terrorized, uprooted and expelled, several decades after Moshe Sharret announced, “We have not come to an empty land but we have come to conquer a country from people inhabiting it”; several years after David Ben-Gurion declared, “I support compulsory transfer. I do not see anything immoral in it”; and several months after Menachem Begin gloated over “a splendid act of conquest ” the rape and massacre of 254 Palestinians at Deir Yassin. The spark was not extinguished in 1967, when Israel grabbed the remaining 22% of Palestine and began its military occupation as its war hero Moshe Dayan kindly informed the natives, “You shall continue to live like dogs.”
Alam Wolf.

“Negev land is reserved for Jewish citizens whenever and wherever they want. We must expel the Arabs and take their place.” By 1951, fewer than 13,000 inhabitants remained of a community that numbered somewhere between 70,000 and 90,000 in the late 1940s. David Ben Gurion in a letter to his son.

Individual Arabs may perhaps be bought off but this hardly means that all the Arabs in Eretz Israel are willing to sell a patriotism that not even Papuans will trade. Every indigenous people will resist alien settlers as long as they see any hope of ridding themselves of the danger of foreign settlement.
That is what the Arabs in Palestine are doing, and what they will persist in doing as long as there remains a solitary spark of hope that they will be able to prevent the transformation of “Palestine” into the “Land of Israel”.
…they are not a rabble but a nation, perhaps somewhat tattered, but still living. A living people makes such enormous concessions on such fateful questions only when there is no hope left. Only when not a single breach is visible in the iron wall, only then do extreme groups lose their sway, and influence transfers to moderate groups. Only then would these moderate groups come to us with proposals for mutual concessions. And only then will moderates offer suggestions for compromise on practical questions like a guarantee against expulsion, or equality and national autonomy.
The Iron Wall by Vladimir Jabotinski, 1923

“Israel may have the right to put others on trial, but certainly no one has the right to put the Jewish people and the State of Israel on trial.” Ariel Sharon

“I want to tell you something very clear, don’t worry about American pressure on Israel, we, the Jewish people control America, and the Americans know it.”
Ariel Sharon to Shimon Peres, October 3rd, 2001, as reported on Kol Yisrael radio.

“Everybody has to move, run and grab as many (Palestinian) hilltops as they can to enlarge the (Jewish) settlements because everything we take now will stay ours…Everything we don’t grab will go to them.”
Ariel Sharon, Israeli Foreign Minister, addressing a meeting of the Tsomet Party, Agence France Presse, Nov. 15, 1998.

“Spirit the penniless population across the frontier by denying it employment… Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly.”
Theodore Herzl, founder of the World Zionist Organization, speaking of the Arabs of Palestine, “Complete Diaries,” June 12, 1895 entry.

“The blood of the Jewish people is loved by the Lord; it is therefore redder and their life is preferable.” Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsberg, head of the Kever Yossev Yeshiva in Nablus

“True, the white man brought great change. But the varied fruits of his civilization, though highly colored and inviting, are sickening and deadening. And if it be the part of civilization to maim, rob, and thwart, then what is progress? I am going to venture that the man who sat on the ground in his tipi meditating on life and its meaning, accepting the kinship of all creatures, and acknowledging unity with the universe of things, was infusing into his being the true essence of civilization…. “
Chief Luther Standing Bear, in his 1933 autobiography

UN picks South African Jew to head Gaza war crimes inquiry

2009-04-03T11:17:00.000-07:00

I'm testing my open mind with this post. Judging from the reaction to this news in the blogs I have read, I am not alone in struggling to remember that many Jews and Israeli's have serious problems with Israeli Government actions...and openly protest them...around the world.

I wouldn't be struggling so much if at least one member of the investigating team was also an Arab, or a Muslim or a Palestinian. In fact, given the history of unfairness toward Palestinians, I don't know why I am even required to keep trying...I feel pretty lame for doing so...but, here is the story:

Richard Goldstone, a South African Jewish judge, will head an international fact-finding mission into allegations of war crimes by Israeli soldiers and Palestinian militants in Gaza, the United Nations said on Friday.

The former war crimes prosecutor will head a four-member team whose mandate stems from a resolution adopted by the United Nations Human Rights Council at a special session on January 12.

"It is in the interest of all Palestinians and Israelis that the allegations of war crimes and serious human rights violations related to the recent conflict on all sides be investigated," Goldstone said in a statement.

Goldstone served as chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Goldstone will investigate conduct by both sides in Israel's 22-day offensive in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.

According to a Palestinian rights group, 1,417 people including 926 civilians were killed in the fighting. Israel has disputed Palestinian claims that most of the people killed in the recent offensive in Gaza were civilians, stating that the vast majority of the dead were in fact Hamas militants. Thirteen Israelis were also killed in the hostilities.

"I am confident that the mission will be in a position to assess in an independent and impartial manner all human rights and humanitarian law violations committed in the context of the [Gaza] conflict," the president of the Human Rights Council, Nigerian ambassador Martin Uhomoibhi, said in a statement.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1076259.html

Wiping Countries Off the Face of the Map

2009-04-02T08:59:00.000-07:00

Dr. Juan Cole at www.juancole.com presents a very interesting article on Israel's new foreign minister.

Avigdor Lieberman, the Moldovan night club bouncer, is now foreign minister of Israel. The world has had a lot of fun laughing at the pronouncements of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who stands falsely accused of threatening to wipe Israel off the face of the map. One of many "proofs" he never said it: http://www.mohammadmossadegh.com/news/rumor-of-the-century/

But Ahmadinejad has protested that it would be wrong to kill large numbers of civilians. In contrast, Lieberman has threatened to wipe at least two countries, Egypt and Palestine, off the map. Monstrously, he suggested bombing the Aswan Dam, which would have the effect of murdering all 80 million Egyptians and sweeping them into the Mediterranean in a vast continental African tsunami.

Lieberman promptly announced on assuming office that the Mideast peace process is dead. Well, at least we have an outbreak of frankness.Whereas Ahmadinejad was humiliated by Columbia University president Lee Bollinger on his visit to that university, which provoked public protests, Lieberman's acceptance into the Israeli government has been greeted mildly and he was allowed to come to the Brookings Institution and meet with Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Lieberman is a Central/Eastern European ultra-nationalist in the mold of Slobodan Milosevic and Jorg Haider, and it is shameful that he was allowed into the government and more shameful that this travesty has passed without a peep in the civilized world.

The The Electronic Intifada lists "Some of Avigdor Lieberman's infamous statements":

1. In 1998, Lieberman called for the flooding of Egypt by bombing the Aswan Dam in retaliation for Egyptian support for Yasser Arafat.

2. In 2001, as Minister of National Infrastructure, Lieberman proposed that the West Bank be divided into four cantons, with no central Palestinian government and no possibility for Palestinians to travel between the cantons.

3. In 2002, the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth quoted Lieberman in a Cabinet meeting saying that the Palestinians should be given an ultimatum that "At 8am we'll bomb all the commercial centers ... at noon we'll bomb their gas stations ... at two we'll bomb their banks ..."

4. In 2003, the Israeli daily Haaretz reported that Lieberman called for thousands of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel to be drowned in the Dead Sea and offered to provide the buses to take them there.

5. In May 2004, Lieberman proposed a plan that called for the transfer of Israeli territory with Palestinian populations to the Palestinian Authority. Likewise, Israel would annex the major Jewish settlement blocs on the Palestinian West Bank. If applied, his plan would strip roughly one-third of Israel's Palestinian citizens of their citizenship. A "loyalty test" would be applied to those who desired to remain in Israel. This plan to trade territory with the Palestinian Authority is a revision of Lieberman's earlier calls for the forcible transfer of Palestinian citizens of Israel from their land. Lieberman stated in April 2002 that there was "nothing undemocratic about transfer."

6. Also in May 2004, he said that 90 percent of Israel's 1.2 million Palestinian citizens would "have to find a new Arab entity" in which to live beyond Israel's borders. "They have no place here. They can take their bundles and get lost," he said.

7. In May 2006, Lieberman called for the killing of Arab members of Knesset who meet with members of the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority.'

People are under the mistaken impression that Jews are the only semites in the middle east.
If one offers any comment even remotely critical of Israeli laws and policies, Israeli's or Jews, one is called an anti-semite. If one simply calls for more information on aspects of the Holocaust, one is shouted down, drummed out of office, job and country. If one simply asks that a rational discussion be held on the plight of occupied Palestine, one is banned from entering Israel...and in some cases, the United States.

Well, Arabs are also Semites. Palestinians are Semites.
Certainly the comments and actions by Lieberman qualify him as an anti-semite.
Yet, we hear only silence from those who seem to be so finely tuned to identify anti-semitism.

Gaza: Dead People Walking

2009-04-01T10:37:00.000-07:00

From Natalie Abou Shakra and International Solidarity Movement and Free Gaza volunteer, who lives in Gaza and places herself between Palestinians and Racist Israeli bullets: She tells of a generation of people...how they think...some of their motivations...and how they live...with very little hope.

"The famers told us that during their harvesting on the field yesterday and the day before that, they had been shot at and were obliged to stop working and leave...to be shot at as one ploughs their lentils on their fields .. if ones house was constantly under fire... if it was decorated with bullet shots rather than artistic portraits... is usually the case that most of whom i meet, or have met, is either a refugee, or an ex-political prisoner... and sometimes even both...

...ultimate alienation... continuous frustration... anger... helplessness... great potentials with limited resources... non-existent oppurtunities... imprisonment... perpetual killings of beloved ones... unwavering resistance... tragedy... cynical reality... nervous laughter, out of fear, in defiance of unaccomplished aims... eyes looking everywhere, on guard... no future, death expected any second... children walking, indifferent, unaware-an F16 might bomb soon... no traffic, minimal cars... foreigners that ask too much... journalists that take statements that are not read... no change occurs... same promises, no outcome... working, endlessly, a life's achievements devastated in a second... don't build a home, they might bomb it soon... don't buy a car, it will be targeted... hurry to the store, buy bread, war coming unexpectedly... let's go to a fancy restaurant, it might be our last dinner... pray continuously, you might be dead soon... have more children, you will be losing some of them anyway... news, news, news.. lies, killings, injustice, ignorance, hatred- yalla, yalla, yalla!"

I looked up the meaning of "Yalla" and it means to "Hurry up!" or to "Come on!"
If you are able to make a small contribution or send words of encouragement, please visit her website. I have linked it below.

BOYCOTT APARTHEID ISRAEL
Natalie
http://www.gaza08.blogspot.com/

Strong Arab Woman Elected to Israeli Knesset

2009-03-31T07:12:00.000-07:00

Wow!
Maybe it's because I don't know where to look or maybe because most of what this woman says is mostly in Arabic, but I haven't heard of her before, but I love her already.

In my opinion, the West has a hard time hearing a clearly defined and commonsense voice from the Arab side in Palestine. Haneen appears to be this voice and a very courageous one at that.

I hope to hear more from her.
A Palestinian voice that drips commonsense in a way that America can understand, will soon have a huge, sympathetic following...and be able to sell the Palestinian cause.

Palestine needs a real leader. Could she be one?

"Haneen Zuabi, the first woman to be elected to the Knesset as a representative of an Arab party, has welcomed Iran's growing influence on Palestinian affairs and praised Iran's quest for a nuclear weapon as a means of offsetting Israel's regional military edge. Having Israel as the region's sole nuclear power, she said, was "dangerous to the world."

"She said Iran's role in Palestinian affairs was "more useful" than that of regimes like Jordan and Egypt, in that Iran stood more firmly "against occupation than a lot of the Arab countries. This is our interest."

"Zuabi was asked if she felt worried, living among Jews, that Iran was getting close to acquiring a nuclear weapon. She replied: "No, I am not." Indeed, she said was "more afraid from the Israeli nuclear [weapons]."

Israel is thought to have between 150 and 300 nuclear warheads.

"When asked if she thought that Israel would use nuclear weapons, she replied, "The Israelis? I think yes… And I am afraid from real risk rather than from potential risk."

"Every day the Israeli [army] uses its violence, army violence."
"The Israeli violence of the army is an outcome of Israel's convenient feeling that no one will restrict her, that no Arab country will really declare a war against [Israel]."

"She added: "I believe that [Israel] would respect its use of power if she's afraid of others. The fact that [Israel]is not afraid of Arab countries, the fact that [Israel]is not afraid of a potential declaration of our Arab world to declare war against Israel, makes Israel more violent. You understand me?"

"Asked whether an Iranian bomb would make America nervous and lead to more US pressure on Israel, and whether that would be good from her point of view, Zuabi replied: "Exactly."

"Zuabi declared that the very concept of a Jewish state was "inherently racist", saying that Israel must be turned into a "state of all its citizens," which would eliminate its Jewish or Zionist nature. "

"When you agree with the 'Jewish state' idea, you necessarily agree with the idea of loyalty to this state. Rejecting the 'Jewish state' concept will block the road for anyone who demands our loyalty to such a state. There is no logic in demanding that I be loyal to an idea to which I do not agree to begin with, especially since I am proposing an alternative and fighting for it… The language of democracy does not speak of loyalty. This is a language of fascism, just like Lieberman. The language of democracy speaks of rights, equality, and values."

Full article: http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1238423651844&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull

Gaza Holocaust Never Happened - ITF

2009-03-30T07:20:00.000-07:00

The IDF/IOF (Israeli Occupation Forces)/ITF (Israeli Terrorist Forces) said today that stories of abuse of Palestinians by Israeli soldiers were just rumours and they closed the investigation.

Here are some rumours:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxAxgokbOrE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1XWqfCONQA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4S-0dXljx7o

The rest of the newspaper story:

IDF ends Gaza war crimes probe, says claims are 'rumors'
By Anshel Pfeffer and Amos Harel, Haaretz Correspondents

Military Advocate General Brig. Gen. Avichai Mendelblit on Monday instructed the Military Police Investigation unit to close the investigation into soldiers' accounts of alleged misconduct and serious violations of the army's rules of engagement during Operation Cast Lead. In a press release issued Monday the army said that the preliminary Military Police investigation into the testimonies revealed that they "were based on rumors and not first-hand experience." However, the Military Advocate General's announcement does not address testimonies published by the Associated Press on Friday that corroborate soldiers' accounts with testimonies given by Palestinians.

The probe was launched earlier this month after IDF soldiers were quoted as telling a military cadet academy that combat troops in Gaza fired at unarmed Palestinian civilians and vandalized property during Operation Cast Lead.

The army has barred those soldiers from speaking to the press. The testimonies include a description by an infantry squad leader of an incident where an IDF sharpshooter mistakenly shot a Palestinian mother and her two children. "There was a house with a family inside .... We put them in a room. Later we left the house and another platoon entered it, and a few days after that there was an order to release the family. They had set up positions upstairs. There was a sniper position on the roof," the soldier said. Another squad leader from the same brigade told of an incident where the company commander ordered that an elderly Palestinian woman be shot and killed; she was walking on a road about 100 meters from a house the company had commandeered.

Boycott APARTHEID Israel!

2009-03-27T07:31:00.000-07:00

The evidence is overwhelming. Israel is an Apartheid State and practices Institutionalized Genocide and Anti-Semitism against the People of Palestine.

"Several homes visited by the AP this week still had graffiti in Hebrew scribbled on the walls. "Death to the Arabs," read one inscription in a house near where Mahdiyeh Ayyad's body was found.

"The eternal people have no fear," read another. "Long live the Jewish people," was scrawled elsewhere, alongside Stars of David and four-letter English words describing Hamas and Gaza. Crude holes for snipers were covered with plastic sheeting or stuffed with cloth."

Israeli soldiers told of vandalizing homes they seized to use as army posts, as well as relaxed rules of engagement, including hasty shooting at civilians.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1074408.html

Gaza Offensive Purpose: Expel All Non-Jews

2009-03-26T11:40:00.000-07:00

Israeli Soldiers say Military Rabbi's said purpose of Israeli Offensive in Gaza was to Expel all Non-Jews.

The winter assault on the Gaza Strip was officially portrayed in Israel as an attempt to quell rocket fire by militants of Hamas. But some soldiers say they also were lectured about a more ambitious aim: to banish non-Jews from the biblical land of Israel.

This rabbi comes to us and says the fight is between the children of light and the children of darkness,` a reserve sergeant said, recalling a training camp encounter. His message was clear: `This is a war against an entire people, not against specific terrorists.` The whole thing was turned into something very religious and messianic.

As armies elsewhere use chaplains, the Israeli military inducts rabbis to serve religious soldiers. Their traditional tasks include ensuring that kitchens are kosher and religious services are available.

But soldiers now going public with allegations of misconduct in Gaza portray the military rabbinate as a corps of self-appointed holy warriors whose sermons and writings demonized Palestinians.

The army itself is a battleground of conflicting ideals in Israeli Jewish society, said Avi Sagi, a Bar-Ilan University philosophy professor who in the 1990s was a co-author of the military`s code of ethics, which obliges soldiers to avoid killing innocents.

On one side, he said, are universal values that call for respecting all human life equally and are largely shared by Jews who seek accommodation with the Palestinians. On the other side are more nationalistic passages of the Torah, cited by religious thinkers who liken the Palestinians to Old Testament invaders and place a premium on Jewish life.

In the Gaza conflict, the argument has focused on how to fight Islamic militants who for years have fired rockets indiscriminately at Israeli communities, causing scores of civilian casualties.

Maj. Avital Leibovich, a military spokeswoman, denied that the military rabbinate takes sides. Army rabbis violated a directive to `stay away from politics` in Gaza, she said, but they were few in number and acted on their own.

Well organized

In testimony reported by Israeli news media and in interviews with The Times, Gaza veterans said rabbis advised army units to show the enemy no mercy and called for resettlement of the Palestinian enclave by Jews.

The rabbis were all over, in every unit, said Yehuda Shaul, a retired army officer whose human rights group, Breaking the Silence, has taken testimony from dozens of Gaza veterans. `It was quite well organized.

The army, which conscripts almost every Israeli Jew at 18, has been dominated for most of its history by secular officers. But over the last 15 years, as secular Israelis have soured on the occupation of Palestinian territory, religious nationalists have taken over senior positions in elite combat brigades.

With them have come hundreds of volunteer rabbis, who teach at pre-military academies for religious youths and serve side by side with the troops.

The rabbis` role in Gaza came into focus last week along with testimony from soldiers who said that loose rules of war led to unwarranted civilian deaths and property destruction.

The testimony reported by two Israeli newspapers was the first such criticism to surface from within the army since the assault ended Jan. 18, leaving an estimated 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis dead. Most Palestinian casualties were listed as civilians.

The army chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, said Monday that he did not believe soldiers shot Gaza civilians `in cold blood.` He added that `isolated cases` of misconduct, if proved, `will be dealt with individually.`

Responding to newspaper photos, the army also condemned soldiers who wore T-shirts depicting a pregnant woman in a rifle`s cross hairs with the slogan `1 Shot 2 Kills.`

During the Gaza offensive, critics contend, rabbinical propaganda was part of a broader effort to legitimize Israel`s decision to use overwhelming force.

Legal opinion

Before the assault, the army`s legal office issued an opinion saying that Israel was entitled to use artillery against civilian neighborhoods from which Hamas was launching rockets.

And after the 22-day operation, a Tel Aviv University philosophy professor with close ties to the military, Asa Kasher, said the decision to shell Gaza`s cities stemmed from an anti-terrorism doctrine he had helped draft a few years ago. It stated that in Gaza, as in other areas the army does not control, there is no justification for endangering soldiers` lives in order to avoid killing civilians in the proximity of targeted militants.

That doctrine appears to be at odds with the military code, which obliges the army to avoid civilian casualties, and it was never formally adopted. However, it was echoed in religious terms in literature distributed in Gaza by military rabbis.

`Our ancestors did not always fight with a sword and at times preferred to use a bow and arrow from a distance,` one text read.

Actions must be taken from a distance in order to spare our soldiers` lives.

The reserve sergeant, an observant Jew who spoke to The Times on condition of anonymity, said that he and a fellow soldier in his 15-man unit were troubled by the children of darkness` sermon, but that other troops seemed receptive.

In one of several postwar testimonies given at a left-leaning military institute, a squad commander identified only as Ram complained that army rabbis tried to press what he called a `religious mission` on his men.

The military rabbinate brought in a lot of booklets and articles and their message was very clear: We are the Jewish people, we came to this land by a miracle, God brought us back to this land and now we need to fight to expel the non-Jews who are interfering with our conquest of this holy land,` Ram said.

As a commander, he said, he tried to explain to his men that `not everyone in Gaza is Hamas [and] wants to vanquish us [and] that this war is not a war for the sanctification of the holy name, but rather one to stop the Kassams` -- a type of rocket fired from Gaza.

Danny Zamir, director of the institute that elicited the testimonies and leaked them to Israeli papers, was quoted in a transcript as voicing dismay that Israeli nationalists, like their Hamas enemies, are using faith to justify violence.

If clerics are anointing us with oil and sticking holy books in our hands, and if the soldiers in these units aren`t representative of the whole spectrum of the Jewish people, but rather of certain segments of the population, what can we expect?he said.

Ofer Shelah, military correspondent for the newspaper Maariv, said the rising profile of religious nationalists in the army has helped them in two showdowns with the high command.

After Israel withdrew its settlers and soldiers from Gaza in 2005, graduates of two pre-military academies associated with the settler movement said they would refuse to obey future orders to disband West Bank settlements. The army threatened to cancel its certification of the schools, then backed down.

During the Gaza assault, the chief military rabbi, Brig. Gen. Avichai Rontzki, was called in to answer criticism that his department was distributing war propaganda. He denied knowledge of it, and a subordinate was given `a slap on the wrist` by the Defense Ministry, Shelah said.

Rabbi David Hartman, a leading Jewish philosopher who has lectured thousands of officers at his Shalom Hartman Institute, said the religious nationalist belief in holy war is still a minority view in the army.

But it has to be fought with a rational religious ideology that takes into account the living reality of two peoples,` he said. Otherwise, he added, `you have these rabbis volunteering in the army, and it`s not necessarily the people the army wants. There`s a vacuum, and it gets filled by crackpots.`

boudreaux@latimes.com

Israeli War Crimes Detailed

2009-03-25T03:20:00.000-07:00

The Guardian Newspaper of the United Kingdom has compiled detailed evidence of alleged war crimes committed by Israel during the 23-day offensive in the Gaza Strip earlier this year, involving the use of Palestinian children as human shields and the targeting of medics and hospitals.
A month-long investigation also obtained evidence of civilians being hit by fire from unmanned drone aircraft said to be so accurate that their operators can tell the colour of the clothes worn by a target.

The testimonies form the basis of three Guardian films which add weight to calls this week for a full inquiry into the events surrounding Operation Cast Lead, which was aimed at Hamas but left about 1,400 Palestinians dead, including more than 300 children.

The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) refused to respond directly to the allegations made against its troops, but issued statements denying the charges and insisted international law had been observed.
The latest disclosures follow soldiers' evidence published in the Israeli press about the killing of Palestinian civilians and complaints by soldiers involved in the military operation that the rules of engagement were too lax.
Amnesty International has said Hamas should be investigated for executing at least two dozen Palestinian men in an apparent bout of score-settling with rivals and alleged collaborators while Operation Cast Lead was under way.
Human rights groups say the vast majority of offences were committed by Israel, and that the Gaza offensive was a disproportionate response to Hamas rocket attacks. Since 2002, there have been 21 Israeli deaths by Hamas rockets fired from Gaza, and during Operation Cast Lead there were three Israeli civilian deaths, six Israeli soldiers killed by Palestinian fire and four killed by friendly fire.

"Only an investigation mandated by the UN security council can ensure Israel's co-operation, and it's the only body that can secure some kind of prosecution," said Amnesty's Donatella Rovera, who spent two weeks in Gaza investigating war crime allegations. "Without a proper investigation there is no deterrent. The message remains the same: 'It's OK to do these things, there won't be any real consequences'."

Some of the most dramatic testimony gathered by the Guardian came from three teenage brothers in the al-Attar family. They describe how they were taken from home at gunpoint, made to kneel in front of Israeli tanks to deter Hamas fighters from firing, and sent by Israeli soldiers into Palestinian houses to clear them. "They would make us go first so if any fighters shot at them the bullets would hit us, not them," 14-year-old Al'a al-Attar said.
Medics and ambulance drivers said they were targeted when they tried to tend to the wounded; sixteen were killed. According to the World Health Organisation, more than half of Gaza's 27 hospitals and 44 clinics were damaged by Israeli bombs.

In a report released today, a medical human rights group said there was "certainty" that Israel violated international humanitarian law during the war, with attacks on medics, damage to medical buildings, indiscriminate attacks on civilians and delays in medical treatment for the injured.

"We have noticed a stark decline in IDF morals concerning the Palestinian population of Gaza, which in reality amounts to a contempt for Palestinian lives," said Dani Filc, chairman of Physicians for Human Rights Israel. The Guardian gathered testimony on missile attacks by Israeli drones against clearly distinguishable civilian targets. In one case a family of six was killed when a missile hit the courtyard of their house. Israel has not admitted using drones but experts say their optical equipment is good enough to identify individual items of clothing worn by targets. The Geneva convention makes it clear medical staff and hospitals are not legitimate targets and forbids involuntary human shields.

The army responded to the claims. "The IDF operated in accordance with rules of war and did the utmost to minimise harm to civilians uninvolved in combat. The IDF's use of weapons conforms to international law," it said. The IDF said an investigation was under way into allegations hospitals were targeted. It said Israeli soldiers were under orders to avoid harming medics, but: "However, in light of the difficult reality of warfare in the Gaza Strip carried out in urban and densely populated areas, medics who operate in the area take the risk upon themselves."

Use of human shields was outlawed by Israel's supreme court in 2005 after a string of incidents. The IDF said only Hamas used human shields by launching attacks from civilian areas. An Israeli embassy spokesman said any claims were suspect because of Hamas pressure on witnesses. "Anyone who understands the realities of Gaza will know these people are not free to speak the truth. Those that wish to speak out cannot for fear of beatings, torture or execution at the hands of Hamas," the spokesman said in a written statement.

However, the accounts gathered by the Guardian are supported by the findings of human rights organisations and soldiers' testimony published in the Israeli press.
An IDF squad leader is quoted in the daily newspaper Ha'aretz as saying his soldiers interpreted the rules to mean "we should kill everyone there [in the centre of Gaza]. Everyone there is a terrorist."

Please click on the link below to view three videos on this report.
• This article was updated on Tuesday March 24 2009 to reflect changes made for the first edition of the Guardian newspaper.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/23/israel-gaza-war-crimes-guardian/print

International Solidarity Movement Violence Report

2009-03-24T10:19:00.000-07:00

Every week I get a report from the International Solidarity Movement on the notable actions and virtually unprovoked violence against the people of Gaza. These are stories written by Palestinians and International activists who journey to the occupied territories to put their bodies between - Palestinians trying to harvest Parsley, Olives, rebuild their homes, or just get delivered to a hospital safely - and Israeli military forces who constantly fire harrassing volleys at their feet in an attempt to drive them not only from their gardens, but out of Palestine altogether. Unfortunately, many International Activists who have come to Palestine to shield the people from Israeli fire, have themselves been wounded or killed. The theory is that Israel doesn't want the bad PR of hitting activists from other countries. But, I think - like a hungry lion who suffers no consequences for his actions - the Israeli's are getting bolder and more deadly all the time.

Here is the pasted link to the website. It reads like one of the best spy or action books, but it is all true.
I suggest subscribing to their weekly summary and if after you do, you may be moved to do as I did and send a donation. They send you back an amazing book full of personal Palestinian stories of faith and courage, but also of devastating loss.
It is good for the soul of those who are trying to make the world a better place and want to know how they can make a meaningful contribution.
Any who knows? Like me, you might meet and make friends with some of the most courageous and moral people in the world. I get so much hope for mankind from my new friends.
http://palsolidarity.org/

The State of Israel - Nazi Version

2009-03-23T08:14:00.000-07:00

"In the name of the ghetto fighters of Warsaw, let us strive to see a world where no one needs to die with a stone in their hand trying to defend a starved, walled ghetto against an army of tanks and planes, where people like Tristan don't need to have their brains blown out for trying to prevent a wall from being built around yet another ghetto."

In this article, David Rovics a singer/songwriter from Portland Oregon, draws in stunningly historical colors the unavoidable similarities between the German/Nazi behavior of WWII and the Present State of Israel.

If you have already been forming a loose association in your mind for some time, then this careful chronology of the similarities will help firm things up for you in a stunning indictment.
http://palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=14927

Who Profit$ from Israeli Apartheid?

2009-03-16T10:54:00.000-07:00

Want to know who Profit$ from keeping Palestinians in the Open Air Prisons that are Gaza and the West Bank?
Well, the same folks that profit from the prison industry anywhere in the world.
Please go to their website and see the list of companies for each category. If you recall, in just the last few months, 30 plus new companies directly involved in the oppression of the Palestinians have been set up and financed by USA tax dollars.
http://www.whoprofits.org/

The settlement Industry:

1. 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.

2. Israeli Construction on Occupied Land
In the occupied territories, including East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, Israeli housing and infrastructure projects effectively serve two goals: annexing more land and resources to Israel, and cutting off the local residents from the same. In the West Bank, the jurisdiction area of the settlements takes up approximately 40% of the area while the built-up area covers only 3%. The construction of an Israeli road system, the use of which is forbidden for Palestinian residents, supports the creation of a separate Jewish-Israeli space on top of the fragmented Palestinian space. The roads and the settlements thus become part of the separation system, which also includes fences, walls, gates and checkpoints. The Israeli construction industry in the West Bank and the Golan Heights includes real estate dealers and realtors, contractors, planners, and suppliers of materials, security and maintenance services to the construction sites.

3. Services to the Settlements
This section of the database includes companies that provide services to the settlements, with an emphasis on discriminatory services that are provided solely to the Jewish settlements and not to their surrounding Palestinian neighbors, services that help connect the settlements to Israel and normalize their status, and security services dedicated to keeping Palestinians out of the settlements.

Economic Exploitation:

1. Exploitation of Palestinian Labor
Israeli employers of Palestinian workers in the West Bank directly benefit from employing people under conditions of occupation. Restrictions on Palestinian movement limit the workers' employment choices, and the workers' dependency on security permits makes organizing almost impossible. Palestinian workers have no effective legal redress, and labor laws are not enforced. Kav Laoved has documented reports of companies in the Israeli industrial zones that have paid sub-standard wages, forced Palestinians to work overtime for no pay, employed workers in hazardous conditions or denied them of adequate social benefits. Of course, not all the Israeli employers of Palestinians workers would abuse the situation as severely, but all of them benefit from it nonetheless. Since Palestinian workers are effectively prevented from changing employers, organizing or suing for their rights, we would consider all such cases as cases of exploitative employment.

2. Palestinian Captive Market
This category includes companies providing services or goods to Palestinians at high costs, exploiting the restrictions on movement imposed on the Palestinians who cannot purchase these goods and services at a competitive price locally or abroad. Most Israeli retailers in the occupied territories would fall under this category. This category also includes companies using their ties to the Israeli authorities to gain commercial advantages over Palestinian companies, and companies that collect Palestinian debts using their ties to the Israeli government (for example, Palestinian import and sales tax moneys collected by Israel, were illegally retained and then used to pay various debts to Israeli companies such as the Israeli electricity company).

3. Exploitation of Occupied Production and Resources
This category includes companies that pay below market prices for Palestinian products because Palestinian producers are restricted to selling to companies that can cross Israeli checkpoints or borders. It also includes companies that use or exploit Palestinian or Syrian natural and environmental resources under the protection of the occupation. With present conditions, almost all Israeli companies buying Palestinian products or using Palestinian natural resources would fall under this definition.

Control Of Population:

1. Private Security in the Occupation
One of the fastest growing industries in Israel is that of private security. In recent years, many military responsibilities were handed over to civilian companies. Private security firms guard settlements and construction sites in the occupied territories; some are also in charge of the day-to-day operation, security and maintenance of some of the checkpoints.

2. The Wall and Checkpoints
This section of the database includes all companies involved in the planning, construction, operation and maintenance of the intricate mechanisms of physical separations and restrictions of movement. This includes businesses ranging from contractors that build the ditches, civil engineering firms that supply ready-made watch towers or raise razor wire fences, to suppliers of biometric identification systems and high-end surveillance technologies.

3. Specialized Equipment and Services
At this stage in our project, we have decided not to investigate the arms trade and supply of weapons to the Israeli army. We will focus our attention instead on civilian firms that supply the Israeli army with equipment and services specific to the needs of the military occupation. This will include, for example the specially armored D9 bulldozers supplied by Caterpillar, specially designed simulators and software, specialized anti-demonstration equipment, and services to soldiers stationed in the occupied territories.

UN and 7 Nations Don't Block Israeli Arms Shipments

2009-03-14T08:02:00.000-07:00

The casualty report in the ongoing Gaza Massacre on day 75 stands at:
Palestinian: 6805, Israel: 153.

In an ironic act, given the disproportionate statistics, the UN and 7 nations have decided to send warships to the coast of Gaza in an attempt to block Gaza from receiving weapons.

There is no mention of any kind of any action by any nation, to block weapons shipments to Israel...the overwhelming aggressor, who operates as an outlaw nation, rejecting any adherence to international law.

Gaza is still an open air prison where the inhabitants are subject to Israeli aircraft bombs and missiles, and cannon fire and missiles from Israeli warships off Gaza's coast.
Israel controls all borders and the people are being starved of the basics of life.
Extra judicial executions are common place.
In other words, Israel is a terrorist occupying force and has enlisted the support of the UN and 7 other nations to further isolate Gaza.

For the rest of the story:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1070950.html

Friday the 13th Demons Got Me

2009-03-13T09:55:00.000-07:00

I knew something was different when I woke up. It seemed like I had slept DEEP.
You, know, the kind of deep sleep aliens put you into just before they stick a big, cold, shiney, stainless steel probe up your butt...and then erase your memory.

So, not knowing any better, and forgetting what day it was, I thought it was a good feeling.
I put the kettle on, warmed up my laptop, lit a cigar and started to look in my favorite places on the WWW for Israeli Atrocities I could showcase on my blog.

Yeeeooooow!
The sound of cats either being raped or murdered outside my window blasted me off my chair and outside to see tufts of fur being thrown into the air from behind a tall daisy hedge. The dozen or so tufts continued their upward travel by catching a morning sun thermal.

The yeeooowling was a constant, though modulating wail and the tufts continued to rise as I looked over the daisy hedge to see a cartoon image of a yeeooowling blur of what I guessed had to be two cats in a mid-air cyclone of screaming, clawing, and flying body parts.
Honestly, I don't think they ever touched ground. I think they had reached the point where their bodies had become a sort of helicopter or propeller and they just spun in mid-air.
I was mezmerized. It was the most amazing and entertaining thing I ever expected to see.

But then my beautiful next door neighbor opened her door and began to scream. She obviously thought part of the cyclone was hers.

Where it comes from I don't know, but there I was, watching myself approach the tumbling ball of sharp teeth and nails, intent on saving her cat.
So I kicked at it.
EEEEEEEeeeeeekkkkkk!
Now she was screaming and firing indignant and outraged photon torpedoes of death at me from her blue eyed missle silos.
All the while, my slipper had sailed off my foot and landed harmlessly on the hood of her car about 30 feet away.
Not about to give up, I did the next thing my quickly cramping brain could think of and threw my cigar at the spinning cats.

That did it, she came charging out of her doorway screaming at either at me or the cats...I still don't know which.
But the cats stopped and ran about 10 feet and and stood with their backs arched, hissing and growling at the same time and then BOOOM, for no reason or signal I was able to discern they were instantly a levitating ball of screaming fury again.

A dozen random thoughts came and went: of the garden hose coiled in the garage for the winter, throwing my hat, throwing the garbage can, stomping...I'd already tried yelling.
While I was standing there frozen, my beautiful neighbor walked to the ball of cats and somehow came out with her cat. She paid a price, but she got him.
It was at that moment, I found some more courage and ran after the Terrorist Cat...and he ran too. But then he stopped at the fence and turned around and it seemed like he kind of dared me and said "Okay Pal, let's do it". So I pulled up short and we had a little shouting and stomping and hissing match that I finally won when he jumped through the hole in the fence.

For several weeks, I had been trying to develop a relationship with my neighbor, it was only yesterday that she had asked: "Hey, when are we gonna have a barbeque?" I had been stunned. I'd had no idea I was so close to success.

But as I turned around from winning my standoff with the Bad Cat, I could see the look in her eyes and it meant my stock had fallen into the worthless range.
Sure, she thanked me and was nice, but I could tell she had more respect for the bad cat than me. She wasn't looking in my eyes anymore.
I decided against bringing up the barbeque. It just seemed like I would even look more lame.

As I sit here thinking about all the things I could have done, I think I should have run to the garage, grabbed my .380 semi-auto and shot that fucking cat.
Sure I'd be in jail for the weekend, but when I got out, I bet we'd have had that barbeque.

Bribes and Coersion or Death and Starvation = USA Foreign Policy

2009-03-12T12:17:00.000-07:00

Clinton says U.S. Gaza Aid Tied to Recognition of Israel.
Some $900 million pledged by the United States to the Palestinians will be withdrawn if the expected Palestinian Authority coalition government between Fatah and Hamas does not recognize Israel's right to exist, Western and Israeli diplomats said Wednesday.

Let me get this straight:
1. Israel bombs Gaza into smithereens using USA supplied weapons.
2. USA makes a big supposedly humanitarian gesture of pledging $900 million to help rebuild Gaza.
3. AIPAC and other pro-Zionist lobbies start jumping up and down and holding their breath about it and demand that to get the money, the massacred people of Gaza have to recognize Israel or starve and continue to live in cardboard boxes and under blue plastic tarps.
4. Cowardly USA politicians in terror of the Israel lobby, agree to continue the enslavement and destruction of the native indigenous population.
5. No mention whatsoever of the Israeli Occupation Forces - recognizing the native indigenous people right to exist, have a homeland, be free from 2nd class status, have equal rights, not be discriminated against, etc. etc. etc.

Clinton and her masters are obviously afraid of elections - given their disasterous campaign in 2006, in which the people of Gaza, in a fair election, monitored by Jimmy Carter, voted in Hamas - and is discouraging them in favor of a PA/Fatah dictatorship. DICTATORSHIP!!!

USA Foreign policy is obviously:
"Do what we say or we will directly or indirectly bomb and starve you back into the stone age."

Ain't it wonderful how we spread Freedom and Democracy throughout the world?

Here's the link to the whole miserable article:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1070450.html

President Bush Had Personal Hit Team Run by Cheney

2009-03-12T08:01:00.000-07:00

You can't make this up, folks!
When Cheney said he was going to have to journey into the Dark Side, it obviously meant everything our most active imaginations could come up with.
I mean, what 5 deferment, draft dodging toy soldier doesn't want his own Personal Hit Team???

Trying to figure out how the "Compassionate Conservatism" motto of Bush 44, fits a Presidential Hit Team.
Maybe it means when they "hit" someone, they make sure they do it quickly and don't waste any extra bullets.

Read the whole article (links provided) and see if you feel like I do that Cheney was also probably doing the same sort of sick @#$% during his stint at the Reagan Whitehouse.

The Reagan motto, "Peace Through Strength", probably meant more than we thought, too.
"Peaceful" as in sleeping with the fishes (old Mafia term, right?).

Anyway, read it for yourself and make up your own mind.......

"Under President Bush’s authority, they’ve been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That’s been going on, in the name of all of us."

"Congress has no oversight of it. It’s an executive assassination ring essentially, and it’s been going on and on and on."

"...they reported directly to the Cheney office. They did not report to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff or to Mr. [Robert] Gates, the secretary of defense. They reported directly to him."

http://www.minnpost.com/ericblackblog/2009/03/11/7310/investigative_reporter_seymour_hersh_describes_executive_assassination_ring

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/10/world/asia/10terror.html?_r=1&hp

Israel Lobby Has Final Say in USA Appointments

2009-03-11T08:24:00.000-07:00

The candidate for a leading US intelligence post has withdrawn his nomination after accusing the country's Israel lobby of plumbing "the depths of dishonour and indecency" to assassinate his character.
"...he withdrew his nomination following what he called a "barrage of libellous distortions" of his record by the Israel lobby in the US.
"The libels on me and their easily traceable email trails show conclusively that there is a powerful lobby determined to prevent any view other than its own from being aired," Freeman said."

What disturbs me as much as the Israel Mafia, is that this man did not make a stand and courageously refuse to withdraw his name. People need to stand up to this kind of strong arm tactic or we will have to live with it.

More selected quotes:
"The tactics of the Israel lobby plumb the depths of dishonour and indecency and include character assassination, selective misquotation, the wilful distortion of the record, the fabrication of falsehoods, and an utter disregard for the truth."

"The aim of this lobby is control of the policy process through the exercise of a veto over the appointment of people who dispute the wisdom of its views, the substitution of political correctness for analysis, and the exclusion of any and all options for decision by Americans and our government other than those that it favours."

Freeman, who in 2007 said "the brutal oppression of the Palestinians by Israeli occupation shows no sign of ending", was criticised by some in the US congress for remarks seen as critical of Israel.

Freeman quotes:
2007 - "The brutal oppression of the Palestinians by Israeli occupation shows no sign of ending"
2007 - "Israel is even more despised and isolated than we are, and together with the Israelis we are rapidly multiplying the ranks of terrorists with regional and global reach."
But he countered in an email to supporters on Tuesday: "It is apparent that we Americans cannot any longer conduct a serious public discussion or exercise independent judgment about matters of great importance to our country as well as to our allies and friends."

Max Blumenthal, a blogger and journalist for the Daily Beast website who has been following Freeman's nomination process, told Al Jazeera that his withdrawal was "a catastrophic defeat for the Obama administration".
"What happened is the Israel lobby won," he said.

This is just more evidence that the Zionists don't care about the truth as much as they care about winning. This is the same mindset and strategy they use against the native indigenous people of Gaza and the West Bank...Lebanon...oh heck...where DON'T they use these tactics???

I hope other "Blind" supporters of Zionism will like I did, finally become overwhelmed by the evidence that Zionists are not honest players in the world and will call them out and marginalize them.
They are like a bad apple that infect any barrel they happen to be found in.

Full story here: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2009/03/200931113340555177.html

Israel to "Stack the Deck" in Internet Searches

2009-03-10T10:31:00.000-07:00

If you Google "Israel", it seems you get a bunch of Gaza Massacre images.
Hey, it's what people are interested in that gets the high Google rank.
People obviously want to see the results of Israeli Occupation/Terrorism Forces efforts.

In their typically dishonest manner, Israel has now decided to hire a bunch of geeks to flood the internet with beautiful photos of pastoral Israeli bliss.
Presently, when one "types in "Israel", unsightly images of bombarded housed in Gaza, or the nuclear facility in the southern city of Dimona, pop up on the screen. Not exactly vacation hotspots."

"In order to combat the PR impediment, the ministry, along with the Israeli Consulate General in New York, has decided it was time to fight back: The consulate has long been spearheading various innovative PR projects and now it stands to fly seven media experts to Israel, including video and stills photographers, who will be tasked with capturing the country's more beautiful and unfamiliar sides, on film."
What is it with these people??? Is everything about war???

"We've protested Google allowing photos of bombarded Gaza to be included in search results about Israel, but it has made it clear that users can upload any photo they please and that it has no control over it,"

By the way, I decided to Google "Israel Photos" and the first image was of a IDF/IOF/ITF woman on one knee pointing her rifle at the camera.
Beautifully ironic, don't you think?

The first image page showed 25 photos. There was only one more military photo, that of a line of Israeli aircraft. The remaining 23 photos were all beautiful shots of Israel or maps of Israel.

I typed in just "Israel" and got the same photos.
Sounds like Israel doesn't have much of a problem, but does have another news bite to showcase their "persecution complex".

"The fact of the matter is that Israeli surfers are rather indifferent, allowing the other side to dominate the web and upload its photos to harm the Israeli narrative. That's why we have decided to bring these experts to Israel. We want to see the internet flooded with the true images of beautiful Israel, free for anyone to use."
Are these people serious???
I'm sure everyone who Googles Israel, does so with the intent to do harm.
I guess the Massacre of Gaza isn't true (stay tuned: I think I'll get a list of deaths, injuries and destruction and post it on this site. You all can then decide if it looks real.

You know, it is just impossible not to stumble over examples of Israel trying to dishonestly manipulate world opinion. Has it ever been any different?

Isn't honesty a religious rule for them?

Read the full story here:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3683202,00.html

Palestine: An Introduction to History & Issues

2009-03-09T08:17:00.000-07:00

If you scratch your head about the crazy goings on over there in the middle east, this is an excellent read. It only takes about 15 minutes, but will certainly balance the unsatisfying propaganda we get from the MSM.

The whole piece is at http://www.palestineinformation.org/history.htm, but I have included a few main exerpts below to whet your appetite.

PALESTINIAN HERITAGE
Both Palestinians and Jews have lived for thousands of years in the region once known as Palestine and now known as Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
For some two thousand years, Palestinian Jews were a small and accepted minority in Palestine. The current conflict is not ancient, but has its roots in the nineteenth century with the birth of the Zionist movement in Europe.

ZIONISM
Zionism began in the late 1800s as a nationalist movement among European Jews who hoped to escape from centuries of persecution, apartheid, pogroms and expulsions from European countries. The Zionist movement advocated forming a Jewish national state in Palestine. By the nineteenth century, however, since Jews had long been only a small minority there, founding a Jewish majority state would by definition require the displacement of the non-Jewish majority population.
After WWI, there were about 600,000 Palestinians and 60,000 Jews in the territory, half of the latter figure being Jewish settlers from Europe.

1947: THE UN PARTITION PLAN
On November 29, 1947, the General Assembly of the United Nations -- under heavy pressure from the United States Government -- adopted Resolution 181, which recommended dividing Palestine into two nations, one Palestinian and one Jewish.
The Palestinian Arabs, having already rejected the UN's right to partition their land, now rejected the Resolution as unjust. They demanded instead the independence that the British and French had promised them after World War One.

WAR
Civil war between Zionist Jews and Palestinian Arabs broke out immediately after UN Resolution 181 was announced. One of the first major assaults by Zionist/Jewish forces came on December 18, 1947, when Palmach troops (the shock troops of the Zionist underground army) attacked the Palestinian village of Khissas in northern Galilee. Men, women and children were killed and wounded in the night raid.
Armistice agreements were signed in January 1949. The new state of Israel had conquered 78% of Palestine, with Jordan taking control of the West Bank and Egypt taking control of Gaza. Historic Palestine disappeared from the map of the world.

REFUGEES
By 1949, at least 800,000 Palestinians had been driven out of their homes.
Israeli historian Benny Morris has documented 369 Palestinian villages that were eradicated. At least 234 of those villages were destroyed by direct Israeli military action. Over 80 of these villages were outside the territory of the UN-defined Jewish state. Israeli towns were founded on many of the sites.

1967: THE SIX-DAY WAR AND BEGINNING OF OCCUPATION
Border skirmishes and instability increased, with neither side refraining from attacks on civilians. In 1956, Israel invaded Egypt in tandem with a French-British attack on the Suez Canal, only to be forced to retreat by US President Eisenhower.

Palestinians who had managed to remain inside Israel lived under harsh martial law until 1966. Israel became increasingly militarized and Arab governments continued threatening and violent rhetoric which was not backed up by any serious military capability or plans.

The Israeli military created provocations in what was supposed to be a demilitarized zone between Israel and Syria.
In 1967, violent rhetoric on both sides had escalated to the point where both the Arab countries and Israel had reason to fear invasion by the other. Egypt, though participating in diplomatic initiatives from the U.S., also moved troops into defensive position in the Sinai Peninsula. On June 5, Israel launched a surprise attack on Egypt. Israel called the surprise attack a preemptive strike, though Israeli military and government leaders have since admitted that they knew there was no actual military necessity:

"Message intercepts by the [United States Ship] Liberty made it clear that Israel had never intended to limit its attack to Egypt. Furthermore, we learned that the Israelis were themselves intercepting communications among Arab leaders. The Israelis then retransmitted 'doctored' texts to encourage Jordan and Syria to commit their armies in the erroneous belief that Nasser's army had repelled the Israeli invaders. To destroy this incriminating evidence, Moshe Dayan [Israeli Minister of Defense] ordered his jets and torpedo boats to destroy the Liberty immediately." --Wilbur Crane Eveland, CIA operative in the Middle East during 1967

THE OCCUPIED TERRITORIES
After the victory of 1967, Israel annexed East Jerusalem to become a part of the State of Israel. The other conquered areas -- the West Bank and the Gaza Strip -- have never been formally annexed and so the 3.5 million Palestinians who remain there are not citizens of any country but have been subjects of a military occupation since 1967.

SETTLEMENTS
4th Geneva Convention, Article 49:
"The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies."
"Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive."
Beginning in 1967 and accelerating through the present day, the Israeli government has given financial incentives to Israeli Jewish citizens to move to "settlements" in the Occupied Territories.

LIFE UNDER OCCUPATION
By suppressing Palestinian industry inside the Occupied Territories, Israel keeps Palestinians as a cheap labor force for Israeli industry. Over the past decades, Israel has tried to become less dependent on Palestinian labor by exploiting immigrant labor from Thailand, Romania, the Philippines and other countries.
With unemployment in the Occupied Territories as high as 80%, many Palestinians live in abject poverty just outside the walls of prosperous government-supported Israeli settlements.

Palestinians are deprived of access to hospitals, social services, and cultural and religious centers in Jerusalem. Palestinians with illnesses are routinely turned away at the hundreds of Israeli checkpoints that strangle Palestinian freedom of movement throughout the West Bank.

Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories are not allowed to vote in Israeli elections. They are, however, forced to pay taxes to the Israeli government. Though they pay taxes to the Israeli government, they do not receive equal government services. Taxes collected in the Occupied Territories are primarily spent inside Israel, not in the West Bank or the Gaza Strip.

INSIDE ISRAEL
Palestinians living inside Israel proper, although they are citizens, are also subjected to many human rights violations. They lived under martial law from 1948 until 1966. Today their communities receive poorer municipal services than comparable Jewish cities. Their access to jobs, loans, or business permits is extremely limited. Palestinians students have not been allowed to study or celebrate their own history or culture -- though this situation is improving somewhat with the revision of textbooks starting in 1998. Palestinian Bedouins, the indigenous people of the Negev desert, have been forced into shanty-towns, where crime, poverty and drug abuse are rampant.

THE LAW OF RETURN
Israel's Law of Return allows Jews anywhere in the world to receive immediate Israeli citizenship with all its privileges, simply by setting foot on Israeli soil. Meanwhile, millions of Palestinians outside Israel are not allowed to return to their homes; Palestinians inside Israel are treated as second-class citizens; Palestinians in the Occupied Territories have no vote and are citizens of no country.

THE WALL
In the spring of 2002, the Israeli military began constructing a physical barrier to separate the West Bank from Israel proper. However, most of this barrier, often called the Annexation Wall, is not being built on the pre-1967 Border, called the Green Line, between Israel and the West Bank. The barrier is being constructed well inside the West Bank, fencing Palestinians away from major water sources and large tracts of their farmland, dividing villages, separating people from hospitals and schools, leaving over 200,000 Palestinians on the Israeli side of the Wall but still without the rights of Israeli citizens. The International Court of Justice ruled in June 2004 that the Wall as currently planned and constructed is illegal and must be dismantled.

GAZA DISENGAGEMENT
In 2005, the Israeli government moved approximately 8000 Israeli settlers out of Gaza and redeployed Israeli military forces to the border. Israel also took down four tiny settlements in the West Bank. The government of Israel tried to present this as an end to Israeli occupation in Gaza. However:
o Israel still controls Gaza's airspace, sea shore, borders and border crossings, including Gaza's border with Egypt.
o Israeli soldiers still can and do enter Gaza at any time and for any reason. Over 400 Palestinians were killed by Israeli soldiers in the second half of 2006 in Gaza alone.
o Israel still controls Gaza's electricity and water, with the ability to shut them off at any time.
o Israel still has veto power over any legislation passed by the Palestinian Authority in Gaza.
As defined by the Hague Regulations of 1907 and the Nuremberg Tribunal of 1948, this amount of “effective control” still constitutes occupation.

HAMAS
In the Palestinian election of 2006, a majority of seats in the Palestinian authority were given to Hamas, a political militant organization whose charter calls for an Islamic religious state in all of historic Palestine. In the early days of Hamas, the government of Israel had nurtured and enabled the organization, hoping to create internal conflict and reduce the effectiveness of secular Palestinian resistance movements such as the Palestine Liberation Organization and Fatah. Hamas' rise to power in the Palestinian Authority has nonetheless created grave concerns in Israel.

US INVOLVEMENT
The US government has consistently supported Israel and Israeli policy, giving several billions dollars of aid each year to Israel in the form of direct aid, weapons shipments, loan guarantees, and weapons contracts. The US government has repeatedly vetoed UN Security Council resolutions critical of Israel, and pressures other countries to refrain from reprimanding Israel for its policies or actions. In spite of this apparent bias, the United States continues to present itself as the only "honest broker" for Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations.

PALESTINIAN RESISTANCE: STEADFASTNESS, UPRISINGS, NONVIOLENCE, VIOLENCE
Palestinians have resisted occupation in many ways. For many years, they practiced sumud, meaning a steadfast refusal to leave their land, even when the oppression was most difficult.

International law also forbids occupying powers from launching armed reprisals against the occupied population. While the right of self-defense is universally supported, Israel’s military also violently maintains an illegal occupation, consistently attacks civilians, and participates in acts intended to destroy the means of living for Palestinians.

Palestinians resisting ethnic cleansing and occupation have employed armed struggle as well as nonviolence. While the Geneva Conventions and other international laws support the right to resist military occupation and dictatorship “by any means at hand” including armed struggle.

A vast majority of Palestinians have never resorted to legitimate or illegitimate violence to resist the occupation, but continue to use steadfastness and nonviolence to struggle against Israel’s military occupation and ongoing attempts to dispossess the Palestinian people.

Pots of urine, feces in the refrigerator - how IDF troops vandalized Gaza homes

2009-03-06T09:08:00.000-08:00

Israeli Terrorist Forces Defecate and Destroy The Homes They Occupied in Gaza.
Turns out winnning the hearts and minds of Gaza residents in not in the hearts and minds of the IDF/IOF/ITF (Israeli Terrorist Forces).
The troops appear to have behaved like pigs who wander, root and shit wherever they want to.
Interesting, since they seem to think they are the chosen people of God.
Interesting that they also seem to have been observing kosher rules as they behaved like pigs.
Kosher pigs????

A few examples are included here and you can read the whole article at the link provided at the end:

"In the midst of all of this were plastic bottles of urine and many closed bags - in some houses, olive-colored ones - of excrement. People assumed that the commanders stayed there. There are houses where excrement was smeared on the walls, or where dry piles of it were found in corners. In many cases, the smells indicated that soldiers had urinated on piles of clothing or inside a washing machine. In all the houses the toilets were overflowing and clogged, and there was filth all around. When the Abu Eidas returned to house No. 5 in Jabalya, they discovered pots of urine and excrement in the refrigerator..."

"On January 18, when the forces pulled out, similar sights awaited people whose homes had become military bases in their absence. There were bullet-pocked walls, ripped-up sofas and armchairs, smashed televisions and computers, shards of glass and porcelain dishes and broken wooden thresholds. Clothing was ripped up. And there were mountains of very Israeli garbage - empty tin cans, cardboard boxes, empty bags of potato chips and chocolate, and full bags of sugar and raspberry-flavored drinking powder. Everything was kosher for Passover under the supervision of the Chief Rabbinate. And there were Hebrew newspapers,.."
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1068989.html

Hillary Thinks Colonization and Ethnic Cleansing Is Unhelpful

2009-03-05T09:24:00.000-08:00

So says Hillary Clinton. here is exactly what she said (with my interjections in bold in between paragraphs):
The United States supports the Palestinian Authority as the only legitimate government of the Palestinian people. As a partner on the road to a comprehensive peace, which includes a two-state solution, our support comes with more than words. As I pledged in Sharm el-Sheikh, we will work with President Abbas, Prime Minister Fayyad, and the government of the Palestinian Authority to address critical humanitarian, budgetary, security, and infrastructure needs, both in Gaza and in the West Bank.

um, okay, i don’t know how many times this needs to be said, but the democratically-elected government in palestine is not fatah, it is hamas. and because of you and your government, hillary, and its work over the years, with your israeli terrorist friends, to use the old-fashioned divide and conquer scheme, there is a huge rift between fatah and hamas. moreover, your pressure on fatah has made those in power in the pa do the dirty work of the americans and israeli terrorists. their work does nothing but censor dissent, imprison those who dissent.
As I said in Sharm el-Sheikh, a child growing up in Gaza without shelter, healthcare or an education, has the same right to go to school, see a doctor, and live with a roof over her head as a child growing up in any country. That a mother and a father here in the West Bank, struggling to fulfill their dreams for their children, have the same right as parents anywhere else to have a good job, a decent home, and the tools to achieve greater prosperity.
really, hillary? so what of the american-made weapons that israeli terrorists used to bomb over 200 schools–including the american international school–in gaza? and the unrwa schools, including those where palestinians made refugees yet again sought shelter: those were bombed too with weapons from your regime. do they have these rights, too? no, of course, not. because if they did, or if you thought they did, for one thing you’d be in gaza. you’d see this destruction you helped to create in gaza.

"The United States aims to foster conditions in which a Palestinian state can be fully realized, a state that can provide these opportunities, a state that is a responsible partner, is at peace with Israel and its Arab neighbors, and is accountable to its people. That is the state that this government is attempting to build.
I met with Prime Minister Fayyad this morning and I expressed to him the appreciation we had for his presentation at Sharm el-Sheikh, which outlined the specific needs of the people in Gaza. I also believe that it is imperative we continue to do the reform work that the president is leading in order to bolster the credibility of the government and to serve the needs of the people."

ah, ok, i see you’re lying again. as with the report i posted the other day. not one damn dime of the $900 million you pledged is going to gaza. it’s all going to your corrupt collaborator friends in ramallah. and, a reminder, hillary: abbas has not been president since january 9th. i know, as an american, you enjoy bolstering puppet leaders and controlling governments around the world to aid your dirty work, but he is not the president. moreover, the people of palestine do not want a west bank state. the people of palestine, whether they are here, or refugees around the world, want the right of return to their homes. this is what they want and what is their right and what they deserve. not this busywork you want to help with–constantly giving money to the pa to build this and that and then giving more military aid to the israeli terrorists to destroy it. this is not a state. and there cannot be a true state under colonialism. and all that you do with your israeli terrorist friends is to create more colonial impediments to prevent palestinians from ever having a state.

I’m very grateful that President Abbas has remained firm in his commitment to move forward on a comprehensive peace and a two-state solution. President Abbas is offering the Palestinian people the chance, finally, to fulfill the aspirations to be free, independent, prosperous, and peaceful, flourishing in a state of your own. And the only way to achieve that goal is through negotiations. All who believe in this comprehensive peace, we urge you to work with the Palestinian Authority and with us, because we are determined to move forward.
Time is of the essence. We cannot afford more delays or regrets about what might have been had different decisions been made in the past. The Obama Administration will be vigorously engaged in efforts to forge a lasting peace between Israel, the Palestinians, and all of the Arab neighbors. I will remain personally engaged. As I said in Sharm el-Sheikh, this is a commitment that I carry in my heart, not just in my portfolio as Secretary of State….
the “peace process” which you refer to, what those of us who live her know and refer to as the “war process,” is made possible by american and israeli terrorist endless “negotiations.” what do negotiations mean for palestinians? more broken promises, more facts on the ground, more land confiscation, more political prisoners, more checkpoints, and more repression. and as for what is in your heart, i don’t think that you have one. you who refuses to go to gaza. you who continue to create problems for palestinians as you have since your husband was president. you who support terrorism here against palestinians and all over the world against people from the congo to iraq to afghanistan. such a person has no heart. period.

MR. WOOD: The next question is Glenn Kessler from The Washington Post.
QUESTION: Yes. Madame Secretary, Israel last week approved the demolition of 88 Palestinian homes in Jerusalem and, as you arrived, another 55 homes were slated for demolition, the largest number in one area since 1967. Will you, as James Baker did in 1991, urge a halt to such unilateral actions?
And President Abbas, what do you think of these demolitions, and has the U.S. been too silent on this issue?
SECRETARY CLINTON: Glenn, clearly, this kind of activity is unhelpful and not in keeping with the obligations entered into under the roadmap. It is an issue that we intend to raise with the government of Israel and the Government at the municipal level in Jerusalem, because it is clearly a matter of deep concern to those who are directly affected.
But the ramifications go far beyond the individuals and the families that have received the notices you referenced. Yes, this will be taken up with the Israeli government.
ah, yes, here is the quote: that illegal, colonial, settlements that continue unabated as they have for over 61 years, really over 122 years, are, as you say, “unhelpful.” what is really “unhelpful” is the united states. in general. in every way. even when the u.s. pretends to “help,” it is always to further its own interests, always involving murder, massacre, repression, torture. the u.s., a country, which has never done anything to protect or further the best interests of palestinians. because if you wanted to be helpful you would sanction the israeli terrorist regime. you would stop giving them money, weapons. you would demand that palestinians have the right of return. short of that you have never helped and do not help. ever.
todd baer gives some context to clinton’s first trip to palestine, which at the time included a trip to gaza on al jazeera today:

i also find it interesting that none of the reports on hillary’s visit to ramallah today said nothing of the fact that at the precise time she was meeting with abbas and co. that israeli terrorists were busy bombing rafah with american f-16s and bombs (and, in fact, we heard those planes overhead in nablus and i am sure she could hear them in ramallah as well) as ma’an news reported:
Israeli warplanes on Wednesday morning bombed the tunnel area at the Gaza-Egypt border in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip.
Director of Ambulance and Emergency Services in the Palestinian Health Ministry Muawiya Hassanein told Ma’an that there were no casualties amongst Palestinian citizens.
Meanwhile, Palestinian medical sources at Abu Yousif An-Najjar Hospital in Rafah said 12 Palestinians were injured in Tuesday’s shelling of the same tunnel area.
and those children that hillary claims to care so much about–what of those who are murdered by israeli terrorists with u.s. tax dollars? or the men and women who are murdered? maram isid & ghassan bannoura for imemc news report on last month’s casualties of israeli terrorism with american weapons:
The International Relations Department of the Palestinian Liberation Organization issued on Wednesday a report documenting the Israeli military attacks on Palestinians during the month of February 2009.
The report shows that 17 Palestinian including 4 children were killed last month by the Israeli military fire in the West Bank and Gaza.
In addition there was 320 Palestinian who have been kidnapped by the Israeli troops and 8 Palestinian-owned homes demolished by the Israeli Authorities in Jerusalem, the PLO reported.
The report also shows that the Israeli army continued to siege the Gaza strip for the 19th month by the end of February; moreover the report documented a number of cases where the army did not allow patients to leave Gaza for treatment outside bringing the number of those who died due to the siege to 300 patients.
and back to hillary’s idea about what is “unhelpful” with israeli colonialism and ethnic cleansing…here is some context from rory mccarthy in the guardian on those “unhelpful” colonies in al quds:
On Monday, the Israeli group Peace Now reported that the Israeli housing ministry was planning to build at least 73,000 housing units in West Bank settlements.
The organisation said 15,000 units had already been approved and another 58,000 were awaiting approval.
Almost 500,000 settlers now live in east Jerusalem and the West Bank. All settlements are illegal under international law.

hillary likes to talk about rights. but she rarely does so with respect to international law and on the few occasions when she does, those rights are always for the white folks, the rich folks, the people of the global north. certainly never for palestinians. i’ve written about the new ethnic cleansing in silwan in al quds before, but there is some important context in international law that the project for monitoring israeli colonization activities posted a report that gives insight to al bustan and silwan, but also to the legal aspects, which of course, hillary chose not to speak about when she opted instead to say merely that they are “unhelpful”:
House demolition in light of human rights, international covenants and treaties
Adequate housing is one of the basic needs and rights of each person, where ‘the right to adequate housing is the right of every woman, man and child to a place to live in security and dignity.’[6] In the occupied Palestinian territory, Israel as an occupier should abide by the international human rights treaties to which it is a state party including: The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination,. As an occupier Israel should also abide by the international humanitarian law including: The Hague Regulations and the Forth Geneva Convention. The demolition of houses in Al Bustan neighborhood would be a stark violation of these rights and covenants. Israel should be held accountable for its acts in occupied East Jerusalem and the other Palestinian Territory; should comply with the international legitimacy, laws treaties and United Nations’ resolutions; and Israel’s long time apathy of the international community’s wills must come to an end.
Following is a synopsis of Articles within these covenants, conventions and laws that address the issue of house demolitions and forced evictions under these articles:
International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
Article 11 (1): ‘The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right of everyone to an adequate standard of living for himself and his family, including adequate food, clothing and housing, and to the continuous improvement of living conditions’.
International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (1965)
Article 5: ‘States’ Parties undertake to prohibit and eliminate racial discrimination in all of its forms and to guarantee the right of everyone, without distinction as to race, color, or national or ethnic origin, to equality before the law, notably in the enjoyment of the following rights: … (e) in particular … (iii) the right to housing’.
Universal declaration of human rights, Article 17:
1. ‘Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.’2. ‘No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.’
Article 25:
1. ‘Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.’
The Fourth Geneva Convention
Article 53: ‘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.’
Article 47: ‘Protected persons who are in occupied territory shall not be deprived, in any case or in any manner whatsoever, of the benefits of the present Convention by any change introduced as the result of the occupation of a territory, into the institutions or government of the said territory, nor by any agreement concluded between the authorities of the occupied territory and the Occupying power, nor by any annexation by the latter of the whole or part of the occupied territory.’
Article 147: ‘Grave breaches to which the preceding Article relates shall be those involving any of the following acts … extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly.’
Hague Regulations 1907
Section II Article 23: ‘it is especially forbidden- to destroy or seize the enemy’s property, unless such destruction or seizure be imperatively demanded by the necessities of war.’
Section III Article 46: ‘Family honor and rights, the lives of persons, and private property, as well as religious convictions and practice must be respected. Private property cannot be confiscated.’
Agenda 21 (UNCED, 1992)
Chapter 7.6 : ‘Access to safe and healthy shelter is essential to a person’s physical, psychological, social and economic well-being and should be a fundamental part of national and international action. The right to adequate housing as a basic human right is enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Despite this, it is estimated that at the present time, at least one billion people do not have access to safe and healthy shelter and that if appropriate action is not taken, this number will increase dramatically by the end of the century and beyond.’
‘People should be protected by law against unfair eviction from their homes or land’.
all of the above is in relation to the ethnic cleansing and colonization project in the silwan and al bustan areas of al quds, and indeed can be applied to all of historic palestine. here is a report on sky news from dominic waghorn on the forced removal of palestinians from their homes:

there are palestinians in al quds who have set up protest camps where hundreds of people are staging a sit-in every day, all day, around the clock. my friend wassef, from al quds, came up to nablus today for work and we went out to lunch. he has been going to the protest at the tents and told me about it. he says that everyone is too afraid of resisting this in ways beyond this vigil-like sit-in. wassef, who spent 10 years in an israeli terrorist prison for his resistance work feels that everyone, especially since gaza, sees how easy it is for palestinians to be slaughtered, imprisoned and so they feel helpless. but, of course, they want to do something. here is a story on the protest from imemc’s ghassan bannoura:
Palestinians from Ras Khamis neighborhood, near Jerusalem’s old city, set up a protest camp near their homes in protest against Israel’s decision to demolish their neighborhood.
The Israeli municipality says that there are 55 homes in the Palestinian Ras Khamis neighborhood that are built without the required permissions.
Hatem Abdel al-Qader, the Palestinian Prime Minister’s advisor for Jerusalem affairs, stated that lawyers managed to stop the demolition until March 10th, by court order . He added that the camp is one in a number of actions that home owners and local activists are organizing to counter the Israeli plans. Abdel al-Qader said that there will be public and popular events of solidarity with the home owners, stressing that the Israeli plans will displace hundreds of Palestinian families.
Since Israel occupied East Jerusalem in 1967, it has rarely given Palestinian residents permission to build homes, while continuing to expand Jewish settlements, illegal under international law, in and around the city.
Since the beginning of this year, Israel has issued orders to demolish nearly 700 Palestinian-owned homes and other structures in the city of Jerusalem, local activists reported. 88 of the homes are located in the al-Bustan neighborhood, located immediately south of the al-Aqsa Mosque, in Jerusalem’s old city.
Many of the homes were built before 1967. According to Israel’s plans, registered with the Jerusalem municipality, this traditionally Palestinian neighborhood is to become a park with flowers, trees and cafe’s.
there is another way in which hillary herself is more than “unhelpful,” but rather destructive with respect to being an agent of the u.s. and its never ending efforts to participate in divide and rule schemes around the world. i will close with a brilliant analysis by ali abunimah and hasan abu nimah on electronic intifada today so you can see precisely how hillary is helping to foment more division already:
Still reeling from the Israeli massacres in the occupied Gaza Strip, Palestinians have lately had little to celebrate. So the strong start to intra-Palestinian reconciliation talks in Cairo last week provided a glimmer of hope.
An end to the schism between the resistance and the elected but internationally-boycotted Hamas government on the one hand, and the Western-backed Fatah faction on the other, seemed within reach. But the good feeling came to a sudden end after what looked like a coordinated assault by United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, European Union High Representative Javier Solana, and Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas whose term as president of the Palestinian Authority (PA) expired on 9 January.
On Friday 27 February, the leaders of 13 Palestinian factions, principal among them Hamas and Fatah, announced they had set out a framework for reconciliation. In talks chaired by Egypt’s powerful intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, the Palestinians established committees to discuss forming a “national unity government,” reforming the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) to include all factions, legislative and presidential elections, reorganizing security forces on a nonpolitical basis, and a steering group comprised of all faction leaders. Amid a jubilant mood, the talks were adjourned until 10 March.
Then the blows began to strike the fragile Palestinian body politic. The first came from Clinton just before she boarded her plane to attend a summit in the Egyptian resort of Sharm al-Sheikh ostensibly about pledging billions in aid to rebuild Gaza.
Clinton was asked by Voice of America (VOA) whether she was encouraged by the Cairo unity talks. She responded that in any reconciliation or “move toward a unified [Palestinian] Authority,” Hamas must be bound by “the conditions that have been set forth by the Quartet,” the self-appointed group comprising representatives of the US, EU, UN and Russia. These conditions, Clinton stated, require that Hamas “must renounce violence, recognize Israel, and abide by previous commitments.” Otherwise, the secretary warned, “I don’t think it will result in the kind of positive step forward either for the Palestinian people or as a vehicle for a reinvigorated effort to obtain peace that leads to a Palestinian state.”
The next strikes came from Ramallah. With the EU’s top diplomat Solana standing next to him, Abbas insisted that any national unity government would have to adhere to the “two-state vision” and abide by “international conditions and signed agreements.” He then demanded that Gaza reconstruction aid be channeled exclusively through the Western-backed, but financially bankrupt and politically depleted PA. Solana affirmed, “I would like to insist in agreement with [Abbas] that the mechanism used to deploy the money is the one that represents the Palestinian Authority.” Solana fully endorsed the campaign waged by Abbas ever since the destruction of Gaza that the PA, plagued by endemic corruption, and which only pays salaries of workers deemed politically loyal, be in sole charge of the funds, rather than neutral international organizations as Hamas and others have suggested.
Was the Sharm al-Sheikh summit then really about helping the people of Gaza or was it about exploiting their suffering to continue the long war against Hamas by other means? Indeed, Clinton had already confirmed the politicization of reconstruction aid when she told VOA, “We want to strengthen a Palestinian partner willing to accept the conditions outlined by the Quartet,” and, “our aid dollars will flow based on these principles.”
Hamas warned that Clinton’s and Abbas’s statements set Palestinian reconciliation efforts back to square one. “Hamas will not recognize Israel or the Quartet’s conditions,” said one spokesman Ismail Radwan, while another, Ayman Taha, said Hamas would “reject any preconditions in the formation of the unity government.” Khaled Meshal, head of the movement’s political bureau, insisted that the basis for national unity must remain “protecting the resistance and the rights of the Palestinian people.”
Such statements will of course be used to paint Hamas as extremist, intransigent and anti-peace. After all, what could be more reasonable than demanding that any party involved in a peace process commit itself to renouncing violence, recognizing its enemy, and abiding by pre-existing agreements? The problem is that the Quartet conditions are designed to eliminate the Palestinians’ few bargaining chips and render them defenseless before continuous Israeli occupation, colonization, blockade and armed attacks.
None of the Western diplomats imposing conditions on Hamas have demanded that Israel renounce its aggressive violence. Indeed, as Amnesty International reported on 20 February, the weapons Israel used to kill, wound and incinerate 7,000 persons in Gaza, half of them women and children, were largely supplied by Western countries, mainly the US. In a vivid illustration, Amnesty reported that its field researchers “found fragments and components from munitions used by the Israeli army — including many that are US-made — littering school playgrounds, in hospitals and in people’s homes.”
For Palestinians to “renounce violence” under these conditions is to renounce the right to self-defense, something no occupied people can do. Palestinians will certainly note that while Abbas stands impotently by, neither the US nor the EU have rushed to the defense of the peaceful, unarmed Palestinians shot at daily by Israeli occupation forces as they try to protect their land from seizure in the West Bank. Nor has Abbas’ renunciation of resistance helped the 1,500 residents in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan whose homes Israeli occupation authorities recently confirmed their intention to demolish in order to make way for a Jewish-themed park. A cessation of violence must be mutual, total and reciprocal — something Hamas has repeatedly offered and Israel has stubbornly rejected.
While Israeli violence is tolerated or applauded, Israel’s leaders are not held to any political preconditions. Prime minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu emphatically rejects a sovereign Palestinian state and — like his predecessors — rejects all other Palestinian rights enshrined in international law and UN resolutions. When told to stop building illegal settlements on occupied land, Israel responds simply that this is a matter for negotiation and to prove the point it revealed plans in February to add thousands of Jewish-only homes to its West Bank colonies.
Yet Quartet envoy Tony Blair, asked by Al-Jazeera International on 1 March how his masters would deal with a rejectionist Israeli government, said, “We have to work with whoever the Israeli people elect, let’s test it out not just assume it won’t work.” Unless Palestinians are considered an inferior race, the same logic ought to apply to their elected leaders, but they were never given a chance.
It is ludicrous to demand that the stateless Palestinian people unconditionally recognize the legitimacy of the entity that dispossessed them and occupies them, that itself has no declared borders and that continues to violently expand its territory at their expense. If Palestinians are ever to recognize Israel in any form, that can only be an outcome of negotiations in which Palestinian rights are fully recognized, not a precondition for them.
During last year’s US election campaign, Clinton claimed she helped bring peace to Northern Ireland during her husband’s administration. Yet the conditions she now imposes on Hamas are exactly like those that the British long imposed on the Irish nationalist party Sinn Fein, thereby blocking peace negotiations. President Bill Clinton — against strenuous British objections — helped overturn these obstacles by among other things granting a US visa to Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams, whose party the British once demonized as Israel now demonizes Hamas. Like Tony Blair, who as British prime minister first authorized public talks with Sinn Fein, Hillary Clinton knows that the negotiations in Ireland could not have succeeded if any party had been forced to submit to the political preconditions of its adversaries.
Former British and Irish peace negotiators including Nobel Peace Prize winner John Hume, and former Israeli foreign minister Shlomo Ben-Ami made similar points in a 26 February letter they co-signed in The Times of London. “Whether we like it or not,” the letter states, “Hamas will not go away. Since its victory in democratic elections in 2006, Hamas has sustained its support in Palestinian society despite attempts to destroy it through economic blockades, political boycotts and military incursions.” The signatories called for engagement with the movement, affirming that “The Quartet conditions imposed on Hamas set an unworkable threshold from which to commence negotiations.”
Those who claim to be peacemakers should heed this advice. They should allow Palestinians to form a national consensus without external interference and blackmail. They should respect democratic mandates. They should stop imposing grossly unfair conditions on the weaker side while cowering in fear of offending the strong, and they should stop the cynical exploitation of humanitarian aid for political manipulation and subversion.
There are many in the region who were encouraged by US President Barack Obama’s appointment of former Northern Ireland mediator Senator George Mitchell as Middle East envoy. But in all other respects the new president has continued the Bush administration’s disastrous policies. It is not too late to change course, for persisting in these errors will guarantee only more failure and bloodshed.

Thanks to Marcy Newman at: www.bodyontheline.wordpress.com

USA gives 30 Billion to Israel and 900 Million to Gaza

2009-03-04T08:03:00.000-08:00

The American taxpayers' contribution to the Ramallah government's bank account is dwarfed by the large sums the U.S. government donates to Israel every year.
The extent of the funding pledged to the Palestinian Authority by donor countries reflects the extent of their support for Israel and its policies.

The Clinton and Bush administrations - and Barack Obama appears to be following in their footsteps - erased the phrase "Israeli occupation" from their dictionaries and collaborated with Israel in ignoring its commitments as enshrined in international law.
The billions of dollars that Israel receives from the United States for weapons and defense development - which played a significant role in the destruction in the Gaza Strip - are part of Israel's successful propaganda, which presents the Rafah tunnels and Grad rockets as a strategic threat and part of the Islamic terror offensive against enlightened countries.
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The West has blown the Hamas movement out of proportion, exaggerating its military might to the point of mendacity;

Every cent paid to the Palestinians - whether for the Ramallah government's budget or medical treatment of children wounded by Israeli pilots or soldiers - lets Israel know that it can continue its efforts to force a capitulation deal on the Palestinian elite.
Only by recognizing that surrender is the goal can one understand that 16 years after Oslo, no Palestinian state was established. When did Shimon Peres, Ariel Sharon and Tzipi Livni begin talking about two states? Only after their bulldozers and military bureaucrats crushed the realistic physical basis of a Palestinian state.

Support for Israeli policy - this is the only way to understand the fact that other countries keep pouring in hundreds of millions of dollars meant to put out the fires set by this policy, without extinguishing the source of the blaze.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1068553.html

Go on a Hit With Israeli Assassination Team

2009-03-03T07:10:00.000-08:00

A former member of an Israeli Assassination Squad has told of his role in a botched ambush that killed two Palestinian bystanders, as well as the two militants targeted.
"He gave his story to Breaking the Silence, which has collected testimony from hundreds of former troops concerned about what they saw and did - including abuses of Palestinians - during their service in the occupied territories."

"As the critical moment approached, the sharpshooter said he began to shake from the waist down. "What happens now is I'm waiting for the car to come and I am losing control of my legs..."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/01/israels-death-squads-a-fo_n_170871.html

292 Palestinians Kidnapped/Israel Rejects War Crime Charge

2009-03-02T07:35:00.000-08:00

The Palestinian Political detainees Society issued a report on Monday stating that the Israeli military have kidnapped 292 Palestinians during the month of February.
35 were sick, 59 were children and 4 were women.

Here is a breakdown of the kidnappings per town. This is just the West Bank.
I'll include the kidnapping in Gaza when I get them.
http://www.imemc.org/article/59068

Israel dismisses Tehran demand to arrest Israeli 'war criminals'
"Based on our investigation and according to article two of the Interpol charter, we asked Interpol to arrest these suspects," he said in comments carried by Iranian state television, according to the BBC's monitoring service. Mortazavi said Iran had drawn up charges against 34 Israeli commanders and 115 individuals, adding that the charges included "war crimes, invasion, occupation, genocide and crimes against humanity".
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1067792.html

Israeli Wanted Posters: http://www.wanted.org.il/

Israel launches campaign against UN nuke watchdog chief

2009-02-26T20:22:00.000-08:00

Israel wants UN inspections of Iran and Syria nuclear power sites, but refuses UN inspections of their own sites.
They are not signatories of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and so they don't have to, they say.

Because Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei won't say and do what Israel wants him to so they can attack and destroy Iran and Syria, they have decided to try to get rid of him. They simply can't have a rational, thoughtful person in his position.
Israel's Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) recently intensified its attacks on the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei. The AEC, one of the most classified bodies in Israel that is also, among other things, responsible for operating the Dimona nuclear reactor, does not often issue public statements, and usually plays down its activities. But in recent months, given the IAEA director's actions relating to all aspects of Syria and Iran's nuclear programs, the committee decided, with the consent of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, to stop tiptoeing around the issue.

The AEC now hurries to respond to ElBaradei's interviews, in which they feel he speaks of Israeli in critical tones. The latest expression of this new policy is a letter to be published this week in the latest issue of the American weekly magazine, Newsweek, written by the AEC spokeswoman Nili Lifshitz. Lifshitz is leaving her post at the end of the week after years on the job to assume a different position in human resources at the Nuclear Research Center (NRC, the Nahal Sorek nuclear reactor, which the AEC also oversees). But she does not hesitate to criticize the IAEA director sharply.

According to her, ElBaradei, "failed in his attempts to persuade Syria to allow visits by IAEA inspectors to three sites in Syria with suspected links to Syria's confidential nuclear program." She charges: "Even the IAEA director's attempt to arrange for a true investigation into Syria's efforts to obfuscate and cover up the evidence at the site bombed in September 2007 failed". She says: "Syria hustled the building rubble and dirt from the site so that it would not be possible to uncover what was built there and what was going on".

The AEC spokeswoman stressed in her letter that the suspicion is that Syria set up a North Korean-made nuclear reactor at the site, an action that is contrary to its agreements with the IAEA. She said (without providing examples) instead of focusing on these issues, ElBaradei has deemed it appropriate to denounce and criticize the State of Israel. "Unfortunately, this has become typical behavior on the part of the IAEA director," Lifshitz wrote, "as part of his efforts to divert attention away from his failed attempts to arrange for a fitting and appropriate investigation given the accumulated information and proof that Middle Eastern states are clearly violating the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty."

Soft on Iran Israel's pointed criticism takes on a special significance against the backdrop of the most recent IAEA report and a briefing on Syria and Iran for reporters presented by a senior agency official. The report and the briefing presented additional evidence that the bombed site in Syria was built as a nuclear reactor resembling one in North Korea. The IAEA report also rejected Damascus' claims that the uranium traces found at the site were from the missiles that destroyed the structure, i.e., that they are part of the Israeli Air Force's armaments.

The letter to Newsweek follows a previous letter also sent by the Israeli AEC to The Wall Street Journal in response to another ElBaradei interview. In that interview, he also claimed that Israel, like Iran, is not cooperating with his organization, and in so doing attempted to draw a parallel between the two countries.

ElBaradei, an Egyptian legalist and veteran diplomat who has been affiliated with the United Nations in general for over 35 years, has been considered for many years to be a "red flag" by the AEC. He is perceived by senior AEC officials, which is responsible for contacts with the IAEA, as someone not known for his pro-Israel views, to put it mildly. According to diplomatic and defense officials in Israel, ElBaradei was negligent in handling all matters relating to the Iranian nuclear crisis. In reports he wrote, which were written in soft, evasive and conciliatory language, he allowed Iran to evade over the course of six years its commitments according to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and its agreements with the IAEA. The United States was also not overly pleased with the IAEA director.

About four years ago, the Bush administration tried to bar his reelection to the post, but failed due to the tremendous support for ElBaradei from the bloc of Third World countries, with the backing of Russia and China. As a result, for years, Israel, even though it was not satisfied with ElBaradei's handling of the job, had to act diplomatically. Israel was hesitant about openly airing its reservations and tried to maintain favorable ties with him, and keep up a professional working relationship.

ElBaradei visited Israel more than four years ago, met with the leaders of the AEC, visited the Nuclear Research Center, but was not permitted to visit Dimona, because Israel (unlike, for example, Iran and Syria) is not a signatory to the NPT and therefore is not obligated to allow international oversight of the Dimona reactor. Nevertheless, in recent months, as noted, the policy has shifted prompted by the AEC director, Dr. Shaul Horev, and with the approval of the prime minister. Presumably, the attacks are coming due to the report that ElBaradei will leave his position at the end of the year and be replaced by a new director, with representatives from South Africa and Japan vying for the spot.

Hollywood Supports War Industry with Few Exceptions

2009-02-26T07:15:00.000-08:00

Here is an inside look at how a handul of men make sure you feel the way they want you to feel about war.

The Deep Politics of Hollywood In the Parents` Best Interests
By Matthew Alford and Robbie Graham

URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=12465

Global Research, February 26, 2009

Tom Cruise – “the world's most powerful celebrity” according to Forbes Magazine – was unceremoniously sacked in 2006. His dismissal was particularly shocking for the fact that it was carried out not by his immediate employer, Paramount Studios, but rather by Paramount's parent company, Viacom. Viacom's notoriously irascible CEO Sumner Redstone – who owns a long list of media companies including CBS, Nickelodeon, MTV, and VH1 – said that Cruise had committed “creative suicide” following a spate of manic public activity. It was a sacking worthy of an episode of The Apprentice.[i]
The Cruise case points to the overlooked notion that the internal mechanisms of Hollywood are not determined entirely by audience desires, as one might expect, nor are they geared to respond solely to the decisions of studio creatives, or even those of the studio heads themselves.

In 2000, The Hollywood Reporter released a top 100 list of the most powerful figures in the industry over the past 70 years. Rupert Murdoch, chief of News Corporation, which owns Twentieth Century Fox, was the most powerful living figure. With the exception of director Steven Spielberg (no. 3), no artists appeared in the top 10.

Each of the dominant Hollywood studios (“the majors”) is now a subsidiary of a much larger corporation, and therefore is not so much a separate or independent business, but rather just one of a great many sources of revenue in its parent company's wider financial empire. The majors and their parents are: Twentieth Century Fox (News Corp), Paramount Pictures (Viacom), Universal (General Electric/Vivendi), Disney (The Walt Disney Company), Columbia TriStar (Sony), and Warner Brothers (Time Warner). These parent companies are amongst the largest and most powerful in the world, typically run by lawyers and investment bankers.[ii] Their economic interests are also sometimes closely tied to politicised areas such as the armaments industry, and they are frequently inclined to cozy-up to the government of the day because it decides on financial regulation.

As Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Professor Ben Bagdikian puts it, whereas once the men and women who owned the media could fit in a “modest hotel ballroom,” the same owners (all male) could now fit into a “generous phone booth.” He could have added that, whilst a phone box may not exactly be the chosen venue for the likes of Rupert Murdoch and Sumner Redstone, these individuals do indeed meet at plush venues such as Idaho's Sun Valley to identify and forge their collective interests.

Of course, the content of a studio's films is not, as a rule, determined entirely by the political and economic interests of its parent company. Studio CEOs typically have considerable leeway to make the pictures they want to make without direct interference from their ultimate masters. At the very least, however, the content of Hollywood studios broadly reflects their wider corporate interests, and, at times, the parent companies behind the studios take a conscious and deliberate interest in certain movies. There is a battle between “top down” and “bottom up” forces, but mainstream media and academia have traditionally focused on the latter, rather than the former.

Consider last year's blockbuster Australia, the epic from Baz Luhrmann. Two of the film's most salient aspects were that, firstly, it glossed-over the history of Aboriginal people, and, secondly, it made Australia look like a fantastic place to go on holiday. This should come as no surprise – Twentieth Century Fox's parent company (Rupert Murdoch's News Corp) – worked hand-in-hand with the Australian government throughout the film's production for mutual interests. The government benefited from Luhrmann's huge tourist campaign, which included not just the feature film itself but also a series of extravagant tie-in advertisements (all in apparent support of its ham-fisted Aborigine “reconciliation” programme). In turn, the government gave its favourite son tens of millions of dollars in tax rebates. The West Australian newspaper even alleged that Murdoch had his "journalistic foot soldiers" ensure that every aspect of his media empire awarded Australia glowing reviews, an assessment nicely illustrated by The Sun, which enjoyed the “rare piece of good old fashioned entertainment" so much that its reviewer was "tempted to nip down to the travel agent."

There are historical precedents for such interference. In 1969 Haskell Wexler –cinematographer on One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest – had considerable trouble releasing his classic Medium Cool, which riffed on the anti-war protests at the Democrat Convention the previous year. Wexler claims he has Freedom of Information documents revealing that on the eve of the film's release, Chicago's Mayor Richard J. Daley and high sources in the Democratic Party let it be known to Gulf and Western (then the parent company of Paramount) that if Medium Cool was released, certain tax benefits and other perks in Gulf and Western's favor wouldn't happen. “A stiff prick has no conscience,” Wexler told us angrily, referring to Hollywood's business leaders, “and they have no conscience.”
Wexler explained how this corporate plot was enacted so as to minimize attention: “Paramount called me and said I needed releases from all the [protestors] in the park, which was impossible to provide. They said if people went to see that movie and left the theatre and did a violent act, then the offices of Paramount could be prosecuted.” Although Paramount was obliged to release the film they successfully pushed for an X rating, advertised it feebly, and forbade Wexler from taking it to film festivals. Hardly the way to make a profit on a movie, but certainly an effective way to protect the broader interests of the parent.

Then there's the more famous case of Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004), the Michael Moore blockbuster which the Walt Disney Company tried to scupper despite it “testing through the roof” with sample audiences. Disney's subsidiary Miramax insisted that its parent had no right to block it from releasing the film since its budget was well below the level requiring Disney's approval. Disney representatives retorted that they could veto any Miramax film if it appeared that its distribution would be counterproductive to their interests. Moore's agent Ari Emanuel alleged that Disney's boss Michael Eisner had told him he wanted to back out of the deal due to concerns about political fallout from conservative politicians, especially regarding tax breaks given to Disney properties in Florida like Walt Disney World (where the governor was the then US President's brother, Jeb Bush). Disney also had ties to the Saudi Royal family, which was unfavourably represented in the film: a powerful member of the family, Al-Walid bin Talal, owns a major stake in Eurodisney and had been instrumental in bailing out the financially troubled amusement park. Disney denied any such high political ball game, explaining they were worried about being "dragged into a highly charged partisan political battle," which it said would alienate customers.
Disney has consistently spread pro-establishment messages in its films, particularly under subsidiary banners such as Hollywood Pictures and Touchstone Pictures (although Oliver Stone's 1995 Nixon biopic is a notable exception). Several received generous assistance from the US government: the Pentagon-backed In the Army Now (1994), Crimson Tide (1995), and Armageddon (1998), as well as the CIA-vetted Bad Company (2002) and The Recruit (2003). In 2006, Disney released the TV movie The Path to 9/11, which was heavily skewed to exonerate the Bush administration and blame the Clinton administration for the terrorist attacks, provoking outraged letters of complaint from former Secretary of State Madeline Albright and former Clinton National Security Advisor Sandy Berger.
The nature of Disney's output makes sense when we consider the interests of the higher echelons of the corporation. Historically, Disney has had close ties with the US defense department, and Walt himself was a virulent anti-communist (though reports about him being a secret FBI informant or even a fascist are rather more speculative). In the 1950s, corporate and government sponsors helped Disney make films promoting President Eisenhower's “Atoms for Peace” policy as well as the infamous Duck and Cover documentary that suggested to schoolchildren that they could survive an atomic attack by hiding under their desks. Even now, a longtime Directors Board member of Disney is John E. Bryson who is also a director of The Boeing Company, one of the world's largest aerospace and defence contractors. Boeing received $16.6bn in Pentagon contracts in the aftermath of the US invasion of Afghanistan[iii]. This would have been no small incentive for Disney to avoid commissioning films critical of Bush's foreign policy, such as Fahrenheit 9/11.
It is hardly surprising that when Disney released Pearl Harbor (2001) – a simplistic mega-budget movie made with full cooperation from the Pentagon, and which celebrated the American nationalist resurgence following that “day of infamy”– it was widely received with cynicism. Yet, despite lamentable reviews, Disney unexpectedly decided in August 2001 to extend the film's nationwide release window from the standard two-to-four months to a staggering seven months, meaning that this ‘summer' blockbuster would now be screening until December. In addition, Disney expanded the number of theatres in which the film was showing, from 116 to 1,036. For the corporations due to profit from the aftermath of 9/11, Pearl Harbor provided grimly convenient mood music.

But whilst movies like Australia and Pearl Harbor receive preferential treatment, challenging and incendiary films are frequently cast into the cinematic memory hole. Oliver Stone's Salvador (1986) was a graphic expose of the Salvadorian civil war; its narrative was broadly sympathetic towards the left wing peasant revolutionaries and explicitly critical of U.S. foreign policy, condemning the United States' support of Salvador's right wing military and infamous death squads. Stone's film was turned down by every major Hollywood studio – with one describing it as a “hateful piece of work” – though it received excellent reviews from many critics. The film was eventually financed by British and Mexican investors and achieved limited distribution.

More recently controversial documentaries such as Loose Change (2006/2007), which argued that 9/11 was an "inside job," and Zeitgeist (2007), which presents a frightening picture of global economics, have been viewed by millions through the Internet when corporate media wouldn't touch them.[iv]
Universal studios' contemporary output has been less rigidly supportive of US power, as films like Children of Men (2006), Jarhead (2005), and The Good Shepherd (2006) indicate. Still, with movies like U-571 (2000) and Charlie Wilson's War (2007), it makes sense that Universal's parent company is General Electric, whose most lucrative interests relate to weapons manufacturing and producing crucial components for high-tech war planes, advanced surveillance technology, and essential hardware for the global oil and gas industries, notably in post Saddam Iraq. GE's board of directors has strong ties to large liberal organizations such as the Rockefeller Foundation. Whilst ‘liberal' may sound like a positive term after the unpopularity of Bush's brand of conservatism, liberal organizations are cemented firmly in the bedrock of US elites and have frequently been architects of American interventionist foreign policy, including against Vietnam. They are prepared to ally themselves with conservatives over certain issues, particularly national security, so it should come as no shock to find that GE was close to the Bush Administration through both its former and current CEOs. Jack Welch (CEO from 1981-2001) openly declares disdain for “protocol, diplomacy and regulators” and was even accused by California Congressman Henry Waxman of pressuring his NBC network to declare Bush the winner prematurely in the 2000 “stolen election” when he turned up unannounced in the newsroom during the poll count. Welch's successor, the current GE CEO Jeff Immelt, is a neoconservative and was a generous financial contributor to the Bush re-election campaign.

Perhaps GE/Universal's most eyebrow-raising release was United 93 (2006), billed as the “true account” of how heroic passengers on 9/11 “foiled the terrorist plot” by forcing the plane to crash prematurely in rural Pennsylvania. Although the film made a return on its relatively low investment, it was greeted with a good deal of public apathy and hostility prior to its nation-wide release. At the time, Bush's official 9/11 story was being seriously interrogated by America's independent news media: according to the results of a 2004 Zogby poll, half of New Yorkers believed “US leaders had foreknowledge of impending 9/11 attacks and ‘consciously failed' to act,” and, just one month prior to the release of United 93, 83% of CNN viewers recorded their belief “that the US government covered up the real events of the 9/11 attacks.”

With the official narrative under heavy fire, the Bush Administration welcomed the release of United 93 with open arms: the film was a faithful audio-visual translation of the 9/11 Commission Report, with “special thanks” to the Pentagon's Hollywood liaison Phil Strub tucked away discreetly in the end credits. Soon after the film's nationwide release date, in what might be interpreted as a cynical PR move and as gesture of official approval, President Bush sat down with some of the victims' family members for a private screening at the White House. [v]

GE/Universal's Munich (2005) – Steven Spielberg's exploration of Israeli vengeance following the Palestinian terrorist attack at the 1972 Olympics – raises similar suspicions. Although the Zionist Organisation of American called for a boycott of the film because they felt it equated Israel with terrorists, such a reading is less than convincing. Indeed, by the time Munich's credits begin to roll its overriding messages have been stamped indelibly into the brain by the film's Israeli Special Forces characters: “Every civilization finds it necessary to negotiate compromises with its own values,” “We kill for our future, we kill for peace,” and “Don't f*ck with the Jews.” Predictably, Israel is one of GE's most loyal customers, buying Hellfire II laser missiles as well as propulsion systems for the F-16 Falcon fighter, the F-4 Phantom fighter, the AH-64 Apache attack helicopter, and the UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter. In Munich's 167 minute running time the voice of the Palestinian cause is restricted to two and a half minutes of simplistic dialogue. Rather than being an “evenhanded cry for peace,” as the Los Angeles Times hailed it, General Electric's Munich is more easily interpreted as a subtle corporate endorsement of the policies of a loyal customer.

On the most liberal end of the spectrum for movies in recent years has been Warner Bros. – JFK (1991), The Iron Giant (1999), South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut (1999), Good Night and Good Luck (2005), V for Vendetta (2005), A Scanner Darkly (2006), Rendition (2007), and In the Valley of Elah (2007). It is indicative that following complaints about racial stereotyping in Warner Bros.' Pentagon-sponsored action adventure, Executive Decision (1996), the studio took the unusual step of hiring the services of Jack Shaheen, an on-set adviser on racial politics, resulting in what was critically received as one of the best films of its genre in a generation, Three Kings (1999).[vi] It may be no coincidence that Warner Brothers' parent company, Time Warner, is less intimately tied to the arms industry or the neoconservative clique.

But to have an idea of what happens to movies when you remove multinational interests from the industry, consider the independent distributor Lions Gate Films, which is still very much a part of the capitalist system (formed in Canada by an investment banker) but not beholden to a multibillion dollar parent corporation with multifarious interests. Although Lions Gate has generated a good deal of politically vague and blood ‘n' guts products, it has also been behind some of the most daring and original popular political cinema of the past ten years, criticizing corporatism in American Psycho (2000), US foreign policy in Hotel Rwanda (2004), the arms trade in Lord of War (2005), the U.S. healthcare system in Michael Moore's Sicko (2007), and the U.S. establishment in general in The U.S. vs. John Lennon (2006).

It hardly needs re-stating that Hollywood is driven by the desire for dollars rather than artistic integrity. As such, cinema is open to product placement in a variety of forms, from toys, to cars, to cigarettes, and even state-of-the art weaponry (hence the “special thanks” to Boeing in the credits of Iron Man (2008)). Less obvious though – and less well investigated – is how the interests of the studios' parent companies themselves impact on cinema – at both systemic and individual levels. We hope to see critical attention shifted onto the ultimate producers of these films to help explain their deradicalised content, and ultimately to assist audiences in making informed decisions about what they consume. As we peer up from our popcorn it is as well to remember that behind the magic of the movies are the wizards of corporate PR.

Matthew Alford is author of the forthcoming book “Projecting Power: American Foreign Policy and the Hollywood Propaganda System.” Robbie Graham is Associate Lecturer in Film at Stafford College. References available on request.

NOTES
[i] Most memorably, Cruise declared his love for Katie Holmes whilst bouncing up and down on Oprah (the chat show, not the woman).
[ii] The 2008 Fortune Global 500 list placed General Electric at no. 12 with revenue of $176bn. Sony was at 75, Time Warner at no. 150, The Walt Disney Company at no. 207, and News Corp at no. 280. By way of comparison, Coca Cola is at no. 403.
[iii] Interestingly, Disney's CEO Michael Eisner was personally involved when it pulled Bill Maher's Politically Incorrect show after the host committed the cardinal sin of saying that the US use of cruise missiles was more cowardly than the 9/11 attacks, with Eisner “summoning Maher into his office for a hiding” according to Mark Crispin Miller in the Nation.
[iv] A less convincing but nevertheless intriguing case can be made for high political/economic influence over the distribution of John Carpenter's satirical sci-fi They Live (1988), which depicted the world as being run by an invading force of evil space aliens, allied with the US establishment. The film was well received by critics (with the notable exceptions of the NYT and Washington Post) and opened at number one in the box office. It easily made its $4m investment back over the weekend, and although by the second weekend it had dropped to fourth place, it still made $2.7m. The distributing studio, Universal Pictures, published an advertisement during its run that showed a skeletal alien standing behind a podium in suit and tie, with a mop of hair similar to that of Dan Quayle, the new US Vice-President-elect. The Presidential election had been just a few days previous, on November 8th. Co-star Keith David observed: “Not that anybody's being paranoid but suddenly you couldn't see it [They Live] anywhere – it was, like, snatched”.
[v] We stated elsewhere that representatives from Universal attended the screening. This was erroneous.
[vi] Shaheen also later assisted on Warner Bros.' Syriana (2005).
Thanks to www.Globalresearch.ca

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Jindal Commmands Satan to Leave in Exorcism

2009-02-25T07:57:00.000-08:00

It is kind of old news, but as Bobby Jindal is presumed a Republican front runner for President in 2012, I guess it is important to bring up his odd obsession with demons and exorcisms.
"Jindal pursued his Catholic faith with unbridled zeal. Jindal became emotionally involved with a classmate named Susan who had overcome skin cancer and struggled to cope with the suicide of a close friend. Jindal reflected in an article for a Catholic magazine (called “Beating a Demon: Physical Dimensions of Spiritual Warfare”) that “sulfuric” scents hovered over Susan everywhere she went. In the middle of a prayer meeting, Jindal claimed that Susan collapsed and began convulsing on the floor. His prayer partners gathered together on the floor, holding hands and shouting, “Satan, I command you to leave this woman!”
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-02-24/bobby-jindals-secret-past/full/

"...I felt some type of physical force distracting me,” Jindal reflected. “It was as if something was pushing down on my chest, making it very hard for me to breathe… I began to think that the demon would only attack me if I tried to pray or fight back;..."

For crying out loud!
Are we forever going to have to put up with these cave dwellers???

You know, I watched a very frightening documentary a couple years ago. "Jesus Camp".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_Camp
It showed the horrifying mind control, indoctrination and coersion techniques of the Religious Right. One particular scene shows the "Camp Warden" of a summer bible/Jesus Camp, standing over a beautiful 8 - 12 year old girl and browbeating her into "seeing" Jesus. The little girl is shown in a state of hysteria, tearing streaming down her face, and her little voice pleading with God.
Child abuse is what I saw. Crazy nuts abusing children.
Thankfully, the "Warden" of the camp, has shut it down after an avalanch of criticsm...but I'm betting it will spring up under another name. And as the saying goes: "For every rat you see, there are ten you don't", I bet there are many camps just like this one still in operation, still abusing the minds of young children.

Anyway, this is what I thought of when I read this Jindal article. If someone with crazy views like this can be considered mainstream and a candidate for President, then we will be running cavemen for President for a long time.

Obama Names A Jew to Negotiate With Iran

2009-02-24T07:34:00.000-08:00

Dennis Ross, Chairman of the Israeli government funded, Jewish People Policy Planning Institute, has been named Special U.S. Envoy to Iran.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1235410696722&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Say you were trying to calm tensions in your neighborhood between a Jewish family and an Iranian one. Would you send a Jew to mediate the conflict?
Ross has a long history of involvement in middle east peace politics, but precious little success.
His team was known as "Israel's Lawyer".
He tried in the past to negotiate an Israel/Palestinian peace deal, but was criticized by both sides...especially by the Palestinians who felt a Jew could not be unbiased in the capacity of mediator between the two parties. Duh!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Ross

Basically, Ross starts his new job with a threat to Iran:
"Ross outlined what he said was a "sticks-then-carrots" approach to engaging Iran: Rallying the international community to tighten sanctions and then offering incentives to have the Islamic Republic stand down from its suspected nuclear weapons program."

What he will do:
Ross, a noted supporter of the George Bush's Iraq War, "will provide to the Secretary and senior State Department officials strategic advice and perspective on the region; offer assessments and also act to ensure effective policy integration throughout the region; coordinate with senior officials in the development and formulation of new policy approaches; and participate, at the request of the secretary, in inter-agency activities related to the region."

Forecast: If Obama were to also appoint as a Special Envoy, an Iranian, to be part of the peace team, then the effort might bear some fruit.
As it is, this is a pointless exercise. Pointless for it's stated intentions...but probably Nuts Dead On target for the unstated one.

A Pointless Little Peace Exercise

2009-02-23T07:19:00.000-08:00

See who in the world you look like.
I know it is a mostly meaningless exercise, but I'm so depressed focusing on all the bad news, I thought I'd throw in something frivilous and fun.

Of course I'm hoping while you look at the people you look like, you will think of yourself as a part of a Global Family.
I hope as you look into the eyes of people from cultures other than yours, it might stir a bit of compassion and awareness in you that will stay with you for awhile...maybe even influence your actions.

It's not a perfect exercise, since you will be seeing what celebrity you look like instead of what bombed Palestinian, spyed on Iranian or demonized freedom fighter, or ignored American Indian,...you look like, but you'll get my point.

Here is the link. All you do is upload a photo of yourself and Bam! You get to see if you look like Ghandi or Paris Hilton...among others.
http://www.myheritage.com/celebrity-face-recognition

Obama Okay's Hamas/Fatah Government

2009-02-22T08:38:00.000-08:00

The Obama administration has given the Palestinian Authority a "green light" to talk to Hamas about forming a Palestinian unity government, a PA official in Ramallah said over the weekend.
The official said that Washington had also given Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak the go-ahead to resume his efforts to achieve reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah.

"The new administration has a different policy than that of [former US president] George W. Bush," the official told The Jerusalem Post. "The administration of President Barack Obama believes that a Hamas-Fatah government is good for stability."

Cairo has issued invitations to representatives of Hamas, Fatah and several other Palestinian groups to attend reconciliation talks that are due to begin in Cairo on Wednesday.
Fatah and Hamas officials confirmed that the Egyptians had invited them to the talks.

Hamas spokesman Mushir al-Masri said that for the talks to succeed, the PA must first release all "political prisoners" from its West Bank jails.
The talks were originally set for Sunday, but the Egyptians announced last week that they were postponing them following the failure of negotiations with Hamas and Israel over a new Gaza cease-fire agreement.
An attempt by the Egyptians to hold a similar conference in November failed because of PA President Mahmoud Abbas's refusal to free hundreds of Hamas detainees ahead of the talks.
Abbas, who visited Cairo last week, reportedly told Mubarak that he's prepared to patch up his differences with Hamas.
According one of his aides, Abbas urged the Egyptian president to set a new date for convening the Palestinian "national reconciliation" talks in Cairo.

At the conference, Hamas and Fatah are expected to form five joint committees to discuss ways of resolving their differences over issues such as control over the border crossings into the Gaza Strip, reconstructing the PA security forces and forming a new unity government.
Ahead of the planned parley, Hamas and Fatah representatives met in Cairo and Ramallah over the past two weeks in an attempt to agree on an agenda.
Fatah legislator Azam al-Ahmed, who has been participating in the talks with Hamas, said the results of the recent Israeli election, which saw the rise of right-wing parties, required the Palestinians to unite "in the face of the new challenges."
He also expressed optimism regarding the prospects of ending the Hamas-Fatah power struggle.
Another Fatah official, Ibrahim Abu al-Naja, said the fact that Likud chairman Binyamin Netanyahu has been tasked with forming the next government "proves that Israeli public opinion favors war and destruction."
In the wake of the "dangerous developments in Israel, the Palestinians must unite their ranks by forming a unity government," Naja said.

Meanwhile, Hamas leaders said over the weekend that Democratic Sen. John Kerry's visit to the Gaza Strip last Thursday signaled a change in US policy toward their movement.
"The visit is a move in the right direction," Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said. "We consider the visit as an indirect step aimed at ending the boycott of Hamas by the Americans and the international community."
Welcoming the apparent shift in US policy, the Hamas spokesman expressed hope that the Obama administration would "repair" the damage and injustice done to Hamas after it won the January 2006 election, when the Bush administration decided to boycott and impose sanctions on it.
However, he voiced disappointment over the fact that Kerry did not meet during his tour of the Gaza Strip with "representatives of the democratically elected government headed by Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh."
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1233304839598&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Obama Continues to Disappoint - BIGTIME -

2009-02-21T07:42:00.000-08:00

I'm seeing less and less daylight between Bush and Obama all the time.

No Prisoner Rights:
I awoke to the news this morning that Obama is not going to give prisoners picked up on the battlefield, access to attorneys or courts.
Well, on the surface this sounds okay. That has been the rule in conflict forever.
The difference here though is, the War on Terror has been defined by all as a War Without End.
This effectively means the military can hold a prisoner forever...without access to attorneys or courts. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/20/obama-backs-bush-on-bagra_n_168766.html

But, I thought Obama had promised something different:
Does anyone else remember him saying we were going to have one standard of human rights for all people?

Bushama behavior:
Renditions. You know, the practice of picking up people on the battlefield and taking them to another country and asking that countries security services to question them for us?
Why do we do that? So harsh interrogation methods and treatment can be used to try to get info from these suspects.
I guess we are going to keep doing that.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/feb/06/panetta-supports-rendition-but-not-torture/

More Bushama Behavior:
Remember the British court case where a British citizen claims he was flown all over the place and tortured? Well, Obama has decided not to open files that allow this man to continue his case.
They say it is a state secret how they fly people around to be interrogated and tortured. Obama says he is not going to fly them to places they are at risk of being tortured, but can't help this British citizen pursue his case even if he was tortured.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/09/AR2009020902423.html?nav=hcmodule

More disappointment and broken Campaign Promises?
It looks like Health Care is out the window. A sure sign is the trial balloon floated late Friday that Obama has changed his mind and will not created a Health Czar position in his cabinet.
Seems like a sure signal that American will continue to have 40 million without access to meaningful health care.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0209/19098.html

I have already talked about Obama's staffing choices for various foriegn policy posts that heavily favor the Israeli point of view.
So we know we will have the same middle east policies, but under a different color of wrapping paper. Picture this political cartoon: Obama's head up Netanyahu's ass, and Obama saying: "I appreciate a fair an open discussion on both sides of the issue".

I could go on and on, it seems. There just seems to be an avalanche of broken promises rolling over the hopeful American's who put him in office.

Can you tell, I'm really depressed this morning?
I think I'm going to go to the Go-Kart track and run some people off the road.

- Terry Allen -

The Nightmare of Netanyahu as Prime Minister

2009-02-20T08:15:00.000-08:00

This is a man calling for the violent re-occupation of Gaza to "liquidate" its elected government.

Today, Netanyahu routinely compares dealing with the Palestinians to dealing with Nazis.

This is a man who says he will "naturally grow" the West Bank settlements. This is a man who says he will "never" negotiate over Jerusalem, or the Golan Heights, or control of the West Bank water supply. This is a man who says establishing a Palestinian state would leave Israel with "an existential threat and a public relations nightmare reminiscent of 1938 Czechoslovakia." This is a man who Yitzhak Rabin's widow says helped to incite his murder.

The political beneficiaries of Operation Cast Lead have been Israel's hard-right. The opinion poll numbers have surged for Netanyahu's Likud and for the even more extreme
Avigdor Lieberman, a Russian immigrant was openly advocates the ethnic cleansing of Arabs. They say the only problem with the 23-day bombing of Gaza -- killing 410 children, and hugely strengthening Hamas -- is that it didn't go far enough.

The world needs to urgently look at these individuals and ask how this came to pass.Everybody agrees that the key to understanding Netanyahu lies with his father, Benzion. He is a distinguished scholar of medieval history who believes the world is eternally and ineradicably riddled with genocidal anti-Semitism. When he arrived in British Mandate Palestine, he declared that the majority of Jews there were naïve and idealistic. They had to immediately seize the entire Biblical land of Israel -- taking all of the West Bank and stretching right into present-day Jordan. There could be no compromise, ever, with the Arabs, who only understand force. The man he calls his mentor, Abba Ahimeir, described himself proudly as "a fascist."Today, Benzion's son routinely compares dealing with the Palestinians to dealing with Nazis. He can only understand their anger as a resurfacing of Europe's irrational, genocidal hate. He insists they have no right to a share of the land because they "stole" it -- in the year 636 AD. He writes: "It was not the Jews who usurped the land from the Arabs, but the Arabs who usurped the land from the Jews... twelve hundred years ago."Accordingly, Netanyahu rubbishes every peace initiative offered by Israel. His reaction to Yitzhak Rabin's decision to sign the mild and moderate Oslo accords with Yassir Arafat reveals the depth of his opposition to compromise. He warmly addressed crowds which chanted "Rabin is a Nazi" and "through blood and fire, Rabin shall expire." He called the Prime Minister "a traitor", shortly before Rabin was murdered by a Jewish fundamentalist who agreed.

In order to justify his opposition to all compromise to the Obama administration, Netanyahu has adopted a neat distraction-idea. He says he wants "economic peace" with the Palestinians, developing their economy, rather the political process. But how can anything develop amidst the rubble, blockade and roadblocks he has in mind? This is a piece of spin to sugar-coat the on-going occupation.

Avigdor Liberman with 20% of the vote and a likely coalition partner, is a Russian ex-nightclub bouncer who was once arrested for attacking a boy who he suspected of insulting his son. Lieberman grew up in the Soviet system -- and he retains a Soviet mindset. His party, Yisrael Beytenu (Israel, Our Home) has campaigned claiming that Israel's two million Arab citizens are "a danger to the country", to be dispensed with, in part, by ethnic cleansing. Lieberman wanted to bus thousands of released Palestinian prisoners to the Dead Sea and drown them.Today, he has moderated his stance and merely wants to "transfer" many hundreds of thousands of Israeli Arabs -- inevitably by force -- to the scraps of remaining land that will be labeled Palestine after Israel has annexed the major illegal settlement blocks. If your name's not on the list, you're not staying in. At times, he says his model for how to deal with the Palestinians is Cyprus in the 1970s, where the mixed Turkish and Greek populations were separated out at gunpoint. "The final result was better," he sighs. "Minorities are the biggest problem in the world."

He would like to begin these racist expulsions with a simple, swift move: executing Israeli Arab members of the Knesset. Since they have spoken to the democratically elected Palestinian leadership, they are "traitors", Lieberman argues. They should be dealt with "like Hamas."At other times, Lieberman shifts analogy, and says the correct model for dealing with Gaza and the West Bank should be to copy Vladimir Putin's approach to Chechnya in the 1990s. One third of the civilian population died.Perhaps even more depressing than the rise of these political thugs is the flat and flat-lining response from the other parties. Both Kadima and Labour militantly defend the blockade and bombing of Gaza, not least because their leaders -- Tzipi Livni and Ehud Barak -- led the charge in cabinet. Even Barak has picked up the comparison to Putin and started approvingly quoting the new Russia Tsar. The brave pro-peace parties like Meeretz are shunted far to the margins of the debate.How did this happen?

It is essential to remember that Israelis didn't end up in the Middle East out of a wicked desire to colonise and kill, as some people now gleefully claim. They are there because they were fleeing genocidal Jew-hatred. That doesn't justify a single crime against a single Palestinian -- but if we forget this, and the unimaginably vast trauma that lies behind it, we cannot understand what is happening now.Over the past few months, I keep returning to an extraordinary essay written by the great Israel novellist Amos Oz in 1982. The Likud Prime Minister Menachem Begin had compared the Palestinian leadership to Adolf Hitler, so Oz wrote: "You display an urge to resurrect Hitler from the dead so you may kill him over and over again each day... Like many Jews, I feel sorry I feel sorry I didn't kill Hitler with my bare hands. But there is not, and there never will be, any healing for the open wound. Tens of thousands of dead Arabs will not heal that wound. Because, Mr Begin, Adolf Hitler is dead. He is not hiding in Nabatiyah, in Sidon, or in Beirut. He is dead and burned to ashes."Israeli society consists, Oz says, of "a bunch of half-hysterical refugees and survivors". The two thousand year trauma of the blood libel, the Inquisition, the pogroms, Auschwitz and Chelmno and the Gulag Archipelago, have produced a distorted vision, where every shriek of pain directed at Israel can sound like the rumble beginning in the massed crowds at Nuremberg.

This means that Israel is missing opportunities for peace. Even much of Hamas -- an Islamist party I passionately oppose -- is amenable to a long-term ceasefire along the 1967 borders. That isn't my opinion; it is the view of Yuval Diskin, the current head of the Israeli security service Shin Bet. He told the Israeli cabinet before the bombing of Gaza that Hamas would restore the ceasefire if Israel would only end the blockade of the Strip and declare a ceasefire on the West Bank. Instead, they bombed, and the offer died.The former head of Mossad, Ephraim Halevy, says that Hamas "will have to adopt a path that could lead them far from their original goals" if only Israel will begin the path of compromise. This would drain support for the really implacable rejectionists like Osama Bin Laden and Mahmoud Ahmadinejadh, and make it easier to build the international coalitions needed to hold them back.Instead, too many Israelis -- imprisoned by their history -- seem determined to choose the opposite path: of Netanyahu and Lieberman and ramming an endless alienating boot onto the throat of the Palestinians. It doesn't have to be like this. We can only say to them with Amos Oz, as urgently as we can: Adolf Hitler is not hiding in Gaza City, or Beit Hanoun, or Hebron. Adolf Hitler is dead.

Thanks to: Johann Hari at: http://www.johannhari.com/archive/article.php?id=1444

I took a few liberties in making this article a bit more current as far as election result are concerned. It was written on February 5th before the elections.
- ObamasEar -

Israeli Forces Abduct Four International Human Rights Activists

2009-02-19T13:43:00.000-08:00

Four international Human Rights Activists from the USA, Sweden and Germany are currently being held.

Israeli forces have launched a large-scale military invasion of the village following a series of demonstrations by the village against the Israel’s annexation wall.
We went to the school just after the Israeli forces had left. Around 90 residents had been taken there, mostly young men. A few were released, but most have been taken somewhere else, no one knows where.
Thomas Patterson - International Solidarity Movement

The school was severely damaged. The front gate had been smashed open and all the doors taken off their hinges. There were mass interrogations there. Israel is clearly attempting to crush through force any form of popular resistance to the illegal Apartheid Wall.
Ulrika Lundquist – International Solidarity Movement

Israeli forces invaded the village in the early hours of this morning (18th February), conducting house-to house raids and arresting dozens of residents, including the son of the mayor of Jayyous.

At least 70 residents of Jayyous have now been abducted by Israeli forces from the village after being rounded up in one of the village schools. The village has been blockaded by Israeli forces, with the two main entrances blocked with earth mounds.
Israeli soldiers have occupied many houses within the village, ransacking many and causing large amounts of damage. Many residents have been beaten by Israeli soldiers, including an elderly female who attempted to prevent the soldiers from entering her home. Israeli flags were flown from peoples’ homes, adding insult to the situation.

This large-scale military action appears to be an act of collective punishment for the series of demonstrations that have been staged by the village against the further confiscation and destruction of village land caused by the re-routing of the annexation wall. 277 dunums of land will be razed for the new path of the Wall, with a further 5,585 dumums to be permanently confiscated when the Wall is completed.According to Stop The Wall, the settlement of Zufim is planned to expand onto much of the confiscated land.

The construction of infrastructure for the new part of the Israeli settlement known as “North Zufim” has already begun, with the construction of an electricity network that will allow for the creation of housing units.
The settlement of Zufim is being built by the company Leader which is owned by Israeli billionaire Lev Leviev, who has been the object of an international boycott for his settlement construction.

Thanks to: www.palsolidarity.org

Traitor or Tortured?

2009-02-19T07:34:00.000-08:00

I don't care much for Ethan Bronner's reporting. He gives the appearance of impartiality, but you don't have to read too carefully to see where his loyalties lie. I suspect much of what he writes is at the secret bidding of the Israeli government.
Whatever the case, this is an interesting story:

MARAJ, Lebanon — For 25 years, Ali al-Jarrah managed to live on both sides of the bitterest divide running through this region. To friends and neighbors, he was an earnest supporter of the Palestinian cause, an affable, white-haired family man who worked as an administrator at a nearby school.

Ali al-Jarrah
To Israel, he appears to have been a valued spy, sending reports and taking clandestine photographs of Palestinian groups and Hezbollah since 1983.
Now he sits in a Lebanese prison cell, accused by the authorities of betraying his country to an enemy state. Months after his arrest, his friends and former colleagues are still in shock over the extent of his deceptions: the carefully disguised trips abroad, the unexplained cash, the secret second wife.

Lebanese investigators say he has confessed to a career of espionage spectacular in its scope and longevity, a real-life John le Carré novel. Many intelligence agents are said to operate in the civil chaos of Lebanon, but Mr. Jarrah’s arrest has shed a rare light onto a world of spying and subversion that usually persists in secret.
Mr. Jarrah’s first wife maintains that he was tortured, and is innocent; requests to interview him were denied.

From his home in this Bekaa Valley village, Mr. Jarrah, 50, traveled often to Syria and to south Lebanon, where he photographed roads and convoys that might have been used to transport weapons to Hezbollah, the Shiite militant group, investigators say. He spoke with his handlers by satellite phone, receiving “dead drops” of money, cameras and listening devices. Occasionally, on the pretext of a business trip, he traveled to Belgium and Italy, received an Israeli passport, and flew to Israel, where he was debriefed at length, investigators say.
At the start of the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, Israeli officials called Mr. Jarrah to reassure him that his village would be spared and that he should stay at home, investigators said.

He was finally arrested last July by Hezbollah, which now has perhaps the most powerful intelligence apparatus in this country. It handed him to the Lebanese military — along with his brother Yusuf, who is accused of helping him spy — and he awaits trial by a military court.
Several current and former military officials agreed to provide details about his case on condition of anonymity, saying they were not authorized to discuss it before the trial began. Their accounts tallied with details provided by Mr. Jarrah’s relatives and former colleagues.
It is not the family’s first brush with notoriety. One of Mr. Jarrah’s cousins, Ziad al-Jarrah, was among the 19 hijackers who carried out the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, though the men were 20 years apart in age and do not appear to have known each other well.
Mark Regev, a spokesman for Israel’s prime minister, Ehud Olmert, declined to discuss Mr. Jarrah’s situation, saying, “It is not our practice to publicly talk about any such allegations in this case or in any case.”

Villagers here seemed incredulous that a man they knew all their lives could have taken money to spy for a country that they regard with unmixed hatred and disgust.
Many maintained his innocence. But Raja Mosleh, the Palestinian doctor who was his partner for years in a school and health clinic near here, did not.
“I never suspected him before,” Dr. Mosleh said. “But now, after linking all the incidents together, I feel he’s 100 percent guilty.”
“He used to talk about the Palestinian cause all the time, how he supported the cause, he supported the people, he liked everybody — this son of a dog,” Dr. Mosleh added, his voice thick with contempt.

Mr. Jarrah would often borrow money to buy cigarettes, apparently posing as a man of limited means. Investigators say he received more than $300,000 for his work from Israel.
Only recently did he begin to spend in ways that raised questions. About six years ago, neighbors said, he built a three-story villa with a terra-cotta roof that is by far the grandest house in this modest village of low concrete dwellings. Outside is a small roofed archway and a heavy iron gate, and on a recent day a German shepherd stood guard.
Dr. Mosleh asked him where he got the money, and Mr. Jarrah said he got help from a daughter living in Brazil. It is a natural excuse in Lebanon, where a large portion of the population receives remittances from relatives abroad.

Mr. Jarrah also had a secret second wife, according to investigators and his former colleagues. Unlike his first wife, Maryam Shmouri al-Jarrah, who lived in relative grandeur with their five children in Maraj, the second wife lived in a cheap apartment in the town of Masnaa, near the Syrian border. This apparently allowed Mr. Jarrah to travel near the border in the unremarkable guise of a local working-class man.

Mr. Jarrah has said he was recruited in 1983 — a year after Israel began a major invasion of Lebanon — by Israeli officers who had imprisoned him, according to investigators. He was offered regular payments in exchange for information about Palestinian militants and Syrian troop movements, they said.
After Israel withdrew from Lebanon in 2000, thousands of Lebanese from the occupied zone in the south were tried and sentenced — mostly to light prison terms — for collaborating with Israel.
Far from the border, a different class of collaborators, rooted in their communities, persisted. A few have been caught and sentenced.

Mr. Jarrah’s motives remain a mystery. He said he tried to stop, but the Israelis would not let him, investigators said.
It all came to an end last summer. He went on a trip to Syria in July, and when he returned he said he had been briefly detained by the Syrian police, his first wife said. He seemed very uneasy, not his usual self, she said.
He left the house that night, saying he was going to Beirut, and never returned, Mrs. Jarrah said. Only three months later did she get a call from the Lebanese Army saying it had taken custody of him.
A few weeks ago, Mrs. Jarrah said, she was allowed to see him. He looked terrible, exhausted, she said.

Lebanese security forces released a photograph of Mr. Jarrah, taken before his arrest. In it, he appears against a blue and white backdrop, dressed in a formal dark shirt, wearing an enigmatic smile.

Hwaida Saad contributed reporting from Beirut, Lebanon, and Ethan Bronner from Jerusalem.

USA Funds 30 New Israeli Weapons Projects

2009-02-18T07:19:00.000-08:00

Since Israel’s bombing of the buildings housing scientific laboratories at the Islamic University of Gaza (IUG) on 28 December, the rubble that remains debunks Israeli claims that those labs were used to manufacture weapons.
Of course such allegations are preposterous; indeed it would be quite foolish for IUG to even entertain the notion of producing weapons given the way in which Palestinian universities have been under constant Israeli attack since the founding of Birzeit University in the West Bank in 1975.

Rather, it is Israeli universities that contain the laboratories where the weaponry used to destroy Palestinian lives in Gaza and elsewhere is developed. In the 14 June 2007 issue of The Nation, US journalist Naomi Klein makes it clear that the relationship between the State of Israel, its academic institutions and its military are intertwined.

“Thirty homeland security companies were launched in Israel in the past six months alone, thanks in large part to lavish government subsidies that have transformed the Israeli army and the country’s universities into incubators for security and weapons start-ups (something to keep in mind in the debates about the academic boycott).”
The way that Israel binds together its universities (all of which are state-run and funded) and its military can be gleaned from any number of Israeli universities and their laboratories, which serve as incubators of destruction while the Palestinian people inevitably become its guinea pigs. In a recent article in the Tel Aviv University Review (Winter 2008-2009) entitled “Lifting the Veil of Secrecy,” Gil Zohar lays out the collaboration between Israeli universities and Israel’s colonial military project quite clearly:
“… Tel Aviv University [TAU] is at the front line of the critical work to maintain Israel’s military and technological edge. While much of that research remains classified, several facts illuminate the role of the university. MAFAT, a Hebrew acronym meaning the [Research and Development] Directorate of the Israel Ministry of Defense, is currently funding 55 projects at TAU. Nine projects are being funded by DARPA — the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency of the US Department of Defense.”

What is significant is that the US government and its military are complicit in the research leading to the destruction and devastation of Palestinian lives through their funding of these research projects, projects that inevitably lead to acts of aggression such as the bombing of IUG.
IUG is an institution of higher education open not only to its 20,000 students, but also to the 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza who visit its libraries and attend its lectures. USAID, the US government’s foreign aid agency, claims that it funded more than $900,000 of projects, which went into building IUG’s campus (see “Audit finds US funded university linked to terrorism,” The Chicago Tribune, 12 December 2007). In March 2007 The Washington Times published a propagandistic article, “School Linked to Hamas Gets US Cash,” charging that USAID did not follow US federal laws when financially assisting IUG, as well as Al-Quds University (famous for its normalizing relations with Israeli academia, although it recently promised to cease such joint projects). USAID conducted an audit in response to The Washington Times article that questioned $140,000 of USAID money awarded to the university and to 49 students who received scholarships. The article and the audit argued that funding a so-called “Hamas-controlled” university violates US federal law. As a result of this audit faculty and students at IUG have been prohibited from receiving US State Department funds — whether USAID-related funds for building, scholarships or the Palestinian Faculty Development Program. This is yet another method of destroying educational opportunities for Palestinians in Gaza over the course of the past few years.

It is difficult to assess at present how much of the damage sustained by IUG was built with USAID funds. Likewise, it is difficult to ascertain a direct link between military research projects at Tel Aviv University funded by Israel and the US and the destruction of IUG. But what is clear is that past educational opportunities, for individual faculty members and students as well as for expanding scientific studies in the form of building laboratories, coming from the US are no longer available to Palestinians affiliated with IUG. Moreover, the primary “living” testimony which verily refutes Israeli claims about IUG as a place for hiding or manufacturing weapons can be found in the rubble of its destroyed buildings, which were decimated with knowledge produced by American research projects at Israeli universities. The mountains of rubble call out to any investigation team to come, to dig, to excavate in order to prove that Israeli allegations are merely a pretext employed to destroy a prestigious academic institution in Palestine. The debris of the science lab buildings shows that beneath it were 74 laboratories serving the science and engineering students at IUG. These labs were places for diligent research and scientific experiments. They were a fountain of hope for impoverished students, many of whom were about to graduate.
The science and engineering lab buildings were not the only premises that were pounded by the Israelis with their American-made weapons. Many other university buildings housing sophisticated computer labs, classrooms, workshops and seminar rooms were also bombed. In spite of the tremendous damage inflicted on IUG, it will be rebuilt with the spirit of resiliency that we see in the young minds of our students. This role however cannot be sustained without the help of our colleagues from around the world. That academics have taken the decision to boycott Israel and support Palestinians given Israeli academia’s role in its continuous military aggression, offers a glimmer of hope for IUG.

IUG needs financial support to help it rebuild and re-equip its labs. But it does not just need charity. IUG faculty and students also require solidarity from their academic colleagues at institutions around the world to start partnerships in order to rehabilitate the rest of its premises. Projects such as collaborative video-conference courses, faculty and student exchange programs and scholarships for faculty and students are all important ways of lending solidarity to IUG. Equally important for our American colleagues is to remove the false label that IUG is a “Hamas-controlled” institution. Just as Palestinians in Gaza belong to a variety of political parties, IUG’s students, board, faculty and staff represent that reality. IUG is a university like any other in Palestine that reflects the diversity of its population. As with Israel’s propagandistic claims that it engaged in a “war with Hamas,” when they besiege all Palestinians living in Gaza, this classification of IUG hurts all Palestinians pursuing higher education. We call on our colleagues to work to rebuild IUG through their solidarity through which it can remain an edifice of light, love and learning.

This article is by: Akram Habeeb and Marcy Newman.
Akram Habeeb, teaches literature at the Islamic University of Gaza and Marcy Newman teaches literature at An Najah National University.

For more information about IUG reconstruction please visit http://www.iugaza.edu.ps/iugrec/en/.

For more information about how you can help please email Marcy at http://www.marcynewman@riseup.net/ or Akram at http://www.akramhabeeb@yahoo.com/.

Gaza Tunnel Update: Impending Disaster?

2009-02-17T10:52:00.000-08:00

"No matter what the Israelis do, we're steadfast," one tunnel owner, who identifies himself as Abu Ahmed, says as he sits in an outdoor courtyard within sight of the border. "But this? This could slaughter our country and our economy."

Under pressure from the United States and Israel, Egypt is imposing stronger checkpoints throughout the Sinai peninsula to prevent merchandise from reaching the tunnel zone.

The tunnel owners deny that they smuggle weapons, saying rockets pass through secret Hamas-run tunnels that are deeper and more fortified and extend much farther across the border.

"Think about it. The weapons tunnels aren't these guys out in the open here," an owner named Abu Baraa says, pointing to the diggers around him. "I bring through potato chips, Cadbury bars and Pampers."

Looks more and more like starving the prisoners of Gaza into submission.
Isn't starving people to death, Genocide? Isn't starving all Gazan's in order to get at Hamas called "collective punishment" and against the Geneva Conventions?

The whole story:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-gaza-tunnel17-2009feb17,0,2242169.story

Thanks to: http://www.angryarab.blogspot.com/

Israel Boycott Progress

2009-02-17T09:04:00.000-08:00

The Boycott of Israel continues to grow. While it may be unfortunate that athletes or other seemingly unrelated persons are being singled out, I can understand the value in doing so. Those boycotted will assail the government of Israel and change their behavior.

Chocolate Boycott:
"Palestine solidarity activists in Sydney have launched a campaign targeting Max Brenner Chocolates, a 100% Israeli-owned company belonging to the Strauss Group, as part of the growing international boycott Israel movement."

Hampshire College becomes first college in U.S. to divest from Israeli Occupation!
Hampshire College in Amherst, MA, has become the first of any college or university in the U.S. to divest from companies on the grounds of their involvement in the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

Church Warns Companies:
The Presbyterian Church on Friday warned four US companies to stop providing military equipment and technology to Israel for use in the occupation of the Palestinian territories, or else face a vote by the Church to divest its stock in them.
http://www.christiantoday.com/article/us.presbyterian.church.warns.companies.to.boycott.israel.or.face.divestment/3647.htm

Here is a nice, long list of Israeli-related companies.
Hopefully, you will join in the boycott of these companies and it will help to end Israeli Apartheid and Israeli Genocide.
http://musliminsuffer.wordpress.com/2009/01/14/alphabetized-boycott-list-of-israeli-corporationsaffiliates-and-banking-institution/

Your Own Personal Trip into the Gaza Tunnels.

2009-02-16T07:17:00.000-08:00

We have heard about these tunnels. All we hear is that masses of weapons are smuggled through them. As usual, we only hear one side of the story from the world wide main stream media which seems to have been completely brainwashed by Israeli interests.

The tunnels are an amazing sign of resiliency and act of resistance given the never-ending blockade and siege on gaza. Mohammed Omer reports:

Tunnel owners earn $300 for each 100 pounds of goods smuggled in. (Smuggling animals for Gaza’s zoo can net up to $3,000 each!) With this revenue Abu Khaled supports 20 workers: diggers who do the dirty work, and runners who transport the goods.
As he separates bags of smuggled goods for distribution throughout the Strip, Abu Khaled points to his jeans. “These jeans I am wearing cost Egyptian pounds ($11), including the [Egyptian] merchant’s profit,” he explains, “but now I can sell them for 120 Israeli shekels ($34).”
Not only jeans, but shoes and underwear are brought through the tunnels and resold at high mark-ups. In addition, Abu Khaled notes, “We get medicine, gasoline, food, dried milk and monocycles” through the tunnels—which also serve as the conduit for sending money to merchants in Egypt to pay for the goods smuggled back into Gaza.

Islam frowns upon alcohol and drug use, although pharmaceuticals—even Viagra—continue to be smuggled in. According to Abu Khaled, Hamas police “control what we get in. Weapons and drugs are prohibited.” Rafah municipal officials confirm that they regulate tunnel operations, which they classify as an “investment project.”
In a society where the average family lives on $2 a day or less, tunnel work is a way out of poverty and a means to feed one’s family. Nader, a 20-year-old tunnel digger, admits he can make between $80 and $110 a day. “It depends on how many feet I dig in the ground,” the young man explains, adding that he usually spends 12 hours a day digging underground, in poorly ventilated conditions.

With the border crossing at Rafah now sealed again, people who want kathy kelly imagines what would happen if americans had to send its weapons of mass destruction to the zionist entity through a tunnel:
With the border crossing at Rafah now sealed again, people who want to obtain food, fuel, water, construction supplies and goods needed for everyday life will have to increasingly rely on the damaged tunnel industry to import these items from the Egyptian side of the border. Israel’s government says that Hamas could use the tunnels to import weapons, and weapons could kill innocent civilians, so the Israeli military has no choice but to bomb the neighborhood built up along the border, as they have been doing.

Suppose that the US weapon makers had to use a tunnel to deliver weapons to Israel.
The US would have to build a mighty big tunnel to accommodate the weapons that Boeing, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin and Caterpillar have supplied to Israel. The size of such a tunnel would be an eighth wonder of the world, a Grand Canyon of a tunnel, an engineering feat of the ages.
Think of what would have to come through.
Imagine Boeing’s shipments to Israel traveling through an enormous underground tunnel, large enough to accommodate the wingspans of planes, sturdy enough to allow passage of trucks laden with missiles. According to the UK’s Indymedia Corporate Watch, 2009, Boeing has sent Israel 18 AH-64D Apache Longbow fighter helicopters, 63 Boeing F-15 Eagle fighter planes, 102 Boeing F-16 fighter planes, 42 Boeing AH-64 Apache fighter helicopters, F-16 Peace Marble II and III Aircraft, four Boeing 777s, and Arrow II interceptors, plus Israel Aircraft Industries-developed Arrow missiles, and Boeing AGM-114 D Longbow Hellfire missiles.

In September of last year, the US government approved the sale of 1,000 Boeing GBU-9 small diameter bombs to Israel, in a deal valued at up to $77 million.
Now that Israel has dropped so many of those bombs on Gaza, Boeing shareholders can count on more sales, more profits, if Israel buys new bombs from them. Perhaps there are more massacres in store. It would be important to maintain the tunnel carefully.

Raytheon, one of the largest US arms manufacturers, with annual revenues of around $20 billion, is one of Israel’s main suppliers of weapons. In September last year, the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency approved the sale of Raytheon kits to upgrade Israel’s Patriot missile system at a cost of $164 million. Raytheon would also use the tunnel to bring in Bunker Buster bombs as well as Tomahawk and Patriot missiles.

Lockheed Martin is the world’s largest defense contractor by revenue, with reported sales in 2008 of $42.7 billion. Lockheed Martin’s products include the Hellfire precision-guided missile system, which has reportedly been used in the recent Gaza attacks. Israel also possesses 350 F-16 jets, some purchased from Lockheed Martin. Think of them coming through the largest tunnel in the world.

Maybe Caterpillar Inc. could help build such a tunnel. Caterpillar Inc., the world’s largest manufacturer of construction (and destruction) equipment, with more than $30 billion in assets, holds Israel’s sole contract for the production of the D9 military bulldozer, specifically designed for use in invasions of built-up areas. The US government buys Caterpillar bulldozers and sends them to the Israeli army as part of its annual foreign military assistance package. Such sales are governed by the US Arms Export Control Act, which limits the use of US military aid to “internal security” and “legitimate self defense” and prohibits its use against civilians.

Israel topples family houses with these bulldozers to make room for settlements. All too often, they topple them on the families inside. American peace activist Rachel Corrie was crushed to death standing between one of these bulldozers and a Palestinian doctor’s house in 2003.
yes, caterpillar. that company that barack obama–that president of change for koolaid drinkers out there–visited last week:

Over the objections of church groups, peace organizations and human rights activists, President Barack Obama decided to return to Illinois to visit the headquarters of the Caterpillar company, which for many years has violated international law, U.S. law and its own code of conduct in selling its D9 and D10 bulldozers to Israel.
In his speech on Thursday, Obama praised Caterpillar, saying “Your machines plow the farms that feed our families; build the towers that shape our skylines; lay the roads that connect our communities; power the trucks that deliver our goods.” He failed to mention that Caterpillar machines have been used to level homes, uproot olive orchards, build the illegal separation wall and, in some cases, kill innocent civilians, including a 23-year old American peace activist.

Thanks to Marcy Newman at: http://www.bodyontheline.wordpress.com/

Once in a Lifetime You May Read Something This Rare and Beautiful

2009-02-14T15:20:00.000-08:00

A stunningly honest and beautiful love and war poem by Natalie Abou Shakra. She is a 21 year old woman who writes from the rubble of Gaza.

"The Struggle Within Me".

It is a curve, a curvy path. From the very top, till the very bottom. You can trace it with a light touch, from the inclined neck, down to the sensitive nape, around the curve of a yearning breast, around the erecting nipple. The waist moves for your hands to tighten their grip and motion you closer. The line of the hip seduces your tongue to taste its prolonged solitude, in dire need of the warm, damp of the salivary liquid you leave as you go further below. The thighs expand their distance, awaiting a touch, in between a distant cave, that had once existed, now forgotten- Bomb! We all fall down to the ground… a reverie of a longing sensuality broken. Your body does not belong to you any longer. Your sex has suddenly disappeared. You no longer are man, or woman; you are an object subliming in fright, rigidity, terror, trauma, disgust, and anxiety. Love under the bombs? What an alluring, distant broken dream…

Twenty two days, and the coming ones hold more savagery to your body than ever before. The body of Gaza has been barbarically violated, raped. To the images of slaughtering and torn human flesh you awake, you arise, and to the anxiety that you are next, you dwell. Your body, your sex, your self, you lose in the oblivion of an existence you once lived.

I open the tap for warm water, and nothing pours down. I smell of sweat, and a week of non-cleaned flesh, but the yearning for a touch, is left intact despite it all. My hair, too oily to be stroked gently, tangled and shaggy. I am clad in an attire of loose cloths, the only ones I could find, untouched by any other dirt, than that on my body. It removes any form, or curve my figure reveals. I tie the long hair around in several trials to the back. Its length no longer shows. Despite the continuous vibrations of the shelling, shaking the building I am, I struggle to place my kohl. I resist with all my might, "the day shall not rise without the kohl," I jokingly tell myself. "I placed nail polish on," the lady I live with tells me. "I want my spirits uplifted. I cannot take it anymore," she confides in me. She remained home during the twenty two days of death and terror that have not ended yet, now that trauma and shock have replaced them. She is married and has a seven year old boy dependent on her life and wellbeing. I am an activist dedicated to a cause and struggle. I do not stay home. I shall not die home.

The house, without tap water, is a haven of unwashed dishes, smelly bathrooms, and dirty laundry. Nevertheless, it is a roof atop our heads, despite all the broken windows of our house. My host family consists of three individuals, the child and his parents, and now myself. We shared a vacant room, of which we placed a mattress that can support us against the cold of the floor, of which to sleep on during the sleepless nights. There is no privacy to the self, no moment to live to touch yourself, to feel that there is still a body that yearns within you, that sends shocks of vibrations, other than those of the shelling, that cause you to smile, to feel, to climax.

Outside, every man becomes a potential prospect to your loneliness; a companion that can soothe the hunger; the hunger for a loving touch, and the thirst; the thirst for sentimental unity, and the flowing of emotions. 'Do I still look like a woman?' I ask myself in the empty streets as I walk alone, in a ghost town, with no lights, no electricity to lift the shadow of darkness that has fallen against a million and a half bodies of a land. 'Can I break a taboo or two? Do I have a right to against these circumstances?' I question the desperate, yearning soul in the human being of me.

Eyes lock with the pedestrians as I move towards my destination. It is still a long walk towards where I am supposed to be. The shelling continues, and the darkness is broken from the White Phosphorous the Israeli Occupation Forces light our skies with. During the day, darkness dwells reflecting the sun rays, as a result of the constant bombings and dark smoke that arises. Our days become nights, and nights turn to day. I fear for my health, as we all do, against the chemicals used. Can we be future cancer victims? How will my body respond to this present in case it has a future to live?

I struggle with myself to resist an occupation and all its influences. I struggle with a body, with no weapon. I struggle to smile, to laugh, to sing, to dance… to live my days as if there is no grander might that can remove my physical self from this being. I struggle to defy death, the killing machine, the loneliness, the fatigue of emotions and sentiments, the extinction of entertainment, the sadness of tales, of unjust facades of an absurd reality. I struggle for a rose, in a black field of death. I struggle for a crimson reality other than that of blood. I struggle for unity against division. I struggle to defy insecurity and its all resulting fragmentations. I struggle to listen to a tune, to touch a man. I struggle and struggle with all that I can, to live the last moments, as if they were the only ones in my life, to allow myself the non-existent pleasures of an already shortened life span.

Gaza the spark of burning coal onto the ears of forgetfulness; Gaza, now the liberating torch against all the evils of occupation, oppression, repression, colonialism and silence; Gaza, the struggle of the politics of identity and the right to self-determination, of a people, of a body, of every child, man and woman.
Natalie

Silent Peace Plan

2009-02-09T14:27:00.000-08:00

In a novel approach to Peace Diplomacy, Obama's special mid-east envoy decides not to talk to one of the main parties.

"Yet Mitchell did not attempt to talk to Hamas or even visit the Gaza Strip during the visit. Like many others in the West and in the Arab world, he appears to believe it is possible to rebuild Gaza yet ignore its Hamas-led government. His itinerary took him to Ramallah, Cairo, Amman and Riyadh - but not to Damascus. He cancelled a visit to Turkey after a high-level Israeli-Turkish clash at the Davos World Economic Forum - as if this somehow rendered Ankara's own Middle East mediation efforts, past and future, less relevant."
Thanks to: http://www.angryarab.blogspot.com/

Is this really a surprise?
A man with a life history of pro-Israel employment and views decides not to talk to Israel's bitter enemy?
Surprise, surprise.

Are you listening, Mr. President?

Israeli Terrorists Hide Munitions in Synagogue?

2009-02-06T12:07:00.000-08:00

Hiding in civilian settings: "Weapons from Israel's pre-independence era were discovered Thursday in a large synagogue in Hod Hasharon, in central Israel.

WoW! What if Palestinians did that?

"Weapons from Israel's pre-independence era were discovered Thursday in a large synagogue in Hod Hasharon, in central Israel.

The location, which synagogue elders say served as a meeting place for members of the Haganah in the 40s, believe that the arms have not been touched since Israel's War of Independence.
They said that the dozens of worshippers who frequent the synagogue, located near the area's business center, were most likely unaware of the existence of the armaments.

The cache was discovered when caretakers of the building decided to clean out an adjoining supply room on the second story of the synagogue. The weapons – three stun grenades, a Sten rifle, magazines and a steel helmet - were stored in a wooden trunk in the room.
At this point, it is unclear whether the arms cache belonged to the organization or whether it was merely a private stash belonging to one of the members. "
Thanks to: http://www.angryarab.blogspot.com/

Might be interesting to go back over the history of the founding of "Israel".

Israel Refuses to Cooperate in Nuremburg/Gaza War Crimes Investigation

2009-02-04T07:10:00.000-08:00

How do you win in a game where the cards have been stacked against you?

"Officially" a stateless people with almost no voice or representation, Palestinians must rely on uncertain legal ground to prove Israel Defense/Occupation Forces and the civilian leadership of Israel, conspired to commit war crimes against the entire Gaza Strip killing almost 400 children and another 500 civilian women and men, plus close to 5000 wounded and the total destruction of large swaths of the country. Including hospitals, schools, libraries, police stations, UN buildings, farms and water, sewer and electric utilities.

The UN takes a stand.
The Palestinian Authority has accepted the authority of the International Criminal Court to investigate war crimes by both Hamas and Israel.
This is a necessary step, but one on shaky legal ground as Palestine is not "officially" a state, and the UN charter says a "state" must request/agree to an investigation.

Israel denies everything.
Not surprisingly, Israel has denied any crimes, yet has buttoned up their shop so tight only official spokesmen are allowed by law, to talk to the press or anyone else. They have also said Israel will pay for the legal defense of any accused Israeli soldiers or government officials.
To further hamper both the investigation and a popular uprising against Israeli war crimes among their own populace, they have banned the publishing or circulation of names and photos of suspected Israeli war criminals. See the wanted poster here:
http://www.wanted.org.il/ehud_barak_en.htm

New legal precedent?
Since most nations are very shy about publicly criticizing Israel for fear of being the object of the formidable Israeli Lobby PR Army, they might prefer to quietly support the UN in their efforts at correcting Israel's increasingly rouge state behavior.

Israel's next legal move.
Since Palestine is not an "official state, Israel will no doubt challenge the UN's right to investigate on Palestines behalf.
Additionally, Israel may start their own investigation in an effort to shut down the UN investigation...as the UN charter says a state may do their own and that would preclude the UN action.

Likely outcome.
I don't have a crystal ball and have read of no one else who has one, but based on past performance, I think we can expect a long investigation, a long legal battle and a finding of blame and excuses on both sides. But, with Israel again winning the PR war in the heavily Israeli influenced world press. With almost every nation on the UN Security Council having acted as Israel is now acting...ignoring international law...it is doubtful the axe will come down too hard on Israel, especially since Israel seems to have been the birth place for so many of these tactics...or was it in Germany in WWII?
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=84605&sectionid=351020202
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29009543

- Terry Allen -

Did Hillary say "Islamist" like it was a dirty word?

2009-02-03T07:57:00.000-08:00

Hillary Clinton has just repeated the same old, tired, thoughtless, non-starter conditions which have been repeated for generations.

"The United States wants to work with all parties to settle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but the Islamist group Hamas must renounce violence, recognize Israel and respect past peace agreements", U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Tuesday.
Did she just say "Islamist" like it was some sort of dirty word?
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1061190.html

Moving on:
What did she have to say about what she requires from Israel in her peace efforts?
Nothing. Nada. Zero. Zip. Zilch!
I guess Israel just shows up, receives gifts from the Palestinians and gives nothing in return.

Not a word from Hillary about Israel renouncing violence...not even unlawful violence...like not bombing schools, hospitals, medics, UN installations, civilians, food production, snipers shooting farmers, and indiscriminate attacks using non-directional-specific weapons, etc.

Not a word from Hillary about Israel respecting past peace agreements...like violating cease fires, opening borders, facilitating economic growth, returning confiscated property, conducting meaningful investigations into Israeli abuse, etc.

Not a word from Hillary about Israel formally recognizing the right of the Palestinian people to exist.
Can anyone with fair and honest intentions fail to highlight the rights of the indigenous population?
For a detailed list of Israel's violations of law:
http://www.voicesforpalestine.com/index.cfm?pagepath=International_Law/Israel_s_Violations&id=10417

Commonsense must be employed in understanding Obama Administration intent.

First, Obama gave his famous Al Arabiya interview to a friendly paper that never criticizes the status quo. The paper speaks for the repressive Arab governments. Obama never mentioned listening to the voice of the Palestinian people, only the voice of the Palestinian government that the USA and Israel replaced the freely elected Hamas government with.

Second, elected USA officials receive a lot of money from Israel lobbying organizations, but none from any Arab organizations that are not "approved" by the USA. This means, puppet Arab governments and organizations set up by the USA are welcome to lobby, but not any other Arab voices. Result: Israel tells both sides of the story. Nice scam.

Third, Who are the Middle East Advisors, to Obama, Clinton, Mitchell, etc?
The majority have a solid pro-Israel past.
So far, I have seen not a single Arab advisor appointed to any senior position in either Obama's, Clinton's or Mitchell's staffs.
Not one!

More Commonsense:
How can anyone "think" the conditions for Palestinians will materially change for the better when Israel is not criticized, let alone condemned?
How can anyone "think" ignoring the voice and the will of the people affected, is going to bear fruit?
How can anyone "think" President Obama will be receptive to Palestinian points of view, when he has no Arab advisors, let alone Palestinian ones?

I put "think" in quotes because it would seem...if the Obama administration were of good intent...they would recognize this deficiency in the incompleteness of the information they have and will receive. Without it, how can they make a they make a fair peace initiative?

But at best, it appears there is no thinking involved. It all seems like the same, decades old "reaction" again.
A reaction to the propaganda FOR the Israel position and a reaction to the propaganda AGAINST the Palestinian position.

But, these are all smart people. Clinton, Mitchell, Obama.
They know the deck is stacked.

What can we expect?
Hillary will cobble together a bunch of puppets and call it the new Palestinian government.
They will help train and arm the new government, which will try to silence the voice of the people...any voice that is not in tune with the puppet choir.
And the struggle will go on, because, the Peace Charlatans will have again treated the symptoms rather than the cause.

Late Update:
Brooklyn Man Jailed for Distributing Lebanese TV Channel
In other media news, a Pakistani American who owns a satellite TV company in Brooklyn has pleaded guilty to providing material aid to a terrorist organization. Javed Iqbal was accused of providing the aid by letting customers receive broadcasts from a Lebanese TV station tied to Hezbollah. Prosecutors said Iqbal used satellite dishes on his Staten Island home to distribute television broadcasts of Al Manar. Iqbal faces up to six-and-a-half years in prison. He has lived in the United States for twenty years and is the father of five children.

See what I said? Silence all but the state approved news. Don't give the oppressed a voice.
- Terry Allen -

A Short Course in International Humanitarian Law

2009-02-02T07:25:00.000-08:00

Here you go, Mr. President.
Read this short, clear and concise article and get a good grounding in International Humanitarian Law...and a better understanding of how Israel behaves and will behave again in the future if we do not all join together to reject it.

International Law
Israeli conduct in its offensive against Gaza has been widely condemned. The president of the United Nations General Assembly has accused Israel of violating international law with its war on Gaza in which over 1300 Palestinians have been killed in three weeks, more than half of them civilians. Israel stands accused of war crimes and the disproportionate and indiscriminate use of force. Even prior to this conflict, the Israeli blockade of Gaza violated international law.
The violations of international law inherent in the Gaza assault have been well documented and include collective punishment, disproportionate military force [and] attacks on civilian targets, including homes, mosques, universities, schools.

Overview of International Humanitarian Law (IHL)
International humanitarian law is a system of legal safeguards that cover the way wars may be fought and the protection of individuals. It protects persons and property that are, or may be, affected by an armed conflict and limits the rights of the warring parties to use methods and means of warfare of their choice. IHL only concerns actions taken during armed conflict and does not deal with whether or not the war itself is just.

International Humanitarian Law exists in both treaty and customary form. The main IHL treaties are the Geneva Conventions and their Additional Protocols, which contain the most important rules limiting the barbarity of war. They protect people who do not take part in the fighting (civilians, medics, aid workers) and those who can no longer fight (wounded, the sick, prisoners of war).

In addition, customary law consists of those rules of war that are recognized as binding by states even when the state is not required by treaty to observe them. For example, many of the rules in the first Additional Protocol, including those about the targeting of civilians, indiscriminate attack, and humane treatment of all prisoners, are agreed to be part of customary law. This means that they are binding on nations even if they have not signed Additional Protocol I.International Law is very clear about the rules of engagement during warfare and Israel has most definitely violated these rules before and during these attacks.

The Laws Governing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
Israel’s Legal Obligations

As an Occupier: The Fourth Geneva Convention, which protects civilians in time of war or occupation, applies to Israeli actions in the Occupied Territories. In addition, Common Article 3 to the Geneva Conventions and the Additional Protocol II of 1977 is also applicable to internal armed conflict.

Israel disputes the notion that the Gaza Strip remains occupied since it unilaterally withdrew its military forces and settlers in 2005 after decades of occupation. As such, Israel claims it no longer has responsibility over the welfare of the Gazan population. However, rights groups and international legal experts state that Israel retains the position of an occupying power as it exercises “effective” and total control over Gaza’s air and sea space, land borders, its electricity, sewage, and water networks, and frequently carries out armed incursions into the coastal strip. The absence of a full military administration in Gaza does not diminish its responsibility.

The Right to Self-Defense
Israel's attacks on Gaza from Dec 27, 2008 to Jan 17, 2009, have been argued by the Israeli government, and justified by President Bush and his administration to be a war of self defense as permitted by article 51 of UN charter.

This is not self-defense, it is a war of aggression.

First, Israel is an occupying power under international law and cannot in principle invoke the right to self-defense against an armed attack coming from the territory it occupies. The International Court of Justice's advisory opinion on the Wall states that "unless an attack is directed from outside territory under the control of the defending State, the question of self-defense in the sense of Article 51 does not normally arise."

Second, self -defense is an act of last resort and in any case is subject to the customary rules of proportionality and necessity. According to international law, an Occupying Power could, at best, justify reasonable, proportional targeted attacks against Hamas military objects, commensurate with the Qassam rocket attacks. However, the scale and manner of its operations in the Strip reveal it to be a war of aggression, in contravention of international law.

Third, Israel broke the ceasefire by assassinating six Gazans on 4 November 2008, provoking Hamas to fire rockets into Israel in response. Moreover, these rocket attacks by Hamas in terms of scale and effect do not amount to an armed attack that warrants the right to self-defense. Such an armed attack must be characterized by serious violations of the peace.
It is critical to understand that these attacks were not, as Israel claims, in self defense. One must be very careful about contextualizing the recent events. Where the clock starts is crucial to interpreting and understanding the current conflict. For more information on the context preceeding these attacks, please go to 'Setting the Context'...in the below link.
http://www.voicesforpalestine.com/index.cfm?pagepath=International_Law&id=10416
I suggest you put the above website link in your favorites. It is top notch.

Thanks to: http://gaza08.blogspot.com/

Dear readers, please forward this helpful post to your concerned friends. It is hard to sort out the facts on this issue unless you make it your lifes work...and who has the time? This article should be very helpful to all who care.

- Terry Allen -

Israel Changes Spanish Law

2009-01-31T09:15:00.000-08:00

Very interesting the power of the Israel lobby in Spain. You will recall a Spanish court, under Spanish law is allowed to prosecute officials of other countries, for war crimes. But now, obviously due to extreme intervention by Israel, the Spanish government is going to change their own law...to allow accused Israeli War Criminals to go free.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1059964.html

Okay to Kill up to 10 Civilians per Strike.

2009-01-30T08:11:00.000-08:00

A classified letter by the NATO commander U.S. General John Craddock, in Afghanistan orders the killing of civilians and impoverished farmers. No proof that they are insurgents is required. Just kill them.

The directive was sent on Jan. 5 to Egon Ramms, the German leader at NATO Command in Brunssum, Netherlands, which is currently in charge of the NATO ISAF mission, as well as David McKiernan, the commander of the ISAF peacekeeping force in Afghanistan. Neither want to follow it. Both consider the order to be illegitimate and believe it violates both ISAF rules of engagement and international law, the "Law of Armed Conflict."

"The US general, who is considered a loyal Bush man and fears that he could be replaced by the new US president, has already made his intention known internally that he would like to relieve any commander who doesn't want to follow his instructions..."
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,604183,00.html

Thursday Thrash!

2009-01-29T09:09:00.000-08:00

A collection of little reported and "inconvenient" news.

1. The Fox gets back into the henhouse....just trust me.
“We have a financial system that is run by private shareholders, managed by private institutions, and we’d like to do our best to preserve that system.”
-by Tim Geithner, our New Treasury Secretary-

Amazing that The Public is being scammed into supporting this house of cards.
Thanks to: http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2009/01/who-is-the-treasury-secretarys-boss/

2. The Prison that is Gaza....
Videos today of the damage done since the ceasefire by israeli terrorists to palestinian fishermen in gaza waters.
The fishermen were given a limit of 20miles before the Oslo accords, then it diminished to 12, then 6 miles during the siege, then 3 miles now… it is impossible to catch good fish, a variety, and a good quantity within such a limit.This is especially devastating for the fishermen whose lives depend on fishing… whose families cannot survive without an income from this.
Thanks to Marcy at: http://bodyontheline.wordpress.com/
Thanks to Natalie Abu Shakra at: http://gaza08.blogspot.com/

3. Blogging: Zionist propaganda.
"Some 1,000 new immigrants and foreign-language-speaking Jews volunteer to army of bloggers set up by Absorption Ministry and Foreign Ministry with the stated objective of flooding blogs with pro-Israel opinions." If they are as boring and tedious and ill-informed as Michael Totten is, Palestine has nothing to worry about.
-Thanks to: http://www.angryarab.blogspot.com/

Directly From Gaza

2009-01-28T07:26:00.000-08:00

If you find it odd that when Mainstream Media news talk shows feature expert discussion on Palestine, the guests are only Israeli and/or Jewish, with no Arab representation, then you might find this site liberating. If you wonder how Obama is going to bring balance the the Middle East when none of his advisors are Arab, then you are not alone.

Join the actual residents of Palestine at this website and hear their own words.

Virtual Gaza is an independent, civic media initiative established by a collective of scholars, media activists and Palestinian residents of Gaza in response to the Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip in December 2008-January 2009.
For years, Israel has been gradually tightening its strangehold on the 1.5 million Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip, sealing its borders and cutting off adequate food, fuel, and medical supplies, bringing the economy and infrastructure to the point of collapse.
Israel has also sought to control how Gaza's story is told to the outside -- from its sophisticated 'public relations' campaigns to blocking the entry of foreign journalists.
Virtual Gaza is a space where ordinary Palestinians under siege can describe their experiences in their own words, and where the destruction of the Gaza strip can be documented by those experiencing it directly. The diary entries, photographs, and video material gathered here have been contributed by residents of Gaza. For safety reasons, authors are located in neighborhoods, but their precise location has been randomized.

http://virtualgaza.media.mit.edu/

Please share this information with your friends.

- Terry Allen -

Obama or Bushama. Is he anything new?

2009-01-27T09:14:00.000-08:00

Choosing a news organization because it is friendly to USA/Israel points of view, is a strong indication there will be no real "change" in how Obama deals with Arabs.
Arabs will remain second class to Israeli's.

This exchange from the interview with AlArabiyya TV (the station of King Fahd's brother-in-law) summarizes it for me:

"THE PRESIDENT: Well, here's what I think is important. Look at the proposal that was put forth by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia --

Q Right.

THE PRESIDENT: I might not agree with every aspect of the proposal, but it took great courage

Q Absolutely.

"There are several things to be said about this interview, and I don't believe that there is anything new in it whatsoever. I mean, CNN is lauding it as an example of how Obama (or Bushama) is willing to reach out to the Muslim world. I listened to it on my way from SF last night and CNN aired it in full. First, if the Bushama really wants to be different from Bush he would have selected AlJazeera and not al-Arabiyya. I mean, CNN does not know that Bush spoke to Arabic TV stations regularly, and Rice was a fixture on Al-Arabiyya TV. And they selected Al-Arabiyya because it is "friendly" to US interests and because on Al-Arabiyya TV US officials get softball questions. If Obama wanted to be different he would have chosen Al-Jazeera because it is the Arabs' favorite channel. Al-Arabiyya is the US government's favorite channel, and the US under Obama does not seem to want to respect the choices and preference of the Arab population. Secondly, Obama chose this station because he wanted to appease the Saudi royal family especially after the moping remarks of Prince Turki--the midwife of Al-Qa`idah and a key ally of the US. This president is signaling that he will be no different than Bush in coddling the Saudi Wahhabi dictatorship--a key ally of Israel today. Do you notice that Israel does not even make token noise about Saudi arms sales? It used to prod its lobby here in the US to put stiff resistance to any arms sale to Saudi Arabia, and then they deny the existence of a Saudi-Israeli conspiracy. Apparently, the Saudi King was not pleased that Obama or Bushama called Abu Mazen (the usurping president of the puppet PA) and Mubarak--and of course Olmert--on his first day on the job but not the Saudi autocrat. The president then called him the next day and the Saudi news agency reported that they discussed ways to even "strengthen and expand" the Saudi-American relations. Don't ever believe the promises of any presidential candidate regarding human rights or democracy when it comes to the Middle East: look at the example of the disgraced and failed president, Jimmy Carter who can't stop producing boring and insignificant books on the Middle East. Thirdly, there is nothing that Bushama said that was not said by Bush. The CNN guest, Aslan something who always impresses me with his lack of knowledge on the Middle East when he speaks on the Middle East, kept saying in awe that the president spoke respectfully about respect in his address to Muslims and Arabs. But so did Bush, and Bush went to a mosque in Washington, DC--in order to prepare for the bombs and missiles to fall on Muslim and Arab heads. Fourthly, Obama in talking about the Middle East--the Palestine question and beyond--suffers from an acute case of "economism" or economic reductionism. He has the tendency to reduce all Arab and Muslim issues to job and medical care. It is NOT only the economy--stupid. It is also about pride and dignity and Palestine AND about freedom from the severe oppression that people suffer under governments that are coddled and armed by the very same US of A. So the words fall hollow here. Fifthly, Obama as a representative of the White Man (and he can also be referred to as the White Man, analytically speaking just as Margaret Thatcher was a representative of the White Man) did not deviate from the deep racism that characterizes US foreign policy to the Arab-Israeli conflict. I mean when he refers to Israel's security as "paramount" he is basically saying (like previous US president) that the security of the Palestinians is inferior because they are seen as inferior people. There is no question about that. It means that and the racism is reflected clearly in the disregard of Israeli WMDs. It never comes up in any interview with US officials on Al-Arabiyya (it is featured regularly in AlJazeera as yesterday's interview with Brent Ccowcroft showed). Karl Marx wrote somewhere about the danger of covering up the chain with flowers. Obama is no different than Bush but American bombs and missiles under his administration will be decorated and covered with flowers. If that is a reason to celebrate, please open the champagne bottles NOW.

- Courtesy of: The Angry Arab - http://www.angryarab.blogspot.com/

Pirates or Freedom Fighters?

2009-01-26T07:28:00.000-08:00

I'm sure you have all been titillated by all the news about Pirates.
I have.
Armed, half dressed, crazy, but brave Somali's who apparently, run around in high speed inflatable boats and take over freighters and hold them for ransom.

As usual, that is all we have heard. We are led to assume it is all about crime and money.
Well, maybe it is, but maybe it is not the Somali Pirates who are the real criminals. The real Pirates.

It seems major nations have been dumping their industrial waste off the shores of Somalia. This has effectively destroyed their fisheries and sickened their populations.

Johann Hari of The Independant, has an amazingly revealing article on "the other side of the story". http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-you-are-being-lied-to-about-pirates-1225817.html

It is about more than fishing.
It is more like a Robert Ludlum novel.

By the way: Do you realize that the USA hired Pirates during our Revolutionary war?
Once again, there is more to the story than the Corporate Media and our Governments wish us to know.

So, pour another cup, sit back and enjoy the adventure.

- Terry Allen -

And don't forget to get this into Obama's Ear!

Gas on Israel & Lebanon Border Cause for Dispute!

2009-01-23T09:11:00.000-08:00

A new player in the game of Middle East Dominance has elbowed it's way into a place at the table.

Nobel Energy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_Energy, the USA based exploration company, in partnership with Israel and other partners, has discovered a large natural gas deposit off the coast of Haifa, on the border of Lebanon.
As the gas lays on the border, the potential for conflict is obvious. To further complicate the issue, is "directional drilling".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directional_drilling

Though this is a legitimate and useful tool in efficiently extracting oil and gas when used properly, it has also long been a tool for tapping gas and oil reserves that lay under a "neighbors" property. Though this ability was discovered in the late 1920's, in the Wild West atmosphere that is the world of exploration, the practice continues to this day.

Iraq claimed Kuwait was drilling into Iraqi fields and used it as a part of it's case for war. After the war, the borders were re-drawn and Kuwait now owns the wells that were on the Iraqi side.

It doesn't look good:
Combine a rush to claim and exploit disputed and diminishing natural resources, with unstable religious, political and territorial conditions and it begins to look like the Wild West in the Middle East.

Karin Kloosterman presents an in depth look at the situation, complete with good links at:

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/01/natural-gas-israel.php

It will be interesting to see what face, the powers that be put on issue if the shooting starts up over this issue (can anyone realistically believe it won't?). Will Lebanon be accused of firing rockets, will Israel be accused of sending hit teams, will "Terrorism" be the watchword of the day and will the corporations use the armies of both in a no holds barred cage match that again spills over and engulfs the innocents?

Will someone call "BullShit?
As usual, will there be no mention in the Main Stream Media about the real origin of the conflict?
Will they simply not care about "following the money" and calling "Bullshit" on the perpetrators? Will they not insist the parties simply resolve the issue in a business like manner?
Very seldom are courtrooms the scene of bloody conflict...of course this course would cut into the value-added products: Munitions.

In a land where the indigenous people still struggle for a homeland and equal rights, conflict is a given; until their voices are heard, respected...and they get their fair slice of the pie.

- Terry Allen -

Remember to play Kevin Bacon's Six Degrees of Separation and get this information, into Obama's Ear.

Is the Gaza War about Stealing Palestine's Gas and Oil?

2009-01-22T09:44:00.000-08:00

Dear Mr. President,
As you know, there is often a public face and a private face to a sensitive issue.
It is possible, the reason's for current wars in Palestine are much deeper than the public story tells.

Israel has sold the rights to the gas fields off Gaza to "British Gas (BG Group) and its partner, the Athens based Consolidated Contractors International Company (CCC)... in a 25 year agreement...".

Obviously, the Palestinian's, who technically "own" this land and water and the gas beneath it are upset that their natural resources are being taken from them against their will, much as land and resources of the American Indian were taken from them...by using broken promises and bloody conflict.

The linked, in depth study by Michel Chossudovsky of Global Reasearch, will provide you with all the maps and details you need to get an understanding from the Palestinian perspective, you most likely are not getting from your advisors and certainly not from our main stream media.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=11680

We ask you to fulfill your pledge to look at all sides of the issue, as you seek to find a long term solution which is fair and honest.

Additionally, please remember, there are at least two parties in Palestine that have a voice. Both Fatah and Hamas. Remember also, Hamas was elected in a fair and democratic election verified by President Jimmy Carter and the United Nations. There are reasons why the population voted for Hamas and and not Fatah. There can be no full understanding and certainly no peace unless both Palestinian voices are heard and respected.

Friends of this blog:
Let us all use Kevin Bacon's Six Degrees of Separation principle, to get this information into Obama's Ear. This means Obama's Ear as well as to Obama's "Special Middle East Envoy" George Mitchell.

- Terry Allen -